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Diagnosing potassium deficiency in wheat Potassium is a major nutrient that is increasingly required as soil reserves become depleted. Potassium deficiency results in poor water use and other nutrients, making crops more susceptible to drought, waterlogging, frost and leaf diseases. What to look for - Smaller lighter green plants with necrotic leaf tips, generally on sandier parts of the paddock or between header or swathe rows. - Plants look unusually water-stressed despite adequate environmental conditions. - Affected areas are more susceptible to leaf disease. - Plants appear paler and weak. - Older leaves are affected first with leaf tip death and progressive yellowing and death down from the leaf tip and edges. There is a marked contrast in colour between yellow leaf margins and the green centre. - Yellowing leaf tip and leaf margins sometimes generates a characteristic green 'arrow' shape towards leaf tip. What else could it be \|Diagnosing molybdenum deficiency in cereals\|\|Pale plants with leaf tip death.\|\|Potassium deficient plants do not have white or rat-tail heads, and have more marked contrast between yellow and green sections of affected leaves.\| \|Diagnosing nitrogen deficiency in wheat\|\|Pale plants with oldest leaves most affected.\|\|Potassium deficient plants have more marked leaf tip death and contrast between yellow and green sections of affected leaves, and tillering is less affected.\| \|Diagnosing spring drought in wheat and barley\|\|Water stressed plants with older leaves dying back from the tip, yellowing progressing down from tip and edges and often leaf death occurs.\|\|The main difference is that potassium deficiency is more marked in high growth plants in good seasons.\| \|Diagnosing root lesion nematode in cereals\|\|Smaller, water stressed pale plants.\|\|Root lesion nematode affected plants have 'spaghetti' roots with few feeder roots.\| Where does it occur? - Sandy soils and deep grey sandy duplex soils tend to be more susceptible to potassium deficiency. - High rates of hay or grain removal can result in potassium deficiency. - Top-dressing potassium will generally correct the deficiency. - Foliar sprays generally can not supply enough potassium to overcome a severe deficiency and can also scorch crops. How can it be monitored? - Use whole-top plant test to diagnose suspected potassium (K) deficiency, and compare paired good/poor plant samples where possible. - The critical concentration for the whole shoot varies from 4.5% for young plants to about 1.5% at the boot stage. - The critical level for the 0 - 10 centimetres Colwell K soil test is about 45 - 50 milligrams per kilogram for deeper sands. However for duplex soils K reserves may be present in the clay. Therefore, the reliability of soil test K is frequently improved with K soil test values from deeper in the soil profile. Where to go for expert help Page last updated: Friday, 17 April 2015 - 2:05pm
History of the Jews in Germany \|Regions with significant populations\| \|German, Hebrew, and Yiddish\| \|Related ethnic groups\| \|other Ashkenazi Jews\| \|Part of a series on\| \|Jews and Judaism\| Jewish settlers founded the Ashkenazi Jewish community in the Early (5th to 10th centuries CE) and High Middle Ages (c.1000–1299 CE). The community prospered under Charlemagne, but suffered during the Crusades. Accusations of well poisoning during the Black Death (1346–53) led to mass slaughter of German Jews, and their fleeing in large numbers to Poland. The Jewish communities of the cities of Mainz, Speyer and Worms became the center of Jewish life during Medieval times. "This was a golden age as area bishops protected the Jews resulting in increased trade and prosperity." The First Crusade began an era of persecution of Jews in Germany. Entire communities, like those of Trier, Worms, Mainz, and Cologne, were murdered. During the war upon the Hussite heretics became the signal for the slaughter of the unbelievers. The end of the 15th century was a period of religious hatred that ascribed to Jews all possible evils. The atrocities of Chmielnicki (1648, in the Ukrainian part of southeastern Poland) and his Cossacks drove the Polish Jews back into western Germany. With Napoleon's fall in 1815, growing nationalism resulted in increasing repression. From August to October 1819, pogroms that came to be known as the Hep-Hep riots took place throughout Germany. During this time, many German states stripped Jews of their civil rights. As a result, many German Jews began to emigrate. From the time of Moses Mendelssohn until the 20th century the community gradually achieved emancipation, and then prospered. In January 1933, some 522,000 Jews lived in Germany. However, following the growth of Nazism and its antisemitic ideology and policies, the Jewish community was severely persecuted. Over half (approximately 304,000) emigrated during the first six years of the Nazi dictatorship. In 1933, persecution of the Jews became an active Nazi policy. In 1935 and 1936, the pace of persecution of the Jews increased. In 1936, Jews were banned from all professional jobs, effectively preventing them from exerting any influence in education, politics, higher education and industry. The SS ordered the Night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht) to be carried out that night, November 9–10, 1938. The storefronts of Jewish shops and offices were smashed and vandalized, and many synagogues were destroyed by fire. Increasing antisemitism prompted a wave of a Jewish mass emigration from Germany throughout the 1930s. There were only approximately 214,000 Jews in Germany proper (1937 borders) on the eve of World War II. The remaining community was nearly eradicated in the Holocaust following deportations to the East. By the end of the war between 160,000 and 180,000 German Jews had been killed in the genocide officially sanctioned and executed by Nazi Germany. In the Holocaust, approximately 6 million European Jews were deported and murdered during World War II. On May 19, 1943, Germany was declared judenrein (clean of Jews; also judenfrei: free of Jews). Of the 214,000 Jews still living in Germany at the outbreak of World War II, 90% died during the Holocaust. After the war the Jewish community started to slowly grow again, fueled primarily by immigration from the former Soviet Union and Israeli expatriates. By the 21st century, the Jewish population of Germany approached 200,000, and Germany had the only growing Jewish community in Europe. Today, the majority of German Jews are Russian-speaking. The total estimated enlarged population of Jews living in Germany (including non-Jewish household members) is close to 250,000. Currently in Germany it is a criminal act to deny the Holocaust or that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust (§130 StGB); violations can be punished with up to five years of prison. In 2007, the Interior Minister of Germany, Wolfgang Schäuble, pointed out the official policy of Germany: "We will not tolerate any form of extremism, xenophobia or anti-Semitism." In spite of Germany's measures against right-wing groups and anti-Semites a number of incidents have occurred in recent years. - 1 From Rome to the Crusades - 2 A period of massacres (1096–1349) - 3 In the Holy Roman Empire - 4 During the 16th and 17th centuries - 5 Migration of Polish and Lithuanian Jews to Germany - 6 From Moses Mendelssohn (1778) to the Nazis (1933) - 7 Jews under the Nazis (1933–45) - 8 Jews in Germany from 1945 to the reunification - 9 Jews in the reunited Germany (post-1990) - 10 See also - 11 Notes - 12 References - 13 Literature - 14 External links From Rome to the Crusades Jewish immigration from Roman Italy is considered the most likely source of the first German Jews. While the date of the first settlement of Jews in the regions the Romans called Germania Superior, Germania Inferior, and Magna Germania is not known, the first authentic document relating to a large and well-organized Jewish community in these regions dates from 321 and refers to Cologne on the Rhine. (In Rome itself, a Jewish community existed as early as 139 BC.) It indicates that the legal status of the Jews there was the same as elsewhere in the Roman Empire. They enjoyed some civil liberties, but were restricted regarding the dissemination of their faith, the keeping of Christian slaves, and the holding of office under the government. Jews were otherwise free to follow any occupation open to their fellow citizens and were engaged in agriculture, trade, industry, and gradually money-lending. These conditions at first continued in the subsequently established Germanic kingdoms under the Burgundians and Franks, for ecclesiasticism took root slowly. The Merovingian rulers who succeeded to the Burgundian empire were devoid of fanaticism and gave scant support to the efforts of the Church to restrict the civic and social status of the Jews. Charlemagne (800–814) readily made use of the Church for the purpose of infusing coherence into the loosely joined parts of his extensive empire, by any means a blind tool of the canonical law. He employed Jews for diplomatic purposes, sending, for instance, a Jew as interpreter and guide with his embassy to Harun al-Rashid. Yet, even then, a gradual change occurred in the lives of the Jews. The Church forbade Christians to be usurers, and so the Jews secured the remunerative monopoly of money-lending. This decree caused a mixed reaction of people in general in the Frankish empire (including Germany) to the Jews: Jewish people were sought everywhere as well as avoided. This ambivalence about Jews occurred because their capital was indispensable, while their business was viewed as disreputable. This curious combination of circumstances increased Jewish influence and Jews went about the country freely, settling also in the eastern portions. Aside from Cologne, the earliest communities were established in Mainz, Worms and Speyer, which existed up until the 1930s. The status of the German Jews remained unchanged under Charlemagne's successor Louis the Pious. Jews were unrestricted in their commerce; however, they paid somewhat higher taxes into the state treasury than did the Christians. A special officer, the Judenmeister, was appointed by the government to protect Jewish privileges. The later Carolingians, however, followed the demands of the Church more and more. The bishops continually argued at the synods for including and enforcing anti-Semitic decrees of the canonical law, with the consequence that the majority Christian populace mistrusted the Jewish unbelievers. This feeling, among both princes and people, was further stimulated by the attacks on the civic equality of the Jews. Beginning with the 10th century, Holy Week became more and more a period of anti-Semitic activities. Yet the Saxon emperors did not treat the Jews badly, exacting from them merely the taxes levied upon all other merchants. Although they were as ignorant as their contemporaries in secular studies, they could read and understand the Hebrew prayers and the Bible in the original text. Halakhic studies began to flourish about 1000. At that time, Rav Gershom ben Judah was teaching at Metz and Mainz, gathering about him pupils from far and near. He is described in Jewish historiography as a model of wisdom, humility, and piety, and has been praised as a "lamp of the Exile". He first stimulated the German Jews to study the treasures of their religious literature. This continuous study of the Torah and the Talmud produced such a devotion to Judaism that the Jews considered life without their religion not worth living; but they did not realize this clearly until the time of the Crusades, when they were often compelled to choose between life and faith. Cultural and religious centre of European Jewry The Jewish communities of the cities of Mainz, Speyer and Worms formed the league of ShUM-cities which became the center of Jewish life during Medieval times (after the first letters of the Hebrew names: Shin for Schpira (Spira), Waw for Warmaisa and Mem for Main). The Takkanot Shum (Hebrew: תקנות שו"ם), or Enactments of ShU"M were a set of decrees formulated and agreed upon over a period of decades by their Jewish community leaders. The official website for the city of Mainz states: \|“\|\|One of the most glorious epoches in Mainz's long history was the period from the beginning of the 900s and evidently much earlier. Following the barbaric Dark Ages, a relatively safe and enlightened Carolingian period brought peace and prosperity to Mainz and much of central–western Europe. For the next 400 years, Mainz attracted many Jews as trade flourished. The greatest Jewish teachers and rabbis flocked to the Rhine. Their teachings, dialogues, decisions and influence propelled Mainz and neighboring towns along the Rhine into world-wide prominence. Their fame spread, rivaling that of other post-Diaspora cities such as Bagdhad. Western European— Ashkenazic or Germanic— Judaism became centered in Mainz, breaking free of the Babylonian traditions. A Yeshiva was founded in the 10th century by Gershom ben Judah. According to historian John Man, "Mainz was the capital of European Jewry"; "it had its own Jewish academy for over 300 years"; "it was revered as the home of Gershom ben Judah, the 'Light of the Diaspora,' who in the eleventh century was the first to bring copies of the Talmud to Western Europe and whose directives helped Jews adapt to European practices. Gershom's school attracted Jews from all over Europe, including the famous biblical scholar Rashi; " and "in the mid-fourteenth century, it had the largest Jewish community in Europe, some 6,000 citizens.":16 "In essence," states the City of Mainz web site, "this was a golden age as area bishops protected the Jews resulting in increased trade and prosperity." A period of massacres (1096–1349) The First Crusade began an era of persecution of Jews in Germany. Entire communities, like those of Trier, Worms, Mainz, and Cologne, were murdered. The Jewish community of Speyer was saved by the bishop, but 800 were slain in Worms. About 12,000 Jews are said to have perished in the Rhenish cities alone between May and July 1096. Alleged crimes, like desecration of the host, ritual murder, poisoning of wells, and treason, brought hundreds to the stake and drove thousands into exile. Jews were alleged to have caused the inroads of the Mongols, even though they suffered equally with the Christians. When the Black Death swept over Europe in 1348–49, some Christians communities accused Jews of poisoning wells. Royal policy and public ambivalence towards Jews helped the persecuted Jews fleeing the German-speaking lands to form the foundations of what would become the largest Jewish community in Europe in what is now Poland/Ukraine/Romania/Belarus/Lithuania. In the Holy Roman Empire The legal and civic status of the Jews underwent a transformation under the Holy Roman Empire. Jewish people found a certain degree of protection with the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, who claimed the right of possession and protection of all the Jews of the empire. A justification for this claim was that the Holy Roman Emperor was the successor of the emperor Titus, who was said to have acquired the Jews as his private property. The German emperors apparently claimed this right of possession more for the sake of taxing the Jews than of protecting them. There was a variety of such taxes. Ludwig the Bavarian was a prolific creator of new taxes. In 1342 he instituted the "golden sacrificial penny" and decreed that every year all the Jews should pay to the emperor one kreutzer in every gulden of their property in addition to the taxes they were paying to the state and municipal authorities. The emperors of the house of Luxembourg devised other means of taxation. They turned their prerogatives in regard to the Jews to further account by selling at a high price to the princes and free towns of the empire the valuable privilege of taxing and mulcting the Jews. Charles IV, via the Golden Bull, granted this privilege to the seven electors of the empire when the empire was reorganized in 1356. From this time onward, for reasons that also apparently concerned taxes, the Jews of Germany gradually passed in increasing numbers from the authority of the emperor to that of the lesser sovereigns and of the cities. For the sake of sorely needed revenue the Jews were now invited, with the promise of full protection, to return to those districts and cities from which they had shortly before been expelled. However, as soon as Jewish people acquired some property, they were again plundered and driven away. These episodes thenceforth constituted a large portion of the medieval history of the German Jews. Emperor Wenceslaus was most expert in transferring to his own coffers gold from the pockets of rich Jews. He made compacts with many cities, estates, and princes whereby he annulled all outstanding debts to the Jews in return for a certain sum paid to him. Emperor Wenceslaus declared that anyone helping Jews with the collection their debts, in spite of this annulment, would be dealt with as a robber and peacebreaker, and be forced to make restitution. This decree, which for years allegedly injured the public credit, is said to have impoverished thousands of Jewish families during the close of the 14th century. Nor did the 15th century bring any amelioration. What happened in the time of the Crusades happened again. During the war upon the Hussite heretics became the signal for the slaughter of the unbelievers. The Jews of Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia passed through all the terrors of death, forced baptism, or voluntary immolation for the sake of their faith. When the Hussites made peace with the Church, the Pope sent the Franciscan monk Capistrano to win the renegades back into the fold and inspire them with loathing for heresy and unbelief; forty-one martyrs were burned in Breslau alone, and all Jews were forever banished from Silesia. The Franciscan monk Bernardine of Feltre brought a similar fate upon the communities in southern and western Germany. As a consequence of the fictitious confessions extracted under torture from the Jews of Trent, the populace of many cities, especially of Ratisbon, fell upon the Jews and massacred them. The end of the 15th century, which brought a new epoch for the Christian world, brought no relief to the Jews. Jews in Germany remained the victims of a religious hatred that ascribed to them all possible evils. When the established Church, threatened in its spiritual power in Germany and elsewhere, prepared for its conflict with the culture of the Renaissance, one of its most convenient points of attack was rabbinic literature. At this time, as once before in France, Jewish converts spread false reports in regard to the Talmud. But an advocate of the book arose in the person of Johannes Reuchlin, the German humanist, who was the first one in Germany to include the Hebrew language among the humanities. His opinion, though strongly opposed by the Dominicans and their followers, finally prevailed when the humanistic Pope Leo X permitted the Talmud to be printed in Italy. Jewish life in the Holy Roman Empire The Jews had kept their piety and their intellectual activity. They were devoted to the study of the Halakah. In the 11th century Rabbi Gershom's pupils had been the teachers of Rashi, and his commentaries on the Bible and Talmud marked out new paths for learning. The German Jews contributed much to the spread and completion of these commentaries. Beginning with the 12th century they worked independently, especially in the fields of Haggadah and ethics. R. Simon ha-Darshan's Yalḳuṭ (c. 1150), the Book of the Pious by R. Judah ha-Ḥasid of Ratisbon (c. 1200), the Salve-Mixer (Rokeaḥ) of R. Eleasar of Worms (c. 1200), the halakic collection Or Zarua of R. Isaac of Vienna (c. 1250), the responsa of Rabbi Meïr of Rothenburg (died 1293), are enduring monuments of German Jewish industry. Even the horrors of the Black Death could not completely destroy this literary activity. Profound and wide scholarship was less common after the middle of the 14th century, which led to the institution of allowing only those scholars to become rabbis who could produce a written authorization to teach (hattarat hora'ah), issued by a recognized master. To this period of decline belong also a number of large collections of responsa and useful commentaries on earlier halakic works. The customs and ordinances relating to the form and order of worship were especially studied in this period, and were definitely fixed for the ritual of the synagogues of western and eastern Germany by Jacob Mölln (Maharil) and Isaac Tyrnau. As it was difficult to produce any new works in the field of the Halakah, and as the dry study of well-worn subjects no longer satisfied, scholars sought relief in the interpretations and traditions embodied in the Cabala. There arose a new, ascetic view of life that found literary expression in the Shene Luḥot ha-Berit by Rabbi Isaiah Horovitz of Frankfurt am Main (died 1626), and that appealed especially to the pietistic German Jews. The end and aim of existence were now sought in the aspiration of the soul toward its fountainhead, combined with the endeavor to saturate the earthly life with the spirit of God. By a continuous attitude of reverence to God, by lofty thoughts and actions, the Jew was to rise above the ordinary affairs of the day and become a worthy member of the kingdom of God. Every act of his life was to remind him of his religious duties and stimulate him to mystic contemplation. During the 16th and 17th centuries The feeling of the Christians against the Jews themselves, however, remained the same. During the 16th and 17th centuries they were still subject to the will of the princes and free cities, both in Catholic and in Protestant countries. It was at this period of time in which Jews were considered a bargaining chip between the Princes and the Magistrate, for the Jews resided among the Imperial cities. The Jews were used as leverage by the Imperial Cities within Imperial courts, which would later shift the power struggle between Imperial Cities and the Emperor. The Protestant Reformation ended this notion of human bargaining chip, and they were therefore not needed within Imperial Cities. The emperor was unable to protect them because the Imperial cities gained control over the regions, and the Jews were not protected under the Christian laws then extant. The German emperors were not always able to protect them, even when they desired to do so, as did the chivalrous Emperor Maximilian I; they could not prevent the accusations of ritual murder and desecration of the host. The unending religious controversies that rent the empire and finally led to the Thirty Years' War further aggravated the position of the Jews, who were made the prey of each party in turn. The emperors even occasionally expelled their kammerknechte from their crown lands, although they still assumed the office of protector. Ferdinand I expelled the Jews from Lower Austria and Görz, and would have carried out his vow to banish them also from Bohemia had not the noble Mordecai Ẓemaḥ Cohen of Prague induced the pope to absolve the emperor from this vow. Emperor Leopold I expelled them in 1670 from Vienna and the Archduchy of Austria, in spite of their vested rights and the intercession of princes and ecclesiastics; the exiles were received in the Margraviate of Brandenburg. The Great Elector Frederick William (1620–1688), decided to tolerate all religious beliefs impartially, and protected his new subjects against oppression and slander. In spite of the civic and religious restrictions to which they were subjected even here, the Jews of this flourishing community gradually attained a wider outlook. Migration of Polish and Lithuanian Jews to Germany The atrocities of Chmielnicki (1648, in the Ukrainian part of southeastern Poland) and his Cossacks drove the Polish Jews back into western Germany. This trend accelerated throughout the 18th century as parts of Germany began to readmit Jews, and with the worsening conditions in Poland after the Partition of Poland in 1772, 1793 and 1795 between Prussia, Austria, and Russia. From Moses Mendelssohn (1778) to the Nazis (1933) Moses Mendelssohn considered that the Middle Ages, which had not seen the Jews lose their faith or their past intellectual achievements, had deprived them of the chief means of comprehending the intellectual labors of others (namely, the vernacular German). The divide that separated them from their educated fellow citizens was bridged by Mendelssohn's translation of the Torah into German. This book became the manual of German Jews, teaching them to write and speak the German language, and preparing them for participation in German culture and secular science. Mendelssohn lived to see the first fruits of his endeavors. In 1778 his friend David Friedländer founded the Jewish free school in Berlin; this was the first Jewish educational institution in Germany in which instruction, in scripture as well as in general science, was undertaken in German only. Similar schools were later founded in the German towns of Breslau (1792), Seesen (1801), Frankfurt (1804), and Wolfenbüttel (1807), and the Galician towns of Brody and Tarnopol (1815). In 1783, the periodical Der Sammler was issued with the aim of providing general information for adults and enabling them to express themselves in cultured German. In the late eighteenth century, a youthful enthusiasm for new ideals of religious equality began to take hold in the western world. Austrian Emperor Joseph II was foremost in espousing these new ideals. As early as 1782 he issued the Patent of Toleration for the Jews of Lower Austria, thereby establishing civic equality for his Jewish subjects. Before 1806, when general citizenship was largely non-existent in the Holy Roman Empire, its inhabitants were subject to varying estate regulations. In different ways from one territory of the Empire to another, these regulations classified inhabitants into different groups, such as dynasts, members of the court entourage, other aristocrats, city dwellers (burghers), Jews, Huguenots (in Prussia a special estate until 1810), free peasants, serfs, peddlers and Gypsies, with different privileges and burdens attached to each classification. Legal inequality was the principle. The concept of citizenship was mostly restricted to cities, especially free imperial cities. There was no general franchise, which remained a privilege for the few, who had inherited the status or acquired it when they reached a certain level of taxed income or could afford the expense of the citizen's fee (Bürgergeld). Citizenship was often further restricted to city dwellers affiliated to the locally dominant Christian denomination (Calvinism, Roman Catholicism or Lutheranism). City dwellers of other denominations or religions and those who lacked the necessary wealth to qualify as citizens were considered to be mere inhabitants who lacked political rights and were sometimes subject to revocable residence permits. Most Jews then living in those parts of Germany that allowed them to settle were automatically defined as mere indigenous inhabitants, depending on permits that were typically less generous than those granted to gentile indigenous inhabitants (Einwohner, as opposed to Bürger, or citizen). In the 18th century some Jews and their families (such as Daniel Itzig in Berlin) gained equal status with their Christian fellow city dwellers, but had a different status from noblemen, Huguenots, or serfs. They often did not enjoy the right to freedom of movement across territorial or even municipal boundaries, let alone the same status in any new place as in their previous location. With the abolition of differences in legal status during the Napoleonic era and its aftermath, citizenship was established as a new franchise generally applying to all former subjects of the monarchs. Prussia conferred citizenship on the Prussian Jews in 1812, though this by no means resulted in full equality with other citizens. While Jewish emancipation did not eliminate all forms of discrimination against Jews, who often remained barred from holding official state positions. The German federal edicts of 1815 merely held out the prospect of full equality; but it was not genuinely implemented at that time, and even the promises which had been made were modified. However, such forms of discrimination were no longer the guiding principle for ordering society, but a violation of it. In Austria many laws restricting the trade and traffic of Jewish subjects remained in force until the middle of the 19th century in spite of the patent of toleration. Some of the crown lands, such as Styria and Upper Austria, forbade any Jews to settle within their territory; in Bohemia, Moravia, and Austrian Silesia many cities were closed to them. The Jews were also burdened with heavy taxes and imposts. In the German kingdom of Prussia the government materially modified the promises made in the disastrous year of 1813. The promised uniform regulation of Jewish affairs was time and again postponed. In the period between 1815 and 1847 there were no less than 21 territorial laws affecting Jews in the older eight provinces of the Prussian state, each having to be observed by part of the Jewish community. There was at that time no official authorized to speak in the name of all Prussian Jews, or Jewry in most of the other 41 German states, let alone for all German Jews. Nevertheless, a few men came forward to promote their cause, foremost among them being Gabriel Riesser (d. 1863), a Jewish lawyer from Hamburg, who demanded full civic equality for his race. He won over public opinion to such an extent that this equality was granted in Prussia on April 6, 1848, in Hanover and Nassau on September 5 and on December 12, respectively and also in his home state of Hamburg, then home to the second biggest Jewish community in Germany. In Württemberg equality was conceded on December 3, 1861; in Baden on October 4, 1862; in Holstein on July 14, 1863; and in Saxony on December 3, 1868. After the establishment of the North German Confederation by the law of July 3, 1869, all remaining statutory restrictions imposed on the followers of different religions were abolished; this decree was extended to all the states of the German empire after the events of 1870. The Jewish enlightenment in Germany The intellectual development of the Jews kept pace with their civic enfranchisement. Recognizing that pursuit of modern culture would not at once assure them the civic status they desired, their leaders set themselves to reawaken Jewish self-consciousness by applying the methods of modern scholarship to the study of Jewish sources. They sought to stimulate the rising generation by familiarizing them with the intellectual achievements of their ancestors, which had been accumulating for thousands of years; and at the same time they sought to rehabilitate Judaism in the eyes of the world. The leader of this new movement and the founder of modern Jewish science was Leopold Zunz (1794–1886), who united broad general scholarship with a thorough knowledge of the entire Jewish literature and who, with his contemporary Solomon Judah Löb Rapoport of Galicia (1790–1867), especially aroused their coreligionists in Germany, Austria, and Italy. The German scholars who cooperated in the work of these two men may be noted here. H. Arnheim wrote a scholarly manual of the Hebrew language; Julius Fürst and David Cassel compiled Hebrew dictionaries; Fürst and Bernhard Bär compiled concordances to the entire Bible; Wolf Heidenheim and Seligmann Baer edited correct Masoretic texts of the Bible; Solomon Frensdorff subjected the history of the Masorah to a thoroughly scientific investigation; the Bible was translated into German under the direction of Zunz and Salomon; Ludwig Philippson, Solomon Hirschheimer, and Julius Fürst wrote complete Biblical commentaries; H. Grätz and S.R. Hirsch dealt with some of the Biblical books; Zacharias Frankel and Abraham Geiger investigated the Aramaic and Greek translations. Nor was the traditional law neglected. Jacob Levy compiled lexicographical works to the Talmud and Midrashim. Michael Sachs and Joseph Perles investigated the foreign elements found in the language of the Talmud. Numerous and, on the whole, excellent editions of halakic and haggadic midrashim were issued—for instance, Zuckermandel's edition of the Tosefta and Theodor's edition of Midrash Rabbah to Genesis. Zacharias Frankel wrote an introduction to the Mishnah and to the Jerusalem Talmud, and David Hoffmann and Israel Lewy investigated the origin and development of the Halakah. Religio-philosophical literature was also assiduously cultivated, and the original Arabic texts of Jewish religious philosophers were made accessible. M. H. Landauer issued Saadia Gaon's works, and H. Hirschfeld the works of Judah ha-Levi. M. Joel and I. Guttmann investigated the works of Jewish thinkers and their influence on the general development of philosophy, while S. Hirsch attempted to develop the philosophy of religion along the lines laid down by Hegel, and Solomon Steinheim propounded a new theory of revelation in accordance with the system of the synagogue Reorganization of the German Jewish community The enfranchisement of the Jews and the renewed flowering of Jewish science led to a reorganization of their institutions to transmit the ancient traditions intact to new generations. Opinions differed widely as to the best methods for accomplishing this object. While Geiger and Holdheim were ready to meet the modern spirit of liberalism, Samson Raphael Hirsch defended traditional customs. As neither of these two tendencies was followed by the mass of the faithful, Zacharias Frankel initiated a moderate Reform movement with a historical basis, in agreement with which the larger German communities reorganized their public worship by reducing the medieval payyeṭanic additions to the prayers, introducing congregational singing and regular sermons, and requiring scientifically trained rabbis. In general, it was easier to agree on the means of training children for Reformed worship and the awakening of interest in Jewish affairs in adults. The religious schools were an outcome of the desire to add religious instruction to the secular education of Jewish children prescribed by the state. As the Talmudic schools, which still existed in Germany in the first third of the 19th century, gradually emptied; rabbinical seminaries were founded in which Talmudic instruction followed the methods introduced by Zacharias Frankel in the Jewish Theological Seminary opened at Breslau in 1854. Since then special attention has been devoted to religious literature. Textbooks on religion and specifically on Biblical and Jewish history, as well as aids to the translation and explanation of the Bible and the prayer-books, were compiled to meet the demands of modern educational systems. Pulpit oratory began to flourish as never before, foremost among the great German preachers being M. Sachs and M. Joël. Synagogal music was not neglected, with Louis Lewandowski especially contributing to its development. The public institutions of Jewish communities served to supplement the work of teachers and leaders and to promote Jewish solidarity. This was the primary object of the Jewish press, created by Ludwig Philippson. In 1837 he founded the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, which was followed by a number of similar periodicals. Societies for the cultivation of Jewish literature were founded, as well as associations of teachers, rabbis, and leaders of congregations. Birth of the Reform Movement In response to the Enlightenment and the emancipation, elements within German Jewry sought to reform Jewish belief and practice, starting the Jewish Reform Movement. In light of modern scholarship, these German Jews denied divine authorship of the Torah, declared only those biblical laws concerning ethics to be binding, and stated that the rest of halakha (Jewish law) need no longer be viewed as normative. Circumcision was abandoned, rabbis wore vestments modeled after Protestant ministers, and instrumental accompaniment—banned in Jewish Sabbath worship since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE—reappeared in Reform synagogues, most often in the form of a pipe organ. The traditional Hebrew prayer book (the Siddur) was replaced with a German text which truncated or altogether excised most parts of the traditional service. Reform synagogues began to be called temples (Hamburg Temple), a term reserved in more traditional Judaism for the Temple in Jerusalem. The practice of Kashrut (keeping kosher) was abandoned as an impediment to spirituality. The early Reform movement renounced Zionism and declared Germany to be its new Zion. This anti-Zionist view is no longer held; see below. One of the most important figures in the history of Reform Judaism is the radical reformer Samuel Holdheim. Freedom and repression (1815–1930s) Napoleon I emancipated the Jews across Europe, but with Napoleon's fall in 1815, growing nationalism resulted in increasing repression. From August to October 1819, pogroms that came to be known as the Hep-Hep riots took place throughout Germany. Jewish property was destroyed, and many Jews were killed. During this time, many German states stripped Jews of their civil rights. In the Free City of Frankfurt, only twelve Jewish couples were allowed to marry each year, and the 400,000 gulden the city's Jewish community had paid in 1811 for its emancipation was forfeited. After the Rhineland reverted to Prussian control, Jews lost the rights Napoleon had granted them, were banned from certain professions, and the few who had been appointed to public office before the Napoleonic Wars were dismissed. Throughout numerous German states, Jews had their rights to work, settle and marry restricted. Without special letters of protection, Jews were banned from many different professions, and often had to resort to jobs considered unrespectable, such as peddling or cattle dealing, to survive. A Jewish man who wanted to marry had to purchase a registration certificate, known as a matrikel, proving he was in a "respectable" trade or profession. Matrikels, which could cost up to 1,000 gulden, were usually restricted to firstborn sons. As a result, most Jewish men were unable to legally marry. Throughout Germany, Jews were heavily taxed, and were sometimes discriminated against by gentile craftsmen. As a result, many German Jews began to emigrate. The emigration was encouraged by German-Jewish newspapers. At first, most emigrants were young, single men from small towns and villages. A smaller number of single women also emigrated. Individual family members would emigrate alone, and then send for family members once they had earned enough money. Emigration eventually swelled, with some German Jewish communities losing up to 70% of their members. At one point, a German-Jewish newspaper reported that all young Jewish males in the Franconian towns of Hagenbach, Ottingen, and Warnbach had all emigrated or were about to emigrate. The United States was the primary destination for emigrating German Jews. The Revolutions of 1848 swung the pendulum back towards freedom for the Jews. A noted reform rabbi of that time was Leopold Zunz, a contemporary and friend of Heinrich Heine. In 1871, with the unification of Germany by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, came their emancipation, but the growing mood of despair among assimilated Jews was reinforced by the anti-Semitic penetrations of politics. In the 1870s anti-Semitism was fueled by the financial crisis and scandals; in the 1880s by the arrival of masses of Ostjuden, fleeing from Russian territories; by the 1890s it was a parliamentary presence, threatening anti-Jewish laws. In 1879 the Hamburg anarchist pamphleteer Wilhelm Marr introduced the term 'anti-Semitism' into the political vocabulary by founding the Anti-Semitic League. Anti-Semites of the völkisch movement were the first to describe themselves as such, because they viewed Jews as part of a Semitic race that could never be properly assimilated into German society. Such was the ferocity of the anti-Jewish feeling of the völkisch movement that by 1900, anti-Semitic had entered German to describe anyone who had anti-Jewish feelings. However, despite massive protests and petitions, the völkisch movement failed to persuade the government to revoke Jewish emancipation, and in the 1912 Reichstag elections, the parties with völkisch-movement sympathies suffered a temporary defeat. Jews experienced a period of ostensible legal equality from 1848 until the rise of Nazi Germany. In the opinion of historian Fritz Stern, by the end of the 19th century, what had emerged was a Jewish-German symbiosis, where German Jews had merged elements of German and Jewish culture into a unique new one. Marriages between Jews and non-Jews became somewhat common from the 19th century; for example, the wife of German Chancellor Gustav Stresemann was Jewish. However, statutory equality and actual practice did not coincide. As Walter Rathenau found out, even in 1905 there was hardly any chance of a Jew receiving a judgeship, and even then only if the Jewish candidate renounced his faith and converted to Christianity. A higher percentage of German Jews fought in World War I than that of any other ethnic, religious or political group in Germany; some 12,000 died for their country. It was a Jewish lieutenant, Hugo Gutmann, who awarded the Iron Cross, First Class, to a 29-year-old corporal named Adolf Hitler. After Hitler came to power, Gutmann was incarcerated by the Gestapo, but was later released and moved to Brussels, subsequently escaping to the USA after the war began In October 1916, the German Military High Command administered the Judenzählung (census of Jews). Designed to confirm accusations of the lack of patriotism among German Jews, the census disproved the charges, but its results were not made public. Denounced as a "statistical monstrosity", the census was a catalyst to intensified antisemitism and social myths such as the "stab-in-the-back legend" (Dolchstosslegende). Jews under the Nazis (1933–45) \|Part of a series on\| In Germany, according to historian Hans Mommsen, there were three types of antisemitism. In a 1997 interview, Mommsen was quoted as saying: One should differentiate between the cultural antisemitism symptomatic of the German conservatives—found especially in the German officer corps and the high civil administration—and mainly directed against the Eastern Jews on the one hand, and völkisch antisemitism on the other. The conservative variety functions, as Shulamit Volkov has pointed out, as something of a "cultural code." This variety of German antisemitism later on played a significant role insofar as it prevented the functional elite from distancing itself from the repercussions of racial antisemitism. Thus, there was almost no relevant protest against the Jewish persecution on the part of the generals or the leading groups within the Reich government. This is especially true with respect to Hitler's proclamation of the "racial annihilation war" against the Soviet Union. Besides conservative antisemitism, there existed in Germany a rather silent anti-Judaism within the Catholic Church, which had a certain impact on immunizing the Catholic population against the escalating persecution. The famous protest of the Catholic Church against the euthanasia program was, therefore, not accompanied by any protest against the Holocaust. The third and most vitriolic variety of antisemitism in Germany (and elsewhere) is the so-called völkisch antisemitism or racism, and this is the foremost advocate of using violence. In 1933, persecution of the Jews became an active Nazi policy, but at first laws were not as rigorously obeyed or as devastating as in later years. Such clauses, known as Aryan paragraphs, had been postulated previously by antisemitism and enacted in many private organizations. On April 1, 1933, following calls throughout March from international Jewish leaders for a international boycott of German products, Germans retaliated with bans against Jewish doctors, shops, lawyers and stores were boycotted. Only six days later, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service was passed, banning Jews from being employed in government. This law meant that Jews were now indirectly and directly dissuaded or banned from privileged and upper-level positions reserved for "Aryan" Germans. From then on, Jews were forced to work at more menial positions, beneath non-Jews, pushing them to more labored positions. The Civil Service Law reached immediately into the education system because university professors, for example, were civil servants. While the majority of the German intellectual classes were not thoroughgoing National Socialists, academia had been suffused with a "cultured Judeophobia" since imperial times, even more so during Weimar. With the majority of non-Jewish professors holding such feelings about Jews, coupled with how the Nazis' outwardly appeared in the period during and after the seizure of power, there was little motivation to oppose the anti-Jewish measures being enacted—few did, and many were actively in favor. According to a German professor of the history of mathematics, "There is no doubt that most of the German mathematicians who were members of the professional organization collaborated with the Nazis, and did nothing to save or help their Jewish colleagues." "German physicians were highly Nazified, compared to other professionals, in terms of party membership," observed Raul Hilberg and some even carried out experiments on human beings at places like Auschwitz. On August 2, 1934, President Paul von Hindenburg died. No new president was appointed; with Adolf Hitler as chancellor of Germany, he took control of the office of Führer. This, and a tame government with no opposition parties, allowed Adolf Hitler totalitarian control of law-making. The army also swore an oath of loyalty personally to Hitler, giving him power over the military; this position allowed himself to enforce his beliefs further by creating more pressure on the Jews than ever before. In 1935 and 1936, the pace of persecution of the Jews increased. In May 1935, Jews were forbidden to join the Wehrmacht (Armed Forces), and that year, anti-Jewish propaganda appeared in Nazi German shops and restaurants. The Nuremberg Racial Purity Laws were passed around the time of the Nazi rallies at Nuremberg; On September 15, 1935, the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor was passed, preventing sexual relations and marriages between Aryans and Jews. At the same time the Reich Citizenship Law was passed and was reinforced in November by a decree, stating that all Jews, even quarter- and half-Jews, were no longer citizens (Reichsbürger) of their own country (their official status became Reichsangehöriger, "subject of the state"). This meant that they had no basic civil rights, such as that to vote. (But at this time the right to vote for the non-Jewish Germans only meant the obligation to vote for the Nazi party.) This removal of basic citizens' rights preceded harsher laws to be passed in the future against Jews. The drafting of the Nuremberg Laws is often attributed to Hans Globke. In 1936, Jews were banned from all professional jobs, effectively preventing them from exerting any influence in education, politics, higher education and industry. Because of this, there was nothing to stop the anti-Jewish actions which spread across the Nazi-German economy. After the Night of the Long Knives, the Schutzstaffel (SS) became the dominant policing power in Germany. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler was eager to please Hitler and so willingly obeyed his orders. Since the SS had been Hitler's personal bodyguard, its members were far more loyal and skilled than those of the Sturmabteilung (SA) had been. Because of this, they were also supported, though distrusted, by the army, which was now more willing to agree with Hitler's decisions than when the SA was dominant. All of this allowed Hitler more direct control over government and political attitude towards Jews in Nazi Germany. In 1937 and 1938, new laws were implemented, and the segregation of Jews from the true "Aryan" German population was started. In particular, Jews were penalized financially for their perceived racial status. On June 4, 1937, two young German Jews, Helmut Hirsch and Isaac Utting, were both executed for being involved in a plot to bomb the Nazi party headquarters in Nuremberg. As of March 1, 1938, government contracts could no longer be awarded to Jewish businesses. On September 30, "Aryan" doctors could only treat "Aryan" patients. Provision of medical care to Jews was already hampered by the fact that Jews were banned from being doctors or having any professional jobs. Beginning August 17, 1938, Jews with first names of non-Jewish origin had to add Israel (males) or Sarah (females) to their names, and a large J was to be imprinted on their passports beginning October 5. On November 15 Jewish children were banned from going to normal schools. By April 1939, nearly all Jewish companies had either collapsed under financial pressure and declining profits, or had been forced to sell out to the Nazi German government. This further reduced Jews' rights as human beings; they were in many ways officially separated from the German populace. The increasingly totalitarian, militaristic regime which was being imposed on Germany by Hitler allowed him to control the actions of the SS and the military. On November 7, 1938, a young Polish Jew, Herschel Grynszpan, attacked and shot two German officials in the Nazi German embassy in Paris. (Grynszpan was angry about the treatment of his parents by the Nazi Germans.) On November 9 the German Attache, vom Rath, died. Goebbels issued instructions that demonstrations against Jews were to be organized and undertaken in retaliation throughout Germany. The SS ordered the Night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht) to be carried out that night, November 9–10, 1938. The storefronts of Jewish shops and offices were smashed and vandalized, and many synagogues were destroyed by fire. Approximately 91 Jews were killed, and another 30,000 arrested, mostly able bodied males, all of whom were sent to the newly formed concentration camps. In the following 3 months some 2000–2500 of them died in the concentration camps, the rest were released under the condition that they leave Germany. Many Germans were disgusted by this action when the full extent of the damage was discovered, Hitler ordered it to be blamed on the Jews. Collectively, the Jews were made to pay back one billion Reichsmark in damages, the fine being raised by confiscating 20 per cent of every Jewish property. The Jews also had to repair all damages at their own cost. Increasing antisemitism prompted a wave of a Jewish mass emigration from Germany throughout the 1930s. Soon after their rise to power in 1933, the Nazis negotiated the Haavara Agreement between Zionist authorities in Palestine, which was signed on August 25, 1933. Under its terms, 60,000 German Jews were allowed to emigrate to Palestine and take $100 million in assets with them. Between 1929 and 1939, a total of 250,000 Jewish immigrants arrived in Palestine, many of them from Germany. Of these, 174,000 arrived between 1933 and 1936. After that, the British Mandatory authorities imposed limits on Jewish immigration, which led to clandestine illegal immigration. This wave of immigration was part of the Fifth Aliyah, and saw many Jewish doctors, lawyers, professionals, and professors leave the country. The United States was another destination for German Jews seeking to leave the country, though the number allowed to immigrate was restricted due to the Immigration Act of 1924. Between 1933 and 1939, more than 300,000 Germans, of whom about 90% were Jews, applied for immigration visas to the United States. By 1940, only 90,000 German Jews had been granted visas and allowed to settle in the United States. Some 100,000 German Jews also moved to Western European countries, especially France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. However, these countries would later be occupied by Germany, and most of them would still fall victim to the Holocaust. Another 48,000 emigrated to the United Kingdom and other European countries. Overall, of the 522,000 Jews living in Germany in January 1933, only 214,000 were left by the eve of World War II. The Nazi persecution of the Jews culminated in the Holocaust, in which approximately 6 million European Jews were deported and murdered during World War II. On May 19, 1943, Germany was declared judenrein (clean of Jews; also judenfrei: free of Jews). Jews in Germany from 1945 to the reunification Of the 214,000 Jews still living in Germany at the outbreak of World War II, 90% died during the Holocaust. Substantial numbers of the 100,000 German Jews who had moved to European countries that were occupied by the Nazis were also killed. When the Soviet army took over Berlin in 1945, only 8,000 Jews remained in the city, all of them either in hiding or married to non-Jews. Most German Jews who survived the war in exile decided to remain abroad; however, a small number returned to Germany. Additionally, approximately 15,000 German Jews survived the concentration camps or survived by going into hiding. These German Jews were joined by approximately 200,000 displaced persons (DPs), Eastern European Jewish Holocaust survivors. They came to Allied-occupied western Germany after finding no homes left for them in eastern Europe (especially in Poland) or after having been liberated on German soil. The overwhelming majority of the DPs wished to emigrate to Palestine and lived in Allied- and U.N.