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The writer Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on the Fourth of July in 1804 and went on from there to establish himself as one of the great contributors to American literature. Like Forrest Gump, he seemed all his life to be surrounded by history. He was descended from a line of notorious Puritans, including a judge at the Salem witch trials. His college pals included poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and future president Franklin Pierce. Henry David Thoreau planted Hawthorne a vegetable garden as a wedding present. Edgar Allan Poe wrote rave reviews of his books. The mourners at his funeral in 1860 included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Hawthorne spent most of his life in or around the Massachusetts towns of Salem and Concord, both of which played prominent roles in American history.
Hawthorne's books and stories drew heavily from America's Puritan history. His stories were pointed allegories that took aim at hypocrisy, sin, and corruption. Hawthorne's most famous novel, The Scarlet Letter, practically ran through a checklist of the Seven Deadly Sins. His was not a rosy view of human nature. Perhaps because of this, Hawthorne kept mostly to himself. He was painfully shy and rarely invited anyone to the home he shared with his wife and three children. A friend of his said at the time, "I love Hawthorne, I admire him; but I do not know him. He lives in a mysterious world of thought and imagination which he never permits me to enter."1 If Hawthorne were alive today, he probably wouldn't even be on Facebook. Maybe it's easier to know him 150 years after his death, now that we have access to the journals and personal papers he fiercely guarded during his lifetime.
Picture it: A brilliantly creative man is stuck at an incredibly boring desk job at the Boston Custom House. He hates it, but he can't quit because he has to support his family. It's sucking away his energy, his time, and his creativity. Yet, in a quintessentially American way, he refuses to give up hope. "I do not mean to imply that I am unhappy or discontented; for this is not the case," Hawthorne confided in his diary on 3 July 1839. "Henceforth forever I shall be entitled to call the sons of toil my brethren, and shall know how to sympathize with them; seeing that I likewise have risen at the dawn, and borne the fervor of the midday sun, nor turned my heavy footsteps homeward till eventide. Years hence, perhaps, the experience that, my heart is acquiring now will flow out in truth and wisdom."2 Generations of readers since agree that he was right.
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Enzymes are complex proteins that cause a specific chemical change in all parts of the body. For example, they can help break down the foods we eat so the body can use them. Blood clotting is another example of enzymes at work.
Enzymes are needed for all body functions. They are found in every organ and cell in the body, including in the:
Stomach (gastric juice)
Linda J. Vorvick, MD, Medical Director and Director of Didactic Curriculum, MEDEX Northwest Division of Physician Assistant Studies, Department of Family Medicine, UW Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Washington. Also reviewed by A.D.A.M. Health Solutions, Ebix, Inc., Editorial Team: David Zieve, MD, MHA, David R. Eltz, Stephanie Slon, and Nissi Wang.
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Benzene is a clear, liquid, petroleum-based chemical that has a sweet smell. Benzene poisoning occurs when someone swallows, breathes in, or touches benzene.
This is for information only and not for use in the treatment or management of an actual poison exposure. If you have an exposure, you should call your local emergency number (such as 911) or the National Poison Control Center at 1-800-222-1222.
People may be exposed to benzene in factories, refineries, and other industrial settings. Benzene may be found in:
Seek immediate medical help. Do NOT make a person throw up unless told to do so by poison control or a health care professional.
If the chemical is on the skin or in the eyes, flush with lots of water for at least 15 minutes.
If the chemical was swallowed, immediately give the person water or milk, unless instructed otherwise by a health care provider. Do NOT give water or milk if the patient is having symptoms (such as vomiting, convulsions, or a decreased level of alertness) that make it hard to swallow.
If the person breathed in the poison, immediately move him or her to fresh air.
Before Calling Emergency
Determine the following information:
Patient's age, weight, and condition
Name of the product (ingredients and strengths, if known)
Time it was swallowed
Poison Control, or a local emergency number
The National Poison Control Center (1-800-222-1222) can be called from anywhere in the United States. This national hotline number will let you talk to experts in poisoning. They will give you further instructions.
This is a free and confidential service. All local poison control centers in the United States use this national number. You should call if you have any questions about poisoning or poison prevention. It does NOT need to be an emergency. You can call for any reason, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
People who work with benzene products should only do so in areas with good air flow. They should also use protective gloves and eye glasses.
Mirkin DB. Benzene and related aromatic hydrocarbons. In: Shannon MW, Borron SW, Burns MJ, eds. Haddad and Winchester's Clinical Management of Poisoning and Drug Overdose. 4th ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Saunders Elsevier; 2007:chap 94.
ATSDR (Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry). Toxicological profile for benzene. Update. Public Health Service, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Atlanta, Ga.
Eric Perez, MD, St. Luke's / Roosevelt Hospital Center, NY, NY, and Pegasus Emergency Group (Meadowlands and Hunterdon Medical Centers), NJ. Review provided by VeriMed Healthcare Network. Also reviewed by David Zieve, MD, MHA, Medical Director, A.D.A.M., Inc.
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The science fair concept has been established to:
- Focus attention on students’ academic achievements
- Strengthen student motivation and interest in science
- Promote teacher and public recognition of outstanding science talent
- Recognize outstanding individual achievements, efforts, potential, and creativity
- This event provides a medium for students to apply learned knowledge and skills to solve real problems and answer real-life questions.
Entering the Fair
- The competition is open to 4th – 12th grade students.
- Each elementary school may bring 10 projects to the district fair.
- Each middle school may bring 15 projects to the district fair
- Each high school may bring 25 projects to the district fair.
- Schools will decide how the projects will be selected. Most often this will be through a school science fair.
- Students may work individually or in groups (no groups of more than 3).
- Students may not participate in more than one project.
- All participating schools must be represented by at least one teacher or administrator at the competition.
- Registration must be submitted for each project entered.
- Project displays should NOT show the students names.
- Only participants, judges, teachers, and fair officials are allowed in the judging area during judging.
- Exhibits must be brought to, cared for, and removed from the fair by the exhibitor.
- The Science Fair Committee and cooperating groups will assume NO responsibility for loss or damage to any exhibit.
- Valuables, such as computers, meters, cameras, microscopes, etc., should NOT be left unattended. The only time they are required to be part of the exhibit is during the hours of judging.
How are the projects judged?
The role of judging is not to distinguish winners and losers, but to recognize students who achieve standards of excellence. By encouraging students to strive for their best effort, all participants are winners and grow from the experience.
- A team of judges is assigned to each category. During the initial judging, the projects are grouped so that each project is screened by at least two judges.
- All students must remain with their projects during the judging to make presentations and explain their study.
- All others (sponsors, teachers, parents, and other students) are not permitted in the project area while judging is in progress.
- All decisions of the judges are final.
- Final judging information will not be available to participants, parents, or teachers.
How are awards given?
- Every student entering the fair will receive an a certificate of participation.
- Trophies will be given for the top 3 scores in each category. First and second place winners that are students in grades 5 through 12 will invited to advance to the Salt Lake Valley Science and Engineering Fair.
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Memories of the Golden Age of American Space Flight (Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab) - Oral Histories of Managers, Engineers, and Workers (Set 4) - Including Sjoberg, Wendt, and Yardley by Progressive Management
Price: $9.99 USD. 338140 words.
Language: English. Published on August 9, 2012. Nonfiction » Engineering, trades, and technology » Aeronautics & Astronautics.
The fascinating oral histories of a fourth set of thirteen pioneers of the "golden age" of American manned spaceflight (Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Skylab)- converted for accurate flowing-text ebook format reproduction - provide new insights into this extraordinary effort, with vital observations about an era of space history that changed the world.
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Some texts are currently available in German only. We apologize for any inconvenience.
On display in the Friedrichswerder Church are sculptures from the early 19th century. Built between 1824 and 1830 after plans by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the Friedrichswerder Church, with all its works, is the most authentic building of its creator.
The reception of antique motif and form is an important feature of the sculptures from the late 18th to the mid-19th century which are on display here. They are grouped in the exhibition space in a way which is informal and rich in connections so that the observer is given an impression of something like a "landscaped serenity".
At the centre of the exhibition is the original plaster model for Johann Gottfried Schadow's marble sculpture of the Prussian princesses. The area of the Classical sculptural ideal is represented by Emil Wolff's "Badende" and Heinrich Kümmel's "Fischerknabe". Theodor Kalide's "Bacchantin auf dem Panther" - a war-damaged torso, the revolutionary modernity of which can be recognised even in this fragmentary form - already exceeds the boundaries of Classicism. Busts of significant personages from the Goethe period complement the sculpture exhibition: Immanuel Kant, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt and other characters from this significant period in German intellectual history are present.
In the gallery of the church, the Nationalgalerie (National Gallery) has put on display a documentary exhibition on the life and work of Karl Friedrich Schinkel. So, at the same time, the building receives recognition: with the Friedrichswerder Church Schinkel realised a central work of German neo-Gothic.
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Did You Know?
- By purchasing recycled products, consumers are helping to create
long-term stable markets for the recyclable materials that are collected
from New Jersey homes, businesses and institutions.
- The purchase of recycled products is crucial to the success of New
Jersey’s many recycling programs, as well as recycling in general
which has proven to be both an environmental and economic success story.
- The State of New Jersey purchases a variety of recycled products
for its government operations, including recycled copy paper, paper
towels, garbage bags, toner cartridges, antifreeze, traffic cones and
road construction aggregate.
- American businesses demonstrate their commitment to buying recycled
by purchasing billions of dollars of recycled content products annually.
- In addition to preserving natural resources and saving energy, recycling
employs almost 27,000 people in New Jersey and adds almost $6 billion
in annual receipts to our state’s economy.
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Oil Painting ID: 62935
1511-12 Fresco, 215 x 430 cm Cappella Sistina, Vatican "Matthan begat Jacob. Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ." (Matthew 1:15-16) At the top of the entrance wall of the chapel, to the right of the viewer, next to the Eleazar-Matthan lunette, there is the one concluding the genealogical sequence of the ancestors of Christ in the Gospel of St Matthew. Sullen and perplexed, wrapped in a huge yellow ochre cloak and seemingly withdrawn, the old man - generally believed to be Jacob - dominates the family group on the left due to his expressive power and the quality of the colour. Similarly, on the right, the female figure, usually thought to be Mary, is more prominent than the other members of the Holy Family and the child holding a mirror. Behind Mary in the shadow, Joseph holds the Christ child, who stretches out an arm toward the round mirror held out at the height of his face by a naked female child, possibly an allegory of the Church. The compositional schemes of the two neighbouring lunettes correspond: in both there is a female figure in the foreground seen in full, or half, profile and facing the outer wall of the chapel, and a male figure, on the internal side, with his torso seen frontally. Artist: MICHELANGELO Buonarroti Painting Title: Jacob - Joseph , 1501-1550 Painting Style: Italian , , religious
b Caprese 1475 d Rome 1564
Born: March 6, 1475
Died: February 18, 1564
Michelangelo was one of the greatest sculptors of the Italian Renaissance and one of its greatest painters and architects.
Michelangelo Buonarroti was born on March 6, 1475, in Caprese, Italy, a village where his father, Lodovico Buonarroti, was briefly serving as a Florentine government agent. The family moved back to Florence before Michelangelo was one month old. Michelangelo's mother died when he was six. From his childhood Michelangelo was drawn to the arts, but his father considered this pursuit below the family's social status and tried to discourage him. However, Michelangelo prevailed and was apprenticed (worked to learn a trade) at the age of thirteen to Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449?C1494), the most fashionable painter in Florence at the time.
After a year Michelangelo's apprenticeship was broken off. The boy was given access to the collection of ancient Roman sculpture of the ruler of Florence, Lorenzo de' Medici (1449?C1492). He dined with the family and was looked after by the retired sculptor who was in charge of the collection. This arrangement was quite unusual at the time.
Michelangelo's earliest sculpture, the Battle of the Centaurs (mythological creatures that are part man and part horse), a stone work created when he was about seventeen, is regarded as remarkable for the simple, solid forms and squarish proportions of the figures, which add intensity to their violent interaction.
Soon after Lorenzo died in 1492, the Medici family fell from power and Michelangelo fled to Bologna. In 1494 he carved three saints for the church of San Domenico. They show dense forms, in contrast to the linear forms which were then dominant in sculpture.
After returning to Florence briefly, Michelangelo moved to Rome. There he carved a Bacchus for a banker's garden of ancient sculpture. This is Michelangelo's earliest surviving large-scale work, and his only sculpture meant to be viewed from all sides.
In 1498 the same banker commissioned Michelangelo to carve the Piet?? now in St. Peter's. The term piet?? refers to a type of image in which Mary supports the dead Christ across her knees. Larger than life size, the Piet?? contains elements which contrast and reinforce each other: vertical and horizontal, cloth and skin, alive and dead, female and male.
On Michelangelo's return to Florence in 1501 he was recognized as the most talented sculptor of central Italy. He was commissioned to carve the David for the Florence Cathedral.
Michelangelo's Battle of Cascina was commissioned in 1504; several sketches still exist. The central scene shows a group of muscular soldiers climbing from a river where they had been swimming to answer a military alarm. This fusion of life with colossal grandeur henceforth was the special quality of Michelangelo's art.
From this time on, Michelangelo's work consisted mainly of very large projects that he never finished. He was unable to turn down the vast commissions of his great clients which appealed to his preference for the grand scale.
Pope Julius II (1443?C1513) called Michelangelo to Rome in 1505 to design his tomb, which was to include about forty life-size statues. Michelangelo worked on the project off and on for the next forty years.
In 1508 Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to decorate the ceiling of the chief Vatican chapel, the Sistine. The traditional format of ceiling painting contained only single figures. Michelangelo introduced dramatic scenes and an original framing system, which was his earliest architectural design. The chief elements are twelve male and female prophets (the latter known as sibyls) and nine stories from Genesis.
Michelangelo stopped for some months halfway along. When he returned to the ceiling, his style underwent a shift toward a more forceful grandeur and a richer emotional tension than in any previous work. The images of the Separation of Light and Darkness, and Ezekiel illustrate this greater freedom and mobility.
After the ceiling was completed in 1512, Michelangelo returned to the tomb of Julius and carved a Moses and two Slaves. His models were the same physical types he used for the prophets and their attendants in the Sistine ceiling. Julius's death in 1513 halted the work on his tomb.
Pope Leo X, son of Lorenzo de' Medici, proposed a marble facade for the family parish church of San Lorenzo in Florence to be decorated with statues by Michelangelo. After four years of quarrying and designing the project was canceled.
In 1520 Michelangelo was commissioned to execute the Medici Chapel for two young Medici dukes. It contains two tombs, each with an image of the deceased and two allegorical (symbolic) figures: Day and Night on one tomb, and Morning and Evening on the other.
A library, the Biblioteca Laurenziana, was built at the same time on the opposite side of San Lorenzo to house Pope Leo X's books. The entrance hall and staircase are some of Michelangelo's most astonishing architecture, with recessed columns resting on scroll brackets set halfway up the wall and corners stretched open rather than sealed.
Michelangelo wrote many poems in the 1530s and 1540s. Approximately three hundred survive. The earlier poems are on the theme of Neoplatonic love (belief that the soul comes from a single undivided source to which it can unite again) and are full of logical contradictions and intricate images. The later poems are Christian. Their mood is penitent (being sorrow and regretful); and they are written in a simple, direct style.
In 1534 Michelangelo left Florence for the last time, settling in Rome. The next ten years were mainly given over to painting for Pope Paul III (1468?C1549).
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Duchenne muscular dystrophy is caused by a defective gene for dystrophin (a protein in the muscles). However, it often occurs in people without a known family history of the condition.
Because of the way the disease is inherited, boys are affected, not girls. The sons of females who are carriers of the disease (women with a defective gene but no symptoms themselves) each have a 50% chance of having the disease. The daughters each have a 50% chance of being carriers.
Duchenne muscular dystrophy occurs in about 1 out of every 3,600 male infants. Because this is an inherited disorder, risks include a family history of Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
Symptoms usually appear before age 6 and may appear as early as infancy. They may include:
Duchenne muscular dystrophy leads to quickly worsening disability. Death usually occurs by age 25, typically from lung disorders.
Congestive heart failure (rare)
Heart arrhythmias (rare)
Mental impairment (varies, usually minimal)
Permanent, progressive disability
Decreased ability to care for self
Pneumonia or other respiratory infections
Calling your health care provider
Call your health care provider if:
Your child has symptoms of Duchenne muscular dystrophy
Symptoms worsen, or new symptoms develop, particularly fever with cough or breathing difficulties
Genetic counseling is advised if there is a family history of the disorder. Duchenne muscular dystrophy can be detected with about 95% accuracy by genetic studies performed during pregnancy.
Kliegman RM, Behrman RE, Jenson HB, Stanton BF. Muscular dystrophies. In: Kliegman RM, Behrman RE, Jenson HB, Stanton BF. Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics. 18th ed. Philadelphia, Pa:Saunders Elsevier; 2007:chap 608.
Neil K. Kaneshiro, MD, MHA, Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, University of Washington School of Medicine; and Benjamin Seckler, MD, Diagnostic Radiologist, Poughkeepsie, NY, and President of Charley's Fund; and Luc Jasmin, MD, PhD, Department of Neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, and Department of Anatomy at UCSF, San Francisco, CA. Review provided by VeriMed Healthcare Network. Also reviewed by David Zieve, MD, MHA, Medical Director, A.D.A.M. Health Solutions, Ebix, Inc.
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Do not misled by the name of water chestnut, it is not at all a member of the nut family but is about the size of a walnut. Water chestnuts (荸薺 or 馬蹄 in Chinese) are the knobby root of an aquatic plant that grow in areas also suitable for paddy fields. That is why they are widely found in China and South East Asia, where they are said to be planted between rice crops. Since harvesting of water chestnuts is pretty labor intensive, no doubt they are less common in regions of high costs of living like Japan and Australia though these affluent areas also grow abundant rice.
Nice water chestnuts are firm with no rotten or soft spot. Their skins, often muddy, have to be peeled off before cooking. The flavor of water chestnuts is mild yet a little bit sweet. Even after cooked, they are still crunchy and juicy.
Once peeled, do rinse and clean them thoroughly and cover with cold water or their pale-looking flesh may turn rusty. If chilled in fridge, and water is replaced daily, the peeled water chestnuts can be stored for one to two weeks. Besides they can also be eaten raw alone as snack. If not taken as a snack or cooking ingredient, you may just boil them in water and add in your preferred amount of sugar (we often use rock sugar to go with it) and that will give you a good cup of sweet soup.
Water chestnuts can also be dried and made into powder form and is known as water chestnut flour or starch. The flour (like corn starch) is often used as thickener in Chinese cooking, and sometimes for use in making puddings or steamed cakes.
A day before, I have used water chestnuts as one of the fillings for preparing some Lettuce Wraps, just click here to read details of the recipe or leave a comment.
To get immediate updates and new recipes from my blog, you may also SUBSCRIBE them via RSS feeds. See you there.
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Vinca is very drought-tolerant and has an extremely long blooming season. It can also tolerate the highest temperatures we face during the summer growing season.
Great improvements have been made in vinca flower colors and varieties during the past 25 years. In the 1980s, gardeners had few choices in terms of vinca growth habits, flower colors or disease resistance. In the 1990s, new forms and new flower colors arrived with rapid expansion occurring between 2000-2005.
Vinca flower colors now include pink, deep rose, red, blush, scarlet, white, white with a red eye, lavender blue, peach, apricot, orchid, burgundy and many others. You can have vinca varieties that are upright and vinca varieties that are spreading. Plants generally grow 18-20 inches tall with a spread of 12-14 inches. Spreading types, though, have more trailing or ground cover habits and reach only 6-8 inches tall (at the most) with spreads of 18-14 inches.
We do have vinca problems in the landscape, and based on the number of calls with vinca issues this spring, this is a bad year for vinca. This is surprising considering we now have disease-resistant varieties and we had a very dry spring and early summer.
The main disease culprit is a fungus called Phytophthora, which always is present in our soils. It is often responsible for root rots and crown rots, and it attacks many types of plants. This fungus causes a disease seen shortly after planting, but it also can be found later in the year.
Rhizoctonia is another disease common on vinca in Louisiana. It normally shows up in the summer after plants are established. Plant pathologists can also find Botrytis (gray mold) and Alternaria (leaf spot) on vinca in summer and fall.
To get the best performance out of vinca in your landscape, consider the following LSU AgCenter recommendations:
•Begin with good quality plants. Inspect plants obtained from the greenhouse grower or retail garden center for healthy roots.
•Select a full-sun location. Vinca need at least eight hours of direct sun daily for optimum performance.
•Properly prepare the landscape bed to allow for drainage and aeration. Raise the bed at least 6 inches if drainage is questionable. If beds are already established, all debris from the previous planting needs to be removed. Possibly, mulch should be removed also and add another couple inches of landscape soil prior to planting.
•Although late April through early May is the ideal first planting date for the spring, you can continue planting vinca through the summer. The main thing to remember is that vinca love warm soil.
•Plant so that the top of the root ball is level with or slightly higher than the soil of the bed. Proper spacing also is important because a crowded planting limits air circulation and can create conditions more favorable to disease development. Space transplants at least 8-10 inches apart. The more quickly plants grow together, the higher the likelihood of disease moving through foliage later in the year.
•Mulch to decrease splashing of rainfall and irrigation water from soil onto the lower stems and foliage of the plants. Bedding plants should be mulched to a depth of about 1 inch. Pine straw is the preferred mulch material.
•Manage irrigation properly. This is the main culprit in plant decline in commercial landscape beds. Vinca need very little irrigation once they’re established. Avoid regular overhead irrigation. Even if the landscape bed drains very well, an adequate volume once a week is the most water that should be applied.
•Don’t plant periwinkles in the same bed year after year. Rotate them with other summer bedding plants that like sunny locations, such as blue daze, lantana, pentas, angelonia, scaevola, verbena, melampodium or sun-tolerant coleus.
Varieties of vinca available in Louisiana include Pacifica, Cooler, Mediterranean, Victory, Titan, Nirvana and Cora series. Cooler and Pacifica are older varieties that still perform well with correct care. Mediterranean vincas spread and should be planted only in hanging baskets and containers. Titans have the largest flowers of all the vinca groups. The newer and more expensive Nirvana and Cora vincas have genetic resistance to Phytophthora. A few other vincas we have evaluated at the LSU AgCenter recently are not being sold in any significant quantities in Louisiana.
It is late in the bedding-plant season, but pay attention to vinca in landscapes. Are you noticing them looking good or looking bad? Try to figure out why a particular planting is performing well or not performing well. Vinca can have trouble through the summer and fall if proper practices are not followed, so consider the above options to improve your success.
For more information, contact Dr. Chris Robichaux, county agent/area horticulturist, St. Martin/Iberia Parishes, at 332-2181 or 369-4440.
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Job S. Ebenezer, Ph.D.
President, Technology for the Poor,
877 PELHAM COURT, WESTERVILLE, OHIO - 43081
The original Savonius design called
for a 7 to 8 inch overlap of the buckets. Research at Sandia Laboratories,
however, suggested an overlap of 10 to 15% of the bucket diameter or in this
case 3 inches (the bucket diameter=23 inches).
The second modification was the use of an automobile differential at the bottom of the machine to convert the vertical shaft power of the rotor to horizontal shaft power. A water pump or grain grinder could then be connected to the horizontal shaft either directly or via chain or V belt arrangements. The vertical main shaft of the wind machine was connected to the driveshaft of the differential., and one axle shaft of the differential became the horizontal power take off shaft for the wind machine. The other axle shaft was removed and the slip gears were locked. The gear ratio offered by this arrangement was 3:1, i.e. for every three turns of the wind machine's main shaft, the horizontal shaft turned once. This arrangement provided a high torque, low speed power to run a chain pump and a grain mill. A simple brake mechanism was provided to stop the machine in high winds.
A chain pump was constructed using a design proposed by Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA). A drawing of the chain pump constructed is shown below. In order to prevent corrosion of the metal chain, short lengths of nylon ropes were substituted for the lengths of chain between each leather washer. This substitution;. however, proved to be unsatisfactory
as there was much binding and
misalignment of the washers as they ascended the pipe. It is suggested that the
metal links should not be replaced by light weight ropes as the weight of the
links keep the washers taught and aligned well. Aside from these alignment
problems, the Savonius machine performed well. The Brace Research Institute in
Canada has successfully operated a diaphragm pump made of a tire with a Savonius
windmill. It is suggested that a diaphragm pump may be better suited for
Savonius windmill than a chain pump. Although the Village Technology Program did
not construct and test a chain bucket pump (shown below), it is believed that it
might perform very well with a Savonius windmill. Conventional piston pumps can
also be used with a Savonius windmill.
The Savonius windmill was also used to grind grain. A small grain mill known as "Corona Convertible" manufactured in Columbia, South America, was fitted with a hopper and sprocket.
The hopper holds a large amount of grain and can feed the mill automatically. A s shown below, the horizontal shaft of the windmill is connected to the grain mill via a roller chain and sprocket drive. The overall ratio between the wind machine and the grain mill was 5:1. The mill turned once for every five turns of the rotor.
This wind machine and mill combination successfully ground grain into fine flour. However, the rate of production and wind speed are not known with any accuracy, as this set up was not instrumented. Also unknown is the eventual durability of the mill's simple cast iron journal bearings. Perhaps the use of higher quality mills with better bearings will be required.
All factors considered, the Savonius design affords a very simple, stable machine requiring little maintenance. The Savonius' power output is relatively low (about 1 2 hp), but so is the initial investment for its construction (about $250 of materials). We highly recommend this machine for use in Third World countries.
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When I was in school at MIT and Harvard in the 1980s and 1990s, I was taught that there were 100,000 or so human genes, every one encoding a protein. The properties of those genes were unknown. Today, I teach that our genome contains only 21,000 protein-coding genes. To our surprise, there are thousands of additional genes that don’t encode proteins. All of these genes have been described in great detail.
I was taught that the parts of the genome not encoding proteins were “junk.” Today, we know that this junk makes up three-quarters of our functional DNA. Parts of it help exquisitely control where and when genes are active in the body.
I was taught that “genetic diseases,” such as cystic fibrosis, are caused by mutation of a single gene, with only a small handful of these mutations known. Today, precise causes are known for 2,800 of these rare single-gene disorders.
I was taught nothing about the more complex genetics of common diseases. Today, we are learning at dizzying speed about the interplay of genes and environment in diabetes, heart disease, and other common conditions. In the past three years alone more than 1,000 genetic risk factors have been found (an increase of perhaps 50-fold), contributing to more than 100 common diseases.
Such advances would have come far later, if at all, without the Human Genome Project (see “The Human Genome, a Decade Later” ). But a body of knowledge is not its only legacy. It also changed the way biological research is performed.
I was trained to view scientific data as the private property of each investigator. Human genetics research groups were locked in a “race” to discover each disease gene, and there were winners and losers. This often led to fragmentation of effort and yielded results irreproducible by others. Data was collected by hand and stored in paper notebooks.
The Human Genome Project held the revolutionary view that data collected should be freely available to all. Today this view prevails in genomics and many other fields of biology and medicine. Data is shared online by scientists the world over.
Today, thanks in no small part to the genome project’s example, investigators working on the same disease often publish together. Combining clinical and genetic data this way increases the statistical robustness of the claimed findings and makes for highly reproducible results.
Of course, knowledge of the human genome alone is not sufficient to cure disease. It will always be the case that creativity, hard work, and good fortune are needed to translate biological data into medical progress. But without the information, understanding, and cultural changes brought on by the genome project, the benefits to patients would be much further off.
David Altshuler is a founding member, the deputy director, and the chief academic officer of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, and Professor of genetics and of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
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by Staff Writers
Ann Arbor MI (SPX) Mar 14, 2013
In evolutionary biology, there is a deeply rooted supposition that you can't go home again: Once an organism has evolved specialized traits, it can't return to the lifestyle of its ancestors.
There's even a name for this pervasive idea. Dollo's law states that evolution is unidirectional and irreversible. But this "law" is not universally accepted and is the topic of heated debate among biologists.
Now a research team led by two University of Michigan biologists has used a large-scale genetic study of the lowly house dust mite to uncover an example of reversible evolution that appears to violate Dollo's law.
The study shows that tiny free-living house dust mites, which thrive in the mattresses, sofas and carpets of even the cleanest homes, evolved from parasites, which in turn evolved from free-living organisms millions of years ago.
"All our analyses conclusively demonstrated that house dust mites have abandoned a parasitic lifestyle, secondarily becoming free-living, and then speciated in several habitats, including human habitations," according to Pavel Klimov and Barry OConnor of the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
Their paper, "Is permanent parasitism reversible?-Critical evidence from early evolution of house dust mites," is scheduled to be published online March 8 in the journal Systematic Biology.
Mites are arachnids related to spiders (both have eight legs) and are among the most diverse animals on Earth. House dust mites, members of the family Pyroglyphidae, are the most common cause of allergic symptoms in humans, affecting up to 1.2 billion people worldwide.
Despite their huge impact on human health, the evolutionary relationships between these speck-sized creatures are poorly understood. According to Klimov and OConnor, there are 62 different published hypotheses arguing about whether today's free-living dust mites originated from a free-living ancestor or from a parasite-an organism that lives on or in a host species and damages its host.
In their study, Klimov and OConnor evaluated all 62 hypotheses. Their project used large-scale DNA sequencing, the construction of detailed evolutionary trees called phylogenies, and sophisticated statistical analyses to test the hypotheses about the ancestral ecology of house dust mites.
On the phylogenetic tree they produced, house dust mites appear within a large lineage of parasitic mites, the Psoroptidia. These mites are full-time parasites of birds and mammals that never leave the bodies of their hosts. The U-M analysis shows that the immediate parasitic ancestors of house dust mites include skin mites, such as the psoroptic mange mites of livestock and the dog and cat ear mite.
"This result was so surprising that we decided to contact our colleagues to obtain their feedback prior to sending these data for publication," said Klimov, the first author of the paper and an assistant research scientist in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
The result was so surprising largely because it runs counter to the entrenched idea that highly specialized parasites cannot return to the free-living lifestyle of their ancestors.
"Parasites can quickly evolve highly sophisticated mechanisms for host exploitation and can lose their ability to function away from the host body," Klimov said.
"They often experience degradation or loss of many genes because their functions are no longer required in a rich environment where hosts provide both living space and nutrients. Many researchers in the field perceive such specialization as evolutionarily irreversible."
The U-M findings also have human-health implications, said OConnor, a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and a curator of insects and arachnids at the U-M Museum of Zoology.
"Our study is an example of how asking a purely academic question may result in broad practical applications," he said. "Knowing phylogenetic relationships of house dust mites may provide insights into allergenic properties of their immune-response-triggering proteins and the evolution of genes encoding allergens."
The project started in 2006 with a grant from the National Science Foundation. The first step was to obtain specimens of many free-living and parasitic mites-no simple task given that some mite species are associated with rare mammal or bird species around the world.
The research team relied on a network of 64 biologists in 19 countries to obtain specimens. In addition, Klimov and OConnor conducted field trips to North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa. On one occasion, it took two years to obtain samples of an important species parasitizing African birds.
A total of around 700 mite species were collected for the study. For the genetic analysis, the same five nuclear genes were sequenced in each species.
How might the ecological shift from parasite to free-living state have occurred?
There is little doubt that early free-living dust mites were nest inhabitants-the nests of birds and mammals are the principal habitat of all modern free-living species in the family Pyroglyphidae.
Klimov and OConnor propose that a combination of several characteristics of their parasitic ancestors played an important role in allowing them to abandon permanent parasitism: tolerance of low humidity, development of powerful digestive enzymes that allowed them to feed on skin and keratinous (containing the protein keratin, which is found in human hair and fingernails) materials, and low host specificity with frequent shifts to unrelated hosts.
These features, which occur in almost all parasitic mites, were likely important precursors that enabled mite populations to thrive in host nests despite low humidity and scarce, low-quality food resources, according to Klimov and OConnor. For example, powerful enzymes allowed these mites to consume hard-to-digest feather and skin flakes composed of keratin.
With the advent of human civilization, nest-inhabiting pyroglyphids could have shifted to human dwellings from the nests of birds and rodents living in or around human homes. Once the mites moved indoors, the potent digestive enzymes and other immune-response-triggering molecules they carry made them a major source of human allergies.
University of Michigan
Darwin Today At TerraDaily.com
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EARLY HISTORY OF LOGIC, SCIENCE AND MATH. Imagine holding history in your hands. Now you can. Digitally preserved and previously accessible only through libraries as Early English Books Online, this rare material is now available in single print editions. Thousands of books written between 1475 and 1700 can be delivered to your doorstep in individual volumes of high quality historical reproductions.
The "hard sciences" developed exponentially during the 16th and 17th centuries, both relying upon centuries of tradition and adding to the foundation of modern application, as is evidenced by this extensive collection. This is a rich collection of practical mathematics as applied to business, carpentry and geography as well as explorations of mathematical instruments and arithmetic; logic and logicians such as Aristotle and Socrates; and a number of scientific disciplines from natural history to physics. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++ Logicae artis compendium In quo vniversiae artis synopsis, methodo ac forma ad scholarum vsum, qu m fieri potuit, accommodatissim breviter proponitur. Sanderson, Robert, 1587-1663. By Robert Sanderson. With a final errata leaf. , 230, 124, p. Oxonii : Excudebat Iosephus Barnesius, 1615. Madan, I, p. 104. / STC (2nd ed.) / 21701 Latin Reproduction of the original in the Queen's College (University of Oxford) Library ++++ This book represents an authentic reproduction of the text as printed by the original publisher. While we have attempted to accurately maintain the integrity of the original work, there are sometimes problems with the original work or the micro-film from which the books were digitized. This can result in errors in reproduction. Possible imperfections include missing and blurred pages, poor pictures, markings and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature.
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Timor-Leste lies right at the heart of The Coral Triangle, an area of 648 million hectares which holds the world’s highest diversity of marine life and is also home to some of the world’s poorest people. Although small compared to other countries in the Coral Triangle, Timor-Leste boasts rich and relatively pristine marine areas as well as huge unfulfilled economic potential in marine and coastal ecotourism.
Today, over half of the people in Timor-Leste live on less than $2 a day and around 90 percent depend on natural resources to survive. Rapid development, unsustainable fishing practices and climate change all threaten the valuable marine ecosystems surrounding Timor-Leste, posing serious challenges to the ongoing food security for this small nation.
Through the Coral Triangle Support Partnership (CTSP), USAID works with the government and coastal communities of Timor-Leste to improve the skills of the people who are instrumental in maintaining their precious marine areas. Since 2009, CTSP has trained hundreds of fishermen to better manage their coastline, and has helped the Ministry of Fisheries to develop polices which use conservation, sustainable fisheries, and Climate Change Adaptation to protect their most vulnerable coastal communities.
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Case Study: Adderall vs. Response Cost
A six year-old boy in the T.L.C. program was seen by the consulting psychiatrist who recommended tapering the child off of his psycho-stimulant medication (Adderall) due to his small stature, observable tics, and ongoing difficulties with inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity despite the use of the stimulant medication. Prior to tapering the medication, observations were made of this child’s behavior in the school and cottage settings. Frequencies of off-task, inattentive, and impulsive behaviors were counted in each setting over the course of one week. After this data was collected and the child was tapered off the Adderall, a response cost program was implemented in the school and cottage settings to specifically target these behaviors. Frequencies of off-task, inattentive, and impulsive behaviors were again collected in the cottage and school settings after the implementation of the response cost program.
The average rate of off-task, inattentive, and impulsive behaviors per hour were determined from these frequency counts. Comparisons were made between the child’s average hourly frequency of displaying each behavior while on Adderall to the child’s average hourly frequency of displaying each behavior while off Adderall and utilizing a response cost program. In all cases the rates of behaviors were lower during the response cost program than they were during the Adderall regimen (see graph below). It is important to note that the decrease in the average hourly rate of off-task behavior (t(2)=1.104, p=.38) and impulsive behavior (t(2)=.949, p=.443) was not statistically significant. This finding is not surprising, rather it is to be expected given the limited statistical power to find real differences that comes from using such a small data set (with only two degrees of freedom).
Average hourly frequency of behaviors
The truly impressive finding in this single-sample case study is that the average rate of inattentive behavior did significantly decrease (t(2)=4.062, p=.05). This is particularly noteworthy given the limited amount of statistical power to find real differences with a small data set, as mentioned above. This indicates that, for this child, the intended effect of the response cost program is rather potent when compared to the intended effect of the Adderall. Furthermore, the response cost program does not have the negative side effects of diminished stature or tics that were associated with the Adderall.
The current study should be viewed only as intended, as a single-sample case study to assess the effects of the change in program for one child, with all the inherent threats to validity that are associated with a single case study or any study with limited data points. The significant findings of this study do indicate however, that these positive effects might be expected to generalize to other children. Further assessment should therefore be conducted whenever similar changes are indicated in other children’s treatment programs in an attempt to replicate these findings.
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This month, the Hubble Telescope celebrates twenty years in space. Why should we care? And does an orbiting telescope matter to those of us who aren't scientists?
Caroline Moore became the youngest person to discover a supernova on November 7, 2008 (at the age of 14). She explains why, yes, the Hubble matters.
And Derrick Pitts, chief astronomer at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, shares discoveries that the Hubble has revealed about the universe, which will blow your mind.
Caroline's eleven facts about the Hubble, as well as a Nova-sponsored video profile on her own work, are below. To learn more about the Hubble, tune in to Nova's mini-series "Hunting the Edge of Space."
Caroline Moore's Eleven Facts Everyone Should Know About The Hubble Space Telescope:
The Hubble Space Telescope was named for the notable astronomer Edwin Hubble and was launched April 24, 1990.
Hubble has looked further into space than any other instrument: some 20 billion light years.
In 2003, Hubble looked at a small patch of space that you could cover with a match head at arms length and found 10,000 galaxies, where we once thought there was nothing.
Hubble observations have lead to over 7,000 scientific articles.
Every 97 minutes, Hubble completes an orbit and as it passes over your house, you can look up and see it as long as you don’t live in the city.
After Hubble was launched into orbit, they found it had a tiny flaw. It was just slightly the wrong shape by about 1/50th the thickness of a human hair.
Hubble has been repaired 4 times, by the Hubble repairman, John Grunsfeld.
Hubble can see 20 billion light years across the universe, but can’t see the flag on the moon.
Hubble weighs 24,500 lb. on Earth, but when in space, you can move it with your finger.
Hubble, over its lifetime, has cost $10 billion. Compare this to the cost of cigarettes in the U.S. for one year: $157.7 billion.
Hubble is not in danger of being demoted to a dwarf space telescope when the James Webb Telescope comes on line in 2014.
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Ninety-one years after two Americans, Robert Edwin Peary and Frederick Albert Cook, both claimed to have been the first to reach the North Pole, experts are still arguing over which of them if either turned the trick. Certainty remains elusive.
Cook's case is weaker, not least because Cook is such a lousy character witness for himself. A physician, he was, to be sure, also an accomplished outdoorsman. He had served as surgeon on Peary's first Arctic expedition in 1891 and had done some serious mountaineering in the years prior to his North Pole assault. But consider the mountaineering as Exhibit A against the man: In 1906, Cook stated that he had made the first successful ascent of Alaska's Mount McKinley. Later, his summit photographs were revealed as fakes, and Cook's climbing partner recanted his corroboration. Exhibit B could be Cook's conviction for mail fraud, a smear erased sort of by a presidential pardon in 1940, the year of Cook's death. So that's Frederick A. Cook.
Peary was no sweetheart either. The U.S. Navy commander was unlikable, arrogant and extraordinarily self-involved. A married man with a son and a daughter, he fathered two Eskimo children during his Arctic adventures. (Though he associated with Eskimos during his entire career, Peary proved to be no friend to the northern people: As detailed in Kenn Harper's Give Me My Father's Body: The Life of Minik, The New York Eskimo, in 1897 Peary presented six Eskimos as "specimens" to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Four of the group died almost immediately of influenza.) Peary once said of Matthew Henson, his African American assistant of 22 years, "Henson must go all the way. I can't make it without him." Throughout the Arctic, Henson cooked, built igloos, tended the dogs and walked every cold and painful step, while his boss was hauled on a sledge by Eskimos. But when evidence indicated that Henson had quite possibly reached the Pole before him, Peary never spoke to the man again. So that's Robert E. Peary.
