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Shipment & Transport-Sea, Air, Rail, Road, Pipeline
The mode of transportation is an important consideration when planning the shipment process. Besides the costs, the urgency of the shipment, the value of the goods being shipped as well as the size and weight of the goods need to be evaluated when determining the form of transportation.
Seaborne trade accounts for about 90% of the global trade, and as per UNCTAD, 1687 million tons (2015 estimate) were carried in around 177.6 million containers (2015 estimate) covering 998 billion ton-miles (2016 estimate).
Because of size or volume, there are several types of cargoes that cannot be or is economically unviable to move by other modes of transport than the sea.
Ocean freight is a less expensive method of shipping goods, but the drawback is a longer transit time. Another benefit for ocean freight is while size and weight may be an issue for air; it is not for ocean freight.
Ocean freight is used quite extensively for the movement of bulk commodities such as agri-products (wheat, maize, soya, etc.), coal, iron ore or for wet bulk products such as crude oil and petroleum. Also, larger, odd-shaped items including engines and propellers may move via this mode as well, depending on how sensitive the delivery time is.
Ocean freight is also a preferred mode of transport for the movement of high volume and heavy cargo such as minerals, metals, ores, steel coils, etc. which would be impossible to move by air freight.
Additionally, businesses are placing more of an emphasis on the environmental impact on shipping. An air freight service emits a higher amount of polluting gases with less space capacity compared to sea freight services which are considered a much greener transportation mode with a higher carrying capacity.
Key benefits of ocean freight include
- Suitable for wide range of products with long lead times
- Large volumes. A single, ultra-large container ship can carry +/-20,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU)
- Most environmental friendly among all modes of transport
- Liner shipping is the most efficient mode of transport for goods
- Extensive coverage around the world
- Multiple carrier options for the shippers
Over the next 15 years, as the world GDP grows, there will be a demand for higher value goods. As per Boeing’s 2016 – 2017 world air cargo forecast, there will be a proportionate growth in the value per ton of total traded goods around the world.
To meet the demand for growth, world air cargo traffic is forecasted to grow an average 4.2 percent per year.
Air freight is a critical mode of transport. It serves markets and supply chains that demand speed. One of greatest examples goes back to 1997 when Apple began innovating on the nitty-gritty details of supply-chain management. Almost immediately upon Steve Jobs’ return. At the time, most computer manufacturers transported products by sea, a far cheaper option than air freight.
Steve Jobs took advantage of the benefit of air freight and used an innovative strategy. He paid $50 million to buy up all the available holiday air freight space to ensure that the company’s new, translucent blue iMacs would be widely available during Christmas season giving them a massive competitive advantage over their rivals. – “It was an ‘Oh s—’ moment,” recalls former HP supply chain chief Mike Fawkes.”
Other industries such as the automotive and retail industry also utilize air freight to achieve ‘just-in-time’ (JIT) inventory replenishment. JIT option allows stores, production lines to place order fulfillment based on demand as, and when required. It provides greater flexibility and reduces inventory and storage costs.
Also, perishable goods such as foods, flowers, and some pharmaceuticals also take advantage of shorter transit time. Another positive for air freight is that there’s less handling of cargo overall, so the likelihood of damage or theft is less likely when utilizing air.
But air freight also has its own disadvantages such as being one of the most expensive due to the requirement of speed and the fuel that is used.
It also has its size and weight limitations. Regulatory bodies limit what can and cannot be transported by air, and as such, oddly shaped or very large items may be more suitable for other modes of transport.
Key benefits of air freight include
- Quick transit
- Less handling of cargo
- Less documentation
- Reliable arrival and departures
- Enhanced level of security for your cargo
Another mode of transport which is also considered a ‘green’ option is rail. Trains burn less fuel per ton-mile than road vehicles and a train, which can have as many than 100 wagons, only needs one driver. There are, however, some additional costs which are incurred in a rail journey: at each end of the rail transit, a road delivery will be needed, and there will be a lift cost to transfer the container between the train and the road vehicle.