-administered refugee camps, remaining isolated from German society. When Israel became independent in 1948, most European-Jewish DPs left for the new state; however, 10,000 to 15,000 Jews decided to resettle in Germany. Despite hesitations and a long history of antagonism between German Jews (Yekkes) and East European Jews (Ostjuden), the two disparate groups united to form the basis of a new Jewish community. In 1950 they founded their unitary representative organization, the Central Council of Jews in Germany. Jews of West Germany The Jewish community in West Germany from the 1950s to the 1970s was characterized by its social conservatism and generally private nature. Although there were Jewish elementary schools in West Berlin, Frankfurt, and Munich, the community had a very high average age. Few young adults chose to remain in Germany, and many of those who did, married non-Jews. Many critics of the community and its leadership accused it of ossification. In the 1980s, a college for Jewish studies was established in Heidelberg; however, a disproportionate number of its students were not Jewish. By 1990, the community numbered between 30,000 and 40,000. Although the Jewish community of Germany did not have the same impact as the pre-1933 community, some Jews were prominent in German public life, including Hamburg mayor Herbert Weichmann; Schleswig-Holstein Minister of Justice (and Deputy Chief Justice of the Federal Constitutional Court) Rudolf Katz; Hesse Attorney General Fritz Bauer; former Hesse Minister of Economics Heinz-Herbert Karry; West Berlin politician Jeanette Wolff; television personalities Hugo Egon Balder, Hans Rosenthal, Ilja Richter, Inge Meysel, and Michel Friedman; Jewish communal leaders Heinz Galinski, Ignatz Bubis, Paul Spiegel, and Charlotte Knobloch (see: Central Council of Jews in Germany); and Germany's most influential literary critic, Marcel Reich-Ranicki. Jews of East Germany The Jewish community of East Germany, a communist country, numbered only a few hundred active members. Most Jews who settled in East Germany did so either because their pre-1933 homes had been there or because they had been politically leftist before the Nazi seizure of power and, after 1945, wished to build an antifascist, socialist Germany. Most such politically engaged Jews were not religious or active in the official Jewish community. They included writers Anna Seghers, Stefan Heym, Jurek Becker, Stasi General Markus Wolf, composer Hanns Eisler, and politician Gregor Gysi. Many East German Jews emigrated to Israel in the 1970s. Jews in the reunited Germany (post-1990) \|Historical German Jewish population\| The end of the Cold War contributed to a growth in the Jewish people of Germany. An important step for the renaissance of Jewish life in Germany occurred in 1990 when Helmut Kohl convened with Heinz Galinsky, to allow Jewish people from the former Soviet Union to emigrate to Germany, which led to a large Jewish emigration. Today, Germany is home to a nominal Jewish population of more than 200,000 (although this number reflects non-Jewish spouses or children who also immigrated under the Quota Refugee Law); 104,024 are officially registered with Jewish religious communities. Most Jews in Germany are recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Many Israelis also move to Germany, particularly Berlin, for its relaxed atmosphere and low cost of living. Olim L'Berlin, a Facebook snowclone asking Israelis to emigrate to Berlin, gained notoriety 2014. Some eventually return to Israel after a period of residence in Germany. There are also a handful of Jewish families from Muslim countries, including Iran, Turkey, Morocco, and Afghanistan. Germany has the third-largest Jewish population in Western Europe after France (600,000) and Britain (300,000). and the fastest-growing Jewish population in Europe in recent years. The influx of immigrants, many of them seeking renewed contact with their Ashkenazi heritage, has led to a renaissance of Jewish life in Germany. In 1996, Chabad-Lubavitch of Berlin opened a center. In 2003, Chabad-Lubavitch of Berlin ordained 10 rabbis, the first rabbis to be ordained in Germany since World War II. In 2002 a Reform rabbinical seminary, Abraham Geiger College, was established in Potsdam. In 2006, the college announced that it would be ordaining three new rabbis, the first Reform rabbis to be ordained in Germany since 1942. Partly owing to the deep similarities between Yiddish and German, Jewish studies has become a very popular subject for academic study, and many German universities have departments or institutes of Jewish studies, culture, or history. Active Jewish religious communities have sprung up across Germany, including in many cities where the previous communities were no longer extant or were moribund. Several cities in Germany have Jewish day schools, kosher facilities, and other Jewish institutions beyond synagogues. Additionally, many of the Russian Jews were alienated from their Jewish heritage and unfamiliar or uncomfortable with Orthodox Judaism. Thus American-style Reform Judaism, led by the Union of Progressive Jews in Germany, has emerged as a powerful and popular force in Germany, even though the Central Council of Jews in Germany and most local Jewish communities officially adhere to Orthodoxy. The unresolved tension between the re-emerging Reform movement in Germany and the official Orthodoxy is one of the most pressing issues facing the community at present. On January 27, 2003, then German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder signed the first-ever agreement on a federal level with the Central Council, so that Judaism was granted the same elevated, semi-established legal status in Germany as the Roman Catholic and Evangelical Church in Germany, at least since the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany of 1949. In Germany it is a criminal act to deny the Holocaust or that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust (§130 StGB); violations can be punished with up to five years of prison. In 2007, the Interior Minister of Germany, Wolfgang Schäuble, pointed out the official policy of Germany: "We will not tolerate any form of extremism, xenophobia or anti-Semitism." Although the number of right-wing groups and organisations grew from 141 (2001) to 182 (2006), especially in the formerly communist East Germany, Germany's measures against right-wing groups and antisemitism are effective: according to the annual reports of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution the overall number of far-right extremists in Germany has dropped in recent years from 49,700 (2001), 45,000 (2002), 41,500 (2003), 40,700 (2004), 39,000 (2005), to 38,600 in 2006. Germany provided several million euros to fund "nationwide programs aimed at fighting far-right extremism, including teams of traveling consultants, and victims' groups". Despite these facts, Israeli Ambassador Shimon Stein warned in October 2006 that Jews in Germany feel increasingly unsafe, stating that they "are not able to live a normal Jewish life" and that heavy security surrounds most synagogues or Jewish community centers. Yosef Havlin, Rabbi at the Chabad Lubavitch in Frankfurt, does not agree with the Israeli Ambassador and states in an interview with Der Spiegel in September 2007 that the German public does not support far-right groups; instead, he has personally experienced the support of Germans, and as a Jew and rabbi he "feels welcome in his (hometown) Frankfurt, he is not afraid, the city is not a no-go-area". A flagship moment for the burgeoning Jewish community in modern Germany occurred on November 9, 2006 (the 68th anniversary of Kristallnacht), when the newly constructed Ohel Jakob synagogue was dedicated in Munich, Germany. This is particularly crucial given the fact that Munich was once at the ideological heart of Nazi Germany. Jewish life in the capital Berlin is prospering, the Jewish community is growing, the Centrum Judaicum and several synagogues—including the largest in Germany—have been renovated and opened, and Berlin's annual week of Jewish culture and the Jewish Cultural Festival in Berlin, held for the 21st time, featuring concerts, exhibitions, public readings and discussions can only partially explain why Rabbi Yitzhak Ehrenberg of the orthodox Jewish community in Berlin states: "Orthodox Jewish life is alive in Berlin again. ... Germany is the only European country with a growing Jewish community." In spite of Germany's measures against right-wing groups and anti-Semites, a number of incidents have occurred in recent years. On August 29, 2012 in Berlin, a rabbi in visible Jewish garb was physically attacked by a group of Arabic youths, causing a head wound that required hospitalization. The rabbi was walking with his six-year-old daughter in downtown Berlin when the group asked if he was a Jew, and then proceeded to assault him. They also threatened to kill the rabbi’s young daughter. On November 9, 2012, the 74th Kristallnacht anniversary, neo-Nazis in Greifswald vandalized the city’s Holocaust memorial. - Germany-Israel relations - HaGalil Online – an online magazine of Jews in German-speaking countries - History of the Jews in Cologne - History of the Jews in Hamburg - History of the Jews in Munich - History of Jews in Poland - List of German Jews - Peter Stevens (RAF officer) - "World Jewish Population, 2013". Jewish Virtual Library. - Ole Jørgen Benedictow (2004). Jews in Germany and the Low Countries (GOOGLE BOOKS PREVIEW). The Black Death, 1346-1353: The Complete History (Boydell Press). pp. 393–394. ISBN 1843832143. Retrieved October 7, 2012. - "City of Mainz Online". Mainz.de. 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Quote, p 72: "About 10,000 volunteered for duty, and over 100,000 out of a total German-Jewish population of 550,000 served during World War One. Some 78% saw front-line duty, 12,000 died in battle, over 30,000 received decorations, and 19,000 were promoted. Approximately 2,000 Jews became military officers and 1,200 became medical officers." (Rigg, Bryan: Hitler's Jewish Soldiers - Alberge, Dalya (August 16, 2010). "Adolf Hitler a war hero? Anything but, said first world war comrades". The Guardian (London). - "Leaving Nuremberg (Hugo Gutmann: Escaped Three Times)". Jewishgen.org. Retrieved 2013-04-16. - "Deutsche Jüdische Soldaten" (German Jewish soldiers) Bavarian National Exhibition - Bajohr, Frank: The "Folk Community" and the Persecution of the Jews: German Society under National Socialist Dictatorship, 1933–1945. Holocaust Genocide Studies, Fall 2006; 20: 183–206. - Antisemitism in Germany Post World War 1. 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Retrieved 2013-04-16. - An Israeli in Berlin: The chocolate pudding exodus, Spiegel 2014 - Axelrod, Toby (2011-07-05). "Israeli expats flocking to Berlin for the culture and the passport \| JTA - Jewish & Israel News". JTA. Retrieved 2013-04-16. - Die Welt: "Oberrabbiner tagen erstmals in Berlin." November 17, 2004 - Chabad Lubavitch (2003-02-20). "Yeshiva Trains Rabbis In Berlin". Lubavitch.com. Retrieved 2013-04-16. - German Jewish community to ordain three new rabbis, first since 1942 - Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz. Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Verfassungsschutzbericht 2003. Annual Report. 2003, Page 29 - Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz. Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Verfassungsschutzbericht 2006. Annual Report. 2006, Page 51 - German Jewish Leader Says Right-wing Violence Recalls 1930s, Deutsche Welle. - Jewish leader: Attacks just like Hitler era[dead link] - The Associated Press. "Berlin police say 16 arrested during neo-Nazi demonstration." International Herald Tribune. October 22, 2006 - Der Spiegel: "Wir dürfen uns auf keinen Fall verstecken". September 12, 2007 - New Munich Synagogue Opens on Nazi Persecution Anniversary, Deutsche Welle, November 9, 2006. - Williams, Robin. "New Munich synagogue symbolizes German Jew's growing presence, confidence". International Herald Tribune. Retrieved 2013-04-16. - "World \| Europe \| Major German synagogue reopened". BBC News. 2007-08-31. Retrieved 2013-04-16. - Die Bundesregierung (Federal government of Germany): "Germany's largest synagogue officially reopened." August 31, 2007 - Axelrod, Toby. "Cantor who led Berlin's Jews for past 50 years dies." j.. January 21, 2000 - "Global Anti-Semitism: Selected Incidents Around the World in 2012". Adl.org. Retrieved 2013-04-16. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Jewish Encyclopedia. 1901–1906. - Berger, Michael: Eisernes Kreuz und Davidstern. Die Geschichte Jüdischer Soldaten in Deutschen Armeen. trafo verlag, 2006. ISBN 3-89626-476-1 (German) - Friedländer, Saul (2007) . The Years of Persecution: Nazi Germany & the Jews 1933–1939. London: Phoenix. - "IRON CROSS and STAR OF DAVID: Jewish Soldiers in German Armies," a summary of Michael Berger's book at http://www.trafoberlin.de/pdf-dateien/Iron_Cross_and_Star_of_David.pdf (PDF file), from http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judenzählung. - Elon, Amos: The Pity of It All: A History of Jews in Germany, 1743–1933. New York, 2002 - Schultheis, Herbert / Wahler, Isaac E.: Bilder und Akten der Gestapo Würzburg über die Judendeportationen 1941–1943. Bad Neustadt a. d. Saale 1988. ISBN 978-3-9800482-7-9 (German-English Edition) - Meyer, Michael A., ed.: German–Jewish History in Modern Times, vols. 1–4. New York, 1996–1998: - vol. 1 Tradition and Enlightenment, 1600–1780 - vol. 2 Emancipation and Acculturation, 1780–1871 - vol. 3 Integration in Dispute, 1871–1918 - vol. 4 Renewal and Destruction, 1918–1945 - Reilly, Kaufman and Bodino, eds: Racism: A Global Reader Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2002 - Rink, Thomas: Doppelte Loyalität: Fritz Rathenau als deutscher Beamter und Jude. Published by Georg Olms Verlag, 2002 - Kaplan, Marion A.: Jewish Daily Life in Germany, 1618–1945. Oxford, 2005 - Geller, Jay Howard: Jews in Post-Holocaust Germany . Cambridge, 2005 - Kauders, Anthony D.: Unmögliche Heimat. Eine deutsch-jüdische Geschichte der Bundesrepublik. Munich, 2007. - Peck, Jeffrey: Being Jewish in the New Germany. 2006 - Hertz, Deborah: "How Jews Became Germans: The History of Conversion and Assimilation in Berlin," New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. - Stevens, Marc H.: Escape, Evasion And Revenge: The True Story of a German-Jewish RAF Pilot Who Bombed Berlin and Became a PoW. Barnsley, England: (Pen and Sword Books, 2009) - Leo Baeck Institute, NY a research library and archive focused on the history of German-speaking Jews - DigiBaeck Digital collections at Leo Baeck Institute - Berkley Center: Being Jewish in the New Germany
Most autorotations are performed with forward airspeed. For simplicity, the following aerodynamic explanation is based on a vertical autorotative descent (no forward airspeed) in still air. Under these conditions, the forces that cause the blades to turn are similar for all blades regardless of their position in the plane of rotation. Dissymmetry of lift resulting from helicopter airspeed is therefore not a factor, but will be discussed later. During vertical autorotation, the rotor disk is divided into three regions: The force vectors are different in each region, because the rotational relative wind is slower near the blade root and increases continually toward the blade tip. When the inflow up through the rotor combines with rotational relative wind, it produces different combinations of aerodynamic force at every point along the blade. In the driven region, the total aerodynamic force acts behind the axis of rotation, resulting in an overall dragging force. This area produces lift but it also opposes rotation and continually tends to decelerate the blade. The size of this region varies with blade pitch setting, rate of descent, and rotor RPM. When the pilot takes action to change autorotative RPM, blade pitch, or rate of descent, he is in effect changing the size of the driven region in relation to the other regions. Between the driven region and the driving region is a point of equilibrium. At this point on the blade, total aerodynamic force is aligned with the axis of rotation. Lift and drag are produced, but the total effect produces neither acceleration nor deceleration of the rotor RPM. Point "D" is also an area of equilibrium in regard to thrust and drag. Area "C" is the driving region of the blade and produces the forces needed to turn the blades during autorotation. Total aerodynamic force in the driving region is inclined forward of the axis of rotation and produces a continual acceleration force. Driving region size varies with blade pitch setting, rate of descent and rotor RPM. The pilot controls the size of this region in relation to the driven and stall regions in order to adjust autorotative RPM. For example, if the collective pitch stick is raised, the pitch angle will increase in all regions. This causes the point of equilibrium "B" to move toward the blade tip, decreasing the size of the driven region. The entire driving region also moves toward the blade tip. The stall region becomes larger and the total blade drag is increased, causing RPM decrease. A constant rotor RPM is achieved by adjusting the collective pitch control so blade acceleration forces from the driving region are balanced with the deceleration forces from the driven and stall regions. Because of lower angles of attack on the advancing side blade, more of that blade falls into the driven region. On the retreating side blade, more of the blade is in the stall region, and a small section near the root experiences a reversed flow. The size of the driven region on the retreating side is reduced. Autorotations may be divided into three distinct phases; the entry, the steady state descent, and the deceleration and touchdown. Each of these phases is aerodynamically different than the others. The following discussion describes forces pertinent to each phase. Entry into autorotation is performed following loss of engine power. Immediate indications of power loss are rotor RPM decay and an out-of-trim condition. Rate of RPM decay is most rapid when the helicopter is at high collective pitch settings. In most helicopters it takes only seconds for the RPM decay to reach a minimum safe range. Pilots must react quickly and initiate a reduction in collective pitch that will prevent excessive RPM decay. A cyclic flare will help prevent excessive decay if the failure occurs at thigh speed. This technique varies with the model helicopter. Pilots should consult and follow the appropriate aircraft Operator's Manual. The following figure shows the airflow and force vectors for a blade in powered flight at high speed: Note that the lift and drag vectors are large and the total aerodynamic force is inclined well to the rear of the axis of rotation. If the engine stops when the helicopter is in this condition, rotor RPM decay is rapid. To prevent RPM decay, the pilot must promptly lower the collective pitch control to reduce drag and incline the total aerodynamic force vector forward so it is near the axis of rotation. The following figure shows the airflow and force vectors for a helicopter just after power loss: The collective pitch has been reduced, but the helicopter has not started to descend. Note that lift and drag are reduced and the total aerodynamic force vector is inclined further forward than it was in powered flight. As the helicopter begins to descend, the airflow changes. This causes the total aerodynamic force to incline further forward. It will reach an equilibrium that maintains a safe operating RPM. The pilot establishes a glide at the proper airspeed which is 50 to 75 knots, depending on the helicopter and its gross weight. Rotor RPM should be stabilized at autorotative RPM which is normally a few turns higher than normal operating RPM. The following figure shows the helicopter in a steady state descent: Airflow is now upward through the rotor disk due the descent. Changed airflow creates a larger angle of attack although blade pitch angle is the same as it was in the previous picture, before the descent began. Total aerodynamic force is increased and inclined forward so equilibrium is established. Rate of descent and RPM are stabilized, and the helicopter is descending at a constant angle. Angle of descent is normally 17 degrees to 20 degrees, depending on airspeed, density altitude, wind, the particular helicopter design, and other variables. The following figure illustrates the aerodynamics of autorotative deceleration: To successfully perform an autorotative landing, the pilot must reduce airspeed and rate of descent just before touchdown. Both of these actions can be partially accomplished by moving the cyclic control to the rear and changing the attitude of the rotor disk with relation to the relative wind. The attitude change inclines the total force of the rotor disk to the rear and slows forward speed. It also increases angle of attack on all blades by changing the inflow of air. As a result, total rotor lifting force is increased and rate of descent is reduced. RPM also increases when the total aerodynamic force vector is lengthened, thereby increasing blade kinetic energy available to cushion the touchdown. After forward speed is reduced to a safe landing speed, the helicopter is placed in a landing attitude as collective pitch is applied to cushion the touchdown. [Top] [Up] [Prev] [Next]
Unit 5: Human Population Dynamics // Section 5: Population Growth and the Environment Many people (including national leaders) worry that population growth depletes resources and can trigger social or economic catastrophe if it is not contained. As discussed in the preceding section, most of the projected population growth during this century will take place in developing nations. These countries have faced many challenges in recent decades, including low levels of education, poor health standards, poverty, scarce housing, natural resource depletion, wars, and economic and political domination by other countries. In Sub-Saharan Africa industrial development has stalled and most workers still make a living from subsistence agriculture. Countries in this situation generally have devoted less energy to addressing environmental issues than their wealthier neighbors, so these problems have intensified. Especially in the poorest countries, therefore, future population growth is likely to make environmental deterioration worse (although it does not automatically follow that countries with low population growth rates will have cleaner environments). However, the relationship between population and the environment is complex. As noted in section 1, human societies' impacts on the environment are a function of three major, interconnected elements: population size, affluence or consumption, and technology. An expanded version of the IPAT equation separates technology into two factors: resource-intensity (how many resources are used to produce each unit of consumption) and waste-intensity (how much waste each unit of consumption generates), and also considers the sensitivity of the environment (footnote 11). Societies' environmental impacts take two major forms. First, we consume resources such as land, food, water, soils, and services from healthy ecosystems, such as water filtration through wetlands. (For more on ecosystem services, see Unit 9, "Biodiversity Decline.") Over-consumption uses up or severely depletes supplies of non-renewable resources, such as fossil fuels, and depletes renewable resources such as fisheries and forests if we use them up faster than they can replenish themselves (Fig. 11). Figure 11. Land conversion for grazing in the Amazon rainforest See larger image Source: Courtesy National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Goddard Space Flight Center. Second, we emit wastes as a product of our consumption activities, including air and water pollutants, toxic materials, greenhouse gases, and excess nutrients. Some wastes, such as untreated sewage and many pollutants, threaten human health. Others disrupt natural ecosystem functions: for example, excess nitrogen in water supplies causes algal blooms that deplete oxygen and kill fish. (For more on these pollutants, see Unit 8, "Water Resources"; Unit 10, "Energy Challenges"; Unit 11, "Atmospheric Pollution"; and Unit 12, "Earth's Changing Climate.") Rising population growth rates in the 1950s spurred worries that developing countries could deplete their food supplies. Starting with India in 1951, dozens of countries launched family planning programs with support from international organizations and western governments. As shown above in Figure 4, total fertility rates in developing countries declined from six children per woman to three between 1950 and 2000. National programs were particularly effective in Asia, which accounted for roughly 80 percent of global fertility decline from the 1950s through 2000 (footnote 12). It is important to note, however, that this conclusion is controversial. Some researchers have argued that desired fertility falls as incomes grow—and that family planning has essentially no independent influence (footnote 13). These programs sought to speed the demographic transition by convincing citizens that having large numbers of children was bad for the nation and for individual families. Generally they focused on educating married couples about birth control and distributing contraceptives, but some programs took more coercive approaches. China imposed a limit of one child per family in 1979, with two children allowed in special cases (Fig. 12). Figure 12. Poster advertising China's one-child policy, 1980s See larger image Source: Artist Zhou Yuwei. Courtesy of the International Institute of Social History Stefan R. Landsberger Collection, http://www.iisg.nl/~landsberger. In some parts of China the one-child policy reportedly has been enforced through methods including forced abortions and sterilizations. Forced sterilizations also occurred in India in the 1970s. These policies have spurred some Indian and Chinese families to practice selective abortion and infanticide of female babies, since boys are more valued culturally and as workers. Population sex ratios in both countries are skewed as a result. In 2005 there were 107.5 males per 100 females in India and 106.8 males per 100 females in China, compared to a worldwide average of 101.6 males per 100 females. Females slightly outnumber males on every continent other than Asia (footnote 14). Large societies consume more resources than small ones, but consumption patterns and technology choices may account for more environmental harms than sheer numbers of people. The U.S. population is about one-fourth as large as that of China or India, but the United States currently uses far more energy because Americans are more affluent and use their wealth to buy energy-intensive goods like cars and electronics. But China and India are growing and becoming more affluent, so their environmental impacts will increase because of both population size and consumption levels in the next several decades. For example, in 2006 China surpassed the United States as the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas produced as a result of human activities (footnote 15). Economies tend to become more high-polluting during early stages of economic development because they first adapt inexpensive technologies that are relatively inefficient—for example, simple manufacturing systems and basic consumer goods such as cars. As income rises and technologies diffuse through society, consumers start to value environmental quality more highly and become more able to pay for it. Some analysts have argued that developing countries can skip the early stage of industrialization through "leapfrogging"—deploying advanced, clean technologies as soon as they are fielded in developed nations, or even earlier. For example, some developing countries have skipped past installing telephone poles and wires and moved straight to cell phones as a primary communication system. If fast-growing nations like China and India can leapfrog to clean technologies, they can reduce the environmental impacts of their large and growing populations (Fig. 13). However, many new technologies will not flow easily across borders in the absence of special efforts. Developed countries and international financial institutions can promote technology transfer to reduce the environmental impacts of growth in developing countries. Figure 13. Youths installing solar panels to power a rural computer center, São João, Brazil See larger image Source: Courtesy United States Agency for International Development.
The economies of scale curve is a long-run average cost curve, because it allows all factors of production to change the short-run average cost curves presented earlier in this module assumed the existence of fixed costs, and only variable costs were allowed to change. Economies of scale and scope economies of scale is a long run phenomenon they are essentially unit cost reductions associated with large scale of output . Economies of scale result from bulk discounts when purchasing large amounts of raw materials, specialized labor and equipment that increase efficiency, and the fact that an increase in production . Economies of scale is an economics term that describes a competitive advantage that large entities have over smaller entities it means that the larger the business, non-profit or government, the lower its costs for example, the cost of producing one unit is less when many units are produced at . Economies of scale the short run & long run of growing a firm returns to scale short -run & long run remember that economic cost of production are the firm's opportunity cost of producing a certain type of good or service. Long run cost analysis and economies of scale you will learn all of the major principles normally taught in a year-long introductory economics college course. Economies of scope occur where it is cheaper to produce a range of products rather than specialize in a handful of products for example, in the competitive world of postal services and business logistics, service providers such as royal mail, uk mail, deutsche post and parcel carriers including tnt . Economies of scope and scale 1 economies of scale v/s economies of scope presented by, gaurav h nanjani pgdbm long run economies of scale lac eco of scale dis . Economies of scale, diseconomies of scale, constant returns to scale efficiency in production also, economies of scope and how to maximize profit when there are two production plants, long-run equilibrium. Economies of scale and scope are two of the most valuable economics concepts in business where “lrac” is the long run average economies of scope is a . The best videos and questions to learn about long-run costs and economies of scale get smarter on socratic. Running head: economies of scale and economies of scope economies of scale and economies of find study resources main menu in long-run all the inputs are variable. Economies of scale and scope [online] available here [accessed september 26, 2017] your views provide your feedback what bugs you let us know your suggestions or . Suppose you run a small manufacturing company that makes widgets if you buy a $10,000 machine and sell 50 widgets a year, the cost per widget is high economies of scale kick in: you get much . Economies of scale, however, have a dark side, called diseconomies of scale the larger an organisation becomes in order to reap economies of scale, the more complex it has to be to manage and run . Long-run average total cost and economies of scale by jason welker when a firm has time to expand or reduce the amount of capital and land it employs in its production, it may find its average, per-unit production costs either rising or falling with the amount of capital it uses. Definition of economies of scale: the reduction in long-run average and marginal costs arising from an increase in size of an operating unit (a factory or plant, for . 28 (p 217) economies of scale occur when a firm's long-run average total cost curve is: a upward sloping b vertical c downward sloping d horizontal economies of scale imply that long-run average total cost declines as output increases. Where economies of scale refer to a firm's costs, returns to scale describe the relationship between inputs and outputs in a long-run (all inputs variable) production function a production function has constant returns to scale if increasing all inputs by some proportion results in output increasing by that same proportion. Definition of economies of scale: the reduction in long-run average and marginal costs arising from an increase in size of an operating unit (a factory or plant, for example) economics of scale can be internal to an organization . Economies of scale is defined as a fall in the long run average costs because of an increased scale of production this basically means the cost of production per unit reduces as you produce more units. “economies of scale” has been known for long time as a major factor in increasing profitability and contributing to a firm’s other financial and operational ratios economies of scale is about the benefits gained by the production of large volume of a product. Long-run costs - economies & diseconomies of scale economies of scale in the long run all costs are variable and the scale of production can change (no fixed inputs). In economies of scale, the firm gains cost effectiveness due to volume, whereas cost effectiveness in economies of scope is due to the varieties offered economies of scale strategy are used by organisations since a long time. Economies of scale is a fall in the long run average costs because of an increased scale of production reducing the cost per unit of production is the most significant advantage of achieving economies of scale. Economies of scale can somebody please clarify the distinction between short run and long run production i already know that in the short run production there is at least one fixed input and variable inputs,, however in the long run all of the inputs are variables thus only zero economic profit is possible.
Water is absolutely necessary for survival. It makes up approximately 60% of the human body, with every system depending on water to function properly. Thus, dehydration — or a lack of body water — has widespread repercussions. While mild dehydration is easily remedied, severe dehydration is a serious condition that can lead to loss of consciousness, organ failure or even death. This article discusses the common signs and symptoms of dehydration. What Is Dehydration? Water is constantly leaving your body, mostly through sweat, urine and stools. An adequate amount of water must be consumed to make up for this loss. Dehydration occurs when more water is leaving the body than coming in. It can be caused by either a lack of fluid intake or excessive fluid loss. Here are some of the common causes of dehydration: - Vigorous exercise: Intense exercise leads to fluid loss through sweat. If fluids are not replaced by drinking water, you can become dehydrated. - Exposure to heat: Heat can cause you to lose fluid through sweat. You may become dehydrated if you don’t drink extra water when it’s very hot outside. - Vomiting and diarrhea: Vomiting and diarrhea both cause significant fluid loss that can lead to dehydration. - Nausea: Many people don’t feel like eating or drinking when they are nauseated. It’s important to continue drinking water so you don’t become dehydrated. - Burns or skin infections: Water can be lost through severe burns and skin infections. - Diabetes: When blood sugar levels are high, the body increases urine production to eliminate sugar from the body. This can lead to dehydration if this loss is not matched with an increase in water consumption. - Fever: A fever may contribute to fluid loss through sweating. Summary: Dehydration occurs when more fluid is leaving the body than being consumed. Factors that decrease fluid consumption or increase fluid losses can contribute to dehydration. Thirst is a craving for fluid that serves as an automatic reminder to drink water. It’s often the body’s first indicator that it needs more water. Interestingly, your body is equipped with a complex system for regulating fluid balance. Even a small change in fluid balance can trigger a sensation of thirst (1, 2, 3). For most people, drinking when they’re thirsty is an effective method for staying hydrated. However, there are some situations in which thirst might not be a reliable indicator of hydration status. For example, older people may need to consciously manage their fluid intake, as your sense of thirst tends to decline with age (4). In addition, you may need to drink beyond simply satisfying your thirst if you are sweating profusely. For example, intense exercise and exposure to high temperatures can cause you to lose a large amount of water through sweat. In these situations, you may need to drink additional water to stay hydrated. Summary: Thirst is the body’s first indicator of dehydration. For most people, responding to thirst effectively prevents dehydration. 2. Changes in the Color or Amount of Your Urine Your urine can tell you a lot about your hydration status, since it accounts for the majority of the fluid that leaves your body. Thus, controlling the amount and composition of urine is one way in which the body is able to maintain proper fluid balance. Urine, which is produced by the kidneys, consists of both water and waste products that your body needs to eliminate. If you are dehydrated, the kidneys conserve water by concentrating urine. This allows waste to be eliminated while retaining water for important biological functions (5). Interestingly, urine’s concentration affects its appearance. If you’re well hydrated, your urine should be a clear, pale yellow color and nearly odorless (6, 7). On the other hand, cloudy, dark yellow urine is a sign of dehydration. A honey-yellow color may indicate mild dehydration, while a deep, amber-yellow color with a strong odor can signal severe dehydration (8, 9). In addition to controlling the concentration of urine, the kidneys can also conserve fluid by decreasing the amount of urine produced. In fact, if the body becomes severely dehydrated, the kidneys may stop making urine altogether. However, urine output varies from person to person, so there is no set amount of urine you should be producing every day. If you notice a significant decrease in urine, you may be dehydrated (10). Keep in mind that certain foods, medications and medical conditions can also influence the color and amount of urine. If your urine is consistently a color other than pale yellow, you should consult your doctor. Summary: The color and amount of urine that your body produces are good indicators of your hydration status. Dark yellow urine or a low urine output are signs of dehydration. 3. Fatigue or Sleepiness Fatigue or tiredness can have many different causes, but dehydration can be one of them. Many studies have shown that dehydration causes fatigue and decreases endurance during exercise (11, 12, 13). For this reason, drinking an adequate amount of water is particularly important during exercise. However, you don’t have to be exercising to experience dehydration-related fatigue. Studies have shown that fluid loss amounting to 1–3% of your body weight, which is considered mild dehydration, can cause feelings of fatigue and sleepiness during normal daily activities. In a study of young, healthy women, water restriction for 24 hours caused sleepiness, confusion, fatigue and decreased alertness. All of these symptoms improved when the women were allowed to freely drink water at the conclusion of the 24-hour period (9). Another study in men found that a fluid loss amounting to 1.6% of their body weight significantly increased fatigue both at rest and during exercise (14). This amount of fluid loss can easily occur during normal daily activities if you’re not drinking an adequate amount of fluid throughout the day. Summary: Fatigue or sleepiness can be a sign of dehydration. Drinking water may boost your energy and help you feel more alert. Dehydration may trigger headaches or migraines in some people (5, 15, 16). One study found that a fluid loss of 1.4% of body weight caused headaches and moodiness in healthy women (17). Another study found similar results in men. Water restriction for 37 hours, which resulted in a 2.7% fluid loss, led to headaches and difficulty concentrating (18). Fortunately, evidence shows that headaches caused by dehydration can be relieved by drinking water. In one small study, all but one of 34 people who experienced a dehydration-related headache found relief from drinking water. In fact, drinking water provided headache relief within 30 minutes for 22 out of 34 people, while 11 other participants found relief within three hours (16). Keep in mind that there are many different types of headaches, and they are not all caused by a lack of hydration. Nevertheless, a headache may be a sign that your body needs more water. Summary: Dehydration can cause headaches. In most cases, drinking water can resolve a dehydration-related headache. 5. Changes in Skin Elasticity Dehydration can cause changes to the appearance and texture of your skin. Your skin is made up of approximately 30% water, which is responsible for its fullness and elasticity (5). Healthy, well-hydrated skin will return to its normal shape after being pulled and stretched. This elastic nature of skin is known as skin turgor. On the other hand, when the body is dehydrated, fluid is pulled away from the skin and diverted to major organs to keep them functioning properly. This shift of fluid away from the skin causes it to lose its elasticity. To test the elasticity of your skin, pinch your skin between your thumb and your forefinger. If you are well hydrated, your skin should snap back immediately after being released. If it takes a half a second or more for your skin to return to its shape, you may be dehydrated (5, 19, 20). In addition, a lack of fluid in the skin can cause dryness and make skin feel cool and clammy to the touch. Summary: Decreased skin turgor, or elasticity, is a sign of dehydration. Skin that is dry, cool and clammy may also indicate dehydration. 6. Muscle Cramps Muscle cramps may be a sign of dehydration. Cramps are particularly common when dehydration is caused by excessive sweating. Interestingly, sweating can result in a significant loss of both fluid and sodium, which is an electrolyte that plays a role in muscle contractions. Thus, when fluid and sodium become depleted, muscles sometimes contract involuntarily. This is known as a muscle cramp (21). For this reason, adequate hydration is especially important during strenuous exercise or exercise in high temperatures. Summary: Fluid and sodium depletions can lead to muscle cramps. Drinking water is particularly important during strenuous exercise. 7. Decrease in Blood Pressure Low blood pressure can be a symptom of dehydration (22). Dehydration lowers the volume of blood in the body, which lowers the pressure on artery walls (5, 23). Interestingly, low blood pressure might make you feel light-headed or dizzy when you go from lying down to standing up (24). That’s because your heart has to pump faster and harder to get blood to the brain when there is less fluid in the body. When you stand up, it may take a few seconds for blood to get to the brain from the lower limbs. What’s more, low blood pressure can make you feel weak and tired. Nevertheless, a small drop in blood pressure is relatively harmless and usually remedied by drinking water (25). On the other hand, severe dehydration can lead to dangerously low blood pressure. Symptoms like blurred vision, nausea and fainting could indicate very low blood pressure that requires medical attention (24). Summary: Dehydration can cause a drop in blood pressure, which might make you feel light-headed, weak and tired. Severe dehydration can cause dangerously low blood pressure that requires medical attention. 8. Rapid Heart Rate or Heart Palpitations Dehydration can cause a rapid heart rate or heart palpitations. Palpitations give you the feeling that your heart is jumping or skipping a beat. Interestingly, these abnormalities are a result of the heart attempting to compensate for the lack of fluid in the body. When there’s not enough fluid in your body, it decreases the volume of blood in your blood vessels. Your body then works hard to deliver enough blood to your organs by increasing its heart rate, pumping blood more quickly throughout your body (5, 26). When this happens, you might feel your heart racing, fluttering or pounding extra hard. Fortunately, in most cases of dehydration, this increase in heart rate effectively makes up for the low blood volume. Even with less blood pumping through the body, the organs and tissues are able to receive what they need. However, as dehydration becomes more severe, the heart becomes less effective at compensating for the lack of fluid. If the heart is unable to get blood to the organs, they will eventually shut down. Keep in mind that dehydration is not the only condition that affects heart rate. Rapid heart rate or palpitations can also indicate a more serious medical condition. That being said, if your heart rate does not return to normal after drinking water, you should consult a medical professional. Summary: A lack of fluid in the body decreases blood volume. The heart makes up for the lack of blood volume by working harder and faster to pump blood throughout the body. 9. Irritability or Confusion Dehydration can have a significant effect on brain function. Studies have shown that even mild dehydration can cause irritability and decreased brain function (10, 27). A few studies found that a 1–2% loss of body fluid causes symptoms, such as anxiety, moodiness, difficulty concentrating and a decline in short-term memory (14, 28). Furthermore, brain function can deteriorate significantly as dehydration becomes more severe. Severe dehydration can cause confusion and incoherence (29). In fact, confusion and even delirium are common symptoms among older adults who are dehydrated. Older adults are particularly susceptible to becoming dehydrated due to their sense of thirst declining with age (30, 31, 32). Conversely, drinking plenty of water has a positive effect on mental clarity and brain function. In fact, both children and adults have been found to perform tasks better when they are well hydrated (33, 34, 35). In one study, children who were given additional water to drink had improved short-term memory and performed better in school (33). Overall, it appears that hydration status can have a significant impact on mental performance. Summary: Dehydration can negatively affect brain function and cause symptoms like moodiness, anxiety, decreased concentration and confusion. 10. Serious Complications and Organ Failure Severe dehydration can lead to very serious complications. Every organ in the body requires fluid to function properly. If dehydration becomes critical, organs will begin to shut down. In fact, a severe loss of body fluid can lead to shock, which is a potentially fatal condition (36). Shock occurs when the volume of blood becomes so low that the brain and other organs are not able to receive the oxygen they need (37). Moreover, shock can cause complications like loss of consciousness, brain damage, kidney failure and heart attack. If shock is not treated immediately, it will result in death (38). That being said, shock is a rare consequence of dehydration that only occurs with an extreme loss of body water. It is most likely to come about when fluid is lost through trauma, severe burns or prolonged vomiting and diarrhea. Summary: Extreme dehydration can cause shock and organ failure. This level of dehydration can be fatal if not treated immediately. How to Prevent Dehydration The key to preventing dehydration is to drink plenty of water throughout the day, along with other beverages like unsweetened coffee and tea. Interestingly, water-rich foods like fruits and vegetables also contribute to hydration. However, there’s no magic amount of fluid you should drink every day to stay hydrated (39). Fluid requirements vary from person to person and are affected by activity level, amount of sweat and climate (40). Nevertheless, here are some tips to stay hydrated: - Drink when you are thirsty: For most people, thirst is a reliable indicator that your body needs water. If you feel thirsty, drink water (1). - Drink plenty of water before exercising: It’s important to be properly hydrated before you start exercising, particularly if you are going to be active in the heat. - Replace fluids lost through sweat: If you sweat a lot, you will need to drink extra water to replace lost fluids. In this case, you may need to drink more than your thirst demands (12). - Keep tabs on the color of your urine: The color of your urine is a good indicator of your hydration status. Drink enough water so that your urine maintains a pale yellow color. - Replace fluids lost through vomiting or diarrhea: Sip on liquids or ice chips if you are experiencing vomiting or diarrhea. If you are unable to keep fluids down for more than 24 hours, seek medical attention. Summary: In order to prevent dehydration, drink when you are thirsty and replace fluids lost through sweat or illness. The Bottom Line Symptoms of dehydration range from thirst, in the case of mild dehydration, to organ failure when dehydration is severe. While most cases of dehydration can be easily remedied by drinking water, more severe dehydration will likely require medical attention. Drinking plenty of fluids can prevent dehydration and its side effects. Furthermore, staying properly hydrated may have additional benefits, such as boosting your mood, fighting fatigue and improving memory and concentration.