Cook and Peary were right for the task, as the goal they had in sight could be reached only by a driven man of considerable ego. The North Pole was the single greatest target for adventurers at the turn of the century. In the 1890s the Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen sailed his ship to Spitsbergen but ultimately failed to reach the Pole; the Swede Salomon Andrée tried to reach the Pole by balloon but failed; Peary tried for the Pole on dogsled but failed. The North Pole, floating on a sea 13,410 feet deep, its surface ice perpetually shifting and drifting, cracking and freezing again, was a cruel siren: By the early 20th century it had already claimed the lives of hundreds of adventurers.
Peary, 52, felt certain that his 1908 expedition would be his last. His six previous trips to the Arctic had earned him considerable renown in 1891-92 he had proved Greenland to be an island by exploring its northern coast, and his 1905 polar trek had established a farthest-north record but he would remain unfulfilled if he did not reach 90 degrees north.
He either did or did not do so on April 6, 1909, after an over-the-ice journey of 37 days, accompanied on the last stretch by Henson and four Eskimos. Before Peary could even cable the news, his old colleague Cook blindsided him by announcing from the Shetland Islands that he had stood atop the world a full year earlier. It seemed, initially, that he might have, but the journals he presented as proof were said by experts to have been doctored, and the Eskimo guides that Cook trotted out as witnesses proved as worthy as his McKinley corroborator. The Eskimos finally admitted that Cook had, in fact, never left sight of land land that ends hundreds of miles south of the Pole.
In recent years, Peary's claim has also come under a cloud: Did he get there? Were his measurements accurate? The truth may never be known. In 1989 the National Geographic Society, after commissioning the Navigation Foundation to spend more than a year investigating 225 cubic feet of documents, announced that Peary, who had been made a rear admiral before his death in 1920, had very likely come within five miles of the North Pole and perhaps had stood upon the spot itself. Whatever the truth is, favor does seem to rest much more comfortably with Peary than with Cook. As Peter Freuchen, the noted Danish explorer and writer who knew both men, once put it: "Cook was a liar and a gentleman; Peary was neither."
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Fans of Lake St. Clair's 420 square miles of water connecting Lake Erie and Lake Huron want to make it the sixth Great Lake. They should forget it.
At 26 miles long and 14 miles wide at its widest, this lake is important as a link and an established part of the Great Lakes waterway system. But a Great Lake? The notion makes no more sense than an effort four years ago to designate Lake Champlain, which lies between Vermont and New York, a Great Lake.
Leading the campaign to promote Lake St. Clair, a puddle in comparison with Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, are two members of the Macomb Water Quality Board. Their aims are as economic as ecological, as connected to sport fishing as to shipping, and to clean water as to biodiversity.
What's behind their petition to the Great Lakes Commission is money. Lake St. Clair's characterization as a “Great,” though it flies in the face of common sense, would entitle it to federal dollars allocated to the real Great Lakes for pollution and weed control, to save wetlands, correct contamination from runoff, and help get rid of noxious marine life such as the gobey and the zebra mussel brought in by foreign vessels.
But Lake St. Clair, because it connects Lake Erie and Lake Huron, may be entitled to some of this money anyway. If the lake is contaminated, if it harbors alien noxious species, they will be quick to spread to the Great Lakes. It is a key part of the system.
Is this money possible? Of course it is. The Great Lakes Commission last year set aside a half million dollars in federal funds to correct chronic pollution in Lake St. Clair.
It could use some of its allocations under the Great Lakes Legacy Act to keep conditions in Lake St. Clair comparable to those in the Great Lakes.
And if there is a reason to fix Lake St. Clair, surely it is easier for Congress to fix it than to see this relatively small body of water declared a Great Lake.
Michael J. Donahue, who heads the Great Lakes Commission, acknowledges that the commission staff has been calling St. Clair the sixth Great Lake for a while, if only to illustrate the importance of the whole water system.
But even he concedes that the name is not the issue, that what Lake St. Clair needs is some kind attention and some recognition because it “might be a lot more important, economically and ecologically, than the five Great Lakes.”
Maybe so, but there are not six Great Lakes, only five.
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Christian parents should gather their families together each day for spiritual instruction and prayer. This opportuity must be seized when the children are young. Even a child of two will bow his head, and say "Amen" at the end of a prayer. This Catechism has been made available to help you teach your children the Word of God. Family worship might well include:
1. Two or three verses of a hymn
2. The reading of a few verses of Scripture
3. Catechism questions and answers
4. Prayer need not be tedious or long-winded
Encourage the children to pray. Use your imagination to make family worhsip attractive and interesting. The children will sometimes be ready to discuss the Catechism answers with you. They will enjoy looking up passages of scripture where the Catechism truths are found. Pray for the guidance and help of the Holy Spirit. God will honour you if you are faithful. Remember the promise, "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it" (Proverbs 22:6).
1. Q. Who made you?
A. God made me (Gn 1:26, 27, 2:7; Eccl. 12:1; Acts 17:24-29).
2. Q. What else did God make?
A. God made all things (Gn 1, 31; Acts 14:15; Rom. 11:36; Col 1:16).
3. Q. Why did God make you and all things?
A. For his own glory (Ps 19:1; Jer 9:23, 24; Rv 4:11, 4:15).
4. Q. How can you glorify God?
A. By loving him and doing what he commands (Eccl. 12:13; Mk 12:29-31; John 15:8-10; 1 Cor 10:31).
5. Q. Why ought you to glorify God?
A. Because he made me and takes care of me (Rom. 11:36; Rv 4:11; cf. Dan 4:39).
6. Q. Are there more gods than one?
A. There is only one God (Deut 6:4; Jer 10:10; Mk 12:29; Acts 17:22-31).
7. Q. In how many persons does this one God exist?
A. In three persons (Mt 3:16, 17; John 5:23, 10:30, 14:9, 10, 15:26, 16:13-15; 1 John 5:20; 2 John 9; Rv 1:4, 5).
8. Q. Who are they?
A. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (Mt 28:19; 2 Cor 13:14; 1 Pet 1:2; Jude 20, 21).
9. Q. Who is God?
A. God is a Spirit, and does not have a body like men (John 4:24; 2 Cor 3:17; 1 Tim 1:17).
10. Q. Where is God?
A. God is everywhere (Ps 139:7-12; Jer 23:23, 24; Acts 17:27, 28).
11. Q. Can you see God?
A. No. I cannot see God, but he always sees me (Ex 33:20; John 1:18; 1 Tim 6:16; Ps 139; Prov. 5:21; Heb. 4:12, 13).
12. Q. Does God know all things?
A. Yes. Nothing can be hidden from God (1 Chron 28:9; 2 Chron 16:9; Lk 12:6, 7; Rom. 2:16).
13. Q. Can God do all things?
A. Yes. God can do all his holy will (Ps 147:5; Jer 32:17; Dan 4:34, 35; Eph 1:11).
14. Q. Where do you learn how to love and obey God?
A. In the Bible alone (Job 11:7; Ps 119:104; Is 8:20; Mt 22:29; 2 Tim 3:15-17).
15. Q. Who wrote the Bible?
A. Holy men who were taught by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet 1:20, 21; Acts 1:16; 2 Tim 3:16; 1 Pet 1:10, 11).
16. Q. Who were our first parents?
A. Adam and Eve (Gn 2:18-25, 3:20, 5:1, 2; Acts 17:26; 1 Tim 2:13).
17. Q. Of what were our first parents made?
A. God made the body of Adam out of the ground, and formed Eve from the body of Adam (Gn 2:7, 21-23, 3:19; Ps 103:14).
18. Q. What did God give Adam and Eve besides bodies?
A. He gave them the breath of life and they became living souls (Gen. 2:7; Job 33:4; Eccl 12:7; Zech 12:1).
19. Q. Have you a soul as well as a body?
A. A soul is not something a person has, it is the person. Man was not given a soul, but rather he became a soul. (Gen. 2:7; Mk 8:34-37, 12:30).
20. Q. Can a soul die?
A. Yes. The soul that continues in sin shall die. (Ezek. 18:20; Mt 10:28; Mk 8:34-37).
21. Q. What is your soul?
A. My soul includes all of me that should know and love God (Mk 8:34-38; Eph. 3:16-19).
22. Q. In what condition did God make Adam and Eve?
A. He made them holy and happy (Gn 1:26-28; Ps 8:4-8).
23. Q. Did Adam and Eve stay holy and happy?
A. No. They sinned against God (Gn 3:1-7; Eccl 7:29; Hos 6:7 where "men~~ = Adam). 24.
24. Q. What was the sin of our first parents?
A. Eating the forbidden fruit (Gn 2:16, 17, 3:6).
25. Q. Why did they eat the forbidden fruit?
A. Because they did not believe what God had said (Gn 3:1-6; cf. Heb. 11:6).
26. Q. Who tempted them to this sin?
A. The devil tempted Eve, and she gave the fruit to Adam (Gn 3:1-13; 2 Cor 11:3; 1 Tim 2:13, 14; cf. Rv 12:9).
27. Q. What happened to our first parents when they had sinned?
A. Instead of being holy and happy, they became sinful and miserable (Gn 3:14-24, 4:1-24; James 1:14, 15).
28. Q. What effect did the sin of Adam have on all mankind?
A. All mankind is born in a state of sin and misery (Ps. 5 1:5; Rom. 5:12, 18, 19; 1 Cor 15:21, 22; 1 John 5:19).
29. Q. What do we inherit from Adam as a result of this original sin?
A. A sinful nature (1 Kings 8:46; Ps 14:2, 3, 58:3; Eccl 9:3; Mt 15:18-20; John 2:24, 25; Rom. 8:7).
30. Q. What is sin?
A. Sin is any transgression of the law of God (1 John 3:4; Rom. 3:20; James 2:9-11).
31. Q. What is meant by transgression?
A. Doing what God forbids (1 Sam 13:8-14, 15:22, 23; Hos 6:7; Rom. 1:21-32).
32. Q. What does every sin deserve?
A. The anger and judgment of God (Deut 27:26; Rom. 1:18, 2:2; Gal 3:10; Eph 5:6).
33. Q. Do we know what God requires of us?
A. Yes, he has given us his law both in our hearts and in writing (Rom. 2:14-15).
34. Q. How many commandments did God give on Mt. Sinai?
A. Ten commandments (Ex 20:1-17; Deut 5:1-22).
35. Q. What are the ten commandments sometimes called?
A. God's moral law (Lk 20:25-28; Rom. 2:14, 15, 10:5).
36. Q. What do the first four commandments teach?
A. Our duty to God (Deut 6:5, 6, 10:12, 13).
37. Q. What do the last six commandments teach?
A. Our duty to our fellow men (Deut 10:19; Mic 6:8; cf. Gal. 6:10).
38. Q. What is the sum of the ten commandments?
A. To love God with all my heart, and my neighbor as myself (Deut 6:1-15; 11:1; Mt 22:35-40; James 2:8).
39. Q. Who is your neigHeb.or?
A. All my fellow men are my neighbors (Lk 10:25-37, 6:35).
40. Q. Is God pleased with those who love and obey him?
A. Yes. He says, 'I love them that love me' (Prov. 8:17; Ex 20:6; 1 John 4:7-16).
41. Q. Is God pleased with those who do not love and obey him?
A. No. 'God is angry with the wicked every day' (Ps 7:11; Mal 2:17; Prov. 6:16-19; 1 Cor 16:22).
42. Q. What is the first commandment?
A. The first commandment is, You shall have no other gods before Me (Ex 20:3; Deut 5:7).
43. Q. What does the first commandment teach us?
A. To worship God only (Is 45:5, 6; Mt 4:10; Rv 22:8, 9).
44. Q. What is the second commandment?
A. The second commandment is, You shall not make for yourself [a]an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments (Ex 20:4-6; Deut 5:8-10).
45. Q. What does the second commandment teach us?
A. To worship God in the right way, and to avoid idolatry (Is 44:9-20, 46:5-9; John 4:23, 24; Acts 17:29).
46. Q. What is the third commandment?
A. The third commandment is, Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain (Ex 20:7; Deut 5:11).
47. Q. What does the third commandment teach us?
A. To reverence God's name, word, and works (Is 8:13; Ps 29:2, 138:2; Rv 15:3, 4).
48. Q. What is the fourth commandment?
A. The fourth commandment is, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it (Ex 20:8-11, 23:12; Deut 5:12-15).
49. Q. What does the fourth commandment teach us?
A. To keep the Sabbath holy (Lv 19:20, 23:3; Is 58:13, 14).
50. Q. What day of the week is the Christian Sabbath?
A. The first day of the week, called the Lord's Day (Acts 20:7; Rv 1:10).
51. Q. Why is it called the Lord's Day?
A. Because on that day Christ rose from the dead (Mt 28:1; Mk 16:9; Lk 24:1-6; John 20:1).
52. Q. How should the Sabbath be kept?
A. In prayer and praise, in hearing and reading God's Word, and in doing good to our fellow men (Is 58:13, 14; Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2; Lk 4:16; Mt 12:10-13).
53. Q. What is the fifth commandment?
A. The fifth commandment is, Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee (Ex 20:12; Deut 5:16).
54. Q. What does the fifth commandment teach us?
A. To love and obey our parents (Mt 15:3-6; Eph. 6:1-3; Col. 3:20).
55. Q. What is the sixth commandment?
A. The sixth commandment is, Thou shalt not kill (Ex 20:13; Deut 5:17)
56. Q. What does the sixth commandment teach us?
A. To avoid hatred, all that leads to it, and all that follows from it. (Mt 5:21-24; 1 John 3:15; James 4:1-3).
57. Q. What is the seventh commandment?
A. The seventh commandment is, Thou shalt not commit adultery (Ex 20:14; Deut 5:18).
58. Q. What does the seventh commandment teach us?
A. To be pure in heart, language and conduct (Mt 5:27, 28; Eph. 5:3-5; Phil. 4:8, 9).
59. Q. What is the eighth commandment?
A. The eighth commandment is, Thou shalt not steal (Ex 20:15; Deut 5:19).
60. Q. What does the eighth commandment teach us?
A. To be honest and not to take the things of others (Ex 23:4; Prov. 21:6, 7; Eph. 4:28).
61. Q. What is the ninth commandment?
A. The ninth commandment is, Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neigHeb.or (Ex 20:16; Deut 5:20).
62. Q. What does the ninth commandment teach us?
A. To tell the truth and not to speak evil of others (Ps 15:1-3; Zech 8:16; 1 Cor 13:6; James 4:11).
63. Q. What is the tenth commandment?
A. The tenth commandment is, Thou shalt not covet thy neigHeb.or's house, thou shalt not covet thy neigHeb.or's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neigHeb.or's (Ex 20:17; Deut 5:21; Rom. 7:7).
64. Q. What does the tenth commandment teach us?
A. To be content with what we have (Phil 4:11; 1 Tim 6:6-8; Heb. 13:5).
65. Q. Can any man keep these ten commandments?
A. No mere man, since the fall of Adam, ever did or can keep the ten commandments perfectly (Prov. 20:9; Eccl. 7:20; Rom. 3:19, 20; James 2:10; 1 John 1:8, 10).
66. Q. Of what use are the ten commandments to us?
A. They teach us our duty, make clear our condemnation, and show us our need of a Saviour (1 Tim 1:8-11; Rom. 3:20; Gal 3:24).
67. Q. Does God condemn all men?
A. No. Though he could justly have done so he has graciously entered into a covenant to save many (Rom. 3:19, 20, 23-25; John 17:11, 12; Is 53:11).
68. Q. What is a covenant?
A. A covenant is an agreement between two or more persons (e.g., 1 Sam 18:3; Mt 26:14, 15).
69. Q. What is the covenant of grace?
A. It is an eternal agreement within the Trinity to save certain persons called the elect, and to provide all the means for their salvation (Gn 17:1-8; Rom. 11:27; Heb. 10:16, 11; 13:20, 21; Jer 31:31-34; Ez 36:25-28).
70. Q. What did Christ undertake in the covenant of grace?
A. Christ undertook to keep the whole law for his people, and to suffer the punishment due to their sins (Rom 8:3, 4; Gal 4:4, 5; Heb. 6:17-20, 7:22, 9:14, 15, 13:20, 21).
71. Q. Did our Lord Jesus Christ ever sin?
A. No. He was holy, blameless and undefiled (Heb. 7:26; Lk 23:47; Heb. 4:15; 1 Pet 2:22; 1 John 3:5).
72. Q. How could the Son of God suffer?
A. Christ, the Son of God, took flesh and blood, that he might obey and suffer as a man (John 1:14; Rom. 8:3; Gal 4:4; Phil 2:7, 8; Heb. 2:14, 17, 4:15).
73. Q. What is meant by the atonement?
A. The atonement consists of Christ's satisfying divine justice, by his sufferings and death, in the place of sinners (Mk 10:45; Acts 13:38, 39; Rom. 3:24-26, 5:8, 9; 2 Cor 5:19-21; Gal 3:13; 1 Pet 3:18).
74. Q. For whom did Christ obey and suffer?
A. Christ obeyed and suffered for those whom the Father had given him (Is 53:8; Mt 1:21; John 10:11, 15, 16, 26-29, 17:9; Heb. 2:13).
75. Q. What kind of life did Christ live on earth?
A. Christ lived a life of perfect obedience to the law of God (Mt 5:17; Rom. 10:4; 1 Pet 2:21, 22).
76. Q. What kind of death did Christ die?
A. Christ experienced the painful and shameful death of the cross (Ps 22; Is 53; Gospel records).
77. Q. Who will be saved?
A. Only those who repent of sin and believe in Christ will be saved (Mk 1:15; Lk 13:3,5; Acts 2:37-41, 16:30, 31, 20:21, 26:20).
78. Q. What is it to repent?
A. Repentance involves sorrow for sin, leading one to hate and forsake it because it is displeasing to God (Lk 19:8-10; Rom. 6:1, 2; 2 Cor 7:9-11; 1 Thess. 1:9, 10).
79. Q. What is it to believe in Christ?
A. A person believes who knows that his only hope is Christ and trusts in Christ alone for salvation (John 14:6; Acts 4:12; 1 Tim 2:5; 1 John 5:11, 12).
80. Q. How were godly persons saved before the coming of Christ?
A. They believed in the Saviour to come (John 8:56; Gal 3:8, 9; 1 Cor 10:1-4; Heb. 9:15, 11:13).
81. Q. How did they show their faith?
A. They offered sacrifices according to God's commands (Ex 24:3-8; 1 Chron 29:20-25; Heb. 9:19-23, 10:1, 11:28).
82. Q. What did these sacrifices represent?
A. They were symbolic of Christ, the Lamb of God, who was to die for sinners (Ex 12:46 cf. John 19:36; Heb. 9, Heb. 10; John 1:29; 1 Cor 5:7; 1 Pet 1:19).
83. Q. What does Christ do for his people?
A. He does the work of a prophet, a priest and a king (Heb. 1:1-3; Rv 1:5; Mt 13:57; Heb. 5:5-10; John 18:37).
84. Q. How is Christ a prophet?
A. He teaches us the will of God, reveals God to us, and really was God in human flesh. (Deut 18:15, 18; John 1:18, 4:25, 14:23, 24; 1 John 5:20).
85. Q. Why do you need Christ as a prophet?
A. Because I am ignorant (Job 11:7; Mt 11:25-27; John 6:67-69, 17:25, 26; 1 Cor 2:14-16; 2 Cor 4:3-6).
86. Q. How is Christ a priest?
A. He died for our sins and prays to God for us (Ps 110:4; 1 Tim 2:5, 6; Heb. 4:14-16, 7:24, 25; 1 John 2:1, 2).
87. Q. Why do you need Christ as a priest?
A. Because I am guilty (Prov. 20:9; Eccl. 7:20; Rom. 3:19-23; Heb. 10:14, 27, 28; 1 John 1:8, 9).
88. Q. How is Christ a king?
A. He rules over us and defends us (Ps 2:6-9; Mt 28:18-20; Eph 1:19-23; Col 1:13, 18; Rv 15:3, 4).
89. Q. Why do you need Christ as a king?
A. Because I am weak and helpless (John 15:4, 5; 2 Cor 12:9; Phil 4:13; Col 1:11; Jude 24, 25).
90. Q. What did God the Father undertake in the covenant of grace?
A. By His goodness and mercy, God the Father elected, and deteRom.ined to justify, adopt and sanctify those for whom Christ should die (Ex 33:18, 19; Eph 1:3-5; Rom. 8:29-33; Gal 4:4-7; Heb. 10:9, 10; 1 Cor 1:8, 9; Phil 1:6; 1 Thess. 4:3, 7, 5:23, 24).
91. Q. What is election?
A. It is God's goodness as revealed in his grace by choosing certain sinners for salvation (Eph 1:3, 4; 1 Thess. 1:4; 1 Pet 1:1, 2).
92. Q. What is justification?
A. It is God's regarding sinners as if they had never sinned and granting them righteousness (Zech 3:1-5; Rom. 3:24-26, 4:5, 5:17-19, 8:33; 2 Cor 5:21; Heb. 8:12; Phil. 3:9).
93. Q. What is righteousness?
A. It is God's goodness as revealed in his law, and as honored in Christ's perfect obedience to that law. (Ex 33:19, 34:6; Ps 33:5; Hos 3:5; Rom. 11:22).
94. Q. Can anyone be saved by his own righteousness?
A. No. No one is good enough for God (Prov. 20:9; Eccl. 7:20; Rom. 3:10-23; Eph. 2:8-10; Phil. 3:8, 9).
95. Q. What is adoption?
A. It is God's goodness in receiving sinful rebels as his beloved children (John 1:12; Eph. 1:5; Eph. 5:1; Gal 4:7, 31; 1 John 3:1-3).
96. Q. What is sanctification?
A. In sanctification God makes sinners holy in heart and conduct so that they will demonstrate his goodness in their lives (John 17:17; Eph. 2:10, 4:22-24; Phil. 2:12-13; 1 Thess. 5:23).
97. Q. Is this process of sanctification ever complete in this life?
A. No. It is certain and continual, but is complete only in heaven (Phil. 3:12-15; 2 Pet 1:4-8; 1 John 3:1-3).
98. Q. What hinders the completion of sanctification in this life?
A. The Scripture says "The flesh lusts against the Spirit so that you cannot do the things you would" (Gal. 5:17).
99. Q. Since we are by nature sinful, how can one ever desire to be holy and to gain heaven where God lives?
A. Our hearts must be changed before we can be fit for heaven (Eph. 4:17-24; Col 3:5-12).
100. Q. Who can change a sinner s heart?
A. Only the Holy Spirit can change a sinner's heart. (John 3:3; Rom. 8:6-11; 1 Cor 2:9-14; 2 Thess. 2:13, 14; Titus 3:5-6).
101. Q. What did the Holy Spirit undertake in the covenant of
A. He regenerates, baptizes, and seals those for whom Christ has died (Eph. 2:1-8; 1 Cor 12:13; Eph. 1:13, 14; Eph. 4:30; 2 Cor 1:22).
102. Q. What is regeneration?
A. It is a change of heart that leads to true repentance and faith (Gal 5:22; Eph. 2:5-8; 2 Thess. 2:13).
103. Q. Can you repent and believe in Christ by your own power?
A. No. I can do nothing good without God's Holy Spirit (John 3:5, 6, 6:44; Rom. 8:2, 5, 8-11; 1 Cor 2:9-14; Gal 5:17, 18; Eph. 2:4-6).
104. Q. How does the Holy Spirit baptize believers?
A. He puts them into the body of Christ by making them a living part of all those who truly believe in Him (1 Cor 12).
105. Q. How does the Holy Spirit seal believers?
A. He comes to live within them to guarantee that they will receive the wonders God has promised those who love Him (Rom. 8:9-11; Eph. 1:13, 14; Eph. 4:30; 2 Tim 1:9; 2 Cor 1:22).
106. Q. How can you receive the Holy Spirit?
A. God has told us that we must pray to him for the Holy Spirit (Lk 11:9-13; John 4:10, 16:24); but the evidence of His presence is seen most clearly in our trusting and loving the Lord Jesus Christ. (Lk 12:8-10; John 3:3-5, 16, 20, 21, 14:17-21; 1 Cor 12:3; 1 Pet 1:2; 1 John 5:6-12). Part 117
107. Q. What is prayer?
A. Prayer is talking with God (Gn 17:22, 18:33; Neh 1:4-11, 2:4; Mt 6:6; Rom. 8:26, 27).
108. Q. In whose name should we pray?
A. We should pray in the name of the Lord Jesus (John 14:13, 14, 16:23, 24; Heb. 4:14-16).
109. Q. What has Christ given to teach us how to pray?
A. The Lord's Prayer (Mt 6:5-15; Lk 11:1-13).
110. Q. Can you repeat the Lord's Prayer?
A. "Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil."
111. Q. How many petitions are there in the Lord's Prayer?
112. Q. What is the first petition?
A. "Hallowed be thy name" (Mt 6:9; Lk 11:2).
113. Q. What do we pray for in the first petition?
A. That God's name may be honored by us and all men (Ps 8:1, 72:17-19, 113:1-3, 145:21; Is 8:13).
114. Q. What is the second petition?
A. "Thy kingdom come" (Mt 6:10; Lk 11:2).
115. Q. What do we pray for in the second petition?
A. That the gospel may be preached in all the world, and believed and obeyed by us and all men (Mt 28:19, 20; John 17:20, 21; Acts 8:12, 28:30, 31; 2 Thess. 3:1).
116. Q. What is the third petition?
A. "Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven" (Mt 6:10; Lk 11:2).
117. Q. What do we pray for in the third petition?
A. That men on earth may serve God as the angels do in Heaven (Ps 67, 103:19-22; John 9:31; Rv 4:11).
118. Q. What is the fourth petition?
A. "Give us this day our daily bread" (Mt 6:11; Lk 11:3).
119. Q. What do we pray for in the fourth petition?
A. That God will give us all things needful for our bodies (Ps 145:15, 16; Prov. 30:8, 9; 1 Tim 4:4, 5).
120. Q. What is the fifth petition?
A. 'And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us" (Mt 6:12; Lk 11:4).
121. Q. What do we pray for in the fifth petition?
A. That God will pardon our sins, and help those who have sinned against us (Ps 51: Mt 5:23, 1 John 4:20, 21). us to forgive 24; 18:21-35;
122. Q. What is the sixth petition?
A. 'And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil" (Mt 6:13; Lk 11:4).
123. Q. What do we pray for in the sixth petition?
A. That God will keep us from sin (1 Chron 4:10; Ps 119:11; Mt 26:41).
124. Q. How does the Holy Spirit bring us to salvation?
A. He uses the Bible, which is the Word of God (1 Thess. 1:5, 6, 2:13; 2 Tim 3:15, 16; James 1:18; 1 Pet 1:22, 23).
125. Q. How can we know the Word of God?
A. We are commanded to hear, read and search the Scriptures (1 Pet 2:2; Rv 3:22; Mt 21:42, 22:29; 2 Tim 3:14-17).
126. Q. What is a church?
A. A church is an assembly of baptized believers joined by a covenant of discipline and witness who meet together regularly to minister to one another that they might grow "in the grace and knowledge of the Lord" (Mt 18:20; Acts 2:42).
127. Q. What two ordinances did Christ give to his Church?
A. Baptism and the Lord's Supper (Mt 28:19; 1 Cor 11:24-26).
128 Q. Why Did Christ give these ordinances?
A. To show that his disciples belong to him, and to remind them of what he has done for them (Mt 28:19; 1 Cor 11:24-26)
129. Q. What is Baptism?
A. The dipping of believers into water, as a sign of their union with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection (John 3:23; Acts 2:41, 8:12, 35-38; Col 2:12).
130. Q. What is the purpose of baptism?
A. Baptism testifies to believers that God has cleansed them from their sins through Jesus Christ (Acts 22:16; Col 2:11-14).
131. Q. Who are to be baptized?
A. Only those who repent of their sins, and believe in Christ for salvation should be baptized (Acts 2:37-41, 8:12, 18:8, 19:4, 5).
132. Q. Should babies be baptized?
A. No; because the Bible neither commands it, nor gives any example of it.
133. Q. What is the Lord's Supper?
A. At the Lord's Supper, the church eats bread and drinks wine to remember the sufferings and death of Christ (Mk 14:22-24; 1 Cor 11:23-29).
134. Q. What does the bread represent?
A. The bread represents the body of Christ, broken for our sins (Mt 26:26; 1 Cor 11:24).
135. Q. What does the wine represent?
A. The wine represents the blood of Christ, shed for our salvation (Mt 26:27, 28; 1 Cor 11:25).
136. Q. Who should partake of the Lord's Supper?
A. The Lord's Supper is for those only who repent of their sins, believe in Christ for salvation, receive baptism, and love their fellow men (Mt 5:21-24; 1 Cor 10:16, 17, 11:18, 20, 27-33; 1 John 3:24-27, 4:9-11).
137. Q. Did Christ remain in the tomb after his crucifixion?
A. No. He rose from the tomb on the third day after his death (Lk 24:45-47; 1 Cor 15:3, 4).
138. Q. Where is Christ now?
A. Christ is in heaven, seated at the right hand of God the Father (Rom. 8:34; Col 3:1; Heb. 1:3, 10:12, 12:2).
139. Q. Will the bodies of the dead be raised to life again?
A. Yes. 'There shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the faithful and unfaithful' (Acts 24:14, 15; John 5:28, 29; 1 Corinthians 15:54-57; Dan 12:2).
140. Q. What will happen to the wicked in the day of judgment?
A. They shall perish and be destroyed in the Lake of Fire which is the second death (Psalm 1:6 Psalm 145:20; John 3:16; Ps 9:16, 17; Lk 12:5; Rom. 2:8, 9, 12; 2 Thess. 1: 9; Rv 20:12-15).
141. Q. What will happen to the righteous in the day of judgement?
A. They shall receive eternal life and live with God forever (John 3:16; John 12:25; Rom. 2:8, 9, 12; 1 Thess. 4:17; Rv 21:3-4).
142. Q. In light of these truths, what should you do?
A. I should cry out to God for mercy, repent of sin and believe savingly in the Lord Jesus Christ (Lk 13:23, 24; John 6:27; Acts 16:31).
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Kindergarten English Games:
K (5-6 yrs)
Opposite Words is an interactive vocabulary lesson for kindergarteners. The lesson is designed to teach kids some common opposite words. Kids will learn to identify and recall opposite words through a simple matching exercise, in which they have to match the words to their opposites. Kids will enjoy playing this exciting word game. They will learn new words and their meanings as they build and expand their vocabulary through this game.
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Between 1990 and 2001, the number of people in sub-Saharan Africa living on less than $1 a day rose from 227 million to 313 million, and the poverty rate rose from 45 percent to 46 percent. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rate of undernourishment in the world, with one-third of the population below the minimum level of nourishment.
Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa are:
- Crippled by disease
- Exposed to drought-prone climates
- Located in areas not suitable for irrigation
- Tackling extreme isolation in mountains and landlocked regions
- Suffering from poor infrastructure
In 2000, the nations of the world committed to the Millennium Development Goals. These Goals were agreed to by every country in the world and set time-bound and measurable targets for halving extreme poverty by 2015. In 2005, at the World Summit leaders from all 191 UN member states recommitted to achieving the Millennium Development Goals, while leaders at the G8 Summit in Gleneagles agreed to double aid to Africa to $50 billion per year by 2010 (roughly $70 per African per year) and to cancel debts for the poorest countries.
Sub-Saharan Africa is at the greatest risk of not achieving the Goals and is struggling to progress on almost every dimension of poverty, including hunger, lack of education, and prevalent disease.
The Millennium Villages seek to end extreme poverty by working with the poorest of the poor, village by village throughout Africa, in partnership with governments and other committed stakeholders, providing affordable and science-based solutions to help people lift themselves out of extreme poverty.
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Reinforce your understanding of the concepts in Patton and Thibodeau’s The Human Body in Health & Disease, 6th Edition! Corresponding to the chapters in the text, this study guide reviews essential medical terminology, concepts and processes related to the anatomy and physiology of the human body, and body function in health and disease. A variety of exercises make it easy to review and apply key concepts, and labeling of anatomy drawings helps you learn anatomical structures and terminology.
NEW!Know Your Medical Termsexercises help you learn and understand the various word parts used in medical terminology, as presented in the new Language of Science and Language of Medicine word lists in the textbook.
Matching and fill-in-the-blankexercises enhance your comprehension of chapter content.
Application questions develop your critical thinking skills and help you apply information to real-world scenarios.
UPDATED! Did You Know?
provides fun, interesting facts on A&P topics.
A briefsynopsis at the beginning of each chapter previews core concepts that will be covered.
Crossword Puzzle, Unscramble and Word Find activities help you learn new vocabulary terms and their proper spelling.
Diagrams and labeling exercises reinforce your understanding of where the structures of the body are located.
Answers to exercises are located in the back of the study guide, along with page-number references to the textbook.
By Linda Swisher, RN, EdD; Kevin T. Patton, PhD, Professor of Life Science, St. Charles Community College, Cottleville, MO, Professor of Anatomy & Physiology Instruction (adjunct), New York Chiropractic College, Seneca Falls, NY, Emeritus Assistant Professor of Physiology, Saint Louis University Medical School, St. Louis, MO and Gary A. Thibodeau, PhD, Chancellor Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Biology, University of Wisconsin, River Falls, River Falls, WI
Elsevier is a leading publisher of health science books and journals, helping to advance medicine by delivering superior education, reference information and decision support tools to doctors, nurses, health practitioners and students. With titles available across a variety of media—print, online and handheld, we are able to supply the information you need in the most convenient format.
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Trademarks - Trademark Lawyers
A trademark includes any word, name, symbol, or device, or any combination used, or intended to be used, in commerce to identify and distinguish the goods of one manufacturer or seller from goods manufactured or sold by others, and to indicate the source of the goods. In short, a trademark is a brand name.
Use of the TM and SM symbols may be governed by local, state, or foreign laws and the laws of a pertinent jurisdiction to identify the marks that a party claims rights to. The federal registration symbol, the R enclosed within a circle, may be used once the mark is actually registered in the USPTO. Even though an application is pending, the registration symbol may not be used before the mark has actually become registered.
The federal registration symbol should only be used on goods or services that are the subject of the federal trademark registration.
A trademark is a type of intellectual property, and typically a name, word, phrase, logo, symbol, design, image, or a combination of these elements. There is also a range of non-conventional trademarks comprising marks which do not fall into these standard categories.
The owner of a registered trademark may commence legal proceedings for trademark infringement to prevent unauthorized use of that trademark. However, registration is not required. The owner of a common law trademark may also file suit, but an unregistered mark may be protectable only within the geographical area within which it has been used or in geographical areas into which it may be reasonably expected to expand.
The term trademark is also used informally to refer to any distinguishing attribute by which an individual is readily identified, such as the well known characteristics of celebrities. When a trademark is used in relation to services rather than products, it may sometimes be called a service mark, particularly in the United States.
The essential function of a trademark is to exclusively identify the commercial source or origin of products or services, such that a trademark, properly called, indicates source or serves as a badge of origin. The use of a trademark in this way is known as trademark use. Certain exclusive rights attach to a registered mark, which can be enforced by way of an action for trademark infringement, while unregistered trademark rights may be enforced pursuant to the common law tort of passing off.
USPTO Trademark | USPTO Trademark Application | USPTO Trademark Fees | USPTO Trademark Search | Trademarks.gov
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Parliament's imposition of taxes on the North American colonies led to organized opposition by the colonial legislatures. In 1773 Parliament passed a tea act giving the East India Company a monopoly on the tea sold in the colonies. In December of that year, residents of Boston, Massachusetts, tossed three shiploads of tea into the harbor rather than let it be landed. In the spring of 1774 Parliament retaliated and passed the Coercive Acts (known in the colonies as the Intolerable Acts). These acts included the Boston Port Act, which closed the port of Boson to all commerce effective June 1, 1774, until the tea was paid for and restitution made to royal officials. The Massachusetts Government Act altered the charter of Massachusetts to limit town meetings and to allow the king to appoint a military governor in place of the governor elected by the colony's assembly, called the General Court.
Word of the closing of the port of Boston reached Williamsburg when the General Assembly was in session in May 1774. Although many Virginians disapproved of the destruction of the tea, which was private property, they did not approve of closing the port. On May 23, several members of the House of Burgesses met in the Capitol and drew on seventeenth-century English precedents to draft a resolution calling on Virginians to observe a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer on June 1, in sympathy with the people of Boston. The House of Burgesses passed the resolution on May 24. Two days later the royal governor, John Murray, fourth earl of Dunmore, dissolved the General Assembly so that the members could take no further action, but on May 27 many of the former burgesses met and formed an association that pledged them to purchase no goods imported by the East India Company except saltpeter and spices. They advised the colony's committee of correspondence to transmit the resolution to the other colonies with the suggestion that the colonies appoint delegates to come together in a general congress. Unbeknownst to the Virginians, letters from Boston were on their way. On May 29, the Virginia Committee of Correspondence received a letter from the Boston Committee of Correspondence proposing to halt all trade with Great Britain. Twenty-five burgesses who were still in Williamsburg met on May 30 and agreed to summon a convention to meet on August 1, 1774, in Williamsburg to discuss the proposal. That convention would be the first Virginia Revolutionary Convention, at which representatives chose Virginia's delegates to the First Continental Congress.
1. How many men signed this resolution? Do you recognize any of their names?
2. Why do you suppose that the burgesses remaining in Williamsburg did not make a decision concerning the Boston committee's proposal?
3. During this time communication between the colonies was delivered by horse or on ships. Consequently, it was considerably slower than today's instant communications. How do you think this influenced the decisions that the colonists made?
On May 29, a letter from the Boston Committee of Correspondence arrived in Williamsburg. This letter, dated May 13, proposed ceasing all trade with Great Britain, both imports and exports. On May 30, the burgesses remaining in Williamsburg met to discuss the letter and determine what action they should take. If you had been a burgess what would you have proposed? Why do you think the Virginians chose the route they did?
Virginia Independence Bicentennial Commission. Revolutionary Virginia: the Road to Independence, a Documentary Record, Vol 1: Forming Thunderclouds and the First Convention 1763–1774. Compiled and edited by William J. Van Schreeven and Robert L. Scribner. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983.
Middlekauff, Robert. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
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Cader/Cadair Idris is a spectacular mountain reserve with a variety of landscapes and terrain. Rugged summits, glacial lakes and a mossy wooded gorge cover over 450 hectares of breathtaking landscape.
Local folklore describes Idris as a giant who lived on this magnificent mountain. The large boulders on the lower slopes are said to be the debris of stone throwing battles between Idris and other giants. Idris is more likely to have been an important leader in this area, a giant in personality and authority rather than in stature.
The reserve lies within Snowdonia National Park and is part of the Cadair Idris Special Site of Scientific Interest (SSSI) and Special Area of Conservation (SAC).
The site encompasses the mountain and lower slopes, with a variety of habitats of European importance. These include dry heath, wet heath, blanket bog, woodland and the species-rich marshy grasslands of Tir Stent common, as well as a number of low nutrient or clear-water lakes. The cliffs support tall herbs growing on the ledges, and a range of plants growing on rock crevices. These habitats support a wide range of species, including slender green feather-moss and marsh fritillary Butterfly.
While the romantically inclined attribute its features to the work of giants, geologists come up with more prosaic but nonetheless interesting explanations that span hundreds of millions of years. The origin of the rock is volcanic, some of the lavas being poured out under the sea and shaped into bulbuous "pillows" that give it the name pillow lava. These are interspersed with layers of ash and other sediments that settled out on the sea bed of the time.
The glaciers of the last ice age scoured and scraped at this hard upfolded rock leaving visible scratches on some of the surfaces and hollowing out basins now filled with small lakes such as those at Cregennan on the first 'step' up the mountain, or the supposedly bottomless Llyn Cau on the south side.
Amongst this craggy country on the mountain tops there survive rare arctic/alipne flowers, a legacy of the last Ice Age such as purple saxifrage and least willow (a 'tree' that never gets to more than a scrambling shrub).