On average, longer journeys tend to be less expensive by rail, and shorter journeys are less costly by road. Where the point of cost neutrality comes is governed by many factors which are route and commodity specific, but in general, the point of cost neutrality can be expected to lie in the range of 130 to 150 miles.
In 2015, the first freight train carrying ISO freight containers from China arrived in the Port of Rotterdam in 18 days as against the normal 44 odd days by the sea.
This movement of containerized cargo by rail from China to logistics hubs in Europe such as in the Netherlands, UK is seen as a significant step in the development of trade between the two continents. It has encouraged multinationals such as Hewlett-Packard and Ricoh to use the route from Europe to China for their cargoes.
The Manager of European Transport at Ricoh notes that if one can set up an effective planning, rail is a relatively quick mode of transport taking only 20 days to China. In addition, the move by rail also has some advantages such as all containers being transported to the location in one go, while being environmentally friendly as a train releases far less CO2 than a plane.
Key benefits of rail freight include
- Reliable transit times and schedules
- Railroads are the most efficient form of land transportation. One train can haul the equivalent of over 400 trucks
- Fast and cost-effective deliveries over long distances. Typically over 500 miles
- Traditionally, rail has a strong safety record.
- Helps in alleviating road congestion, thus lowering emissions
Road freight is one of the most common of all modes of transportation. It is widely used in continents such as Europe, Africa, and North America. The single customs document process provides a seamless movement of goods even across various states and countries.
Road freight provides several advantages over other modes of transportation such as
- Quick and scheduled delivery
- Local, over border, long or short haul deliveries even in rural areas
- Flexible service
- Saving in Packing Cost compared to other modes
- Track and trace of cargo and truck
- Complete door-to-door service and it is one of the more economical means of transport.
However, truck transport is limited somewhat as to what it can carry by the size of the vehicles used and by size and weight restrictions. Another limitation is that it is affected by weather, road conditions and traffic.
Pipeline transport is the long-distance transportation of a liquid or gas through a system of pipes—a pipeline—typically to a market area for consumption. The latest data from 2014 gives a total of slightly less than 2,175,000 miles (3,500,000 km) of pipeline in 120 countries of the world. The United States had 65%, Russia had 8%, and Canada had 3%, thus 75% of all pipeline were in these three countries.
Pipeline and Gas Journal’s worldwide survey figures indicate that 118,623 miles (190,905 km) of pipelines are planned and under construction. Of these, 88,976 miles (143,193 km) represent projects in the planning and design phase; 29,647 miles (47,712 km) reflect pipelines in various stages of construction. Liquids and gases are transported in pipelines and any chemically stable substance can be sent through a pipeline. Pipelines exist for the transport of crude and refined petroleum, fuels – such as oil, natural gas and biofuels – and other fluids including sewage, slurry, water, beer, hot water or steam for shorter distances. Pipelines are useful for transporting water for drinking or irrigation over long distances when it needs to move over hills, or where canals or channels are poor choices due to considerations of evaporation, pollution, or environmental impact.
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12. Definition — In this Part, unless the context otherwise requires, “the State” includes the Government and Parliament of India and the Government and the Legislature of each of the States and all local or other authorities within the territory of India or under the control of the Government of India….
Right to Equality
14. Equality before law — The State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India.
15. Prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth — (1) The State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them. (2) No citizen shall, on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them, be subject to any disability, liability, restriction or condition with regard to — (a) access to shops, public restaurants, hotels and places of public entertainment; or (b) the use of wells, tanks, bathing ghats, roads and places of public resort maintained wholly or partly out of State funds or dedicated to the use of the general public. (3) Nothing in this article shall prevent the State from making any special provision for women and children. (4) Nothing in this article or in clause (2) of Article 29 shall prevent the State from making any special provision for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes.
16. Equality of opportunity in matters of public employment — (1) There shall be equality of opportunity for all citizens in matters relating to employment or appointment to any office under the State. (2) No citizen shall, on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, descent, place of birth, residence or any of them, be ineligible for, or discriminated against in respect or, any employment or office under the State….