Über das farbige Licht der Doppelsterne und einiger anderer Gestirne des Himmels Über das farbige Licht der Doppelsterne und einiger anderer Gestirne des Himmels is a treatise by Christian Doppler (1842) in which he postulated his principle that the observed frequency changes if either the source or the observer is moving, which later has been coined the Doppler effect. The original German text can be found in wikisource. The following annotated summary serves as a companion to that original. The title "Über das farbige Licht der Doppelsterne und einiger anderer Gestirne des Himmels - Versuch einer das Bradley'sche Aberrations-Theorem als integrirenden Theil in sich schliessenden allgemeineren Theorie" (On the coloured light of the binary stars and some other stars of the heavens - Attempt at a general theory including Bradley's theorem as an integral part) specifies the purpose: describe the hypothesis of the Doppler effect, use it to explain the colours of binary stars, and establish a relation with Bradley's stellar aberration. § 1 Introduction in which Doppler reminds the readers that light is a wave, and that there is debate as to whether it is a transverse wave, with aether particles oscillating perpendicular to the propagation direction. Proponents claim this is necessary to explain polarised light, whereas opponents object to implications for the aether. Doppler doesn't choose sides, although the issue returns in § 6. § 2 Doppler observes that colour is a manifestation of the frequency of the light wave, in the eye of the beholder. He describes his principle that a frequency shift occurs when the source or the observer moves. A ship meets waves at a faster rate when sailing against the waves than when sailing along with them. The same goes for sound and light. § 3 Doppler derives his equations for the frequency shift, in two cases: \|Equation Doppler\|\|Modern equation\| \|1.\|\|Observer approaching stationary source with speed vo\|\|n/x = (a + αo)/a\|\|f ' / f = (c+vo) / c\| \|2.\|\|Source approaching stationary observer with speed vs\|\|n/x = a/(a - αs)\|\|f ' / f = c / (c-vs)\| § 4 Doppler provides imaginary examples of large and small frequency shifts for sound: \|vo = -c\|\|f ' = 0\|\|frequency shift down to inaudibly low tones\| \|vs = -c\|\|f ' / f = 0.5\|\|frequency shift down over 1 octave, still audible.\| \|vo = +c\|\|f ' / f = ∞\|\|frequency shift up to inaudibly high tones\| \|vo = 40 m/s\|\|C to D\|\|note C shifting to D.\| \|vo = 5.4 m/s\|\|quarter note\|\|threshold for best observers with absolute hearing\| § 5 Doppler provides imaginary examples of large and small frequency shifts for light from stars. Velocities are expressed in Meilen/s, and the light speed has a rounded value of 42000 Meilen/s. Doppler assumes that 458 THz (extreme red) and 727 THz (extreme violet) are the borders of the visible spectrum, that the spectrum emitted by stars lies exactly between these borders (except for the infrared stars of § 8), and that the colour of the light emitted by stars is white. \|Meilen/s\|\|km/s\|\|f ' / f\| \|vs = -19000\|\|141000\|\|458 / 727\|\|shift from extreme violet to extreme red, and \| from other colours to invisible range beyond extreme red \|vs = -5007\|\|37200\|\|458 / ?\|\|shift from yellow to extreme red\| \|vs = -1700\|\|12600\|\|458 / ?\|\|shift from red to extreme red\| \|vs = -33\|\|244\|\|458 / 458.37\|\|threshold for visual perception of colour changes \| shift from a shade of red to next shade of red § 6 Doppler summarises: - The natural colour of stars is white or a weak yellow. - A white star receding with progressive speed would successively turn to green, blue, violet, and invisible (ultraviolet). - A white star approaching with progressive speed would turn to yellow, orange, red, and invisible (infrared). Doppler wishes that his frequency shift theory will soon be tested by another method to determine the radial velocity of stars. He thinks, without reason, that a confirmation of his theory would imply that light is not a transverse but a longitudinal wave. § 7 Doppler argues that his theory applies mainly to binary stars. In his opinion the fixed stars are immobile and white. In a binary star high speeds could be possible due to orbital motion, and binaries appear to be colourful. Doppler divides the binaries in two groups: (1) binary stars of unequal brightness; and (2) binary stars of equal brightness. His interpretation is: in case (1) the brighter star is the heavier one, the weaker star revolves around him; in case (2) both stars revolve around a center of mass in the middle, or around a dark third star. In case (2) the colours are usually complementary. Doppler rules out that the rich complementary colours of binaries are contrast illusions, because an astronomer said he had observed that covering one star does not change the colour impression of the other star. Doppler claims that his theory is supported by the fact that for many binary stars the colour indication in Struve's catalogue is different from that in Herschel's older catalogue, attributing the difference to progress of the orbital motion. § 8 Doppler presents two groups of variable stars that in his opinion can be explained as binary stars with Doppler effect. These are the "other stars in the heavens" from the title. - Periodic variable stars that are invisible for most of the time, and that brighten up with a red colour for a short while once per cycle. In Doppler's opinion they are binary stars. Such a star is usually invisible because it emits infrared instead of white light. In the orbit section with the maximal radial speed in the direction of Earth, the observed frequency on Earth is shifted from infrared to visible red. - 'New stars' (in particular two supernovas, Tycho's Nova of 1572, and Kepler's Nova of 1604), that suddenly appeared, having a white colour in the brightest phase, then turning to yellow and red, and finally fading out. According to Doppler they too are binary stars, with extremely high speed and long period. Doppler assumes Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, belongs to this group, because some texts from antiquity say its colour was red, instead of its current white colour. § 9 Doppler notes that the orbital speed of the Earth (4.7 Meilen/s) is too low (<33 Meilen/s) to result in visually perceptible colour changes. He identifies two factors that may lead to high orbital speeds in a binary star: - Central star far heavier than the Sun. According to Doppler stars that are a million times heavier than the Sun are plausible. - Highly elliptical orbit with a small perihelium distance (<1 AU). Doppler assumes that there are binary stars with a perihelium speed larger than the speed of light. The astronomer Littrow would have suggested that the perihelium speed of the visual binary star γ Virgo is nearly equal to the speed of light. § 10 Doppler summarises the above, and concludes that his speculations explain so much that his theory has to be true. He shares a few more speculations: - The colours of binary stars are not static, they will change periodically in phase with the orbital motion. - The stars of § 8, which suddenly (in just a few hours time) appear, then gradually extinguish and remain invisible for many years, are binary stars with a highly elliptical orbit and a high perihelium speed. If the Earth sees the orbit obliquely, such a star may appear faster than it disappears. - Fluctuations in the period of variable stars like Mira (according to Doppler its period varies between 328 and 335 days), result from the orbital motion of the Earth. § 11 Conclusion: Doppler expects his frequency shift theory will be accepted, because similar aberrations that depend on v/c (Rømer's and Bradley's) have been accepted before. Doppler waits for the experts to decide if his speculations will do as evidence. He is convinced that finally his principle will be used for the determination of the speed of remote stars. - Some sources mention 1843 as year of publication because in that year the article was published in the Proceedings of the Bohemian Society of Sciences. Doppler himself referred to the publication as "Prag 1842 bei Borrosch und André", because in 1842 he had a preliminary edition printed that he distributed independently. - In 1728 Bradley discovered and explained the so called aberration of star light. This aberration was one of the first compelling pieces of evidence for the finite speed of light in the universe. Finite meaning in this case: although large, not extremely large compared to the orbital speed of the Earth. Bradley's aberration is approximately proportional to v/c, the ratio of the speed of the Earth over the speed of light. The Doppler effect contains a similar proportionality to v/c. - Doppler uses other symbols for the variables than we usually do today: f = 1/n, f ' = 1/x, vo = αo, vs = αs. (Note n=n" and x=x", as in number of seconds = time). - inaudible, except for the shock wave ignored by Doppler. - 1 par.Fuss = 0.325 m (pied de roi); speed of sound 1024 par.Fuss/s = 333 m/s - In 1845 Buys Ballot used this idea of musicians with absolute hearing for the first experimental verification of the Doppler effect. - Meile = geografische Meile = 7420 m. Doppler provides the rounded value of 42000 Meilen/s instead of the best accurate value of his time. The rounded value was well known and stable throughout the years, whereas the accurate value varied due to frequent new measurements. Since 1835 the accurate value was 41549 geogr. Meilen/s (308000 km/s), see Pierer's Universallexikon and Wüllner's Experimentalphysik - The frequencies 458 THz (extreme red) and 727 THz (extreme violet) and other colours apparently have been derived from the wavelengths mentioned by Thomas Young in his Theory of Light and Colours (1802), where Doppler would have used 309000 km/s as light speed. This explains most values in the table, except for the vs-values 19000 and 5007 that remain as calculation errors by Doppler (deviation about 25%). according to Young according to Doppler extreme violet 425 727 -24462 -19000 (error) yellow 577 535 -7037 -5007 (error) red 648 477 -1704 -1700 extreme red 675 458 0 0 - These assumptions are wrong. Doppler ignores the emitted infrared and ultraviolet, although their presence in sun light was known since studies by Herschel (1800) and Ritter (1801). As a result Doppler overstimates the visual colour changes. He knew that stars are able to emit infrared, as he proposes so in § 8. With regard to the colours of stars, the assumption that stars emit white light is his major mistake. Nowadays we know that colour mainly depends on the star temperature. - Doppler uses the old term homogeneous light for monochromatic light. - Derivation of the threshold value 458.37: Herschel stated that white light, obtained by mixing red, yellow and blue light, undergoes a visually perceptible colour change if the intensity of any of these three components changes by at least 1%. According to Doppler this implies that white star light undergoes a perceptible colour change if the frequency shift is at least 1% of the red segment of the spectrum. Using Young's definition of the red segment (wavelength 625 - 675nm, Theory of Light and Colours, see above) and c=309000km/s (see above), the red segment corresponds to the frequency range 458 - 495THz. The value in that segment at 1% distance from the border is 458.37THz. - Bolzano, in his review in 1843, points out that Doppler's thought that his theory would not apply for transverse waves is a mistake. Annalen der Physik 1843 - In Doppler's article, 'fixed stars' are single stars that are not part of a binary star. The idea of their immobility is a legacy from antiquity, when the ideal fixed stars were contrasted with the planets. - Bolzano argues in his review in 1843 that the idea of the immobility of single stars is unnecessary, and that the observed proper motion of many stars indicates that single stars do move. Annalen der Physik 1843 - Later it turned out that the orbital speed of binary stars is not particularly large compared to the proper motion speed of stars. Speeds up to about 200 km/s are observed in eclipsing binaries. An exception is the fastest binary star, a rare type of two white dwarfs, with a period of 5 minutes, an orbit diameter of 80000 km, and an orbital speed of more than 1000 km/s. RX J0806.3+1527 - At present, the highest radial speed of nearby single stars is about 300 km/s. (Doppler effect#Astronomy LHS 52) - With a few known facts Doppler could have easily estimated that the orbital speed of the visual binaries, which appear to be colourful, is smaller than the orbital speed of the Earth. The distance from the Earth to stars is at least 4 light years (that is the distance to the nearest star). A traditional telescope at sea level has a resolving power of 1 arc second or worse, due to atmospheric turbulence. Hence, the two stars that compose a visual binary have a distance of at least 1 AU. The shortest period of a visual binary is 1.7 year. Therefore the orbital speed of visual binaries (with a circular orbit) is smaller than that of the Earth, below the threshold for visual colour changes (see § 9). That is another flaw in Doppler's explanation of the colours of visual binaries. - An additional motive for Doppler to focus on binary stars might have been that binary stars were a hot topic in astronomy. Accurate binary star catalogues had been composed by Herschel and by Struve. It had been discovered that binary stars are not static, but that they revolve in an orbit around a center, bound by gravity. The orbit parameters (speed, period, and excentricity) were determined. It had become clear that visually single, variable stars with a particular brightness development, were actually binary stars (eclipsing binaries, like Algol). - Therefore Doppler expects that supernovas flame periodically. - For details see Sirius Red controversy. This idea meant that Sirius would be a binary star with an extremely long period and high speed. This is incorrect: although Sirius actually is a binary star (as discovered in 1844), it doesn't have a high speed. - We now know that the heaviest stars are 100 times heavier than the Sun, but a black hole could be a million times heavier than the Sun. See solar mass. - In the case of binary stars the perihelium should actually be called periastron - Doppler's suggestion that his theory encompasses Bradley's aberration is an exaggeration. However, he could have claimed that his theory encompassed Ole Rømer's (among astronomers equally famous) aberration of the revolution of Jupiter's moon Io, which Rømer used in 1676 to determine the finite speed of light. That aberration is exactly given by f ' / f = (c+vo) / c, where f ' and f are the apparent and the actual frequency of revolution. In addition, this shows that the Doppler effect applies to more than just the oscillation frequency of a wave. - In his time, Doppler could have thought himself of measuring the shift of spectral lines of stars, although he didn't. In 1815 Fraunhofer had observed dark lines in spectra of the Sun and Sirius. He proposed that every star has a unique line spectrum. A few years later he measured the wavelength of these lines, using a grating. In 1823 William Herschel suggested that the chemical composition of stars could be derived from their spectrum. In 1848 Fizeau pointed to the possibility of measuring the shift of spectral lines in star spectra. But until the breakthrough of the work by Kirchhoff and Bunsen in 1859, spectroscopy remained a difficult method, producing complex and fairly useless spectra. In 1868 Huggins discovered a redshift in the spectrum of Sirius, and he calculated the speed. In 1871 Vogel succeeded in measuring the shift of spectral lines at the edges of the Sun, and he used it to calculate the rotation speed of the sun. In the same year Talbot pointed to the possibility of discovering spectroscopic binary stars by means of periodic doubling of spectral lines, and in 1889 this was observed for the first time in the star Mizar A, by Pickering. See The rise of astrophysics - Full text on archive.org. - Abhandlundgen von Christian Doppler, herausgegeben von H.A. Lorentz (1907). In the final chapter Lorentz comments on Über das farbige Licht.
Geometry of Bridge Construction The four kinds of bridges and some combinations A. The beam or truss bridge is, in effect, a pair of girders supporting a deck spanning the gap between two piers. Such a beam has to withstand both compression in its upper parts and tension in its lower parts. Where it passes over supports, other forces come into play. A beam may be a hollow box girder or an open frame or truss. B. An arch bridge can be designed so that no part of it has to withstand tension. Concrete is well suited to arched bridge design. When reinforced concrete is used, a more elegant and sometimes less costly arch can be designed and most concrete arch bridges are reinforced. C. A suspension bridge consists, basically, of a deck suspended from cables slung between high towers. The cables of high tensile steel wire can support an immense weight. The towers are in compression and the deck, often consisting of a long slender truss (used as a hollow beam), is supported at frequent intervals along its length. D. A cantilever bridge is generally carried by two beams, each supported at one end. Unlike a simple beam supported at both ends, the cantilever must resist tension in its upper half and compression in its lower. A fifth type arrived on the scene in 1952 the first modern cable-stayed bridges were built in Germany and Sweden. There are also many other composite forms of bridges. The bridle-chord bridge is a combination of a long beam (usually a trussed girder) partially supported by steel wires from a tower at one end, or from towers at each end. Most cantilever bridges are designed so that a gap remains between two cantilevered arms that reach out from their abutments: the gap is bridged by a simple beam.
Depending on the method of reading used, an average college student reads at a speed between 250 to 700 words per minute. Students who follow what they've traditionally learned in grade school and pronounce each word they read use the "sub-vocalization" method and read at about 250 words per minute.Continue Reading Students who hear the words that they read are somewhat faster; they use "auditory reading." Those students read at approximately 450 words per minute. Finally, visual readers are the fastest readers. They comprehend meaning by seeing words in a text. Those readers do not need to hear or pronounce words. They can read at 700 words per minute.Learn more about K-12
As city-states all over Mesopotamia kept growing in area and population, conflict among them increased. City-states competed with one another to control fertile land and water sources. Soon people were fighting wars to conquer, or take over, the lands of others. Causes and Effects of Conflict Most wars among early agricultural societies such as those in Mesopotamia were fought to protect farmland and water rights. A Sumerian saying warned of how unstable ownership was: "You can go and carry off the enemy's land; the enemy comes and carries off your land." The land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers was flat. No natural boundaries such as mountains separated one city-state from another. Without natural boundaries, city-states put up pillars to mark their borders. When one city-state moved or destroyed another city-state's pillars, it "violated both the decree [orders] of the gods and the word given by man to man." Such acts often led to war. As more disagreements about land and water arose, more wars were fought. The need for weapons resulted in new technology. Craftworkers created new inventions such as war chariots. A war chariot was a light, two-wheeled cart pulled by horses. From a fast-moving war chariot, a soldier could speed by and throw spears or shoot arrows at an enemy who was on foot. The new war technologies meant that more people died in battle. What was the major cause of wars among the people of Mesopotamia?
Lesson Plan - Tracing Abolitionist Movements in North Carolina A Lesson Plan for Grades 11-12 U.S. History By Jennifer Job, School of Education, UNC-Chapel Hill Students will show an understanding of the debate over slavery in North Carolina and locate the major areas of the abolitionist movement in the state. Students will express an understanding of the major figures of the movement using presentation software skills. Time Required: Two 90-minute class periods Materials and Resources: - Internet Access - PowerPoint presentation - Answer Sheet (.pdf) - Server space or electronic drop box to turn in the final product - This lesson is meant to accompany instruction on the Underground Railroad and the abolitionist movement. - Ask students to open the PowerPoint (.ppt) on their computers. - Explain to students that they will read the first half of the PowerPoint and then work on the last four slides in order to show their understanding. - When students have completed work on the PowerPoint, make sure that they save the file in the following format: last name_first initial.antislavery.ppt to ensure that you know whose work is whose. If you are worried about space constraints, you may ask students to cut and paste the final four slides into a new presentation to turn in. - Ask students to turn in the PowerPoints electronically, either through their server space, drop box, or email. - Discussion of the elements should follow completion of the presentations. Have two or three students who volunteer show their presentations to the class. Discuss how their answers differ from other students' choices. Assessment Activity: The Answer Sheet (.pdf) acts as a rubric for the presentations. In addition, you may wish to quiz students on their knowledge of Levi Coffin and the North Carolina Underground Railroad to make sure they have read the first section of the PowerPoint. North Carolina Curriculum Alignment 2.05: Identify the major reform movements and evaluate their effectiveness. 2.06: Evaluate the role of religion in the debate over slavery and other social movements and issues.
The lithosphere is the outermost part of the earth. It is subdivided into tectonic plates. The lithosphere of the earth consists mainly of the crust and the upper mantle. There are basically two types of the lithosphere, namely – Oceanic Lithosphere and Continental Lithosphere. The lithosphere also contains the different types of rocks such as the igneous, sedimentary, and the metamorphic rocks. There are mainly 15 tectonic plates in the lithosphere. They are – the North American, Caribbean, South American, Scotia, Antarctic, Eurasian, Arabian, African, Indian, Philippine, Australian, Pacific, Juan de Fuca, Cocos, and Nazca. The movement of these plates is responsible for the formation of mountains and oceanic trenches, volcanic eruption, and the earthquakes. The lithosphere includes both the land area and the water bodies. The land area consists of 30% of the total area of the earth. In the continental regions it has a thickness of 35-50 kilometers and under the ocean beds, it gets reduced to 6-12 kilometers. This outer layer of the earth has a depth of more than 100 kilometers. The lithosphere is very important to us mainly because of the abundance of resources in it. Let us see in detail why the lithosphere is important to us. - The lithosphere helps to provide all the necessary nutrients required for the growth of plants. It also combines with the hydrosphere and the atmosphere to help in the growth of all the living organisms. - We need fuels such as coal, petroleum, gas, etc., for the industries, household purposes and also for the automobiles. The lithosphere is rich in all these fuels. - The alteration of the tectonic plates gives rise to mountains, earthquakes, etc. These will gradually help to form new habitats. - The different types of metals we use in our daily lives as tools are extracted from the minerals found in the lithosphere. The various minerals present in it are iron, silver, manganese, aluminum, magnesium, calcium, and copper. - Water bodies are essential for the existence of all the living beings on the earth. The lithosphere contains the water bodies such as lakes, rivers, and oceans. - The lithosphere provides the space for the shelter of all the animals as well as for the human beings. In short, the lithosphere contains everything that is essential for the sustenance of life on the earth. Without lithosphere, we cannot imagine the presence of even a single life on the earth. Though the lithosphere has the various benefits, the eruption of volcanoes and the earthquakes are also caused because of the movement of the tectonic plates on the lithosphere. The movement of these plates is caused by the heat energy from the mantle portion. The lithosphere hence is very important in our life. All our chemical and mechanical activities depend completely on the resources available on the lithosphere. In the absence of lithosphere, we will not have any space to live on the earth. This cool and brittle is, thus, the most important part of the earth by all means.
“There’s no time for inquiry. I’ve got content to cover.” “Look at this topic list. Where will we find the time to inquire?” “These kids don’t know how to inquire.” “There’s an exam at the end of this year.” There are a lot of different reasons why many classrooms do not make time for student inquiry, and these statements are just a few of the most common. If we take a look at the four statements above, we find that perhaps the most common excuse for not approaching learning through student inquiry is a lack of time, which seems to be occupied with topic lists and coverage in preparation for an exam. The other one is that students don’t know how to inquire. What are the bases for these misconceptions about inquiry? - Is becoming curious something that cannot be facilitated? - Is covering content entirely separate from processes of asking questions and finding out, sorting information, evaluating it, thinking about its relevance, drawing conclusions? - If students become personally motivated to find answers to questions they ask about content and concepts, what might happen? - Do curiosity, processes of learning, and motivation take up so much time that they cannot be engaged in when content is being covered? - Are exam questions not able to be answered using process, skills, knowledge and understanding that might result from well-designed and facilitated inquiry? - Curious and motivated to find things out - Able to construct good questions - Able to learn processes and use these deliberately to find answers which are not readily apparent Covering content is teacher’s work. When the summative assessment is upon the learner, he or she must do some work. If the teacher does all the work, what will the student do when the time comes for him or her to perform it?
In our last method, we studied the FOIL method for multiplying binomials. We can still apply the FOIL method when we square binomials, but we will also discover a special rule that can be applied to make this process easier. Let's take a look at Example 1. Let's take a look at a special rule that will allow us to find the product without using the FOIL method. The square of a binomial is the sum of: the square of the first terms, twice the product of the two terms, and the square of the last term. I know this sounds confusing, so take a look.. If you can remember this formula, it you will be able to evaluate polynomial squares without having to use the FOIL method. It will take practice. Now let's take a look at Example 1 and find the product using our special rule. If that was confusing for you, take a look at the following video where we will simplify using the FOIL Method and our new special rule. Now let's take a look at another example. This time we are going to square a binomial, but this binomial will contain a subtraction sign. For this example, we will not use FOIL, we will use our special rule! Did you notice that the middle term is negative this time? Still confused? Take a look at the video lesson for Example 2. Let's quickly recap, and look at the definition for Squaring a Binomial. You might want to record this in your Algebra notes. Are you ready to practice? Copyright © 2009-2014 Karin Hutchinson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Space.com (September 3, 2009) "The Miller-Urey experiment, conducted by chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey in 1953, is the classic experiment on the origin of life. It established that the early Earth atmosphere, as they pictured it, was capable of producing amino acids, the building blocks of life, from inorganic substances. "Now, more than 55 years later, two scientists are proposing a hypothesis that could add a new dimension to the debate on how life on Earth developed. "Armen Mulkidjanian of the University of Osnabrueck, Germany and Michael Galperin of the U.S. National Institutes of Health present their hypothesis and evidence in two papers published and open for review in the web site Biology Direct...." Scientists have been learning more about what's been happening, and thrashing out increasingly less improbable models for explaining how places like Earth develop. Not all that long ago, it was reasonable to assume that this planet had a 'reducing atmosphere' early on: "...Miller and Urey replicated the early Earth atmosphere with a mixture of methane, hydrogen, ammonia and water vapor. This mixture, along with some "sparks" which simulated lightning, led to the formation of amino acids. With this setup, Miller and Urey assumed that the early Earth had a reducing atmosphere, which meant it had large amounts of hydrogen and almost no oxygen...." I remember when "Mars jars," complete with electrical sparks, were all the rage. And, sure enough, amino acids formed in them. They looked cool, reminded me of mad scientists' laboratories in the old movies: and were based on reasonable assumptions. Just one problem. Now it looks like Earth's atmosphere was chemically neutral. Sort of like what Mars has now, except thicker. With small amounts of nitrogen and hydrogen. An atmosphere like that still has the chemical makings of amino acids - but they won't form in the traditional Mars jars. It's been tried. New Data, ModelThe sort of atmosphere that Earth's assumed to have had could have produced amino acids - but through a different mechanism. "...The scientists suggest that life on Earth originated at photosynthetically active porous structures, similar to deep-sea hydrothermal vents, made of zinc sulfide (more commonly known as phosphor). They argue that under the high pressure of a carbon-dioxide-dominated atmosphere, zinc sulfide structures could form on the surface of the first continents, where they had access to sunlight. Unlike many existing theories that suggest UV radiation was a hindrance to the development of life, Mulkidjanian and Galperin think it actually helped...." They could be right. I wouldn't bet that this is the last word in the story of what mechanisms were involved in getting mushrooms, eagles, and sequoias started: but it doesn't sound all that unlikely. I've been following studies of how life may have started for about four decades now, and am impressed by a pattern. From the Mars jars to the Mulkidjanian-Galperin work, each successive best-estimate of what happened several billion years back has been matched with a fairly simple, plausible explanation for how life could have started - or at any rate, the bricks that life is made of. It looks to me like life's components may not be the long shot that some authors have claimed.
\|There is more information available on this subject at Beryllium on the English Wikipedia.\| Beryllium (pronounced /bəˈrɪliəm/) is a chemical element with the symbol Be and atomic number 4. A bivalent element, beryllium is a steel grey, strong, light-weight yet brittle, alkaline earth metal. It is primarily used as a hardening agent in alloys, most notably beryllium copper. Commercial use of beryllium metal presents technical challenges due to the toxicity (especially by inhalation) of beryllium-containing dusts. Beryllium is relatively rare element in both the Earth and the universe, due to the fact that it is not formed in conventional stellar nucleosynthesis. The element is not known to be necessary or useful for either plant or animal life.
For all the resources, please check here: Host: 福科國中- 彭昌輝輔導員 Topic: The application of mind mapping Mind mapping is used as an instrument to help organize one's ideas and thought. Leo applied this concept to promote students' learning efficiency in English which actually led to a very good result. Leo reminded us that it is very important for the teacher to show students the meaning of a mind map, and how it works before they are able to use it. With his application in reading(the essay from the textbook), speaking(to tell a story), writing(a letter to Santa), and daily- life situation (flyers), students were able to practice mind mapping on different topics. For those who were not interested in Engligh, they had a chance to build their understanding in their own ways. Reporter 1: 石岡國中黃清秀老師 Topic: 1. The Application of comics 2. The Application of Reader's Theater 1. By selecting the comics from the textbook, Ms Huang made up a lot of gap filling activities for students to create their own ideas based on how much they have learned. This way not only helped make a good use of our coursebook, but also gave students chances to practice their creativity by using English. 2. Ms. Huang also used resources from youtube to help students form ideas about what they were going to perform. She suggested stories with repetitive lines is good for RT because they decrease the anxiety to speak longer sentences; therefore, students might feel more released to act out. Reporter 2: 和平國中朱國蓉老師 Topic: Teaching songs Most of Miss Ju's students were slow learners, so she liked students to form heterogeneous groups to help each other in class. In this case, students had to translate some of the lyrics. It is not easy to find an English song which is mainly and only made for teaching; therefore, Miss Ju reminded it is important for the teachers to provide as much vocabulary aid as possible. Students might not be interested in reading the coursebook; however, if songs is able to catch their eye, why not help them enjoy learning English from songs. Reporter 3: 梨山國中余勝為老師 Topic: Teaching demonstration (vocabulary) Mr. Yu made a good teaching demonstration by teaching vocabulary. With drills, and lots of pictures, it seemed not that difficult to learn a new word. From the definition of each word to longer sentences, Mr. Yu developed his teaching meaningfully and fluently. He suggested to link all new vocabulary into a story to help memorizing those new words due to the fun of story creation. Feedback from 東勢國中東華國中東新國中新社高(國)中 Most of the teachers highly recommended today's sharing, and they also pointed out that as students' learning habits are changing, photos, comics, or pictures seemed to help a lot. However, due to the time limitation and some other reality difficulties, it would be more efficient to adapt the content of our textbook to form activities instead of creating something new. Thanks for Mr. Yu's sharing for this one, " Students will be happy learners only when the teachers becomes happy teachers themselves first!"
Update: An earlier version of this story stated it was the earliest example of writing in the world. It is actually the oldest found in the Jerusalem area. A current archeological project outside of the Old City walls in Jerusalem has uncovered the oldest example of written language ever found in the city. The clay fragment seen above was dated by researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as being from the 14th century B.C.E., which shows that Jerusalem was an important hub of civilization long before King David came along. The fragment was found in the buried ruins of a tower dating from the 10th century B.C.E., during the King Solomon era. The current theory is that it was part of some form of royal historical archives. The fragment is massively important, but quite small in size.The clay chip is just 2 centimeters by 2.8 centimeters, and just 1 centimeter thick. The writing upon it is in the ancient language of Akkadian, which was the bridge language of the time. Professor Wayne Horowitz, a scholar of Assyriology at the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology, was in charge of discovering the meaning of the tablet segment. According to Horowitz, it includes symbols for the words “you,” “you were,” “later,” “to do” and “them.” But what Horowitz says actually matters much more than the meaning is the style. The words are well scripted, indicating that this may have been the work of a royal scribe, making this part of a royal decree or message.
Collective violence, violent form of collective behaviour engaged in by large numbers of people responding to a common stimulus. Collective violence can be placed on a continuum, with one extreme involving the spontaneous behaviour of people who react to situations they perceive as uncertain, threatening, or extremely attractive. Riots and random youth gang fights are examples of spontaneous collective violence. At the other extreme are the organized forms of collective violence. These include coups, rebellions, revolutions, terrorism, and war. Defining collective violence Criminologists divide violence into two major types: individual violence and collective violence. Individual (or personal) violence is injurious force directed by one person against others. It includes making physical attacks and destroying another’s property. In contrast, collective violence consists of a number of persons directing injurious force against others. Acts of collective violence do not spring from madness, perversion, or intentional criminality; they spring from everyday life and mundane issues, and the people who commit these acts are normal people who become convinced that the time has come to take matters into their own hands. Generally speaking, collective violence can be divided into three categories: - Situational collective violence is unplanned and spontaneous. Something in the immediate situational environment triggers a group to violent action. For example, in a barroom brawl, one group of patrons interprets messages sent by another group as a form of disrespect and feels it necessary to retaliate physically. - Organized collective violence is planned violent behaviour. It is also unauthorized or unofficial and lacks government approval. Lynching is an example of organized collective violence. - Institutional collective violence is carried out under the direction of legally constituted officials. Examples include a country fighting a war, a state’s national guard putting down a riot, or a SWAT team attacking a barricaded suspect. Within the context of collective behaviour, situational collective violence can be understood as spontaneous behaviour, and organized collective violence and institutional collective violence can be combined into the category of organized collective behaviour. Examples of collective violence Compared with conventional, everyday behaviour, collective behaviour is less inhibited, more spontaneous, more open to change, less structured, less stable, and generally shorter lived. One by-product of mass action can be collective violence. The specific forms of collective violence are described below. The most elementary form of collective violence is referred to as “social unrest.” The significance of social unrest is that it represents a breakdown of established routines and behaviours and substitutes a preparation for new collective action. Social unrest is not a new phenomenon; it is most likely a characteristic of urban society. Often, tensions exist in any given social environment. These tensions may be a result of racial, ethnic, or religious discrimination and prejudice that are operant in society. People become frustrated when they realize there is unequal access to the desired social goals (success, wealth, health, sense of self-fulfillment, and the like). There are instances when people will engage in various methods of adaptation. In extreme cases, riots may occur. When groups of people become dissatisfied and frustrated with existing economic and political institutions, there may come a point when the breakdown of law and order is preferred to their preservation. During the chaos of a riot, many emergent forms of behaviour occur that might not occur otherwise. Acts of violence take on new meaning; they are now viewed as legitimate by the performers and the active witnesses. Test Your Knowledge Youths have formed groups, usually within their own age cohorts, from the beginning of human history. Some groups engage in what would be described as “normal” or socially acceptable behaviours. Other groups, however, may engage in behaviours that are harmful or even criminal. Youth gangs have existed since at least the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe. Descriptions of youth gangs in England during this period note that gangs committed various forms of theft and robbery, along with extortion and rape. Gangs found great amusement in breaking windows, demolishing taverns, and assaulting the watch. In the United States, youth gangs have existed since at least the Revolutionary era. As the number of youth gangs slowly increased in American cities, certain characteristics remained constant. Gangs were typically organized along ethnic or racial lines, and the time spent in a gang was generally restricted to one’s youth, as former gang members moved into the mainstream blue-collar workforce. Gang violence was more likely to occur because of some chance meeting of rivals; however, some fights were organized as a form of either retaliation or intimidation. Beginning in the 1980s, gangs in the United States took on a new focus. They were far more violent than in the past, as the primary motive of “turf protection” was replaced with the goal of attaining wealth through control of the illegal drug market. Drug money fueled an urban arms race, and gun violence in American urban centres such as Los Angeles and Chicago became endemic. With the shift of the U.S. economic structure from blue-collar industry to white-collar service professions, the traditional exit path from gang life evaporated. Former youth gang members were now in their 20s and 30s and still participating in gangs. The foundation of youth gangs had transformed from the relatively unstructured, spontaneous group, engaged in random, relatively short-lived forms of violence, to a more organized and structured criminal enterprise. Coups, rebellions, and revolutions Some violent collective behaviour is designed to change or overthrow governments. A coup d’état is the forcible removal of a head of government by the society’s own armed forces or internal security personnel. In a coup, the military takes action to overthrow the government with little or no involvement by the civilian population. Antagonistic relations between ethnic groups and rivalries within the military and civilian government are typical causes of coups. A rebellion involves large-scale violence directed against the state by its own civilian population. Rebellions try to change the government or some of its policies but not the society itself. Intense government repression seems to deter rebellion, whereas mild repression tends to stimulate it. Thus, mild repression serves to outrage citizens but leaves them with the resources to organize resistance. Revolutions can sweep away the old order. Unlike coups and rebellions, revolutions can cause radical changes in the institutions of government and bring about basic changes in society as a whole. The French Revolution destroyed the ancien régime and advanced ideas of social and political equality. The Russian Revolution of 1917 ended the Russian monarchy, introduced communism, and established the Soviet Union. Revolutions often involve collective acts of violence that are deemed justifiable by those who participate in such historic events. No other concept conjures images of collective violence more clearly than war. A war is a lethal conflict in which one group seeks to impose its will on others through the use of armed aggression and force. Nations go to war for a variety of reasons, including the desire to seize territory and resources, the desire for domination, revenge for past wrongs, preservation of a balance of power, and misperceptions about an adversary’s intentions and strength. Wars have been used to solve disputes throughout all of recorded history and remain a prominent feature of relations between nations. War is an example of institutionally organized collective violence. The military often has an organized plan of attack, but spontaneous and unforeseen battles are a by-product of the so-called fog of war. Terrorism is a form of warfare in which a social movement that opposes the state directs violence toward civilians rather than the military or the police. Terrorist actions include bombing, assassination, kidnapping, hijacking, arson, torture, and mass murder. Terrorists tend to adopt the position that their political or ideological objectives justify the means they employ to achieve them, even if innocent people are harmed.
Coral reefs are incredibly diverse jewels of biodiversity in the oceans, and it’s critical we preserve them. To preserve anything we must understand it, and these four lessons aims to let people do just that. Students will discover all about the amazing animals that create our reefs – the polyps. Students will have the opportunity to learn about the anatomy and abilities of coral polyps by creating their own edible polyp. Mangroves and sea grass line the local coasts but very little is known about these important ecosystems. In this lesson students will develop an in-depth understanding of how sea grass meadows and mangrove forests work together with coral reefs to support life in the ocean. In this lesson students will find out about cutting edge research being done into the future of our coral reefs. They will learn, through playing our Coral Reef boardgame, about the small and big actions that can be undertaken to secure the future health of our reefs. We are heading in a catastrophic direction. By weight, it is estimated that plastic will be more abundant than fish in 2050. So How do we go about teaching our students about it? Can we even exist without plastic? Students will consider the harmful effects of plastic on marine life and develop an awareness for the consequences of plastic pollution. Students will gain inspiration from hearing stories, and creating their own showing the heroes that protect and save our marine life. Through analysing their own plastic use students will develop an awareness of the amount of plastic that is consumed and consider how we can reduce this. They will also consider what happens to plastic when it is disposed of. Students will be introduced to some of the innovative and creative way individuals, communities and organisations are tackling the problem of plastic pollution. They will then in workshops either up-cycle plastic materials or try to creatively design a machine or device for dealing with the marine plastic problem. Far from being mindless killing machines, sharks are incredibly adaptive and have a crucial role in their ecosystems. These modules help you teach about these apex predators without hype and sensationalism. In this series of two lessons students will get the opportunity to do their own research into the way sharks and humans interact. They will research up to the minute shark conservation projects and technological advances; as well as look in depth into the ways humans are having hugely negative impacts on sharks around the globe. Marine Life Stratego Based on the popular board game Stratego, Marine Life Stratego has turned the original board into a live game involving (quite likely) a lot of running, team-work and fun. Marine Life Stratego Is a fast paced strategy game, that challenges participants with quick decision making making, strategic decisions and team-work. The game is fun to participate in, no matter if you’re ten or thirty year old. Number of participants: 15-60 (more participants is possible, but you’ll need to print multiple deck of cards.)
The nature and extent of learning outcomes to be achieved at different levels of the general education system, and the means through which they should be achieved, is usually articulated in the curriculum or education programme. The curriculum, on the other hand, will usually receive its cue from national development goals and priorities. Teaching and learning processes operationalise these outcomes and give them effect. Assessment verifies if stipulated outcomes have been achieved, although it can also be an input for learning to occur and/or be directed. The extent to which stipulated outcomes have been achieved remains a dominant1, though not exclusive signal of the quality of education, as well as of the effectiveness of curriculum implementation, teaching and learning. That is to say, assessment procedures will normally only be able to capture limited elements of learning that has occurred, in specifically defined areas, for example, literacy and numeracy. Assessment in itself is a varied education process. It varies by purpose, forms of assessment and area of assessment. An initial distinction has to be made between assessment for learning and assessment of learning. The former is concerned with the function of assessment as an educational process. For this, feedback to the learner is essential3. Nevertheless, on a systemic level, assessment of learning is essential in order to monitor achievement of the education system as a whole. Assessment of learning, on the systemic level, can also result in (policy) lessons to improve systemic performance and, in this sense, on this level as well, ‘assessment for learning.’ can take place (although this expression is not usually used to refer to systemic learning). To this end, such large scale assessments usually use instruments for assessment of factors associated with learning in addition to the actual tests, which are normally grounded in a framework such as the generic ‘CIPP’-model (CIPP stands for Context, Inputs, Process and Product, see adjacent Figure 2), which is used, for example, by the Latin American Laboratory for Assessment of the Quality of Education (LLECE). This Analytical Tool aims at assisting users to diagnose if, and to what extent, the existing assessment system is part of the impediments to reaching the desired and/or stated goals of education quality. The paramount question in the diagnosis of our assessment systems is how assessments can contribute to improving the quality of our education system and learning effectiveness. The diagnosis addresses this paramount question by posing some key questions with regard to assessment policies, frameworks and methods in place, the implementation mechanisms, and the systems for drawing appropriate lessons from assessment results and using the results from assessments to improve the different aspects of education processes and outcomes. Diagnosis and analysis assessment policies, frameworks and methods 1. Do we have a national strategy / policy / position paper on educational assessment? If yes, how recent is this? Which educational levels (both in terms of ISCED and in terms of location (local – regional – national) and subjects are covered by this? Has it been evaluated? 2. To what extent is the choice of purposes, targets and subject matters for assessment, for example in national assessments, related directly to what the country thinks of as important in terms of learning outcomes for its learners and not only in terms of what is easy to assess? (See Articles on Assesment) 3. What have been the criteria used to determine the coverage of the assessment and the level at which national assessments are conducted? Are these criteria linked to clear objectives and goals of the assessment? Is there evidence that the coverage and the levels at which the assessments are made contributed to improvement of education system quality? 4. In general, to what extent is assessment in this country effective? To what ends? Is it inclusive? In what way? What evidence do we have for this? Do we know where the system stands in terms of achievement outcomes at every level? Implementation of assessment 1. If there is an educational assessment policy has it been implemented/enacted? How do we know? At what levels is assessment implemented? What are the objectives of this? 2. Is there evidence that the implementation of the assessments is according to rules of good practice, incl. inclusiveness? What is this based on? [Analytical Tool on Equity and Inclusion] 3. Who implements assessments? How does this vary by types of assessment? 4. How are tests conceptualised (i.e. how are test items developed) and what is the conceptual basis for this (for example, a curriculum/syllabus analysis or rather an orientation of ‘life skills’)? What psychometric methods and techniques are used to classify items, and to what extent are these item characteristics taken into account in the development of achievement tests? Are open and closed items used? In terms of test conceptualisation, is there a good mix of standardised and non-standardised testing available? 5. Are assessments also measuring ‘associated factors’ that facilitate analysis (e.g. looking at age, gender, socioeconomic status and other background information)? 6. If applicable, how are data processed and fed into a centralised information system? 7. What is the evidence that participation in international quality assessment (LLECE, PISA, SACMEQ and others) help us to bench mark the quality of our education system? What has been our and others experience of international assessments? If we have not participated, was it a deliberate decision and, if so, why? Utilisation of assessment results 1. What mechanisms do we have for making the evaluation of the assessment results inform education policy and practice (at classroom, school, regional and national level)? How often do we use these mechanisms? What is the evidence that we do such evaluation in a purposeful and systematic way? 2. How do we interpret the findings from evaluations of assessment results findings, and how do we make sure that educational assessments have the intended impact of improving the education system quality and learning effectiveness? How do we communicate our evaluation so as to focus on how we can do better? How are outcomes data linked to other variables, such as finance data, which permits rigorous analyses? 3. Are assessment results made public, and to whom (for example, individual student results to parents / carers; school rankings to the general public, etc.)? Priorities for action 1. What are the key areas to be addressed urgently to make assessment contribute to the quality of our education system? 2. What are the knowledge gaps which need to be filled for an evidence-based policy and practice of school-based and national assessments? 3. What are the required actions to deal with the priority constraints and the identified knowledge gaps?
What Is a Fossil? Fossils are evidence of ancient life preserved in sedimentary rocks. On Earth, they are clues to what living things, ecosystems, and environments were like in the past. The oldest fossils are from mats of blue-green algae that lived over three billion years ago. The youngest fossils are from animals that lived before the beginning of recorded history, 10,000 years ago. Scientists that study fossils know that the types of creatures that lived on the planet at different times in Earth history have changed quite a bit over millions and millions of years. Each unique type of life form, whether alive today or extinct, is called a species. Most fossils are from species that no longer live on the planet because they have become extinct. Many of these extinct species are somewhat similar to species that live today. Fossils are not always big dinosaur bones or fancy shells like the ones found in museums. In fact, if you think you have never found a fossil, think again! You probably rely on fossils everyday by using fossil fuels such as oil, gas, or coal to power cars, lights, and heat or cool your house. Fossil fuels are organic carbon from ancient plants and marine life that lived millions of years ago. So, every time you pull into a gas station, think about the fossils that are filling the tank! Body fossils are remains of actual organisms. Most living things never become fossils. It takes special conditions for a fossil to form. Hard parts made of mineral such as shells and bones are much more likely to become body fossils than soft tissues, such as skin, organs, and eyes, which usually decay. This means that animals like jellyfish, which have no bones made of hard mineral, are rarely preserved. Trace fossils are clues to how ancient animals lived. For instance, if you were to make footprints on the beach today and the beach sand eventually became cemented together forming a rock called sandstone, your footprints would be in the rock as well. They would be trace fossils and evidence that you were once there. This doesnï¿½t happen very often. Think about all the people, dogs, crabs, birds and other animals that walk over a beach each day. Few, if any, of those footprints will become fossils someday. Most of them are washed away by wind and waves. Other examples of trace fossils include crab burrows, dinosaur bite marks, and bear claw starches on the walls of caves.