At the lower level around Cregennan the National Trust owns two small hill farms where the rough grazing can be managed in the traditional way. A sign of summer here is the arrival of that dainty visitor, the wheatear, often difficult to spot until it displays its white rump in flight.
Open all the time
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Some individuals with disabilities require assistive technology (AT) in order to access computers. Hundreds of Windows AT third-party products are available, making it possible for almost anyone to use Windows® applications, regardless of their disabilities. The Microsoft® Windows® operating systems also provides a core set of basic accessibility features and AT applications, which can be deployed on all computers in a computer lab or classroom without additional cost. These applications provide students with basic accessibility features from any workstation, maximizing the inclusiveness of the learning environment.
It should be noted that the AT applications that are bundled with Windows provide only a minimum level of accessibility, not the full set of features that many users require for equal access to the operating system, educational programs, and other software applications. Therefore, many educational entities deploy the standard set of Windows AT on all workstations by default, but additionally 1) provide a small number of dedicated workstations that are equipped with commonly requested third party AT, and 2) are prepared to purchase and install additional AT as needed by specific students.
It should also be noted that the availability of AT does not itself guarantee accessibility. Software applications must be designed in a way that is compatible with AT and other accessibility features of the operating system. For information about purchasing software products that are accessible, see the AccessIT Knowledge Base article How can I tell whether a software application is accessible?
The following is a list of basic accessibility features that are included with Windows XP. Previous versions of Windows also included several of these same features.
Display and Readability:
These features are designed to increase the visibility of items on the screen.
- Font style, color, and size of items on the desktop—using the Display options, choose font color, size and style combinations.
- Icon size—make icons larger for visibility, or smaller for increased screen space.
- Screen resolution—change pixel count to enlarge objects on screen.
- High contrast schemes—select color combinations that are easier to see.
- Cursor width and blink rate—make the cursor easier to locate, or eliminate the distraction of its blinking.
- Microsoft Magnifier—enlarge portion of screen for better visibility.
Sounds and Speech:
These features are designed to make computer sounds easier to hear or distinguish - or, visual alternatives to sound. Speech-to-text options are also available.
- Sound Volume—turn computer sound up or down.
- Sound Schemes—associate computer sounds with particular system events.
- ShowSounds—display captions for speech and sounds.
- SoundSentry—display visual warnings for system sounds.
- Notification—Get sound or visual cues when accessibility features are turned on or off.
- Text-to-Speech—Hear window command options and text read aloud.
Keyboard and Mouse:
These features are designed to make the keyboard and mouse faster and easier to use.
- Double-Click Speed—choose how fast to click the mouse button to make a selection.
- ClickLock—highlight or drag without holding down the mouse button.
- Pointer Speed—set how fast the mouse pointer moves on screen.
- SnapTo—move the pointer to the default button in a dialog box.
- Cursor Blink Rate—choose how fast the cursor blinks—or, if it blinks at all.
- Pointer Trails—follow the pointer motion on screen.
- Hide Pointer While Typing—keep pointer from hiding text while typing.
- Show Location of Pointer—quickly reveal the pointer on screen.
- Reverse the function of the right and left mouse buttons—reverse actions controlled by the right and left mouse buttons.
- Pointer schemes—choose size and color options for better visibility.
- Character Repeat Rate—set how quickly a character repeats when a key is struck.
- Dvorak Keyboard Layout—choose alternative keyboard layouts for people who type with one hand or finger.
- StickyKeys—allow pressing one key at a time (rather than simultaneously) for key combinations.
- FilterKeys—ignore brief or repeated keystrokes and slow down the repeat rate.
- ToggleKeys—hear tones when pressing certain keys.
- MouseKeys—move the mouse pointer using the numerical keypad.
- Extra Keyboard Help—get ToolTips or other keyboard help in programs that provide it.
The Accessibility Wizard is designed to help new users quickly and easily set up groups of accessibility options that address visual, hearing and dexterity needs all in one place. The Accessibility Wizard asks questions about accessibility needs. Then, based on the answers, it configures utilities and settings for individual users. The Accessibility Wizard can be run again at any time to make changes, or changes can be made to individual settings through Control Panel.
Windows Accessibility Utilities:
- Magnifier—a display utility that makes the computer screen more readable by creating a separate window that displays a magnified portion of the screen.
- Narrator—a text-to-speech utility that reads what is displayed on the screen—the contents of the active window, menu options, or text that has been typed.
- On-Screen Keyboard—displays a virtual keyboard on the computer screen that allows people to type data by using a pointing device or joystick.
- Utility Manager—enables administrator-level users to check an accessibility program's status and start or stop an accessibility programs—automatically, if required.
- Speech Recognition—Vista and newer versions of the OS have built-in speech recognition
For more information about how to access these features and utilities in Windows products visit Microsoft's website Windows Accessibility Resources .
For a comparison of accessibility features across operating systems, see the AccessIT Knowledge Base article How does accessibility differ across operating systems?
- How can I tell whether a software application is accessible?
- Windows Accessibility Resources
- How does accessibility differ across operating systems?
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January 14, 1741
Birth of a Traitor
Benedict Arnold was born in Connecticut on January 14, 1741. He rose from captain to general during the Revolutionary War. After he death of his first wife, he married the daughter of a Loyalis sympathizer. Before long he was spying for the British and plotting to hand over West Point. His plans discovered, he managed to escape capture and began fighting openly for the British. After the British surrendered, Arnold and his family went to England.
Today, Benedict Arnold is synonymous with the word traitor.
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HelpNow by Brainfuse: Live Homework Help available 1pm to 10pm, 7 days a week. Grades 1-12, Washington State curriculum-aligned, tutoring subjects include English, math, science, Spanish, and more.
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- Biography In Context --More than 400,000 biographies on nearly 275,000 people from around the world and throughout history.
- CultureGrams -- Cultural reports for state, province and country projects. Maps, flags, symbols, timelines, history, economy, geography, recipes, population and more.
- eLibrary -- Search or browse more than 1,500 full text magazines and journals. Access pictures, maps and illustrations to enliven homework assignments. Includes the World Almanac.
- Gale Virtual Reference Library --Encyclopedias and specialized reference sources for cross subject research.
- HelpNow by Brainfuse - Live Homework Help available 1pm to 10pm, 7 days a week. Grades 1-12, Washington State curriculum-aligned, tutoring subjects include English, math, science, Spanish, and more.
- History Study Center --is a collection of primary and secondary sources on global history from ancient times to the present day.
- LearningExpress -- Interactive online testing for jobs, school & skills with practice tests and courses designed to help students and adult learners.
- Literature Resource Center —A complete literature reference database. Rich in biographical, bibliographical, and critical content, provides information on literary figures from all time periods writing in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, history, journalism, and more.
- Testing & Education Reference Center--Your one-stop shop for test preparation! eBooks, practice tests (GED, ACT, SAT) developing career plans and boosting your job skills.
- U.S. History In Context-- Primary documents, secondary sources, and journal articles covering all areas of U.S. history.
- Worldbook Online — World Book sets the standard for providing accuracy, objectivity, and reliability in research materials for both children and adults. Available in Spanish.
- World History in Context-- moves chronologically over 5,000 years from antiquity to the present and geographically around the globe.
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Harbor seal activity and numbers are on the increase as we approach the summer month for pupping or birthing. By late June or early July harbor seals numbers will have peaked and pups will literally be popping out on the beach. Check out the blog today!
What is a harbor seal haul-out and what are you looking at?
Harbor seals use specific shoreline areas on a regular basis to haul-out of the water and rest. These resting areas are called seal haul-outs and include: beaches, rocky areas, log booms and floats. Some haul-outs are used regularly, while others may be used seasonally or occasionally. Time spent on the haul-out is essential for their survival as they rest, dry out, interact and regulate body their temperature. In addition to resting, Harbor seals give birth to and nurse their pups on the haul-out, and undergo an annual molt of their pelage or fur. This SealCam is focused on a haul-out in the Puget Sound and that is used by harbor seals throughout the year for many of the activities described above. A regular viewer may also see many other species of wildlife including perhaps some other fin-footed marine mammals known as Pinnipeds.
Erin D'Agnese is a Western Washington University graduate student, and has been interning with Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) Marine Mammal Investigations since 2011. She is collaborating with WDFW biologists on her Master's project to study pup rearing success of female harbor seals at a longterm study site in south Puget Sound. Her research will study how the success of known females relates to age, body mass, pupping experience and pup care behaviors of the mother. Study results may lead to a better understanding of the unique reproductive strategy used by harbor seals and enhance the use of a non-invasive measuring technique on protected marine mammals.
Erin will be using the WDFW SealCam to aid her in this research and will be posting periodic notes from the field on her project and what she is observing at the harbor seal haulout. Check out the blog today!
Currently, the Sealcam has a series of video clips and still photos organized by categories that will help tell you about the life, birth, ecology, diseases and sometimes death of the seals and wildlife that inhabit this fascinating area. As we approach the months of March through June harbor seal presence and activities will intensify leading up to the late June-mid August popping season. The early weeks are challenging for many baby animals, and seals are no exception. During this time period, mortality rates for our harbor seals, according to biologist Dyanna Lambourn, can reach as high as 50 percent. So, as we experiment with camera technology, you are invited to stay tuned and cheer on this year’s young seals as they practice swimming and begin their fight for survival during the critical first months of life in Puget Sound.
Young pups may become separated from their mother and appear “abandoned” on shore, log-booms, rocks or other haul-out sites. The pup’s best chance for survival is to stay in the location where its mother expects it to be upon return. To help ensure the pups’ survival, biologists ask that people stay clear—at least 100 yards away from the animals at all times. If you are concerned about the welfare of any harbor seal, please leave the animal in place, and contact the Northwest Marine Mammal Stranding Network contact for your area at http://www.nwr.noaa.gov/Marine-Mammals/Stranding-Maps.cfm or call 1-800-853-1964.
Please visit the Sealcam frequently and send it to the attention of friend. The Sealcam is also an important tool used by Department biologists to continue to study and add our knowledge of this member of the marine mammal’s order of pinnipedia or wing or fin-footed mammals.
Viewing Seals Responsibly In the Wild
- If you see a seal on the beach, give it room
- Use binoculars or a spotting scope if you want to see the animal "close up".
- The NMFS marine mammal viewing guidelines mandate a minimum approach distance of 100 yards.
- The approach distance will reduce the potential for disturbing or stressing a resting or injured animal.
- Keep pets away. Baby seals can easily fall prey to dogs.
- To avoid possible injury to seals, dogs should be leashed and kept away from seals on the beach. Some diseases are common to both dogs and seals.
- Older seals may bite in self defense.
- People may also be at risk if they come into direct contact with a diseased animal.
- It is a Federal offense to harass seals in any way.
- Please go to Northwest Marine Mammal Stranding Network in Washington to report stranded or injured marine mammals.
Remember: Share the beach and help keep the "wild"
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BOLDO Overview Information
Boldo is a tree that grows in the Andes mountains in South America. Interestingly, fossilized boldo leaves dating from over thirteen thousand years ago have been found in Chile. These fossils have imprints of human teeth, suggesting that boldo has a long history of dietary or medicinal use.
Boldo is used for mild gastrointestinal (GI) spasms, gallstones, achy joints (rheumatism), bladder infections, liver disease, and gonorrhea. It is also to increase urine flow to rid the body of excess fluids, reduce anxiety, increase bile flow, and kill bacteria.
How does it work?
Boldo contains chemicals that might increase urine output, fight bacterial growth in the urine, and stimulate the stomach.
- Achy joints (rheumatism).
- Bladder infections.
- Liver disease.
- Fluid retention.
- Constipation or flushing out of the bowels.
- Mild stomach or intestinal spasms.
- Other conditions.
BOLDO Side Effects & Safety
Boldo might be UNSAFE when used for medicinal purposes. Poisoning by ascaridole, a chemical that occurs naturally in boldo, has occurred in people taking boldo. Boldo might cause liver damage when taken by mouth. If you take boldo, use only ascaridole-free preparations. When applied to the skin, boldo can cause irritation.
Special Precautions & Warnings:Pregnancy and breast-feeding: Boldo might be UNSAFE when used orally in medicinal amounts. Ascaridole, a chemical in boldo, can damage the liver.
Bile duct blockage: Boldo seems to be able to increase the flow of bile, a fluid produced by the liver and stored in the gallbladder. Bile passes through small channels (ducts) in the intestine where it plays an important role in digesting fats. These ducts can become blocked. There is a concern that the extra bile flow caused by boldo might be harmful in people with blocked bile ducts.
Liver disease: There is some concern that boldo can damage the liver, especially in people who have liver disease. Don’t use boldo if you have liver problems.
Surgery: Boldo can slow blood clotting, so there is some concern that it might increase the chance of too much bleeding during and after surgery. Stop using boldo at least two weeks before a scheduled surgery.
Moderate Interaction Be cautious with this combination
- Lithium interacts with BOLDO
Boldo might have an effect like a water pill or "diuretic." Taking boldo might decrease how well the body gets rid of lithium. This could increase how much lithium is in the body and result in serious side effects. Talk with your healthcare provider before using this product if you are taking lithium. Your lithium dose might need to be changed.
- Medications that can harm the liver (Hepatotoxic drugs) interacts with BOLDO
Boldo might harm the liver. Taking boldo along with medication that might also harm the liver can increase the risk of liver damage. Do not take boldo if you are taking a medication that can harm the liver.
Some medications that can harm the liver include acetaminophen (Tylenol and others), amiodarone (Cordarone), carbamazepine (Tegretol), isoniazid (INH), methotrexate (Rheumatrex), methyldopa (Aldomet), fluconazole (Diflucan), itraconazole (Sporanox), erythromycin (Erythrocin, Ilosone, others), phenytoin (Dilantin), lovastatin (Mevacor), pravastatin (Pravachol), simvastatin (Zocor), and many others.
- Medications that slow blood clotting (Anticoagulant / Antiplatelet drugs) interacts with BOLDO
Boldo might slow blood clotting. Taking boldo along with medications that also slow clotting might increase the chances of bruising and bleeding.
Some medications that slow blood clotting include aspirin, clopidogrel (Plavix), diclofenac (Voltaren, Cataflam, others), ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin, others), naproxen (Anaprox, Naprosyn, others), dalteparin (Fragmin), enoxaparin (Lovenox), heparin, warfarin (Coumadin), and others.
- Warfarin (Coumadin) interacts with BOLDO
Warfarin (Coumadin) is used to slow blood clotting. Boldo might also slow blood clotting. Taking boldo along with warfarin (Coumadin) might increase the chances of bruising and bleeding. Be sure to have your blood checked regularly. The dose of your warfarin (Coumadin) might need to be changed.
The appropriate dose of boldo for use as treatment depends on several factors such as the user's age, health, and several other conditions. At this time there is not enough scientific information to determine an appropriate range of doses for boldo. Keep in mind that natural products are not always necessarily safe and dosages can be important. Be sure to follow relevant directions on product labels and consult your pharmacist or physician or other healthcare professional before using.
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Project Laser Beam (PLB) is a five-year, multi-million dollar public-private partnership that seeks to eradicate child malnutrition. It brings together the expertise of UN agencies with that of Fortune 500 companies, and others in the private sector, to work with local governments and companies to find new solutions to old problems.
PLB was unveiled in September 2009 by PLB founding partners WFP, Unilever, Mondelez International Foundation (formerly Kraft Foods Foundation), DSM and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) by US President Bill Clinton at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York.
The pilot projects will focus initially on Bangladesh and Indonesia. These are countries where there are unacceptably high rates of child malnutrition, but also a demonstrated commitment by the government to tackle the problem. PLB partners will be able to assist as these are also countries where they have a presence and the ability to leverage existing resources and knowledge.
The projects will centre around three main pillars: food, hygiene and behavioural change. Specifically, work will include: fortification of food with micronutrients, products to nutritionally supplement a child’s diet, ready-to-use foods requiring no water or cooking, sanitation and hand-washing, access to clean water, deworming, immunization, therapeutic feeding for the severely malnourished, education on the benefits of breastfeeding, nutrition education and others as needed.
Replicate the model
PLB will employ the many nutritional solutions already available in the marketplace, ensuring they are accessible to those in need. When gaps in products and services are found, PLB will call on an ever-growing number of partners to step into the breach and develop new ones for the fight against child hunger in other countries. Ultimately, a model will evolve that can be replicated. At the end of the five-year pilot phase, PLB’s model will be replicated in other countries where malnutrition is prevalent, paving the way for generations of children to enjoy the benefits of this concerted, co-ordinated action.
The situation compels us to act now. In the wake of the global economic crisis, and increasing climate-related emergencies, families with malnourished children are slipping deeper into the poverty and hunger trap every day — many for the first time.
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A new study by Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health reveals that the chemical compound in non-stick cookware may impact babies' weight. According to Fox News, researchers studied blood samples from 450 British women who were pregnant in 1991 and 1992, looking for the concentration of polyluoroalkyl compounds (PFCs). PFCs are a chemical that is commonly found in non-stick cookware items such as frying pans.
Study researchers claim that mothers who had high levels of this chemical in their blood during pregnancy had lower birth weight babies than other moms. Although the babies were smaller to start, at 20 months, these same babies were larger in size than their counterparts. While the study does not conclude why this happens, researchers did suggest that PFCs may impact how fat is metabolized by the body.
What does this mean for pregnant moms? Simply stated, it suggests that you might want to avoid using non-stick pans and other similar cookware during pregnancy. This chemical is also found in other items such as water-resistant clothes and some packaging products. While it might not be entirely possible to avoid PFCs, pregnant women can do their best to keep their exposure to a minimum.
It should be noted that the data collected during this study is 20 years old, meaning that the current levels of PFCs in products (or the environment) may not be the same. While PFCs are still in non-stick cookware, researchers believe that the modern push toward environmentalism and more stringent health standards could mean that the amount of this chemical in the general environment is lower. In turn, a lower general environmental level of PFCs may mean that the overall concentration of this chemical would be lower in a pregnant mom's blood than that found 20 years ago.
Given the latest weight statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), stating that 17 percent of U.S. kids between two and 19 years old are considered obese, it doesn't hurt to give your little one the best start possible. If some scientists believe that using non-stick cookware may lead to bigger babies, then avoiding the connected chemical may just be the right way to go.
Does this research change the way that you cook? Would you plan on giving up your favorite non-stick items during pregnancy to keep your child's weight down? Tell us below in the comments section!
Photo credit: Morguefile
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This is the wildflower for which the Burren in County Clare is famed. Although there are many startlingly attractive flowers growing in this wonderful limestone area of western Ireland, the Spring Gentian is the plant which has become best known of all by those seeking to see the Burren's great variety of flowers. Its pure, bright blue solitary flowers (20–25 mm across) are extremely beautiful. As each of the five petal tubes unfurl, they spread to reveal a little white throat. Each flower has small fringed lobes or scales between its petals. The flowers are borne on upright stems, the leaves being bright green, oval, mostly in a basal rosette. These exquisite flowers bloom from late April to June. They are best found on grassy areas, near sand dunes and rocky pastures. In Ireland they are confined to the Burren and parts of Counties Galway and Mayo. This native plant belongs to the Gentianaceae family.
I first identified this wildflower in 1979 near Bishop's Quarter in the Burren. I photographed it at the Rine, also in the Burren in 2004.
If you are satisfied you have correctly identified this plant, please record your sighting for the 2013 wildflower mapping survey at www.biology.ie
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(ARA) - The peak water usage season, which usually begins in late July or early August, arrived early this year with record high temperatures and widespread drought. During the warmer months, the average American uses about four times as much water as they do the rest of the year. More time outdoors translates into more sweat and dirt, which leads to taking more frequent showers and washing additional loads of laundry. Meanwhile, outside, fighting heat and lack of rain requires heavy lawn and garden watering.
All of the increased activity adds up. Fortunately, the plumbing experts at Roto-Rooter recommend a list of water safety and conservation tips to beat the heat.
1. Check the temperature setting on your water heater. It should be set no higher than 125 degrees to prevent scalding and reduce energy use. Summer is a good time to turn the temperature down, especially when away on vacation to save on energy costs.
2. Replacing an old showerhead can save up to 7.5 gallons of water per minute without sacrificing water pressure. Also, try cleaning mineral deposits from the showerhead by unscrewing it, soaking it in vinegar overnight and then gently scrubbing with a toothbrush to remove deposits.
3. To maximize efficiency with each load of laundry, check washing machine hoses for rupture. Turn valves on and off to check for leaks.
4. Water should flow freely from outdoor faucets when watering the lawn, washing the car or filling the pool.
5. If everything is operating as it should, be conscious about conserving water. Water your lawn before sun up or after sun down to reduce wasted evaporation.
6. If you will be out of town on vacation and have no house-sitters requiring the washing machine, you can shut off the machine's water supply.
7. When traveling, install a rain shut-off device on your automatic sprinklers to eliminate unnecessary watering. Another useful device is a flood detector that works like a smoke detector, setting off an alarm to warn your house-sitter of a potential flood or leak.
8. Make sure that yard drains, gutters and downspouts are cleaned out, open and free of debris.
9. Beware of standing water. Excess water can result from leaky or broken pipes or a damaged sewer line. Standing water is not healthy for children or pets, and is a breeding ground for insects and germs. Inspect the yard for areas that are too wet and with unusual plant or grass growth.
10. If your region is experiencing or anticipating drought, schedule a pipe and drain inspection. Extended periods of very dry ground can cause strain on pipes resulting in cracks. This can create a very serious and expensive problem for homeowners, so it is best to get in front of it with an inspection.
Roto-Rooter has additional seasonal plumbing tips available on-line at www.RotoRooter.com/plumbing-basics.
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How do people know how old a star is?
Wow, this is a popular question! Scientists have learned a lot about stars, especially the stages in their lives. Since a single star can live for billions of years, scientists study several stars at different stages of their lives.
Certain characteristics of stars are related to each other. The luminosity, temperature, magnitude, spectral class and mass are all related. For example, larger stars are cooler, red in color and are very luminous. All these characteristics are important in determining the age of a star, but scientists found that the composition of a star is the most important.
The Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram is a very famous diagram that shows how these characteristics of stars are related. Stars are divided into different categories depending on their temperature, size, etc. Most stars are either, main sequence, or giants. Scientists realized that the compositions of stars were related to the diagram. Stars spend most of their lives as a main sequence star. During this time they burn hydrogen in their core.
When a star burns hydrogen it creates helium. At some point the star uses up all the hydrogen, and starts to burn helium. The star expands and cools while burning the helium. During this stage a star is called a giant.
So why tell you all of this? Well, scientists discovered this is a very easy way to compare stars. It is also a great way to tell the age of a star. Scientists can look at the spectra of a star and tell its temperature, which is related to the size, etc. In turn, this information reveals how much hydrogen or helium is left inside the star. We know the rate at which stars burn the gases. Scientists can now tell how old the star is depending on its composition!
Submitted by Dana, Kelly, Michael, Kelli, Tommy, Nick, Randall, (ages 11 &12, North Carolina)
Windows original artwork
Shop Windows to the Universe Science Store!
Learn about Earth and space science, and have fun while doing it! The games
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Brandon Turley didn't have friends in sixth grade. He would often eat alone at lunch, having recently switched to his school without knowing anyone.
While browsing MySpace one day, he saw that someone from school had posted a bulletin -- a message visible to multiple people -- declaring that Turley was a "f--." Students he had never even spoken with wrote on it, too, saying they agreed.
Feeling confused and upset, Turley wrote in the comments, too, asking why his classmates would say that. The response was even worse: He was told on MySpace that a group of 12 kids wanted to beat him up, that he should stop going to school and die. On his walk from his locker to the school office to report what was happening, students yelled things like "f--" and "fatty."
"It was just crazy, and such a shock to my self-esteem that people didn't like me without even knowing me," said Turley, now 18 and a senior in high school in Oregon. "I didn't understand how that could be."
A pervasive problem
As many as 25 percent of teenagers have experienced cyberbullying at some point, said Justin W. Patchin, who studies the phenomenon at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. He and colleagues have conducted formal surveys of 15,000 middle and high school students throughout the United States, and found that about 10 percent of teens have been victims of cyberbullying in the last 30 days.
Online bullying has a lot in common with bullying in school: Both behaviors include harassment, humiliation, teasing and aggression, Patchin said. Cyberbullying presents unique challenges in the sense that the perpetrator can attempt to be anonymous, and attacks can happen at any time of day or night.
There's still more bullying that happens at school than online, however, Patchin said. And among young people, it's rare that an online bully will be a total stranger.
"In our research, about 85 percent of the time, the target knows who the bully is, and it's usually somebody from their social circle," Patchin said.
Patchin's research has also found that, while cyberbullying is in some sense easier to perpetrate, the kids who bully online also tend to bully at school.
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We've traveled through the heartland to examine iconic regional barbecue styles, but the birthplace of this nation's smoky tradition lies in South Carolina. In a marriage of the perfect meat with the perfect cooking process, Spanish explorers and their European pigs traveled here in the 17th century and happened upon the American Indians and their slow cooking method with smoke. Long before the region gained the name it boasts today, people were enjoying tender pork thanks to this merging of cultural traditions.
The barbecue developed in South Carolina is not unlike that of its Northern counterpart — with one key difference. Like North Carolinian barbecue, the smoked meat on the coast (the "Pee Dee" region) uses the whole hog with a spicy, vinegary sauce applied during cooking. And in the western part of the state along the Savannah River, the sauce integrates ketchup while the meat of choice is the moister, fattier shoulder. But travel to the Midlands, and you'll come across Carolina gold: a mustard-based sauce traced to early German settlers in the 18th century. South Carolina is perhaps best known for this contribution to barbecue culture, as no other state has adopted mustard sauces with the same fervor.
Have you tried South Carolina-style barbecue and its famed mustard sauce? What did you think?
Take the tour of America's other iconic barbecue regions:
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October 3, 2011 | A team that includes NCAR scientists Anne Boynard and Alex Guenther has found that the rate at which plant canopies emit isoprene, a volatile organic compound, is influenced by circadian rhythms. The discovery has the potential to lead to more accurate predictions of ground-level ozone, which is harmful to human health.
For the study, the researchers made measurements of isoprene in Malaysia above both tropical rain forest and oil palm plantations. They observed for the first time ever a circadian (24-hour) rhythm operating in concert across the entire tree canopy, especially in the palm plantation.
The finding changes how scientists estimate isoprene emissions from plants, as both the palm plantations and rain forest emit less isoprene than shown by computer models of emissions. This has implications for ground-level ozone, which forms when volatile organic compounds such as isoprene react with nitrogen oxides from automobiles and industry.
The researchers incorporated the circadian pattern into the NCAR Model of Emissions of Gases and Aerosols from Nature (MEGAN) model to estimate isoprene emissions for input to ozone models. They then compared simulated ground-level ozone to observed ozone measurements from 290 monitoring sites in the United States. They found that model accuracy was significantly improved. Accounting for circadian impacts on isoprene emissions could especially improve ozone predictions in isoprene-sensitive regions of the world, which include the United States, Mediterranean, Middle East, Japan, and parts of Southeast Asia.
The research was published in Nature Geoscience in September.
C. N. Hewitt, K. Ashworth, A. Boynard, A. Guenther, B. Langford, A. R. MacKenzie, P. K. Misztal, E. Nemitz, S. M. Owen, M. Possell, T. A. M. Pugh, A. C. Ryan, O. Wild, “Ground-level ozone influenced by circadian control of isoprene emissions,” Nature Geoscience, 2011; DOI: 10.1038/ngeo1271
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Aurora Borealis May Be Visible Over NJ Tonight [VIDEO]
Normally you’d have to travel to the Arctic Circle to see the Northern Lights, but that may not be true tonight.
According to meteorologists, a powerful solar flare last night will make the natural phenomenon known as Aurora Borealis visible for much of the United States.
- INTERACTIVE: The Science Of The Aurora
Accuweather.com is reporting that mostly clear skies along the eastern seaboard tonight could improve visibility in New Jersey, though the lights may be obscured by a full moon.
Experts suggest attempting to view the Aurora Borealis from areas with as little light pollution as possible.
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This very beautiful photo was taken by my brother (Nikon Coolpix L310), and after receiving the authorization, i want to share it with you. This landscape is found of course in Greece, more specific in Sounio, and this is the ruins of the ancient temple of Poseidon. Sounio is the acroterion, which is located at the southern most of Attica. The coast is rocky and steep. Sounio is known because of its important geographical position, but also because of this ancient temple. In recent years, the place was declared a national park because of it's environmental value.
"The temple of Poseidon was constructed in 444-440 BC, over the ruins of a temple dating from the Archaic Period. It is perched above the sea at a height of almost 60 m. The design of the temple is a typical hexastyle i.e. it had a front portico with 6 columns. Only some columns of the Sounion temple stand today, but intact it would have closely resembled the contemporary and well-preserved Temple of Hephaestus beneath the Acropolis, which may have been designed by the same architect."
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Power Supplies and Wires
For some time I’ve been wondering how the wire size for power supplies limits the power. So I’ve done some quick calculations to determine if it’s a problem.
The first type that is of interest are the “Inverters” that are used to convert 12VDC to 240VAC (mains power) to allow electric devices to be operated in a car. I’ve seen some reports from dissatisfied user about Inverters not supplying as much power as expected and I’ve had problems with my 150W Inverter not always supplying my Thinkpad (which definitely doesn’t draw 150W). The second type is phone chargers as charging a phone in a reasonable amount of time is always a problem.
Inverter Rating Fine Print vs Laptop PSU
My Thinkpad Power Supply claims “Efficiency Level IV” which according to the US EPA document describing the efficiency marking protocol for external power supplies means that it is at least 85% efficient when supplying 50W+. The peak output of the PSU is 4.5A at 20V which is 90W peak output, 90/0.85 == 106W power drawn. One would hope that wouldn’t be a problem from a 150W PSU.
But the fine print on the PSU says that it can provide 110W continuously and 150W for 10 minutes. So according to my calculations I’m within 4W of overloading the PSU if my Thinkpad uses full power. It also says that it is designed for 13.8V input. I have no idea how the performance of the Inverter changes as the supply Voltage changes between the 12.6V that a 6 cell lead-acid battery is designed to provide and the 13.8V charge from the car alternator. But I have had occasions when my Inverter stopped working correctly presumably due to being unable to supply as much current as my Thinkpad draws.
As an aside I measured the Voltage in my car (with the engine off) at 12.85V from the cigarette lighter socket and 13.02V directly from the battery. I wonder if there is some sort of overload protection on the cigarette lighter which has a side effect of reducing the Voltage. Resistance in wires reduces the Voltage, but all Voltage meters are designed to have a high resistance to prevent that from being an issue. If anyone has an explanation for the 0.17Volt drop then please write a comment!
Can a Car Provide 130W from the Cigarette Lighter socket?
If the Inverter is also 85% efficient (and it might be less as it has no indication of efficiency on the box) then when supplying 110W it would draw 110/0.85 == 129.4W (I’ll round it up to 130W).
The current that goes through a circuit is equal to the Voltage divided by the resistance (see the Wikipedia page on Ohm’s law for more information). This also means that the resistance equals the Voltage divided by the current. 12.85V/10.12A == 1.27 Ohms. Note that this is the resistance of the entire circuit, all the wires going to the battery, the circuitry inside the Inverter, and the internal resistance of the battery.
The Inverter’s cable is 1M long (2 meters of wire) and each wire is about 3.5mm in diameter including the insulation which means that the copper wire is probably equivalent to a single core conductor that is about 1mm in diameter. According to one of the online guides to resistance wire that is 1.02mm in diameter will have a resistance of 0.02 Ohms per meter which gives a resistance of 0.04 Ohms. 0.04 Ohms is 3% of the total resistance of the circuit which doesn’t seem like it will be a real problem.
In practice I’ve noticed that the connector gets extremely hot when it’s in use while the cable doesn’t get warm enough to notice. I suspect that the quality of the connector limits the power that is available but I don’t have an easy way of measuring this.
Inverters that are rated at 300W are designed to attach directly to the battery. An Inverter that is rated at 300W would draw 300W/0.85 == 352W from the battery. That needs 352W/13.02V == 27.04A and therefore a circuit resistance of 13.02V/27.04A == 0.48 Ohms total resistance. I wonder whether dirt on the battery terminals would give a significant portion of that.
I’ve also been wondering about why mobile phones take so long to charge, and now I’ve finally done the calculations.
The latest standard for mobile phones is to use USB for charging. The Wikipedia page about USB says that the standard is for USB 2.0 to supply up to 500mA at 5V +-5%. That means 0.5A*5V == 2.5W +- 5%. If we assume that the internal power supply in a phone is also 85% efficient then that means 2.5*0.85 == 2.125W going to the battery.
My Samsung Galaxy S3 has a battery which is rated at 7.98Wh. According to the Wikipedia page about Lithium Ion batteries the charge/discharge efficiency is 80% to 90% – I’ll assume that it’s 85% for further calculations. If the battery in the phone is 85% efficient and the phone is doing nothing but charging then the charge time for a regular USB port would be 7.98Wh/0.85/2.125W == 4.42 hours (4 hours 25 minutes) of charge time. That probably means something closer to 5 hours to totally charge the phone while it’s running. There are dedicated “charging ports” for USB which can supply up to 1.5A. The 3rd party charger which came with my phone was rated at 1A and would hopefully be capable of completely charging the phone in less than 3 hours (but in practice isn’t). It’s interesting to note that MacBooks expose the amount of current drawn from a USB port with a GUI, so it should be possible to measure a phone charge rate by connecting it to a MacBook (which is cheaper than cutting up a phone cable).
My old Samsung Galaxy S has a battery which is rated at 5.55Wh, by the same calculations it would take slightly more than 3 hours to charge on a standard USB port or 1.5 hours on my newest USB charger. In practice it has never got anywhere close to that, I presume that the phone is designed to draw less than 500mA.
Phone Cable Resistance
The charger that came with my Galaxy S has a cable that is about 1.75M long, the cable is flat and measures just over 1mm thick and about 2mm wide. Presumably the wire is equivalent to a single core that’s about 0.4mm in diameter thus giving it a resistance of about 0.134 Ohm per meter, or 1.75*2*0.134 == 0.469 Ohm for the cable. The charger is rated at 0.7A. To supply 0.7A at 5V the resistance would be 5V/0.7A == 7.143 Ohm – so about 6.6% of the total resistance of the circuit would be in the wire from the charger to the phone.
The charger that came with my Galaxy S3 has a round cable that’s just over 3mm thick and about 90cm long. If each wire in the cable is equivalent to a solid wire that is 0.912mm in diameter then it would be 0.0264 Ohm per meter of wire or 0.9*2*0.0264 == 0.0475 Ohm. The total circuit resistance would be 5V/1A == 5 Ohm. So 0.0475 Ohm is less than 1% of the circuit resistance.
The Voltage across a part of a circuit is proportional to the resistance (see the Wikipedia page on Series and Parallel Circuits for a good explanation).
Basically this means that if 1% of the resistance of a circuit is in the wire then 1% of the Voltage drop will also be in the wire, so if we have a 5V supply with my Galaxy S3 cable then each of the two wires in the cable will have a difference of about 0.025V between the ends and the phone will receive a supply of 4.95V, the difference isn’t something that is worth worrying about. But the cable from my Galaxy S has a resistance equivalent to 6.6% of the circuit resistance which means that the theoretical charge time will be 6% longer than it might be – or 6% more current will be drawn from the mains than should be needed.
The charger that came with my Samsung Galaxy S isn’t much good. Wasting 6.6% of the power in the wire is unreasonable.
Phones keep getting more power hungry and batteries keep getting larger. There are third party phone batteries and external batteries that are charged by USB which have more than twice the capacity of the stock phone batteries – this means more than twice the charge time. This problem will keep getting worse.
The problem of a phone in active use drawing more power than the charger can provide (and running out of battery while on the charger) seems likely to stay with us. So while an Android phone has the potential to be a great little embedded server it seems that hacking the power supply is going to be a required first step for realising that potential.
The decision to make 5V the USB power standard was reasonable at the time as it was the voltage used for most things on the motherboard. The decision to use USB as the phone charging standard was also reasonable, it allows phones to be charged anywhere. The combination of those two decisions isn’t good for the user. If a higher Voltage such as 12V was used then 5* the power could be supplied through the same wires at the same level of efficiency.
It would be really good if cars came with built in Inverters and supplied 240VAC or 110VAC depending on the region they were manufactured for. It’s becoming a fairly common feature to have a “cigarette lighter” port in the car boot as well as at least two ports inside the car. When a car has three sockets and only one device to actually light cigarettes (which I suspect is only provided to fill an empty socket) it’s very obvious that people want to connect random devices. Also having USB charging ports inside the car would be a really good idea (one for each seat would be good for Ingress).
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Readers may remember the footprints found in Mexico that have been dated to about 40,000 years BP. Geotimes has an interesting story on the subject:
In summer 2003, researchers Matthew Bennett of Bournemouth University and Silvia Gonzalez and David Huddart of Liverpool John Moores University in the United Kingdom were dating and mapping the geology of the Valsequillo Basin in Mexico, about 130 kilometers south of Mexico City, when they came across what appeared to be footprints on the floor of an abandoned quarry. Examining the site further, they found the site littered with footprints, Bennett says — 269 individual prints of humans and animals intermingled.
Sixty percent of the footprints appear to be human, with telltale arches and impressions of the heels, balls and toes, and 36 percent of those appear to be child-sized, according to the researchers, whose work is in press in Quaternary Science Reviews. The remaining 40 percent of the prints were from a variety of animals, Bennett says, including dogs, big cats and animals with cloven hooves, such as deer and camels. The researchers also found mastodon and mammoth teeth.
Previously, in the 1960s and 1970s, archaeologists found megafaunal remains, including bones that had been “worked” with tools, scattered throughout the basin. Those remains had been unreliably dated to be between 20,000 and 40,000 years old, Bennett says, so the sites have been somewhat ignored since then.
The footprints are preserved in a layer of volcanic ash from the eruption of Cerro Toluquilla beneath a shallow lake in the Valsequillo Basin just over 40,000 years ago. “Volcanic ash lithifies quickly, like cement,” Bennett says, so when the inhabitants of the lake shores wandered across the mucky ash, their footprints were captured. When lake levels later rose, water washed over the footprints, burying them in lake sediments, he says. “So we have this great stratigraphic sequence” of lake sediments, topped by ash, which is then topped again by lake sediments, Bennett says, that can be dated.
The dissenting opinion:
But Michael Waters, a geoarchaeologist at Texas A&M University in College Station, is not convinced. He says that the ash layer is likely much older than 40,000 years, and should be retested using different methods. Furthermore, says Waters, who has visited the site, “I have serious reservations as to whether or not these are even footprints, human or animal.” The site has been so extensively quarried over the years, being chopped with axes and picks, that these imprints could just be tool marks that have weathered.
The team, Waters says, needs to find tracks in outcrops or areas that have not been quarried — “look for them like you would look for dinosaur or other trackways.” Bennett says that he and his colleagues are planning to begin just such excavations soon.
Even more interesting, there is a link to the Mexican Footprints Website Which contains a wide variety of information on the geology, dating methods, etc. Based on what I saw at the site I am a little less skeptical – although I still have some reservations.
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From the time of Alzheimer’s first description of psychotic symptoms in a patient with Alzheimer’s disease in 1907, psychosis has been recognized as a major clinical syndrome in this illness. The consequences of psychotic symptoms in Alzheimer’s disease may be painful and costly for the affected individuals, those who care for them, and society at large. Psychotic symptoms have been linked to greater caregiver distress (1–3) and have been found to be a significant predictor of functional decline and institutionalization (4–7). Compared to patients with Alzheimer’s disease without psychosis, those with Alzheimer’s disease and psychotic symptoms are also more likely to have worse general health (8) as well as a greater incidence of other psychiatric and behavioral disturbances (9–11). Psychotic patients tend to have more frequent and problematic behaviors, including agitation (12–14), episodes of verbal and physical aggression (10, 15–18), and anxiety (11).