17. Abolition of Untouchability — “Untouchability” is abolished and its practice in any form is forbidden. The enforcement of any disability arising out of “Untouchability” shall be an offence punishable in accordance with law.
18. Abolition of titles — (1) No title, not being a military or academic distinction, shall be conferred by the State….
Right to Freedom
19. Protection of certain rights regarding freedom of speech, etc. — (1) All citizens shall have the right — (a) to freedom of speech and expression; (b) to assemble peaceably and without arms; (c) to form associations or unions; (d) to move freely throughout the territory of India; (e) to reside and settle in any part of the territory of India; and (f) [removed]; (g) to practice any profession, or to carry on any occupation, trade or business.
…Nothing in sub-clause (a)… (b)… (c)… (d)… (e)… (g)… of Clause (1) shall affect the operation of any existing law, or prevent the State from making any law, in so far as such law imposes reasonable restrictions on the exercise of the right conferred by the said sub-clause in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India….
20. Protection in respect of conviction for offenses — (1) No person shall be convicted of any offence except for violation of a law in force at the time of the commission of the act charged as an offence, nor be subjected to a penalty greater than that which might have been inflicted under the law in force at the time of the commission of the offence. (2) No person shall be prosecuted and punished for the same offence more than once. (3) No person accused of any offence shall be compelled to be a witness against himself.
21. Protection of life and personal liberty — No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law.
22. Protection against arrest and detention in certain cases — (1) No person who is arrested shall be detained in custody without being informed, as soon as may be, of the grounds for such arrest nor shall he be denied the right to consult, and to be defended by, a legal practitioner of his choice. (2) Every person who is arrested and detained in custody shall be produced before the nearest magistrate within a period of twenty-four hours of such arrest excluding the time necessary for the journey from the place of arrest to the court of the magistrate and no such person shall be detained in custody beyond the said period without the authority of a magistrate. (3) Nothing in clauses (1) and (2) shall apply — (a) to any person who for the time being is an enemy alien; or (b) to any person who is arrested or detained under any law providing for preventive detention. (4) No law providing for preventive detention shall authorize the detention of a person for a longer period than three months unless — (a) an Advisory Board consisting of persons who are, or have been, or are qualified to be appointed as, Judges of a High Court has reported before the expiration of the said period of three months that there is in its opinion sufficient cause for such detention;… (5) When any person is detained in pursuance of an order made under any law providing for preventive detention, the authority making the order shall, as soon as may be, communicate to such person the grounds on which the order has been made and shall afford him the earliest opportunity of making a representation against the order. (6) Nothing in clause (5) shall require the authority making any such order as is referred to in that clause to disclose facts which such authority considers to be against the public interest to disclose….
Right Against Exploitation
23. Prohibition of traffic in human beings and forced labor — (1) Traffic in human beings and begar and other similar forms of forced labor are prohibited and any contravention of this provision shall be an offence punishable in accordance with law. (2) Nothing in this article shall prevent the State from imposing compulsory service for public purposes….
24. Prohibition of employment of children in factories, etc. — No child below the age of fourteen years shall be employed to work in any factory or mine or engaged in any other hazardous employment.
Right to Freedom of Religion
25. Freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion —(1) Subject to public order, morality and health and to the other provisions of this Part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practice and propagate religion. (2) Nothing in this article shall affect the operation of any existing law or prevent the State from making any law — (a) regulating or restricting any economic, financial, political or other secular activity which may be associated with religious practice; (b) providing for social welfare and reform or the throwing open of Hindu religious institutions of a public character to all classes and sections of Hindus….
Cultural and Educational Rights
29. Protection of interests of minorities — (1) Any section of the citizens residing in the territory of India or any part thereof having a distinct language, script or culture of its own shall have the right to conserve the same. (2) No citizen shall be denied admission into any educational institution maintained by the State or receiving aid out of State funds on grounds only of religion, race, caste, language or any of them….