May 26, 2006 Chloride, in the form of the Cl ion, is one of the major inorganic anions, or negative ions, in saltwater and freshwater. It originates from the dissociation of salts, such as sodium chloride or calcium chloride, in water. NaCl(s) ----> Na+(aq) + Cl(aq) CaCl2(s) ----> Ca2+(aq) + 2 Cl(aq) These salts, and their resulting chloride ions, originate from natural minerals, saltwater intrusion into estuaries, and industrial pollution. There are many possible sources of manmade salts that may contribute to elevated chloride readings. Sodium chloride and calcium chloride, used to salt roads, contribute to elevated chloride levels in streams. Chlorinated drinking water and sodium-chloride water softeners often increase chloride levels in wastewater of a community. In drinking water, the salty taste produced by chloride depends upon the concentration of the chloride ion. Water containing 250 mg/L of chloride may have a detectable salty taste if the chloride came from sodium chloride. The recommended maximum level of chloride in U.S. drinking water is 250 mg/L. \|Some sources of Chloride Ions\| \|River streambeds with salt-containing minerals\| \|Runoff from salted roads\| \|Mixing of seawater with freshwater\| \|The Use of Water softeners\| \|Irrigation water returned to streams\| \|Chlorinated drinking water\| Salinity is the total of all non-carbonate salts dissolved in water, usually expressed in parts per thousand (1 ppt = 1000 mg/L). Unlike chloride (Cl) concentration, salinity is a measure of the total salt concentration, comprised mostly of Na+ and Cl ions. Even though there are smaller quantities of other ions in seawater (e.g., K+, Mg2+, or SO42), sodium and chloride ions represent about 91% of all seawater ions. Salinity is an important measurement in seawater or in estuaries where freshwater from rivers and streams mixes with salty ocean water. The salinity level in seawater is fairly constant, at about 35 ppt (35,000 mg/L), while brackish estuaries may have salinity levels between 1 and 10 ppt. Since most anions in seawater or brackish water are chloride ions, salinity can be determined from chloride concentration. The following formula is used: salinity (ppt) = 0.0018066 5 Cl (mg/L) A Chloride Ion-Selective Electrode can be used to determine the chloride concentration, which is converted to a salinity value using the above formula. Salinity can also be measured in freshwater. Compared to seawater or brackish water, freshwater has much lower levels of salt ions such as Na+ and Cl; in fact, these ions are often lower in concentration than hard-water ions such calcium (Ca2+) and bicarbonate (HCO3). Because salinity readings in freshwater will be significantly lower than in seawater or brackish water, readings are often expressed in mg/L instead of ppt (1 ppt = 1000 mg/L). Salinity is also of interest in bodies of water where seawater mixes with freshwater, since aquatic organisms have varying abilities to survive and thrive at different salinity levels. Saltwater organisms survive in salinity levels up to 40 ppt, yet many freshwater organisms cannot live in salinity levels above 1 ppt.
Definition - What does Benzene Ring mean? Benzene ring is a hexagonal arrangement found in Benzene, an organic chemical compound. The hexagonal arrangement of the benzene ring contains 6 carbon atoms, which have single or double bonds between them. Each of the carbon atoms within the ring is tied with a hydrogen atom. In some cases, the carbon atom maybe bonded with either a single atom or a group of atoms. The hexagonal arrangement is found in the molecules of the benzene as well as its derivatives. It is a natural component of crude oil in the petroleum industry. Due to its high octane number, it is an important constituent of the gasoline. Petropedia explains Benzene Ring Benzene ring molecule consists of 6 carbon atoms, having 1 hydrogen atom attached to each of the carbon atoms in the shape of a ring. Its chemical formula is C6H6 and this organic chemical compound is the most natural element of crude oil. Benzene is classified as a hydrocarbon, since its molecules have only carbon and hydrogen. Due to its high octane number in its molecular structure, it is an important constituent of gasoline making it an important fuel for engine; with ell as its derivatives. It is a natural component of crude oil in the petroleum industry.
Researchers at the University of Michigan and Princeton University have developed more-efficient OLED lighting: Energy efficiency and flexible lighting applications have long been the promise of organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). The technology hasn’t lived up to its promise, however, because in typical OLEDs, only 20 percent of the light generated is released from the device. That means that most light is trapped inside the bulb, making it highly inefficient. The new technology boosts illumination by 60 percent by using micro-lenses to guide the trapped light out of the device: In OLEDs, white light is generated by using electricity to send an electron into nanometer-thick layers of organic materials that behave like semiconductor materials. Typically, the light in the substrate is internally reflected and runs parallel and not perpendicular. That’s the crux of the problem because the light can’t escape in the vertical direction without some coaxing. In Forrest’s devices, the grids refract the trapped light, sending it to the five micrometers dome-shaped micro lenses. The light is sent off in a vertical orientation that helps release the trapped rays. Forrest and his coworkers report that the technology emits about 70 lumens from a watt of power. In comparison, incandescent lightbulbs emit 15 lumens per watt. Fluorescent lights put out roughly 90 lumens of light per watt but have liabilities: they produce harsh light, lack longevity, and use environment-damaging substances like mercury.
The food chain or trophic chain indicates the nutritional relationships between producers, consumers and decomposers. In other words, the chain reflects who eats whom (a living being feeds on the one that precedes it in the chain and, at the same time, is eaten by the one who follows it). It is, in short, a stream of energy that begins with photosynthesis and is then transferred from one organism to another through nutrition. The food chain, therefore, begins with photosynthetic plants, which have the ability to create living matter from the inert. Therefore, they are called producers. Autotrophs is how these aforementioned producers are also called, among which we can emphasize that there are plants. In the next link in the chain we find the animals that feed on the producers and are called primary consumers or phytophagous. The herbivorous beings are those that consider that they are primary consumers since they are the ones that feed on the producers, the plants. Among them we could highlight, for example, insects. These animals serve as food for others that are known as secondary consumers or carnivores. And then we could also talk about tertiary consumers, which are those that basically feed on secondary ones. Among those we could highlight that there are all those animals and beings of the ecosystem that exert superiority over the rest, as would be the case of super predators such as the crocodile, the shark, the jaguar, the polar bear, the wolf or the lion. According to abbreviationfinder, to close the chain, bacteria and fungi appear that decompose the waste of plants and animals. With this decomposition, simple elements reappear that are used as food by plants. However, to all the above it must be added that up to seven levels can be established in this food chain if actions or phenomena such as commensalism or decomposition are taken into account. In order to fully understand how the food chain works and to be able to work with it in a much easier way, it is common to represent it through the so-called trophic pyramid. It is an element, in the shape of said geometric object, where each of the aforementioned levels is ordered according to a criterion from highest to lowest. That is, at the top of it, the upper level will appear, that of the super predators, and thus it will continue to descend until it reaches the base of the pyramid where the beings called producers are found. In a food chain, all beings have great importance. With the disappearance of a link, the beings that follow it will run out of food. On the other hand, living beings that are in the level immediately before the missing link will begin to experience an overpopulation, since they will not have their predator. That is why the protection of ecosystems and all their components is of vital importance.
When a classroom full of fifth graders learned they would be studying the French artist Henri Rousseau, none of them had ever heard of him before. As the first half of the Meet the Masters lesson was presented by two parent volunteers, students learned that the post-impressionist artist Rousseau, who lived from 1844-1910, today is best known for his vivid jungle scenes. Tucked beneath layers of varying-length wild grasses and shielded by long, dangling leaves of all shapes and sizes, Rousseau carefully positioned each of his wide-eyed animals, who were seemingly ready to pounce right off his canvases. Most often, when students set out to create a picture, whether it be a simple drawing or a more complex painting, they have a tendency to start in the center of the page or canvas, working their way outward. With fascination, students learned how Henri Rousseau always created his artwork from top to bottom, using one color at a time before starting back at the top all over again. How often have you looked at a child’s artwork that features grass and trees, and observed that the grass is a solid rectangular area of only one shade of green that monopolizes the entire bottom portion while the tree, in the same shade of green, resembles a big, puffy cloud as opposed to a collection of individual leaves? As the first lesson on Rousseau drew to a close, students utilized their practice sheets, where they focused on drawing basic leaves that varied in shape, just like one would find in Mother Nature. Additionally, students learned how to use zigzag lines as a means of creating tall, swaying grasses. The first Rousseau lesson concluded with students using a grid to create the head and shoulders of a jungle lion. The grid allowed for a sense of symmetry, allowing students the opportunity to challenge themselves without the expectation that they would inherently know how to draw a lion. Those students who weren’t confident in their drawing skills breathed loud sighs of relief to learn that they would have guidance as they learned how to draw lions of their own. As the second part of the lesson began, students were asked to review what they learned about Rousseau. One of the most interesting facts that they readily recalled was that Henri Rousseau himself had never actually visited a jungle because he had never even stepped foot outside of his native France! They also recalled that, sadly, much of his artwork was not recognized as being especially noteworthy during his lifetime. For the second part of the lesson, students created their own jungle scenes. Before learning about Rousseau, if students were given different shades of construction paper, they probably would have first started with the main focal point of the artwork, the lion. Honoring Rousseau’s style though, students instead first added jungle grass and leaves, where lines of texture had been carefully added with blue art crayons, before carefully placing the lion’s head and shoulders within the grass. As the jungle grass was carefully glued to the black piece of construction paper, which served as the backdrop, the grass wasn’t glued flat to the paper like students would have normally done. Instead, the top portion of the grass was left unattached so, like in Rousseau’s paintings, it looked like it was swaying in the soft, jungle breezes. As they glued their leaves to the lightning bolt branches they had drawn on the black construction paper, students once again didn’t glue the leaves flat to the page, carefully using only dots of glue so they could bend the leaves onto the page. The leaves and grass looked three-dimensional. Students had the choice to position their individual lions where they saw fit, but, like Rousseau, their lions were added last. Admiring their work, students observed how each lion looked like it was sneaking up on its prey. As students reflected on the significance of Rousseau’s work, one of the most important lessons they learned from him (other than how to pronounce Henri the way that French people say it,) was that it’s not always necessary to have actually seen something up close and personal in order to be able to create it for oneself. They also appreciated how Rousseau persisted in his artistic endeavors despite the fact that his work wasn’t celebrated by everyone during his time period. Even though critics at the time compared his work to that of a child, it turns out that simple artwork may, in fact, prove to become the most revered.
Türkçe Okumak İçin Tıklayın Emory mathematician Ken Ono and colleagues devised new theories that answer famous old questions about partition numbers, the basis for adding and counting. For centuries, some of the greatest names in math have tried to make sense of partition numbers, the basis for adding and counting. Many mathematicians added major pieces to the puzzle, but all of them fell short of a full theory to explain partitions. Instead, their work raised more questions about this fundamental area of math. On Friday, Emory mathematician Ken Ono will unveil new theories that answer these famous old questions. Ono and his research team have discovered that partition numbers behave like fractals. They have unlocked the divisibility properties of partitions, and developed a mathematical theory for “seeing” their infinitely repeating superstructure. And they have devised the first finite formula to calculate the partitions of any number. “Our work brings completely new ideas to the problems,” says Ono, who will explain the findings in a public lecture at 8 p.m. Friday on the Emory campus. “We prove that partition numbers are ‘fractal’ for every prime. These numbers, in a way we make precise, are self-similar in a shocking way. Our ‘zooming’ procedure resolves several open conjectures, and it will change how mathematicians study partitions.” The work was funded by the American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) and the National Science Foundation. Last year, AIM assembled the world’s leading experts on partitions, including Ono, to attack some of the remaining big questions in the field. Ono, who is a chaired professor at both Emory and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, led a team consisting of Jan Bruinier, from the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany; Amanda Folsom, from Yale; and Zach Kent, a post-doctoral fellow at Emory. “Ken Ono has achieved absolutely breathtaking breakthroughs in the theory of partitions,” says George Andrews, professor at Pennsylvania State University and president of the American Mathematical Society. “He proved divisibility properties of the basic partition function that are astounding. He went on to provide a superstructure that no one anticipated just a few years ago. He is a phenomenon.” On the surface, partition numbers seem like mathematical child’s play. A partition of a number is a sequence of positive integers that add up to that number. For example, 4 = 3+1 = 2+2 = 2+1+1 = 1+1+1+1. So we say there are 5 partitions of the number 4. It sounds simple, and yet the partition numbers grow at an incredible rate. The amount of partitions for the number 10 is 42. For the number 100, the partitions explode to more than 190,000,000. “Partition numbers are a crazy sequence of integers which race rapidly off to infinity,” Ono says. “This provocative sequence evokes wonder, and has long fascinated mathematicians.” By definition, partition numbers are tantalizingly simple. But until the breakthroughs by Ono’s team, no one was unable to unlock the secret of the complex pattern underlying this rapid growth. The work of 18th-century mathematician Leonhard Euler led to the first recursive technique for computing the partition values of numbers. The method was slow, however, and impractical for large numbers. For the next 150 years, the method was only successfully implemented to compute the first 200 partition numbers. “In the mathematical universe, that’s like not being able to see further than Mars,” Ono says. A mathematical telescope In the early 20th century, Srinivasa Ramanujan and G. H. Hardy invented the circle method, which yielded the first good approximation of the partitions for numbers beyond 200. They essentially gave up on trying to find an exact answer, and settled for an approximation. “This is like Galileo inventing the telescope, allowing you to see beyond what the naked eye can see, even though the view may be dim,” Ono says. Ramanujan also noted some strange patterns in partition numbers. In 1919 he wrote: “There appear to be corresponding properties in which the moduli are powers of 5, 7 or 11 … and no simple properties for any moduli involving primes other than these three.” The legendary Indian mathematician died at the age of 32 before he could explain what he meant by this mysterious quote, now known as Ramanujan’s congruences. In 1937, Hans Rademacher found an exact formula for calculating partition values. While the method was a big improvement over Euler’s exact formula, it required adding together infinitely many numbers that have infinitely many decimal places. “These numbers are gruesome,” Ono says. In the ensuing decades, mathematicians have kept building on these breakthroughs, adding more pieces to the puzzle. Despite the advances, they were unable to understand Ramanujan’s enigmatic words, or find a finite formula for the partition numbers. Seeing the forest Ono’s “dream team” wrestled with the problems for months. “Everything we tried didn’t work,” he says. A eureka moment happened in September, when Ono and Zach Kent were hiking to Tallulah Falls in northern Georgia. As they walked through the woods, noticing patterns in clumps of trees, Ono and Kent began thinking about what it would be like to “walk” through partition numbers. “We were standing on some huge rocks, where we could see out over this valley and hear the falls, when we realized partition numbers are fractal,” Ono says. “We both just started laughing.” The term fractal was invented in 1980 by Benoit Mandelbrot, to describe what seem like irregularities in the geometry of natural forms. The more a viewer zooms into “rough” natural forms, the clearer it becomes that they actually consist of repeating patterns. Not only are fractals beautiful, they have immense practical value in fields as diverse as art to medicine. Their hike sparked a theory that reveals a new class of fractals, one that dispensed with the problem of infinity. “It’s as though we no longer needed to see all the stars in the universe, because the pattern that keeps repeating forever can be seen on a three-mile walk to Tallulah Falls,” Ono says. Ramanujan’s congruences are explained by their fractal theory. The team also demonstrated that the divisibility properties of partition numbers are “fractal” for every prime. “The sequences are all eventually periodic, and they repeat themselves over and over at precise intervals,” Ono says. “It’s like zooming in on the Mandelbrot set,” he adds, referring to the most famous fractal of them all. But this extraordinary view into the superstructure of partition numbers was not enough. The team was determined go beyond mere theories and hit upon a formula that could be implemented in the real world. The final eureka moment occurred near another Georgia landmark: Spaghetti Junction. Ono and Jan Bruinier were stuck in traffic near the notorious Atlanta interchange. While chatting in the car, they hit upon a way to overcome the infinite complexity of Rademacher’s method. They went on to prove a formula that requires only finitely many simple numbers. “We found a function, that we call P, that is like a magical oracle,” Ono says. “I can take any number, plug it into P, and instantly calculate the partitions of that number. P does not return gruesome numbers with infinitely many decimal places. It’s the finite, algebraic formula that we have all been looking for.” Türkiyenin en büyük evden eve taşıma web sitesine hoş geldiniz linklere tıklayıp sayfamızı ziyaret edebilirsiniz. başakşehir evden eve nakliyat beşiktaş evden eve nakliyat beykoz evden eve nakliyat
During a lumbar puncture (also known as a spinal tap), a small amount of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is extracted from the spinal (vertebral) canal using a special needle. This fluid surrounds the brain and the spinal cord, acting as a shock absorber. After being extracted, the cerebrospinal fluid is analyzed in a laboratory, which helps detect diseases of the brain and spinal cord. The cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is a clear fluid that protects your brain and spinal cord from trauma. The fluid also helps your central nervous system work properly by removing waste products from the brain. It is constantly produced and reabsorbed in the brain. Cerebrospinal fluid is made up of cells, water, sugars, proteins, and other substances that are essential for the balance of the nervous system. - A spinal tap may help in diagnosing infections of the brain (meningoencephalitis), demyelinating diseases, subarachnoid bleeding, demyelinating diseases such as multiple sclerosis, headaches of unknown cause, and autoimmune diseases of the brain. - A spinal tap is used to measure the amount of pressure in the CSF. - Cerebrospinal fluid is collected to check for infections, inflammation, or other diseases. - A spinal tap may be used to inject specific medication directly into the spinal cord and central nervous system. These medications include spinal anesthesia medicines before any surgery, antibiotics, contrast dye for x-ray studies such as myelography, and chemotherapeutic agents used to treat cancer. Before the procedure: - Before the procedure, the treating doctor does a thorough physical examination, acknowledges your medical history, and conducts blood tests to check for bleeding or clotting disorders. - The doctor may also recommend a CT scan or MRI scan to rule out any abnormal swelling in and around the brain. - The patient going for the procedure is asked to maintain a normal eating schedule and is advised to talk clearly about any allergies due to latex or medications. - The patient should also ask the doctor for specific guidelines about discontinuing alcohol use and the use of aspirin and blood-thinning drugs before the procedure. - Since it is advised not to drive immediately after the procedure, the patient must also ensure proper transportation arrangements. During the procedure: - You may be given a sedative to make you drowsy and relaxed. A doctor and at least one assistant will be in the room. - You will lie on your side with your knees drawn to your chest so that your spine is curved(fetal position), and in some cases, you may sit on the table and lean forward onto some pillows instead. - After cleaning your back with a cooling antiseptic, the doctor will numb the area of your lower back where the needle will be inserted. This may cause some brief stinging sensation. - Then a hollow needle is inserted between the third and fourth lumbar vertebrae into your spinal canal. The needle doesn't touch the nerves of your spinal cord. - Your doctor will collect between 5 to 20 ml of cerebrospinal fluid in 2 to 4 tubes. - You will probably feel pressure when the needle is inserted, and some people feel a sharp stinging sensation when the needle goes through the protective dural layer that surrounds the spinal cord. - Although you may feel some discomfort, it is important that you lie still. Let your doctor know if you are feeling pain. - In order to measure the cerebrospinal fluid pressure, you will be asked to straighten your legs to decrease abdominal pressure and increase cerebrospinal fluid pressure. The needle is attached to a meter, and the pressure in your spinal canal is measured. - In cases of hydrocephalus, a catheter may be inserted to continuously remove CSF and relieve pressure on the brain. After the procedure: - You will be asked to lie down flat on your back for up to 30 minutes, and the doctor will monitor you for a headache, dizziness or other side effects. - When you get home, you should rest by lying down for a certain period of time as directed by your doctor. - If you get a headache, lying down flat and drinking plenty of fluids may help to relieve it. Often the headache is more painful when you stand, but it gets better over time. - You may also need to take an over-the-counter pain reliever. But do not take aspirin. Caffeine drinks may help to relieve headaches after a spinal tap. These include soda, coffee, or tea. - A headache may also occur along with an upset stomach (nausea), vomiting, or dizziness. - You can remove your bandage immediately the day after your spinal tap. - Your doctor will inform you when your test results are available and undergo further investigations and treatment based on the report. A lumbar puncture can help your doctor to diagnose accurately or rule out certain medical conditions, including some life-threatening conditions. Some infections, such as bacterial meningitis, can be fatal if not treated quickly. The quicker they make a diagnosis, the sooner you can choose treatment. As with any other procedure, a lumbar puncture may also have risks and complications. Serious complications in carefully planned lumbar puncture procedure are very rare. - A small amount of cerebrospinal fluid leak can occur from the site of needle insertion. This can cause headaches after the procedure. If the CSF leak continues, your headache can be severe. - You may be at risk of infection because the needle breaks the surface of the skin, allowing bacteria to enter the body. - You might have lower back pain after the local anesthetic has worn off. This usually lasts for a couple of days after the test. - Short-term numbness of the legs may be present. - There is a risk of bleeding in the spinal canal. Other risks may exist depending on your specific medical condition. So before the procedure, make sure to discuss any concerns you have with your doctor. Care at Medicover At Medicover Hospitals, we have the most experienced team of neurologists providing exceptional neurological procedures such as lumbar puncture to our patients. Our neurologists at Medicover use an interdisciplinary approach to diagnose and treat conditions with utmost precision. We provide a wide variety of diagnostic and treatment procedures using the most advanced technologies and world-class equipment, bringing out the best possible outcomes.
The term “hardware” refers to all devices or components that make up a computer. If you have ever opened the case of a computer or a laptop you have probably seen many of its components, such as the microprocessor (CPU), the memory, and the hard disk. A computer is not a device but a system of devices that all work together. The basic components of a typical computer system are discussed here. - The Central Processing Unit(CPU) This is the part of a computer that actually performs all the tasks defined in a program. - Main Memory(RAM – Random Access Memory) This is the area where the computer holds the program (while it is being executed/run) as well as the data that the program is working with. All programs and data stored in this type of memory are lost when you shut down your computer or you unplug it from the wall outlet. - Secondary Storage Devices This is usually the hard disk, and sometimes (but more rarely) the CD/DVD drive. In contrast to main memory, this type of memory can hold data for a longer period of time, even if there is no power to the computer. However, programs stored in this memory cannot be directly executed. They must be transferred to a much faster memory; that is, the main memory. - Input Devices Input devices are all those devices that collect data from the outside world and enter them into the computer for further processing. Keyboards, mice, and microphones are all input devices. - Output Devices Output devices are all those devices that output data to the outside world. Monitors (screens) and printers are output devices.
Tench is an invasive fish native to Europe and western Asia. It was introduced across the United States in the late 19thcentury for use as a food and sport fish. Tench were brought to a Quebec fish farm illegally in 1986 and escaped into the Richelieu River, a tributary of the St. Lawrence River. The fish could enter Ontario waters if it spreads to the St. Lawrence, or it could spread from the Mississippi River watershed through the Great Lakes. It could also be mistaken for some baitfish species and brought to Ontario as live bait. Tench prefer lakes and slow-moving waterways with abundant vegetation and muddy bottoms. A bottom-feeding fish, it eats shellfish such as snails, and insect larvae. Tench can live in water with low levels of oxygen, and in water temperatures from 0°C to 24°C. In Canada, the Tench is established in the Columbia watershed in British Columbia and the Richelieu River in Quebec. However, recent monitoring has led to captures in the St. Lawrence River near Bainsville, ON and the fish has been observed as far south as Prince Edward County near Belleville, ON. It is well established in the United States, particularly in the Mississippi River watershed. Scientists have not studied the effects of tench on native species in Canada, but their behaviour may affect native species and water quality. - Tench compete with native minnows, bullheads and suckers for food and eat large quantities of snails and insect larvae. - By feeding heavily on snails, which graze on algae, tench may contribute to algal blooms. - Aggressive feeding by tench stirs up sediments, leading to cloudy water. How to Identify Tench - Tench are usually 20 to 25 centimetres long, with a deep, but thin, body. - The body is dark olive to pale golden tan above, with a white to bronze belly and a bright reddish-orange eye. - The mouth forms the front tip of the head (known as a “terminal” mouth) and has a single whisker (known as a barbel) hanging from each corner. - Fins are dark and rounded, with no spines. - Scales are small and embedded in thick skin. The tench resembles other native and introduced members of the minnow family, but only the tench has a deep body with small scales, and a single whisker (barbel) at each corner of the mouth. What You Can Do - Learn how to identify tench and how to prevent the spread of this unwanted species. - Never buy or use tench as bait. It is against the law to use tench as bait. - Don’t put any live fish into Ontario lakes, rivers or streams. Return or donate unwanted aquarium fish to a pet store or local school. - If you have any information about the illegal importation, distribution or sale of tench, report it immediately to the Ministry of Natural Resources TIPS line at 1-877-TIPS-MNR (847-7667) toll-free any time, or contact your local Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry office during regular business hours. You can also call Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477). - If you’ve seen a tench or other invasive species in the wild, please contact the toll-free Invading Species Hotline at 1-800-563-7711, or visit EDDMapS Ontario to report a sighting.
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Mesothelioma is a rare but aggressive type of cancer that occurs in the mesothelium, a membrane that covers some organs in the body. The cause for mesothelioma is exposure to asbestos, a natural mineral widely used for about 100 years in industries such as construction, shipbuilding, and manufacturing, given its heat resistance, tensile strength, and insulating properties. It was proven toxic during the 20th century since asbestos fibers can be released into the air if the material is disturbed. Asbestos fibers can be inhaled or swallowed and become trapped in the body, irritating the cells and causing the formation of tumors. There are four types of mesothelioma classified according to the origin of the tumors. The most common type occurs in the pleura of the lungs and is known as pleural mesothelioma, while peritoneal mesothelioma refers to the disease in the peritoneum, which is the lining of the abdomen. In addition, pericardial mesothelioma occurs in the pericardium of the heart, and testicular mesothelioma in the tunica vaginalis testis. Pericardial mesothelioma accounts for about 1% of all cases and due to the proximity to the heart, and surgery is often an undesirable option. However, there are procedures available to patients, including pericardiectomy. Pericardiectomy Surgical Procedure Pericardiectomy is a surgical procedure meant to treat disease of the pericardium, including pericardial mesothelioma. Before the surgery, the patient is put asleep under general anesthesia and the surgeon starts by making an incision between the ribs. A mechanical spreader is used to spread the ribs and gain access to the heart. Then, the pericardium, which is the outer covering of the heart sac, is carefully stripped off and removed. A partial pericardiectomy consists of the removal only of the affected part of the heart lining and a total pericardiectomy on the removal of as much of the heart lining as possible. During the surgery, the surgeon may also remove the fluid in the area and any tumor growth present. After completing the procedure, the breastbone and ribs are wired back together and the initial incision is closed using surgical stitches. The pericardiectomy is expected to relieve the symptoms of pericardial mesothelioma and increase life span, but it is not a common surgical procedure. Benefits and Risks of a Pericardiectomy The benefits of a pericardiectomy include relief of difficulty in breathing, chest pain, heart palpitations and fatigue, as well as inflammation of the pericardium (pericarditis) and buildup of fluid in the pericardium (pericardial effusion). However, it is an invasive cardiac surgery and there are numerous risks associated with it, such as the need for cardiopulmonary bypass during surgery, bleeding complications, the need for blood transfusion, and even death. Patients in advanced stages of mesothelioma are not usually eligible for pericardiectomy, while older patients, women and patients with other medical problems are particularly at risk for complications. “All patients who underwent operation primarily for effusion with associated pain are alive and have improved functional capacity without steroid use. We conclude that pericardiectomy can be performed with low mortality and can result in good long-term survival and improved functional capacity. Patients who are seen primarily with pain refractory to steroid therapy can be relieved of symptoms with operation,” revealed the authors of the study “Constrictive pericarditis: risks, aetiologies and outcomes after total pericardiectomy: 24 years of experience,” who conducted a retrospective analysis of the records of 60 patients who underwent pericardiectomy between 1980 and 1990 at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. Recovery and Life After a Pericardiectomy After a pericardiectomy, the patient needs to stay in the hospital for one or two weeks, depending on the recovery path. Still in the hospital, the patient is given pain medication, while the recovery is monitored by a doctor or nurse. When the patient is able to go home, it will take a few weeks before going back to work. The results of the surgery vary and it may improve the patient’s prognosis or just alleviate the symptoms. In patients in earlier stages of pericardial mesothelioma the results can be better, while as palliative care, the effects on life span are reduced. “One patient in advanced stages of pericardial mesothelioma received a pericardiectomy to relieve symptoms. Because the cancer had already spread beyond the initial site, the procedure had little effect on life span and the patient lived for eight months after the operation, explains The Mesothelioma Center. “In other patients with less progressed forms of the cancer, this surgery could have better results. In one mesothelioma patient, a pericardiectomy was followed by a chemotherapy regimen. This combination put the cancer into remission and the patient remained free of cancer at a three-year follow-up.” Note: Mesothelioma Research News is strictly a news and information website about the disease. It does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. This content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_wp_rss items=”7″ title=”Read the Latest Mesothelioma News” url=”https://mesotheliomaresearchnews.com/category/news-posts/feed”][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Did you know that your child’s brain development begins at conception? This is because fulfilling the child’s requirement of nutrition for brain development is heavily dependent on the nutrition provided by the mother. If the mother makes sure that she is eating a diet rich in nutrition, it will add to her child’s brain development. Other than nutrition, factors such as genetics and environment (stimulation) affect the child’s brain growth and development. While the genetics cannot be altered, you can definitely provide the requisite nutrition and stimulation for your child’s brain development. Although brain development is a lifelong process, most of the growth and development takes place early on, in the first two years of a baby’s life. Understanding nutrition as an important part of child brain development: Right nutrition during pregnancy leads to improved health of the baby at birth. 90% of the child’s brain development happens by the age of 2 years. DHA is an important nutrient that helps the development of brain cells and brain connections. However, your baby’s DHA is prone to oxidation, or in other words, it can get damaged and hence needs protection. Natural Vitamin E is a powerful anti-oxidant that prevents DHA from any oxidative damage and keeps it intact. This intact DHA or protected DHA helps in the child’s brain development. All of this nutrition helps develop the baby’s cognition, thereby creating a fertile ground for better IQ. So, giving the appropriate nutrition means feeding IQ to the baby! What do we mean by Feed IQ? Feed IQ literally means that a mother feeds ‘IQ’ to her baby through breastfeeding and stimulation i.e. infant brain exercises! Nutrition for brain development for infants is of great importance. Find out about the benefits of Vitamin E for infants 1. Natural Vitamin E protects DHA from oxidation: DHA is a building block that is important in enhancing brain development but it is also vulnerable to oxidative damage. Natural Vitamin E acts as a sentry guard protecting DHA from being oxidized with Lutein. 2. Natural Vitamin E is potent: The synthetic Vitamin E found in dietary supplements and foods that are fortified, is only half as potent and active as Natural Vitamin E. 3. Natural Vitamin E in the babies’ brain: Research showed that Natural Vitamin E accumulates in parts of the brain associated with visual memory and language development. The nutritional requirements of a baby are fully dependant on a mother in the early stages of life. However, did you know that stimulation or infant brain exercises also play a vital role in shaping a baby’s cognitive development! Let us understand how stimulation or infant brain exercises actually help the child’s brain development. Understanding the role of brain exercise as an important part of child brain development: It is vital to know that the amount of cumulative vocabulary by 2 years of age is enormously predictive of later brain development or your child’s IQ. Hence, it is important that parents talk to the child from an early age to build their vocabulary and engage with their child in a meaningful manner. Fetuses hear voices antenatally. Research has shown that a baby can identify its mother’s voice but it can’t differentiate between the father’s and a stranger’s voice. Parents need to know that early life build up of social and cognitive skills comes with the advantage of time, which means in time these children will be more likely to be better at communicating. For example, at home you can reward your child for giving appropriate responses and even during the assessment, make sure to give them time to perform tasks. Let them do so at a pace comfortable to them. Regardless of chronological age, the development clock begins at 40 weeks. Make sure you chose simpler activities, keeping in mind the infant’s capacity, before increasing the complexity of an activity.
Type III hypersensitivity occurs when there is little antibody and an excess of antigen, leading to the formation of small immune complexes. - Describe Type III hypersensitivity reactions - It is characterized by solvent antigens that are not bound to cell surfaces (which is the case in type II hypersensitivity) but bind antibodies to form immune complexes of different sizes. - Large complexes can be cleared by macrophages but small immune complexes cannot be cleared and they insert themselves into small blood vessels, joints, and glomeruli, causing symptoms. - The cause of damage is as a result of the action of cleaved complement anaphylotoxins C3a and C5a, which, mediate the onset of the inflammatory response and eventual tissue damage. - glomerulonephritis: A form of nephritis characterized by inflammation of the glomeruli - immune complex: An immune complex is formed from the integral binding of an antibody to a soluble antigen. The bound antigen acting as a specific epitope, bound to an antibody is referred to as a singular immune complex. - Arthus reaction: The Arthus reaction is a type of local type III hypersensitivity reaction which involves the deposition of antigen/antibody complexes mainly in the vascular walls, serosa (pleura, pericardium, synovium) and glomeruli. Type III hypersensitivity occurs when there is little antibody and an excess of antigen, leading to small immune complexes being formed that do not fix complement and are not cleared from the circulation. It is characterized by solvent antigens that are not bound to cell surfaces (which is the case in type II hypersensitivity). When these antigens bind antibodies, immune complexes of different sizes form. Large complexes can be cleared by macrophages but macrophages have difficulty in the disposal of small immune complexes. These immune complexes insert themselves into small blood vessels, joints, and glomeruli, causing symptoms. Unlike the free variant, small immune complex bound to sites of deposition (like blood vessel walls) are far more capable of interacting with complement. These medium-sized complexes, formed in the slight excess of antigen, are viewed as being highly pathogenic. Such depositions in tissues often induce an inflammatory response, and can cause damage wherever they precipitate. The cause of damage is as a result of the action of cleaved complement anaphylotoxins C3a and C5a, which, respectively, mediate the induction of granule release from mast cells (from which histamine can cause urticaria), and recruitment of inflammatory cells into the tissue (mainly those with lysosomal action, leading to tissue damage through frustrated phagocytosis by polymorphonuclear neutrophils and macrophages). Immune complex glomerulonephritis, as seen in Henoch-Schönlein purpura is an example of IgA involvement in a nephropathy. The reaction can take hours, days, or even weeks to develop, depending on whether or not there is immunlogic memory of the precipitating antigen. Typically, clinical features emerge a week following initial antigen challenge, when the deposited immune complexes can precipitate an inflammatory response. Because of the nature of the antibody aggregation, tissues that are associated with blood filtration at considerable osmotic and hydrostatic gradient (e.g. sites of urinary and synovial fluid formation, kidney glomeruli and joint tissues respectively) bear the brunt of the damage. Hence, vasculitis, glomerulonephritis and arthritis are commonly-associated conditions as a result of type III hypersensitivity responses. As observed under methods of histopathology, acute necrotizing vasculitis within the affected tissues is observed concomitant to neutrophilic infiltration, along with notable eosinophilic deposition (fibrinoid necrosis). Often, immunofluorescence microscopy can be used to visualize the immune complexes. Skin response to a hypersensitivity of this type is referred to as an Arthus reaction, and is characterized by local erythema and some induration. Platelet aggregation, especially in microvasculature, can cause localized clot formation, leading to blotchy hemorrhages. This typifies the response to injection of foreign antigen sufficient to lead to the condition of serum sickness. An immune complex is formed from the integral binding of an antibody to a soluble antigen. The bound antigen acting as a specific epitope, bound to an antibody, is referred to as a singular immune complex. After an antigen-antibody reaction, the immune complexes can be subject to any of a number of responses, including complement deposition, opsonization, phagocytosis, or processing by proteases. Red blood cells carrying CR1-receptors on their surface may bind C3b-decorated immune complexes and transport them to phagocytes, mostly in liver and spleen, and return back to the general circulation. Immune complexes may themselves cause disease when they are deposited in organs, e.g. in certain forms of vasculitis. This is the third form of hypersensitivity in the Gell-Coombs classification, called Type III hypersensitivity. Immune complex deposition is a prominent feature of several autoimmune diseases, including systemic lupus erythematosus, cryoglobulinemia, rheumatoid arthritis, scleroderma and Sjögren’s syndrome.
In the early 1960s two linguists created the first computer-readable text collection (or ‘corpus’) of American English – the Brown Corpus of Standard American English. Compiled by Nelson Francis and Henry Kučera, the corpus consisted of one million words from works published in 1961, sampled from 15 different text categories. By creating an electronic word reference resource the linguists had unlocked a vast potential for comparing, grouping and analysing languages. Francis and Kučera used the Brown Corpus to run a wide array of computer-based analyses, and in 1967 they published Computational Analysis of Present-Day American English – widely seen as a landmark publication in linguistic research. Although the Brown Corpus is small by today’s standard, it’s still being used because its structure has been copied by later corpora such as the LOB corpus (the Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen Corpus, for British English) – which means that it can still be cross-referenced. Much of corpus linguistics research has been built on the Brown and LOB corpora, as they for a long time remained the only computer-readable corpora that were easily available for researchers. By studying the same data from different angles, using different types of methodology, researchers can compare their findings directly without having to consider variation from the use of different data. The Brown Corpus ushered in the age of computer linguistics, pioneering a field where we today have electronic corpora for text and speech encompassing almost all known languages across the world – launching a true revolution in linguistics.
Neuromorphic hardware takes a page from the architecture of animal nervous systems, relaying signals via spiking that is akin to the action potentials of biological neurons. This feature allows the hardware to consume far less power and run brain simulations orders of magnitude faster than conventional chips. Spaun is one example. The 2.5 million–neuron model recapitulates the structure and functions of several features of the human brain to perform a variety of cognitive tasks. Much like humans, it can more easily remember a short sequence of numbers than a long sequence, and is better at remembering the first few and last few numbers than the middle numbers. While researchers have run parts of the current Spaun model on conventional hardware, neuromorphic chips will be crucial for efficiently executing larger, more-complicated versions now in development. Read full, original post: Infographic: Brain-Like Computers Provide More Computer Power
COMPTON EFFECT topics Einstein's photoelectric discussion of 1905 and his other work including "Special Relativity" led physicists to speculate on the "momentum" of these "packets" of light which became known as "photons". Arthur Compton and Debye both provided in 1922 a very simple mathematical framework for the momentum of these photons with Compton having experimental evidence from firing X-Rays of known frequency into graphite and looking at recoil electrons. Let E = mc2 = hf for a photon, where f is frequency, and "m" is the mass "equivalent" of the photon given they have no "rest mass". (It is important to recognise that stopping a photon to measure its mass eliminates it -so it has no "at rest" mass - crucial in Special Relativity where, to travel at the speed of light, mass would otherwise become infinite.) Having "rigged" this mass problem, p = momentum = mc (mass x velocity) = hf /c = E / c = h / l The experiment shows that X-Rays and electrons behave exactly like ball bearings colliding on a table top using the same 2D vector diagrams. They enter the graphite at one wavelength and leave at a longer wavelength as they have transfered both momentum and kinetic energy to an electron. Momentum and energy are conserved in the collision if we accept the equation above for momentum of light. When the photon enters at l0 and leaves at l1, its energy has changed from E0 to E1 and momentum from E0 / c to E1 / c with a change in direction of q. The electron gains Ek = E0 -E1 Using the cos rule on the diagram above, the energy equation, with some Special Relativity (or by approximation) one can derive the change in wavelength as a function of scattered angle q. Dl = ( h / mc )( 1 - cosq ) "m" here is the electron mass and the term h / mc is called the "Compton wavelength". This was corroborated and forced doubting physicists to take the whole photon thing very seriously - which they had not up to this point.