Reviews completed before the early 1990s found that psychotic symptoms were common in dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease (19–23). In their review of 21 studies, for example, Wragg and Jeste (23) found that approximately one-third of all patients with Alzheimer’s disease had delusions at some point during their illness, 28% had hallucinations, and nearly 35% had other psychotic symptoms that were difficult to categorize. Overall, however, the reviewed studies were compromised by sampling deficiencies and methodological problems. Wragg and Jeste’s review included studies with as few as nine subjects. Moreover, only five of the 21 studies had a sample size larger than 100 subjects. Other methodological problems included the use of unreliable or nonvalidated diagnostic criteria for Alzheimer’s disease. Consequently, samples included individuals with various types of dementias, and thus generalizability was limited, and findings as they related to Alzheimer’s disease specifically were obscured. Imprecise operational definitions of psychosis (24) and utilization of assessment methods with questionable reliability and validity also undermined these investigations. Moreover, all of the studies published before 1990 were cross-sectional or descriptive and thus did not provide data on the incidence or course (e.g., persistence) of symptoms.
Since the early 1990s, research on psychosis of Alzheimer’s disease has advanced considerably. There have been improvements in the development of diagnostic criteria for Alzheimer’s disease and for psychosis of Alzheimer’s disease (25) and the development of more reliable measures of psychotic symptoms, including the Behaviorial Pathology in Alzheimer’s Disease Rating Scale (26) and the Neuropsychiatric Inventory (27). Larger sample sizes have become available because of increased awareness of the disease and the establishment of Alzheimer’s disease centers. Longitudinal data from these centers have become available, and more investigators have undertaken prospective studies on this topic.
We reviewed studies published from 1990 through 2003 that investigated psychosis of Alzheimer’s disease with the aim of providing a systematic overview of the current state of knowledge in this area. In so doing, we employed more stringent inclusion criteria than were applied in reviews conducted before the early 1990s. In this article, we summarize findings on the epidemiology of psychotic symptoms in Alzheimer’s disease. Delusions and hallucinations are also reviewed separately, and we include findings on other uncategorized psychotic symptoms. In addition, we examine the literature on potential risk factors for psychosis of Alzheimer’s disease. Implications of the findings for clinical practice and for future research are discussed.
Computerized searches using PubMed and PsycINFO databases were performed for English-language articles published between 1990 and the end of 2003 with the keywords "psychosis and Alzheimer disease" and "psychosis and dementia." Additional articles were identified by using the "related articles" function in PubMed and by cross-referencing identified articles. Only empirical investigations reporting data on psychotic symptoms in patients with Alzheimer’s disease were selected. If a given study included subjects with dementias other than Alzheimer’s disease (e.g., vascular dementia or mixed dementia), sufficient data on the Alzheimer’s disease group itself (e.g., number of subjects and a prevalence rate of psychotic symptoms) must have been provided. In addition, the study design, study setting, some description of the method of diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease (e.g., National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke and the Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders Association criteria), and description of how psychotic symptoms were measured or defined must have been clearly stated. Target symptoms that could not be well categorized as delusions or hallucinations were considered "other psychotic symptoms." Using these methods, we identified 55 articles for review.
Sample Size and Subject Characteristics
The mean sample size in the 55 studies reviewed (t1) was 177 subjects (median=135; range 27 to 1,155). These findings represent an increase in sample sizes from those in the studies of psychosis in Alzheimer’s disease prior to 1990 that were included in a previous review (23). In that review, the largest sample size among 21 studies was merely 175 subjects, and the median sample size was 33. In the current review, the mean age of subjects with Alzheimer’s disease was 75.5 years (median=74.0, range=69–85), and the mean level of education was 10.7 years (median=12.0, range=6–13). Inclusion of education data was not possible for some studies because of the use of alternative scales of measurement (e.g., less than high school versus high school). Nearly two-thirds of the total subject sample were women (mean=64.2%), although considerable variability in gender distribution was noted across studies, with the proportion of women ranging from 28.8% to 83.4%. In general, subjects included in the studies tended to have mild or moderate cognitive impairment, as reflected by a mean Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) (28) score of 15.5 (median=16.3; range 5–21), although there was considerable variability in this regard across studies as well. Relatively few studies provided data on age at onset or the mean duration of illness. These variables may be considered unreliable estimates because they are based on a patient’s or informant’s retrospective memory and/or perceptions.
Although a majority of the reports (63.6%) were cross-sectional (8, 10, 12, 17, 29–60), 34.5% of the studies provided longitudinal data (9, 13, 16, 63–78). The primary settings for 72.7% of the studies were outpatient clinics, Alzheimer’s disease clinical centers, or Alzheimer’s disease research centers (8, 10, 12, 13, 16, 17, 29–32, 34–39, 43, 44, 48–50, 52, 53, 55, 57–74); relatively few studies included samples of inpatients (33, 41, 45–47, 56, 75) or a combination of inpatients and outpatients (9, 42). Even fewer reports (51, 54) included community-based samples, which are often more difficult to obtain. The setting was not clear in one investigation (76).
Diagnosis and Measurement
The National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke and the Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders Association criteria (77) were used most commonly for diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (8, 10, 12, 16, 31–34, 36, 40–44, 48, 50–55, 57, 61–63, 65, 66, 71–75). Both those criteria and the DSM criteria were used together in several studies (9, 13, 17, 29, 30, 35, 37, 45–47, 50, 59, 63, 64, 67, 69). Autopsy results, specifically those that utilized criteria of the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer’s Disease (78), were used infrequently.
Numerous measures or tools were used alone or in combination to assess psychotic symptoms. Informal or semistructured interviews of patients and/or their caregivers (such as the National Institute of Mental Health Diagnostic Interview Schedule , the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders , and the Initial Evaluation Form ) were utilized most frequently (15 studies), with an additional six studies incorporating other measures in addition to interviews. The Behavioral Pathology in Alzheimer’s Disease Rating Scale and the Neuropsychiatric Inventory, or both, were also used frequently.
The median prevalence of psychotic symptoms (delusions or hallucinations) in patients with Alzheimer’s disease was 41.1% (range=12.2%–74.1%). The median prevalence of delusions was 36% (range=9.3%–63%). Delusions of theft were the most common type of delusions reported (50.9% of studies). Hallucinations occurred less frequently, with a median prevalence of 18% (range=4%–41%). Visual hallucinations were more prevalent than auditory hallucinations (median=18.7% and 9.2%, respectively). Between 7.8% and 20.8% of subjects (median=13%) experienced both hallucinations and delusions. Psychotic symptoms not categorized as delusions or hallucinations were reported by 3.6% to 38.9% of patients with Alzheimer’s disease (median=25.6%). Most often, this category comprised misidentifications (frequently considered to be a type of delusion, although it may be a separate phenomenon). Prevalence data are summarized in t1.
Prevalence is affected by several factors, including the study setting and study design. A higher prevalence of psychotic symptoms tended to occur in inpatient settings (e.g., acute care hospitals, nursing homes, neurobehavioral units) (31.2% to 74.1%) (33, 40, 41, 45–47, 56, 75), whereas lower rates (12.2% to 65.2%) were noted in patients referred to outpatient memory or research clinics (8, 10, 12, 13, 16, 17, 29–32, 34–38, 43, 44, 48–50, 52, 53, 55, 57–61, 63–70, 72–74). Two studies included a community sample (51, 54), and one reported that 26.9% of the subjects experienced psychosis (51). Delusions among inpatients were present in 44.4% to 62.9% and hallucinations were present in 5.7% to 34%. In outpatient samples, 9.3% to 63% of subjects experienced delusions, and 3.8% to 41% had hallucinations. In the two studies of community-dwelling subjects, 21.8% and 22.7% had delusions, and 12.8% and 13.1% had hallucinations.
The incidence of psychosis of Alzheimer’s disease refers to the percentage of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease who are initially not psychotic and who develop one or more psychotic symptoms by a specified end-point. No studies before 1990 reported data on incidence. In studies conducted since 1990, however, seven studies (13, 61, 63, 64, 66, 69, 73) reported data on incidence over observation periods ranging from 1 to 5 years. Paulsen et al. (69) reported a 1-year incidence of 20%. Levy and colleagues (13) reported a comparable incidence of 25% after 1 year. Over a 2-year period, Paulsen and colleagues (69) reported an incidence of 36.1%, and in the study by Caligiuri et al. (63) of neuromotor abnormalities and risk for psychosis, 32.5% of subjects developed psychotic symptoms over the course of 2 years. The latter rates are likely comparable because the samples from the two studies overlapped to some extent, given that subjects in both studies were drawn from the same group of individuals enrolled in longitudinal studies at the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center in San Diego. Delusions and hallucinations both seem to develop more readily within a 1-year to 2-year span, although these data are limited by the small number of studies addressing delusions and hallucinations specifically over more than two assessment points (60, 65). Incidence seemed to plateau after 3 years, as there was little difference between 3-year (49.5%) and 4-year (51.3%) cumulative rates for psychosis in the study by Paulsen et al. (69). In the study by Chen and colleagues (64), 29.7% of the subjects developed psychosis over an average of 5 years of follow-up. However, the authors pointed out that subjects were not evaluated the same number of times or at the same time points. The 14.9% incidence reported by Sweet and associates (73) was difficult to compare to the findings of other studies because the length of follow-up was not specified.
Persistence of psychosis of Alzheimer’s disease refers to whether an individual experiences a symptom at two or more consecutive evaluations. Again, comparison of rates across studies is limited because variable follow-up periods were used by different researchers. In one study, subjects were evaluated every 3 months over 1 year, and 57% had psychotic symptoms on at least two occasions (13). In another study, a similarly high persistence of psychosis was found for individuals evaluated at baseline and 1 year later: 44% for delusions, 26% for visual hallucinations, and 45% for auditory hallucinations (61). Psychotic symptoms rarely seemed to persist after several months, however. Haupt et al. (66) reported that after 2 years, psychotic symptoms did not persist in any of 21 subjects who had delusions or in any of 11 subjects who had hallucinations at baseline. The results may have been affected by the small number of patients manifesting psychotic symptoms. Furthermore, the authors assessed symptoms at 1 and 2 years but reported persistence on the basis of the presence of a symptom at both time points. A low persistence rate over a 2-year period was also found by Devanand and colleagues (9), who reported that delusions persisted in only 12.8% of 180 subjects and hallucinations in only 5.6%. Rosen et al. (70) and Zubenko et al. (76) considered a symptom to be persistent if it was present on any two consecutive annual evaluations conducted over the course of the study (on average, 2 and 5 years, respectively). Using this definition, these authors reported that 86.7% and 84.6%, respectively, of the same subject sample had persistent psychotic symptoms.
Seven studies examined the relationship between African American or black ethnicity and psychosis. Five found a positive association (8, 16, 31, 36, 52), and two found no relationship (9, 32). Bassiony and colleagues (31) reported that African Americans were significantly more likely to have hallucinations than Caucasians; the investigators did not report on other psychotic symptoms. Lopez et al. (52) reported that African Americans in the moderate to severe stages of Alzheimer’s disease had significantly more psychotic symptoms than Caucasians in the same stages; the relationship between ethnicity and psychotic symptoms was not significant in mild stages, however. No studies reported associations with any other ethnic groups. Associations between risk factors and psychosis are summarized in t2.
Severity of cognitive impairment (assessed with the MMSE or a similar global cognitive measure) showed a significant positive association with the presence of psychosis in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease in 20 studies (8, 9, 12, 13, 31, 32, 34, 36, 37, 40, 44, 45, 48, 52, 57, 65, 67–69, 74) and no association in 10 studies (10, 33, 39, 42, 47, 50, 51, 58, 62, 70). Overall, the prevalence of psychosis in general increased as cognitive impairment became more severe. Delusions tended to initially become more prevalent as cognitive functioning worsened but then decreased again as cognitive impairment became more severe in later stages of the illness. Hallucinations, like general psychotic symptoms, also increased in prevalence as cognitive impairment became more severe. When subjects were categorized as mildly, moderately, or severely cognitively impaired on the basis of MMSE scores (28), a similar pattern was observed. The median prevalence of psychosis was 25.5% (range=3.1%–50%) in mildly impaired individuals (MMSE scores 21–25), 37% (range=18.8%–56%) in those with moderate cognitive impairment (MMSE scores 20–11), and 49% (range=21.9%–79%) in severely impaired subjects (MMSE score 10 or below). Delusions were reported in a median of 23.5% (range=11%–50%) of mildly impaired individuals, 46% (range=13%–67%) of those with moderate cognitive impairment, and 33.3% (range=23%–57%) of severely impaired subjects. The median prevalence of hallucinations among those with mild cognitive impairment was 11.4% (range=9%–33%) and increased to 19% in those with moderate cognitive impairment (range=13%–48%) and to 28% (range=16%–44%) in severely impaired patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Other psychotic symptoms occurred in 5.9% and 16.7% of mildly impaired subjects (as reported in two studies), in 43.5% of moderately impaired individuals, and in 41.7% of those with severe cognitive impairment (one study). Overall, a statistical examination of the mean prevalence figures for psychotic symptoms and cognitive severity level revealed a significant difference only between the mean prevalence of hallucinations in mildly and moderately impaired individuals, with hallucinations being more prevalent in the moderately impaired than in the mildly impaired subjects. There were no other significant differences in mean prevalence of symptoms at any other levels of cognitive impairment.
Education, gender, and family history of dementia or psychiatric disorder were weakly associated with increased risk for psychosis in the majority of reviewed studies. A majority of studies (76.5%) found that education level was not correlated with the presence of psychotic symptoms (10, 16, 31, 36, 37, 44, 45, 47, 48, 50, 51, 56, 69). In contrast, education level was positively associated with delusions in one study (33) and negatively associated with psychosis in three (8, 32, 52). Gender was not associated with psychosis in 17 studies presenting these data (9, 10, 16, 31, 32, 36, 37, 44, 47, 48, 50, 55, 56, 68–70, 76), but it was associated with psychosis in seven. Of those seven, four found that women were at greater risk for psychotic symptoms (45, 51, 63, 65) and three found that men had a higher risk for psychosis (39, 42, 62). Of seven studies that investigated the association of family history of dementia and/or other psychiatric disorders and psychosis in Alzheimer’s disease (8, 10, 12, 31, 37, 48, 56), none found a positive relationship. However, lack of knowledge and diagnostic inaccuracy in diagnosis among family members could have obscured such an association.
The relationships between psychosis and patients’ age, age at onset of Alzheimer’s disease, and duration of Alzheimer’s disease were generally equivocal. Older age was correlated with psychotic symptoms (delusions, hallucinations, or both) in 12 of 25 studies (8, 13, 17, 32, 36, 37, 40, 45, 47, 50, 55, 56) and was not associated with psychosis in the remaining 13 investigations (9, 10, 31, 42, 43, 48, 57, 59, 62, 69, 70, 75, 76). In 12 studies reporting on the relationship between age at onset of Alzheimer’s disease and psychotic symptoms, seven studies found no relationship (12, 16, 42, 47, 51, 68, 76), four found that the later the age at onset of Alzheimer’s disease, the more likely the individual was to experience psychosis (40, 45, 56, 75), and only one found that an earlier age at onset was associated with psychosis (62). Nine of 17 studies found no relationship between duration of Alzheimer’s disease and the occurrence of psychotic symptoms (36, 47, 51, 55, 56, 58, 68, 71, 76). The other eight studies, however, found that a longer duration of Alzheimer’s disease was correlated with the occurrence of psychosis (12, 17, 31, 32, 34, 37, 39, 45).
Psychotic symptoms were significantly associated with more rapid cognitive decline over time in all nine studies that examined this relationship (13, 37, 40, 58, 62, 69–71, 74), supporting the notion that psychosis may denote a subset of patients with Alzheimer’s disease with a more aggressive course of the disease (see references 13, 69, 70). It is interesting to note that only two of these studies examined the relationship between the rate of cognitive decline and hallucinations or delusions separately, and each found that hallucinations, but not delusions, were significantly associated with more rapid cognitive decline (62, 74).
Our review of 55 studies of psychosis in possible or probable Alzheimer’s disease revealed that a sizable proportion (median 41%) of individuals with the disease experience psychotic symptoms at some time during the course of their illness. Delusions occurred more frequently (median=36%) than hallucinations (median=18%). Other psychotic symptoms not categorized as delusions or hallucinations occurred in 25% of individuals. The incidence of psychotic symptoms seemed to increase with increasing follow-up intervals over the first 3 years. Psychotic symptoms tended to be reported in a majority of patients at least over a period of several months but often were not observed beyond 1 or 2 years. African American or black ethnicity and greater degree of cognitive impairment were strongly associated with a higher rate of psychosis. Psychosis was also associated with a faster rate of cognitive decline. Age, age at onset of Alzheimer’s disease, and duration of Alzheimer’s disease were associated with psychosis in approximately one-half of studies. Education, gender, and family history of dementia or psychiatric illness showed a weak or inconsistent relationship with psychosis in patients with Alzheimer’s disease.
The prevalence rate of psychosis in patients with Alzheimer’s disease found in our review was 41%. The median rate for delusions was 36%, which is comparable to the median rate of 33.5% reported in one of the only review studies of psychosis in Alzheimer’s disease published before the early 1990s (23). The rate of hallucinations found in the present review (18%) represents a decrease from the 28% reported by Wragg and Jeste (23). The fact that prevalence remains high in light of pharmacologic treatment may reflect increased awareness that these disturbances are consequences of Alzheimer’s disease, improved detection, or the use of better criteria and rating scales that allow for psychotic symptoms to be diagnosed with greater accuracy. As an increasing number of patients with Alzheimer’s disease are treated with cholinesterase inhibitors over the coming years, we might expect that the prevalence and incidence of psychosis would decrease, although findings for the efficacy of these drugs in reducing psychotic symptoms specifically have been mixed (see references 13, 82, 83).
The fact that psychosis is persistent over a short interval of a few months may reflect the reasonable amount of time it takes to begin typical treatment for psychosis and to observe amelioration of symptoms. To assess the true persistence of symptoms, subjects would have to be enrolled in a placebo-controlled study in which some psychotic patients did not receive the typical treatment for symptoms. In the studies that were reviewed, it was more the exception than the rule that subjects would be excluded if they were taking an antipsychotic drug or cholinesterase inhibitor or that a drug washout period would be invoked. Furthermore, there were no means of determining whether the patients who were taking these drugs were being treated optimally, and the extent to which psychotic symptoms persist despite antipsychotic treatment is not known. Therefore, persistence values may reflect the experience of psychosis given current treatments rather than the true persistent nature of psychotic symptoms.
Few equivocal associations with psychosis emerged from the reviewed studies. The association between African American or black ethnicity and psychosis is intriguing, although it is also limited by the fact that only Caucasian samples are available for comparison. Issues of acculturation and genetic influences are yet to be adequately examined, highlighting an area in need of exploration. Cognitive impairment and the rate of cognitive decline were also found to be strongly associated with psychotic symptoms.
The findings of the present review suggest that psychosis represents a developmental feature marking the progression of Alzheimer’s disease or that it represents a distinct disease subtype marked by psychotic symptoms and a particularly rapid disease course. The fact that delusions, specifically, seemed most prevalent in patients with moderate cognitive impairment supports the hypothesis that a certain amount of neuronal integrity must be present for delusions to occur (see references 48, 84). Conclusions are limited, however, by a general failure to include severely cognitively impaired subjects in these studies. In addition, the association between psychosis and cognitive impairment and between psychosis and rate of cognitive decline may be influenced by medications, including antipsychotics and cholinesterase inhibitors, the former of which is recommended as a first-line treatment for dementia patients with delusions (85). Yet, a majority of the studies reviewed did not account for the potential effects of medication on cognition and simply reported that these effects were a possible limitation to their findings. A number of studies altogether failed to report what, if any, medications the subjects were taking. The importance of considering medication effects is illustrated in studies of antipsychotic use and cognition. The use of two atypical antipsychotics (clozapine and risperidone) in cognitively impaired patients was reviewed by Jeste et al. (86) and Gladsjo et al. (87). Jeste and colleagues found that the effects of clozapine on cognition were somewhat conflicting, which they posited was due, at least in part, to the strong anticholinergic activity of clozapine, which is likely to confound or diminish any enhancement of cognitive functioning. Berman and colleagues (88, 89) reported significant increases in MMSE scores in patients with schizophrenia or mild dementia treated with risperidone. Moreover, cholinesterase inhibitors have been shown to improve cognitive symptoms or temporarily reduce the rate of cognitive decline (90). Certainly, future studies should examine the potential influence of medication use, not only to examine any potential effects, positive or negative, on cognitive functioning but also to elucidate underlying biological mechanisms of psychosis in dementia. Furthermore, difficulties in diagnosing patients with Lewy body dementia may have led to their inadvertent inclusion in studies of patients with Alzheimer’s disease, thereby affecting the association between some psychotic symptoms and rate of cognitive decline, given that psychotic symptoms, and hallucinations in particular, may occur in nearly one-half of those with Lewy body dementia (30, 91).
For many variables that were found not to be associated with psychosis, including age, age at onset, and duration of illness, small standard deviations likely affected the detection of associations. In the case of age and age at onset, few individuals who were younger than age 55 years or who had an early age at onset (age 55 years or younger) were included in these studies. Similarly, the range and standard deviation for illness duration were restricted (range=2.8–7.7 years, SD=1.33 years), thus limiting the potential to detect a positive association. In addition, many authors noted that age at onset of Alzheimer’s disease was inherently difficult to determine, because it was often an estimate that relied on the failing memory of those with Alzheimer’s disease or the recall and dating by others of behaviors that occurred several years earlier.
The results of this review are also limited by problems in assessing psychosis. Despite more regular use of accepted diagnostic criteria, some researchers continue to use diagnostic criteria that are nonspecific to Alzheimer’s disease (e.g., DSM-III or DSM-IV criteria). Even when accepted criteria are utilized, inconsistencies in interpreting those criteria are evident. Presumably, the rates reported herein may underestimate the prevalence of delusions and hallucinations specifically, as evidenced by the fact that from 3.6% to 38.9% of psychotic symptoms remained uncategorized and were labeled "other psychotic symptoms." Conversely, as suggested by Devanand and colleagues (24), the lack of clarity may result in an overestimation of prevalence rates for symptoms such as delusions, as some symptoms are classified as delusions when they would otherwise be better classified as other psychiatric symptoms or as behavioral problems of Alzheimer’s disease. Clarity regarding the definition of psychosis and the categorization of symptoms such as misidentifications will be necessary to produce data that can be better compared across studies.
Overall, the present review reflects improvements in sampling, study design, diagnosis, and assessment, compared to reviews conducted before the early 1990s. Subject samples were larger, providing a more accurate picture of the nature and frequency of psychosis. More studies were prospective in nature and thus used methods designed to answer a directed research question. Longitudinal data were more readily available, providing information on incidence that had not previously been reported and other insights into how psychotic symptoms affect the course of Alzheimer’s disease over time. More reliable assessment tools have also come into use over the past decade with the advent of measurements such as the Neuropsychiatric Inventory and Behaviorial Pathology in Alzheimer’s Disease Rating Scale and the use of structured clinical interviews, as opposed to the previously employed methods of chart review and behavioral observation. However, future studies should continue to address the remaining shortcomings of the past 15 years. Research should use longitudinal designs to advance our understanding of the incidence and persistence of psychosis. Future studies should also develop or utilize appropriate diagnostic criteria and rating scales for psychosis in the Alzheimer’s disease population. By taking into account medication use (such as antipsychotics and anticholinergics) among subjects included in these studies, we may also learn about the relative benefits of various pharmacological agents in treating psychosis as well as the mechanisms underlying the occurrence of psychotic symptoms in Alzheimer’s disease and other illnesses.
Research since the early 1990s shows that psychotic symptoms affect a sizable proportion of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease. The incidence of psychosis in any sample of patients typically continues to climb during the first 3 years of observation and may persist for several months, pointing to the necessity for early detection and treatment. With recognition of how prominent and devastating psychotic symptoms may be, it becomes increasingly clear that research should continue to focus on the epidemiology of and risk factors for psychosis of Alzheimer’s disease. As Alzheimer’s disease affects a growing number of individuals over time, so too will psychosis as a syndrome. Systematic delineation of the epidemiology of and risk factors for psychosis in Alzheimer’s disease may clarify the biological underpinnings of these symptoms and direct indications for early interventions, facilitate patient management, reduce caregiver burden, improve patients’ quality of life, and open the door to discovering the nature of psychosis in other diseases.
Received Nov. 29, 2004; revision received Feb. 1, 2005; accepted Feb. 22, 2005. From the Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego; and the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System, San Diego. Address correspondence to Dr. Jeste, Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego, VA San Diego Healthcare System, 9500 Gilman Dr., Mail Code 0603V, La Jolla, CA 92093-0603; email@example.com (e-mail). Supported in part by NIMH grants MH-66248 and MH-59101 and by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
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When I read the Pocohontas story to my kids (we have the Disney version), we usually have a little discussion when we get to the page where Pocohontas attempts to dissuade her father (the local Indian chief) from starting a war with the settlers. The kids are interested in the idea that both people are trying to do the right thing, but they have completely different ideas about what the right thing is.
For those of you not familiar with the story, Pocohontas has fallen in love with a mercenary on the voyage (John Smith), and the two of them want to establish peace between the settlers and the natives. The book suggests that peace involves the settlers staying in North America. Powhatan, her father, is assembling a war party to drive the settlers away.
We can look back in history to better understand who was "right".
- As the book makes clear, a war between the settlers and the Indians is going to lead to many Indian casualties, since the settlers have guns and the Indians do not. Furthermore, most of the settlers are not intending to do harm to the Indians, as they've been told they are settling land that has no ownership yet. Pocohontas' efforts end up saving many well-intentioned people's lives.
- These same settlers would probably understand that, had they landed anywhere in England and built a village where they landed, they would be summarily evicted by whomever owned the land they were on. The racism here is lightly touched on in the book, but it's helpful because it's pretty easy for the kids to see how convenient it is for the settlers to suppose that nobody in North America owns anything yet.
- I usually tell the kids what little I know of the Mauri, the indigenous people of New Zealand. As I understand it, they immediately made war with white folks who arrived. I suspect that the Mauri were territorial in a way that worked better with the White conception of property, and because of that Mauri today have a significant representation in the New Zealand constitution and legislature, and own very large amounts of New Zealand's real estate. I expect many Native Americans would prefer the Mauri outcome to their own.
- The Na'vi are territorial. They have a few specific high-value trees. My understanding is that most of the North American natives had a much less specific sense of property.
- The movie has the natives resisting under human leadership, which is interesting to think about. It seems a bit condescending (especially the bit where the human, after 3 months of training, is outperforming the best of the natives), but historically North American natives really did not grasp the nature of the European threat fast enough to organize a massive resistance in time, and it seems at least possible that a charismatic European might have communicated the continent-level consequences of the European idea of property to enough of them to organize a resistance.
I once asked a friend who is a lawyer if all property rights, at least in North America, trace back to peace treaties of some kind, or if some (particular the French claim to the center of the continent that was then sold as the Louisiana Purchase) are based on bald assertions of authority without even a war. I never did get a decent answer.
If, in reading this post, anyone is wondering if I'm willing to cede my house to a Native American, the answer is no.
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18) The Story of Merriwether Lewis and William Clark Young Americans
by Nellie Kingsley
The source book entitled, four American Heroes, was authored by Nellie Kingsley, and published by the The Werner School Book Company.
This book included the follow titles:
1) The Story of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark for Young Americans
2) The Story of John Charles Fremont for Young Americans
This review includes only The Story of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark for Young Americans; the other two are covered in separate articles.
This story is an abbreviated account of the expedition of 1804-1805 and as the subtitle indicates is For Young Americans.
The publication consists 132 pages of text and approximately 28 black and white/gray scale images.
This is an ideal book for the first time exposure to the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The book is short and uncomplicated so it doesn't have the same kind of detail and background that a longer work would have; realistically even a 600 page book could not tell the whole story but it would have much more detail than this short work.
Beyond grammar school I never remember reading or remembering much about the Lewis and Clark Expedition (or the Corps of Discovery). I think I envisioned it as being a very long backpacking trip. And I probably assumed that for the men of that day and time it was just a picnic. Only in my later reading and study have I learned that it was a monumental achievement.
The physical strength and endurance the fortitude and courage intelligence and common sense were all common attributes of all the members of the expedition. Not only did they have to battle the elements from oppressive heat to freezing cold to dry desert and flowing rivers but they also had to contend with wild animals, especially the dreaded grizzly bear (whom the Indians also feared) and some hostile Indians (though some Indians were also friendly).
It is amazing that only one man was lost during the whole expedition and that was due to an acute case of appendicitis I've read much more detail works and I'm sure I've absorbed other details through the years but I still found this book to be an interesting and compelling read.
It is exciting and definitely includes details and stories that I'd never heard before; (perhaps this is true because of the age of the book or because of my own age and memory.)
For example in the following passage I'd never heard of this initiation/custom; (in fact I didn't realize that there were sailors on the expedition) and the phrase equinoctial line.
----At last the Platte River was reached. There the sailors carried out a curious custom. It seems that the passing of the Platte River is regarded by Missouri River boatmen just as the crossing of the equinoctial line is regarded by sailors on the sea. To mark the passing of it every man in the who had never been there before was caught and shaved unless he could stand treat; to his comrades.
Or that the Kite Indians were “so called because they were always flying about.
This is an interesting one though kind of bad for the horse:
Early in August they came to the burial-place of a great and awful chief of the Omaha nation named Blackbird. He was buried sitting erect on horseback.
How about the singing Indians:
No sooner were the explorers settled than a dozen Indians appeared on the opposite bank and began to sing. This was their sign of friendship and their friendship was very genuine.
I would be remiss not to mention Sacajawea. She and her husband were essential members of the expedition of that there is no doubt. I myself did not know that during that time while she was traveling with them she gave birth to a son and carried him along with her. She was a tough lady !
Table of Contents:
INTRODUCTION I. THE TWO CAPTAINS II. THE START III. JUNE AND JULY IV. THE FIRST INDIAN COUNCIL V. THE MOUNTAIN OF LITTLE PEOPLE VI. THE COUNCIL WITH THE SIOUX VII. AN INDIAN DANCE VIII.WINTER AMONG THE MANDANS IX. INDIAN HUNTS X. THE MANDAN INDIANS XI. THE WINTER XII. FIGHTS WITH GRIZZLY BEARS XIII. A IMPORTANT DECISION XIV. MAKING A CACHE XV. AN EXCITING MORNING XVI. PASSING THE FALLS XVII. UP THE JEFFERSON RIVER XVIII. THE COLUMBIA RIVER REACHED XIX. AMONG THE INDIANS XX. HESITATION XXI. DOWN THE SNAKE RIVER XXII. DOWN THE COLUMBIA XXIII. FORT CLATSOP AND THE START HOME XXIV. ASCENT OF THE COLUMBIA XXV. CROSSING THE BITTER ROOT MOUNTAINS XXVI. CAPTAIN LEWIS'S ADVENTURES XXVII. CAPTAIN CLARK'S ADVENTURES XXVIII. THE END OF THE GREAT EXPEDITION"
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Polygamy and the Quran
Those people who have modeled their thinking after New Testament Christianity are, to say the least, a bit surprised (if not shocked and appalled) to learn that the religion of Islam countenances polygamy. But the Christian mind must realize that Muhammad’s Islam arose out of Arabia in the sixth and seventh centuries A.D. The Arab culture was well-known for the practice of polygamy, in which the men were allowed to have as many wives as they desired. The Quran addressed this social circumstance by placing a limitation on the number of wives a man could have. The wording of the pronouncement is in a surah titled “Women”: “And if ye fear that ye will not deal fairly by the orphans, marry of the women, who seem good to you, two or three or four; and if ye fear that ye cannot do justice (to so many) then one (only) or (the captives) that your right hands possess” (Surah 4:3).
Setting aside the issue of why Muhammad himself was exempt from this limitation (Surah 33:50—see Miller, “Muhammad’s Polygamy,” 2004), the divine origin of the Quran is discredited on the basis of its stance on polygamy. In the first place, for all practical purposes, the Quran authorizes a man to have as many wives as he chooses, since its teaching on divorce contradicts its teaching on marriage. Unlike the New Testament, which confines permission to divorce on the sole grounds of sexual unfaithfulness (Matthew 19:9), the Quran authorizes divorce for any reason (e.g., Surah 2:226-232,241; 33:4,49; 58:2-4; 65:1-7). If a man can divorce his wife for any reason, then the “command” that limits a man to four wives is effectively meaningless—merely restricting a man to four legal wives at a time. Theoretically, a man could have an unlimited number of wives—all with the approval of God!
In the second place, Jesus declared in no uncertain terms that “whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery” (Matthew 19:9, emp. added). Jesus gave one, and only one, reason for divorce in God’s sight. In fact, even the Old Testament affirmed that God “hates divorce” (Malachi 2:16). The teaching of the Bible on divorce is a higher, stricter, nobler standard than the one advocated by the Quran. The two books, in fact, contradict each other on this point.
In the third place, why does the Quran stipulate the number “four”? Why not three or five wives? The number four would appear to be an arbitrary number with no significance—at least, none is given. Though the passage in question indicates the criterion of a man’s ability to do justice to those he marries, there is no reason to specify the number four, since men would vary a great deal in the number of women that they would have the ability to manage fairly.
The answer may be seen in the influence of the contemporaneous Jewish population of Arabia. Sixth century Arabia was a tribal oriented society that relied heavily on oral communication in social interactions. Muhammad would have been the recipient of considerable information conveyed orally by his Jewish, and even Christian, contemporaries. Many tales, fables, and rabbinical traditions undoubtedly circulated among the Jewish tribes of Arabia. The Jews themselves probably were lacking in book-learning, having been separated from the mainstream of Jewish thought and intellectual development in their migration to the Arabian peninsula. The evidence demonstrates that the author of the Quran borrowed extensively from Jewish and other sources. The ancient Talmudic record (Arbah Turim, Ev. Hazaer, 1) stated: “A man may marry many wives, for Rabba saith it is lawful to do so, if he can provide for them. Nevertheless, the wise men have given good advice, that a man should not marry more than four wives” (see Rodwell, 1950, p. 411; Tisdall, 1905, pp. 129-130). The similarity with the wording of the Quran is too striking to be coincidental. It can be argued quite convincingly that the magic number of four was drawn from currently circulating Jewish teaching.
Miller, Dave (2004), “Muhammad’s Polygamy,” http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2219.
Rodwell, J.M., trans. (1950 reprint), The Koran (London: J.M. Dent and Sons).
Tisdall, W. St. Clair (1905), The Original Sources of the Quran (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge).
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Two-spotted spider mites can be rusty green,greenish amber or yellow and they have eight legs. Overwintering females are red or orange. These mites have two (sometimes four) black spots on top. They are very small,but still visible. The best way to see them is with a small magnifying glass. The eggs vary from transparent and colorless to opaque straw yellow.
If spider mites infest your roses,you will begin to notice a dull appearance to the leaves. The undersides will feel “sandy”or rough. Fine webbing will appear on the undersides of leaves and in leaf axils. Leaves will begin to lose their color and become dry and lifeless. The leaves soon die and dry up.
BIOLOGY Two-spotted spider mites are widely distributed in the United States and feed on over 180 host plants,including roses. Once a plant is infested,the mites spread onto nearby crops and ornamentals. Two-spotted spider mites pierce the epidermis of the host plant leaf with their sharp,slender mouthparts. When they extract the sap,the tissue of the leaf collapses in the area of the puncture. Soon a spot without green color forms at each feeding site. After a heavy attack,an entire plant may become yellowed,bronzed or killed completely. The mites may spin so much webbing over the plant that it becomes entirely covered.
Though insects and mites are in a group called the Arthropoda (meaning jointed foot),because jointed legs are common to both,spider mites are not actually insects. Being more closely related to spiders,they derive their name from the thin web that some species spin.
Two-spotted spider mites overwinter as adults in the soil or on hosts such as violets and hollyhocks. In mild winter weather,two-spotted spider mites continue to feed and lay eggs,although development in the winter is much slower than in the summer. In warm weather,six-legged larvae hatch from the eggs. They develop into eight-legged nymphs,which pass through two nymphal stages. After each larval and nymphal stage,there is a resting stage. The adults mate soon after emerging from the last resting stage,and in warm weather the females soon lay eggs. Each female may lay over 100 eggs in her life and up to 19 eggs per day. Development is most rapid during hot,dry weather. A single generation may require as many as 20 or as few as 5 days to reach adulthood and begin producing offspring.
CONTROL Control of spider mites depends heavily upon an understanding of the biology of the mites. The mites are usually found on the underside of leaves. Thorough application of a miticide to the underside of the plant foliage is essential for good control. An alternative to chemical controls is a strong water spray applied to the undersides of the leaves every three days during hot weather. Miticide applications may be needed 7 to 10 days apart to kill mites that were in the egg and resting stages during the first application. In hot weather,an eye should be kept on the plants to check for reinfestation or for the offspring of mites missed on the first application.
If you choose to use a miticide,read the label carefully and apply as directed. Mites easily become resistant,so NEVER dilute the miticide —this will only ensure that future generations of mites can resist the miticides you use.
Some commonly used miticides are:
(The use of brand names and any mention or listing of commercial products does not imply endorsement by the American Rose Society,nor discrimination against similar products or services not mentioned. Individuals who use chemicals are responsible for ensuring that the intended use complies with current regulations and conforms to the product label. Be sure to obtain current information about usage and examine a current product label before applying any chemical.
To download the pdf version of this article click here.
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You can't teach that
Two parents are suing the University of California-Berkeley over a web site aimed at educating teachers. Understanding Evolution, a collaborative project of the University of California Museum of Paleontology and the National Center for Science Education, is "is a non-commercial, education website, teaching the science and history of evolutionary biology." Jeanne and Larry Caldwell, the couple bringing the suit against the site, claim that the site delves improperly into religion. While most debates center around whether or not Intelligent Design is "religion in the classroom," the Caldwells are looking to spin it the other way.
The plaintiffs in the case claim that they are not proponents of Intelligent Design, but they do argue that it is inappropriate for a project that is partially funded by the US government to essentially engage in swaying students towards evolution. In the language of the suit, the site seeks to "to modify the beliefs of public school science students so they will be more willing to accept evolutionary theory as true." How exactly does the website do this?
For one, it provides information to teachers, who then teach. One of the aftereffects of teaching is that, ideally, students learn. In the context of a science classroom, this could mean that students are taught evolution, and then they may understand it better. This is the fundament of pedagogy.
But that's not all. The real gist of the suit, from my own reading, stems from the fact that the site in question makes observations about the religious world around us. For example, the site notes that most forms of Christianity and Judaism have no fundamental conflict with evolution, and it even links to collected statements from a variety of movements that do not challenge evolution. Many scholars have argued that it is important to note that this debate is not "science versus Christianity" or anything of the sort. Rather, they note, creationists and religiously-oriented Intelligent Design proponents are but a subset of religious people in general. To the Caldwell's however, pointing out this reality is akin to the government endorsing certain forms of religion over others, namely those that do not have a problem with evolution.
To date, courts across the country have rejected the idea that teaching evolution, which is a peer-reviewed scientific theory that as of yet has had little challenge in the way of peer-reviewed academic research, is tantamount to teaching religion.
"The courts in many cases have said evolution is a scientific idea and there is no prohibition on the government teaching a scientific idea even if it conflicts'' with some people's religious beliefs, said university counsel Christopher Patti.
Larry Caldwell, however, disagrees. His view is that by not teaching students about supposed problems with the fossil record, problems that are dismissed by most specialists in the field, teachers are misleading them. Still, Caldwell doesn't want to see evolution removed from the classroom, but he does believe that alternative views, including those that attribute serious problems to the theory, should also be presented to students. This returns us to the crux of the debate, however, which is whether or not any worthwhile challenges to evolution have been made.
Yeah, well you can't teach THAT!
The University of California finds itself in another controversy over religion, as well. A suit filed federal court in Los Angeles accuses the University system of discriminating against Christians. The Association of Christian Schools International, the Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta, Calif., and six Calvary Chapel students have joined forces to seek a legal remedy to what they term "viewpoint discrimination," which is a terse way of saying that they object to the fact that the UC system considered parts of their Christian education to be below admittance standards.