34. Restriction on rights conferred by this Part while martial law is in force in any area – ..Parliament may by law indemnify any person in the service of the Union or of a State or any other person in respect of any act done by him in connection with the maintenance or restoration of order in any area within the territory of India where martial law was in force or validate any sentence passed, punishment inflicted, forfeiture ordered or other act done under martial law in such area….
51-A. Fundamental duties — It shall be the duty of every citizen of India — (a) to abide by the Constitution and respect its ideals and institutions, the National Flag and the National Anthem; (b) to cherish and follow the noble ideals which inspired our national struggle for freedom; (c) to uphold and protect the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India; (d) to defend the country and render national service when called upon to do so; (e) to promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people of India transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional diversities; to renounce practice derogatory to the dignity of women; (f) to value and preserve the rich heritage of our composite culture; (g) to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wild life, and to have compassion for living creatures; (h) to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform; (i) to safeguard public property and to abjure violence; (j) to strive towards excellence in all spheres of individual and collective activity so that the nation constantly rises to higher levels of endeavour and achievement.
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Gúthwinë was the sword that belonged to Éomer.
It was borne by him at the Battle of the Hornburg, and presumably at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields and the battle before Morannon.
In Old English, Gúthwinë means "Battle-friend".
Portrayal in adaptationsEdit
The Lord of the Rings film trilogyEdit
In The Two Towers, Gúthwinë is shown as having a fullered blade and both the guard and the pommel were of bronze. The guard was shaped like horses' heads, one on each side of the blade.
The sword slew many orcs in its time, especially Uruks of Isengard, and earned a large reputation as the sword of Rohan.
- ↑ The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter VII: "Helm's Deep"
- ↑ Parma Eldalamberon, Words, Phrases and Passages in Various Tongues in The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
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The robot in the picture above is called YOLO, which stands for “your own living object.” It’s pretty weird looking—not like something you or I would design if someone were to tell us to design a social robot, right? And that’s because YOLO is a robot that was designed by, and for, children. Not adults making the kind of robot that they think kids will want, mind you, but actual children doing the designing from scratch.
Getting children to design a robot was not easy. It took years to take YOLO from concept to physical reality, incorporating considerations for simplicity, cost, and a level of durability that’s compatible with open-ended play. The end result was something completely different, and also something that was very effective at helping kids tell better stories.
Human-centered design of robots can be very challenging, because once you’ve gotten a robot to a point where you’re ready for user testing, the kinds of major changes that you can easily implement are typically pretty minor. On the other hand, if you try and get user input earlier, you’re generally restricted to things like interviews or questionnaires or asking people to look at images or animations, and none of that stuff is very reliable at providing useful feedback in the same way that interaction with a physical robot would be.
When you start talking about children, things get even more difficult, because even those questionnaires don’t work nearly as well as they would with an adult. This is a big problem because social robots are potentially (I would argue) very valuable for children as tools for education and social development. We’re not there with social robots yet, of course, but understanding how to design robots for kids is, if not step one, still one of the things that we need to figure out early.
What’s so cool about YOLO is how unapologetically child-centric the entire process is; there doesn’t seem to be even a little bit of adult going on in that robot. But it took input from 142 children to get to this point. For the humans working on this, YOLO has been quite a journey.
For more details on YOLO and the thought and process behind the design, we spoke with YOLO’s creator, Patrícia Alves-Oliveira.
IEEE Spectrum: What are your general impressions of the current generation of social robots for children?
Patrícia Alves-Oliveira: Social robots seem to be the new generation of toys for children. Toys, in general, are the most important tool in a child’s life because while manipulating them, children learn to explore the world. Toys are the very first tool children use to express their own emotions and thoughts. The way we use tools, and toys in the case of children, can deeply influence and transform how we learn and experience the world. If we think of social robots for children as the new generation of tools, it feels that children can have access to a richer playset which enables them to be stimulated in new ways that traditional toys cannot elicit. Consequently, they can experience the world in richer ways.