Food microbiology is the study of the microorganisms that inhibit, create, or contaminate food, including the study of microorganisms causing food spoilage, pathogens that may cause disease especially if food is improperly cooked or stored, those used to produce fermented foods such as cheese, yogurt, bread, beer, and wine, and those with other useful roles such as producing probiotics. Food safety is a major focus of food microbiology. Numerous agents of disease, pathogens, are readily transmitted via food, including bacteria, and viruses. Microbial toxins are also possible contaminants of food. However, microorganisms and their products can also be used to combat these pathogenic microbes. Probiotic bacteria, including those that produce bacteriocins, can kill and inhibit pathogens. Alternatively, purified bacteriocins such as nisin can be added directly to food products. Finally, bacteriophages, viruses that only infect bacteria, can be used to kill bacterial pathogens. Thorough preparation of food, including proper cooking, eliminates most bacteria and viruses. However, toxins produced by contaminants may not be liable to change to non-toxic forms by heating or cooking the contaminated food due to other safety conditions. Fermentation is one of the methods to preserve food and alter its quality. Yeast, especially Saccharomyces cerevisiae, is used to leaven bread, brew beer and make wine. Certain bacteria, including lactic acid bacteria, are used to make yogurt, cheese, hot sauce, pickles, fermented sausages and dishes such as kimchi. A common effect of these fermentations is that the food product is less hospitable to other microorganisms, including pathogens and spoilage-causing microorganisms, thus extending the food's shelf-life. Some cheese varieties also require molds to ripen and develop their characteristic flavors. Alginates can be used as thickening agents. Although listed here under the category 'Microbial polysaccharides', commercial alginates are currently only produced by extraction from brown seaweeds such as Laminaria hyperborea or L. japonica. To ensure safety of food products, microbiological tests such as testing for pathogens and spoilage organisms are required. This way the risk of contamination under normal use conditions can be examined and food poisoning outbreaks can be prevented. Testing of food products and ingredients is important along the whole supply chain as possible flaws of products can occur at every stage of production. Apart from detecting spoilage, microbiological tests can also determine germ content, identify yeasts and molds, and salmonella. For salmonella, scientists are also developing rapid and portable technologies capable of identifying unique variants of Salmonella . Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) is a quick and inexpensive method to generate numbers of copies of a DNA fragment at a specific band ("PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction)," 2008). For that reason, scientists are using PCR to detect different kinds of viruses or bacteria, such as HIV and anthrax based on their unique DNA patterns. Various kits are commercially available to help in food pathogen nucleic acids extraction, PCR detection, and differentiation. The detection of bacterial strands in food products is very important to everyone in the world, for it helps prevent the occurrence of food borne illness. Therefore, PCR is recognized as a DNA detector in order to amplify and trace the presence of pathogenic strands in different processed food. Notes and references - Fratamico PM (2005). Bayles DO (ed.). Foodborne Pathogens: Microbiology and Molecular Biology. Caister Academic Press. ISBN 978-1-904455-00-4. - Tannock GW, ed. (2005). Probiotics and Prebiotics: Scientific Aspects. Caister Academic Press. ISBN 978-1-904455-01-1. - Ljungh A, Wadstrom T, eds. (2009). Lactobacillus Molecular Biology: From Genomics to Probiotics. Caister Academic Press. ISBN 978-1-904455-41-7. - Mayo, B (2010). van Sinderen, D (ed.). Bifidobacteria: Genomics and Molecular Aspects. Caister Academic Press. ISBN 978-1-904455-68-4. - Sillankorva, Sanna M.; Oliveira, Hugo; Azeredo, Joana (2012). "Bacteriophages and Their Role in Food Safety". International Journal of Microbiology. 2012: 1–13. doi:10.1155/2012/863945. Retrieved 28 September 2016. - Rehm BHA, ed. (2009). Microbial Production of Biopolymers and Polymer Precursors: Applications and Perspectives. Caister Academic Press. ISBN 978-1-904455-36-3. - Remminghorst & Rehm (2009). "Microbial Production of Alginate: Biosynthesis and Applications". Microbial Production of Biopolymers and Polymer Precursors. Caister Academic Press. ISBN 978-1-904455-36-3. - Shih & Wu (2009). "Biosynthesis and Application of Poly(gamma-glutamic acid)". Microbial Production of Biopolymers and Polymer Precursors. Caister Academic Press. ISBN 978-1-904455-36-3. - Food Testing Laboratories - Rapid Testing and Identification of Salmonella in Foods - FOOD PATHOGEN DNA EXTRACTION filter paper card
April 18, 2009 Researchers Getting Closer To New Type Of Antibiotic According to a study in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, researchers have found the structure of a key genetic mechanism in bacteria, which may allow them to design a new type of antibiotic. Information stored in genes is translated into proteins, the workhorse molecules that make up the body's structure. DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) chains store instructions which are copied into mRNAs (messenger ribonucleic acids). The mRNAs are then transported to ribosomes that pair with transfer RNAs which decode the gene. Recently, research has revealed that RNA exerts control over expression, instead of being a passive middleman. In 2002, researchers from Yale and NYU reported that the regulatory mechanisms arising from riboswitches regulate gene expression at the mRNA level by changing shape. This change in shape governs the genetic decoding process. Understanding how riboswitches change shape, can help researchers develop a new class of antibiotics. The current study revealed the structure of nature's smallest known riboswitch, and detailed how its structure controls the life process in bacteria. It's the first time scientists have been able to do so. "The work has gained attention because interfering with riboswitches in bacteria known to cause major human infections may provide a new generation of antibiotics at a time when bacteria have become frighteningly capable of resisting current drugs," said Joseph E. Wedekind, Ph.D., the study's senior author. "Among the bacteria now known to contain riboswitches are E. coli and streptococcus, as well as the bacteria behind forms of anthrax, gonorrhea, meningitis and dysentery. Riboswitches have not yet been found in human cells, and the hope is future riboswitch drugs will kill bacteria without side effects." Typically riboswitches turn of the ability of an mRNA to decode its genetic message. The current study looked at the preQ1 riboswitch, which controls the ability of bacteria to produce a molecule called queuosine. Queuosine, also known as Q, allows gene expression despite a defect in the mRNA-ribosome-tRNA system. Many bacteria lose their ability to produce gene products necessary to survival without Q. Yale's Ron Breaker first revealed the mechanism by which bacteria make sure that they possess the correct amount of Q. A riboswitch senses whether there is enough preQ1, a key precursor to Q. If there is too much preQ1, the bacterial genes responsible for producing preQ1 are shut down. Researchers have theorized that when preQ1 binds to the preQ1 riboswitch, mRNA shape changes to mask signals which are necessary for a productive agreement with the ribosome. Ultimately, if too much preQ1 is present, the enzyme which makes preQ1 is shut off by the riboswitch. Researchers were able to take snapshots of the riboswitch interacting with preQ0. In once instance, the preQ0 binds into a buried pocket of the riboswitch. In another instance, the riboswitch twisted into the double helix structure. The study also revealed how the first base of the mRNA's ribosome binding site binds to a loop of the riboswitch. The research confirmed Breaker's findings that the preQ1 riboswitch is uncommonly small. Its economical size allows it to function better than expected. Wedekind's team will now search for how other bacterial species sequester their ribosome binding sites. These findings will help researchers develop a new class of antibiotics, which would bind in place of the natural signaling molecule. This would lock the mRNA into a stable conformation which would counter act the mRNA's ability to cause disease. Previous studies have shown that E Coli and other disease causing bacteria are limited when genetically engineered to lack the genes for Q production. According to Robert C. Spitale, a doctoral student who played a key role in the research, unraveling the biology of these molecules will greatly benefit our understanding of gene regulation and human disease. On The Net: Journal of Biological Chemistry
The question of whether these two populations are on the road to speciation comes down to sex. When two populations stop exchanging genes-that is, stop mating with each other-then they can be considered distinct species. Uy and his team wanted to see if these flycatchers were heading in that direction. [. . .]Richard Dawkins (in The Ancestor's Tale): That males from the two populations no longer view the other as a reproductive threat is a good indication that not much mating is taking place between the two groups. Their evolutionary paths are diverging, Uy and his team found-all because of a change in plumage. The researchers then went a step further. They looked into the birds' genomes to see what genes may have played a role in the different plumage pattern. They found only one: the melanocortin-1 receptor gene (MC1R). The MC1R gene regulates the production of melanin, which gives skin and feathers their color. The all-black and chestnut-bellied birds had different versions of the MC1R gene, which gave rise to the plumage change. That change appears to have been enough to create a reproductive barrier for flycatchers. Not every species is so picky, so a color change doesn't always drive speciation. Nonetheless, these results suggest that it can take as little as one gene, in the right spot in the genome, to cause a fork in the evolutionary road. As I said, zoologists define a species as a group whose members breed with each other under natural conditions — in the wild. It doesn't count if they breed only in zoos, or if we have to use artificial insemination, or if we fool female grasshoppers with caged singing males, even if the offspring produced are fertile. We might dispute whether this is the only sensible definition of a species, but it is the definition that most biologists use. If we wished to apply this definition to humans, however, there is a peculiar difficulty: how do we distinguish natural from artificial conditions for interbreeding? It is not an easy question to answer. Today, all surviving humans are firmly placed in the same species, and they do indeed happily interbreed. But the criterion, remember, is whether they choose to do so under natural conditions. What are natural conditions for humans? Do they even exist any more? If, in ancestral times, as sometimes today, two neighbouring tribes had different religions, different languages, different dietary customs, different cultural traditions and were continually at war with one another; if the members of each tribe were brought up to believe that the other tribe were subhuman 'animals' (as happens even today); if their religions taught that would-be sexual partners from the other tribe were taboo, 'shiksas', or unclean, there could well be no interbreeding between them. Yet anatomically, and genetically, they could be completely the same as each other. And it would take only a change of religious or other customs to break down the barriers to interbreeding. How, then, might somebody try to apply the interbreeding criterion to humans? If Chorthippus brunneus and C. biguttulus are separated as two distinct species of grasshoppers because they prefer not to interbreed although they physically could, might humans, at least in ancient times of tribal exclusivity, once have been separable in the same kind of way? Chorthippus brunneus and C. biguttulus, remember, in all detectable respects except their song, are identical, and when they are (easily) persuaded to hybridise their offspring are fully fertile.
Modern experts advise the parents to allow their wards or kids to learn more outside the classroom. Here, we should make note that “learning outside” is a broad term with no definite boundary. Outdoor play, environmental education, adventure, and recreational activities are some of the few examples to mention here. Learning outside is more motivating, realistic, and makes a significant impact on the students. Even the students, who struggle to learn the concepts inside the classroom teaching, would learn easily through out-of-classroom learning. A classroom teaching is more theoretical, and in most instances, the students are required to mug-up things, rather than have a clear understanding. Outside classroom teaching helps the students to visual things really and gain a better understanding. Outdoor learning exercises the visuals, listening/hearing, legs, arms, and the entire body. The picture speaks thousands of words and we can remember anything that is expressed visually. Outside the classroom teaching stimulates the brain and helps the kids to stay more active. With outdoor learning, the students are able to improve their communication skills, teamwork skills and develop more ability to tackle or face the real-life situations. Now let us list some of the significant benefits of outdoor learning. · Develop interpersonal skills and the ability to act independently · Improve creativity · Minimize behavioral problems · Stay motivated · Better ability to tackle with uncertainties There are many outdoor areas, where kids can spend their time having activities and learning. Now we will mention some of the types of outdoor areas. This is usually a large outdoor area that is considered very secure because it is fenced and guarded adequately. This area is ideal for both formal and informal learning. This is the area that is nearby or neighboring to the schools and homes of the kids. The local environment can provide a different and unexpected way of learning various things. Students can learn about street and landscapes, heritage site, parks, theatres, places of worships and many more. These areas that are packed with a significant number of adults and kids can offer a great learning experience to the students. Depending on the nature of the residential area, the kids can learn about various things such as fence, boundaries, car parking, using lifts and many more. In the current scenario, we read news about the kids committing crime and suicides. These things happen due to the lack of emotional balance and negative thoughts. Classroom learning, which is confined within four walls and board will not address nor expose the negative behavior of the kids. Outdoor learning allows the teachers to gauge the emotional, mental and physical strength of the kids. Though there are many schools across the country, not all of them equally emphasize the concept of learning outside the classroom. If you want to kid to have a better education, it is better to get admission to a school that focuses on outdoor learning. Before you finalize the school for your kid, have a look at its policy with respect to the outdoor learning. You can inquire your neighbors to get more opinion on this regard.
This paper was originally published in the Smithsonian. “Biodiversity is proving to be one of humanity’s best defenses against extreme weather. In past experiments, diversity has fostered healthier, more productive ecosystems, like shoreline vegetation that guards against hurricanes. However, many experts doubted whether these experiments would hold up in the real world. A study offers a decisive answer: biodiversity’s power in the wild surpasses experimental predictions, in some cases topping even effects of climate. “Biodiversity is not just a pretty face,” said Emmett Duffy, lead author and marine ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Md. “Protecting it is important for keeping the ecosystems working for us, providing food, absorbing waste and protecting shorelines, which is important right now.” In the past, ecologists primarily tested biodiversity’s impact through carefully controlled experiments: planting one or several species in plots while ensuring everything else remained the same, and observing which plots grew best. But those experiments in many ways do not mimic reality. To uncover biodiversity’s power in the rough and tumble of wild nature, biologists synthesized data from 67 observational studies of nature in the field, covering grasslands, forests, freshwater environments and marine environments. The studies spanned all seven continents and contained data from over 600,000 sampling locations around the world…” Read on at: Science Daily.
synchronous key encryption Data encryption using two interlocking keys where enything encoded using one key may be decoded using the other key. This means if someone makes one of the two keys publicly available (as in public-key encryption) and keeps the other private, then anyone may send them a message or data that only they can decode, giving privacy, and furthermore, the sender may also encrypt that same message additionally with their own private key, making it impossible to read without decoding first with their public key by the receiver, this gives authenticity.It is a very powerful system. One cannot determine one key from the other, nor can they crack the encryption by computing all combinations, because, depending on the size of the keys (sometimes as large as 1024 bytes, though having grown from smaller versions in popular implementations of the software which does this), the amount of computing power required to crack the code is unavailable, even supercomputers would take more than a hundred years to crack it. PGP is a publicly availble software implementation written by Phil Zimmermann. Last updated: 1994-10-10
Chickenpox Home > Chickenpox Prevention The chickenpox vaccine, also known as the varicella vaccine, is used to prevent chickenpox. As with any other vaccine, it is not 100 percent effective at preventing the disease; however, vaccinated people who develop chickenpox usually develop a milder case than unvaccinated people. For chickenpox prevention, the vaccine should be used in the following groups of people: - All children between 12 and 18 months of age should have one dose of chickenpox vaccine. - Children who have had chickenpox do not need the vaccine. No tests need to be administered to determine immune status -- a parent's recollection of the disease is considered a reliable measure of previous infection and therefore immunity. - Children between 19 months and 13 years old, who have not had chickenpox, should be vaccinated with a single dose. - People 13 and older who have not had chickenpox should get two doses of the vaccine 4 to 8 weeks apart. The chickenpox vaccine may be given at the same time as other vaccines. No vaccine is 100 percent effective in preventing disease. For the chickenpox vaccine, about 8 to 9 out of every 10 people who are vaccinated are completely protected from chickenpox. The vaccine almost always prevents against severe disease. If a vaccinated person does get chickenpox, it is usually a very mild case with fewer skin lesions (usually less than 50) lasting only a few days, no fever or a low fever, and few other symptoms.
A study suggests that the human being began to have an important impact on the environment 5000 years ago. Let’s do a mental experiment. Suppose the arrow of time does not exist and that we can build a machine to travel to the past. Let us also suppose that we are inspired to make a trip to a time in which the Earth, having the same type of fauna and flora, had not yet been spotted by the hand of man. It would be a time in which a virgin Earth would be waiting for us, populated with life, without pollution and without major human impact. Once there, we could look at a natural world and it would probably seem perfect. At what time would we adjust our time machine ?, in 100 years ago ?, in 10,000 years ?, in 100,000? It begins to be called with the word “Anthropocene” that era in which the human being has changed the world, probably forever and for worse. But experts disagree about when it started. Some argue that the Anthropocene began with the industrial revolution. Others say it began with the Neolithic and the agricultural revolution about 10,000 years ago. However, a new study suggests that it started 5000 years ago, when certain habits such as burning thickets for hunting animals were spread. Erle Ellis, of the University of Maryland, and his collaborators have calculated that the human being transformed at least one fifth of the earth’s surface, except for the polar regions, 5000 years ago. Other studies ensured that this level of transformation was only achieved in the last 100 years. These researchers argue that this level of transformation was enough to release enough carbon dioxide and change the weather at that time. Although 5000 years ago there was only a population of a few tens of millions of humans, Nature was in decline due to the fact that each individual needed on average more area than at present to stay. With the adoption of recent intensive agricultural methods, per capita land use is now in Europe only one sixth of what it was 2500 years ago and in Asia one tenth. Although there was no technology at that time, the impact of land use was greater per person because the methods were much more inefficient. Until now it was assumed in the models that the per capita land use had remained unchanged during all this time, but archaeological evidence says otherwise. Thus, for example, sediments in lakes indicate a peak in the presence of particles of charcoal that began 60,000 years ago. This coincides with the time when humans began to use fire to hunt animals and with the use of fire to stimulate grass growth in grasslands. The presence peaks of these particles coincide with the arrival of humans in certain regions of the globe, something that also coincides with the extinction of large animals. Another example is the soil present under the modern forests of America and Africa, which is enriched with manure and charcoal laid by farmers 2500 years ago. The planet’s climate has probably been altered by man in prehistoric times, when forest clearing and pasture burning released carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for thousands of years. These researchers estimate that these habits would have increased the presence of this gas by 20 or 30 parts per million. Although it is less than the 120 parts per million that the modern human being has released, this could change the climate, at least locally. The carbon footprint of a human from 8000 years ago would be about 30 tons of carbon dioxide, that is, roughly one ton per year. At present, the per capita emission is 2 to 3 tons per year. Human societies, even those of thousands of years ago, have altered ecosystems in a much broader way than previously believed. This new image of a human domain over the world shows that there is no longer any pristine or unaltered site for a long time. There are no virgin forests, but forests recovered from clearings made in the past. Although the authors say that Nature has adapted to our needs, they reject the question of the current concern for the environment, especially the crazy emission of greenhouse gases due to the burning of fossil fuels. The study also provides solutions or answers to these modern challenges. One of the lessons is not to look at whether an ecosystem is natural enough or not to deserve protection, but everyone has to be protected. Another interesting point is to recognize that technology has always been our ace in the manga. Intensive agriculture, for example, allowed the human population to grow without needing to occupy much more land. Although some civilizations, such as the Maya or Mesopotamian, failed to manage their resources, others did, the study says. Between 30,000 and 20,000 years ago the Eurasian tribes changed their strategy due to the decline caused by overhunting. They began to diversify their resources by also hunting smaller animals and even managing the flock populations of the larger ones so that they did not disappear. They also learned to ferment, grind, cook and grill food. This allowed them to use a wider food range and develop techniques that later resulted in agriculture and livestock. All this allowed them to lead more sustainable lives and better endure times of scarcity. The human being seems to do the easiest thing that can be done at the moment. When hunting and gathering is not enough, then you have to look for more intensive and technological methods that allow you to survive, such as livestock and others. Intensive rice farming began to develop 6000 years ago in the Yangtze River Valley, but was not adopted by other humans in the region for thousands of years, humans for whom hunting and fishing were sufficient. According to the use of fossil fuels it has allowed to cultivate the same land with less labor, the human being has emigrated from the countryside to the city and a minority feeds a majority. This process has been completed in industrialized countries. where only 1% work in the primary sector, but it has not been completed in other countries such as India or China. Ellis, if forced to choose, places the beginning of the Anthropocene 5000 years ago, which he says is when the presence of carbon dioxide and methane begins to increase due to the domestication of fauna and the emergence of urban planning and metallurgy on a large scale right after. So if we want to go with our time machine to an era unchanged by the human being we will have to set a date before that. 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Complex Political Concepts Government and politics involve a lot of abstract concepts that can be difficult to grasp. We simplify these complex ideas, making them more accessible through real-world examples, simplified explanations, and engaging visuals. Keeping Up with Current Events The world of politics is dynamic, and it's essential for students to keep up with the latest developments. We incorporate current events into our lessons, relating them back to the fundamental concepts they are learning to make the content more relevant and engaging. Government and Politics AP requires students to think critically about political systems and policies. We guide students on how to dissect arguments, assess validity, and develop their own informed opinions. Key Terms and Theories The course involves a lot of terminology and theories. We employ various memory techniques like active recall, mnemonic devices, and regular revision sessions to help students remember these terms. Different Political Systems The course covers various government systems worldwide, and understanding the differences can be overwhelming. We create comparative charts and employ other visual learning techniques to make this easier. Politics is a field where biases can significantly influence one's understanding. We foster an environment where multiple perspectives are presented and respected, helping students understand the importance of separating fact from opinion. Real-world Case Studies Teaching abstract political theories using real-world examples and case studies helps students connect concepts to their practical applications. For instance, discussing how the democratic process was enacted during a recent election can help solidify understanding of that concept. Incorporating current events into lessons keeps the material fresh and relevant. Students can analyze news stories to understand how government policies impact society. It's also a good opportunity to teach media literacy and critical evaluation of sources. Debate and Discussion Government & Politics is all about different perspectives. Regularly holding debates or discussions on hot topic issues can help students understand the nuances of political ideologies and the complexities of policy making. Flowcharts, diagrams, and other visual aids can help clarify the structure of different governmental systems and the processes within them. These aids can be particularly helpful when comparing and contrasting different political systems. Holding a mock election can be an engaging way for students to understand the electoral process. It's also a good opportunity to discuss the importance of civic engagement. Timed Essay Practice The AP exam requires students to write essays under time constraints. Regular timed essay practice sessions can help students develop their ability to formulate arguments quickly and coherently. Advanced Humanities Degrees Our Government & Politics (AP) tutors are distinguished scholars who have obtained advanced degrees in disciplines such as history, literature, philosophy, or related fields. With their extensive academic background and expertise, they bring a deep understanding of human culture and society to the tutoring sessions Experience Teaching Humanities Our humanities tutors have extensive teaching experience and a genuine passion for humanities education. They possess the expertise to engage students and ignite a love for the humanities through innovative teaching methods. Our tutors embody warmth and approachability. They foster an engaging learning environment, facilitating open communication and making students feel comfortable asking questions or expressing concerns. Example AP Government & Politics Tutoring Packages We offer diverse and flexible options, catering to your child's unique needs and your family's schedule. Choose from ad-hoc sessions for immediate needs, to long-term plans for ongoing support. Our most common tutoring plans: This package offers regular tutoring sessions for an entire academic semester, ensuring consistent support for the student. The frequency could be 1-3 times per week depending on the need. This offers more frequent sessions over a one-month period. This could be suitable for a student who needs to catch up quickly or prepare for an important exam. For students who require tutoring on a more sporadic or as-needed basis.
- September 1995 - How many squares? If you connect (0,0) to (5,3) with a line segment, it goes through seven unit squares. If you connect (0,0) to (p,q) where p and q are positive whole numbers, how many squares do you go through? Experiment, look for patterns, and summarize your findings. - October 1995 - Quadrilateral relationships. Take seven specific quadrilaterals and draw a diagram that shows the relationships between them. The quadrilaterals are: kite, parallelogram, rhombus, trapezoid, scalene quadrilateral, rectangle, and square. - November 1995 - How many cubes will be painted? A cube with sides n units long is painted on all faces. It is then cut into cubes with sides 1 unit long. Explain how many of these smaller cubes will have paint on: a) 3 surfaces b) 2 surfaces c) 1 surface d) no surfaces - December 1995 - What figure is formed? What figure is formed when the consecutive midpoints of the sides of a quadrilateral are joined? What if the original quadrilateral were a rectangle? A kite? An isosceles trapezoid? A square? A rhombus? Other shapes? - January 1996 - Angles formed by the hands of a clock. a) At how many different times will the hands of a clock make a right angle? At what times will this occur? Determine your answers to the nearest second. b) Find a time at which the hands of a clock make a 45-degree angle. Generalize your method to find a time at which the hands of a clock form any given angle. c) What angle will the hands of a clock form at 3:20? Do not use a protractor. Generalize your method to give the angle formed by the hands of a clock at any given time. - February 1996 - Sides of a triangle Tell me about the altitudes, medians, angle bisectors, and perpendicular bisectors of the sides of a triangle. Be sure to mention anything interesting that happens when the triangle is "special" - equilateral, isosceles, right, etc. - March 1996 - Rep-tiles A rep-tile is a tile that can be used to tile a larger scale copy of itself. Can you find a way to divide any triangle into 4 congruent similar triangles? How would you divide squares, rectangles, and parallelograms? Can you find other quadrilaterals that are rep-tiles? How about other polygons? Are there things that make a polygon a good candidate for being a rep-tile? - April 1996 - Tangrams For which N's is it possible to make a perfect square using all the pieces from N sets of Tangrams? Example: We know you can make a square with one set of tangrams. If you take all the pieces from two sets, can you make a square? How about with three sets? Four? More? Explain why some of the numbers work and some don't. - May 1996 - A Single Formula for Area Write a single formula for area that will work for a rectangle, a parallelogram, a trapezoid, a triangle, and a square. Explain how it works.
The Good We Do To educate people, give them the latest, most reliable information so they can make decisions for their own or their loved Hepatitis B (HBV) Hepatitis B is a vaccine-preventable bloodborne infection. It is a serious viral disease that infects the liver. While the hepatitis B virus (HBV) doesn’t directly damage the liver, it is the body’s immune response to the virus that results in liver injury. Among adults with acute hepatitis B less than 2% fail to clear the virus within six months after infection and develop chronic Hepatitis B infection. To offer a comparison, about 80% of infected newborns and as many as 20% of children under the age of 5 develop persistent infection. Patients with acute hepatitis B must be followed carefully to identify those who have recovered spontaneously and those in whom chronic infection may require specific antiviral drug treatment. Treatment is reserved for those patients in whom viral levels are increased above a specific level and liver enzymes elevations are present. Other patients, for example, so-called inactive carriers with low levels of virus and normal liver enzymes are not currently treated. In the U.S. the disease is spread predominantly through sex with an infected person, from mother to child during childbirth, (regardless if the delivery is vaginal or through Caesarean section), and through contact with infected blood or body secretions among injection drug users, health care workers, first-responders, and others at risk of exposure. Screening of Asian-Americans for evidence of HBV is recommended because mother to child transmission was common in Asia and other parts of the world prior to the development of immunization programs. Vaccination provides the safest and most effective protection against hepatitis B for at least 15 years and possibly much longer. Currently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommend that all newborns and individuals up to 18 years of age as well as adults at a high risk of infection (see below) be vaccinated. They also recommend that previously unvaccinated patients with diabetes, age 19 to 59 years, should be vaccinated since such individuals appear to be at increased risk. Everyone who handles blood or blood products in their daily work should be vaccinated. Three injections over a 6-12 month period are required to provide full protection. Infants born to infected mothers should receive hepatitis B immune globulin and the hepatitis B vaccine within 12 hours of birth to help prevent infection. Two additional doses of vaccine should be administered at 1 and then at 6-12 months of age. There is increasing evidence that for pregnant women with high levels of HBV, treatment with an oral antiviral at the end of the second or beginning of the third trimester until delivery will reduce the risk that the immunized baby will be infected. People who develop acute hepatitis B are generally not treated with antiviral drugs because the disease often resolves on its own. Infected newborns are most likely to progress to chronic hepatitis B, but by young adulthood, most people with acute infection recover spontaneously. Severe acute hepatitis B can be treated with an oral antiviral drug but available data on effectiveness are conflicting and those with acute liver failure are candidates for liver transplantation.
Memory and Mnemonic Devices Mnemonic devices are techniques a person can use to help them improve their ability to remember something. In other words, it’s a memory technique to help your brain better encode and recall important information. It’s a simple shortcut that helps us associate the information we want to remember with an image, a sentence, or a word. Mnemonic devices are very old, with some dating back to ancient Greek times. Virtually everybody uses them, even if they don’t know their name. It’s simply a way of memorizing information so that it “sticks” within our brain longer and can be recalled more easily in the future. Popular mnemonic devices include: The Method of Loci The Method of Loci is a mnemonic device that dates back to Ancient Greek times, making it one of the oldest ways of memorizing we know of. Using the Method of Loci is easy. First, imagine a place with which you are familiar. For instance, if you use your house, the rooms in your house become the objects of information you need to memorize. Another example is to use the route to your work or school, with landmarks along the way becoming the information you need to memorize. You go through a list of words or concepts needing memorization, and associate each word with one of your locations. You should go in order so that you will be able to retrieve all of the information in the future. An acronym is a word formed from the first letters or groups of letters in a name or phrase. An acrostic is a series of lines from which particular letters (such as the first letters of all lines) from a word or phrase. These can be used as mnemonic devices by taking the first letters of words or names that need to be remembered and developing an acronym or acrostic. For instance, in music, students must remember the order of notes so that they can identify and play the correct note while reading music. The notes of the treble staff are EGBDF. The common acrostic used for this are Every Good Boy Does Fine or Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge. The notes on the bass staff are ACEG, which commonly translates into the acrostic All Cows Eat Grass. A rhyme is a saying that has similar terminal sounds at the end of each line. Rhymes are easier to remember because they can be stored by acoustic encoding in our brains. For example: - In fourteen hundred and ninety-two Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue. - Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November; All the rest have thirty-one, Save February, with twenty-eight days clear, And twenty-nine each leap year. Chunking & Organization Chunking is simply a way of breaking down larger pieces of information into smaller, organized “chunks” of more easily-managed information. Telephone numbers in the United States are a perfect example of this — 10 digits broken into 3 chunks, allowing almost everyone to remember an entire phone number with ease. Since short-term human memory is limited to approximately 7 items of information, placing larger quantities of information into smaller containers helps our brains remember more, and more easily. Organizing information into either objective or subjective categories also helps. Objective organization is placing information into well-recognized, logical categories. Trees and grass are plants; a cricket is an insect. Subjective organization is categorizing seemingly unrelated items in a way that helps you recall the items later. This can also be useful because it breaks down the amount of information to learn. If you can divide a list of items into a fewer number of categories, then all you have to remember is the categories (fewer items), which will serve as memory cues in the future. Visual imagery is a great way to help memorize items for some people. For instance, it’s often used to memorize pairs of words (green grass, yellow sun, blue water, etc.). The Method of Loci, mentioned above, is a form of using imagery for memorization. By recalling specific imagery, it can help us recall information we associated with that imagery. Imagery usually works best with smaller pieces of information. For instance, when trying to remember someone’s name you’ve just been introduced to. You can imagine a pirate with a wooden leg for “Peggy,” or a big grizzly bear for “Harry.” Psych Central. (2015). Memory and Mnemonic Devices. Psych Central. Retrieved on July 27, 2016, from http://psychcentral.com/lib/memory-and-mnemonic-devices/
5.1 Phase and phase difference In this section I am considering sine waves that have the same frequency, but are out of step with each other. Suppose we have two detectors at fixed points, A and B. At this moment in time A is in a high pressure region and B in a low pressure region. If we were to look again shortly later B would now in a high pressure region and A in a low pressure region. The pressures at A and B would be out of step with each other. The pressure variation at B is not in phase with that at A. The exception is when A and B are an exact number of wavelengths apart, in this case the pressure variations at A and B are in phase. Although the two graphs have the same frequency, they are not in step. At any given moment, each is at a different part of its cycle. For example, if you look at the 1 ms point on each graph you can see that the curves are at different parts of a cycle. We use the word phase to refer to the part of a cycle that a particular vibrating system is in at any moment. In practice we are often less concerned with the phase of a single wave than with the phase difference between two (or more) waves having the same frequency. (The stipulation ‘having the same frequency’ is necessary because we cannot really speak of a fixed phase difference between sine waves with different frequencies.) Another way of saying that there is a phase difference between two sine waves is to say that they are out of phase. When the waves have the same phase, they are said to be in phase. In Figure 13, on each graph's horizontal axis events to the right are happening later than events to the left. Thus, because the first peak in (b) is to the right of the first peak in (a), we say that the pressure variations in (b) are lagging in phase behind those in (a). Alternatively, we can say that the pressure variations in (a) are leading in phase those in (b). Activity 17 (Self-Assessment) The delay is 0.2 ms. One way to answer the question would be to look at where the first peak occurs in each graph and to try to read the time difference. This is not easy because neither peak occurs on a grid line, and finding the exact summit of a smoothly curving sine wave is not easy. In cases like this it makes more sense to compare the points where the graphs cross the horizontal axis at the end of corresponding cycles. In Figure 13(a) the end of the first cycle occurs at 1 ms. In Figure 13(b) the end of the corresponding cycle occurs at the next vertical grid line after 1 ms. As there are five grid lines between 1 ms and 2 ms, the space between each pair of adjacent lines represents 0.2 ms. Hence there is a delay of 0.2 ms. In the last activity there was a phase difference of 0.2 ms, but phase differences are not always expressed in units of time. Instead, a phase difference is commonly expressed quantitatively in one of the following two ways: (a) as a fraction of a cycle (b) as an angle. The first of these is fairly straightforward, as the following activity demonstrates. Activity 18 (Self-Assessment) In Figure 13, by what fraction of a cycle does (b) lag (a)? The phase difference is 0.2 millisecond, and the period is 1 millisecond, so the phase lag is 0.2 of a cycle, or one-fifth of a cycle. Expressing a phase difference as an angle depends on the fact that in a periodic wave, every cycle is identical to every other, and we can regard one cycle as being like a complete rotation round a circle: 360 degrees. After one cycle, we are back at the part of the cycle where we began. After half a cycle we are halfway to the part of the cycle where we began. The phase difference in Figure 13 was calculated in Activity 17 to be a fifth of a cycle. To express this as a phase difference in degrees we simply calculate a fifth of 360 degrees, because one cycle corresponds to 360 degrees. The answer is 72 degrees. If the phase lag were increased continuously beyond 72 degrees, it would eventually reach 360 degrees, which would bring the two sine waves back into phase again. If the phase difference continued to increase, the waves would next be in phase at 720 degrees, and so on.
The next computer-generated animals in King Kong or The Lion King could look a lot more realistic thanks to a breakthrough by computer scientists at the University of California. The researchers from UC San Diego and UC Berkeley developed a method that dramatically improves the way computers simulate fur, and more specifically, the way light bounces within an animal’s pelt. The team recently presented their findings at the SIGGRAPH Asia conference in Thailand. “Our model generates much more accurate simulations and is 10 times faster than the state of the art,” said Ravi Ramamoorthi, one of the paper’s senior authors and the director of the Center for Visual Computing at UC San Diego. The method could be applied to everything from video games, to computer-generated special effects, to computer-animated movies. One issue with existing models is that they were designed to create computer-generated hair, and do not work well for fur. That’s because most of these models don’t take into account the central cylinder, or medulla, present in each fur fiber. The medulla in fur is much bigger than in human hair and the passage of light and its scattering through that cylinder is very important to fur appearance. So far, most researchers have ignored the medulla and built models that follow a ray of light as it bounces from one fur fiber to the next. As a result, existing models require a tremendous amount of computation and are both expensive and slow. By contrast, the UC San Diego and UC Berkeley researchers used a concept called subsurface scattering to quickly approximate how light bounces around fur fibers. Essentially, subsurface scattering describes how light enters the surface of a translucent object, like hair or fur, at one point; scatters at various angles; interacts with the object’s material; and then exits the object at a different point. This concept is well understood and often used in simulations in the fields of computer graphics and computer vision. In real life, you can observe subsurface scattering by turning on your smart phone’s flashlight and covering it with your finger in a room where the lights have been dimmed. You will see a ring of light, because the light has entered through your finger, scattered inside and then gone back out. (The light is red because it is not absorbed by the body, unlike green and blue light.) To apply the properties of subsurface scattering to fur fibers, researchers used a neural network. “We are converting the properties of subsurface scattering to fur fibers,” said Ph.D. student Ling-Qi Yan, from UC Berkeley, who worked on the study under the direction of UC San Diego computer science professors Ravi Ramamoorthi and Henrik Wann Jensen. “There is no explicit physical or mathematical way to make this conversion. So we needed to use a neural network to connect these two different worlds.” The neural network only needed to be trained with one scene before being able to apply subsurface scattering to all the different scenes it was presented. This resulted in simulations running 10 times faster than state of the art.
Patient and family education is important to us. Here you can learn more about autism spectrum disorders in children, and view trusted insights from KidsHealth.org, the No. 1 most viewed health site for children, created by the experts at Nemours. We've also provided information from the most respected nonprofit organizations. About Autism in Children Autism — whether mild or severe — is a lifelong condition and your child may need medication, therapy or support throughout his or her life. Thankfully today, unlike only a few decades ago, autism specialists can offer many interventions and therapies that can remarkably increase your child’s skills and abilities. The next few decades (and even the next few years) show great promise of more to come. Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder, which means it’s a condition related to the improper development of the neurons in the brain. Children with an autism spectrum disorder develop “unevenly” and have difficulties in communication and social interactions and exhibit repetitive or restrictive behaviors. Very often, these children have exceptional strengths in other areas, such as math, visual processing and musical and artistic abilities (to name a few). Autism spectrum disorder is an active area of research — every day we’re uncovering important information about the disorder. Traditional Types of Autism Autism has had many names, including: - autistic disorder (or autism) — refers to the more severe cases in which children have difficulty communicating and interacting with others (or they may be unable to communicate), and also exhibit unique repetitive/restrictive behaviors such as hand flapping, spinning or rocking. - Asperger syndrome (AS, also called Asperger’s) — a milder form of autism in which children have average or above-average intelligence, impaired language skills only in some areas (like language pragmatics, or understanding the meaning of words in certain situations), impaired social skills (problems with reciprocity, or the natural “give and take” that occurs in a conversation) and repetitive/restrictive behaviors, sometimes related to a special interest. - pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS) — Because there are many variations within the autism spectrum — with no two children experiencing the same symptoms or patterns of behavior — today we refer to all types of autism as “autism spectrum disorder” regardless of how mild or severe symptoms may be. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that 1 in 88 children has an autism spectrum disorder. And while there are many theories about the causes of autism spectrum disorder in children, large research studies show vaccinations do not increase the risk for the disorder. Other studies show that genes may play a role, and possibly prenatal illness or infections, but it is not caused by anything a mother did, or did not do, during pregnancy. What’s more, autism is not a result of a child’s upbringing, amount of nurturing or environment at home. The cause of autism development disorder continues to be a very active area of study. Children with an autism spectrum disorder exhibit behavioral symptoms in specific areas, with different degrees of severity, and at different ages or life stages. Some symptoms include: - delayed babbling or speaking - does not speak, or is “nonverbal” (but may be able to communicate using pictures or assistive technologies) - problems understanding the meaning of words - difficulty starting and sustaining (continuing) conversation - can only talk about a special interest (no “small talk”) - does not understand tone, body language or facial expressions - interprets words literally (may not understand statements like “it’s raining cats and dogs”) - may speak in a different tone (monotone or high-pitched) Impaired Social Interaction - does not engage in interactions or imitation (smiling back or responding to name) - reduced interest in people - lack of eye contact - difficulty making and keeping friends - difficulty playing games or working in groups (has own rules or way of playing) - responds to things differently (laughs when it’s serious or cries when it’s not) - hard time understanding how people think or feel (difficulty with or lack of empathy) - difficulty seeing other people’s perspective - difficulty regulating emotions (tantrums when overloaded) - repeats words over and over - upset when a routine is disrupted or changed - hand-flapping, rocking or spinning - uses toys differently (repeatedly lines items up, spins wheels on vehicles, opens and shuts/turns things on and off) - intense fixation with details, particularly related to a special interest Sensory Processing Difficulties Some children may be easily overloaded by too much — or too little — sensory input. For example, children with an autism spectrum disorder may: - react adversely to itchy clothing (tags or seams) - dislike loud noises (vacuum cleaner, school bell, etc.) - avoid bright lights (particularly flickering of fluorescent lighting) - avoid being touched or hugged (or conversely, need more touch) From Nemours' KidsHealth - Camps for Kids With Special Needs - Sending Your Child With Special Needs to Camp - Disciplining Your Child With Special Needs - Does My Toddler Have a Language Delay? - Relaxation Techniques for Children With Serious Illness - Occupational Therapy - Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) - Giving Teens a Voice in Health Care Decisions - Raising a Child With Autism: Paige and Iain's Story - Is There a Connection Between Vaccines and Autism? - Brain and Nervous System - Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder - Delayed Speech or Language Development - Asperger Syndrome - What Is ADHD? - A to Z: Autism - Autism Special Needs Factsheet - Auditory Processing Disorder - Speech-Language Therapy - Sleep Problems in Teens - Anxiety, Fears, and Phobias Trusted External Resources - The Power of Positive Parenting: A Wonderful Way to Raise Children, by Dr. Glenn I. Latham - Educate Toward Recovery: Turning the Tables on Autism, by MA BCBA Robert Schramm - Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search For A Cure, by Paul A. Offit, MD Sending Your Child With Special Needs to Camp You've decided to send your child with special needs to camp this summer. But that's just the first step — you can choose a camp designed just for kids with special needs or a mainstream camp where your child will be with kids without special needs. Once that's decided, what can you do to get ready? Preparing Your Child — and Yourself If you haven't visited the camp, get as much information about it as possible, including a description of the layout and a video, if the camp has one, and go over these with your child. Tell your child that you'll be checking in regularly with the camp staff and stress that he or she can always let them know if his or her needs aren't being met. Offer reassurance that you and the camp staff will take every precaution to make sure that all kids stay safe. Talk about the benefits of attending camp and what some of your child's goals might be, such as to try a new sport, make new friends, or just enjoy a break from doctors' appointments and therapy sessions. When kids are intimidated by the thought of attending a residential camp or an inclusionary camp, parents might consider starting them in a day camp or a sports team for kids with special needs. This can give them the skills and confidence they need to feel comfortable about going to a residential camp. Start with regular sports activities and day camp. Then use a special-needs camp to get them used to being away before sending them to an inclusionary camp. Another option to consider is sending a child to camp with a friend or a sibling. If kids attend an inclusionary or mainstream camp, the buddy doesn't have to have a special need. Going with a friend can reduce stress for both parents and kids, since kids with special needs and their camp buddies will be looking out for each other. Sharing Information With Camp Staff Some parents are reluctant to share too much information with camp staff for fear it will have negative repercussions for their child (for example, they may wonder if the camp will still take their child or if they're setting their child up for failure). But good camps will want and need to know as much as possible — the more information they have, the better. Consult with your child's doctor and other specialists, such as a physical therapist, to make sure you give the camp director and staff all necessary information, and ask the camp staff if they have everything they need from you. You can help educate the staff by spending time with them and answering and asking questions before you drop off your child. This can be critical. For example, if your child will be attending a mainstream camp, you'll want to make sure that everything is accessible for your child and that the staff understands your child's needs. Many camps have paperwork you can fill out to share information about things like dietary and medical needs. And regardless of whether your child is going to a day or residential camp, you should give the staff a list of emergency phone numbers and email addresses, and make sure they know how to reach you at all times during your child's camp stay. If your child takes any medication, include the phone number of your doctor in case the prescription is lost and needs to be refilled by camp staff. Check whether the camp infirmary stocks your child's medication, too. If it doesn't, send extra medicine in case of an emergency. What to Pack Try to limit the special equipment your child brings, especially if it's expensive or breakable. Kids going to a mainstream camp are likely to want to be like all the other kids, so do what you can to accommodate that desire. And mark or label everything with your child's name to make it easier to keep track of belongings — that goes for everything from crutches to a retainer case. If the camp hasn't sent you one, you should call ahead for a list of recommended items. Every camp has different requirements. You also have the option to provide any support staff your child needs. If your child needs a therapist, you can have that person come in on a predetermined basis to provide care. Or maybe your child needs more intensive, round-the-clock care — ask the camp director what you can do to accommodate these special needs. Remember, however, that you may want to let your child have a vacation from therapy or other treatments. Before you decide to postpone any treatments, though, consult with your doctor. Dealing With Anxiety and Homesickness Many camps don't allow direct contact between parent and child while the camp is in session — they do this to help the campers stay focused on their activities. This can be scary for parents of kids with special needs, which is why it's important that you figure out, ahead of time, how you'll get information about your child's status. Will the camp call you with updates or can you occasionally call or email the supervisor and camp staff? Like any parent of a camper, though, parents of kids with special needs can write letters to remind their kids that they're loved and missed, and that they can't wait to hear all about their campers' many experiences. And just like any other child, your kid probably won't want you to cramp his or her style while away at camp. The best thing you can do is respect your camper's need for freedom and independence while enjoying a safe camp environment./p> Reviewed by: Steven J. Bachrach, MD Date reviewed: September 26, 2016
Bacteremia is the presence of bacteria in the bloodstream. Most bacteremia is temporary, has no symptoms, and will usually not lead to serious infection. However, bacteremia can also lead to serious infections. The risk is highest in those with weakened immune systems. Bacteremia that causes symptoms requires treatment to prevent more severe infections. Bacteria are normally present in certain areas of the body. For example, it can be found on the skin and inside the mouth, nose, throat, large intestine, and vagina. Small tears or damage in these tissue can allow the bacteria to enter the bloodstream. This can happen during everyday activities, like vigorous toothbrushing, or certain medical procedures. Bacteremia may also be caused by an infection that is already in the body, such as pneumonia, urinary tract, or ear infection. Once bacteria enters the blood, the immune system will normally remove it. The quick removal of bacteria will stop other infections from developing. Complications of bacteremia usually develop if: - Bacteria remain in the bloodstream for long period of time - Large amounts of bacteria in the blood overwhelm the immune system - The immune system is weakened by medical conditions, treatments, or procedures This can lead to infections anywhere in the body such as lungs, heart, brain, or bone. Growth of the bacteria in the bloodstream can also lead to sepsis, a body wide infection. Certain medical or dental procedures can cause bacteremia. Higher risk activities include: - Dental cleaning or procedures - Urinary catheter - IV or central catheters - Tubes placed in throat to assist in breathing—mechanical ventilation - Surgical treatment of abscesses or infected wounds - Invasive procedures, such as endoscopy or open surgeries - Intensive care unit admission The risk of developing a serious infection from bacteremia is increased with: - A suppressed or weakened immune system - Exposure to aggressive strains of bacteria - Presence of implanted medical devices Bacteremia symptoms can vary depending on the amount of bacteria present. - There may be no symptoms in children with brief small amounts of bacteria. - If higher amounts of bacteria enter the system there may be fever without other symptoms. - Growth of bacteria in the bloodstream can lead to more general symptoms such as a fever with body aches. - Higher growth rates and more severe bacteremia can result in symptoms of sepsis, such as a fast heart rate, low blood pressure, or mental confusion. Bacteremia can lead to a number of serious complications such as infections of: - Heart tissue—infective endocarditis - Central nervous system—bacterial meningitis or brain abscess - Bone tissue—osteomyelitis - Joint tissue—septic arthritis - Soft tissues—abscess Untreated complications can lead to disability, organ failure, and death. You will be asked about your child’s symptoms and medical history. A physical exam will be done, including specific questions about recent medical treatments or surgery. Blood tests will be done to see if your body if responding to an infection. If bacteremia is suspected, a blood culture test will be done to identify the specific bacteria causing the problem. Identifying the specific bacteria may help with treatment decisions. Bacteremia that is not causing symptoms may not need treatment. The body’s immune system will control and remove the bacteria. Bacteremia that causes symptoms or infections is treated with antibiotics. The antibiotics may be later adjusted if the blood culture find a bacteria that requires specific antibiotics. Other symptoms associated with the location of the infection or sepsis will need to be treated. Antibiotics may be recommended before high-risk procedures if a child is at high risk for infection. This includes children with weakened immune systems or medical implants. The antibiotics will eliminate bacteria that enter into the blood before they can cause problems.