At issue in the lawsuit are academic standards for admission to the university, specifically UC's process for assessing high-school courses to verify that they meet the system's college-preparatory course requirements (known as the a-g requirements). For a new or substantially revised course to be approved for the a-g list, a high school must submit a request, listing the course curriculum, textbook information, and supplemental materials, to UC for approval. Staff at UCOP review such applications to make sure that courses meet UC academic standards established by BOARS.
The UC system has approved 43 courses from the school in question, but a select number of courses have not received approval, including science courses that use overtly Christian theology books as textbooks. For example, as the NY Times has noted, the books spouts peculiar takes on historical figures. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, is outed as a non-believer, and by scriptural proof, an antichrist.
American believers can appreciate Jefferson's rich contribution to the development of their nation, but they must beware of his view of Christ as a good teacher but not the incarnate son of God. As the Apostle John said, "Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son" (I John 2:22).
With regards to slavery, the book blames not only slave holders, but "African tribal leaders... whom allowed their love for profit to outweigh their love for their fellow man."
The case will be heard December 12, and educators across the country are watching.
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Allen, Frederick Lewis. Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the Nineteen-Twenties.
American Heritage New Illustrated History of the United States. Volumes 13, 14 and 15.
Bateson, Charles. The War With Japan.
Barnhart, Michael A. "Japan Prepares for Total War."
Boghosian, Sam. "On a Fine Sunday Morning."
Brinkley, David. Washington Goes to War.
Butow, Robert. Tojo and the Coming of the War.
Cacutt, Len, ed. Decisive Battles: The Turning Points of World War II.
Chihaya, Masataka. Japanese Historical Perspective.
Choate, Pat. Agents of Influence: How Japan's Lobbyists in the United States Manipulate America's Political and Economic System.
Costello, John. The Pacific War 1941-1945.
Daedalus. Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Showa: The Japan of Hirohito.
Dower, John W. War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War.
Fermi, Laura. Atoms in the Family: My Life With Enrico Fermi.
Friedman, George, and Meredith Lebard. The Coming War With Japan.
Fuchida, Mitsuo. I Led the Air Attack Against Pearl Harbor.
Fussell, Paul. Wartime.
Genda, Minoru, Higeki Shinjuwan Kogeki, and Kaigun Kokutai. Shimatsu.
Halberstam, David. The Reckoning.
Hall, John Whitney. Japan From Prehistory to Modern Times.
Halsey, Fleet Adm. William F. Admiral Halsey's Story.
Honan, William H., Visions of Infamy, The Untold Story of How Journalist Hector C. Bywater Devised the Plans That Led to Pearl Harbor.
Jackson, Charles L. On to Pearl Harbor--and Beyond.
James, D. Clayton. Triumph & Disaster 1945-1964, The Years of MacArthur, Vol. III.
Johnson, Chalmers, MITI and The Japanese Miracle.
Johnson, Sheila K. The Japanese Through American Eyes.
Kahn, David. Foreign Affairs Magazine. "The Intelligence Failure of Pearl Harbor."
Keegan, John. The Second World War.
Ketchum, Richard M. The Borrowed Years 1938-1941: America on the Way to War.
Klingaman, William K. 1941: Our Lives in a World on the Edge.
Layton, Edwin T. (Rear Admiral, U.S.N. Ret.). "And I Was There": Pearl Harbor and Midway--Breaking the Secrets.
Lincoln, Edward J. Japan's Unequal Trade.
Lord, Walter. Day of Infamy.
Writing "Day of Infamy."
Manchester, William. American Caesar, Douglas MacArthur.
The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America.
MacDonald, Fred J. Don't Touch That Dial!: Radio Programming in American Life.
Millis, Walter. New York Times Magazine. "Two Hours That Changed History."
Morison, Samuel Eliot. The Rising Sun in the Pacific.
The Two-Ocean War.
Potter, E.B. and Chester W. Nimitz, eds. The Great Sea War.
Prange, Gordon. At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor.
Quarterly Journal of Military History. Hill, Douglas, "Countdown to Disaster." Kahn, David, "Why Weren't We Warned." Warner, Denis and Peggy. "The Doctrine of Surprise." Young, Stephen Bower. "Trapped!"
Reischauer, Edwin O. Japan: The Story of a Nation.
Sansom, G.H. The Western World and Japan.
Schaller, Michael. The American Occupation of Japan.
Spector, Ronald H. The Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan.
Stetson Conn, Rose Engelman & Byron Fairchild. Guarding the U.S. & Its Outposts.
Stillwell, Paul. U.S. Naval Institute. "Admiral Husband E. Kimmel: Scapegoat."
Terkel, Studs. The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two.
This Fabulous Century. New York: Time-Life. Volume 2: 1910-1920. Volume 3: 1920-1930. Volume 4: 1930-1940.
Toland, John. The Rising Sun, The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945.
Trumbull, Robert. New York Times Magazine. "A Sunday That Seems Like Yesterday."
U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey: The Campaigns of the Pacific War.
Wallin, Homer N. Pearl Harbor: Why, How, Fleet Salvage and Final Appraisal.
Weintraub, Stanley. Long Day's Journey Into War: December 7, 1941.
Wohlstetter, Roberta. Pearl Harbor, Warning and Decision.
Yoshikawa, Takeo. Eastwind, Rain (Memories of Japan's spy in Honolulu).
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Agricultural extension, which refers to activities relating to the dissemination of agricultural information and technical guidance on farming, has had its golden and gloomy eras in Indonesian history.
Agricultural extension practices move forward in line with dynamic social, political and economic development processes. At the time when agricultural development was a top national priority, agricultural extension was dynamically improved. On the contrary, when agricultural development has been a low priority, agricultural extension remained gloomy and stagnant.
Regardless of the controversial impacts of the green revolution on socioeconomic and environmental resources, the historical fact is that the golden era of agricultural extension in Indonesia was the green revolution program. Agricultural extension has played pivotal role in increasing production of rice, Indonesia’s staple food crop.
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Some wonder whether vitamins nutrition supplements are truly necessary? Vitamins nutrition supplements are nutritional substances that provide key health benefits. Preferably, the supplements benefits are backed up by clinical study results.
[Read More][Read Less]
What we eat daily is important, thus it is key to eat a balanced diet. Even if you do regularly eat a balanced diet, there is still the problem of the nutrient value of food declining due to soil depletion over the past few decades. The USDA food pyramid recommends women eat 2.5 cups of veggies a day and men eat 3 cups. However, most adults do not even eat the minimum and thus where high-quality vitamins nutrition supplements come in as a way to make up for poor diet in order to have optimum health.
Good nutrition supplements do not just contain vitamins and minerals. This is because both men and women need more than just vitamins and minerals. Thus good anti-aging natural supplements also contain amino acids, antioxidants, bioflavanoids, neuronutrients, L-Carnosine, alpha lipoic acid, acetyl L-Carnitine. Studies have shown the vitamins nutrition supplements products can effectively support heart, eyes, brain, immune system, and joint health.
These days the average life span is longer. The extra years are ideally are active healthy ones filled with energy. The main aspects to having good health include following a balanced diet with vitamins nutrition supplements, getting enough quality sleep, exercising moderately on a regular basis, and managing weight. High-quality nutrition supplements are a good way to help fill the nutrition gaps in a diet. They can help the body get the essential nutrients it needs. Vitamins and minerals are just part of what they need. The other nutrients in high-quality supplements provide anti-aging benefits that help improve energy and health to prevent disease.
One-a-day type vitamins nutrition supplements are not the ideal way of getting the nutrients our body’s need. This is because one single tablet cannot possibly have all the nutrients our bodies need the right quantities. If one tablet did, it would be too big to swallow. Thus these types of supplements are a waste of money and there are studies to back up their ineffectiveness. However, the extreme of taking a dozen or more individual supplements is also not ideal, as it can be inconvenient as well as expensive.
It is also important to know that women and men need different combinations of vitamins. Vitamins nutrition supplements for women should possess nutrients that have been found to help balance female hormones in women in their thirties and beyond. Supplements for men should contain nutrients that help promote male prostate health.
There are manufacturers that have created quality vitamins nutrition supplements sold at reasonable prices. One manufacturer evens links each individual ingredient to related clinical studies. Remember to research about all the nutrient products before you begin taking any type of nutrition supplement.
AstroNutrition.com was founded in 2004 with the goal of being the premiere source for fitness enthusiasts looking at bulking up, slimming down or keeping fit. We stock thousands of vitamins, sports nutrition, bodybuilding supplements, diet pills, slimming pills and ephedrine supplements. Customer satisfaction is our ultimate goal and you'll find the best service and selection at AstroNutrition.com. In good health.
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December 7, 1941--A Day that Lives in Infamy
To past generation, December 7, 1941, is a day that will live in infamy, as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt told radio audiences. More than 2400 Americans were killed that day.
The attack on Pearl Harbor (called Hawaii Operation by the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters) was, of course, a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941 (December 8 in Japan).
The attack was intended as a preventive action in order to keep the U.S. Pacific Fleet from interfering with military actions the Empire of Japan was planning in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and the United States.
The base was attacked by 353 Japanese fighters, bombers and torpedo planes in two waves, launched from six aircraft carriers. All eight U.S. Navy battleships were damaged, with four being sunk. Of these eight damaged, two were raised, and with four repaired, six battleships returned to service later in the war.
The Japanese also sank or damaged three cruisers, three destroyers, an anti-aircraft training ship and one minelayer. 188 U.S. aircraft were destroyed; 2,402 Americans were killed and 1,282 wounded. Important base installations such as the power station, shipyard, maintenance and fuel and torpedo storage facilities, as well as the submarine piers and headquarters building (also home of the intelligence section) were not attacked. Japanese losses were light: 29 aircraft and five midget submarines lost, and 65 servicemen killed or wounded. One Japanese sailor was captured.
The attack led directly to the American entry into World War II in both the Pacific and European theaters. The following day (December 8), the United States declared war on Japan. Domestic support for non-interventionism, which had been strong, disappeared. Subsequent operations by the U.S. prompted Germany and Italy to declare war on the U.S. on December 11, which was reciprocated by the U.S. the same day.
There were numerous historical precedents for unannounced military action by Japan. However, the lack of any formal warning, particularly while negotiations were still apparently ongoing, led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to proclaim December 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy."
On December 8, 1941 (the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor), Alan Lomax, then "assistant in charge" of the Archive of American Folk Song (now the Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center), sent a telegram to fieldworkers in ten different localities across the United States, asking them to collect "man-on-the-street" reactions of ordinary Americans to the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the subsequent declaration of war by the United States.
The result, the Library of Congress' After the Day of Infamy: "Man-on-the-Street" Interviews Following the Attack on Pearl Harbor presents approximately twelve hours of opinions recorded in the days and months following the bombing of Pearl Harbor from more than two hundred individuals in cities and towns across the United States.
A second series of interviews, called "Dear Mr. President," was recorded in January and February 1942. Both collections are included in this presentation. They feature a wide diversity of opinion concerning the war and other social and political issues of the day, such as racial prejudice and labor disputes. The result is a portrait of everyday life in America as the United States entered World War II.
This online presentation of After the Day of Infamy: "Man-on-the-Street" Interviews Following the Attack on Pearl Harbor also includes an essay on preseving the recordings, "Making and Maintaining the Original Recordings," as well as biographies of the fieldworkers who conducted and arranged the interviews, complete transcripts of the interviews, related manuscripts and original disc sleeves. The presentation was made possible with the support of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute and the New Deal Network.
In addition, the Veterans History Project (VHP) of the Library of Congress American Folklife Center is an oral history program that collects first-person accounts of military service in World War I, World War II, the wars in Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf, and the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. VHP also collects stories of civilians who supported their efforts, including men and women who worked in defense-related industries, and as USO entertainers and Red Cross workers.
VHP relies on volunteers, both individuals and organizations, throughout the nation to contribute veterans’ stories to VHP. In addition to audio- and video-recorded interviews, VHP accepts memoirs, collections of original photographs and letters, diaries, maps, and other historical documents from World War I through current conflicts.
The United States Congress created the Veterans History Project in 2000. In April 2007, the Library of Congress and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) announced a joint community engagement initiative in conjunction with the broadcast of Ken Burns’ film, The War, which reiterated the Library of Congress’ message to the American people to help build the historic record by interviewing a veteran in your family or community.
A participant in the project may be a veteran, an interviewer, or person donating a veteran’s collection). Students in the 10th grade and above may also participate and there are special resources for educators and students.
The Veterans History Project is ongoing, and there is no deadline.
To participate, visit this website: http://www.loc.gov/vets/
“THE WAR/Veterans History Project Field Guide to Conducting and Preserving Interviews” (PDF)
Includes information on how to send your collection to Veterans History Project, including a list of what VHP can and cannot accept and the necessary forms for submitting content. Also included are tips on conducting an interview and doing research at the National Archives.
National WWII Memorial Registry of Remembrance is “an individual listing of Americans who contributed to the war effort.” It is maintained by the American Battle Monument Commission as a part of the National World War II Memorial located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
1. Article illustration:
The U.S. Navy battleship USS Nevada (BB-36) beached and burning at 0925 hrs on 7 December 1941 after being hit forward by Japanese bombs and torpedoes.
2. Pearl Harbor Attack, 7 December 1941. Damage to the forecastle deck of USS Nevada (BB-36), caused by the explosion of a Japanese bomb below decks.
3. Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, (Dec. 7, 2002) -- Pearl Harbor attack survivor Manual H. Magdaleno arrives at the USS Arizona Memorial to attend the Annual Dec. 7th Commemoration Ceremony.
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Animal Species:Killer Whale
The Killer Whale, Orcinus orca, is the largest member of the dolphin family.
The Killer Whale is a strikingly marked animal characterised by a body pattern of dramatically contrasting areas of intense black and white. The rounded head, indistinct beak, large pointed teeth and prominent upright dorsal fin complete what is considered one of the oceans most impressive mammals.
9 m, 5 tonnes
The Killer Whale is found in all oceans and seas of the world usually in family groups. They occur in most habitat types from coastal areas to the deep ocean waters, from the tropics to polar regions.
Feeding and Diet
These animals are serious meat eaters and one of the most efficient large predators of the ocean. A cooperative hunter, they often work in packs, and will take a broad range of vertebrates including whales, seals, penguins, fish, sea otters, and turtles. Killer Whales have marked territorial behaviour and home ranges. Their prey is determined by what is available in their home ange but they also seek out areas of seasonal abundance such as seal pupping sites.
Killer Whales are a highly social species whose group size and composition is based on the dominance of a female line. The gestation period is thought to be about 15 months after which a single young is born. Group cooperation extends to care of the young, which will continue to suckle from the mother for an extended period of up to two years. The breeding season is variable, as is the interval between births. This latter period can be as little as three years or as long as eight.
The Killer Whale has never been the target of serious commercial hunting so the species worldwide is secure. There is some concern about depletion of individual populations and disruption to social structure from captures for the oceanarium trade and limited hunting in some parts of Asia, Northern Europe and the West Indies.
- Baker, A. N. 1999. Whales and Dolphins of Australia and New Zealand: an identification guide. Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, Australia.
- Bryden, M., Marsh, H. and Shaughnessy, P. 1998. Dugongs, Whales, Dolphins and Seals. A guide to the sea mammals of Australasia. Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, Australia.
- Menkhorst, P. 2001. A Field Guide to Mammals of Australia. Oxford University Press, Melbourne, Australia.
- Reeves, R. R., Stewart, B. S., Clapham, P. J. and Powell, J. A. 2002. National Audubon Society Guide to Marine Mammals of the World. Chanticleer Press, Inc New York, USA.
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Latiné loqui disce sine molestiá!
Learn to speak Latin with ease! ¡Aprende a hablar latín sin esfuerzo!
Apprenez à parler latin sans peine! Impara a parlare latino senza sforzo! Lernen Sie latein zu sprechen ohne Mühe!
you will need to have the following font installed on your system:
Maybe this font can be downloaded for free from the Internet.
The alphabet used by the Romans of the classical period consisted of the following letters:
A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T V X Y Z
It is basically the same alphabet as is still used today by a majority of languages in the world. The ancient Romans already observed a functional difference between the standard I and a more elongated alternative, which would later became J, but didnt conceive of a meaningful distinction between V and U, as was later established, nor did they use other variants like Ç, Ñ or W.
The Romans of the classical period had several styles to write the above letters, greatly depending on the materials used to write. As is true for most scripts, nevertheless, these styles can be grouped into two distinct ones.
There is a formal one, that we now call capitális, that was used on monuments, legal documents, public announcements, books for sale, jewelery, and in general whenever the text was meant to endure and might even have some sort of ornamental value. We can see it below used on stone, bronze, plastered walls, papyrus or, later on, parchment, and on many other surfaces and objects.
There was a second style, the informal one, that we now call cursíva, that was used for everyday transactions with no ornamental value. This is less well known to most people, because of the precarious nature of the materials on which it was used and the lesser artistic value of the objects where we find it; but it was in fact the main style most Romans would have used in their practical lives. We can see it below on waxen or wooden tablets, wall graffiti or bone, and was used on many similar surfaces.
In time there developed a third style, the unciális, which is just a smaller version of the capitális with some strong influence of the cursíva.
The shapes of the letters of the capitális style are practically identical with our present capitals, whereas the cursíva may have influenced the evolution of the former into the unciális, a smaller version which is in turn the predecessor of our lower case characters; but it is important to understand that, in Roman times, the difference between the capitális and the cursíva, or even the later unciális, was not at all comparable to the difference we now make between capitals and lower case when we use capitals at the beginning of some words, or for titles, in texts otherwise written in lower case.
They were just different styles to write the same single case of letters, and were equivalent rather to the duality that exists between our printing and our handwritten letters. They would of course not have been mixed in any one piece of writing, as we would not type some letters and write others by hand within the same text, let alone the same word.
Just like the Arabs or the Japanese, therefore, in spite of a variety of writing styles, the Romans didnt either have an equivalent to our meaningful alternation between capitals and lower case within the same piece of writing in any of them, nor did they write any differently the first letter of a sentence or proper name and the rest.
The Romans, in order to save space, given the high cost of most of the materials they wrote on, used the so called ligátúræ, i.e. groupings of letters written as a cluster by sharing a common stroke. There were many of them: AE could be found as Æ, and similarly AN, TR, VM and many others could appear fused together in groups of two, three and even more letters.
The Romans had only two diacritics, and they didnt use any of the two with any regularity.
The Romans would often write without even separating the words with spaces, as we have seen above in several instances. Moreover, they certainly never distinguished sentences or phrases using commas, semicolons, colons or stops, neither did they know of question or exclamation marks, brackets, inverted commas or any other diacritic we are used to. In fact, the only sign they used, and only in the more elegant writings, like monumental ones, was a dot they used not as final stop, but to separate single words. We have also seen this on the inscriptions above. This dot could sometimes take more sophisticated shapes, as a little ivy leaf, for instance, as below.
The Romans of the most sophisticated period of classical culture used, as much in monumental writing as in more domestic texts, a sign called apex, identical to what we nowadays know as acute accent ( ´ ). This sign, nevertheless, was not used to indicate the accent or stress in the word as in a minute number of modern vernaculars, but to mark long vowels (see the file on pronunciation), as is still done today in languages like Icelandic, Hungarian, Czech and many others.
Latin spelling nowadays
It is obvious that the writing practices of the Romans of the classical period were rather primitive in comparison with present ones. Some people believe for that reason that our spelling habits are vernacular, and therefore somehow spurious and artificially imposed on Latin subsequently. They forget that most of our spelling customs are the natural development of Roman practices and were organically furthered throughout history by people who spoke and wrote in Latin, in order to achieve greater clarity and distinction when reading and writing Latin itself, not the vernacular languages; and these usages passed on from Latin to the vernaculars, and not the other way around.
The ancient difference in shape between a shorter and a more elongated I (i/j), the latter of which, already in antiquity, was frequently used in the cursiva in word-initial position, often corresponding to the consonantal sound, as can be seen in the illustrations above, was formalised in later periods for this useful function specifically, thus allowing for complete transparency as regards the difference in pronunciation between the first sound in janua and in iambus, or in meaning between forms like perjerat and perierat. The previously meaningless difference between the pointed V of the capitalis and the rounded u of some forms of cursiva or of the uncialis was equally put to the service of a more transparent spelling. It was thus finally possible duly to distinguish vowels from consonants. Other variants that could be allocated no distinctive phonetic value, like a taller or shorter T or a more or less stretched S, were either kept for merely aesthetic purposes or eventually dropped as functionally improductive. Some ligatures like æ or were likewise preserved to help distinguish the corresponding diphthongs from the hiatuses ae and oe, whereas many others were abandoned. The separation of words by means of spaces was found to be such a useful device that few contemporaries would be able to read without it; and the rich variety of signs of punctuation introduced also in later stages of the history of Latin helped reading with the necessary pauses, and allowed us to distinguish the component parts of sentences, or to determine beyond doubt whether we are confronted with a statement, an exclamation or a question. Finally, the distinction between capitals and lower case brought in not only a certain elegance, but also some further clarity to grammar (highlighting proper names) and to discourse structure (marking the beginnings of sentences).
There has most unfortunately arisen, nevertheless, and for all the wrong reasons, a fashion of spelling fundamentalism that, abandoning a more than reasonable tradition of centuries of Latin writing, purports to go back to the writing usages of the ancient Romans. This is as absurd as wanting to give up the use of paper or the modern book, and claiming that something is not classical Latin unless its written on papyrus rolls. It should be obvious to anyone that we can be completely respectful of ancient culture and cultivate the purest form of classical Latinity while using more developed methods of writing than our ancestors had at their disposal and which are moreover the result of centuries of Latin tradition. Of course, since fundamentalists rarely guide themselves by reason, the return to the old usages doesnt follow any further criteria than their own arbitrary whim, and they sometimes are purists and sometimes not, as they please. Thus, some have set about eliminating the distinction between i and j as non-Roman, but they are only too happy against all logic to keep that between v and u. Others consider that the use of capitals should be eliminated, and they do use lower case letters at the beginning of sentences, but they then arbitrarily keep capitals for proper names or even adjectives. Of course, none of those purists has dared to admit the fact that a return to ancient usage would imply writing everything rather in capitals than in lower case, and that they would in fact have to stop using any punctuation at all.
The saddest aspect of the modern spelling mess is that it has nothing to do with Latin. It originates in attempts at spelling reforms that seemed to make perfect sense in a vernacular like Italian, but which some people felt the need to force also upon Latin, with deplorable consequences. While most European languages, including Latin, felt very comfortable with the century-old usage of i and j, and v and u, as all those letters represented clearly different sounds or appeared in clearly different syllabic contexts, in Italian the use of i and j had become so complicated by conflicting and arbitrary uses without too much relation with any phonetic reality that people struggled to determine when a word had to be written with i and when with j. Italian being a language with otherwise very straightforward spelling principles, a pressure arose therefore to drop the use of j. Now, this absolutely sensible measure for Italian was unnecessarily applied also to Latin by people who were persuaded that Latin must be spelt as modern Italian. Obviously, they could never have convinced the international Latin using community on such grounds, so they started to contrive specious justifications: that the sound of the vowel and the semivowel were similar enough (even though it is exactly the same difference that i and j have in German and many other languages that have never considered dropping the spelling distinction), that it brought Latin spelling closer to ancient practices (although, as we have explained, the distinction between i and j has in fact a much more ancient history than that of u and v), etc. Of course, they never mentioned that every single one of those reasons applies with exactly equal force to the Latin pair i/j (where [i] differs from [j]) and to the pair u/v (where [u] differs from either [w] or [v], however we care to pronounce it), which the Italians had no intention to simplify because in Italian it made sense to continue to use both letters in the latter case. As the international community began to drop the use of j in a quest for ancient purity, it became more and more obvious to everyone who hadnt given up the human capacity to reason, that it made absolutely no sense in Latin to drop the j without dropping also the v; so, having genuinely assimilated the specious excuses of the Italians to bring Latin spelling closer to Roman times, the best philologists around the world felt it absolutely necessary to do without v too, and many critical editions of classical texts are now published that way. We have thus a traditional i/j/u/v system, which was foolishly undermined and turned into just i/u/v in accordance with some vernacular spelling reforms, but in a move that has now inevitably but most unfortunately backfired (certainly against the expectations of those who promoted the use of i/u/v) into an ugly i/u system as the only reasonably acceptable outcome. Not only that, following the same perverse train of thought, many now feel the need also to drop the use of capitals in Latin texts. Where this absurd nonsense will take Latin spelling is difficult to foresee, but we cannot but lament that the narrow-minded whim of a nation with the most arrogant attitude towards the language of our common civilisation has managed to bring absolute chaos to an elegant, sensible, and century-long Latin spelling tradition.
We consider that our spelling usages were developed through millennia according to criteria of utility and clarity, which it is as absurd as it is unnecessary to renounce. Even if some certainly rude spirits could consider giving up aesthetic developments like the distinction between capitals and lower case, it seems absolutely preposterous to eliminate usages that reflect better the pronunciation of the language and help reading.
Indeed, we should avoid as non-transparent spelling those practices which, with the specious excuse of being truer to ancient practices or following vernacular considerations, disregard centuries of legitimate Latin spelling tradition and prefer to hinder learning of the Latin language by failing to represent transparently its different sounds. Using one and the same letter i to represent both the vowel [i] and the consonant [j] may be true to the most ancient practices, but it is as unfortunately as unnecessarily non-transparent because it doesn't allow to distinguish which is which in words like "iam" (where the i represents a semivowel, pronounced as English y in yes) and "iambus" (where the i represents a vowel, pronounced as English i in it), etc. Non-transparent spelling makes that more and more people nowadays fail to learn the language properly as they are preposterously kept in the dark about the sounds the words they read and write actually contain (we've heard many a professor, let alone students, pronounce "iam" rhyming with Ian and "iambus" starting as yummy). Using i for the vowel and j for the semivowel is conversely a much more transparent spelling, which is justified by centuries of Latin spelling tradition and which allows us to see immediately which is which by writing "jam" but "iambus", etc. Equally using the same ae combination both for the diphthong in "aereus" (where the ae represent a diphthong, pronounced in one syllable, rather like English eye) and the hiatus in "aerius" (where the ae represent an hiatus, pronounced in two syllables, rather like English a in father followed by the e in error), etc. is sadly non-transparent (and leads to error just as many). Using æ for the diphthong and ae of the hiatus, or at least ae for the diphthong but aë for the hiatus, is a much more transparent spelling and it allows us to see immediately which is which by writing "æreus" but "aerius" (or "aereus" but "aërius"), etc.
As inconsistent spelling we must avoid spelling practices that choose to be transparent in some cases but not in others with no legitimate phonetic or historical reason to do so in one case and not in the other whatsoever, as when some people choose to distinguish the vowel [u] from the semivowel [w] by writing the former as u and the latter as v, which is a nicely transparent practice, rather than spelling both as u, which would be non-transparent, and they don't care in this case not to be true to ancient practices; but then, with no phonetic or historical reason to do so, they choose not to to distinguish the vowel [i] from the semivowel [j] by writing the former as i and the latter as j, which would be nicely transparent practice, rather than spelling both as i, which is non-transparent. Equally choosing to distinguish the diphthong æ from the hiatus ae in a usefully transparent way, rather than writing both as ae, but at the same time not distinguishing the diphthong from the hiatus oe and writing both non-transparently as oe, would be also inconsistent.
Finally, indicating the length of the vowels in writing was something that the ancient Romans didn't need to do because they just knew which was which, either because they were native speakers or because they could learn to pronounce the words by listening to native speakers. The use of the apex in ancient inscriptions or manuscripts is therefore quite haphazard. For us, on the other hand, using a more thorough form of spelling, consistently marking all long vowels, is much more poignantly required if we aspire ever to learn to pronounce the words correctly. There was one case, nevertheless, when even ancient native speakers advocated that the use of the apex is actually necessary (cf. Quint. Inst. 1,7,2s), and that is when when a difference of length in a vowel can produce a different meaning in a word, as in "malus" and "málus" or "liber" and "líber" or "rosa" and "rosá" or "loqueris" and "loquéris". We must certainly never omit such necessary apices.
It is absolutely unnecesary to give up our spelling lore, on any grounds; and we advocate the full reinstatement of our century-long, sensible spelling tradition, in the interests of transparency, consistency, and thoroughness.
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James Ford Rhodes (18481927). History of the Civil War, 18611865 1917.
an unfriendly attitude toward the recruitment of the army, for political prisoners, for persons suspected of any disloyal practice, the privilege did not exist. It was suspended for one year, ten months and twenty-one days by Executive assumption and for the rest of the period by the authorization of Congress.
The provocation for the use of arbitrary power was, all things considered, about equal in the Confederacy and the Union. In the Union the disloyal secret societies were larger and more dangerous, and the public criticism of the administration more copious and bitter. There was, too, the organized political party which made a focus for the opposition and developed Vallandigham, who had no counterpart at the South. But these considerations are balanced by the circumstance that in the South was the seat of war which was never but for brief periods moved north of Mason and Dixons line and the Ohio river. Civil administration is everywhere relaxed, wrote Judge Campbell as early as October, 1862, and has lost much of its energy, and our entire Confederacy is like a city in a state of siege, cut off from all intercourse with foreign nations and invaded by a superior force at every assailable point. Where armies stand in opposition disloyalty may give the enemy aid and comfort so substantial as to decide an impending battle; far from the front it is apt to spend itself in bluster, threats and secret midnight oaths. In the Confederacy there was practically no important place east of the Mississippi river which was not at one time or another invaded or threatened by the invader. The courts, it is true, were open in the South, but, owing to the disorganized state of society, the interruption of trade and the passage of stay laws by the States, they tried few commercial cases but confined themselves to criminal jurisdiction
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Alternative Processes: Silver Gelatin Print with Martha Casanave
For the next few days, we will feature a mini-series of posts on alternative processes in photography. Today, Martha Casanave joins us to talk about her Silver Gelatin Print posted above. If this interests you and you'd like to expand your creative pallette, the F295 Annual Symposium might be the spot for you to do so.
Martha Casanave Series “Coastal Pinholes”
- Silver Gelatin Print
- 4 x 5 Pinhole Camera
The Silver Gelatin Process was invented by Richard Leach Maddox in 1871 and was considerably improved upon by Charles Harper Bennett in 1878. The Gelatin Silver Print was the most popular print process throughout the twentieth century and is still used widely by artists today.
Gelatin silver paper (black and white paper) has an emulsion of silver chlorides suspended in gelatin. To create a print, the paper is exposed to light (commonly with an enlarger through a negative), immersed in developer which reduces the silver to form the image, and fixed with sodium thiosulfate.
The concept of a pinhole camera was used prior to the invention of photography for scientific purposes, however came to the photographic world with the advent of gelatin plates.
A pinhole camera is a lensless camera with a single aperture; any light-proof box can easily be converted to a pinhole camera by poking a small hole in one side of the box. Light passes through the pinhole and projects the inverted image on the back wall of the box, where film or paper is exposed.
Casanave creates her work by placing her pinhole camera directly in the sand. Referring to Coastal Pinholes she states, “The wide-angle, distorting view of most pinhole cameras is utilized best from low angles. Working this way also takes me back to my childhood, when I played with toys and lived closer to the ground, and further from reality. The near indefinite depth of field of pinhole cameras allows me to play with visual elements of near and far. The time dilations—long, long exposures—allow water to become cloud, person to become ghost”.
Martha Casanave and many other 21st century photographers will be discussing their work at the 2012 F295 Symposium: Continued Explorations of 21st Century Photography
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Filed under: Creativity — piotr @ 2:42 pm April 15, 2012
I have greatly enjoyed watching the very entertaining talk by John Cleese on Creativity.
Even if you’re in it only for the jokes, it’s worth 36 minutes of your life.
A few main takeaways from John’s talk:
1. Creativity is linked to the ability to Play.
2. People can be described in terms of two modes: Open and Closed.
Creativity is _not_ possible in the closed mode.
3. We mostly operate in the “closed” mode: filled with tention, purposeful, manic and not creative.
4. “Open” mood is marked by: being playful, less serious, relaxed, curious, etc.
5. Alexander Flemming discovered penicillin in the “open” mode – he became curious why the bacterial culture did not grow in one of the Petri dishes.
6. Hitchcock often used to tell random stories to relax people around him, claiming they tried too hard.
7. We need to be in the “open” mode when pondering a problem.
8. Once we find a solution, we must switch to the “close” mode – because it’s the best for “exectution” [Potr: this reminds me of key ideas on innovation and creativity from "Innovators Dilemma" by Clayton C. - great read BTW]
9. We too often get stuck in the “closed” mode, attaining a tunnel vision. This is particularly prevalent among politicians.
How many psychiatrist does it take to change the light bulb?
Only one…but the light bulb really needs to change.
10. The are conditions under which creativity can be released.
To attain the “open” mode you require:
- You need to create space for your creativity to flourish.
- Pick a specific start and end time to your “creative” time. This will help you to seal yourself off from distractions.
- Play is secluded and marked by limitedness.
- Create an oasis for yourself by setting the boundaries of space and time. Become separate from everyday life just for a few moments.
- It’s easier to do trivial things which are not important, that to do important things. Therefore, clear off unimportant distractions.
- It takes some time for your mind to quiet down. 30 minutes is not enough for your creative time.
- Cleese suggest about 1 1/2 hour sessions.
- Take a break (e.g. for a week).
- Learn to tolerate the anxiety that
- Take your time to ponder on the most creative solution.
- When confronted with a problem, do NOT jump into the first solution. Stick with the problem for longer.
- The most creative proffesional played longer with the problem.
They were able to tollerate the slight discomfort of anxiety when we haven’t solved the problem yet.
- Don’t create an image of yourself as being “decisive” just for the sake of it. Coming with the solutions on the spot.
- Take your time to ponder the most creative solution. Then take decission. Once you take it. Stick with it!
- Give yourself MAXIMUM PONDERING TIME. This will lead you to the most creative solution.
- You don’t have to decise IMMEDIATELY.
- Give your TIME as long as possible to COME UP with something ORIGINAL.
- Nothing will stop your creativity time like the fear of being wrong or the fear your failure.
- You can’t be spontaneous withing reason.”
- You have to risk saying things which are silly, illogical, wrong.
- During your creative time, there is never any idea that can be “wrong”.
- Laughter brings relaxation.
- The difference between Serious vs. Solemn.
- What is the point of “solemnity”? Egotism? Pompousness? Laugh in the face of it! You don’t need it.
- Humour inspires and makes things cathartic.
- GIGGLE ALL YOU WANT!
Again. 5 things you need are:
an more Jeffery Archer!
11. Keep your mind resting against the subject. Gently bringing it back into focus. Take your time to ponder the problem.
And you’ll be rewarded
12. It’s easy to be creative if you have other people to play with.
There is a danger though…avoid playing with people who make you feel defensive.
Play with people who you like and trust.
Never, ever negate what they say.Never say “no” or “wrong” or “I don’t like that”.
Always be positive. And build on what’s been said.
“Would it be even better if…?”
“I don’t quite understand that…can you just explain it again?”
Try to establish as free an atmosphere as possible.
13. Japanese creativity – unstructured, lack of pressure, first people to give their views are the most junior - they can speak freely without contradicting what’s already been said by those more important.
14. Creativity is like humour…In a joke, the laugh comes at a moment when you connect two frames of reference.
15. Having a new idea is connecting to separate ideas that creates a NEW MEANING.
16. New connections are significant if they generate a new MEANING.
17. When you play, you can try randomly invent new juxtapositions. Then use your intuition to sense which are significant or meaningful.
18. Deliberately crazy connections can be called “intermediate impossibles”.
However stupid or wrong or absurd they seem, they are the stepping stones to an idea that is right.
If you really don’t know how to start or you get stuck , start generating random connections that may lead to some new ideas.
19. Finally: how to stop your subordinates from being creative.
Filed under: Technology — piotr @ 8:19 pm April 11, 2012
Jesper Richter-Reichhelm of Wooga (Facebook games maker) shares the lessons he learned in scaling their game platforms to handle millions of users. Wooga’s game, called Monster World, is currently heading for 2 million daily users. Veeery impressive!
I aplaude their choice of Ruby language for running the backend logic and interfacing with Flash front-end and MySQL database(s).
I was also happy to learn how they’d overcome MySQL scaling issues. HINT: they used a (now hugely) popular in-memory key-value store called Redis.
Redis is an awesome piece of technology, and in hindsight, seems like a perfect fit for a high-throughput / mega-popular Facebook game like Monster World.
Sounds interesting to you ??? The full video is here for your pleasure.
Where did we come from? I find the explanation that we were made in stars to be deep, elegant, and beautiful. This explanation says that every atom in each of our bodies was built up out of smaller particles produced in the furnaces of long-gone stars. We are the byproducts of nuclear fusion. The intense pressures and temperatures of these giant stoves thickened collapsing clouds of tiny elemental bits into heavier bits, which once fused, were blown out into space as the furnace died. The heaviest atoms in our bones may have required more than one cycle in the star furnaces to fatten up. Uncountable numbers of built-up atoms congealed into a planet, and a strange disequilibrium called life swept up a subset of those atoms into our mortal shells. We are all collected stardust. And by a most elegant and remarkable transformation, our starstuff is capable of looking into the night sky to perceive other stars shining. They seem remote and distant, but we are really very close to them no matter how many lightyears away. All that we see of each other was born in a star. How beautiful is that?
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Ray Kurzweil: Well if we talk about what is it that we should train children and adults 'cause I think we need lifelong education to do. It's not rote learning, which unfortunately it's still the model of education throughout much of the world. I think actually the United States is better than a lot of other areas interms of having more flexible approaches to what it is we're trying toget children to do.
Many areas of the world are really still have a model of education of rote learning, which is obsolete because we carry all that information on our belts. We don't need to remember it all. But we do need to be able to solve actual problems with knowledge. We need to find the right knowledge; yes, we have search engines to help us and the search engines will get better, but really need the right strategies to find the right information. We need to be able to create new knowledge.
Knowledge is doubling every 13 months by some measures.And knowledge isn't just a database. Knowledge is a symphony or a jazz band or a poem or a novel or a new scientific insight or an invention. These are also examples of knowledge. My philosophy ofeducation is learn by doing. Singularity University, which I co-founded with Peter Diamandis and I'm Chancellor of – has that philosophy with the core curriculum is the students self-organizing into small teams and they take on a grand challenge like to solve the water problem of the world and maybe they will actually succeed indoing that – the goal is to actually do – solve major challenges inten years.
Or maybe they'll solve a piece of it, or maybe they won'tsolve it at all, but they'll still learn something. If I think about what I've learned in my career, it's from my own projects and whether they succeed or fail, that's really the best way to learn. And there's versions of that we can bring into every level. We certainly see many college kids started major revolutions, including political revolutions but also technological revolutions, with no equipment other than their notebook computer or their phone.
Directed and Produced by:
Jonathan Fowler & Elizabeth Rodd
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Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions (1798)
These resolutions argued that the federal government had no authority to exercise power not specifically delegated to it in the Constitution. They were passed by the legislatures of Kentucky and Virginia in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 and were authored by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, respectively.
In an analysis of the principle of federalism, the resolutions made the case that the states had the power to nullify unconstitutional federal laws. The Kentucky Resolution declared in part, “[T]he several states who formed that instrument [the Constitution], being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a nullification, by those [states], of all unauthorized acts….is the rightful remedy.”
The Virginia Resolution said that by enacting the Alien and Sedition Acts, Congress was exercising “a power not delegated by the constitution, but on the contrary, expressly and positively forbidden by one of the amendments thereto; a power, which more than any other, ought to produce universal alarm, because it is levelled against that right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon, which has ever been justly deemed, the only effectual guardian of every other right.”
The ideas in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions became a precursor to John C. Calhoun’s arguments about the power of states to nullify federal laws. However, during the 1830s nullification controversy, Madison rejected the legitimacy of nullification, and maintained that it was not part of the Virginia position in 1798.
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This is another image I found on Google+
All lines are absolutely straight, parallel and perpendicular but why does it appear to have a curvature?
Related: How does this illusion work?