What kind of toys are social robots?
Social robots can include robots for play and robots for learning. Robots for play usually take the form of an animal or a doll, and often include human-like features, such as eyes and a mouth. When children use robots for play, they are not only being entertained, but also stimulated. For example, they learn about problem solving, conflict resolution, and social-emotional skills while paying. This is possible because the robot can play back to them, resulting in bi-directional play, or social play. The play does not only depend on the child’s imagination, but also on the relationship that they can build with this artificial embodied system.
By contrast, robots for learning are deliberately designed to teach children something specific. They’re a tangible way of learning about abstract concepts that otherwise would be hard to digest. For example, children can use robots to learn about geometry—perhaps they need to program a robot to make a right angle, so they learn that 90º means a right angle, and that if the robot continues making right turns, it can actually make the shape of a rectangle. These types of robots are generally less animal-like or human-like, and instead have a more practical shape, such as a cube on wheels.
Can you describe what makes YOLO different?
YOLO is a robot whose purpose is to stimulate creativity in children during play. To do this, YOLO uses two techniques called “mirroring” and “contrasting.” These two techniques derive from creativity research and serve to develop convergent and divergent thinking, which are two different types of creative thought that we all have.
When YOLO uses mirroring, it means the robot mimics the same play patterns that children perform while manipulating the robot. So, if children move the robot to the right, YOLO memorizes this movement, and then mimics it. If we imagine what this means within a storytelling context, we can imagine a child moving the robot to the right because “the robot is going to school.” As the robot mimics this movement, the child understands that as a “yes, YOLO is continuing going to school.” The mirroring technique stimulates convergent thinking, related to the elaboration and exploration of details about one single idea.
When YOLO uses contrasting, it means the robot is contrasting the child’s play pattern. Taking the same school example, if a child moves the robot to the right to signal it’s going to school, the robot will then contrast that movement by moving to the left. In the context of storytelling, the child might think “oh, there is something the robot is afraid of in school!” This will shift the story, and children are likely to make a shift in their story narratives. The contrast technique stimulates divergent thinking, as children need to incorporate the novel behavior of the robot in their story in such a way that the story continues to make sense.
Note: the following video is an example of an original story created by a Portuguese child playing with YOLO. To protect the privacy of the child, the story was animated by an artist.
Why is this approach with YOLO valuable?
The value of YOLO lies in its interaction with children. The main idea is that through the interaction between children and YOLO, children’s creative abilities can be stimulated. While this robot uses creativity stimulation techniques, it’s also simple enough for children to play with it as a normal toy. YOLO incorporates both the benefits of social robotics combined with already known benefits of traditional toys. Overall, when creating stories with YOLO, children have more original ideas.
The reason why we were able to create such a robot is because children were involved in the entire design of the robot from the beginning. My major design principle for YOLO was that it can fit a child’s world. The way I accomplished this was to test and test and test YOLO with children until the robot was as natural to use as a toy.
If you had been asked to design a robot to perform YOLO’s function without the input of children, how do you think the robot would be different?
I believe YOLO would be very different. But I also believe that YOLO would be very different if another sample of children was brought in during the design process. My key insight has been that even if the way the robot looks changes, the essence of YOLO’s interactions with children would remain stable. This is because we can keep the key aspects of YOLO’s operation constant, including creativity provocation, open-ended play, ease of use, and abstract non-anthropomorphic design. This means that YOLO can have a different shape and express itself using different physical behaviors, while still using the same creativity techniques.
Why is avoiding anthropomorphism important?
The main reason is that it’s much harder to fulfill expectations if we design a robot that looks like a human, because people will expect the robot to behave as a human, which is never the case due to technological shortcomings. Staying away from designing human-like robots also ended up being a gift in disguise as this opens new spaces when thinking of robots: if not like us, how should a robot look? I think this question is beautiful, and can open doors for many creative and innovative applications of robots.