By Creation Ministries International, CREATION.COM Researchers led by Gábor Horváth of *Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary, examined cave artwork and modern paintings and statues of animals including horses, bulls and elephants. They found the majority of depictions of animals walking or trotting had the legs wrongly positioned. However, cave paintings had the lowest error rate of 46.2%. The highest error rate, 83.5%, was in modern era artworks before the late 19th century. Leonardo da Vinci was famous for his anatomical drawings, but he, too, "got it wrong when he tried to portray animal movement". The error rate decreased to 57.9% after the 1880s thanks to Eadweard Muybridge's pioneering detailed studies of animal gait. But illustrators of moving animals still could not match cave art for accuracy. The researchers wrote: "Cavemen were more keenly aware of the slower motion of their prey animals and illustrated quadruped walking more precisely than later artists."?
Lesson 3 of 4 Objective: SWBAT use the captions in the story to better understand what the author is trying to tell us Just like in informational texts there are often words in and around pictures in fiction stories as well. One goal I have for my students is to slow down as they read and really notice all the rich detail that texts have to offer. Kevin Henkes books are perfect for teaching to this goal. His books contain lots of "hidden hints" - words that show up in unexpected places and add meaning to the text. This is true in the story we have been working with this week, Wemberly Worried. To comprehend this book (along with other Kevin Henkes books and many other examples in literature and informational text), students need to learn how to look beyond the text, and use the pictures and these "hidden hints" to help them understand what the author is trying to tell them. If this isn't explicitly taught, students are likely to pass this over and miss key information in the story. This explicit instruction is what this lesson is all about. Today I ask my students what we call the words in and around pictures that we find in informational texts. "Captions." I tell them that we are going to be looking at the captions in the story we have been working with, Wemberly Worried. They will help us figure out more about what the author is trying to tell us about Wemberly. The illustrations in this text include captions that highlight Wemberly’s thinking. We will be looking at the first few pages together to decipher what the captions and illustrations are telling us about Wemberly. For example on page 2 the words on the page read "Big things." Then we look at the caption pointing to Wemberly says, "I wanted to make sure you were still here." She has a flashlight looking at her parents in their bedroom. We talk about what "big things" is this telling us that she is worried about. It tells us that she is worried about being alone, the dark, her parents leaving ... The next few pages talk about more things she is worried about. The words tell us the things that she is worried about, but the captions tell us why she is worried about them. Here is the chart we created: Wemberly caption chart. To help students make the connection that these can be found in other texts as well, I have them create their own page that could be found in a book. This allows them to create what they would be looking for in a text. It also allows me see who understands the concept of a picture showing what the words mean. I encourage them to keep the sentence short, but have the picture show tell the story. Later we will turn it into a class book of worries. Students create their own page (student's name's Worried). On this page they will include something that they are worried about. Included will be a caption that tells us the "why" the student is worried about that thing, and a picture showing what they are worried about in more detail. Here are some examples: Students share their page with their sentence and picture with the caption. The class then tells what they are worried about and why.
Forces of Nature - Part 3 Kansas is blessed with rich soil, but rainfall determines whether it is a dust bowl or a farming paradise. The Desert and the Garden Two opposing names have been used to describe Kansas and its landscape: - Great American Desert, and - Garden of the West Early white explorers doubted Kansas was suitable for settlement due to its shortage of water and trees. The region was dubbed "The Great American Desert" by Stephen Long, who concluded, "[It] is almost wholly unfit for cultivation, and of course uninhabitable by a people depending on agriculture for their subsistence." But as Americans pushed onto the prairies, their ideas changed. Land speculators began promoting the Plains as the "Garden of the West." Henry Worrall challenged the state's desert image with this painting, "Drouthy Kansas," suggesting bountiful crops and an abundance of water were the norm. Worrall's art sometimes was sponsored by railroads who wanted to attract people to Kansas. These companies profited from land sales to settlers who became their freight customers. Promotional literature often misled settlers into believing Kansas had abundant water. The reality is that drought is part of the natural cycle on the Plains, but eastern settlers who moved here wanted consistent moisture. They thought they could increase the rainfall just by settling and farming the land. "Rain follows the plow" was widely believed in the 1800s. According to this theory, plowing the soil allowed more rain to soak into the prairie sod. The moisture then evaporated, adding humidity and leading to more rainfall. Science of the day supported this theory and confirmed people's belief that God had destined them to control the land. Actual rainfall in Kansas didn't bear out the promise made by promoters. Kansas averages 26.5 inches of precipitation a year, but actual amounts vary widely across the state. The southeast corner sees 45 inches but the western border only 15. County fairs promoted the quality and abundance of farm products in Kansas. No matter what had happened the previous year--drought or flood--the images of bounty stayed the same, as in this fair poster from 1891. The bitter reality of farming on the Plains is that rainfall is inconsistent. When settlers realized this, some left. Those who stayed tried other methods of watering their crops. Instead of relying solely on rain, farmers practiced irrigation. They diverted water from rivers and streams, and pumped water from underground. Windmills were early irrigation tools, while mechanical pumps became important in the 20th century. Kansas has three major aquifers that are sources for irrigation water (an aquifer is an underground layer of rock, sand, and gravel in which water collects). Dust in the Wind One of the greatest natural disasters of the 20th century made Kansans reconsider their approach to farming in a dry environment. Severe drought struck the Plains in the 1930s. Strong winds lifted the light, dry soil and blew it over the landscape in terrible dust storms, and the region became known as the Dust Bowl. The drought's effects had been made worse by human actions. In the 1910s, World War I increased the need for grain around the globe. New technology--particularly gas-powered farm equipment--allowed farmers to work faster and more efficiently. To meet the higher demand for grain, American farmers broke new ground for crops, causing wheat production to jump 300 percent in the 1920s. This destroyed deep-rooted prairie grasses that had held the region's topsoil in place for centuries. The exposed topsoil became airborne in spectacular fashion when the Great Plains were hit hard by drought and winds in the 1930s. One agricultural implement that contributed to the Dust Bowl due to its overuse was this one-way plow developed by Charles Angell of Meade, Kansas. All its discs are set at the same angle, thus the name "one-way." Farmers liked that it plowed faster and easily broke up hard soil. But its overuse created a fine, dusty layer that quickly blew away in heavy winds. This is a smaller version of the actual plow, which was usually ten feet wide. Holding Our Ground Over 90 percent of Kansas is farmland, and dust storms are an ongoing problem. To prevent another Dust Bowl, farmers must work together to conserve moisture and stop erosion. Kansans are keeping an eye on promising new developments in agriculture. All grains planted by today’s farmers are annual—grown from seed every year. Harvesting the grain destroys these plants and exposes soil to wind erosion. In Kansas, Wes Jackson is experimenting with perennial grains—crops that re-grow every year. Their deep root systems will anchor soil in place in much the same way as prairie grasses. Jackson is the founder and president of The Land Institute, located near Salina. The Land Institute promotes "sustainable agriculture," that is, producing food without damaging the earth. Its researchers are developing plants that look like annual crops above-ground, but have the deep roots of perennials below-ground. Jackson wore this jacket as a youth while heading up a local chapter of the Future Farmers of America. The FFA's mission is to turn students into leaders in agriculture. Jackson went on to gain an international reputation as an innovator. His honors include the MacArthur Fellowship (nicknamed the "genius award"). Farmers all over the world are reaping the benefits of no-till farming--growing crops without disturbing (tilling) the soil. Instead of cultivating their land after harvest, no-till farmers leave the stubble in the field. This mulch keeps moisture in the earth while allowing rain to filter through. Wind can't blow away the soil. The benefits of no-till farming include: - Less soil erosion - More moisture retained in the soil - Fewer chemicals needed - Reduced needs for tractors/saves fuel - Healthier crops Forces of Nature is an online exhibit developed by the Kansas Museum of History. - Tornadoes - These storms are a Kansas icon - Wind - Kansas is a windy state - Earth - Sometimes our rich soil becomes airborne - Water - Too much or too little is a problem - Fire - Grasslands depend on fire Test your knowledge by playing our interactive games. Contact us at KansasMuseum@kshs.org
What are waves? Waves are phenomena that everyone experiences constantly; water waves, sound waves, light waves, human waves when the home team scores... the list goes on. When asked what makes a wave a wave, the most common responses would probably be that a wave is something that moves, or propagates, or perhaps that it is something that repeats over and over again. These properties do capture the essential qualities of waves. Now we must determine these properties quantitatively, and discover what governs their behavior. Generally, a wave is defined as any phenomenon which can be modeled by a function of the form where the r-vector represents a position in space, and t represents a time, and the k-vector and omega are both constants. Don't be intimidated by the vectors in the argument - most of our time at first will be spent on one-dimensional waves. If the wave is in only one spatial dimension 'x', for instance a wave travelling on a taut string, it can be written simply as . Any function of this form "propagates" along the direction over time. As time increases, the argument of the function increases; over time the form of the function effectively advances through space. Try coming up with functions of this form, and plot them at time t = 0, then plot them again at a later time. This progressive property will become obvious. Try to figure out the velocity with which your function advances! (we will study this later) The negative sign in front of the time term causes the wave to propagate in the direction defined as positive (if that seems confusing, try plotting more functions over time, and examine the results). If you replace the negative with a positive (or instead consider a negative value of omega), the wave will propagate in the negative direction. A very special and important case of a wave is the mathematical function , or in one dimension, . This is a sinusoidal wave - it oscillates up and down infinitely in both directions, and moves as time progresses. I mentioned that waves have the quality of repeating over and over, the quality of periodicity. However, many functions of the form mentioned above do not seem to repeat. However, you will find that ALL waves can be decomposed into a sum of many of these simple, infinitely repeating waves when you learn about Fourier transformations. More than any other concept, physicists are finding that waves characterize the structure of the universe at every scale imaginable. As you learn about the physics of waves in everyday life, keep an open mind towards finding waves and wave behavior everywhere you turn. Let's consider a very well-known case of a wave phenomenon: water waves. Waves in water consist of moving peaks and troughs. A peak is a place where the water rises higher than when the water is still and a trough is a place where the water sinks lower than when the water is still. So waves have peaks and troughs. This could be our first property for waves. The following diagram shows the peaks and troughs on a wave. In physics we try to be as quantitative as possible. If we look very carefully we notice that the height of the peaks above the level of the still water is the same as the depth of the troughs below the level of the still water. Waves are repetitions of physical quantity in a periodic manner, carrying energy in the process. The water waves, for example, can be visualized to repeat any of the physical quantities like "peaks", "troughs", "potential energy" or "kinetic energy". Even, we can visualize water waves as the motion of disturbance (energy). It is the energy aspect of waves that is central to the understanding of different types of waves, many of which are not visible. Looking closely at the water wave, we can recognize that crests and troughs basically represent of extreme potential and kinetic energies in addition to representing rise and fall of water from the still level. At the peak, energy is only potential, whereas energy is only kinetic at the trough. Similarly, propagation of electromagnetic wave is associated with repetitions of magnetic and electric field in space with certain periodicity. As existence of electrical or magnetic fields does not require any medium, electromagnetic waves can move even in the absence of any medium. Characteristics of Waves : Amplitude We use symbols agreed upon by convention to label the characteristic quantities of the waves. The characteristic height of a peak and depth of a trough is called the amplitude of the wave. The vertical distance between the bottom of the trough and the top of the peak is twice the amplitude. To put it simply, the amplitude is the distance of the wave from the medium, to the crest or trough Worked Example 1 Question: (NOTE TO SELF: Make this a more exciting question) The height of the wave from the medium is 2m. What is the distance from the peak to the trough. What The amplitude is 2m. (Read above paragraph to know why). The distance from the peak to trough is 4m. Characteristics of Waves : Wavelength Look a little closer at the peaks and the troughs. The distance between two adjacent (next to each other) peaks is the same no matter which two adjacent peaks you choose. So there is a fixed distance between the peaks. Similarly, you'll notice that the distance between two adjacent troughs is the same no matter which two troughs you look at. But, more importantly, its is the same as the distance between the peaks. This distance which is a characteristic of the wave is called the wavelength. Waves have a characteristic wavelength. The symbol for the wavelength is the Greek letter lambda, . The wavelength is the distance between any two adjacent points which are in phase. Two points in phase are separate by an integer (0,1,2,3,...) number of complete wave cycles. They don't have to be peaks or trough but they must be separated by a complete number of waves. Characteristics of Waves : Period Now imagine you are sitting next to a pond and you watch the waves going past you. First one peak, then a trough and then another peak. If you measure the time between two adjacent peaks you'll find that it is the same. Now if you measure the time between two adjacent troughs you'll find that its always the same, no matter which two adjacent troughs you pick. The time you have been measuring is the time for one wavelength to pass by. We call this time the period and it is a characteristic of the wave. The period of the wave is denoted with the symbol . Characteristics of Waves : Frequency There is another way of characterising the time interval of a wave. We timed how long it takes for one wavelength to go past. We could also turn this around and say how many waves go by in 1 second. We can easily determine this number, which we call the frequency and denote f. To determine the frequency, how many waves go by in 1s, we work out what fraction of a waves goes by in 1 second by dividing 1 second by the time it takes T. If a wave takes 1/2 a second to go by then in 1 second two waves must go by. . The unit of frequency is the Hz or s-1. Waves have a characteristic frequency. generally, the frequency of a wave is the number of crests that pass by per unit time. Characteristics of Waves : Speed Now if you are watching a wave go by you will notice that they move at a constant velocity. Thinking back to rectilinear motion you will be able to remember that we know how to work out how fast something moves. The speed is the distance you travel divided by the time you take to travel that distance. This is excellent because we know that the waves travel a distance in a time T. This means that we can determine the speed.
Trying to calculate how much avoided deforestation has been achieved through a REDD project is not an easy matter. In fact it’s impossible without knowing what would have happened in the absence of the REDD project. “Offsets are an imaginary commodity created by deducting what you hope happens from what you guess would have happened,” as Dan Welch brilliantly put it five years ago. This is known as a counterfactual, or a description of what did not happen, but what might, could or would happen under different conditions. Without this counterfactual version of events, it’s impossible to know how many tons of carbon were not emitted into the atmosphere and it’s therefore impossible to know how many carbon credits can be issued from a given REDD project (or from a national level REDD programme). Fortunately, we have experts like Lou Verchot, Director of the Forests and Environment Programme at CIFOR, to explain how REDD is going to work. Here here is talking at Rio+20 in June 2012 (the video is posted below). First, Verchot explains, we need a reference point: “Reference emission levels are the reference point from which you begin counting how much emissions reductions you may be able to achieve. Reference emissions levels set up a counterfactual of how much emissions levels would have been, would have occurred in the absence of activities to reduce the emissions. So, it’s a little complicated to set up because it is exactly that, it’s the counterfactual, it’s something that did not happen.” A “little complicated”? That’s some understatement. The REDD that Verchot is discussing is a carbon trading scheme (otherwise why bother going to such extraordinary lengths to measure the carbon not emitted against a counterfactual guess of what would have been emitted?). REDD credits will be sold, allowing emissions from burning fossil fuels to continue somewhere else. The CO2 thus emitted will remain in the atmosphere for around 100 years. That means we need to know what would have happened, in absence of REDD, for the next 100 years as well, as knowing that the forest will actually remain standing for the next 100 years. “But you also want to set it up in a transparent way that everybody can agree upon, so it has to be, it’s some part negotiation, some part technical determination of what would be a reasonable deforestation level, what would be a reasonable emissions level if you did not have deforestation or if you had business as usual with no reduction in deforestation.” Verchot explains that the technical side involves looking at historical deforestation rates and the causes of that deforestation. Obviously, agreeing on what did not happen, but might have happened if conditions were different will take quite a lot of negotiation. “The difficulty is really in this element that it’s counterfactual. It’s something that did not happen. So how do you, you know, under normal circumstances without much variation in the economy you can certainly expect the last five years to be a good predictor of the next five years. But nobody expected the financial crisis, for example. Nobody could predict these big changes, these inflexion points. And that’s where things get a bit difficult. “You know if you go through a financial crisis and the returns to land decrease, you expect a strong reduction in conversion of forest area. If you get a price spike, if food prices go up, you would expect agricultural land to expand. and so predicting some of these flash points, or these points where there are major changes, that cause inflexions in your deforestation rate is very difficult. “And that’s where things get a little complicated.” There he goes again. A “little complicated”? The interviewer asks Verchot about how this can be addressed. And this is where it gets really scary. Not only do we not know what might happen in the future, we don’t really know enough about what happened in the past either, because, as Verchot points out, many countries, “don’t have good deforestation data”. By now the whole idea selling carbon credits is looking pretty flaky. If Verchot is fazed, he doesn’t show it: “We’ve put together a stepwise approach. And the stepwise approach really is data driven. One of the problems is that we are trying to do this in countries that don’t have good deforestation data. They don’t understand how much, they don’t have good data on how much forest they currently have, what had been the deforestation rate. So we lay out some ways to get started. There are datasets out there that everyone has access to, they have problems, everyone knows what the problems is, but at least they are datasets and they are consistent over time.” Consistent over time? Wrong, but consistently wrong. But when you’re comparing the data to a guess of what might have happened in order to generate an imaginary commodity, that’s the least of your worries. “You can start with that and set out your reference emissions level. But then what we did is we laid out pathways to prove that. So how could we go about improving the estimates of the area that’s been deforestation. Through satellite imagery, through non-spatially explicit to more spatially explicit types of approaches. How would we go about improving our emissions estimates, because you know it’s not just about the area that’s deforested, it’s about how much carbon is held in the trees on those areas that’s deforested. And that varies. A forest on top of a mountain, or a forest that’s at sea level, a tropical rainforest or a dry forest all have different carbon contents. So we set out a pathway of how do you go from very basic information to getting more complete information so that you get better estimates, more accurate estimates and less bias. So you can improve the precision as well as the accuracy.” There’s another counterfactual to be considered. What would happen if the finance for REDD didn’t appear? Given that the amount of carbon not emitted under a REDD programme is anybody’s guess and that the UN-led carbon market is close to collapse as the Financial Times commented two days ago, things look pretty shaky. “Right now everything is in the readiness phase, there’s no long term certainty of funding for REDD. That’s one of the things that our research is showing is a major impediment to REDD moving forward. Demonstration projects are being set up but they are not scaling up because they have no certainty of long term funding. “The problem is of spending the money that’s available right now…. Countries are having problems spending the money that’s available right now. But they are having problems because they are not ready to invest in institution building, in capacity building, in some of these long term things that are required, because the long term certainty of REDD, of REDD financing, is just not there.” Talking about the stepwise approach, Verchot notes that it has been agreed in the UNFCCC negotiations, at least in brackets. “This is our suggestion, and something that we’ve actually demonstrated can work through our research…. Getting reference emissions levels set is the first step, because now a country can go to another country and say our reference level, we think our emissions levels are this and they are going to be this for the next five years. Let’s talk about what sort of compensation we can get and we can talk about what type of emissions reductions we are ready to commit to. So it sets the benchmark from which the international negotiations can happen. Both on the finance side, but also on the emissions reduction side. It’s the first step.” Earlier this year, REDD-Monitor interviewed Frances Seymour, then-head of CIFOR. Seymour claimed that CIFOR did not take a position on carbon trading. Yet CIFOR has put forward a suggestion which apparently has been taken up by the UNFCCC for solving a problem that is only relevant to REDD as a carbon trading mechanism. That is taking a position.
Traditionally, coastline-migration maps, showing erosion and accretion at the fringes of marine and lacustrine water bodies, have been made using field-monitoring data, supplemented locally by analyses of aerial photography. The EMODnet-Geology coastline-migration map is a good example. It provides an overview of our current knowledge and is useful in transnational coastal-zone management. At the same time, it is far from perfect. First, it combines monitoring series from different time periods, necessitated by an overall scarcity of data. For some regions, the only information available may be decades old. Second, it includes data gaps as many remote regions have never been surveyed. Quite a few of those gaps have been filled using expert knowledge from coastal geologists, but there are extensive stretches that must be left unfilled for the time being. Third, the coastline is not a single line that is easily and consistently recognized and used. Along sandy coasts, one can map the low-tide line, the high-tide line and the dune foot, and each of these indicators may behave differently through time. Along bluff and cliff coasts, one can map the bluff/cliff top and base, or the actual low- or high-water line some distance away. When part of a bluff or cliff collapses and thus recedes landward, its rubble accumulates at the base, moving the water line seaward. The public availability of satellite data and new analytical tools for processing big data, such as the Google Earth Engine, enable us to look at coastline migration in a new way. Scripts for automated detection of the land-water boundary generate numerous data points for each part of the European coastline. When averaged by year and analyzed for a decadal period, these data points form the basis for a new pan-European coastline-migration map that covers a consistent time period relevant for present-day coastal-zone management, eliminates data gaps, and portrays a single coastline indicator that is assumed to correspond to the mid-tide land-water boundary. As part of EMODnet-Geology, Gerben Hagenaars at Deltares performed an analysis for tens of thousands of transects with a spacing of 500 meters, giving a map resolution of 1:1,000,000. The need for validation As the pixel resolution of individual satellite images is about 10 meters, the precision of the method is still limited. Calculating annual averages from multiple measurements within a year reduces this uncertainty, and validation for sandy coastlines with beaches shows the method’s accuracy. The usefulness of the resulting data is discussed in ‘The state of the world’s beaches’, an article published in Scientific Reports. For bluff and cliff coasts, such validation and further analysis still need to take place. Once published as an EMODnet Web Feature Service, we are keen to invite all users to compare our satellite-based output with corresponding field-monitoring data. For further information, please contact Sytze van Heteren.
When the month of November begins, the word THANKFUL gets thrown around quite a bit. This can be a difficult concept to explain to a child with a language delay. Often using complex language and long explanations can add to the confusion. Here are some SLP suggestions for teaching about gratitude using simple language to help your child grasp the concept. The visual above provides the most basic information. This is all you need if your child is minimally verbal or speaking using 1-2 word utterances. If you feel they can handle some more complex information, introduce some new vocabulary. You can say: - In November, we hear words like thankful, or grateful. They mean the same thing. These words all describe a feeling of gratitude. What is gratitude? It is when you feel happy about all the wonderful people and things in your life. -What are some reasons that people feel thankful? People are grateful for family and friends who they love. There are also places in the world where there are no safe homes or food to eat. So we feel thankful for having a place to live and food to eat. We can also be thankful for being healthy. - Kids can feel thankful for some of their favorite items, like toys and treats too! (By interchanging the words thankful and grateful you are teaching that these words have the same meaning!) If you want to bring this topic up continually, introducing a Thankful Tree is a great way to have a brief daily conversation about gratitude. !To start, simply get foam or brown construction paper and cut out a tree trunk and branches. Purchase or print out some fall leaves. Each day, every family member selects one leaf. They write one thing they are thankful for and place it on the tree. If your kiddo needs help with this, you can give them some suggestions so they do not become frustrated trying to think of ideas. You can give simple reminders such as "We are thankful for people and things we love." Share pictures of your thankful trees with us as they progress on Instagram! You can find us @louknowswhattodo
- The Kepler Mission is designed to find Earth-size planets in orbit around stars like our Sun outside of the solar system. - Kepler will keep a steady gaze on 100,000 stars . - Kepler uses the “transit” method of planetary detection. That is, Kepler watches for dips in the total amount of light that comes from a star. The amount of the dip and the duration of the dip yields clues about how large the planet is, its size and distance from its parent star. - Didier Queloz and Michel Mayor discovered a planet around the star 51 Pegasus. This is the first extrasolar planet orbiting a sun-like star. - The planet at 51 Pegasus is nicknamed, “Bellerophon". - “Bellerophon” in Greek mythology is the hero who tamed the winged horse Pegasus. - Bellerophon has temperatures of nearly 1,000 degrees Celcius. - Bellerophon is a new class of previously unknown gas giant planet called a “hot Jupiter.” A gas giant is made mostly of hydrogen and helium. - Osiris has an average temperature of about 2000 degrees (Fahrenheit), far too hot for any form of life. - A year on the planet at 16 Cygnus B is roughly equivalent to 26 earth months, but the orbit is not circular like that of Earth, it is highly elliptical, or “eccentric”. The planet swings back and forth across its solar system like a yo-yo. - The Goldilocks Zone is a range of distances from a star where water can exist in liquid form, thus making the conditions just right for life. - Planemos have no sunrises or sunsets, and the don’t have seasons, just severe, eternal cold. They are planets without a star, drifting through the galaxy indefinitely. - A pulsar planet is a planetary body that is either captured by a pulsar or a planet that has formed out of the debris field of a supernova explosion. - When a massive red giant star explodes, most of its outer layers blast into space, but some of the material falls back to the remnant core of the star. The stripped, crushed core of the former red giant is called a “neutron star” because its has been so utterly pulverized by the supernova explosion, that even its atoms are crushed. - A water world will have perfect blue skies, puffy white clouds, and not a speck of land in sight. March 25, 2013 Alien Earths Facts
American Civil War \|\|The English used in this article or section may not be easy for everybody to understand. (February 2012)\| The American Civil War (1861–1865) was a civil war in the United States of America. It is sometimes called "The War Between the States". Eleven Southern states in which slavery was legal wanted to leave the United States of America. They formed the Confederate States of America, also called "the Confederacy". They wanted the Confederate States of America to be its own country, separate and independent from the United States. Jefferson Davis was chosen as president of the Confederacy. The U.S government and the states that remained loyal to it were called the Union. The Union is sometimes called "the North". Every state where slavery was illegal supported the Union. Most of these states were in the North. Five states where slavery was legal also supported the Union. These were called the "border states". War began when Confederate forces seized U.S. federal forts in Confederate states. Background[change \| change source] The Republican Party, led by Abraham Lincoln, won the 1860 presidential election. The Republican Party was against spreading slavery to places where it was not already legal. Seven Southern states declared their independence from the Union after the election and formed the Confederacy, even before Lincoln became president on March 4, 1861. The outgoing U.S. president, James Buchanan, said this was against the law, but did nothing to stop them. Lincoln and his Republican party thought secession to be a rebellion. No country ever recognized the Confederacy as its own, separate nation. Fighting started when the Confederates bombarded Fort Sumter, a Union Army fort. Lincoln then asked the Union states to raise soldiers to fight the Confederates. The war was fought mostly in the Southern states. After four years of fighting, the Union won the war. After the Union won, slavery was made illegal everywhere in the United States. Fighting begins[change \| change source] The Confederate States claimed that they owned all forts and other federal buildings in the South. Fort Sumter was in South Carolina - one of the Confederate States. However, the fort was controlled by the Union. On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces attacked the fort. They forced the Union soldiers inside the fort to surrender (give up). After this, President Lincoln asked every Union state for volunteers to join the Union Army. He asked these volunteers to help take back the captured forts, defend Washington, D.C., and make the Confederate states rejoin the Union. Quickly, four more southern slave states joined with the Confederates instead of supplying forces to fight them. The war[change \| change source] The American Civil War was fought in three important land areas, or "theaters". The Eastern theater included all land east of the Appalachian Mountains. The Western theater included everything between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River and along the river. The Trans-Mississippi theater included territory west of the Mississippi valley. Both the United States and the Confederacy had their capital cities in the Eastern theater. Washington D.C. has always been the capital of the U.S. When the South seceded, it named Richmond, Virginia as the capital of the Confederate States. These two cities are only about 90 miles apart. One of the first battles of the war was fought in Virginia. It was called the First Battle of Bull Run and happened on July 21st, 1861. The Confederates won the battle. The Union Army of the Potomac then tried to capture Richmond in the Peninsula Campaign during the spring of 1862. At this time, Robert E. Lee took command of the Army of Northern Virginia and defeated the Union army. He then won the Second Battle of Bull Run in August 1862. Lee tried to win the war by invading (or send soldiers into) Maryland. When he lost the Battle of Antietam, he retreated back to Virginia. There was much fighting at sea in the American Civil War. Lincoln said that the Confederates were under a blockade, which meant the Union navy would not let any ships into the South. The Confederates used ships called blockade runners to bring things from Europe. The things the Confederates brought included weapons. The navies of each side also fought on the rivers. They used different kinds of ships than the ships used on the ocean. These kinds included ironclads, which were protected by iron on their sides, and cottonclads, which used cotton along its sides. During the Battle of Hampton Roads, the Confederate ironclad Virginia fought against the Union ironclad Monitor. This was the first time in world history that two ironclads fought each other. In the Western theater, a lot of the fighting happened along the Mississippi River. Ulysses S. Grant was an important Union military leader in the west. The Confederates tried to send their soldiers into the state of Kentucky during the summer of 1861. During the early months of 1862, the Union army made the Confederates retreat from Kentucky and from western Tennessee. The Confederates tried to recapture western Tennessee by attacking Grant's army at the Battle of Shiloh. Grant won the battle. The Confederates then tried to send their soldiers into eastern Kentucky during the fall of 1862. They left Kentucky after losing the Battle of Perryville. The North won control of almost all of the Mississippi River by capturing the cities along the river during the fall of 1862 and spring of 1863. However, the Confederacy still held Vicksburg, an important city and fort. If they held the city, the Confederates could move soldiers and supplies from one side of the river to the other. Grant started the Siege of Vicksburg during the month of May 1863. The siege continued for a long time. On the 4th of July, 1863, the Confederates in Vicksburg surrendered to Grant. This was one of the turning points in the war, because it divided the Confederacy into two parts. There were also battles west of the Mississippi valley, in the area called the Trans-Mississippi. For example, two important battles were the Battle of Wilson's Creek and the Battle of Pea Ridge. The Confederates tried to invade New Mexico during February and March 1862 but they were defeated at the Battle of Glorieta Pass. After the Union captured Vicksburg, this area became separated from the rest of the Confederate states. Other battles happened in this area after the capture of Vicksburg. During the siege of Vicksburg in the west, another turning point came in the east. After winning some battles, Lee decided to invade the North again. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia went into Pennsylvania. The Confederate Army met the Union Army near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The two armies fought the Battle of Gettysburg. This battle lasted for three days: July 1 to 3, 1863. More soldiers died at Gettysburg than in any other Civil War battle. The Union won the battle. This stopped the Confederate Army's invasion into the North. Lee and his troops were pushed back into the South. After this, President Lincoln decided that Grant was his best general. He put Grant in control of all the Union armies. Lincoln also made William T. Sherman the general in charge of the Union troops in Georgia. Grant led many attacks on Lee's army; these battles were called the Overland Campaign. Meanwhile, Sherman burned Atlanta and Savannah. He did this to try to make the South weaker and to make it harder for Southern people to supply the Confederate Army with food and other things. Sherman then marched north through South Carolina and North Carolina. Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston tried to attack Sherman at the Battle of Bentonville. Sherman won the battle. Lee held out as long as he could in Virginia. Eventually he decided that he had too few soldiers to keep on fighting the Union, which had more soldiers and supplies. Lee surrendered to Grant on April 9, 1865, near Appomattox Court House. After Lee surrendered, many other Confederate armies surrendered also. The last Confederate general to surrender was Brigadier General Stand Watie. He surrendered on June 23, 1865, in Oklahoma. After the war ended, President Lincoln pardoned all of the Confederate soldiers. This meant the Confederate soldiers would not be arrested or punished for fighting against the Union. They would be allowed to rejoin the United States again. However, some Confederates did not want to return to the United States. Some of these people moved to México or Brazil. Inflation[change \| change source] During the war, inflation happened in both the Union and the Confederacy. This meant that prices went up, and everything became more expensive. Many people in the North and the South could not afford the higher prices. Many went hungry because of this. This was one thing that helped lead to the Confederacy's surrender. After the war[change \| change source] The years after the war were called "Reconstruction". Reconstruction lasted from the end of the war until 1877. The Union Army stayed in some Southern states, making them occupied territory. Three important amendments were added on to the United States Constitution. The amendments were proposed (or suggested) by the U.S. government. Although not every American supported them, the amendments got enough support to pass. The 13th Amendment says that slavery is not allowed anywhere in the United States. This officially ended legal slavery everywhere in the country. During the war, President Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation. This said that all of the slaves in the Southern states were free. However, some slaves were not freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. Also, because the Confederacy saw itself as its own country, many Southerners did not obey the Emancipation Proclamation. So until the 13th Amendment was passed, slavery was still practiced in many parts of the United States. The 14th Amendment makes it clear that all people born in the United States are citizens with equal rights. It also says that these rights cannot be taken away unless a person breaks the law. Before this, African-American people were not seen as citizens. They did not have the same rights as white people. The 14th Amendment gave every American equal rights under the law. The 15th Amendment says that people in the United States cannot be kept from voting because of their race. (Citizens could be stopped from voting because of their gender, however. Women could not vote until the 19th Amendment was passed in 1920.) After the war, some of the Union Army's leaders went into politics. Generals Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Harrison, and McKinley became presidents and others were elected to other offices. Notes[change \| change source] - John W. Chambers, II, ed. in chief, The Oxford Companion to American Military History. Oxford University Press, 1999, ISBN 978-0-19-507198-6. P. 849. - Roland, pp. 27–29. - Gibboney, p. 21. Sources[change \| change source] - Gibboney, Douglas Lee. Tragic Glory: A Concise, Illustrated History of the Civil War. Fredericksburg, Virginia: Sergeant Kirkland's, 1997. ISBN 1-887901-17-5. - Roland, Charles P. An American Iliad: The Story of the Civil War. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002. iSBN 0-07-241815-X. Other websites[change \| change source] \|Wikimedia Commons has media related to: American Civil War\|
Light hitting a surface creates very different kinds of disturbances depending on whether it’s a metal or a semiconductor. But combining these two materials in a single nanostructure could lead to devices that benefit from the best properties of each. In order to better understand how this might work, researchers reporting in the 12 September Physical Review Letters have now characterized the coupling between excitons–excited electron states in semiconductors–and plasmons, which exist in metals. Understanding the details of the plasmon-exciton interaction might help researchers develop optical computers, plasmon lasers, or improved solar cells. When light hits a metal, it can create a surface plasmon polariton–often called simply a “surface plasmon”–which is a traveling wave combining electromagnetic fields with electron oscillations. Researchers are using tiny plasmon antennas to funnel more light into solar cells (photovoltaics), increasing their efficiency. Others studying “plasmonics” hope to develop devices that replace some electric currents with plasmon waves, because plasmons can theoretically carry as much information as light pulses but squeeze it into the nanometer-sized wires used in standard computer chips. The emerging field of plasmonics suffers, however, from the fact that plasmons survive for only 10 to 100 femtoseconds before they decay into normal light waves or simply transform into vibrations of atoms. “The big challenge is to overcome these losses,” says Christoph Lienau of Carl von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg, Germany. One solution would be to amplify the plasmon signal by feeding it photons emitted by a semiconductor touching the metal. A light pulse could excite a semiconductor electron into a state called an exciton, which would then drop back down to the ground state and emit the photon. But to build such an amplifier, Lienau says, you need to know how excitons and plasmons “talk to each other.” Others have observed this interaction through changes in the optical properties of semiconductors coupled to metal nanostructures, but no one has been able to precisely measure the way energy transfers between the two materials. To study plasmon-exciton interactions, Lienau and his colleagues designed a “hybrid” nanostructure whose plasmons could be precisely controlled. They started with a 10-nanometer thick slice of the semiconductor gallium arsenide and then laid several parallel gold strips on top, each 360 nanometers wide, leaving 140-nanometer gaps between them. The team shined an infrared laser onto the strips and measured how much of the light was reflected. From decreases in this reflection, they could tell that some of the light was converted into plasmons on the top and bottom surfaces of the gold strips. By varying the angle of the incoming laser beam, the team could change the wavelength of these plasmons. When they tuned this wavelength to near the exciton resonance in the gallium arsenide at 810 nanometers, they detected an even further decrease in reflected light. The implication was that the plasmons at the bottom of the strips were interacting with excitons in the semiconductor. The team then constructed a mathematical model of coupled oscillators to explain their data. From this, they calculated the exciton-plasmon coupling strength to be 8 millielectron volts, which implies that it takes roughly 250 femtoseconds for a plasmon to transform into an exciton. This conversion time could be shortened by a factor of 5 or so by optimizing the device, but in general, all hybrid structures will have this basic coupling, Lienau says. “The work is beautiful in both its scientific detail and thoroughness and also in its potential impact,” says Kobus Kuipers of the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics (AMOLF) in Amsterdam. Although this system essentially converts plasmons into excitons, it could run the other way if an electric current or second laser pumped excitons into the semiconductor. So Kuipers says this detailed study will directly benefit those working to amplify plasmon signals for devices as well as researchers developing a plasmon laser, sometimes called a SPASER. Michael Schirber is a freelance science writer in Lyon, France.
Planting Seeds and Bulbs from Seed Many garden plants are propagated from seed and good germination is encouraged by providing the seeds with the best conditions. Moisture and air must be present in the propagating medium (whether soil or a special compost) and the temperatures must be suitable. Very high temperatures are seldom necessary. Most garden and greenhouse sown seeds need temperatures of 50-60°F (10-16°C) in which to germinate. Some seeds, notably those of tomatoes, cucumbers, melons and tropical plants need much higher temperatures. In early spring and in autumn the garden soil is normally damp. Later in spring and in summer insufficient moisture can lead to poor germination. This condition may be remedied by watering seed drills before sowing, the seeds being sown on the wet surface. Straight seed rows are obtained by the use of a garden line or a length of straight wood. The sowing of seeds in a cold frame is largely the same as for outdoor sowings. The soil mixture in frames is usually one well suited to good germination. In early spring the frame sash should be set on the frame at least a week before sowings are carried out. The covering of the frame in this way traps any available sun heat and the frame bed is warmed and dried. Where seeds are to be sown on ground given cloche protection warm the soil by placing the cloches in early spring. Seed rows in frames and under cloches may be set quite closely together so that maximum use is made of the surface area. If you water protected seed rows before germination use a very fine rose. In the greenhouse seeds are generally sown in receptacles. For some specialized sowings and for limited sowings clay seed pans are often used. Pots, now offered in a wide range of materials, are most useful for those plants which resent the root disturbances which occur when pricking out seedlings raised in boxes or pans. New clay receptacles should be soaked in water for several hours before being used. Used wooden boxes should be washed in mild disinfectant. Where the sowing is made in a seed box some compost is placed in the box, firmed with the fingers and levelled with a ruler or strip of wood to within 12mm (0.5in) of the top. A wooden presser simplifies this task. The compost is then watered thoroughly, using a very fine rose on the can, and set aside to drain. The seed is then sown thinly on the moist surface. Large seeds are spaced at 2.5cm (1in) or so apart. The seeds are normally covered after sowing by sieving a 6mm (0.5in) layer of the compost over them. Sowings in pans and pots are carried out in the same way. The containers are then covered with a sheet of glass on which a sheet of brown paper is laid. The glass prevents evaporation and lessens the need for further watering. The paper provides dark conditions. Bulbs from seed Where a quantity of bulbs of one kind is required the most economical means of raising them is from seed. This applies to wild species and not to named varieties which do not come true to color from seed. Patience is also required for some bulbs require several years to mature to flowering size. In general the seed is best sown as soon as ripe, either in seed trays or in pans, and placed in a cold frame, artificial heat not usually being necessary to germinate seed of most hardy bulbs. Use a well-drained seed compost, sow thinly, and just cover the seed with a fine layer of sifted compost. Keep moist and cool. The seed of some bulbous plants, such as the bluebell, Scilla nutans, and dwarf narcissi for naturalizing purposes may be scattered on the soil or grass in summer where it is to flower, as soon as it is ripe. Once established the sapphire-lavender, Crocus tomasinianus, from Dalmatia, will seed itself happily, as will the grape hyacinth and hardy cyclamen. The Mexican tiger flower Tigridia pavonia, will do likewise in sheltered gardens in full sun and a well-drained soil. One of the easiest of the lilies to raise from seed is Lilium regale, which will usually start to produce its imposing, glorious fragrant trumpets in three years from the time of sowing. Here again the seed should be sown as soon as ripe in pans in a cold frame and when the seedlings are large enough to handle they should be pricked out into boxes. Grow them on in a frame until the bulbs are large enough to plant out permanently. Many colorful tulip species may also be raised from seed, but these may take four or five years to reach flowering size. Seed growing methods
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Describe in words the graph of each of these curves below. Include in your description the shape, along with other possible relevant information such as length, width, and center points. a. Y = 3X2 b. (X-1)2 + (Y-8)2 = 16 c. (X+2)2 + (Y-4)2 = 36 d. Y = X2 - X First, learn how to represent exponentiation, that is, how to show something is being raised to a power when writing an equation. The symbol ^ is used, as illustrated in my red editing above. Originally Posted by LisaAnn_86 Now, do you realise that: 1. is the standard equation for a parabola. Do you know what a parabola looks like and what important features its graph has? 2. is the standard equation for a circle. Do you know what important features the graph of a circle has? If the answer to any of my questions is no, then you need to go back to your class notes and textbook and do some serious revision. If you answered yes to all of my questions, then I really don't understand what your problem is. Are you havng trouble finding the important features? If so, then please state clearly what it is you can't find.