Like these questions :) Many of these illusions come from Prof. Akiyoshi Kitaoka, a japanese Psychologist and expert for Gestalt Psychology. On his website you'll find some more fascinating illusions and questions to ask here ;)
The illusion above is named Cafe Wall illusion and the newest model to explain those illusions is the contrast-polarity model. Short explanation from his webpage:
The paper explained it better to me:
This explains why you perceive a tilt. If you position the smaller squares now in distinct edges of the big squares, you can achieve 2- and 3-dimenional illusions. Here you see a increasing of the tilt due to more smaller squares:
Here you can see that the positioning of the smaller squares is critical to achieve the 3D effect of the orignial bulge effect in your question:
Notice that Gestalt Psychology is a non-reductionistic theory approach and investigates mainly the phenomenology and underlying Gestalt Laws of visual perception. How these Gestalt Laws developed on a deeper level is a question of neurobiological evolution similar to, "why have some species of apes color-vision and some not". The ellipses in the explaining picture above show you, that our cognitive visual machine somehow tries to group divided objects (square and line of same contrast/brightness) in one line and we see a tilt. I'm guessing here, but this is probably due to cognitive brain algorithm that saves things and objects we see and perceive mainly by countor and shapes, rather than pixel by pixel like a computer and digital camera do it, which of course don't perceive any tilt or 3D illusion in any of those trick images :)
Read the papers for more explanations and examples, not behind a paywall:
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For many Americans and almost all New Yorkers, one of the staples of Thanksgiving Day is waking up at a semi-reasonable hour to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, an annual event wherein people gather to march down the streets of New York City from Central Park West to Herald Square accompanied by massive balloons, elaborately decorated floats, and the deafening sounds of holiday camaraderie. Started by immigrants in the 1920s who wanted to celebrate their newfound American heritage and emulate the festive gatherings of their ancestors in Europe, the parade has become an annual tradition, complete with a live television broadcast, musical acts, performances by Broadway players, and millions of New Yorkers and out-of-towners celebrating the season.
The history of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is a long and storied one, and numerous changes have been implemented since its inception almost a century ago. Did you know that it was originally called the Macy’s Christmas Parade and is just one of many Thanksgiving Day parades that take place around the country? Or how about that live animals were used for the first few years before the balloons were introduced? The parade would continue to grow and develop over the years until its current incarnation. Despite these many, many changes, every year since the first parade jolly old Saint Nick awaits at the end, presumably to usher in another season of mass consumerism.
Take a look at the infographic below to learn a number of interesting, bizarre, and downright hilarious facts about this time honored Thanksgiving Day tradition.
Click to Enlarge
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I’m delighted to be working with state folklorist Maggie Holtzberg in Lowell this summer. On the summer solstice, Maggie and I went to visit Jonas Stundzia at his home in Lawrence to learn about Rasos Svente, the Dew Festival, and the ways Lithuanians celebrate the longest day of the year. He will be demonstrating how to make floral head garlands at this year’s Lowell Folk Festival. Garlands, or wreaths, are an important part of this solstice festival, also known as the festival of Saint John.
Jonas is a wealth of folklore. When we got to his house, he welcomed us with a traditional Lithuanian greeting. From a decorative ceramic pitcher, he poured water over our hands, and held out a woven Lithuanian cloth to dry them. He then offered us cucumbers dipped in honey and small cups of samagonas (rye moonshine). He said that cucumbers dipped in honey are eaten as a summer treat only in the northeast area of Lithuania.
Jonas showed us his garden blooming with plants native to Lithuania, including wild sorrel, used in making soup; ruta (rue), the national flower; wild onions; and lavender. His garden also had winter rye, used for Christmas decorations; parsley; mint; wild straw; and wild dahlia. He showed us a large oak garland he had made. Oak is considered a male tree and oak garlands are usually reserved for men. We tried it on anyway, and it was heavy! In Lithuania, garlands made of wild flowers, healing herbs, and grasses are used in the solstice festival to adorn the head, decorate the homestead, float candles on the water, and burn in the bonfire.
Jonas had made another large circular garland with linden and yellow flowers which symbolize the sun. Lithuanians consider linden a female plant; this wreath could be worn by a woman, or decorated with lit candles to be floated on the water on the evening of the Rasos Svente festival. The points of light guide the sun back home to earth. Wreaths symbolize the circle of life. Circles and wheels are important in Lithuanian mythology. In one pre-Bronze age myth the sun travels across the sky pulled by a goat. Jonas told us that Lithuanian rituals and language go back to proto Indo-European times. They still survive today because Lithuania was geographically isolated far up north on swampy land that nobody else wanted. Lithuanian is an ancient language, but still living, unlike Sanskrit or Latin.
On the summer solstice, Lithuanians give kupole staffs to friends and neighbors to protect and bless their homes. Jonas showed us a kupole staff he had made with healing herbs: nettle (good for healing arthritis and a relaxation); wormwood (good for the nerves); southern wort (a nerve relaxant used to make absinthe liquor); mountain ash (considered a male plant, used in the celebration of St. John); and belladonna (a medicinal nightshade).
Next, he showed us decorative iron saule, which means “sun.” One had a circle, which represents the sun; branches which represent the tree of life; jagged thunderbolts; curved snakes; and roots representing the earth. In Lithuania, snakes are symbols of life. Gyvate means snake; gyvas means life. The first animals to appear from Mother Earth in the spring are the toad and the snake. Thunderbolts allude to the god of thunder who creates rain, and therefore gives life.
Other saule he showed us had Christian crosses. He said that Roman Catholics had adopted and reinterpreted the form of the saule and used them in cemeteries to decorate gravestones. In the same way, the pre-Christian kupole staff transformed into a similar, but smaller and more compact staff used on Palm Sunday. The rituals of the Rasos Svente festival also were adopted into Saint John’s Day celebrations. We look forward to hearing more of his stories at his demonstration tent at the folk festival in July.
All photos by Maggie Holtzberg.
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Ta-Da! Look at that wonderful floor puzzle your child JUST completed!! It’s big, and beautiful, and…finished?
Not necessarily! Floor puzzles are a wonderful educational activity on their own, but did you know there are some additional ways you can use these large projects to sneak-in some extra learning? Here are three tips for each level of floor puzzle: Beginner, Intermediate (24-50 piece) and Advanced (100 piece).
These puzzles typically have fewer, and larger, puzzle pieces – which is great for younger puzzlers. After your child is finished, work together to:
- Identify and name all the colors used in the puzzle
- Count how many objects (animals, symbols, people) are in the puzzle
- Group similar objects together (animals, people, big things, little things)
Intermediate Floor Puzzles
Puzzles with up to 50 pieces can be a wonderful accomplishment for your child. But, once complete, there are many ways you can encourage further learning. Try:
- Seeking patterns in the puzzle: Are there objects or colors that repeat?
- Creating a story about the puzzle: Use storytelling paper to write down what’s happening in the puzzle. (For example, for the Solar System puzzle below, write a story about what it would be like to visit each planet!)
- Identify and compare sizes of objects in the puzzle: What is the biggest? What is the smallest?
Advanced Floor Puzzles
Massive puzzles are so much fun to accomplish, and after you’ve spent all that time putting it together, it would be a shame to take it apart! Here are ways to keep enjoying your 100 piece floor puzzle.
- Measure the puzzle and talk about inches versus feet (how many feet long is the puzzle? How many inches?)
- Stare at the puzzle for a certain period of time, then look away and try to recreate the puzzle on a piece of paper from memory.
- Grab your encyclopedia, and do some research on the images or objects that appear in the puzzle. For example, if it’s the Underwater floor puzzle above, look up different species of fish, or find out what plants live in the ocean and what purposes they serve.
What are your favorite ways to play, and learn, with floor puzzles? Share your ideas in the comments below, or join the conversation on Melissa & Doug’s Facebook page!
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Highways of the Future (May, 1938)
Highways of the Future
By E. W. MURTFELDT
PICTURE a 15,000-mile network of twelve-lane motor speedways spanning the nation—three of them linking the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, six more crisscrossing the country north and south —and you will have an idea of the vastness of a spectacular highway plan proposed by Senator Robert J. Bulkley of Ohio. Requiring twenty-five years for completion, the mammoth gridiron of superhighways would change long-distance driving from a motorist’s nightmare of snarled traffic into a reality of fast, safe transportation. It would represent an impressive start toward an era of scientifically constructed speedways, and crashproof cars of radical new design to run upon them, foreseen by leading experts for the not-too-distant future.
What will transcontinental touring be like, say, fifty years from now? Recently Dr. Miller McClintock, director of the Harvard University Bureau for Street Traffic Research—the man who is recognized as the nation’s foremost authority on traffic problems—gave a startling preview of the momentous changes he sees ahead.
Rear-end collisions, he foresees, will be made impossible by a new expedient. Pushing down the brake pedal on a car of the future will operate a stop light that emits infra-red rays. These invisible light rays, picked up and distinguished from ordinary light by a photo-electric cell on the front of a following car, will energize an electric circuit and apply its brakes automatically.
Electric cables, buried beneath the pavements of superhighways, will govern the movement of cars. One set of electromagnetic impulses will control the car’s speed. Another set will lock its steering gear against any attempt to make a dangerous turn from one lane to another. Eventually, the cable system may even be adapted to take over steering altogether—allowing the driver to release the wheel, sit back, and make himself comfortable until he chooses to switch back again to manual control.
At night, the superhighways will light up of their own accord, section by section, as a car travels over them. “Electric eyes” spaced along the road will turn on the glareless illumination whenever a car passes, shutting it off at other times to conserve electricity.
Imagine a typical section of this superhighway of the future. Straight as a shaft of light, ten or more broad lanes of concrete stretch across the countryside, passing around cities and towns, bridging railroads, canals, and crossroads. Streamline busses roar along a center strip that splits the speedway, separating streams of private cars traveling in both directions. For cars moving at different speeds, each one-way pavement is divided into separate safety, accelerating, cruising, and express lanes.
Hop into a 1988-model car and take an imaginary spin down one of these amazing foolproof roads. Perhaps you arrived at the transcontinental artery by plane, swooping down on one of the concrete flight strips lining the boulevard, or settling to an automatic, radio-controlled landing on a spacious airport built close to a major highway intersection.
Driving up the clover-leaf approach onto the elevated highway, you glide first into the slow-speed safety lane, edge over into the accelerating strip, and turn the steering wheel to swing into the cruising lane. But nothing happens. Your car refuses to respond to the wheel, and suddenly you learn why as another automobile whips by on your left at sixty miles an hour. Suspended in service tunnels below the pavement, cables operating on an electromagnetic principle control a mechanism attached to the steering gear to prevent the car from turning left until the adjacent cruising lane is free from traffic for a safe distance.
You try the wheel again. This time the car swings over into the cruising lane and immediately picks up speed. You haven’t stepped on the gas, but the speedometer needle creeps steadily upward and freezes on the sixty mark. A second set of buried electromagnetic cables is taking over control of your speed, since cars in the cruising lane must go no more and no less than sixty miles an hour.
But other automobiles are still flying past you on the express lane to your left. Now you swing the wheel over, confident that the car will respond only if turning is safe. In the express lane, your speed automatically steps up to the 100-mile-an-hour limit. Fifty yards of special nonskid pavement flies by underneath your car every second.
Unless you switch back to a slower lane, you can maintain that pace hour after hour, for you’ll never see a traffic light, a railroad crossing, a street intersection, or even a curve sharp enough to slow you down. At twilight, overhead lamps will bathe the road in light. Sleet cannot form on the chemically coated windshield of the car. If you run into fog, chemical vapor escaping from tiny jets in the roadway will clear a lane of visibility. So your top speed of 100 miles an hour is also your average speed—fast enough to let you have breakfast in New York, lunch in Ohio, dinner in Iowa, and a midnight snack not far from the Colorado state line.
As your car eats up the miles in the express lane, you notice on your left a steel barrier that divides you from the broad two-way center lane reserved for express bus traffic. Built into the middle of this bus roadway at the outskirts of cities and towns, and at railroad and route junctions, are station platforms, served by moving stairways from waiting rooms below. Here passengers change from interstate busses to local lines to be whisked into cities and towns adjacent to the main highway.
Still farther to the left, traffic is speeding along at a controlled pace in the duplicate one-way road section for cars traveling in the opposite direction. But as you marvel at the efficient handling, safety, and speed of this 1988 traffic, it suddenly dawns on you that this superhighway has no roadside markers, no painted warnings on the pavement, not even a signpost to direct you along the route. You search in vain for any of the familiar signs that in 1938 were almost as much a part of the highway as the paving— “Sharp Curve,” “Winding Road,” “Steep Hill”—these signs, and the necessity for them, have disappeared from main routes years ago.
“But how do I find my way around?” you ask your guide. “How do I know where to turn off for Middletown or Cen-terville? Is every motorist a mind reader these days?”
Your guide smiles and suggests that you swing off the traveled lanes and nose into one of the parking bays that line the shoulder of the road. “Take a look at that dashboard,” he advises as you pull up to a stop out of the stream of traffic.
At first glance you spot a few of the familiar dials and instruments—speedometer, fuel gauge, ammeter. After a little study you figure out a few of the others—tachometer, tire-pressure gauge, engine-temperature meter. But what is that row of colored lights, and what is that white screen just over the windshield?
“Since the old days when all cars had gear-shifts and burned gasoline for fuel,” he explains, “science has stripped the welter of directional and warning signs off the highway and put the essential ones right on the dashboard of each car. At 100 miles an hour, roadside markers would be no more legible than hen tracks, anyway. The law now requires every automobile to be equipped with standard, pretuned, ul-trashort-wave radio and television units. On small four-lane side roads, traffic signals are indicated by the colored lights here on the panel.
“Miles before you reach any superhighway junction,” your guide continues, “your television set picks up the junction transmitter. All you have to do is glance at the viewing screen to find out where the crossroads will take you and how far it is to the next turn-off. And in case you get confused somehow, it’s simply a matter of throwing that switch lever to put you in two-way radio communication with highway-patrol headquarters. They’ll tell you where you are, how far it is in hours and minutes to your destination, and where to make the correct turn off the highway.”
IN CONGESTED areas, you find out, I highways are built on elevated structures over railroad lines. The top deck is reserved for private cars, while busses run on a lower level, and streamline trains race along on the tracks beneath. Train passengers transfer at metropolitan terminals to bus platforms for transportation to local stations in city suburbs and villages.
Traffic experts realize that a superhighway similar to the one just described must eventually be constructed —not only to handle an ever-increasing volume of vehicular traffic, but also to end the highway slaughter that in the last fifteen years has taken almost twice as many lives as the total lost in all the wars the United States has fought since the founding of the Republic. Accident statistics show that in many cases the driver is at fault, but the great majority of crashes can be traced ultimately to the roads over which we drive. Better, safer highways are a vital necessity, and extensive road-development programs, now being pushed by state as well as Federal authorities, may lead toward the highspeed superhighways of the future.
Already the State of Pennsylvania is pointing the way by authorizing the construction of what has been called the greatest road engineering project ever undertaken in the United States— a 164-mile, $80,000,000 toll boulevard stretching through the Allegheny Mountains from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh.
THE proposed route will follow a $10,-000,000 railroad right of way, hacked out of the forests in the 1880′s, and on which not one length of track has ever been laid. Built during a bitter feud between rival railroad interests, and abandoned after they concluded a truce, the unused roadbed runs through nine rock tunnels along its route for a total tunnel length of more than seven miles. Engineers’ reports indicate the startling advantages the toll road will have over present traffic routes through the mountains and suggest some of the features that may be expected in future superhighways. From Harrisburg west to Pittsburgh, cars now have to climb nine-percent grades for a total of 13,880 feet. Over the new boulevard, cars will ascend a total of only 3,940 feet up grades that never exceed three percent. The route will eliminate four railroad and twenty-six highway grade crossings. Three quarters of its length will be entirely free from curves. On one straightaway, motorists will drive for forty miles without meeting a single bend in the road.
ULTIMATELY, the Pennsylvania toll road may serve as one link in the transcontinental chain of highways proposed by Senator Bulkley and now being studied by a committee. This whole Federal network would also operate under a toll system, scaled to the rate of about one tenth of a cent a passenger mile, in addition to a flat fee of twenty-five cents for each car entering the highway. Thus you would pay a quarter to get on the boulevard at New York and ninety cents to drive the 900 miles to Chicago, if you were alone in the car.
Federal police would man the toll gates and patrol the road. Since every car would be required to stop at toll stations, authorities could bar intoxicated drivers, check licenses, halt automobiles considered unsafe to drive, and enforce uniform traffic regulations—a procedure that might result in one nationwide code of traffic laws and regulations that would apply in every state in the Union.
These road-building developments indicate that the superhighway of the future is definitely on the way. No one can predict exactly what it will be like, but experts are confident that a modern Rip Van Winkle would wake up twenty years from now rubbing his eyes in amazement at the sight of streamline cars racing along broad, divided highways of concrete with a speed and a margin of safety far beyond his wildest dreams.
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With various dangers lurking in corners and cabinets, our kitchen and backyards can be a minefield of poisons for our pets, especially with the Easter season (plants) and planned egg hunts just around the corner. The ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center handles thousands of cases every year involving pets exposed to toxic substances, many of which involve everyday household products. Don’t leave it up to Fido or Fluffy to keep themselves safe from the Easter festivities and consider keeping them away from your annual Easter Egg Hunt...those plastic eggs filled with Chocolate are an accident waiting to happen!
While fruits are a healthy choice for adults, it is not necessarily true for the four legged members of our families, depending upon the fruit. According to recent studies, grapes and raisins top the list of the ten most common plants that poison pets.
The top ten list includes:
1. Grapes and Raisins
3. Marijuana (...you don't say?)
4. Lily (..mind those Easter Lilies!)
7. Sage Palm
8. Macadamia Nuts
10. Hydrangea (another popular Easter plant)
For more information on keeping your pet safe from harmful foods, plants and the surprising danger of common household substances, visit the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
If your resident Fido or Fluffy absolutely must sink their teeth into a fruit or vegetable, may we suggest a Muttropolis Squeaky Carrot Patch Pal (above) for their enjoyment.....
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Ant trails, airborne chemicals, wood vibrations—scientists have a long history of borrowing clever communication techniques from the animal kingdom. Inspired by the odd social habits of a cave-dwelling cricket, scientists have now taught robots to communicate by firing rings of pressurized air at each other.
The cricket in question is the African cave cricket (Phaeophilacris spectrum), which rapidly flicks its wings to launch donut-shaped air rings, a type of vortex, to both potential mates and enemies. Reduced to two kinds of messages, its “language” is pretty simple: It sends isolated vortices to threaten its rival, and a rapid sequence of vortices to woo would-be lovers.
When Andy Russell, an engineer at Monash University in Australia, learned about the cricket, he thought this technique would improve robots’ ability to communicate in noisy environments—but that wasn’t the only benefit. “Like the cave crickets, there may be times when a robot does not want its communications intercepted,” Russell told New Scientist. Researchers speculate that the cricket uses vortices to communicate undetected by predators—so why not robots? Chris Melhuish, a researcher at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory in the UK said, “This could be a useful addition to the communication armoury of future robotic systems.”
The science of vortices reaches back to 1858, when William Rogers first described vortex rings, and scientists have been dazzled ever since by how far these rings can travel. They form when a slug of air or liquid is shot out of a small nozzle into a region of still air or liquid: As the slug travels out of the nozzle, the low-pressure build-up on the outside of the slug causes the edge to curl, eventually forming a donut shape that can then propagate quite a distance. (Dolphins are natural masters of the art; humans aren’t bad ourselves, and we can use toys to make big rings.)
Russell co-opted cricket communications with the science of vortices by equipping a squat, roughly 6-inch tall, cylinder-shaped robot with eight air disturbance sensors, sending binary messages via a separate vortex generator, which isn’t quite as high-tech as it sounds: it’s pretty much like a loudspeaker cone, sending pulses of air outward through a less than one-inch aperture. Because it’s difficult to track an pulse of air—it is invisible, after all—the engineers burned incense to see the air disturbances in progress.
By themselves, these air pulses don’t say much—but when sent in a series of binary coded pulses, they can be used to communicate with other robots. In this study, for example, the scientists sent a sequence of 1,000 vortices to relay the binary coded word for “vortex” over a distance of nearly 12 inches. In addition to sending messages through varied pulses, the sensors could detect both the direction and range of the sender: The message direction was gathered by sensing which of the eight sensors were triggered, while the robot calculated distance by analyzing the lag between the fast- and slow-moving vortices.
Sensing air disturbances is all fine and dandy, but what happens when you’re in a breezy environment? The scientists equipped the robot with a plastic film attached at only one end to take care of that: When hooked up to an optical sensor, the robot can detect the difference between laminar (typical of breezes) and turbulent flow (typical of the vortices). But despite their valiant efforts, the common error was still missed vortices: As the rings of air traveled, breezes from the room’s ventilation system would sometimes trigger a phantom vortex, sending unintentional messages.
While not perfect, the scientists nevertheless demonstrated that such robot-to-robot communication is possible. In addition to fixing the errors, the researchers want to construct a smaller vortex generator—one closer to the size of its inspiration, the wing-flick of the cave cricket.
DISCOVER: When Robots Live Among Us
Discoblog: How to Speak a Language That Your Robot Will Understand
Discoblog: Japan Wants to Send a Tweeting Companion-Bot to the Space Station
DISCOVER: Evolving A Conscious Machine
Image: Wikimedia Commons / Traitor
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Libraries, supermarkets, classrooms…the world is full of places that look very similar, and yet our brains always seem to keep track of where we are. In a new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers at Princeton University and Ohio State University have uncovered one way in which the brain does this.
Similar-looking places can be distinguished from each other because of differences in what we experience when navigating to them. As we head toward a destination, our brains catalogue details such as other nearby buildings, the look of the doorway, even the people nearby.
The researchers discovered that the parahippocampal cortex, a part of the visual system that analyzes the current scene in front of us, also incorporates the details leading up to the scene, or its “temporal context.” As a result, even when two scenes look identical, we create different memory traces for them when their temporal contexts are different. Ultimately, this can help our brains to keep track of where we are in the world.
Learn more about Nicholas Turk-Browne’s research at Princeton University.
Journal Citation: Turk-Browne NB, Simon MG, Sederberg PB. Scene representations in parahippocampal cortex depend on temporal context. J Neurosci. 2012 May 23;32(21):7202–7.
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How do you engage children in ways that help them verbalise their thinking and help them learn? The children organise their own day and always make time for their ‘own time’ or free inquiry. This provides me with so much evidence of learning. During these sessions I observe the children to see: Where their passion [...]
Molly is in England and we all miss her very much. The good news is we can stay in touch and continue learning together. The children decided the best way to share their maths with Molly was to make her a video. They decided what they wanted to share. Here it is. The children decided [...]
There were some spring balances being given away. I took some and put them out. The video is a condensed version of 45 minutes of sustained inquiry into measuring and weighing. Be aware of: The mathematical language being used The thinking skills being developed The problem solving The cooperation
Children make their own video of how to do a number boggle.
Click on the title to learn more.
This is an explanation of the process children go through as they learn. The focus is on mathematics, but the process applies to all curriculum areas.
Please click on the title to find out more
If you write a letter you will need…Integrating Language Arts and mathematics. This simple task turned into a big inquiry.
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Giant Marble Harvests Energy From Sun And Moon
It looks like a giant, glass marble. But this globe is no game. It’s a sun-tracking, solar energy concentrator created by Barcelona-based architects Rawlemon and, according to the designers, is able to collect not just sunlight but moonlight as well. The weatherproof sphere is designed to rotate and follow the sun across the sky. It’s so sensitive to light that at night, it can even harvest moonlight and convert it into electricity.
Andre Rawlemon, the architect and designer, says his spherical, sun-tracking glass globe is able to concentrate sunlight and moonlight up to 10,000 times and that the system is 35 percent more efficient than photovoltaic designs that track the sun. One of Rawlemon’s idea is to build these globes into the exterior walls of buildings and use them to generate electricity.
Other products to invest in when this technology reaches full commercialization potential: Bounty and Windex.
Seriously though, the ability alone to convert moonlight to electricity could be a game changer for the manufacturers of photovoltaic cells where typical solar panels offer a range of 8 to 12 hours of usable daylight for the generation of electricity.
Coupled with products that offer greater efficiency and other simple behavioral aspects like turning off computers and monitors (or at least put in stand-by) when they’re not being used could add up to significant savings and longer-term environmental benefits.
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Bycatch refers to the unwanted sea life people catch when they’re fishing for something else.
Bycatch wastes 7 million metric tonnes of sea life every year. The vast majority of bycatch—already dead when it hits the deck— is just discarded. Killing hundreds of thousands of juvenile fish not big enough for legal take can undermine the entire fishery.
Bycatch is heavy when boats use destructive fishing gear such as massive trawl nets that scrape the bottom of the ocean and capture virtually everything in their path. The 1.4 billion baited hooks set in longline fisheries every year kill a great deal of non-target animals including sea turtles, sharks, birds, and marine mammals.
Blue Ocean Institute’s Seafood Choices Guide’s methodology for assessing wild-caught seafood uses bycatch as one of its five core criteria. And for years Blue Ocean has worked with scientists, regulators, fishing industry leaders, and conservationists to reduce the unintended catch of marine life. We promote effective, practical solutions for the benefit and balance of ocean ecosystems. New fishing methods or low-cost equipment changes can help animal populations recover.
Bycatch is a serious challenge to healthy fisheries worldwide but by choosing fish from low-bycatch fisheries, consumers can be part of the solution.
3 things you can do to fight bycatch:
1. Eat sustainably caught seafood
2. Support the use of fishing gear that avoids bycatch
3. Know the issues
Other ways to you can make a difference.
LINKS & VIDEOS
Discards in the World’s Marine Fisheries, FAO Fisheries
What is Bycatch?, NOAA Fisheries Service
Global Assessment of Fisheries Bycatch and Discards, FAO Fisheries
Eye of the Albatross, Carl Safina
NOAA Releases First National Bycatch Report, NOAA
Impacts of Bottom Trawling on Fisheries, Tourism, and the Marine Environment, Oceana
Millions of Sea Turtles Killed Due to Bycatch, Discovery
Millions of already endangered turtles are accidentally killed each year as a result of global fisheries.
The Truth About Bycatch, Greenpeace
Many sea creatures are the helpless victims of bycatch. They are caught in fishery operations and are usually tossed overboard either already dead or severely injured.
Bycatch Management and Discard Reduction
A film by the Global Environment Facility funded, UN Development Programme implemented, Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations executed project,
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Grouper, Red – US
Red Grouper are found in the western Atlantic from Massachusetts to southern Brazil but are most commonly found along the west coast of Florida to the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. They are protogynous sequential hermaphrodites, meaning they begin life as females and transition to males between 7 and 16 years of age.
Abundance of Red Grouper is healthy in the Gulf of Mexico and overfished in the U.S. South Atlantic.
They are caught using bottom longlines and handlines, which have some impact on bottom habitat and catch moderate levels of bycatch.
This fish may have high levels of mercury that could pose a health risk to adults and children. More mercury info here.
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So many competent New Zealand climbers came out of Otago, and it is interesting to look back at the origins of mountaineering in Otago, and wider afield so see why ?
The N.Z. Alpine Club, formed in 1891, was the first organised mountain club in New Zealand. Several more were formed early last century, particularly after the First World War--the Tararua Tramping Club in 1919, The Otago Tramping & Mountaineering Club in 1923 and the Auckland Tramping Club in 1925. In Canterbury, a Christchurch Tramping & Mountaineering Club was formed in 1925. Later its male members formed the Canterbury Mountaineering Club.
With the Southern Alps well traversed regularly by Maori in search of Greenstone, food and for the general draw of what lays over the ridge, early New Zealand mountaineers and trampers generally ignored a lot of information available in Maori records and folklore. Here is an extract from my article on Maori mountaineers of South Westland. http://bobmckerrow.blogspot.com/2008/03/maori-mountaineers-of-south-westland.html
The mana and beauty of the Pounamu was an added attraction to cross the Divide again and again, all the while gathering further alpine experience. Their pre-European glossary of snow and ice, whilst not as comprehensive as the Inuit (Eskimo), certainly proved that they had rubbed their paraerae (sandals) on the high mountain passes. Whenuahuka described the permanent snow on the high peaks and hukapapa was the name for the huge snowfields. The snow slides from the high peaks were hukamania, and as they grew and took on avalanche proportions, they became hukahoro. The glaciers that drained the snowfields were called hukapo, the glacial sediment waiparahoaka and the snow-fed water, waihuka. Kipakanui, or ice, was seen in the shady valleys in winter, and the thick ice which never saw the sun was named waiuka, meaning solid water.
One hundred and thirty years later, Southland mountaineer Stan Mulvaney wrote of how this was a very difficult task. More on James McKerrow
So with this background of rugged Maori travellers, surveyors, runholders, goldminers and explorers, the spirit of the hills started a new era with Malcolm Ross of Dunedin heading for Mt Earnslaw in 1885 on an expedition which was characteristic of the 'pluck and daring', colonial ingenuity and self-reliance which typified the early exploits of New Zealand's homebred mountaineers (Ross 1892). Ice axes were improvised from manuka saplings and the blades of sheep shears, while horseshoe nails provided extra friction for his boots (Gilkison 1957: 32). Ross's expedition triggered a number of attempts on Mount Earnslaw, which was finally climbed in 1890 by one of the original expedition members, a young local shepherd and tourist guide called Harry Birley.
By erecting a cairn on the summit, he left not only proof of his ascent, but also marked the advance of man further into this remote wilderness.
Between the first and second World Wars, in the context of social dislocation and economic hardship, young men and women in Otago were drawn to mountain environments for an experience which diverted them from, and in a sense gave meaning to, the world and time that they were living through. It was also a time increasingly characterized by the 'more rigid structures, impersonal forces, and sprawling cities' of the historical momentum of rationalization and bureaucracy (Olssen 1981: 278). explore 'their' mountains and that therein they discovered a sense of self.
So the formation of the Otago Tramping Club club was not an isolated event. Dunedin had been the home of a good many noted trampers and mountaineers such as Malcolm Ross, Kenneth Ross, H.F. Wright, J.K. Inglis, E. Miller and E. A. Duncan. In the earliest post-war years groups of Otago University students - G. M. Moir, R. S. M. Sinclair, D.R. Jennings and many others - had been exploring and track-cutting in the Hollyford and Cleddau Valleys. And both the hills around Dunedin and the Routeburn, Greenstone and Hollyford areas saw an ever increasing number of visitors. Amongst these the idea of forming a Club had been discussed informally, and the idea was quick to gain acceptance.
In 1923 the new Club immediately started with a flourish, and forthwith set out to walk. There was an immediate rush of new members, and at the end of the first year the roll was 157. The first tramp was planned for Saturday afternoon, September 1. About 50 members assembled at Ross Creek reservoir and set off up the Pineapple Track to Flagstaff - a clear sunny day, with a cold south-westerly wind, the kind we know so well. The following Saturday some 60 persons gathered at the Gardens corner for a climb of Signal Hill and down the other side to Burkes; and this was followed the next day by a trip to Whare Flat, where various parties converged on a pleasant river-bank below McQuilkan's (long since washed out by floods and ruined by the invading gorse).
Ben Rudd at his hut with Otago Tramping Club visitors 1923.
A fortnight later while one group climbed Mt. Cargill, two others set off for Whare Flat - one of which made the journey successfully, but the other was stopped and warned off by Ben Rudd, the old hermit whose property was long afterwards purchased by the Club. Scott Gilkinson was one of those cut-off and still remembers the feelings of alarm as they encountered the stocky, bearded little man with the shot-gun. As a result of this, the Club arranged with Ben Rudd that he would cut a track through the manuka scrub, thus providing a route to Whare Flat while keeping members well away from Ben's property. For this he was paid the princely sum of £5, and the track was under very
By 1930 then, the Club was well established as a force in the community. Whereas previously trampers had been looked on almost as cranks, or at best as rare curiosities, their activities were now accepted as rational and respectable. The 'thirties, and the onset of the Depression, saw the Club ready to play its part.
At 4350 feet (1325 m) above sea level Big Hut. In 1946 the Otago Ski Club opened this spacious 70-bunk ski lodge near the summit of the Rock and Pillar Range. The Otago University Tramping Club, then the Otago Tramping and Mountaineering Club, took over the hut in the 1980s and did repairs that kept the elements out.
On the local scene there was extensive development of active interest in the mountains. For seven years the Otago Tramping Club had been building up its activities. The Otago University Tramping Club was functioning—very actively in some years, more modestly in others. Under the influence of Ellis, Miller, Boddy, Aitken and others, Otago men had been taking an active interest in the higher mountains in North-west Otago. At the end of 1930 the Otago Section of the N.Z. Alpine Club was formed in Dunedin, this being the start of a long period of friendly co-operation between trampers and mountaineers. In 1932, as a result of five weeks of continuous ski-able snow on Flagstaff, the Otago Ski Club was formed; the Tramping Club " learned with interest of its formation and extended to it its good wishes for a successful future ". The three clubs operating in their respective fields worked in well together, with some members common to all, and with members of one of the clubs not infrequently becoming interested in the others.
4 x2s on the frame, huts were built. On Christmas trips 90 lb packs were not uncommon. Photo: Bob McKerrow
Interest in organised Christmas trips reached a peak in 1947 when no less than three expeditions were planned Rockburn - Olivine, Hopkins and Ahuriri, with 50 to 60 members involved. Gordon McLaren and Murray Douglas climbed Mt Ward (third ascent) - the first major ascent to be made by the climbing enthusiasts. A high standard of safety was maintained on all these trips and no incident of any sort occurred, despite the numbers in the field.
Christmas 1948 saw another Club camp in the Wilkin Valley. Pack horses took half a ton of stores to Jumboland Base Camp and their owner charged £97 for the privilege. Every part of the Wilkin and its tributaries were visited, and several good climbs made, including the first ascent of the inaccessible Pickelhaube in the South Wilkin. Jack Hoskins and Scott Gilkison made a first crossing from the West Coast via the Waiatoto, Pearson Saddle and South Wilkin. The Rees, Dart, Matukituki, Rockburn, Hollyford and Ahuriri were also visited by other parties. Aspiring was climbed by Gordon McLaren and party, and Murray Douglas climbed Mt Cook - the Club's first major post-war ascents.
John Armstrong carried on the tradition of capable and innovative Presidents with entrepurnurial skills, a sense of adventure, and an even bigger sense of humour.
On January 8th and 9th, 1966, six Club members climbed Mt Cook - M. Jones, G. Kampjes, J. Armstrong, G. Hasler, I. Meyer and H. Laing. Although Club members had climbed Cook before, and have since climbed far more formidable peaks, this does serve to give some idea of the standards reached during this period.
A change in attitudes was noticed in 1966, and is evidenced in the following report which is worth a place in history:
At a lively extraordinary general meeting held on October 26, 1966, the grandiose plans of the committee, led by radical President John Armstrong, were amended. Chief Guide James consented to remain in the cabinet, as tramping is still an 'approved' sport.
The following motion was passed after hours of discussion and much amendment. "This Club should continue to encourage tramping, climbing, ski mountaineering and ski-ing without detriment to the Club's prime aim of tramping."
Bob Cunninghame: " There has been a considerable change in the last five years. There was next to no climbing up until that time."
Gerry Kampjes: " Five or six years ago there was little ambition in the Club and less than half the number of people."
Graeme Hasler: "Safety is of paramount importance. We must have a balanced club"
Laurie Kennedy: "Something must suffer if we run a climbing course"
Jim Freeman: " People now have more money and are able to spread out into areas and sports not previously possible. Now less scope for tramping. Climbing is the natural outcome of tramping"
Alan Thomson: "Need to support tramping"
Arthur James: " Far better to have a small specialist club where you know most of the people rather than a large social ski-ing and climbing organisation."
Jim Cowie: " If the O.T.C. does not run an instruction course in climbing there is little incentive for the likes of me to remain in the Club."
Roger Conroy: " Let's change the name to the Otago Tramping and Mountaineering Club"
Ross Adamson: "Too much advertising on ski-ing by word of mouth and publications"
Photo: Bob McKerrow (l) Graeme Lockett and Keith McIvor on the summit of Mt. Huxley, Easter 1967. photo: Jim Cowie
Christmas 1967-68 saw Club trips led by John Armstrong and Bruce Mason to the North Routeburn, North Col and Rockburn, other's going on to Fohn Saddle and the Beansburn. Parties led by John Fitzgerald went to Martins Bay, Big Bay, Pyke, Alabaster Pass, Olivines, Cox Saddle, Hidden Falls, Park Pass and Rockkburn. Trevor Pullar looked after a party from the Arawata River to Mlilford Heads, Laurie Kennedy's party went into the Olivines whilst Jim Cowie, Keith McIvor and Bob McKerrow spent 10 days in the Cook region and 10 days at Aspiring. Graeme Hasler also ,was back in the Cook area. All in all, a fantastic amount of tramping and climbing was achieved during this season - on a scale which was to continue until the end of the '60's.
Club member Boh McKerrow was a member of the 1968 Andean Expedition, and in return for some assistance from the Club, provided interesting accounts of his exploits.
The number of Club members who went south to the Antarctic during the '60s included Ken Gousmett, Keith McIvor, Bob McKerrow and Frank Graveson. A large number of members have tramped and toured overseas, with some distinguishing themselves on the climbing scene. Two names that spring to mind readily are Bob McKerrow and Murray Jones.
A recent bulletin of the OT&MC shows a very active club with membership rising and the nursery alive and well.
Thanks to Lee Davidson for permission to use extracts from her publication:
The Spirit of the Hills: Mountaineering in Northwest Otago, New Zealand, 1882-1940.
Thanks also to the Otago Tramping and Mountaineering Club to use freely from their history:
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Yesterday I responded to novelist Laurie Halse Anderson’s question about whether John Adams actually wrote about 1777 as “the year of the hangman.” I quoted Adams’s words from over a decade later indicating that unspecified, untraceable “Tories” had said that 1777 “had three gallowses in it, meaning the three sevens.”
However, Adams didn’t write “the year of the hangman,” and neither did anyone else I can find in the 1770s. The label doesn’t appear the Archive of Americana database of period newspapers and pamphlets. Nor is it in the Adams family letters, the George Washington Papers, and the other digital databases I usually check for period usage.
In fact, the earliest use of that phrase for 1777 that I found through Google Books is Lynn Montross’s The Reluctant Rebels: The Story of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789, published in 1950. That book includes a chapter titled “Year of the Hangman,” and at one point says, “It was the year of the hangman, and the gallows jokes exchanged in the State House were not so humorous after the imprisonment of [Richard] Stockton...”
As far as I can tell, Montross coined that phrase; I haven’t uncovered an earlier usage. He didn’t say the words came from 1777, only that it reflected how the Patriots saw their situation that year. But then the same words appeared in other books, with the growing implication that it was a genuine period phrase:
- The 1966 Encyclopedia of the American Revolution, edited by Mark Boatner, included an entry on “Hangman, year of the.”
- One part of The River and the Rock: The History of Fortress West Point, 1775-1783, authored by Dave Richard Palmer in 1969, carried that title.
- The phrase “year of the gallows” comes from a character’s mouth in Thomas Fleming’s 1976 novel Liberty Tavern.
- John S. Pancake’s 1777: The Year of the Hangman (1977) quotes Adams’s original letter to explain its subtitle.
- Gary Blackwood’s The Year of the Hangman (2002) is an alternate history marketed to teen-aged readers.
- The strategy game shown above, designed by Ed Wimble, is “an operational study of the campaign for Philadelphia.”
- Most recently, Glenn F. Williams’s award-winning military history Year of the Hangman: George Washington’s Campaign Against the Iroquois was published in 2005.
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Kathryn Stockett is the author of The Help. It’s a fictional story about a black woman who goes to work for a white family in post civil rights era Mississippi. Coincidentally, Ms. Stocket was born in 1969 and grew up in Jackson, Mississippi and had a black maid who took care of her white family. Although based on her childhood experiences, the story is not about her childhood or about her family’s housekeeper Demetrie.
Ms. Stockett says that even though she grew up in a town with a one to one black white ratio, she never had a black friend or a black neighbor or a black person in her school or any interaction with black people other than their maid Demetrie. The black woman went to work for her family fourteen years before Ms. Stockett was born. She actually went to work for her grandmother and stayed for more than thirty years. The only relationship with black people that Ms. Stockett experienced was the one where the white people, a complete family unit with parents and children, hire a black woman, a woman without any interactions with her own black family or community, to wait on them.