When you design with children, how do you separate physical robot design, and robot purpose and functionality?
The design of YOLO began with the basic idea of moving a cube around. Many children’s toys have geometric shapes, so I started by building paper cubes using origami techniques. The paper cubes I built were of different sizes, and I asked children to create a story using the cubes as their characters. I then just observed how children as they played with the cubes, and based on their play, I made design decisions about YOLO.
For example, I started noticing that while grabbing the paper cubes, children would grasp the edges of the cube, making the edges round with use. I realized that these edges were not ideal for grasping and so I gave the children a new design with rounded edges. This is when the shape of the robot started being designed.
To design YOLO’s behaviors, I listened to how children told stories while using the paper cubes. They generally attributed specific personality traits to their paper cube characters. One character was grumpy, another was shy, and so on. This led me to think that YOLO should also exhibit personality as a way to engage children in their storytelling, and I started reading about personality research, specifically looking at non-verbal behaviors associated with personality expression. The next step was to translate the personality requirements onto the shape of the robot. For a grumpy personality, YOLO would move fast and with high amplitude movements. For a shy robot, YOLO would move slowly and with low amplitude movements, almost saying “don’t look at me, I am not here!”
A series of images showing different iterations of the YOLO robot, from sketches, to paper models, to designs of different sizes and shapes.Patrícia Alves-Oliveira
How much iteration did it take to arrive at YOLO’s final design?
I refined the robot a lot, changed the shape, the size, and the multimodal expression. I always included children to test every change, and I drew from their behavior as inspiration for the next design iteration. To give an example, at some point YOLO was making abstract sounds as an expressive modality. When children interacted with this prototype version, they completely ignored the sounds and talked on top of the robot, sometimes yelling over it. This indicated hat the sounds of the robot were obstructing their own expression in the story, so sounds were removed, and YOLO is now a silent robot.
Another example was the inclusion of touch as a social feature. When I was testing the first actuated prototype, YOLO would start moving while children were holding it, and the movements of the robot scared children. I remember one child actually said, “the robot does not like me, it wants to go away.” After this testing session, I incorporated a touch sensor in YOLO, so when it recognizes touch, YOLO does not move because a child is holding and playing with it. YOLO starts moving only when the touch sensor does not recognize touch anymore, to ensure that the play of children is not interrupted. This made a huge difference in the flow of the interaction.
Close up images of the YOLO robot showing wheels, a touch sensor, and a forest of small plastic whiskers with LEDs under them growing out of the robot’s headPatrícia Alves-Oliveira
How do you incorporate multiple children (who may feel and want different things) into the design process for a single robot?
I’ve included children from 7-9 years old in the design of YOLO. Within this specific age group, children are in the same developmental stage where they attach abstract concepts to concrete situations and use objects locally present as a tool to learn and understand the world. Although there are differences related to a child’s personality and preferences, the way children use, manipulate, and understand objects is quite similar at this age. This was true also in the context of the robot’s design. Knowing the developmental stage of children helped me choose the activities and materials to use during the design sessions to best define the design requirements for the robot.
While designing YOLO, I faced a question that I think many designers face: When is the robot design finished? It is easy to fall into feature creep and keep adding and adding and adding features. To avoid this, I focused on design principles rather than designing features. The distinction between a principle and a feature is that when you design for a feature, you add or remove the exact option the user is asking for. This can make the design short-sighted.
Take the example of a child getting scared if YOLO started moving while they were holding it. Designing for features would mean removing the ability of the robot to move. However, if we design for principles, we require a deeper understanding of the interaction between the child and the robot. Once we have this, it’s clear that the main problem here was not the robot moving, but the timing of the robot staying still. So the child does not necessarily want a stationary robot; but rather a robot they can have some control over, and instead of removing the navigation possibility, we added a touch sensor that would stop the robot from moving while being held.
Do you think this long process was worthwhile?