Conditions InDepth: Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) AUD is a spectrum of alcohol-related issues that include alcohol misuse, abuse, and dependency. It is not solely characterized by the amount of alcohol that is consumed, but rather the effects drinking habits have on social, physical, and mental health.AUD includes: - Binge drinking—The most common pattern of misuse in the US. Personal harm, and unintended injury and death are the most common problems associated with binge drinking. Despite its dangers, binge drinking typically does not lead to abuse or dependence. - Alcohol abuse—A pattern of drinking that continues even though it affects relationships, jobs, or family life. - Alcohol dependence—Marked by cravings to drink. These cravings may be accompanied by withdrawal symptoms when drinking is stopped. CausesThe specific cause of AUD is unknown. It often develops because of a complex combination of factors such as: - Family history - Altered brain chemistry that affects how alcohol is processed by the body - Problem drinking behaviors learned from family and friends - Mood and anxiety disorders - Peer and social pressures - Emotional stress More from Beliefnet Improving parent-adolescent sexual communication has been noted as one factor that could help to encourage adolescents to practice safer sex behavior. This study found that sexual communication with parents plays a small protective role in safer sex behavior among adolescents. Celiac Disease May Increase the Risk of Bone Fractures Music May Improve Sleep Quality in Adults with Insomnia CPAP May Help Older Adults with Obstructive Sleep Apnea
Disproportionation happens when an electron from one atom is taken by another one, making two different chemicals. It is the opposite of symproportionation, which is the giving of electrons from one atom to another atom, It makes one chemical from two different chemicals. Example of disproportionation[change \| change source] Sodium hypochlorite (household bleach) reacts with itself when it is dried. One atom gives two electrons away to two other atoms. The first atom becomes sodium chlorate, while the other two that got the electrons becomes sodium chloride. 3 NaClO → 2 NaCl + NaClO3 Example of symproportionation[change \| change source] Ferric ions react with iron metal. Two ferric ions give two electrons (one electron for each atom) to one iron atom. The ferric ion becomes a ferrous ion. The iron also becomes a ferrous ion. 2 Fe3+ + Fe → 3 Fe2+
A plume of Saharan dust spanned the Mediterranean Sea in late January 2013. Extending roughly 1,110 kilometers (700 miles), the plume stretched from the coast of Libya to southern Italy and mingled with clouds in the north. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image on January 21. The dust plumes were translucent but thick enough to remain discernible across the Mediterranean. This plume followed days of intermittent dust storm activity off the coast of Libya. NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE MODIS Rapid Response. Caption by Michon Scott. - Terra - MODIS
On 22 June 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Confident that the Blitzkrieg was invincible, the German high command expected to overrun most of the European portion of the U.S.S.R. in a matter of weeks, crushing the Soviets' ability to resist and securing German mastery of Europe. Initially successful on all fronts, the German invasion reached deep into the Soviet Union throughout the summer of 1941. The Soviets, however, used their large population and abundant resources to constantly field new forces, replacing the millions of men lost. Although often poorly equipped and inexpertly led, the Soviet soldiers learned to fiercely resist the invaders as they defended Mother Russia. By autumn, the Germans were approaching many key cities in the Soviet Union: Len ingrad, Moscow, Kharkov, and Rostov, but German reserves were dwindling and the bad weather of autumn was rapidly approaching. Operation Typhoon: In September the German High Command decided to launch a final, decisive offensive for the year to capture Moscow and break the Red Army--Operation Typhoon. Gathering forces from across the entire front, the Germans launched their offensive in early October. The Soviets did not expect a German offensive so late in the season and were taken by surprise. The Soviet front line was quickly shattered and surrounded, with over 600,000 men taken prisoner in pockets at Vyazma and Bryansk. While the German infantry cleared the pockets, the panzers raced towards Moscow. However, the Germans were slowed both by the desperate resistance of the remaining Soviet forces in the defense lines built before Moscow and by the weather. The autumn rains had started by mid-October, and they quickly turned the dirt roads to mud, greatly restricting Ger man mobility. Even so, by the end of October the Germans had captured Mozhaisk, the last major town on the direct road to Moscow, and were approaching Tula on the southern route to the Soviet capital. At their closest, the Germans were now only 40 miles from Moscow. In November the rains slackened, and the Germans would have a short period of clear weather before the Russian winter began. However, the German forces had no reserves left, and their strength was dropping, while fresh, new Soviet forces were arriving at the front. The Germans resumed the offensive in mid-November. In front of Moscow, the Germans were stalled as the Soviets launched repeated counterattacks. In the south the Germans, unable to take Tula, bypassed the city. In the north the Germans slowly inched forward to the gates of Moscow. By 5 December, the Germans were halted along the entire front. Exhausted and demoralized, the German forces had failed to take their objective. The next day, amidst the snows and intense cold of the onset of winter, the reinforced Soviets launched their winter counteroffensive. Please report any problems with this page (bfm/typhoon.html).
The Korean Peninsula is a peninsula located in East Asia. It extends southwards for about 1100km (700miles) from continental Asia into the Pacific Ocean and is surrounded by the Sea of Japan (East Sea) to the east, and the Yellow Sea (known in Korea as West Sea) to the west, the Korea Strait connecting the first two bodies of water. See main article: Names of Korea. The peninsula's names, in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, all share the same origin, that being Joseon, the old name of Korea under the Joseon Dynasty and Gojoseon even longer before that. In North Korea's standard language, the peninsula is called Chosŏn Pando, while in China, as well as in Singapore and Malaysia (where Chinese is a common language) it is called Cháoxiǎn Bàndǎo (朝鲜半岛/朝鮮半島). Hong Kong and Macau (the two special administrative regions of China) follow the South Korean naming . In Japan, it is either Chōsenhantō (Kanji: Japanese: 朝鮮半島 / Hiragana: ちょうせんはんとう) or Kanhantō (South Korean-specific only) (Kanji: Japanese: 韓半島 / Hiragana: かんはんとう). In Vietnam, it is called Bán đảo Triều Tiên. Meanwhile, in South Korea, it is called Hanbando, referring to the Samhan, specifically the Three Kingdoms of Korea, not the ancient confederacies in the southern Korean Peninsula. They both use "Korea" as part of their official English names, which is a name that comes from the Goryeo (or Koryŏ, in North Korea) dynasty (고려/Korean: 高麗). See main article: History of Korea. Until the end of World War II, Korea was a single political entity whose territory roughly coincided with the Korean Peninsula. In August 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Imperial Japan, as a result of an agreement with the United States, and liberated Korea north of the 38th parallel. U.S. forces subsequently moved into the south. By 1948, as a product of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, Korea was divided into two regions, with separate governments. Both claimed to be the legitimate government of all of Korea, and neither accepted the border as permanent. The conflict escalated into open warfare when North Korean forces—supported by the Soviet Union and China—moved into the south on 25 June 1950. Since the Armistice Agreement ended the Korean War in 1953, the northern section of the peninsula has been governed by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, while the southern portion has been governed by the Republic of Korea. The northern boundaries for the Korean Peninsula are commonly (and tacitly) taken to coincide with today's political borders between North Korea and its northern neighbors, China (1416km (880miles) along the provinces of Jilin and Liaoning) and Russia (19km (12miles)). These borders are formed naturally by the rivers Amnok (also called Yalu River) and Duman. Taking this definition, the Korean Peninsula (including its islands) has an area of 220847km². The Korean Peninsula has a temperate climate with comparatively fewer typhoons than other countries in East Asia. Due to the peninsula's position, it has a unique climate influenced from Siberia in the north, the Pacific Ocean in the east and the rest of Eurasia in the west. The peninsula has four distinct seasons: spring, summer, autumn and winter. As influence from Siberia weakens, temperatures begin to increase while the high pressure begins to move away. If the weather is abnormally dry, Siberia will have more influence on the peninsula leading to wintry weather such as snow. During June at the start of the summer, there tends to be a lot of rain due to the cold and wet air from the Sea of Okhotsk and the hot and humid air from the Pacific Ocean combining. When these fronts combine, it leads to a so called rainy season with often cloudy days with rain, which is sometimes very heavy. The hot and humid winds from the south west blow causing an increasing amount of humidity and this leads to the fronts moving towards Manchuria in China and thus there is less rain and this is known as midsummer; temperatures can exceed 30°C daily at this time of year. Usually, high pressure is heavily dominant during autumn leading to clear conditions. Furthermore, temperatures remain high but the humidity becomes relatively low. The weather becomes increasingly dominated by Siberia during winter and the jet stream moves further south causing a drop in temperature. This season is relatively dry with some snow falling at times. See main article: Geography of Korea. The Korean Peninsula is located in East Asia. To the northwest, the Amnok River separates the peninsula from China and to the northeast, the Duman River separates it from China and Russia. The peninsula is surrounded by the Yellow Sea to the west, the East China Sea and Korea Strait to the south, and the Sea of Japan to the east. Notable islands include Jeju Island, Ulleung Island, Dokdo. The southern and western parts of the peninsula have well-developed plains, while the eastern and northern parts are mountainous. The highest mountain in Korea is Mount Paektu (2,744 m), through which runs the border with China. The southern extension of Mount Paektu is a highland called Gaema Heights. This highland was mainly raised during the Cenozoic orogeny and partly covered by volcanic matter. To the south of Gaema Gowon, successive high mountains are located along the eastern coast of the peninsula. This mountain range is named Baekdudaegan. Some significant mountains include Mount Sobaek or Sobaeksan (1,439 m), Mount Kumgang (1,638 m), Mount Seorak (1,708 m), Mount Taebaek (1,567 m), and Mount Jiri (1,915 m). There are several lower, secondary mountain series whose direction is almost perpendicular to that of Baekdudaegan. They are developed along the tectonic line of Mesozoic orogeny and their directions are basically northwest. Unlike most ancient mountains on the mainland, many important islands in Korea were formed by volcanic activity in the Cenozoic orogeny. Jeju Island, situated off the southern coast, is a large volcanic island whose main mountain Mount Halla or Hallasan (1950 m) is the highest in South Korea. Ulleung Island is a volcanic island in the Sea of Japan, whose composition is more felsic than Jeju-do. The volcanic islands tend to be younger, the more westward. Because the mountainous region is mostly on the eastern part of the peninsula, the main rivers tend to flow westwards. Two exceptions are the southward-flowing Nakdong River and Seomjin River. Important rivers running westward include the Amnok River, the Chongchon River, the Taedong River, the Han River, the Geum River, and the Yeongsan River. These rivers have vast flood plains and provide an ideal environment for wet-rice cultivation. The southern and southwestern coastlines of the peninsula form a well-developed ria coastline, known as Dadohae-jin in Korean. Its convoluted coastline provides mild seas, and the resulting calm environment allows for safe navigation, fishing, and seaweed farming. In addition to the complex coastline, the western coast of the Korean Peninsula has an extremely high tidal amplitude (at Incheon, around the middle of the western coast. It can get as high as 9 m). Vast tidal flats have been developing on the south and west coastlines. See main article: Wildlife of Korea. Animal life of the Korean Peninsula includes a considerable number of bird species and native freshwater fish. Native or endemic species of the Korean Peninsula include Korean hare, Korean water deer, Korean field mouse, Korean brown frog, Korean pine and Korean spruce. The Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) with its forest and natural wetlands is a unique biodiversity spot, which harbours eighty two endangered species. There are also approximately 3,034 species of vascular plants.
For the first time in 90 years, the birth of the Arabian oryx was witnessed at the King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Royal Reserve. This is seen as a monumental achievement after years of protecting the endangered species in captivity, prior to their reintroduction to the wild. With the birth of the new calf, Saudi Arabia is hopeful in seeing an increase in Arabian oryxes in the wild. The Arabian oryx is one of Saudi Arabia's endangered species currently benefiting from preservation efforts. In 1972, the species was declared extinct in the wild having witnessed a significant drop in numbers due to loss of habitat and poaching. The Kingdom's goal is to reintroduce endangered species into the wild in order to preserve its natural heritage and biodiversity. As part of conservation efforts, this includes preserving the natural habitats of respective species, while designating protected areas such as King Salman Royal Reserve. Simultaneously, protected areas are seeing an increase in greenery as part of the Kingdom's Saudi Green Initiative. In March, a team led by the University of Sydney had the pleasure to analyze the Arabian oryx DNA, in order to better inform breeding programs on how best to look after the iconic species. The study has also been published on the "Royal Society Open Science" journal. Thus far, the university has discovered that Arabian oryxes are quite capable of adapting to changing environments and maintaining good health, but also recommended new strategies in preserving the genes of the species' ancestral groups. In addition, the researchers also recommended that Gulf nations should start storing DNA samples as added protective measures. The samples are to be kept in biobanks as an additional mean of preventing another extinction of the Arabian oryx in the wild.
The Reading Like a Historian curriculum engages students in historical inquiry. Each lesson revolves around a central historical question and features a set of primary documents designed for groups of students with a range of reading skills. This curriculum teaches students how to investigate historical questions by employing reading strategies such as sourcing, contextualizing, corroborating, and close reading. Instead of memorizing historical facts, students evaluate the trustworthiness of multiple perspectives on historical issues and learn to make historical claims backed by documentary evidence. To learn more about how to use Reading Like a Historian lessons, watch these videos about how teachers use these materials in their classrooms. Click herefor a complete list of Reading Like a Historian lessons, and click here for a complete list of materials available in Spanish.
Like wings, eyes have evolved multiple times in different lineages of animals. According to a new study, humans and cephalopods evolved the same eyes through tweaks to the same gene -- even though their eyes arose independently of ours. Many genes are responsible for making the eye. One holds instructions for making light-sensitive pigments, another provides information for making the lens, and then there are genes that orchestrate it all, telling various parts when and where they need to be assembled. These are called master control genes, and for eyes, the most important one Pax-6. The ancestral Pax-6 gene controlled the formation of a very simple eye: a few light-sensing cells working together in a primitive organism living in the Cambrian period. Over time, the number of instructions that arose from a single Pax-6 gene increased, with today’s more complex version directing the formation of compound eyes in insects as well as the “camera-type eye” found in all vertebrates. That is, an enclosed structure with the iris and lens, a liquid interior, and an image-sensing retina. Cephalopods -- which include octopus, cuttlefish, and squid -- have a camera eye similar to ours, even though they belong to a different clade altogether. So, a team led by Atsushi Ogura from Nagahama Institute of Bio-Science and Technology in Japan examined Pax-6 variations in the pygmy squid (Idiosepius paradoxus) and Japanese spear squid (Loligo bleekeri). Specifically, they analyzed RNA splicing. That’s when a piece of the code is removed and the ends are stitched together. In vertebrate eyes, developmental processes are controlled by four Pax-6 splicing variants, with each influencing different genes downstream. They found five types of Pax-6 splicing variants used to create the camera eye in cephalopods. They acquired their Pax-6 splicing variants completely independently of vertebrates, though they used these variants in the same way to create a very similar camera eye. Pretty remarkable considering how we last shared a common ancestor 500 million years ago. The work was published in Nature Scientific Reports in March. [Via The Conversation]
It is closely related to qualities such as character, resilience, grit, etc. It is defined as: A personality trait which determines, in large part, how people respond to challenge, stress and pressure, irrespective of their circumstances. Mental Toughness is important and valuable for everyone at two levels. Firstly, it explains why people behave the way they do. Personality can be defined as an individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting – personality can explain individual differences and how individuals act in to specific events. The output from many personality measures and psychometric instruments is designed to examine specific psychiatric behaviour i.e. the acting dimension. That is perfectly reasonable and there is little doubt that this is a good and valuable purpose for these measures. But it is different from MTQ assessments in important ways. Mental Toughness is a personality trait which describes mindset. It examines what is in the mind of the individual to explain why they behave the way they do. So there is an obvious link between mindset and behaviour – this is especially important for young people in understanding who they are and how they can realise their potential in the way they behave. You could describe mindset as both the pre-cursor to behaviour and the explanation for much behaviour. Secondly, research and case studies from education and the third sector show that Mental Toughness is a major factor in most of the important outcomes for individuals: Performance – explaining up to 25% of the variation in performance in individuals. MT people deliver more, work more purposefully, show greater commitment to purpose and are more competitive. This translates into better academic or social action achievement, personal development, and better attendance. Wellbeing – more contented. MT people show better stress management, willingness to participate, better attendance, are less likely to develop mental health issues, sleep better and are less prone to bullying. They can take stressors in their stride. Positive Behaviour – more engaged. MT people are more positive, more “can do”, respond positively to change and adversity, show better attendance, contribute to a positive culture and a stronger focus on the opportnuities in the world of employment. Openness to Learning – more aspirational. MT people are more ambitious, prepared to manage more risk – seeing opportunity for learning everywhere and understanding the need for a transferable skillset in preparedness for the world of employment and manage transition better – crucially important in the 21st century. These translate into real and tangible benefits for organisations and individuals. Crucially all can be developed through targeted coaching, training and development. AQR and Mental Toughness Partners have a wealth of experience in this area and have developed mental toughness development programs specific to the education sector. Benefits of Developing Mental Toughness in Students One of the greatest challenges facing society today is that of developing young people who are the future generators of wealth so that they can play a full and productive part in the economic and social development of the world they inhabit. This need is particularly acute in the West where the old order is fast disappearing. The purpose of education and youth work is not only to ensure that young people are skilled and qualified. It must also prepare young people with attributes and qualities that enable them to apply what they learn in a challenging, changing and often stressful world. A number of initiatives have recently emerged which all have the same goal – to prepare young people for life in a world that demands resilience, confidence, grit, tenacity and commitment in addition to vocational and academic skills. Possible the most important of these is Mental Toughness which, arguably, embraces most, if not all, of the other initiatives in producing the most comprehensive and enduring approach. There are many issues from the perspective of students. Developing Mental Toughness in young people and students will assist them with: Transition – both on entry to secondary school from junior school and preparation for life after school (work or further education). Settling into a new school quickly and effectively is a major determinant of success for a long time. Performance – mainly exam performance but it can embrace doing good quality course work, assignments and even achieving in non-core activities such as sports. It can be focused broadly on year groups or on specific groups – e.g. economically or socially disadvantaged, poor attenders and even “gifted and talented” who find school boring. Well-Being – simply being contented, enjoying school life, dealing effectively with bullying behaviour. Positive Behaviour– volunteering, engaging with core and non-core activities, attendance, engagement with student life, developing peer relationships (friends) classroom behaviour. Employability – preparation of mindset for finding a job or continuing onto further study or vocational training centres. In Further and Higher Education we also see: Retention – reducing drop out from programmes and courses - Mental Toughness Package for Young People - Mental Toughness Coaching Package for Young People - UCanPass Program for Schools and Educational Bodies
In early April 1536, Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada led a military expedition from the coastal city of Santa Marta deep into the interior of what is today modern Colombia. With roughly eight hundred Spaniards and numerous native carriers and black slaves, the Jiménez expedition was larger than the combined forces under Hernando Cortés and Francisco Pizarro. Over the course of the one-year campaign, nearly three-quarters of Jiménez’s men perished, most from illness and hunger. Yet, for the 179 survivors, the expedition proved to be one of the most profitable campaigns of the sixteenth century. Unfortunately, the history of the Spanish conquest of Colombia remains virtually unknown. Through a series of firsthand primary accounts, translated into English for the first time, Invading Colombia reconstructs the compelling tale of the Jiménez expedition, the early stages of the Spanish conquest of Muisca territory, and the foundation of the city of Santa Fé de Bogotá. We follow the expedition from the Canary Islands to Santa Marta, up the Magdalena River, and finally into Colombia’s eastern highlands. These highly engaging accounts not only challenge many current assumptions about the nature of Spanish conquests in the New World, but they also reveal a richly entertaining, yet tragic, tale that rivals the great conquest narratives of Mexico and Peru. Related collections and offers About the Author Table of ContentsContents List of Maps and Tables Preface and Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: The Other Andean Conquest 2. Three Capitulaciones: Don Pedro Fernández de Lugo and the Governorship of Santa Marta 3. By Land and by Sea: From Santa Marta to La Tora 4. Into the Highlands: From La Tora to Muisca Territory 5. Treasure, Torture, and the Licenciado’s Return
Let’s say you have some data about your company and want to create a database and tables to store and analyse this data. Th employees salary information are in the Salary table and employees information in employees table. id is the primary key for the Salary table and employee_id is the primary key for the employees table. And employee_id in the Salary table is a foreign key for the employee table. Creating a Database in PostgreSQL – What is a database ? A database is an organized collection of structured information, or data, typically stored electronically in a computer system. A database is usually controlled by a database management system (DBMS). Together, the data and the DBMS, along with the applications that are associated with them, are referred to as a database system, often shortened to just database. – Oracle Let’s create a database Life with data (lwd) to store both employee and salary table. To create a database in SQL, we use the CREATE DATABASE statement. Open the pgAdmin tool that we installed previously. You can find the instruction for installing PostgreSQL and pgAdmin from here – How to use pgAdmin from here – pgAdmin Open the pgAdmin > PostgreSQL 14 > Databases > postgres > right click on postgres > Query Tool Then write – CREATE DATABASE lwd; This statement creates a database on your server named lwd using default postgres settings. Once you execute the query, right click and refresh the Databases on the left navigation, you will see that lwd database is created. Connect to the lwd database – Now that we have successfully created the lwd database but before we create any table we have to make sure that we are connected to this database and not the default postgres database. - Close the query tool by click x on top right, no need to save the previous query. - In the object browser right click on lwd and select Query Tool. - In the top right you will see lwd/postgres@PostgreSQL 14. - Now, any code you execute will be applied to the lwd database. Create Tables in PostgreSQL – What is a Table? A table is a grid of rows and columns that stores data. Each rows holds a collection of columns, and each column contains data of a specified type: most commonly, numbers, characters, and dates. When you create a table, you assign a name to each column (sometimes referred to as a field or attribute) and assign it a data type. The Data type of a column determine what kind of data can be stored in that column. If you enter a text data into a date column then you will get an error. CREATE TABLE Statement – To create a table in a database we use the CREATE TABLE statement followed by the table name. CREATE TABLE table_name ( col1 datatype, col2 datatype, col3 datatype, .... ); Let’s create both the salary table. Salary Table – CREATE TABLE Salary ( id bigserial, employee_id int, amount int, pay_date date ); The id column in this table is bigserial data type. It is a special integer data type that auto-increments every time you add a new row to the table. the first row gets the value of 1, second row 2, and so on. The employee_id and amount is of int type, sort for integer. And the pay_date is a date (year, month, day) type. To insert text in a column we can use char(n) for fixed length string and varchar(n) for variable length string where n is the length of the string. Later we will talk more about various data types and constraints in a table. But for now, we will keep it simple. Make sure to follow our blog for the latest updates. Once you execute the above code and right click refresh on lwd database, salary table will be inside the lwd > schemas > public > Tables > salary. INSERT statement – often when we work with large number of rows, the easiest method is to import data from a csv file or from other databases directly into table, which I will explain in the upcoming posts. But for now we will learn how to do it manually. To insert data into a table we use the INSERT Statement. INSERT INTO table_name (col1, col2, col3, ...) VALUES (value1, value2, value3, ...); Let’s insert data into the salary table. INSERT INTO salary (employee_id, amount, pay_date) VALUES (1, 9000, '2017/03/31'), (2, 6000, '2017/03/31'), (3, 10000, '2017/03/31'), (1, 7000, '2017/02/28'), (2, 6000, '2017/02/28'), (3, 8000, '2017/02/28'); If you run the above query, the salary table will be created. After the INSERT INTO we write the table name in which we want to insert the data followed by column names inside the parenthesis. In the next row we use the VALUES keyword followed by the data to insert into each column in each row. We did not inserted the values for the id column as it is bigserial type and the values gets automatically inserted for each rows as we discussed before. To confirm that everything worked correctly, you can run the following sql query to see the data. SELECT * FROM salary We have successfully created the database and the salary table. Now go ahead and create the employee table yourself. Related Posts – - How to install PostgreSQL and pgAdmin on Windows. - How to install PostgreSQL and pgAdmin on Mac. - How to use pgAdmin for PostgreSQL. - INSERT INTO – Add new record in a table. - Copy Table columns without rows in SQL. - Copy Rows from One Table into Another.
Composting is a good way to increase garden productivity: Part I Improving soil structure is one factor that increases garden productivity. This can be accomplished in several ways. One of the best methods is to rototill compost directly into the soil. In fact, compost – a mixture of partially decomposed plant material and other wastes – solves many soil problems. Not only does composting improve soil structure, it also releases plant nutrients and plays a role in recycling. In most instances, improving garden soil is necessary for successful plant growth through maturity. The ideal garden soil is loose, with a high water-holding capacity and adequate drainage. Composting creates these soil conditions. Decomposing compost releases plant nutrients slowly. However, usually this material will not provide the nitrogen crops require. Organic gardeners solve this problem by adding a combination of compost and manure to produce good yields. In this case, additional fertilizers are unnecessary. Recycling comes into play because gardeners make compost from garden wastes, reducing burdens of trash disposal. Most organic materials decompose, but some aren’t suited for a compost pile. Usable organic waste consists of leaves, grass clippings, straw and nonwoody plant trimmings. Any tree branches bigger than 1/4 inch in diameter must be chopped or shredded. Vegetable scraps, coffee grounds and eggshells are also suitable for compost. On the other hand, organic materials that pose health problems and those that draw rodents (meat, eggs, dairy products and grease) should not be put in a compost pile. Another problem with compost piles is the presence of weed seeds and disease organisms. Compost piles generate heat often reaching 150°F. If these harmful organisms are located at the edge of the pile, they may cause problems. The balance of carbon and nitrogen is responsible for the decomposition of organic waste. Carbon is used by microorganisms for energy, while nitrogen provides protein synthesis. The proportion of these two elements used by bacteria averages about 30 parts carbon to one part nitrogen. This creates the perfect balance for bacteria to do its work. Because an imbalance frequently occurs, gardeners add tree leaves and grass clippings to speed up composting. A mixture of one-half brown tree leaves (40:1 ratio) can be used with one-half grass clippings (20:1 ratio) to create a working pile (30:1 ratio). The different sizes and textures of content create a well-drained, well-aerated pile. Think in terms of half high-carbon and half low-carbon materials when creating a compost pile. A pile too high in carbon will take longer to break down, and one too high in nitrogen will smell like ammonia gas. These conditions result in decomposition, but the process will take longer. Locating a compost pile inside some kind of structure saves space, hastens decomposition and keeps yards and gardens looking neat. A structure can be constructed from a variety of materials, using any kind of design. Holding units, especially suited to yard leaves, are simple containers that store materials until they break down. These units are especially suited to nonwoody materials such as grass clippings, crop wastes, garden weeds and leaves. Decomposition may take as long as six months to two years. Chopped or shredded and wet and dry materials, maintained with proper moisture levels, will hasten the composting process. Of course, adding additional materials from time to time will vary the stages of decomposition. The best compost forms at the bottom of the pile, with the partially decomposed material near the top. Once the compost at the bottom has completed the process, it can be used. Turning units, used to build and turn active compost piles, allow wastes to be mixed for aeration on a regular basis. This provides bacteria with oxygen for breaking down materials. However, turning systems require waste preparation and frequent maintenance. Efficiently using these units means composting in batches. Stockpile materials until bins are full. Monitor bins, turning materials when temperatures peak (90°F. to 140°F.) and begin to fall, about four to seven days after construction. Turn again when temperatures peak again. Compost in these bins will be ready in four to six weeks. Compost piles should be located in partial sunlight, but should not be located where neighbors or passersby might be offended. Don’t miss Part II next month.
OR WAIT null SECS In 2008 the rostrum from an ancient warship was recovered from the Mediterranean Sea near Sicily. In 2008 the rostrum from an ancient warship was recovered from the Mediterranean Sea near Sicily. The rostrum was bronze with a wooden core and was used to attack and ram enemy ships in the First Punic War, a conflict between Ancient Rome and Carthage. To establish its origin and condition, samples of black and brown wood were recently extracted and examined using sulphur K-edge X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS).1 GC–MS analysis revealed that the rostrum was constructed from pine, while a derivatized extract of black wood showed that it had been waterproofed with pine pitch. The examination also revealed a large amount of sulphur, about 65% of the endogenous sulphur consisted of thiols and disulphides. Elemental sulphur was approximately 2% and 7% in black and brown wood, respectively, while pyritic sulphur was about 12% and 6%. The presence of sulphur in the wood means that particular care must be taken to preserve the rostrum. The team concluded that the 2300 years of war, sinking and marine burial followed by decreased oxygen conditions, bacterial colonization, sulphate reduction and mobilization of transition metals had produced pyrite and great sulphur functionality. 1. Eugenio Caponetti et al., Analytical Chemistry, 84(10), 4419–4428 (2012).
Children learn best when they: - Make choices and contribute to learning experiences - Share their opinions and diverse experiences and discuss their learning - Have positive role models - Learn in a responsive and supportive social environment - Learn through multi-sensory experiences - Participate actively in experiences that engage them emotionally, physically, cognitively and socially Imaginative Play – The children learn to play together, to share, to use their imaginations and to expand their vocabulary. Children will often develop social skills through this type of play as they act out different situations and negotiate with each other. This type of play encourages children to express their feelings and engage in imaginary situations such as doctors and nurses and going to the post office. The children build on their knowledge of the real world through this type of play and develop thoughts and ideas about the community / world around them. Reading / Picture Books -The children learn to listen when a story is being read. Acting out or reading stories and describing incidents from their own experiences helps to develop their language. Storytelling is an activity, which fosters the enjoyment of books, and can be a motivating factor in learning to read. Storytelling also encourages a positive relationship between adults and children and can often provide children with new ideas about the world they live in. Books develop vocabulary and often other skills such as counting, colour recognition and understanding of various topics and concepts. Music -The children enjoy singing songs, using instruments and listening to a wide variety of music, from rhymes to classical and pop music. This helps to stimulate their awareness and enjoyment of music and gives them an opportunity to use music as a form of expression. Songs also encourage language development and often include mathematical/ intellectual concepts such as counting, colours, places and time and therefore are a fun way for children to learn new information at their own pace. Music also encourages lots of physical movement or can help children relax or sleep. Creative Play – Children are introduced to activities such as painting, colouring, sticking, cutting, play dough, building sculptures etc. This allows the children to develop their creative and pre-writing skills. All these activities give the child a different medium to express their individual feelings, thoughts and emotions. Children will naturally learn about colours, numbers, weight, density and balance all while having great fun making a mess! Sand & Water / Messy Play – We provide a range of sensory activities, which most of the children love. While messy play is great fun, it helps develop manipulative, early science and pre-math’s skills. By exploring and experimenting with sand, water and other materials such as rice, paper, pasta or leaves children learn about volume, quantity, texture, weight, density and form. Many children can express their emotions and feelings when playing with sand and water as well as finding it a very relaxing and soothing activity. Play Dough – This is not just a fun activity for children; it can also help strengthen muscles in their hands and develop hand eye co-ordination. Once again this is an activity where the children’s imagination can be encouraged and developed. Play dough also allows the child to manipulate the material, which may relieve such emotions as anger/frustration. The children often also enjoy learning to make the playdough, an early science experiment. Construction – Jigsaws, building blocks, Lego, shape sorters and so on, provide children with an engaging activity during which pre-reading, pre-writing and hand eye co-ordination are developed. The development of reasoning and problem solving is also developed and encourages fine motor skills. Matching, sorting and pairing are all early skills developed through play. Energetic Play – Organised energetic activities, such as running, jumping, dancing, cycling and skipping, will be a part of the curriculum and encourages large motor movement. As well as aiding physical growth, such activities can be a learning opportunity and a great reliever of built-up energy. Children also need to be active throughout the day for their physical health and to develop skills in controlling their body by taking risks and developing confidence in their abilities as they develop. Montessori Programme – We offer a range of Montessori materials in each of our pre-school rooms. Usually, at least one of our Pre-school teachers is trained in the Montessori method. We combine these resources into our play-based rooms to ensure children have free choice of a large range of activities and materials. Montessori’s method is structured around, and promotes, the child’s natural, self-initiated impulse to become absorbed in an environment and to learn from it. These experiences cover areas such as practical life, sensorial, maths, language and culture. Everyday Activities – The routine and timetable of each room is important to the children and is also part of the curriculum. Arrival should be engaging and encourage children to feel welcome (a fun way for children to register their attendance is a good idea). The activities for the day should be clear to all children (picture-based timetable) and they should be involved and aware of transitions from one activity to another. Meal times are a great opportunity for social interactions and education about healthy habits. Handwashing, toileting and clean up can all be used as fun learning activities for children to develop skills.
Ebola virus disease: Prevention and risks On this page - How to prevent Ebola virus disease - Risk of exposure to Ebola viruses - Health professionals and humanitarian aid workers How to prevent Ebola virus disease Ebola virus disease (EVD) is spread only through direct contact with the body fluids of an infected animal or person experiencing EVD symptoms. Transmission is not known to occur through casual contact (for example, sharing a seating area on public transportation or sitting in the same waiting room), or through the air. Adhering to personal protective measures whenever there is a possibility of exposure to the virus is very important in preventing EVD. Practice good hygiene If you are in a region where outbreaks of EVD are occurring or are known to occur, you are advised to maintain good hygiene practices, including frequent hand washing with soap and water. An alcohol-based hand sanitizer should be used when soap and water are not available. Avoid direct, unprotected contact In EVD-affected areas avoid direct contact with the body fluids and tissues of sick people, or those who have died from EVD or unknown illness, including their: - breast milk - vaginal fluid Avoid high-risk areas and activities In a region where outbreaks are occurring, avoid all potential places or activities that could result in exposure. This includes homes or facilities where sick people are being cared for without optimal infection control measures in place. Also avoid high-risk activities in EVD-affected areas such as: - unprotected direct contact with sick people - participation in unsafe burial practices - handling or eating animals (alive, sick or dead), including bushmeat If high-risk areas or activities cannot be avoided, the risk of exposure to the virus can be minimized by always using appropriate precautions, such as wearing masks, gloves, gowns and goggles. Avoid unprotected sexual activity It is important to avoid unprotected sexual activity with a sick person, even someone who may have recovered from the illness. Ebola viruses can persist for an extended period of time (months) in the semen of infected males, and transmission can occur through unprotected oral, vaginal or anal sex. It is recommended that condoms be used correctly and consistently for 12 months following infection with an Ebola virus. Follow safe burial practices Follow safe burial practices for people who have died of EVD or an unknown illness. Burial practices that involve direct, unprotected contact with the body of a person who died of EVD can contribute to the spread of EVD. If participating in burial practices, always use proper personal protective equipment (masks, gowns, gloves, goggles) and maintain good personal hygiene (frequent hand washing with soap and water or alcohol-based sanitizer). Avoid contact with wild animals Avoid contact with both live and dead wild animals (including their meat, body fluids and feces) because they could potentially be infected with an Ebola virus. Animals known to be a source of Ebola virus, include: - fruit bats - forest antelope No animals in Canada have been found to be naturally infected with an Ebola virus. Only infected animals pose a risk of EVD. There is currently no approved vaccine to prevent EVD. However, there are investigational Ebola virus vaccines that are being used under specific circumstances for outbreak control. This vaccine is not available or recommended for travellers or other Canadians living or working in EVD-affected areas who are not directly involved in outbreak control activities. This is due to the limited availability of these investigational vaccines and the fact that personal protective measures can be used to minimize the risk of exposure. Risk of exposure to Ebola viruses In Canada, the risk of exposure to a source of Ebola virus is extremely low. Specific occupational groups like laboratory and health care workers are at higher risk of exposure to a broad range of infectious diseases due to their work. As such, they take infection prevention and control precautions to reduce their risk of exposure. If a case of EVD were to occur in Canada, public health authorities would investigate and notify people potentially at risk of infection due to exposure to the infected individual. They would provide specific instructions to these individuals to make sure they are properly monitored and receive any medical care that may be required. The viruses that can cause EVD are naturally found in certain animals on the African continent. Some infected animals, like monkeys and gorillas, tend to become ill when infected while others, like fruit bats, may not. When people have direct contact with these animals, their body fluids or feces, they are at risk of getting infected. An infected person may spread EVD to others resulting in an outbreak. The impact of an outbreak can be limited to a specific small village or can occur over a large geographic area as was seen in the West African outbreak of EVD from 2014 to 2016. The actual risk to any one person depends on their activities in an EVD-affected area and whether they take appropriate precautions to prevent infection. These precautions include wearing gloves, gowns and other personal protective equipment. Potential sources of the virus include infected people, animals, and their body fluids or the body of a person or animal who died from EVD. Anything that may have come in contact with infected body fluids (e.g., linens, clothing, toilet, toiletries) or surfaces contaminated by these fluids, are also potential sources of the virus. People in an EVD-affected area who are at low risk of exposure to an Ebola virus include those with protected or only casual contact during all encounters with potential sources of the virus. Those who are at high risk of exposure include those with an unprotected, close contact during any encounter with a potential source of the virus. If you have recently returned from travel to an EVD-affected area and think you may be at risk of EVD due to an exposure please refer to health advice for travellers. Health professionals and humanitarian aid workers Health professionals and humanitarian aid workers in EVD-affected areas use enhanced precautions and receive training to minimize their risk of exposure. For more information, or if you are a health professional or humanitarian aid worker, consult the section for health professionals and humanitarian aid workers for in-depth information about prevention measures in a health care or field setting. 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As discussed in the book, individual drilling has an edge that choral drilling can never capture, but there are some ways to jazz up choral drilling too. Longer phrases or sentences are a bit of a mouthful so they can be chunked and built up, for example: ‘Have you’ – (students repeat) ‘Have you ever been’ – (students repeat) ‘Have you ever been to New York?’ – (students repeat) Backchaining – the same technique in reverse: ‘to New York?’ ‘ever been to New York?’ ‘Have you ever been to New York?’ For some inexplicable reason it is widely thought the teacher’s model is more accurate when backchaining. My experience agrees with this. Not only the rhythm and intonation, but the word stresses and schwas seem more natural and consistent. When dealing with longer phrases the chance for substitution immediately becomes apparent. Using the previous example one could easily substitute Chicago for New York, or Paris or wherever. In this way just a simple substitution can start to widen the scope of the drilling stage. What about individual words? Here another opportunity arises. Let’s take a simple example, cat. The teacher models cat, and the students repeat. Then dog etc. Solid, basic drilling. Now let’s add a tiny bit of context: the cat. Students also need to deal with the definite article, one of the most widely-used words in English, and not the easiest to pronounce. Or how about a cat, and some cats. Adding the indefinite article indicates the noun is countable, and we confirm this with the plural /s/ which is one of the three common plural endings. Dogs with /z/ is one of the others. Substitution opens up a whole new avenue of options. With verbs we may decide not to stop with the basic form, and to include the past form and past participle, for example take, plus took and taken, helping to reinforce the three main verb forms. Or we may wish to add collocations, take a photo, take a bath, take a walk, or even take five. The possibilities are endless. Obviously we can tailor-make the drilling to the surrounding classroom ecology. Drilling thus becomes not only pronunciation practice but knits into the whole fabric of the lesson and the course. When to use drilling in a lesson? Conventional wisdom has it that drilling be used after meaning is established. Not every student will have understood everything, but I feel the point is largely valid, so general understanding should come before drilling. And drilling is clearly a very controlled exercise so would usually come before more fluency-based activities. And it should blend with the ebb and flow of a lesson. So it’s a judgment call for each teacher, but nearer the start of the lesson than the end is my best answer. Some teachers may feel uncomfortable forcing the class to mimic their own form of English accent, perhaps even citing linguistic imperialism. This is a totally understandable reluctance, but consider the student who requests help with a forthcoming speech contest. What do you do? Model the speech. Many times. And what about pronunciation correction, what do you do? Model the correction. Drilling in all bar name. Teachers may rather use a CD/mp3 as the model, which is fine, though a little awkward, and you could even be accused of forcing the students to mimic the accent from the recording. Everyone has an accent. At the end of the day there is nothing like a live voice from a live person. If drilling really isn’t for you, then fair enough, it’s not critical, though I do feel you are missing a trick. Please leave any comment in the box below. Only a name (or nickname) is required, no need for an email address or website.