Ms. Stockett claims that her black maid was one of the closest people to her. From her perspective, their maid was treated like a queen who wanted for nothing. She adored the black maid as much as she adored her own mother. While her mother was always busy, Demetrie stood in and played games with the white children and never got cross. It was the black maid who knew to rock them when they had stomachs aches. It was Demetrie who went with the children to the doctor because Demetrie knew how to get the children to sit still for their injections and whatever procedures they needed.
Black Demetrie knew the young Ms. Stockett and her siblings better than the parents did. But on the other hand, Ms. Stockett admits to some embarrassment at her inability to truly appreciate the complex nature of the role Demetrie had to play in their lives. For more than thirty years this black woman waited on this family. Every single day that Ms. Stockett saw her only black friend the maid, the black woman would be seen wearing nothing other than her stark white maid uniform. Ms. Stockett was blissfully ignorant of the true nature of the relationship she and her family had with the hired help.
Ms. Stockett says that the maid knew the unwritten rules of acceptable and unacceptable black behavior established by the white people of Mississippi. She writes that while laws supporting segregation were erased, the rules supporting segregation were not. In order for the black maid to be accepted in certain white people circles, she had to have that white uniform. In order for black people to exist among these white people, they had best submit and accept their secondary status.
But stuck in the oblivious world of her childhood, Ms. Stockett wants to maintain her claim that Demetrie was a queen. The black maid wasn’t allowed to use the same bathroom facilities of the white people. The black woman had to use a bathroom located on the side of the house. The black woman was not allowed to use the same utensils as the white family. The black woman wasn’t allowed to wear anything but her white uniform. The black woman sacrificed a life with her own family in order to keep her job. Does Ms. Stockett honestly think that this black woman felt like she was the recipient of royal treatment as she cleaned behind white people?
Ms. Stockett and her family never saw their black housekeeper as an equal. They never appreciated her as a valued member of their family. She was the help and she was only the help. Like many black people who are admired by people in the white community, the reason white people admire these black people is because these black people are accepting their position as nothing more than the staff to white people. Unfortunately, by being the go to person for white people, Demetrie allowed Ms. Stockton and her family to develop an impression that the natural order of things was that black people are treated like royalty when they are given the privilege to wait on white people.
If someone hired Ms. Stockett’s mother to be their servant, if they forced Ms. Stockett’s mother to use an outhouse and eat with her own special set of eating utensils because she was not allowed to share the eating utensils of everyone else, I seriously doubt if Ms. Stockett would think that they were treating mom like a queen. If her mother had to surrender her identity and wear nothing but a white uniform in order to be accepted I doubt if she would mistake it for anything other than what it truly is, a not so subtle reminder that the dreams and goals of the help takes a back seat to the whims of the employer.
Back in the day black people who completely devoted themselves to their white employers or owners were called house Negroes. Some black people were more than happy to adapt to whatever life the white establishment defined as acceptable for black people. A lot of these black people were more willing to identify with the white family that would make them use the outhouse and eat off their own supper dish instead of identifying with the black community full of their peers that had to work out in the field. Some black people would embrace the subjugation of the black community.
Unfortunately, I have little doubt that if Ms. Stockett’s black friend was alive today, Demetrie would absolve her white family of anything and everything that could have been construed as poor treatment. The black maid Demetrie made her choice some time ago. More than likely there would be no hard feelings. Ms. Stockett can feel safe that there was nothing but love between her and the only black person she ever knew in her life who wasn’t allowed to use the bathroom in the house or eat off the same plates as white people but was somehow treated like a queen. Most house Negroes were more than happy to support the subjugation of black people as long as they lived better than the general subjugated population.
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fwe2-CC-MAIN-2013-20-22872000
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This worksheet clearly explains the 4 spelling rules for adding -ed to verbs and provides practice. While the narrative portions may be too advanced for beginners, the simple formulas and examples make it easily understandable even for those just learning the simple past tense. It also works well as a review for intermediate or higher students. Answer key on 2nd page. This worksheet may be used alone, but was designed in conjunction with a PowerPoint of the same name.
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Scientific name: Coenonympha tullia
Rests with wings closed. Some have row of ‘eyespots’ on underwings, like Ringlet, but some don’t.
The Large Heath is restricted to wet boggy habitats in northern Britain, Ireland, and a few isolated sites in Wales and central England.
The adults always sit with their wings closed and can fly even in quite dull weather provided the air temperature is higher than 14B:C. The size of the underwing spots varies across its range; a heavily spotted form (davus) is found in lowland England, a virtually spotless race (scotica) in northern Scotland, and a range of intermediate races elsewhere (referred to aspolydama).
The butterfly has declined seriously in England and Wales, but is still widespread in parts of Ireland and Scotland.
Size and Family
- Family – Browns
- Small/Medium Sized
- Wing Span Range (male to female) - 41mm
- Listed as a Section 41 species of principal importance under the NERC Act in England
- Listed as a Section 42 species of principal importance under the NERC Act in Wales
- Classified as a Northern Ireland Priority Species by the NIEA
- UK BAP status: Priority Species
- Butterfly Conservation priority: High
- European Status: Vulnerable
- Protected in Great Britain for sale only
The main foodplant is Hare's-tail Cottongrass (Eriophorum vaginatum) but larvae have been found occasionally on Common Cottongrass (E. angustifolium) and Jointed Rush (Juncus articulatus). Early literature references to White Beak-sedge (Rhyncospora alba), are probably erroneous.
- Countries – England, Scotland and Wales
- Northern Britain and throughout Ireland
- Distribution Trend Since 1970’s = -43%
The butterflies breed in open, wet areas where the foodplant grows, this includes habitats such as; lowland raised bogs, upland blanket bogs and damp acidic moorland. Sites are usually below 500m (600m in the far north) and have a base of Sphagnum moss interspersed with the foodplant and abundant Cross-leaved Heath (the main adult nectar source).
In Ireland, the butterfly can be found where manual peat extraction has lowered the surface of the bog, creating damp areas with local concentrations of foodplant.
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We said on the Getting Started Page that HTML is
nothing more than a box of highlighters that we use to carefully describe our text. This is mostly the entire story. Normally our content is just text we want to define in some way. But what if our content is not just text? What if, let’s say, we have a bunch of images that we want to include on the page? We certainly can’t type in 4-thousand pixels on the keyboard to make up a 200x200-pixel image…
Motivation and Syntax
When the content we want is not text, then we have to have of including that content on the page. The most common example is an image. The problem, however, is that html tags are like highlighters — they have an opening tag and a closing tag. Between the opening and closing tags fits the data that is “highlighted” by the tag. If we were to have an
<image> tag in HTML (we don’t have that tag—one close to it though), what would go “inside” of it? What might you replace the
stuff with inside of
It simply doesn’t make sense for an
<image> tag to exist like all the other HTML tags because the other HTML tags define something else while image is, itself, something that can be defined.
The image tag and all such manner of tags are called “element” tags because, just like the name implies, the tags are themselves the elements all their own. For all intents and purposes you can treat element tags just like text.
If your content is like the words in a textbook and regular HTML is like a pack of highlighters, then these special element tags are indeed like the text and not like the highlighters at all.
The XML standard says that every tag must be closed. But we have this new breed of tags that really don’t make sense to be closed. What we have is a compromise between the two extremes. We have a self-closing tag. The tag is just like the tags we learned about on the General Syntax Page with two exceptions.
- There is no closing tag
- There is a
>to indicate that the tag is self-closing.
So this looks like:
(There is commonly a space before the
/, but again spacing after the name of the tag is arbitrary.)
You might imagine that there could be a tag that produces the copyright symbol (©). There isn’t (we’ll get to special characters later). But if there were, you might imagine there being an element tag called
copyrightsymbol that we could use right in line with our text to produce a ©
Images on Web sites take the form of image files stored on a server. Much like line breaks, images are element tags that are treated like text. The difference is that the image element tag is replaced by the actual image file.
We mentioned the (non-existent)
<image> tag earlier in our discussion on the necessity of the element-style tags. The real tag to include an image on the page is
<img>. This tag makes little sense if used without its
Let’s say we have the image
image1.jpg, , uploaded to the same folder as our HTML file. To include the image on the page, all we have to insert is:
<p><img src="./image1.jpg" /></p>
Which would be rendered (displayed) like:
And, again, images are like text — they go right in with your content:
<p>This is image1: <img src="./image1.jpg" />. Cool, right?</p>
This would be rendered like:
This is image1: . Cool, right?
(More information on how to reference your images using different paths depending on where your images are stored can be found on the Internet File Management Page of the Web Publishing at the UW online curriculum.)
If your images contribute to the content of your site, then you should provide an
alt attribute for your images. The
alt attribute is a text version of your image. Usually it is just a concise sentence describing the image. The
alt attribute will be used if your image is unavailable for any reason (e.g. if you delete the image file, if your viewers can’t see images, etc.)
If we had a picture of a dog jumping into a lake called
spot.jpg, we might use the following HTML to place it on the page:
<p>A picture I took: <img src="./spot.jpg" alt="Spot jumping into a lake." /></p>
If your image is purely a visual element (e.g. an icon next to a download link or an image used in your page’s layout), then you don’t need to provide an
alt attribute. If your web design work is sponsored by the University, be sure to check out the UW’s page on Web Site Accessibility by clicking here.
The spacing rules of HTML say that when we break the line in the source code (e.g. using the enter key on the keyboard), we don’t also break the line on the rendered (displayed) version of the page.
This is why the following two blocks of code:
<p>This is text. This is more text</p>
<p>This is text This is text</p>
…are considered equivalent. They will both be displayed by the web browser in exactly the same way:
This is text. This is more text
<br />element tag. The following block of code:
..is rendered like:
<p> In what particular thought to work I know not; <br /> But in the gross and scope of my opinion, <br /> This bodes some strange eruption to our state.<br /> </p>
In what particular thought to work I know not;
But in the gross and scope of my opinion,
This bodes some strange eruption to our state.
Above we imagined that there was an HTML element tag called
copyrightsymbol that would be used to produce a Copyright symbol (©). If there were such a tag, we might have the following HTML:
<p>This page is Copyright (<copyrightsymbol />) 1989 By George Orwell</p>
There turns out to be so many such symbols that the creators of HTML decided to create a whole group of “special symbols” (or “special characters”). These characters are used in the place of any character you cannot type using a standard US-English QWERTY keyboard. They are also used in the place of some “reserved” characters (like the less-than and greater-than signs, <, and >).
There are many such characters. They all start with an ampersand (
&) and end with a semicolon (
;). The web browser sees these and replaces them with the special character. Some of them are mentioned in the table to the right. You can find a complete listing of all such special characters by doing a search in your favorite search engine for
HTML Special Characters.
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I was given this code from a thread that I created (i cannot remember who) and I would like somebody (preferably the same person who gave it to me) to explain what each line does ('cause i've got no idea). And also, when I compile it (in MSVC++ 6.0), it does nothing but sit there!! It is meant to display all of the lines of a text file. I really wanted it to store each line in a variable if it wasn't empty, but anyway.....
...here is the code:
using namespace std;
ifstream file("myfile.txt"); // or whatever
if(!CurrentLine.empty()) // store it if not empty
// show the stored lines
for(int i = 0; i < Lines.size(); i++)
cout << Lines[i] << endl;
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fwe2-CC-MAIN-2013-20-22893000
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DOCETISM. The term "docetism" comes from the Greek word dokeo (I seem, I appear), and was first used by Serapion, bishop of Antioch (190-208), to refer to certain heretics of the early church. In its earliest expression, docetism apparently grew out of the
difficulties of explaining how the Son of God could be subject to the vicissitudes of humanity, including suffering and death. The earliest
Docetists would explain that Christ only seemed or appeared to suffer, for He only seemed to be mortal and fleshly as other humans.
In reality, they would argue, He is God and, therefore, not truly subject to the problems of humanity. It is generally assumed that the
emphasis on the reality of Christ's physical body in John 1:14, 1 John 1:1-4 and 4:1-3, and 2 John 7 is a refutation of this incipient heresy. During the second century, the positions of Docetists were multiplied and amplified into various gnostic systems, including some that denied the substantive reality of the incarnate Christ, and others that stated that the heavenly Christ descended upon the mortal
Jesus at His baptism and departed when Jesus was before Pilate. The crucifixion scene described in the APOCALYPSE OF PETER is an
example of the latter, portraying the spiritual Savior laughing above the cross while soldiers nail the mortal Jesus to the tree.
Among those especially charged with docetism were Cerinthus and Marcion. There is also a docetic portrayal of Jesus in some anti- Christian writings of the Mandaean Gnostics. Irenaeus and Tertullian, both writing in the late second century, attacked this heresy, and Tertullian claimed that some Valentinians were guilty of docetism. Photius (ninth century) charged CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA with docetism, but Clement rebuked the denial of Christ's flesh in his own writings.
C. WILFRED GRIGGS
Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections.
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fwe2-CC-MAIN-2013-20-22894000
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Did you know that most of the computers on which you deploy applications have more power in the GPU on the video card than in the CPU, even multi-core machines? Harnessing the power of the GPU is the next step in the manycore/multicore revolution and can mean astonishing improvements in execution time. Depending on how data parallel your calculations are, you might see a speedup of 5, 10, or even 50 times! Imagine a calculation that takes 24 hours today completing in half an hour instead. What new capabilities would that enable for your users? Until recently, running code on the GPU has meant using one of several "C-like" languages. The upcoming release of C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism (AMP) means that you can use accelerators like the GPU from native C++. Visual Studio includes debugging and profiling support for C++ AMP, and you don't need to download or install any new libraries to accelerate your code. In this session, see the power of C++ AMP and learn the basic concepts you need to adapt your code to use this massive parallelism.
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fwe2-CC-MAIN-2013-20-22900000
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Janet Barresi State Superintendent
If you're a parent, do you know how your childs' school is doing? What if the school received an annual report card – a grade of A to F – just like the report cards students receive?
If you heard that a school had an Academic Performance Index (API) score of 921, would you know what that means?
Two measures, Senate Bill 348 and House Bill 1456 have either passe committee or a floor vote in the Oklahoma Legislature to give parents and citizens an easy-to-understand way to compare schools and to see how their childrens' schools are doing.
API measures performance and progress in schools or districts and is based on factors including state tests scores; attendance, dropout and graduation rates; ACT scores and participation; Advanced Placement (AP) credit; and college remediation rates in reading and mathematics. The possible scores range from 0 to 1,500.
But the API can be confusing. By contrast, under House Bill 1456, schools would receive a letter grade based on student performance results from a combination of state tests and end-of-instruction tests, gains made in reading and mathematics; and improvement shown by students who had previously scored in the lowest 25th percentile of the state.
State grades would be assigned as follows:
• A would mean schools are making excellent progress;
• B would mean schools are making above average progress;
• C would mean schools are making satisfactory progress;
• D would mean schools are making less than satisfactory progress;
• F would mean schools are failing to make adequate progress.
Florida has had success with a similar plan since 1999, and test scores have risen over the past decade.
In 2009, a record number of schools scored an A and the number of schools graded F was at its lowest in three years.
A grading system for Oklahoma schools will provide much-needed transparency.
Families will have a better idea of how schools rate and they will also have the tools to find the best educational opportunities in their area.
I've heard concerns from some who say this new system of grading schools would cause competition among schools – to which I say, Absolutely!
Competition spurs excellence. It works in the private sector whe businesses compete. And it will work for schools, too.
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According to my understanding, it is a Roman adaptation of the Epitrachelion and Orarion - essentially priestly neck-garments. I wouldn't read too much into the clothing style itself, as it changes infrequently and often erratically and illogically. But the garment itself, functionally, is simply the symbol of the priesthood or diaconate, but styled differently. It's also important to note how simple they can be, so it is likely that they were adapted as priestly garments some time after they were in common use by aristocracy.
The interesting part is that while in the Orthodox tradition the stole is two different garments for the priest and deacon, in the West it is almost the same garment simply worn differently, albeit with the final effect being identical: the priest's is symmetrical and comes down like a beard, and the deacon's is asymmetrical and worn like a sash.
This suggests a common origin to all of the stoles, but does not tell us what the proto-garment was, or if one of the two was the proto-garment. I would be inclined to assume the Orthodox garments, partly because of the Oriental Churches (Non-Chalcedonians):
etc... the naming is Western (stole) but it seems like the garment is mostly unchanged and similar to the Eastern Orthodox one.
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|Title||The National pictorial primer, or, The first book for children (p. 42) |
|Publisher||George F. Cooledge & Brother|
|Publisher Location||United States--New York--New York |
|Publication Date||1850-1859? |
|Image Production Process||Relief prints--wood engravings|
|Notes||Illustrated with uncolored wood engravings.|
Includes illustrated alphabets and lessons that cover a wide variety of subjects including history, the natural sciences, moral behavior, religion, and pastimes and occupations. The stories also warn of the evils and consequences of drinking, fighting, playing with guns, playing too close to fires, imprisonment, and worshipping false Gods.
This lesson is about four boys who try to steal watermelons from a farmer's garden and are punished. The lesson ends by reminding children that "it is as bad to steal from your neighbor's field as it is to take money out of his purse." The illustration shows the young boys trying to escape over a fence with their stolen watermelons. In the background is the farmer and his watchdog.
The illustration at the top of the page depicts the Bay of New York, "one of the finest harbors in the world."
|Contextual Notes||George F. Cooledge & Brother published at 323 Pearl St., Franklin Square, New York, from 1844 to 1871. |
|Subjects (LCSH)||Readers (Primary) |
|Category||Primers (Instructional books)|
|Digital Collection||Children's Historical Literature Collection |
|Digital ID Number||CHL1341 |
|Repository||University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Division |
|Repository Collection||Children's Historical Literature Collection PE1119.A1 N36 1850 |
|Physical Description||48 p.: illustrated; 19.5 x 12 cm. |
|Digital Reproduction Information||Photographed from original book in TIFF format using a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi/EOS 400D, resized and enhanced using Adobe Photoshop, and imported as JPEG2000 using Contentdm's software JPEG2000 Extension. 2009. |
|Exhibit Checklist||Exhibit checklist L.24 |
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Picture this: flourishing soybean fields. Green leaves, thick canopy, strong stands and roots, an abundance of pods. Optimal moisture, not too hot, not too cold. No disease or pest incidence. The best possible soybean-growing environment you can imagine.
Now picture this: reality. Though the optimal growing conditions may exist, the odds of no pests and disease are pretty small, and chances are you'll deal with a variety of them through the growing season. To alleviate the pain and pressure, though, university and Extension personnel have a wealth of data and advice to help combat those pesky pests and dreadful diseases.
Last growing season certainly saw its share of pests and disease, along with not-so-optimal growing conditions around soybean-producing regions of the U.S. From stink bugs in the south to soybean cyst nematode (SCN) in the north, growers had their hands full of managing beans under reality conditions.
“Minnesota was very dry in much of the soybean growing areas, and diseases did not develop as they normally do,” says Dean Malvick, University of Minnesota Extension plant pathologist. “Though 2007 was not a representative year, disease problems did exist, including SCN, SDS, brown stem rot, charcoal rot — due to dry weather — Phytophthora and Fusarium root rot.”
He expects much of the same this year, including white mold, if Minnesota has near-normal rainfall, except for charcoal rot.
Kentucky experienced plenty of charcoal rot and SCN.
“Charcoal rot is always associated with drought, and much of Kentucky was in serious drought during the second half of the summer in 2007,” says Don Hershman, Extension plant pathologist for University of Kentucky. “SCN is always present, but the effects are worst when plants are under drought stress.”
Missouri fields had an elevated number of stink bugs, along with white grubs, says Wayne Bailey, University of Missouri Extension entomologist. Soybean aphid was also present, and reached economic infestations in a few counties and in fields with potassium deficiencies.
Pathologists and entomologists from across the south and the Midwest have given their predictions about what to watch in 2008. Granted no one can provide a solid outlook, but here's what they recommend you watch for this year.
SYMPTOMS: Plant sap is removed via sucking from the small, yellowish, glob-shaped aphid, causing leaves to wilt and curl. If numbers are high, leaves may become yellow and distorted; the plant may be stunted, covered in dark, sooty mold. From seedling to blooming, aphids will colonize tender leaves/branches, later moving down to colonize near the middle/lower underside of leaves and stem.
TIME OF ATTACK: V1-V2 on upper leaves, petioles, stem (scout twice/week); R1-R4 on undersides of mid-canopy leaves, stems.
CONDITIONS FAVORING: Northern states with cooler summer temps; fields with previous aphid populations; late plantings; crops stressed by hot, dry weather; high overwintering populations.
MANAGEMENT: Foliar-applied insecticide when populations reach 250/plant and continue to increase and 80% of field is infested; time treatment to maximize effectiveness. Beneficial lady beetles could help in control.
SPECIES: Redbanded, Southern Green, Brown, Green
SYMPTOMS: Flat pod syndrome and delayed maturity; Brown and Green species attack pods and seeds. Feeding punctures cause small brown/black spots. Young seeds can be deformed or undersized; older seeds become shriveled and discolored.
TIME OF ATTACK: R1-R7 reproductive stages.
CONDITIONS FAVORING: High populations of bugs and vulnerable growth stages; common along Louisiana and Texas Gulf coast.
MANAGEMENT: Cultivar selection and planting date. Rescue insecticide treatments when threshold reached while scouting. Populations also partially suppressed by predators and parasitic wasps.
BEAN LEAF BEETLE
SYMPTOMS: Feeding is identified by small, round holes between veins. Entire pods may be clipped and the outside layer of pod tissue entirely consumed. Beetles feed on plants at all stages of development. Overwintering populations feed on cotyledons and leaves. The next generation feeds on leaves and the final generation feeds on leaves and pods.
TIME OF ATTACK: All season; first generation: late V, early R; second generation: pod-fill stage.
CONDITIONS FAVORING: Early planting and above-normal summer temperatures. Late-planted fields and below-normal temps can cause better conditions for second-generation beetle pod feeding.
MANAGEMENT: Timely application of rescue treatment if sampling/defoliation threshold is reached.
SYMPTOMS: Leaves appear sandblasted. Heavily infested leaves turn red-brown and die. Webbing may be present on undersides of leaves. Heavy infestation causes leaves to wilt and die.
TIME OF ATTACK: V2-R7.
CONDITIONS FAVORING: Drought conditions.
MANAGEMENT: Treatment by air or ground application if infested areas increase in size (no established threshold). Cool, wet weather conditions may reduce infestation.
SUDDEN DEATH SYNDROME
SYMPTOMS: Leaves become brown, with veins remaining green; leaf blades drop off but petioles remain attached. Brown to gray discoloration of internal taproot.
TIME OF ATTACK: During pod set and fill.
CONDITIONS FAVORING: Cool, wet conditions throughout summer; well-fertilized fields; early planting/maturity; soil compaction; fields with history of SDS; co-infection with SCN.
MANAGEMENT: Resistant cultivars; avoid early planting — wait until soils are warmer and drier; eliminate soil compaction.
SYMPTOMS: Small, black sclerotia form on lower stem and roots, both internally and externally. Early season infection produces red-brown lesions. Premature plant death; plants wilt and eventually die.
TIME OF ATTACK: R3-R6.
CONDITIONS FAVORING: Extended periods of hot, dry weather.
MANAGEMENT: Reduced plant populations; rotation; planting fullest maturity group; irrigation, if available. No way to stave off damage in drought year.
SOYBEAN CYST NEMATODE
SYMPTOMS: Difficult to spot in high-yielding fields or when soil moisture is optimal. Yellowing and stunting of plants; white to yellow lemon-shaped cysts on roots.
TIME OF ATTACK: As soil warms and root systems develop.
CONDITIONS FAVORING: Those that favor soybean growth. May first appear near field entrances, flooded areas, weedy areas, high-pH spots, lower-yielding areas. Moisture and fertility stress can enhance disease.
MANAGEMENT: Crop rotation, resistant varieties (rotate resistant varieties, as well), introduction prevention. Test soil samples.
SYMPTOMS: Seed rot. Seedlings may grow poorly, turn yellow and die. Dieback of young plants with damping-off of lower stem.
MANAGEMENT: Seed treatments; delayed planting until soils are warmer/drier; plant high-quality seed with high germ and vigor.
Editor's Note:Please keep in mind this is just a general, short list of pests and diseases to keep an eye out for. Others mentioned included corn earworm, white grub, soybean looper, brown stem rot, Fusarium, Phytophthora and frogeye leaf spot. For specific information for your location, contact your local Extension office or university specialist.
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PHYSICS FOR ELEMENTARY TEACHERS
This course is a one-semester introduction to physics with curriculum and instruction designed as an activity-based hands-on course for K-8 elementary education students and open to all education majors. The course emphasizes a student-oriented pedagogy in order to develop various physics concepts and the nature of science. Topics covered include motion, forces, energy, light, heat, electricity, and magnetism.
Other Requirements: PREREQ: MATH 141 AND RESTRICTED TO STUDENTS WITH BSE PROGRAM
There are no sections offered for this course and term that meet your criteria.
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Who needed the Holy Land when they could fight a crusade on their doorstep?
Throughout the 12th century, Danish forces raided the northern coasts of Germany and Poland time and time again. The aim was to fight the region’s pillaging pagans, the Wends, a mixture of tribes that in turn attacked the Danish coastline with regularity – raids that were particularly unwelcome during a Danish civil war from 1146-57. Despite times of peace, trade and even intermarriage between the Danes and the Wends (Harald Bluetooth was indeed married to a Wendish princess), they were feared and hated by all in Denmark.
In 1147 Pope Eugene III declared the Second Crusade in an attempt to reconquer the Holy Land from the Muslims in the Middle East. Concurrently, holy war was also made a universal principle. This meant that any war waged against the enemies of god – such as the heathen Wends - was now viewed by the church as a holy war and would grant the Christian warriors divine privileges. The Danish Crusades were quickly proclaimed.
The warring parties laid down their arms and put the civil war on hold, so they could do god’s biding. They joined the princes and dukes of northern Germany in the fight against the heathens in their backyard. The Saxons had been granted permission to fight the Wends by a powerful abbot, Bernard of Clairvaux, rather than joining the Second Crusade to the Holy Land, as other Germans had done. Their decision made good financial sense. Expeditions against the Wends were much easier to organise and considerably cheaper than joining the crusade to the Holy Land. It also opened the door to a future taxation of their defeated neighbours.
Alas, it did not go very well for the Christian forces. The Danes and the Saxons were unable to defeat the Wends and ended up negotiating a peace agreement. The Wends agreed to release their prisoners and accept the Christian faith as their own, but almost as soon as the Saxons and Danes turned their backs, they returned to their pagan ways and escalated their attacks on the coasts of Denmark, which was once again embroiled in civil war.
But they hadn’t reckoned on Valdemar the Great, who became king of Denmark in 1157 after decisively ending the civil war in victory. He immediately launched an attack on the Wends, whose attack on Denmark had never stopped during the civil war, and over the next 15 years he completed approximately 20 expeditions against the Wends.
He joined forces with his old enemy Henry the Lion, the duke of Saxony, in a shaky alliance. Rather than just guarding themselves against Wendish aggression, the two leaders expanded into the Wendish areas. Henry the Lion was more successful, since he had a large population that he could use to colonise the newly conquered areas. Valdemar, on the other hand, could not find Danes willing to accept the task of settling in the Wendish areas. It was simply too dangerous.
The Danish activity culminated with the historic conquest of the pagan stronghold of Arkona in 1168. The fall of Arkona signalled the Danish conquest of the island of Rügen and is described in detail by the Danish chronicler Saxo. He described how King Valdemar and Archbishop Absalon (the founder of Copenhagen no less) had the pagan idol Svantevit destroyed. Not only was the big wooden idol chopped to pieces, they used the pieces as firewood and cooked the victory feast for the troops with it, whilst the pagan temple was stripped of its treasures.
The population of Rügen was then christened and the island remained under Danish rule until 1325, while the Danish church remained in charge of ecclesiastical matters until 1660.
To this day, Danish scholars are still arguing whether or not the Danish expeditions against the Wends were crusades. The motives seem to have been very mixed indeed. An example is the conquest of Arkona, which was characterised by pillaging and taxation of the area on one hand, but also the building of churches and other religious institutions on the other hand. Historians agree that the expedition of 1147 can rightly be called a Danish crusade as it was initiated by the Pope, who promised indulgence. But that is about it.
Some historians believe that all the Danish expeditions were crusades based on their claim that religious motives were the main reason for the expeditions. They believe that the Pope’s proclamation of a holy war as a universal principle was still valid after the Second Crusade (1147-49). Other historians, in contrast, point to the Viking-like manner of the expeditions and argue that Saxo only described the expedition in 1147 as a crusade, whilst the others were described as conquests driven by vengeance against the pillaging Wends. They believe that the religious motives were secondary and that the Pope gave up on the idea of a holy war outside the Holy Land after the fiasco of the Second Crusade, in which the christian forces failed to make progress in the Holy Land.
Regardless of the scholarly disagreement, the expeditions against the Wends led to a Danish heyday, during which the country succeeded in establishing itself as a dominant force in the areas surrounding the Baltic Sea – a supremacy that lasted until 1241.
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It is possible to use a hash function to construct a block cipher with a structure similar to DES? Because a hash function is one way and a block cipher must be reversible (to decrypt), how is it possible?
migrated from security.stackexchange.com Nov 8 '12 at 12:26
It is possible to build a block cipher out of a great many things. If you want to use a hash function, the classic trick is to follow a Feistel structure, which is, incidentally, the same kind of structure than what DES uses.
The schematics on the Wikipedia page are quite clear; you would use the hash function for the "F" part, which combines one (sub)key and one half of the current block, to produce a value which is to be XORed with the other half of the current block. The beauty of the scheme is that the "F" function is always invoked in the same direction, both for encryption and for decryption. Therefore, it can be a one-way function, like a hash function.
Luby and Rackoff have demonstrated in 1988 that the Feistel scheme offers remarkable security with as little as four rounds, provided that the "F" function is "perfect" and that the cipher block size is big enough (to get the standard "128-bit security" out of the Luby-Rackoff proof, you need 256-bit blocks).
Of course, any concrete hash function cannot be really "perfect" (see for instance this answer) and there are a lot of subtle details which can destroy the security of the best thought cipher structure. As usual, you are strongly advised not to build your own crypto (unless you are quite clear with yourself that you do it for learning and not to actually protect any data of value).
Also, if you build such a cipher, you will probably notice that the resulting performance is disappointing. With a secure hash function like SHA-256, you could expect an encryption bandwidth roughly 20 times lower than what AES would get you.
It is possible to use a hash function like (SHA family, for instance) in OFB or CFB (and possibly CTR), by using the hash function (with the key as part of the input!) in the place of the block cipher encryption. That said, Thomas is right -- DO NOT BUILD YOUR OWN CRYPTO. Just use a normal block cipher. You'll get better performance (especially if it's AES and you're on hardware with ways to accelerate it), and you'll probably get better security (at least you'll know it's been examined).
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Who We Are
What is the CTBT?
The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) bans nuclear explosions by everyone, everywhere: on the Earth's surface, in the atmosphere, underwater and underground.
Why is the CTBT important?
It makes it very difficult for countries to develop nuclear bombs for the first time, or for countries that already have them, to make more powerful bombs. It also prevents the huge damage caused by radioactivity from nuclear explosions to humans, animals and plants.
Over 2000 nuclear explosions from 1945 to 1996
Over 2000 nuclear tests were carried out between 1945 and 1996, when the CTBT opened for signature: by the United States (1000+), the Soviet Union (700+), France (200+), the United Kingdom and China (45 each). Three countries have broken the de facto moratorium and tested nuclear weapons since 1996: India and Pakistan in 1998, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in 2006 and 2009.
CTBT almost universal but has yet to become law
Many attempts were made during the Cold War to negotiate a comprehensive test ban, but it was only in the 1990s that the Treaty became a reality. The CTBT was negotiated in Geneva between 1994 and 1996. 183 countries have signed the Treaty, of which 159 have also ratified it (as of February 2013), including three of the nuclear weapon States: France, the Russian Federation and the United Kingdom. But 44 specific nuclear technology holder countries must sign and ratify before the CTBT can enter into force. Of these, eight are still missing: China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and the USA. India, North Korea and Pakistan have yet to sign the CTBT. The last Annex 2 State to ratify the Treaty was Indonesia on 6 February 2012.
Headquarters in Vienna
Since the Treaty is not yet in force, the organization is called the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO). It was founded in 1996, has over 260 staff from over 70 countries, and is based in Vienna. It is headed by the Executive Secretary, Tibor Tóth from Hungary. The CTBTO’s main tasks are the promotion of the Treaty and the build-up of the verification regime so that it is operational when the Treaty enters into force. The annual budget is around US$120,000,000 or €82,000,000.
Verification regime to make sure that no nuclear explosion goes undetected
The Treaty has a unique and comprehensive verification regime to make sure that no nuclear explosion goes undetected. This regime consists of three pillars:
The International Monitoring System (IMS) will, when complete, consist of 337 facilities worldwide to monitor the planet for signs of nuclear explosions. Over 85 percent of the facilities are already up and running. The IMS uses the following four state-of-the-art technologies (numbers reflect final configuration):
• Seismic: 50 primary and 120 auxiliary seismic stations monitor shockwaves in the Earth. The vast majority of these shockwaves – many thousands every year – are caused by earthquakes. But man-made explosions such as mine explosions or the North Korean nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, are also detected.
• Hydroacoustic: 11 hydroacoustic stations “listen” for sound waves in the oceans. Sound waves from explosions can travel extremely far underwater.
• Infrasound: 60 stations on the surface can detect ultra-low frequency sound waves (inaudible to the human ear) that are emitted by large explosions.
• Radionuclide: 80 stations measure the atmosphere for radioactive particles; 40 of them also pick up noble gas. Only these measurements can give a clear indication as to whether an explosion detected by the other methods was actually nuclear or not. They are supported by 16 radionuclide laboratories.
On-site inspections can be dispatched to the area of a suspicious nuclear explosion if the data from the IMS indicate that a nuclear test has taken place there. Inspectors will collect evidence on the ground at the suspected site. Such an inspection can only be requested and approved by Member States once the CTBT has entered into force. A large on-site inspection exercise was carried out in September 2008 in Kazakhstan and the next one is planned for 2014 in Jordan.
Helping Tsunami Warning and the Environment
The huge amount of data collected by the stations can also be used for other purposes than detecting nuclear explosions. They can provide tsunami warning centres with almost real-time information about an underwater earthquake, thus helping to warn people earlier and possibly saving lives. During the March 2011 Fukushima power plant accident, the network's radionuclide stations tracked the dispersion of radioactivity on a global scale. The data could also help us better understand the oceans, volcanoes, climate change, the movement of whales, and many other issues.
The International Data Centre
The International Data Centre at the CTBTO's headquarters in Vienna receives gigabytes of data from the global monitoring stations. The data are processed and distributed to the CTBTO's Member States in both raw and analyzed form. When North Korea tested in 2006 and 2009, the Member States received information about the location, magnitude, time and depth of the tests within two hours - and before the actual test had been announced by North Korea.
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Over the weekend, the Washington Post published a series of articles on the poor health of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. Cleaning up the bay, which has been in serious trouble since the early 1980s is especially complicated since its tributaries pass through multiple jurisdictions; New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Virginia, and West Virginia all contain part of the watershed, which is fed by two major rivers (the Potomac and Susquehanna) and numerous smaller tributaries. That means that cleanup strategies have to be coordinated among the various stakeholders, which then have to fight their own internal battles over funding and enforcement priorities.
In the meantime, work is being left undone.
Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania all pledged that their farmers would put up fences along streambanks to keep cows out. But they didn't make it a legal requirement: Officials feared this kind of regulation would be a burden on farmers and would be difficult to enforce....The problem with cow manure is that it contains nitrogen that feeds algae blooms, which in turn cause dead zones throughout much of the bay. Cow manure is just one of many nitrogen or phosphorus sources within the watershed. Sources include fertilizers, sewage, detergents, and septic tanks, among others. While the cleanup has effected some reductions in nitrogen and phosphorus, and stabilized some underwater life, it has fallen far short of its goals.
But in Virginia, many farmers simply didn't want the hassle. And reimbursement funding, which came out of state budget surpluses, was often short. From July 2006 to June 2007, Virginia turned away 144 farmers who wanted to fence off 84 miles of streambank.
Now, Virginia has reached only about 20 percent of its goal for fencing off streams. Across the Chesapeake watershed, the figure is 27 percent.
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Published in Speaking Tree, Nov. 28, 2010
The Kanda Puranam, the Tamil version of the Sanskrit Skanda Purana, retells the story of how Shiva’s son, Murugan, (known as Kartikeya, in North India) defeated the demon Taraka and his brothers, Simhamukhan and Surapadman. On his defeat, Simhamukhan begs forgiveness so Murugan instructs him to turn into a lion and serve as the vehicle of Durga. While fighting Murugan, Surapadman takes the form of a mountain. Murugan breaks the mountain into two with his spear. One part of the mountain turns into a peacock that becomes Murugan’s vehicle while the other part becomes a rooster that becomes Murugan’s symbol on his flag. Thus, says this narrative, the vehicles of Durga and her son, Murugan, are actually demons who have been subdued and transformed and become worthy of being associated with the divine.
In Hindu mythology, every god and goddess is associated with one animal or the other. Brahma, the creator, is associated with a swan, Vishnu, the preserver, with an eagle, Shiva, the destroyer, with a bull. Lakshmi, goddess of wealth, is associated with an elephant, Saraswati, goddess of knowledge, with a goose, and Durga, goddess of power, with lions and tigers. The river-goddesses Ganga and Yamuna ride a dolphin (or crocodile) and turtle respectively. The animals are called vahana, or vehicles, transporting the gods.
Sometimes, the same animal serves as the insignia on the deity’s flag. Thus Shiva, who rides a bull has a flag called Vrishabha-dhvaja, which means the flag with the symbol of a bull. At other times, different animals serve as vahanas and as symbols on flags. Murugan rides a peacock but has the rooster on his flag.
Through the animals an idea is communciated. The idea of love and desire in most Indian poetry is expressed through the parrot, bees, butterflies and the constellation Makara which marks the advent of spring. And so Kama, the god of desire, is described as riding a parrot, having bees and butterflies constituting as the string of his bow whose shaft is made of sugarcane, and as having the symbol of Makara on his flag. Hamsa or geese (often confused with swans) is said to have the ability to separate milk from water. This makes Hamsa the symbol of intellectual discrimination and so is associated with Saraswati, goddess of knoweldge. Rats are an annoying pest and so serve as the symbol of problems. They are also highly fertile. So they are symbols of cascading problems. Ganesha, the god who removes obstacles, has the rat as his vehicle; by mounting the rat and domesticating it as his vehicle, he blocks the problems that plague our life. Shiva’s bull communicates Shiva’s independence, Vishnu’s hawk indicates his mobility and wider vision of things.
Animals are not just vehicles or symbols of the gods; they are the forms that the god takes. Hanuman, who serves Ram, is a monkey. Vishnu, for example, turns into fish and turtle and wild boar in order to save the world. The earth-goddess, Prithvi, often is seen in the form of a cow. Ganesha has the head of an elephant while the Ashwini twins have horse heads and Ketu, the planetary body associated with anxiety and restlessness, is a headless serpent.
In metaphysics, animals are jiva-atmas, souls wrapped in flesh. Their flesh is superior to plants because they are mobile. Their flesh is inferior to human beings because they do not possess the highly developed brain that enables humans to imagine, love, create and care. It says that only after 84 lakh rebirths is a jiva-atma blessed with human flesh. What distinguishes humans from all other living creatures is our infinite ability to empathize, an ability that is highly limited in animals. By riding on animals, the gods are perhaps reminding us of our ability to overpower our animal instincts of self-preservation and self-propagation and focus on the unique human capability of self-realization which can only happen when we are able to feel for the rest of the world. Unfortunately, most of the time we prefer regression to evolution, behave as animals thinking only about survival. In fact, we are worse than animals, for animals think only about survival of their bodies, and do not have the wherewithal to do otherwise. We, on the other hand, spend all our lives working towards survival of our imagined self-image. So long as we think only about me and mine, and exclude others, we will waste this human flesh, remain unevolved animals and not validate our human existence.
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Cyanobacterial Emergence at 2.8 Gya and Greenhouse Feedbacks
D. Schwartzman, K. Caldeira & A. Pavlov
Approximately 2.8 billion years ago, cyanobacteria and a methane-influenced greenhouse emerged nearly simultaneously. Here we hypothesize that the evolution of cyanobacteria could have caused a methane greenhouse.
Apparent cyanobacterial emergence at about 2.8 Gya coincides with the negative excursion in the organic carbon isotope record, which is the first strong evidence for the presence of atmospheric methane. The existence of weathering feedbacks in the carbonate-silicate cycle suggests that atmospheric and oceanic CO2 concentrations would have been high prior to the presence of a methane greenhouse (and thus the ocean would have had high bicarbonate concentrations). With the onset of a methane greenhouse, carbon dioxide concentrations would decrease. Bicarbonate has been proposed as the preferred reductant that preceded water for oxygenic photosynthesis in a bacterial photosynthetic precursor to cyanobacteria; with the drop of carbon dioxide level, Archean cyanobacteria emerged using water as a reductant instead of bicarbonate (Dismukes et al., 2001). Our thermodynamic calculations, with regard to this scenario, give at least a tenfold drop in aqueous CO2 levels with the onset of a methane-dominated greenhouse, assuming surface temperatures of about 60°C and a drop in the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide from about 1 to 0.1 bars. The buildup of atmospheric methane could have been triggered by the boost in oceanic organic productivity that arose from the emergence of pre-cyanobacterial oxygenic phototrophy at about 2.8–3.0 Gya; high temperatures may have precluded an earlier emergence. A greenhouse transition timescale on the order of 50–100 million years is consistent with results from modeling the carbonate-silicate cycle. This is an alternative hypothesis to proposals of a tectonic driver for this apparent greenhouse transition.
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Pronunciation: (rīkhs'rät"), [key]
1. Ger. Hist.the upper house of the parliament during the period of the Second Reich and the Weimar Republic.
2. Hist.the legislature or parliament in the Austrian division of Austria-Hungary. Also,Reichs'rath".
Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Copyright © 1997, by Random House, Inc., on Infoplease.
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|a screen or mat covered with a dark material for shielding a camera lens from excess light or glare.|
|the offspring of a zebra and a donkey.|
a wind that is strong enough to cause at least light damage to trees and buildings and may or may not be accompanied by precipitation. Wind speeds during a windstorm typically exceed 55 km (34 miles) per hour. Wind damage can be attributed to gusts (short bursts of high-speed winds) or longer periods of stronger sustained winds. Although tornadoes and tropical cyclones also produce wind damage, they are usually classified separately
Learn more about windstorm with a free trial on Britannica.com.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
|Part of the Politics series on|
| Communism Portal|
Communism is a social structure in which classes are abolished and property is commonly controlled, as well as a political philosophy and social movement that advocates and aims to create such a society. Karl Marx, the father of communist thought, posited that communism would be the final stage in society, which would be achieved through a proletarian revolution and only possible after a socialist stage develops the productive forces, leading to a superabundance of goods and services.
"Pure communism" in the Marxian sense refers to a classless, stateless and oppression-free society where decisions on what to produce and what policies to pursue are made democratically, allowing every member of society to participate in the decision-making process in both the political and economic spheres of life. In modern usage, communism is often used to refer to Bolshevism or Marxism-Leninism and the policies of the various communist states which had government ownership of all the means of production and centrally planned economies. Communist regimes, all inspired only by the Leninist current, have historically been authoritarian, repressive, and coercive governments concerned primarily with preserving their own power.
As a political ideology, communism is usually considered to be a branch of socialism; a broad group of economic and political philosophies that draw on the various political and intellectual movements with origins in the work oftheorists of the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution. Communism attempts to offer an alternative to the problems with the capitalist market economy and the legacy of imperialism and nationalism.
Marx states that the only way to solve these problems is for the working class (proletariat), who according to Marx are the main producers of wealth in society and are exploited by the Capitalist-class (bourgeoisie), to replace the bourgeoisie as the ruling class in order to establish a free society, without class or racial divisions. The dominant forms of communism, such as Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism and Trotskyism are based on Marxism, as well as others forms of communism (such as Luxemburgism and Council communism), but non-Marxist versions of communism (such as Christian communism and Anarchist communism) also exist.
Karl Marx never provided a detailed description as to how communism would function as an economic system, but it is understood that a communist economy would consist of common ownership of the means of production, culminating in the negation of the concept of private ownership of capital, which referred to the means of production in Marxian terminology.
|It has been suggested that this section be split into a new article titled List of communist ideologies. (Discuss)|
In the schema of historical materialism, communism is the idea of a free society with no division or alienation, where mankind is free from oppression and scarcity. A communist society would have no governments, countries, or class divisions. In Marxist theory, the dictatorship of the proletariat is the intermediate system between capitalism and communism, when the government is in the process of changing the means of ownership from privatism, to collective ownership. In political science, the term "communism" is sometimes used to refer to communist states, a form of government in which the state operates under a one-party system and declares allegiance to Marxism-Leninism or a derivative thereof.
Marxist schools of communism
Self-identified communists hold a variety of views, including Marxism-Leninism, Trotskyism, council communism, Luxemburgism, anarchist communism, Christian communism, and various currents of left communism. However, the offshoots of the Marxist-Leninist interpretations of Marxism are the most well-known of these and have been a driving force in international relations during most of the 20th century.
Like other socialists, Marx and Engels sought an end to capitalism and the systems which they perceived to be responsible for the exploitation of workers. But whereas earlier socialists often favored longer-term social reform, Marx and Engels believed that popular revolution was all but inevitable, and the only path to the socialist state.
According to the Marxist argument for communism, the main characteristic of human life in class society is alienation; and communism is desirable because it entails the full realization of human freedom. Marx here follows Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in conceiving freedom not merely as an absence of restraints but as action with content. According to Marx, Communism's outlook on freedom was based on an agent, obstacle, and goal. The agent is the common/working people; the obstacles are class divisions, economic inequalities, unequal life-chances, and false consciousness; and the goal is the fulfillment of human needs including satisfying work, and fair share of the product. They believed that communism allowed people to do what they want, but also put humans in such conditions and such relations with one another that they would not wish to exploit, or have any need to. Whereas for Hegel the unfolding of this ethical life in history is mainly driven by the realm of ideas, for Marx, communism emerged from material forces, particularly the development of the means of production.
Marxism holds that a process of class conflict and revolutionary struggle will result in victory for the proletariat and the establishment of a communist society in which private ownership is abolished over time and the means of production and subsistence belong to the community. Marx himself wrote little about life under communism, giving only the most general indication as to what constituted a communist society. It is clear that it entails abundance in which there is little limit to the projects that humans may undertake. In the popular slogan that was adopted by the communist movement, communism was a world in which each gave according to their abilities, and received according to their needs. The German Ideology (1845) was one of Marx's few writings to elaborate on the communist future:
"In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic."
Marx's lasting vision was to add this vision to a theory of how society was moving in a law-governed way toward communism, and, with some tension, a political theory that explained why revolutionary activity was required to bring it about.
In the late 19th century, the terms "socialism" and "communism" were often used interchangeably. However, Marx and Engels argued that communism would not emerge from capitalism in a fully developed state, but would pass through a "first phase" in which most productive property was owned in common, but with some class differences remaining. The "first phase" would eventually evolve into a "higher phase" in which class differences were eliminated, and a state was no longer needed. Lenin frequently used the term "socialism" to refer to Marx and Engels' supposed "first phase" of communism and used the term "communism" interchangeably with Marx and Engels' "higher phase" of communism.
These later aspects, particularly as developed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, provided the underpinning for the mobilizing features of 20th century Communist parties.
Marxism-Leninism is a version of socialism adopted by the Soviet Union and most Communist Parties across the world today. It shaped the Soviet Union and influenced Communist Parties worldwide. It was heralded as a possibility of building communism via a massive program of industrialization and collectivization. Historically, under the ideology of Marxism-Leninism the rapid development of industry, and above all the victory of the Soviet Union in the Second World War occurred alongside a third of the world being lead by Marxist-Leninist inspired parties. Despite the fall of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries, many communist Parties of the world today still lay claim to uphold the Marxist-Leninist banner. Marxism-Leninism expands on Marxists thoughts by bringing the theories to what Lenin and other Communists considered, the age of capitalist imperialism, and a renewed focus on party building, the development of a socialist state, and democratic centralism as an organizational principle.
Lenin adapted Marx’s urban revolution to Russia’s agricultural conditions, sparking the “revolutionary nationalism of the poor”. The pamphlet What is to be Done? (1902), proposed that the (urban) proletariat can successfully achieve revolutionary consciousness only under the leadership of a vanguard party of professional revolutionaries — who can achieve aims only with internal democratic centralism in the party; tactical and ideological policy decisions are agreed via democracy, and every member must support and promote the agreed party policy.
To wit, capitalism can be overthrown only with revolution — because attempts to reform capitalism from within (Fabianism) and from without (democratic socialism) will fail because of its inherent contradictions. The purpose of a Leninist revolutionary vanguard party is the forceful deposition of the incumbent government; assume power (as agent of the proletariat) and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat government. Moreover, as the government, the vanguard party must educate the proletariat — to dispel the societal false consciousness of religion and nationalism that are culturally instilled by the bourgeoisie in facilitating exploitation. The dictatorship of the proletariat is governed with a de-centralized direct democracy practised via soviets (councils) where the workers exercise political power (cf. soviet democracy); the fifth chapter of State & Revolution, describes it:
“. . . the dictatorship of the proletariat — i.e. the organisation of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of crushing the oppressors. . . . An immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the rich: . . . and suppression by force, i.e. exclusion from democracy, for the exploiters and oppressors of the people — this is the change which democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism.”
The Bolshevik government was hostile to nationalism, especially to Russian nationalism, the “Great Russian chauvinism”, as an obstacle to establishing the proletarian dictatorship. The revolutionary elements of Leninism — the disciplined vanguard party, a dictatorship of the proletariat, and class war.
"Stalinism" refers to the political system of the Soviet Union, and the countries within the Soviet sphere of influence, during the leadership of Joseph Stalin. The term usually defines the style of a government rather than an ideology. The ideology was "Marxism-Leninism theory", reflecting that Stalin himself was not a theoretician, in contrast to Marx and Lenin, and prided himself on maintaining the legacy of Lenin as a founding father for the Soviet Union and the future Socialist world. Stalinism is an interpretation of their ideas, and a certain political regime claiming to apply those ideas in ways fitting the changing needs of society, as with the transition from "socialism at a snail's pace" in the mid-twenties to the rapid industrialization of the Five-Year Plans.
The main contributions of Stalin to communist theory were:
- The groundwork for the Soviet policy concerning nationalities, laid in Stalin's 1913 work Marxism and the National Question, praised by Lenin.
- Socialism in One Country,
- The theory of aggravation of the class struggle along with the development of socialism, a theoretical base supporting the repression of political opponents as necessary.
Trotsky and his supporters organized into the Left Opposition and their platform became known as Trotskyism. Stalin eventually succeeded in gaining control of the Soviet regime and Trotskyist attempts to remove Stalin from power resulted in Trotsky's exile from the Soviet Union in 1929. During Trotsky's exile, world communism fractured into two distinct branches: Marxism-Leninism and Trotskyism. Trotsky later founded the Fourth International, a Trotskyist rival to the Comintern, in 1938.
Trotskyist ideas have continually found a modest echo among political movements in some countries in Latin America and Asia, especially in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Sri Lanka. Many Trotskyist organizations are also active in more stable, developed countries in North America and Western Europe. Trotsky's politics differed sharply from those of Stalin and Mao, most importantly in declaring the need for an international proletarian revolution (rather than socialism in one country) and unwavering support for a true dictatorship of the proletariat based on democratic principles.
However, as a whole, Trotsky's theories and attitudes were never accepted in worldwide mainstream Communist circles after Trotsky's expulsion, either within or outside of the Soviet bloc. This remained the case even after the Secret Speech and subsequent events critics claim exposed the fallibility of Stalin.
Maoism is the Marxist-Leninist trend of Communism associated with Mao Zedong and was mostly practiced within the People's Republic of China. Khrushchev's reforms heightened ideological differences between the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union, which became increasingly apparent in the 1960s. As the Sino-Soviet Split in the international Communist movement turned toward open hostility, China portrayed itself as a leader of the underdeveloped world against the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union.
Parties and groups that supported the Communist Party of China (CPC) in their criticism against the new Soviet leadership proclaimed themselves as 'anti-revisionist' and denounced the CPSU and the parties aligned with it as revisionist "capitalist-roaders." The Sino-Soviet Split resulted in divisions amongst communist parties around the world. Notably, the Party of Labour of Albania sided with the People's Republic of China. Effectively, the CPC under Mao's leadership became the rallying forces of a parallel international Communist tendency. The ideology of CPC, Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought (generally referred to as 'Maoism'), was adopted by many of these groups.
After Mao's death and his replacement by Deng Xiaoping, the international Maoist movement diverged. One sector accepted the new leadership in China; a second renounced the new leadership and reaffirmed their commitment to Mao's legacy; and a third renounced Maoism altogether and aligned with Albania.
Another variant of anti-revisionist Marxism-Leninism appeared after the ideological row between the Communist Party of China and the Party of Labour of Albania in 1978. The Albanians rallied a new separate international tendency. This tendency would demarcate itself by a strict defense of the legacy of Joseph Stalin and fierce criticism of virtually all other Communist groupings as revisionism. Critical of the United States, Soviet Union, and China, Enver Hoxha declared the latter two to be social-imperialist and condemned the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia by withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact in response. Hoxha declared Albania to be the world's only Marxist-Leninist state after 1978. The Albanians were able to win over a large share of the Maoists, mainly in Latin America such as the Popular Liberation Army, but also had a significant international following in general. This tendency has occasionally been labeled as 'Hoxhaism' after him.
After the fall of the Communist government in Albania, the pro-Albanian parties are grouped around an international conference and the publication 'Unity and Struggle'.
Elements of Titoism are characterized by policies and practices based on the principle that in each country, the means of attaining ultimate communist goals must be dictated by the conditions of that particular country, rather than by a pattern set in another country. During Tito’s era, this specifically meant that the communist goal should be pursued independently of (and often in opposition to) the policies of the Soviet Union.
The term was originally meant as a pejorative, and was labeled by Moscow as a heresy during the period of tensions between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia known as the Informbiro period from 1948 to 1955.
Unlike the rest of East Europe, which fell under Stalin's influence post-World War II, Yugoslavia, due to the strong leadership of Marshal Tito and the fact that the Yugoslav Partisans liberated Yugoslavia with only limited help from the Red Army, remained independent from Moscow. It became the only country in the Balkans to resist pressure from Moscow to join the Warsaw Pact and remained "socialist, but independent" right up until the collapse of Soviet socialism in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Throughout his time in office, Tito prided himself on Yugoslavia's independence from Russia, with Yugoslavia never accepting full membership of the Comecon and Tito's open rejection of many aspects of Stalinism as the most obvious manifestations of this.
Since the early 1970s, the term Eurocommunism was used to refer to moderate, reformist Communist parties in western Europe. These parties did not support the Soviet Union and denounced its policies. Such parties were politically active and electorally significant in Italy (PCI), France (PCF), and Spain (PCE).
Council communism is a far-left movement originating in Germany and the Netherlands in the 1920s. Its primary organization was the Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD). Council communism continues today as a theoretical and activist position within both left-wing Marxism and libertarian socialism.
The central argument of council communism, in contrast to those of social democracy and Leninist Communism, is that democratic workers' councils arising in the factories and municipalities are the natural form of working class organisation and governmental power. This view is opposed to both the reformist and the Leninist ideologies, with their stress on, respectively, parliaments and institutional government (i.e., by applying social reforms), on the one hand, and vanguard parties and participative democratic centralism on the other).
The core principle of council communism is that the government and the economy should be managed by workers' councils composed of delegates elected at workplaces and recallable at any moment. As such, council communists oppose state-run authoritarian "State socialism"/"State capitalism". They also oppose the idea of a "revolutionary party", since council communists believe that a revolution led by a party will necessarily produce a party dictatorship. Council communists support a worker's democracy, which they want to produce through a federation of workers' councils. Council communism (and other types of "anti-authoritarian and Anti-leninist Marxism" such as Autonomism) are often viewed as being similar to Anarchism because they criticize Leninist ideologies for being authoritarian and reject the idea of a vanguard party.
Luxemburgism, based on the writing of Rosa Luxemburg, is an interpretation of Marxism which, while supporting the Russian Revolution, as Luxemburg did, agrees with her criticisms of the politics of Lenin and Trotsky; she did not see their concept of "democratic centralism" as democracy.
The chief tenets of Luxemburgism are commitment to democracy and the necessity of the revolution taking place as soon as possible. In this regard, it is similar to Council Communism, but differs in that, for example, Luxemburgists don't reject elections by principle. It resembles anarchism in its insistence that only relying on the people themselves as opposed to their leaders can avoid an authoritarian society, but differs in that it sees the importance of a revolutionary party, and mainly the centrality of the working class in the revolutionary struggle. It resembles Trotskyism in its opposition to the totalitarianism of Stalinist government while simultaneously avoiding the reformist politics of modern Social Democracy, but differs from Trotskyism in arguing that Lenin and Trotsky also made undemocratic errors.
Luxemburg's idea of democracy, which Stanley Aronowitz calls "generalized democracy in an unarticulated form", represents Luxemburgism's greatest break with "mainstream communism", since it effectively diminishes the role of the Communist Party, but is in fact very similar to the views of Karl Marx ("The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves"). According to Aronowitz, the vagueness of Luxembourgian democracy is one reason for its initial difficulty in gaining widespread support. However, since the fall of the Soviet Union, Luxemburgism has been seen by some socialist thinkers as a way to avoid the totalitarianism of Stalinism. Early on, Luxemburg attacked undemocratic tendencies present in the Russian Revolution.
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In 1992, Juche replaced Marxism-Leninism in the revised North Korean constitution as the official state ideology, this being a response to the Sino-Soviet split. Juche was originally defined as a creative application of Marxism-Leninism, but after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union (North Korea’s greatest economic benefactor), all reference to Marxism-Leninism was dropped in the revised 1998 constitution. The establishment of the Songun doctrine in the mid-1990s has formally designated the military, not the proletariat or working class, as the main revolutionary force in North Korea. All reference to communism had been dropped in the 2009 revised constitution.
According to Kim Jong-il's On the Juche Idea, the application of Juche in state policy entails the following:
- The people must have independence (chajusong) in thought and politics, economic self-sufficiency, and self-reliance in defense.
- Policy must reflect the will and aspirations of the masses and employ them fully in revolution and construction.
- Methods of revolution and construction must be suitable to the situation of the country.
- The most important work of revolution and construction is molding people ideologically as communists and mobilizing them to constructive action.
Prachanda Path refers to the ideological line of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). This thought doesn't make an ideological break with Marxism, Leninism and Maoism but it is an extension of these ideologies totally based on home-ground politics of Nepal. The doctrine came into existence after it was realized that the ideology of Marxism, Leninism and Maoism couldn't be practiced completely as it were done in the past. And an ideology suitable, based on the ground reality of Nepalese politics was adopted by the party.
After five years of armed struggle, the party realized that none of the proletarian revolutions of the past could be carried out on Nepal’s context. So moving further ahead than Marxism, Leninism and Maoism, the party determined its own ideology, Prachanda Path.
Having analyzed the serious challenges and growing changes in the global arena, the party started moving on its own doctrine. Prachanda Path in essence is a different kind of uprising, which can be described as the fusion of a protracted people’s war strategy which was adopted by Mao in China and the Russian model of armed revolution. Most of the Maoist leaders think that the adoption of Prachanda Path after the second national conference is what nudged the party into moving ahead with a clear vision ahead after five years of ‘people’s war’.
Senior Maoist leader Mohan Vaidya alias Kiran says, ‘Just as Marxism was born in Germany, Leninism in Russia and Maoism in China and Prachanda Path is Nepal’s identity of revolution. Just as Marxism has three facets- philosophy, political economy and scientific socialism, Prachanda Path is a combination of all three totally in Nepal’s political context.’ Talking about the party’s philosophy, Maoist chairman Prachanda says, ‘The party considers Prachanda path as an enrichment of Marxism, Leninism and Maoism.’ After the party brought forward its new doctrine, the government was trying to comprehend the new ideology, Prachanda Path.
see also: 'People's Revolution' In Nepal
The dominant forms of communism, such as Leninism, Trotskyism and Maoism, are based on Marxism, but non-Marxist versions of communism (such as Christian communism and anarchist communism) also exist and are growing in importance since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Some of Marx's contemporaries espoused similar ideas, but differed in their views of how to reach to a classless society. Following the split between those associated with Marx and Mikhail Bakunin at the First International, the anarchists formed the International Workers Association. Anarchists argued that capitalism and the state were inseparable and that one could not be abolished without the other. Anarchist-communists such as Peter Kropotkin theorized an immediate transition to one society with no classes. Anarcho-syndicalism became one of the dominant forms of anarchist organization, arguing that labor unions, as opposed to Communist parties, are the organizations that can change society. Consequently, many anarchists have been in opposition to Marxist communism to this day.
Anarchist communists propose that the freest form of social organisation would be a society composed of self-governing communes with collective use of the means of production, organized by direct democracy, and related to other communes through federation. However, some anarchist communists oppose the majoritarian nature of direct democracy, feeling that it can impede individual liberty and favor consensus democracy.
Christian communism is a form of religious communism centered on Christianity. It is a theological and political theory based upon the view that the teachings of Jesus Christ urge Christians to support communism as the ideal social system. Christian communists trace the origins of their practice to teachings in the New Testament, such as this one from Acts of the Apostles at chapter 2 and verses 42, 44, and 45:
42 And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and in fellowship [...] 44 And all that believed were together, and had all things in common; 45 And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need. (King James Version)
Christian communism can be seen as a radical form of Christian socialism. Also, due to the fact that many Christian communists have formed independent stateless communes in the past, there is also a link between Christian communism and Christian anarchism. Christian communists may or may not agree with various parts of Marxism.
Christian communists also share some of the political goals of Marxists, for example replacing capitalism with socialism, which should in turn be followed by communism at a later point in the future. However, Christian communists sometimes disagree with Marxists (and particularly with Leninists) on the way a socialist or communist society should be organized.
Karl Heinrich Marx saw primitive communism as the original, hunter-gatherer state of humankind from which it arose. For Marx, only after humanity was capable of producing surplus, did private property develop.
In the history of Western thought, certain elements of the idea of a society based on common ownership of property can be traced back to ancient times . Examples include the Spartacus slave revolt in Rome. The fifth century Mazdak movement in what is now Iran has been described as "communistic" for challenging the enormous privileges of the noble classes and the clergy, criticizing the institution of private property and for striving for an egalitarian society.
At one time or another, various small communist communities existed, generally under the inspiration of Scripture. In the medieval Christian church, for example, some monastic communities and religious orders shared their land and other property (see religious communism and Christian communism). These groups often believed that concern with private property was a distraction from religious service to God and neighbor.
Communist thought has also been traced back to the work of 16th century English writer Thomas More. In his treatise Utopia (1516), More portrayed a society based on common ownership of property, whose rulers administered it through the application of reason. In the 17th century, communist thought arguably surfaced again in England. In 17th century England, a Puritan religious group known as the Diggers advocated the abolition of private ownership of land. Eduard Bernstein, in his 1895 Cromwell and Communism argued that several groupings in the English Civil War, especially the Diggers espoused clear communistic, agrarian ideals, and that Oliver Cromwell's attitude to these groups was at best ambivalent and often hostile.
Criticism of the idea of private property continued into the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century, through such thinkers as Jean Jacques Rousseau in France. Later, following the upheaval of the French Revolution, communism emerged as a political doctrine. François Noël Babeuf, in particular, espoused the goals of common ownership of land and total economic and political equality among citizens.
Various social reformers in the early 19th century founded communities based on common ownership. But unlike many previous communist communities, they replaced the religious emphasis with a rational and philanthropic basis. Notable among them were Robert Owen, who founded New Harmony in Indiana (1825), and Charles Fourier, whose followers organized other settlements in the United States such as Brook Farm (1841–47). Later in the 19th century, Karl Marx described these social reformers as "utopian socialists" to contrast them with his program of "scientific socialism" (a term coined by Friedrich Engels). Other writers described by Marx as "utopian socialists" included Saint-Simon.
In its modern form, communism grew out of the socialist movement of 19th century Europe. As the Industrial Revolution advanced, socialist critics blamed capitalism for the misery of the proletariat — a new class of urban factory workers who labored under often-hazardous conditions. Foremost among these critics were the German philosopher Karl Marx and his associate Friedrich Engels. In 1848, Marx and Engels offered a new definition of communism and popularized the term in their famous pamphlet The Communist Manifesto. Engels, who lived in Manchester, observed the organization of the Chartist movement (see History of British socialism), while Marx departed from his university comrades to meet the proletariat in France and Germany.
Growth of modern communism
In the late 19th century, Russian Marxism developed a distinct character. The first major figure of Russian Marxism was Georgi Plekhanov. Underlying the work of Plekhanov was the assumption that Russia, less urbanized and industrialized than Western Europe, had many years to go before society would be ready for proletarian revolution to occur, and a transitional period of a bourgeois democratic regime would be required to replace Tsarism with a socialist and later communist society. (EB)
In Russia, the 1917 October Revolution was the first time any party with an avowedly Marxist orientation, in this case the Bolshevik Party, seized state power. The assumption of state power by the Bolsheviks generated a great deal of practical and theoretical debate within the Marxist movement. Marx predicted that socialism and communism would be built upon foundations laid by the most advanced capitalist development. Russia, however, was one of the poorest countries in Europe with an enormous, largely illiterate peasantry and a minority of industrial workers. Marx had explicitly stated that Russia might be able to skip the stage of bourgeoisie capitalism. Other socialists also believed that a Russian revolution could be the precursor of workers' revolutions in the West.
The moderate Mensheviks opposed Lenin's Bolshevik plan for socialist revolution before capitalism was more fully developed. The Bolsheviks' successful rise to power was based upon the slogans "peace, bread, and land" and "All power to the Soviets", slogans which tapped the massive public desire for an end to Russian involvement in the First World War, the peasants' demand for land reform, and popular support for the Soviets.
The usage of the terms "communism" and "socialism" shifted after 1917, when the Bolsheviks changed their name to the Communist Party and installed a single party regime devoted to the implementation of socialist policies under Leninism. The Second International had dissolved in 1916 over national divisions, as the separate national parties that composed it did not maintain a unified front against the war, instead generally supporting their respective nation's role. Lenin thus created the Third International (Comintern) in 1919 and sent the Twenty-one Conditions, which included democratic centralism, to all European socialist parties willing to adhere. In France, for example, the majority of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) party split in 1921 to form the French Section of the Communist International (SFIC). Henceforth, the term "Communism" was applied to the objective of the parties founded under the umbrella of the Comintern. Their program called for the uniting of workers of the world for revolution, which would be followed by the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat as well as the development of a socialist economy. Ultimately, if their program held, there would develop a harmonious classless society, with the withering away of the state.
During the Russian Civil War (1918–1922), the Bolsheviks nationalized all productive property and imposed a policy of war communism, which put factories and railroads under strict government control, collected and rationed food, and introduced some bourgeois management of industry. After three years of war and the 1921 Kronstadt rebellion, Lenin declared the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921, which was to give a "limited place for a limited time to capitalism." The NEP lasted until 1928, when Joseph Stalin achieved party leadership, and the introduction of the first Five Year Plan spelled the end of it. Following the Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks formed in 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), or Soviet Union, from the former Russian Empire.
Following Lenin's democratic centralism, the Communist parties were organized on a hierarchical basis, with active cells of members as the broad base; they were made up only of elite cadres approved by higher members of the party as being reliable and completely subject to party discipline.
After World War II, Communists consolidated power in Eastern Europe, and in 1949, the Communist Party of China (CPC) led by Mao Zedong established the People's Republic of China, which would later follow its own ideological path of Communist development. Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Angola, and Mozambique were among the other countries in the Third World that adopted or imposed a pro-Communist government at some point. Although never formally unified as a single political entity, by the early 1980s almost one-third of the world's population lived in Communist states, including the former Soviet Union and People's Republic of China. By comparison, the British Empire had ruled up to one-quarter of the world's population at its greatest extent.
Communist states such as the Soviet Union and China succeeded in becoming industrial and technological powers, challenging the capitalists' powers in the arms race and space race and military conflicts.
Cold War years
By virtue of the Soviet Union's victory in the Second World War in 1945, the Soviet Army had occupied nations in both Eastern Europe and East Asia; as a result, communism as a movement spread to many new countries. This expansion of communism both in Europe and Asia gave rise to a few different branches of its own, such as Maoism.
Communism had been vastly strengthened by the winning of many new nations into the sphere of Soviet influence and strength in Eastern Europe. Governments modeled on Soviet Communism took power with Soviet assistance in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Romania. A Communist government was also created under Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia, but Tito's independent policies led to the expulsion of Yugoslavia from the Cominform, which had replaced the Comintern. Titoism, a new branch in the world communist movement, was labeled deviationist. Albania also became an independent Communist nation after World War II.
By 1950, the Chinese Communists held all of Mainland China, thus controlling the most populous nation in the world. Other areas where rising Communist strength provoked dissension and in some cases led to actual fighting through conventional and guerrilla warfare include the Korean War, Laos, many nations of the Middle East and Africa, and notably succeeded in the case of the Vietnam War against the military power of the United States and its allies. With varying degrees of success, Communists attempted to unite with nationalist and socialist forces against what they saw as Western imperialism in these poor countries.
Fear of communism
With the exception of the Soviet Union's, China's and the Italian resistance movement's great contribution in World War II, communism was seen as a rival, and a threat to western democracies and capitalism for most of the twentieth century. This rivalry peaked during the Cold War, as the world's two remaining superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, polarized most of the world into two camps of nations (characterized in the West as "The Free World" vs. "Behind the Iron Curtain"); supported the spread of their economic and political systems (capitalism and democracy vs. communism); strengthened their military power, developed new weapon systems and stockpiled nuclear weapons; competed with each other in space exploration; and even fought each other through proxy client nations.
Near the beginning of the Cold War, on February 9, 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin accused 205 Americans working in the State Department of being "card-carrying Communists". The fear of communism in the U.S. spurred aggressive investigations and the red-baiting, blacklisting, jailing and deportation of people suspected of following Communist or other left-wing ideology. Many famous actors and writers were put on a "blacklist" from 1950 to 1954, which meant they would not be hired and would be subject to public disdain.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union
In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union and relaxed central control, in accordance with reform policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). The Soviet Union did not intervene as Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary all abandoned Communist rule by 1990. In 1991, the Soviet Union itself dissolved.
By the beginning of the 21st century, states controlled by Communist parties under a single-party system include the People's Republic of China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, and informally North Korea. Communist parties, or their descendant parties, remain politically important in many countries. President Dimitris Christofias of Cyprus is a member of the Progressive Party of Working People, but the country is not run under single-party rule. In South Africa, the Communist Party is a partner in the ANC-led government. In India, communists lead the governments of three states, with a combined population of more than 115 million. In Nepal, communists hold a majority in the parliament.
The People's Republic of China has reassessed many aspects of the Maoist legacy; and the People's Republic of China, Laos, Vietnam, and, to a far lesser degree, Cuba have reduced state control of the economy in order to stimulate growth. The People's Republic of China runs Special Economic Zones dedicated to market-oriented enterprise, free from central government control. Several other communist states have also attempted to implement market-based reforms, including Vietnam.
Theories within Marxism as to why communism in Eastern Europe was not achieved after socialist revolutions pointed to such elements as the pressure of external capitalist states, the relative backwardness of the societies in which the revolutions occurred, and the emergence of a bureaucratic stratum or class that arrested or diverted the transition press in its own interests. (Scott and Marshall, 2005) Marxist critics of the Soviet Union, most notably Trotsky, referred to the Soviet system, along with other Communist states, as "degenerated" or "deformed workers' states", arguing that the Soviet system fell far short of Marx's communist ideal and he claimed the working class was politically dispossessed. The ruling stratum of the Soviet Union was held to be a bureaucratic caste, but not a new ruling class, despite their political control. Anarchists who adhere to Participatory economics claim that the Soviet Union became dominated by powerful intellectual elites who in a capitalist system crown the proletariat’s labor on behalf of the bourgeoisie.
Non-Marxists, in contrast, have often applied the term to any society ruled by a Communist Party and to any party aspiring to create a society similar to such existing nation-states. In the social sciences, societies ruled by Communist Parties are distinct for their single party control and their socialist economic bases. While some social and political scientists applied the concept of "totalitarianism" to these societies, others identified possibilities for independent political activity within them, and stressed their continued evolution up to the point of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its allies in Eastern Europe during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
A diverse array of writers and political activists have published criticism of communism, such as:
- Soviet bloc dissidents Lech Wałęsa, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Václav Havel;
- Social theorists Hannah Arendt, Raymond Aron, Ralf Dahrendorf, Seymour Martin Lipset, and Karl Wittfogel;
- Economists Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman;
- Historians and social scientists Robert Conquest, Stéphane Courtois, Richard Pipes, and R. J. Rummel;
- Anti-Stalinist leftists Ignazio Silone, George Orwell, Saul Alinsky, Richard Wright, Arthur Koestler, and Bernard-Henri Levy;
- Russian-born novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand
- Philosophers Leszek Kołakowski and Karl Popper.
Part of this criticism is on the policies adopted by one-party states ruled by Communist parties (known as "Communist states"). Critics are specially focused on their economic performance compared to market based economies. Their human rights records are thought to be responsible for the flight of refugees from communist states, and are alleged by some scholars to be responsible for famines, purges and warfare resulting in deaths far in excess of previous empires, capitalist or Axis regimes.
Some writers, such as Courtois, argue that the actions of Communist states were the inevitable (though sometimes unintentional) result of Marxist principles; thus, these authors present the events occurring in those countries, particularly under Stalin and Mao, as an argument against Marxism itself. Some critics were former Marxists, such as Wittfogel, who applied Marx's concept of "Oriental despotism" to Communist states such as the Soviet Union, Silone, Wright and Koestler (among other writers) who contributed essays to the book The God that Failed (the title refers not to the Christian God but to Marxism). Czesław Miłosz, author of the influential essay The Captive Mind, was an example of a sceptic holding a party post, that of cultural attaché.
There have also been more direct criticisms of Marxism, such as criticisms of the labor theory of value or Marx's predictions. Nevertheless, Communist parties outside of the Warsaw Pact, such as the Communist parties in Western Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa, differed greatly.
Economic criticisms of communal and/or government property are described under criticisms of socialism.
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- ^ Crossman, Richard, ed., The God That Failed. Harper & Bros, 1949
- ^ Czeslaw Milosz, Poet and Nobelist Who Wrote of Modern Cruelties, Dies at 93, The New York Times, accessed 3 January 2010.
- Reason in Revolt: Marxism and Modern Science By Alan Woods and Ted Grant
- Forman, James D., "Communism from Marx's Manifesto to 20th century Reality", New York, Watts. 1972. ISBN 978-0-531-02571-0
- Books on Communism, Socialism and Trotskyism
- Furet, Francois, Furet, Deborah Kan (Translator), "The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century", University of Chicago Press, 2000, ISBN 978-0-226-27341-9
- Daniels, Robert Vincent, "A Documentary History of Communism and the World: From Revolution to Collapse", University Press of New England, 1994, ISBN 978-0-87451-678-4
- Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels, "Communist Manifesto", (Mass Market Paperback - REPRINT), Signet Classics, 1998, ISBN 978-0-451-52710-3
- Dirlik, Arif, "Origins of Chinese Communism", Oxford University Press, 1989, ISBN 978-0-19-505454-5
- Beer, Max, "The General History of Socialism and Social Struggles Volumes 1 & 2", New York, Russel and Russel, Inc. 1957
- Adami, Stefano, 'Communism', in Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies, ed. Gaetana Marrone - P.Puppa, Routledge, New York- London, 2006
|Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Communism|
|Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Communism|
|Look up communism in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.|
- European Parliament resolution on European conscience and totalitarianism
- In Defense of Marxism
- Anarchy Archives Includes the works of anarchist communists.
- Libertarian Communist Library
- Marxists Internet Archive
- The Mu Particle in "Communism", a short etymological essay by Wu Ming.
- Open Society Archives, one of the biggest history of communism and cold war archives in the world.
- Islam and Communism
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Date: August 18, 1995
Creator: Riva, Joseph P
Description: Deficient productive capacity has not yet caused an oil crisis, but that does not mean it never will. Significant increases in world oil demand will have to be met primarily from Persian Gulf supplies. This is a region with a history of wars, illegal occupations, soups, revolutions, sabotage, terrorism, and oil embargoes. To these possibilities may be added growing Islamist movements with various antipathies to the West. If oil production were constrained, oil prices could rise abruptly along with adverse world economic repercussions. If the IEA and EIA are correct on the demand side, deficient world oil productive capacity could cause an oil crisis within 15 years and political disruptions in Saudi Arabia could cause one sooner. However, if the increases in world oil demand were more moderate, and there is long-term relative peace in the Middle East, with increasing foreign participation in upstream oil activities, a business as usual world oil demand and supply situation would be a likely scenario for much of the next century.
Contributing Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Date: January 2011
Creator: National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling (U.S.)
Description: On May 22, 2010, President Barack Obama announced the creation of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling: an independent,nonpartisan entity, directed to provide a thorough analysis and impartial judgment. The President charged the Commission to determine the causes of the disaster, and to improve the country’s ability to respond to spills, and to recommend reforms to make offshore energy production safer. This report is the result of an intense six-month effort to fulfill the President’s charge. The Commission’s report offers the President, policymakers, industry, and the American people the fullest account available of the largest oil spill in U.S history: the context for the well itself, how the explosion and spill happened, and how industry and government scrambled to respond to an unprecedented emergency.
Contributing Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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E.J. Campbell High School; Prior to 1903 African American children in Nacogdoches were taught at two different locations by Will Sanders, Peyton Edwards Walton, Sr., and T. C. Ayers. In 1903, the schools were combined and moved to a building on Shawnee Street to create the Nacogdoches Colored School. This building, which is still standing on Shawnee Street, educated African American children of all grades. In 1937, the school board voted to change the name to E.J. Campbell School in honor of a former principal. The building continued to educate all grade levels until 1954 at which time high school students moved into a new building across the street. The high school became known as E.J. Campbell High School and the old building became Emaline Carpenter Elementary School. From 1965 to 1969, NISD offered a “freedom of choice” plan with schools becoming fully integrated in the 1970-71 school year.
This item may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is available for non-commercial research and education. For permission to publish or reproduce, please contact the East Texas Research Center at firstname.lastname@example.org.
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Date of Award
Master of Public Health (MPH)
Dr. Frances McCarty - Chair
Dr. Carol Hoban
Postpartum depression is recognized as an important maternal and child health issue. Postpartum depression is the most common perinatal psychiatric disorder and one of the most common complications of childbirth. Studies show prevalence rates in women ranging from 10% to 25%. Postpartum depression affects the emotional wellbeing of mothers, infant behavior, mother-infant bonding, and marital relationships. However, the majority of women who experience postpartum depression do not seek care. The purpose of this analysis is to examine the demographic differences between women in Georgia who report symptoms of postpartum depression but do not seek care, versus women who report postpartum depression symptoms and seek care. Approximately 15% of respondents in this study reported postpartum depression. Of these women, approximately 80% did not seek care for their symptoms. This analysis found that women with the following characteristics were more likely to not seek care for depression: non-White and Hispanic women; women that were uninsured before their pregnancy; women that had their prenatal care paid for by Medicaid or the Military; and women who did not seek care for depression during their pregnancy. The results of this study may help to guide the implementation of public health interventions among postpartum women in Georgia.
Tennyson, Sarah Elizabeth, "An Analysis of Postpartum Depression and Care Seeking Behaviors in Georgia" (2009). Public Health Theses. Paper 120.
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