What is the common cold? The common cold and the flu are both respiratory illnesses that share similar symptoms. However, different viruses can cause the two conditions. The common cold is also medically known as a viral upper respiratory tract infection (nose, sinuses, voice box, and throat). It can be caused by several kinds of viruses. The rhinovirus the most common virus that causes colds. It can be attributed to causing approximately 30% – 40% of all adult colds. Since there are many other different viruses that can cause colds and new cold viruses also develop, the human body has not built up any resistance against them. This makes colds a frequent and recurring health problem in the world. Colds are more common in the fall and winter, but anyone can get them any time of year. On average adults can catch the cold 2-3 times a year. Children can have more episodes Many common colds resolve after 7-10 days. Others may recover quickly and others may experience prolonged cold symptoms. These conditions depend upon the kind of virus involved, immune system response and if there are other underlying health issues that may worsen the cold. How does the common cold spread? The common cold is contagious. Person to person transmission occurs when a healthy person comes to direct contact or there is a hand to hand interaction with an infected person. The virus can be spread through handshaking and touching an infected surface and then touching the eyes, nose or mouth. A cold virus can live on frequently touched objects for several hours. Colds are also spread by inhaling the virus that has been released into the air through coughing or sneezing. It can be contagious anytime between one to two days before the symptoms begin up until the symptoms disappear. However, it is typically most contagious during the second to the third day of the illness. Signs and Symptoms of the Common Cold Common cold symptoms typically begin about two to three days after the body becomes infected with a cold virus. This may vary though depending on the kind of cold virus. The short period before symptoms appear is called the incubation period. Symptoms are frequently gone in seven to ten days, although they can last from two to 14 days. Signs and symptoms of the common cold may also vary depending on the kind of virus that is responsible for the infection. The signs and symptoms may include: 1. Sore throat A sore throat is often the first sign of a cold. Sore throats produce pain, scratchiness, irritation and difficulty in swallowing. Cold sore throats are often confused with strep throat. Strep throat is another cause for sore throats. However, this is more severe than sore throats caused by the common cold and would require medical attention to prevent complications. Both cold sore throat and strep throat have very similar symptoms but also differ in several ways. For example, colds are caused by viruses while a strep throat is caused by bacteria called Streptococcus pyogenes. A sore throat caused by colds usually does not require any medication. This type of sore throat gets better or goes away after the first day or two. Although there are no cures for sore throats caused by colds, there are several ways of relieving the discomfort brought by them. Drinking warm liquids, over the counter medicines, and gargling warm saltwater can help alleviates some of the pain. 2. Watery eyes Watery eyes are another common symptom of the common cold. Colds bring sneezing, coughing, and fever that can negatively affect the eyes. Eyes can become very dry and tired. The glands under the eyes produce tears that contain water and salt to keep the eyes lubricated. During an illness, like the common cold, these tear ducts produce more tears to address dry eyes caused by colds. The excess tears then spill over to the tear ducts It is not uncommon to gain an eye infection while feeling under the weather. The virus that causes the common colds can also lead to the onset of viral conjunctivitis. This is characterized by redness, itching, sensitivity to light, swelling and watery eyes. Watery eyes often resolve by themselves without the need for treatments. It should be noted, however, that watery eyes can sometimes become a chronic condition. Consult with a doctor if there is a prolonged episode and if it is accompanied by other symptoms. 3. Runny Nose A runny nose refers to a discharge of fluids from the nasal passages. It is often watery and clear but may become thicker and may turn yellow or green after a few days. A runny nose is one of the most constant symptoms of a common cold. Normally, mucus from the nose goes unnoticed. It mixes with saliva and drips down the back of the throat. When a cold virus enters the body, it irritates and inflames the lining of the nose and sinuses or air-filled pockets around the face, and the nose is triggered to make a lot of clear mucus. The excess mucus comes out of the nostrils, down the back of your throat or both. Further medical treatment is not necessary for a runny nose. Drinking plenty of fluids, especially hot drinks, and resting as much as possible are highly advised. Sneezing occurs when the mucous membranes of the nose become irritated. When a cold virus infects and irritates the nasal passages, this sets off the “sneeze center” which is located in the lower part of the brain stem. Signals are then sent to the throat, eyes, and mouth. Chest muscles contract while the throat muscles relax. This results in air, along with saliva and mucus, to be expelled from the mouth and nose. This is sneezing. In addition to that, the body’s immune system releases its own inflammatory chemicals, such as histamine. Once released, the histamine makes the blood vessels to dilate and the mucus glands start to secrete fluid. The resulting irritation also causes sneezing. Coughs are usually the last symptom of the common cold to go away. It can last for one to three weeks. Coughing is a natural reflex that the body makes to protect the lungs This reflex clears pathogens, allergens and mucus from the throats and upper airway, much as sneezing clears them from the nose. It can help keep away infections. The cold virus attacks the body through the nasal linings. The body’s immune response is to release inflammatory chemicals to help fight the infection. These chemicals, albeit playing important roles in fighting the cold virus, can also cause coughing. A common cold can often start with symptoms of feeling tired. The body feels extra tired as a way to force it to slow down and allow the body to do its job of healing. Fatigue occurs as a result of the body fighting off the infection. It needs as much energy as possible. If energy is not conserved and diverted, it becomes an extra challenge for the immune system to gather the resources it needs to resolve the infection. During an illness like the common cold, the body falls into adaptive behavioral changes known as sickness behavior. Sickness behavior is a set of behaviors that often accompanies some illness like the common cold. It is stirred by the body’s response to an infection. The same chemicals that help the immune system fight the invading viruses also tells the body to slow down. Aside from fatigue, loss of appetite, extreme tiredness, social withdrawal, and crankiness are also linked with sickness behavior. 7. Body pains Colds are caused by viral infections. When infections occur within the body, the immune system sends white blood cells to deal with the infection. This results in inflammation which in turn can leave the muscles in the body ache. Body pains due to the common cold are not as severe as that of flu-related body pain. It is also more commonly experienced with the flu but it still can happen with the common cold. The body pains are often mild and do not need any further medical attention. Plenty of rest and warm baths can soothe aching muscles. A heating pad or a heated water bottle can also be used alternatively to help relieve some discomfort. Malaise is one of the symptoms of the common cold that is often mistaken for fatigue which is another symptom of the illness. To help differentiate the two, malaise is defined as an overall feeling of discomfort and lack of well-being. While fatigue is the feeling of extreme tiredness even after getting plenty of rest and sleep. Although quite different, these two symptoms go hand in hand as early indications that a person is sick or is about to get sick. Malaise is not an illness itself. Therefore, further treatment is not required for it. However, if the underlying cause, in this case, the common cold, gets worse then a trip to the doctor would be required. 9. Low-grade fever To fight off infection, the body will often increase its core temperature, producing fever. This increase in temperature increases the body’s metabolic rate. Fever is one of the body’s main response to any infection. With the common cold, high fevers are uncommon symptoms. There are some who experience a low-grade fever. Low-grade fever means that the body’s core temperature is slightly elevated. It ranges between 98.7°F and 100°F (37°C and 37.8°C). Low-grade fevers are nothing to worry about. But if the fever goes up to 100.4°F (38°C), there might be another underlying cause and it would be best to contact a doctor. 10. Loss of smell A stuffy nose, inflammation or blockage due to a cold can lead to a loss of smell. This partial or total loss of smell is also known as anosmia. Anosmia is a temporary condition that can be brought about by common illnesses like the common cold, flu, and allergies. The linings in the nose become irritated that they swell and cause some blockage. This prevents odors from getting to the top of the nose where signals can be sent to the brain. In common colds, anosmia will go away on its own as the body gets ahold of the infection and slowly gets well. Loss of interest in eating can become a complication to anosmia because of the close link between the senses of smell and taste. 11. Swollen lymph nodes The lymph nodes play an important role in the immune system’s response to a virus infection. They produce infection-fighting cells that attack the invading virus. Lymph nodes are located in various parts of the body. They can be found in the neck, armpits and groin area. During sickness, the lymph nodes can become inflamed, tender and painful. They act like a military checkpoint that stops any passing bacteria, virus or damaged cells. The accumulated debris is attacked by the immune cells stored in the nodes. The swelling is a result of the lymph nodes’ immune cell activity. Since colds are an infection of the respiratory tract, the nodes in the neck are most likely to swell. This is because the location of the swelling often relates to the affected area. Swollen lymph nodes may sometimes cause sharp pain when sudden or strain movements are done like sharply turning the neck or eating foods that are difficult to chew. 12. Sinus pressure The cold virus invades membranes of the nasal passages and the sinuses. This makes them inflamed and creates an overproduction of mucus. The excess mucus clogs up the sinuses. This results in sinus pain and pressure. Colds don’t usually cause sinus infections but the constant touching of the nose can become a way for bacteria to get in and start multiplying. There is no treatment for this since antibiotics are ineffective against the cold virus. The pain and pressure will slowly ease up as the cold goes away. There are, however, several home remedies that can ease the sinus pressure discomfort. Over the counter medicines like decongestants can also help
What are Brainwaves? The brain is made up of billions of brain cells called neurons, which use electricity to communicate with each other. The combination of millions of neurons sending signals at once produces an enormous amount of electrical activity in the brain, which can be detected using sensitive medical equipment (such as an EEG), measuring electricity levels over areas of the scalp. The combination of electrical activity of the brain is commonly called a BrainWave pattern, because of its cyclic, “wave-like” nature. With the discovery of brainwaves came the discovery that electrical activity in the brain will change depending on what the person is doing. For instance, the brainwaves of a sleeping person are vastly different that the brainwaves of someone wide awake. Over the years, more sensitive equipment has brought us closer to figuring out exactly what brainwaves represent and with that, what they mean about a person’s health and state of mind. You can learn a lot about a person simply by observing their brainwave patterns. For example, anxious people tend to produce an overabundance of high Beta waves while people with ADD/ADHD tend to produce an overabundance of slower Alpha/Theta brainwaves. Researchers have found that not only are brainwaves representative of a mental state, but they can be stimulated to change a person’s mental state, and this in turn can help with a variety of mental issues. Our brains have the plasticity to change in relation to its environment. What is Brainwave Entrainment? Brainwave Entrainment refers to the brain’s electrical response to rhythmic sensory stimulation, such as pulses of sound or light. When the brain is given a stimulus, through the ears, eyes or senses, it emits an electrical charge in response, called a Cortical Evoked Response. These electrical responses travel throughout the brain to become what you “see and hear.” This activity can be measured using sensitive electrodes attached to the scalp. Then the brain is presented with the rhythmic stimulus, such as a drum beat for example, the rhythm is reproduced in the brain in the form of these electrical impulses. If the rhythm becomes fast and consistent enough, it can start to resemble the natural internal rhythms of the brain, called brainwaves. When this happens, the brain responds by synchronizing its own electrical cycles to the same rhythm. This is commonly called the Frequency Following Response (or FFR). What is Entrainment? Entrainment is a principle of physics. It is defined as the synchronization of two or more rhythmic cycles. The principles of entrainment appear in chemistry, neurology, biology, pharmacology, medicine, astronomy and more. Gamma brainwaves are the fastest documented brainwave frequency range. They have the smallest amplitude on an E.E.G. in comparison to the other four basic types of brainwave frequencies. They naturally occur when awakening and during REM sleep. According to a popular theory, gamma waves may be implicated in creating the unity of conscious perception and associated with precognition, processing high levels of information, and a greater perception of reality and consciousness. Wide awake. This is generally the mental state most people are in during the day and most of their waking lives. Usually, this state in itself is uneventful, but don’t underestimate its importance. Many people lack sufficient Beta activity, which can cause mental or emotional disorders such as depression, ADD and insomnia. Stimulating Beta activity can improve emotional stability, energy levels, attentiveness and concentration. Awake but relaxed and not processing much information. When you get up in the morning and just before sleep, you are naturally in this state. When you close your eyes your brain automatically starts producing more Alpha waves. Alpha is usually the goal of experienced meditators, but to enter it using hypnosis is incredibly easy. Since Alpha is a very receptive, absorbent mental state, you can also use it for effective self-hypnosis, mental re-programming and more. Light sleep or extreme relaxation. Theta can also be used for hypnosis and self-programming using pre-recorded suggestions. Deep, dreamlike sleep. Delta is the slowest band of brainwaves. When your dominant brainwave is Delta, your body is healing itself and “resetting” its internal clocks. You do not dream in this state and are completely unconscious.
Iapetus īăp´ĭtəs [key], in astronomy, one of the named moons, or natural satellites, of Saturn . Also known as Saturn VIII (or S8), Iapetus is 907 mi (1460 km) in diameter, orbits Saturn at a mean distance of 2,212,885 mi (3,561,300 km), and has equal orbital and rotational periods of 79.33 earth days. Saturn's third largest moon, it was discovered in 1671 by the Italian-French astronomer Gian Domenico Cassini . With a density of only 1.1, Iapetus is believed to consist almost completely of water ice. A notable surface feature is a ridge that encircles it along its equator and rises as high as 12 mi (20 km). The reflectivity and surface features of Iapetus's leading and trailing hemispheres are noticeably different. The leading hemisphere is remarkably dark, while the trailing hemisphere is light—the asymmetry is so marked that Cassini wrote that he could see Iapetus on one side of Saturn but not on the other. The difference in reflectivity is due in part to the accumulation of dust on the leading hemisphere; this dust is believed to come from the enormous but faint ring of Saturn discovered in 2009. Much of the difference in reflectivity, however, is believed to be due to residue left behind by the sublimation of ice. The trailing hemisphere is also heavily cratered, while the leading hemisphere is not. Unlike all the other moons but Phoebe , Iapetus's orbit is inclined to the plane of Saturn's equator. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. See more Encyclopedia articles on: Astronomy: General
On International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples we welcome the IPCC’s recognition of the role that indigenous women, and men, play in forest protection, climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation The need to protect forests and biodiversity in order to mitigate the impacts of the climate emergency is a key conclusion in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on land and climate change. It spells out just how vital healthy and functioning ecosystems are to mitigating global temperature rises. It also cautions about the dangerous impacts of false and expensive solutions like bioenergy and large-scale afforestation, and it highlights the importance of reducing meat consumption and dietary change, and agro-ecology as a cornerstone of resilient and environmentally-sound food production systems. Most importantly, the thousands of scientists that have contributed to this IPCC report have finally and unequivocally recognised the vital role of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in conserving forests and other precious ecosystems. They recommend the recognition of land and governance rights for Indigenous Peoples and local communities and highlight the importance of collective actions to conserve forests and other ecosystems by local communities. Despite this, they failed to specifically recognise the role of indigenous women in biodiversity conservation. But indigenous women don’t need the IPCC to tell them how effective their their customary practices and traditional knowledge are at conserving biodiversity—they live them every day, usually with very little recognition and support by governments, and often under extreme threat of violence and forced displacement. Through the courageous work of our member groups and partner organisations we’re privileged to be able to support some of these community actions, particularly the organising power of indigenous women’s groups, through the Women2030 programme and our other campaigns. We’ve picked out three recent examples that highlight the incredible work that indigenous women are doing in their communities: These are examples of rights-based biodiversity conservation and climate mitigation in action. The world has had enough of never-ending negotiations over watered-down reports that are ignored anyway—it’s time to follow the example set by these indigenous women, and acknowledge and support the fantastic work that they are doing!
Fluid power is energy transmitted and controlled by means of a pressurized fluid, either liquid or gas. The term fluid power applies to both hydraulics and pneumatics. Hydraulics uses pressurized liquid, for example, oil or water; pneumatics uses compressed air or other neutral gases. Fluid power can be effectively combined with other technologies through the use of sensors, transducers and microprocessors. How It Works Pascal’s Law expresses the central concept of fluid power: “Pressure exerted by a confined fluid acts undiminished equally in all directions.” An input force of 10 pounds (44.8 N) on a 1-square-inch (6.45 cm2) piston develops a pressure of 10 pounds per square inch (psi) (68.95 kN/m2 or 68.95 KPa) throughout the container. This pressure will allow a 10-square-inch piston to support a 100-pound (444.8 N) weight. The forces are proportional to the piston areas.
Adult Sciarid flies are slender, approximately 2.5 mm in length, and have long legs and antennae. They are weak fliers but can run quite rapidly across the soil surface. Their wings are clear or smokey-colored with no pattern and few distinct veins. However, the females of several species are wingless. They have shiny black head capsules. The life cycle involves four developmental stages: egg, four larvae, pupa and Adult.The females deposit eggs in the surface layer of the potting compost and these hatches within a few days under warm conditions. . Larvae are clear to creamy-white and can grow to about 1/4 inch long The larvae feed on fungal growth and decaying plant material but some species can also damage the roots of seedlings or tunnel into the base of soft cuttings. When fully fed, the larvae pupate in the soil. Larvae, however, when present in large numbers, can damage roots and stunt plant growth, particularly in seedlings and young plants. Significant root damage and even plant death have been observed in interior plantscapes and in houseplants when high populations were associated with moist, organically-rich soil.
While baby bird season is beginning to wind down, we are still receiving Mockingbirds, Blue Jays and Dove. The pictured Mockingbird is a fledgling. From hatching of an altricial species to the unfurling of enough flight feathers to flutter short distances is considered the nestling stage. Babies are completely dependent on the parents at this stage for nourishment, warmth and protection. Once they fledge, the young will continue to beg for food, but will begin to search for food on their own. Within a few days they are flying well and feeding themselves. Precocial species like Killdeer, chickens and ducks are mobile and self-feeding shortly after hatching. They require mom’s protection and guidance to find good sources of food. They will hang together as a group until the young are flying well. Then the group will disperse. Raptors, especially the larger owls have an additional development phase called branchling that occurs between nestling and fledgling. Branchling babies can’t really fly yet, but they leave the nest and spread out along the nearby branches. They continue to be fed by the parents and strengthen their wings by vigorous flapping. They begin to experiment with flight by jumping and fluttering between branches. The Wildlife Center receives many more Wood Ducks and Black Bellied Whistling Ducks than their populations in the wild would imply. Speculation about this phenomenon centers around the fact that both species perch in trees and prefer to nest in tree cavities. All ducks nest near a water source or wetland, but perching ducks have a "bird’s eye view" of water sources that ground nesting ducks wouldn’t normally notice. The problem is that the parent ducks don’t take into account that there are fences or roads between their tree and the water source. Babies sometimes slip under a fence or into a pool where parents cannot retrieve them. What to do if you find unchaperoned ducklings. First, look to see if you can spot a parent and the other ducklings. If so, scoop up the wayward duckling(s) and release them near their siblings. If it is early in the day and there are no nearby predators – give the parents a few hours to reunite. If it is late in the day or the ducklings are threatened place them in a box and bring them to the Wildlife Center. What can you do to help this situation? Both species of duck will use nest boxes. The nest box should be placed in a location that has an unimpeded path to the water. If you are interested in building a nest box, click here. Both species of duck are territorial and a touch lazy. If there are too many nest boxes, a female will "dump" her eggs into someone else's nest box. She may think she's done her duty without having to sit on the eggs, but in nest boxes with two or more clutches none [...] VOLUNTEERS GET ‘QUACKING’ Fall 2007 The Wildlife Center had two very special patients this fall. The first was a small female Mallard mixed duck brought to a WR&E rehabilitator, Margaret Pickell. After closer examination, it was determined that a dog had attacked the Mallard. Normally, wildlife is not given a domestic animal name, but this special creature had been named Ducka by the family who brought her in. For you see, Ducka has lived in a local pond for several years and had a unique problem. She had no feet, only little stubs but had obviously adapted quite well. Margaret transported Ducka to the Wildlife Center where she was treated for scratches and a sprained wing. Following a short recovery period, she healed and is now enjoying life at a ranch pond with other ducks - and no dogs. The other memorable patient was a Peking duck mix who was admitted with the tip of her beak hanging by a thread. Yet another caring family caught her and brought her to the wildlife center for proper care. One of the Wildlife Center’s valued and long-term volunteers, Diane Cheadle, an area veterinary technician, was able to use her years of experience and expertise to reconstruct the bill. Diane cleaned the wound, and then used a special dental product , Ortho-Jet (an acrylic resin used to make dental retainers) - to reconstruct the bill. The dilemma was that the duck wasn’t going to sit still for a fitting and anesthesia is always tricky in birds. As feared, the duck’s heart stopped during the operation and Diane had to resuscitate it. Some extra oxygen and chest compressions – and everything was ducky again. After a few weeks [...]
HTML vs CSS HyperText Markup Language, widely known as HTML is the leading markup language for web pages. HTML is the basic building block of web pages. Web browser reads the HTML document and composes them into visual or audible web pages. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a language that describes the look and formatting of a document written using a mark up language. CSS is widely used to style web pages written in HTML. What is HTML? What is CSS? As mentioned earlier, CSS defines how HTML elements need to be displayed in a page. Originally, HTML was not intended to have tags for formatting a document, but to define the content. But, the introduction of tags like <font> in HTML 3.2 made the lives of web developers very difficult. When developing large web sites, adding font and color information to every page became a very tedious process. As a solution to this problem, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) created CSS. HTML 4.0 allows all formatting to be removed from the HTML document and to be stored in a separate CSS file. CSS enables separation of document content from document presentation such as layout, colors and fonts. This would allow multiple web pages to share the same formatting and reduce complexity and repetition in structural content. CSS can also allow the same markup page to be presented in different styles by allowing the readers to choose a different style sheet to override the one specified by the author of the web page. Today CSS is widely used and supported by all the browsers. Difference Between HTML and CSS The main difference between HTML and CSS is that HTML is a markup language that is used to specify the content of a web page, while CSS is a style sheet language that is used to specify the formatting of web page. Even though HTML can also specify formatting of a web page, using CSS for this purpose would be more effective, since it would allow separation of content from presentation and Site-wide consistency.
You will find occasions when you’ll need to merge data from two different data frames. In order to merge two datasets you are required to have at least one variable in common. Here is an example of how to merge data within R: > merged.data <- merge(dataset1, dataset2, by="cityID") Above we merge two data frames based on the id variable cityID. This is a very basic example of running a merge in R. A merge can happen on multiple variables and can also be used to run variables with different category. Here is an example of running a merge on two variables: > merged.data <- merge(dataset1, dataset2, by=c("zipID", "cityID")) In R you can also merge two files if the unique id variable has a different name in each data set. For example, the id variable may be called cityID in dataset1, but called townID in dataset2: > merged.data <- merge(dataset1, dataset2, by.x="cityID", by.y="townID")
Buy essay examples African Americans are outliers in the deaf community. Historically, most deaf schools were segregated. It comes as no surprise that the first deaf schools opened for Whites in 1817, while he first deaf African Americans started to enjoy the privilege of education in 1865. Segregation in the deaf community mirrored segregation in society. Members of the Black deaf community were educated in separate facilities where they did not receive the same education as other deaf people. Carolyn McCaskill argues that “black deaf people were affected by the same racial discrimination of the era that affected Black hearing people and the same isolation and marginalization due to race” (6). African Americans members of the deaf community have developed a separate culture out of necessity, which included a form of ASL called Black ASL. At the same time, discriminatory practices by the death community created a subculture within the deaf community. Benro Ogunyipe explains that African American deaf individuals often experience double prejudice against them in the form discrimination based on race and numerous barriers related to inability to communicate (3). The purpose of this paper is to analyze segregation in deaf culture in terms of race and gender, illustrating how these concepts developed historically. The segregation of the deaf community began in education. Deaf schools were established to educated young deaf students; most schools were private and residential. African Americans were not allowed to attend these schools. Many deaf blacks had to find other ways to communicate with others and were perceived as outsiders in hearing schools. As a result, they developed a culture, which was separated from other cultures’ deaf students in the hearing community. Even today, African Americans in the deaf community are constantly misunderstood or discriminated against by both the Deaf community and African American community (McCaskill 4-5). Black ASL was created to address African American slang and words used only in black culture. The problem is that it can lead to communication problems between African American members of the deaf community and other people who speak ASL. Students are often educated in ASL in primary and secondary schools and attend Gallaudet. A study called the Black ASL project concluded that, deaf African Americans are impacted by the similar racism and prejudice that Black individuals suffer from. As a result, Black and White deaf individuals share deafness traits; however, Black persons have more in common with the culture of Black hearing families (Sellers para 4-5). A professor at Gallaudet recommends creating a dictionary of Black ASL to increase understanding of words that are unique to African American culture and promote inclusiveness in the deaf community. The purpose of this paper was to explain how segregation in the deaf community has created a subculture for African Americans. African Americans in the deaf community were marginalized by society because of their race and disability. As a result, African American members of deaf community were educated in separate schools and had to find ways to communicate with the hearing world. Black ASL was created to give African Americans a voice in the deaf community. Segregation still exists in the deaf community. However, schools like Gallaudet are creating a more inclusive environment for deaf students. McCaskill, Carolyn. “Deaf Culture and Race.” Gallaudet, 2010. Accessed 7 October 2018, www.pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ Ogunyipe, Benro. “Black Deaf Culture Through the Lens of Black Deaf History.” DCMP, Accessed 7 October 2018, www.dcmp.org. Sellers, Francis. “Signs of Segregation: the singular challenges facing black, deaf Families.” Washington Post, 6 February 2015, www.washingtonpost.com
You may hear about tests that measure apolipoproteins, which are the specific types of proteins that your HDLs and LDLs contain. They are alphabetically designated as A, B, C, D, and E. LDL contains apolipoprotein B (apo B); HDL contains apolipoprotein A-1 (apo A1). A recent study indicated that, in comparison to the standard blood-cholesterol tests, the ratio of apo B to apo A1 is the best predictor of those at risk of heart attack. For example, some people who have normal levels of LDL may have higher-than-normal levels of apo B (usually there's only one apo B molecule on each LDL), and this higher level may indicate greater risk. One clue to an increase in the number of apo B particles is an elevated level of triglycerides -- 150 mg/dL or greater. When LDL-cholesterol levels are normal but triglyceride levels are elevated, something called non-HDL cholesterol should be measured. Non-HDL cholesterol is the total of VLDL and LDL cholesterol, both of which contain apo B particles. As a result, measurement of non-HDL cholesterol provides more accurate information about atherogenic particles. Finally, a low level of apo A1, the apolipoprotein found on HDL, indicates a greater risk of coronary heart disease. Currently, there doesn't seem to be any clinical advantage to measuring these smaller particles of HDL cholesterol, as this information doesn't affect the course of treatment; in the future, however, if effective medications are developed that target HDL cholesterol, this may change. Preliminary research also appears to indicate that genetic differences in apo E, a key protein in the metabolism of LDLs, may predict a person's risk for coronary heart disease. For example, people who have one form of apo E appear to have higher LDL levels and develop coronary heart disease earlier than those with other forms. On the other hand, those who have a different form of apo E may have some protection from heart disease. Researchers have also found a way to measure lipoprotein (a), or Lp(a), a cholesterol-rich lipoprotein that is associated with a tendency toward clotting (thrombosis) and enhanced plaque formation. In some studies, high levels of Lp(a) seem to indicate an increased risk of coronary heart disease in men and women. Estrogen and niacin are among the few drugs that are known to lower Lp(a). However, because the research findings relating Lp(a) and coronary heart disease are not consistent, routine measurement and treatment of Lp(a) are not recommended. This measurement may, however, be helpful in individuals with a personal or family history of premature coronary heart disease, indicating additional benefit from a more intensive reduction in LDL cholesterol. Measurements of apolipoproteins are providing researchers with more and more tools for predicting an individual's risk of coronary heart disease. Some of these tests are becoming available at laboratories. Talk with your doctor to determine if any of these newer tests, in addition to the standard blood-cholesterol tests, would be beneficial in providing more information about your cholesterol levels. Be advised, however, that not all these tests are standardized, they tend to be more expensive, and they may not provide information that would change the course of treatment. Along with apolipoproteins and overall cholesterol, doctors must check your triglycerides. On the next page, learn what these are and why a high level of triglycerides may be harmful. This information is solely for informational purposes. IT IS NOT INTENDED TO PROVIDE MEDICAL ADVICE. Neither the Editors of Consumer Guide (R), Publications International, Ltd., the author nor publisher take responsibility for any possible consequences from any treatment, procedure, exercise, dietary modification, action or application of medication which results from reading or following the information contained in this information. The publication of this information does not constitute the practice of medicine, and this information does not replace the advice of your physician or other health care provider. Before undertaking any course of treatment, the reader must seek the advice of their physician or other health care provider.
Sir John Douglas Cockcroft The Nobel Prize in Physics 1951 Born: 27 May 1897, Todmorden, United Kingdom Died: 18 September 1967, Cambridge, United Kingdom Affiliation at the time of the award: Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Harwell, Berkshire, United Kingdom Prize motivation: "for their pioneer work on the transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles." Prize share: 1/2 John Cockcroft was born into an English family active in the cotton industry. He studied mathematics and electrotechnical engineering in Manchester, with a break for military service during World War I. After working for a couple of years in electrotechnology, he came to Cambridge in 1924. Among other things, he started the Cavendish Laboratory there. During World War II he worked on developing radar. After the war he worked primarily within the UK Atomic Energy Authority. John Cockcroft married in 1925 and had four daughters and a son. Ernest Rutherford used alpha particles from radioactive elements to study nuclear reactions and used his findings to convert nitrogen into oxygen. However, only a very few nuclear reactions could be achieved using alpha particles. John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton developed a device, an accelerator, to generate more penetrating radiation. Using a strong electric field, protons were accelerated to high velocities. In 1932, they bombarded lithium with protons, causing their nuclei to split and producing two alpha particles.
Keratitis is an inflammation of the cornea. The cornea is the clear, dome-shaped tissue in front of the eye covering the pupil and iris. Keratitis has numerous causes, such as bacteria, virus, fungus, or even parasites. Even minor injuries or improper use of contact lenses can cause noninfectious keratitis. Addressing keratitis in a timely manner lowers the risk of complications. That’s when the treatment is most effective. If it’s caused by an infection and left untreated, keratitis may permanently damage your vision. Keratitis causes and complications Keratitis can be caused by a minor injury to the eye, such as scratches on the surface, contaminated contact lenses, viruses like herpes, and contaminated water from swimming pools, oceans, and lakes. Bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites can reside in water, so if your face makes contact with contaminated water or if you go swimming, you can develop keratitis. Keratitis complications include chronic corneal inflammation, chronic or recurrent viral infections, open sores on the cornea, corneal swelling, temporary or permanent reduction in vision, and blindness. Keratitis signs and symptoms Signs and symptoms of keratitis include: - Eye redness - Eye pain - Excess tears or discharge from the eye - Difficulty or pain opening the eye - Blurred vision - Sensitivity to light - Feeling as if there is something in the eye You should see a doctor for keratitis if you notice any of the symptoms related to keratitis. The earlier you start the treatment, the better you can treat it. Delaying treatment increases your risk of complications. Different types of keratitis Keratitis types differ based on location, severity, and cause. If keratitis affects only the surface of the cornea, it is called superficial keratitis. If it affects the deeper layers of the cornea, it is known as stromal keratitis or interstitial keratitis. Keratitis may also affect the center of the cornea, the peripheral part of the cornea, or both. Keratitis may be mild, moderate, or severe, depending on the level of inflammation. Keratitis may also be acute or chronic, meaning it can be a short term condition that’s treated once and doesn’t return, or it can be recurring. Diagnosis and tests for keratitis Once you experience or notice the symptoms of keratitis, it’s important that you promptly make an appointment with your doctor. Your doctor will perform an eye exam, a penlight exam, a slit-light exam, and laboratory analysis. Laboratory analysis involves samples of tears or cells from the cornea to determine the cause of infection. Your doctor will prescribe appropriate treatment depending on the cause – bacterial, viral, fungal. Treatment options for keratitis If keratitis is noninfectious, you may not require treatment. The injury will have to heal on its own. Prescription medication may ease pain, and wearing an eye patch can help reduce the risk of further injury or irritation. Treatment for infectious keratitis depends on the type of infection. For bacterial keratitis, either antibacterial eye drops or oral antibiotics may be prescribed. For fungal keratitis, antifungal eye drops are prescribed. Viral keratitis is treated with antiviral medications administered either orally or through eye drops. To treat keratitis caused by parasites, antibiotic eye drops may be prescribed, but generally, parasitic keratitis is more difficult to treat. If keratitis does not respond well to medications and permanent damage has occurred to the cornea, you may require a corneal transplant. Tips to prevent keratitis Keratitis is a preventable condition. And prevention begins with proper contact lens care – if you wear them. Ensure your contact lenses are always clean and your hands are clean when you put your contacts in. Furthermore, do not wear contact lenses for too long – discard them when the time is up. Lastly, use proper cleaning solutions for contacts and always change solution instead of adding new solution to the old one. To prevent viral keratitis, avoid touching cold sores or herpes blisters and then touching your eye. Avoid corticosteroid eye drops unless prescribed. If keratitis reoccurs numerous times due to contact lens use, you may want to switch to prescription glasses.
The Arabic alphabet has 28 letters – only two more than the English alphabet. So what makes the Arabic alphabet so difficult to learn for beginning Arabic students? There are a number of reasons for this. I explain the three most common problems and show you how to overcome them. Problem 1: Arabic letters are different The most important reason is probably that the letters of the Arabic alphabet do not look anything like our letters. We have not been exposed to the intricate Arabic shapes before, so there is nothing stored in our brains with which to associate the letters. Many Arabic learners who just start out get increasingly frustrated as they try to memorize the shapes of some new Arabic letter just to discover that they have forgotten the shape of the Arabic letters they had learned before. Solution: You need to find something familiar that you can relate the new shapes and sounds to. I developed a method that does just that. In my book The Magic Key To The Arabic Alphabet I give you a memory image (mnemonic) for each of the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet that will help you remember those shapes and associate them with their sounds without need for rote learning. Problem 2: Short vowels are not written In the Arabic script the short vowels, such as “a”, “i”, and “u” are not usually written. So a word like “could” would be written as just “cd” and a word such as “think” would be “thnk”. This can cause a lot of problems, especially early on when you stil don’t know that many Arabic words. For example, the letters “ktb” could mean “he wrote” or “book”, depending on the missing short vowels. Solution: Start with familiar words first. Using the unique method in my book you will be writing English words using the Arabic alphabet letters first until you are completely comfortable with the Arabic script. Only then will I teach you how to write Arabic words. This way you will learn the Arabic alphabet much faster than with traditional methods. Problem 3: Arabic letters change their shape The Arabic letters change their shapes according to whether or not they are connected to adjoining letters. Sometimes the changes are so drastic that it seems that there is hardly any relationships between the two shapes. This can be extremely confusing. Solution: The key is to understand why the Arabic letters change their shapes when they are connected to adjoining letters. And contrary to what many Arabic teachers will have you believe, there really are logical reasons for why the shapes change. For example, the letter “meem” (م) has a very long “tail”. But, it would be difficult to connect “meem” to another letter on the left if the tail was kept. So it’s only logical that the tail would be cut to make it easier to join with the next letter. In my book I show you exactly how the shapes of the letters of the Arabic alphabet change and why. Learning the Arabic alphabet is easy with the right method So, in conclusion, while the Arabic alphabet really does have its difficulties, I strongly believe that with the right method anyone can learn to read and write Arabic and master the Arabic alphabet. So, check out my book on the Arabic alphabet.
Wacona Elementary School first graders have been learning about 2D and 3D shapes. Mrs. Carol Reed’s class learned how shapes are used in every facet of their lives. There are shapes all around us, in our homes, at our school, and in our community. Students learned that foods have different shapes, such as oranges shaped like a circle, brownies shaped like squares or rectangles, and pizza cut into triangles. After discussing many types of foods, the class decided to make pizza. The students were put into groups to make different types of pizzas using pepperoni shaped like circles, cheese cut into rectangles, and ham cut into cubes and squares. They cut the cooked pizzas into triangles. They enjoyed learning about shapes they could eat!!! Mr. Chancey is the principal of Wacona Elementary. Pictured L to R - Khole M., Makinsley R., Jayce P., Gihad T., Victor R., and Breck B.
Farming in a Changing Climate Written onJune 01 , 2011 Seems like the weather’s been extreme in recent years: heat waves, ice storms, and floods. How is this related to climate change? The answer is, indirectly. Weather events are not a good tool for assessing the climate, since climate is made up of weather patterns over many decades. There are ups and downs within seasons, but the trends over time are what counts. They include both temperature and precipitation patterns, and these affect environmental conditions, which in turn affect plants, animals, and ecosystems. Research conducted by the University of New Hampshire makes it pretty clear that the climate in our region is changing. Scientists analyzed data collected by hundreds of weather stations and found that the Northeast’s average annual temperature increased by 1.8 degrees F. from 1899–2000. Winters in particular have gotten warmer, with the average temperature from December through February warming by 2.8 degrees. It may not sound like a lot, but these changes have had significant effects on the environment, and therefore on farming. For example, the Northeast frost-free growing season is 8 days longer than it was 100 years ago; the number of extreme precipitation events (more than 2 inches of rain in 48 hours) has increased from about 3 to 5 per year; there were, on average, 16 fewer days with snow on the ground in 2001 than in 1970; apple and grape bloom dates were about 2 days earlier per decade from 1965 through 2001; and maple sugaring begins 8 days earlier and ends 11 days earlier than it did 40 years ago. In Vermont, climate change impacts are diverse, and will have some positive as well as negative effects on farming. For example, a longer growing season can help the production of annual crops; in recent years we’ve seen mild autumns that allowed pumpkin and squash growers to get higher yields, and let fall raspberry growers harvest fruit that would otherwise be lost to earlier frost. But there are serious downsides to our changing climate, too. Studies suggest that warmer winters could reduce apple fruit yields, and sugar maples in our area are likely to decline in health as the climate warms. The dairy industry will also face challenges, especially from an increase in summer temperatures, since milk production drops off when cows are exposed to hot, humid weather. Farmers will be able to cope with some climate changes more easily than to others. This will depend on what they produce, where they’re located, and the extent of the change. (For a series of fact sheets about climate change impacts on agriculture in the Northeast, see www.climateandfarming.org/clr-cc.php.) For example, it’s likely that cool season crops won’t do as well in areas that warm up significantly, but farmers who grow potatoes or crucifers can fairly easily switch to varieties that are more heat tolerant, or change the types of annual crops they grow. Maintaining the comfort of heat-sensitive livestock such as dairy cows is also feasible with practices such as improved barn design to promote ventilation, or misting systems to provide evaporative cooling. Other problems will be harder to cope with, such as the gradual decline of perennial crop species, or the greater aggressiveness of weeds. Rising CO2 levels may promote photosynthesis and thus the growth of crops, but the weeds in those crops may grow even better. Some fast-growing weeds are especially well adapted to utilizing extra CO2 because their photosynthetic system differs from most crops. Certain perennial weeds such as thistles and quackgrass that can store extra energy underground may become harder to control. Integrated weed management systems that combine tactics such as crop rotation, cover crops, cultivation, no-till production, and mulching will become more important in the future. Climate change will also alter pest populations, although exactly how is not clear. It‘s likely that new pests will arrive and some existing pests will become more abundant, while others decline. For example, insect pests of crops that travel here on storm fronts from southern areas, such as leafhoppers, corn earworm, and armyworms, could become more abundant as summer storm frequency increases. Other pests that overwinter here, such as the European corn borer, flea beetle, and tarnished plant bug could become more abundant if milder winters encourage their survival, although reduced snow cover might lower overwintering populations. Changes in rainfall patterns will affect crop diseases, since most of them require moisture to proliferate. The likelihood of changes in pest pressure, plus the uncertainty about it, will make frequent monitoring for pests an even more important activity on farms than it already is now. Farmers will want to avoid being taken by surprise. Greater variability in precipitation patterns will have a big impact on agriculture, too. Farmers will need to take steps to deal with more intense rainfall events in order to avoid soil erosion. This could include putting in drainage systems or establishing strips of permanent sod in or around fields. Dealing with longer periods of drought will call for more investment in irrigation and water storage. Besides planning to adapt to climate change, farmers can help mitigate the problem by reducing their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Although agriculture generates only a small part of the nation’s GHG output—about six percent of the 2009 total—Vermont farmers, like everyone else, should do what they can to address the problem. The good news is that many agricultural actions that reduce GHG emissions can also enhance farm profitability. For example, renewable energy systems can reduce fossil fuel use and CO2 emissions while lowering energy costs. In order to understand how farmers can help mitigate climate change, one needs to understand something about the greenhouse gases involved. While much of the focus on GHG reduction is on CO2, nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4) are other gases that contribute to climate change. Although they are generated in smaller amounts by human activity than CO2, they are far more potent in terms of their warming effect. And compared to most other industries, agriculture produces proportionally more N2O and CH4 than carbon dioxide. (In general, methane from agriculture is released by livestock and manure, while nitrous oxide is released when excess nitrogen fertilizer is applied under certain soil conditions.) Given the information above, there are a several key steps that farmers can take to reduce GHG emissions, including using nitrogen fertilizer more efficiently; improving manure management; taking CO2 from the atmosphere and sequestering it in plant biomass and soils; increasing the efficiency of farm inputs such as fuel, fertilizers, and pesticides; increasing production of biological-based energy to replace fossil energy; switching to non-carbon energy sources such as wind and solar; and using energy-efficient equipment for heating, cooling, and tillage. With the support of consumers, Vermont farmers can also use the marketplace to combat climate change. Growing the demand for local food products can improve the efficiency of food distribution and thereby reduce the energy consumed by storage and transportation. And eating fresh foods purchased from local farms can avoid the need for packaging and refrigeration, further reducing fossil fuel use and GHG emissions. Of course, this assumes that local food is aggregated at roadside stands, farmers’ markets, food co-ops, cafeterias, and the like. Driving from place to place to purchase small quantities of local food is not efficient. Although the effects of climate change are daunting and somewhat uncertain, it makes sense to take steps to protect our agricultural landscape for generations to come. These steps include planning ahead to prepare for likely changes while working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Many farmers are already taking the initiative in these areas by adopting innovative on-farm practices. Consumers can take action by continuing to buy local food, adding climate change to the list of reasons for doing so. (1) Indicators of Climate Change in the Northeast over the Past 100 Years. Cameron Wake, UNH. 2005.www.climateandfarming.org/pdfs/FactSheets/I.2Indicators.pdf (2) Climate Change: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. IPPC. 2007. (3) The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change. Naomi Oreskes. Science. 2005. www.sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1686.full.pdf (4) Climate Change in the American Mind: Americans’ Global Warming Beliefs and Attitudes. Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. 2010.www.climatechangecommunication.org/images/files/ClimateBeliefsJune2010%281%29.pdf (5) U.S. Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report Executive Summary. EPA. 2011. (6) Climate Change and Greenhouse Gas Mitigation: Challenges and Opportunities for Agriculture (summary). Council on Agricultural Science and Technology. 2004.
As you read these words, electricity is zinging through your brain, voracious killers are coursing through your veins and corrosive chemicals bubble from your head to your toes. In fact, your entire body is like an electrical company, chemical factory, transportation grid, communications network, detoxification facility, hospital and battlefield all rolled into one. The workers that drive these activities are your cells. Our bodies contain trillions of cells, organized into more than 200 major types. At any given time, each cell is doing thousands of routine jobs, like creating and using energy, manufacturing proteins and responding to environmental cues. Different cell types also have special duties, like building skin or bone, pumping out hormones or making antibodies. Let's take a quick trip inside to see how cells carry out their major tasks. Imagine you’ve shrunk down to 3 millionths of your normal size and are now about 0.5 micrometers tall—way smaller than a dust mite or the width of a hair strand. At this scale, a medium-sized human cell looks as big as a football field. From your new perspective, the cell's somewhat spherical nucleus catches your attention. It looks about 50 feet wide. Occupying up to 10 percent of the cell's interior, the nucleus is the most prominent organelle, or cellular compartment. It contains the cell's genetic material, DNA, which guides the making of billions of protein molecules that participate in nearly every cellular process. Encasing the cell is a membrane with special gates, channels and pumps that let in or force out selected molecules. The membrane protects the cell's internal environment—a thick brew called the cytosol made of salts, nutrients and proteins that accounts for about half the cell's volume (organelles make up the rest). In addition to the outer membrane, which is made up of proteins and lipids (fats), the cells of humans and other higher organisms have a pair of porous membranes that envelop the nucleus. Each organelle also has an outer membrane. Endoplasmic Reticulum and Partners Next to the nucleus are enormous, interconnected sacs called the endoplasmic reticulum or ER. From your shrunken view, each sac is only a few inches across, but they can extend to lengths of 100 feet or more. The sacs come in two types: a "rough" version covered with protein-making ribosomes and a "smooth" version that makes lipids and breaks down toxic molecules. The ER sends newly made proteins and lipids to the Golgi complex, a short and narrow structure inside the cytosol. The Golgi complex processes them and sends the molecules to their final destinations inside or outside the cell. About the size of pickup trucks from where you're floating, the organelles called mitochondria convert energy from your food into adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, to power biochemical reactions. A typical cell burns through 1 billion molecules of ATP every 1 to 2 minutes. Like all other organelles, mitochondria are enclosed in an outer membrane. But they also have an inner membrane that's actually four or five times larger than the outer one. The inner membrane doubles over in many places so it can fit, extending long, fingerlike folds into the center of the organelle. These folds vastly increase the surface area for ATP production. Back in the human-sized world, many scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health are studying these cellular structures—and many others not listed here—because knowledge about them underpins our understanding of health and disease. For instance, recent research suggests why the nucleolinus (a cellular compartment found in a range of species) is crucial for proper cell division, and how a special arrangement of microtubules (cellular highways that transport raw materials) may help nerve cells rebuild after injury.
In Chapter 1 of Howard Zinn's book A People's History of the United States, what are communities? 3 Answers \| Add Yours In Chapter One, Zinn uses the word communities to describe the plethora of Native American societies that existed in the Americas prior to contact with Europeans in 1492. He emphasizes that, contrary to popular memory, the Americas were filled with large, sophisticated communities: Columbus and his followers were not coming into an empty wilderness, but into a world which in some places was as densely populated as Europe itself, where the culture was complex, where human relations were more egalitarian than in Europe, and where the relations between men, women, children, and nature were more beautifully worked out than in any place in the world. Zinn also emphasizes the differences between these communities and European understandings of society. Explorers and settlers could not initially make sense, for example, of the matrilineal nature of Iroquois and other socieites, in which women not only inherited possessions, but exercised a great deal of political power. In comparing European and Native American conceptions of community, Zinn clearly views those of Indian peoples as superior. At the very least, he concludes, it ought to make Americans reconsider their popular memory of exploration and conquest: ...it is enough to make us reconsider...the excuse of progress in the annihilation of races, and the telling of history from the standpoint of the conquerors and leaders of Western civilization. Any follow-up questions you may have should actually be posted in a new question. If you ask them here, our editors won't be likely to see that you've asked a new question, and therefore won't be able to answer it. Try posting your questions above at the following link: ok so what interests do they share? and how are they in opposition? Join to answer this question Join a community of thousands of dedicated teachers and students.Join eNotes

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