Building YOLO, the way I did, was a 4-year journey that enabled me to explore many aspects about how robots can be used to nurture intrinsic human abilities, such as creativity. While I was designing and building YOLO, I faced many questions, such as what does it mean to build a robot for creativity? What methods do I need to develop to successfully include children in the design of the robot? How can I measure the success of using YOLO for creativity stimulation? Being able to answer all of these questions was a valuable part of designing and fabricating YOLO, and I feel that as we answer these questions with a robot like YOLO, we are also contributing to many other fields, such as psychology, design, and engineering more broadly.
A paper detailing the design of YOLO received the best paper award in the design track of the HRI 2021 conference, and you can see Patrícia Alves-Oliveira give a talk about her research here.
Source: IEEE Spectrum
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Metal additive manufacturing (AM) is growing at a fast-paced spurring the world’s current economy. According to the Wohler’s Report metal AM grew nearly 76% from 2012 to 2013. Much of this growth is due to the advancement of metal AM from prototyping applications to part production in aerospace, energy and medical industries. Powder bed fusion is the current market leader in metal additive manufacturing. In this AM technique a high power continuous fiber laser is used to melt layers of powdered metal by scanning the laser over a powder bed, melting the powder and bonding it to a 2D substrate. The use of a continuous fiber laser makes the instrumentation expensive and the scanning requirement, and associated controls of laser spot size, power and velocity, makes the build process very time consuming. Continued growth will require penetration of new markets with new metal AM techniques that address cost and speed of production.
LLNL scientists have developed a new metal additive manufacturing technique that uses diode lasers in conjunction with a programmable mask to generate 2D patterns of energy at the powder surface. The method can produce entire layers in a single laser shot, rather than producing layers spot by spot as is currently done in powder bed fusion methods.
Cost reduction is achieved. Diode lasers cost typically 20 times less than currently used fiber lasers (on a $/W basis).
Scalability is enhanced. Entire layers are produced at one time by using diodes and patterned masks.
Accelerate the production rate of additive manufacturing, especially those of metal systems where the energy input required is highest.
Proof of concept has been achieved at a laboratory scale. Patent protection for a portfolio of intellectual property is being pursued. Published patent application 2014/0252687
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The region Bergisches Land is located in southern part of North-Rhine-Westfalia in Germany. Geologically it belongs to the Rhenish Slate Mountains. Its western border is the river Rhine and on the east side it merges into the so called Sauerland, one of the Central German Uplands. The major part of the area is characterized by a low mountain landscape rich in variety with forests, meadows, hills and V-shaped river valleys. Many of the rivers are dammed up to artificial lakes, which serve either as reservoirs for drinking water or industrial water, or as recreational areas. There are more than 20 artificial lakes in this small region, which is unique in the world. Some of the recreational lakes serve as popular dive sites, but conditions vary widely throughout the year. As the lakes are fed and drained by rivers, which carry or swirl up sediments, conditions seem to depend on weather conditions, flow rates and the water level among other factors. All these may as well influence the overall water quality and biodiversity. In order to monitor these factors our volunteer team will regularly collect corresponding data. As a first step we will focus on water temperature, visibility, water level and easily accessible chemical data as pH-value and nitrate. Furthermore, according to our suggestion that weather conditions may have an influence on current water status, we will list meteorological data as the average air temperature, total precipitation and sunshine hours on a monthly base. We plan to measure more demanding parameters as saprobic index and algae growth in the future as resources hopefully grow. Basically the Project is not limited to a defined number of sites, but as resources are limited we will start with one site, which is the so called Wuppertalsperre.
HOW TO SUBMIT DATA
There are two ways to submit data to the Project Baseline database. You can submit data for existing projects, and you can submit data for projects that are not currently hosted (ad-hoc) in the database.
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The investigation of past cultures of the modern nationstate of France through the study and scientific analysis of material remains (i.e., osteological, artifactual, architectural, etc.).
Related categories 1
Archaeological Guides of France: Great Archeological Sites
Monographs published by the French Ministry of Culture on prehistoric or ancient sites or towns, or describing the ruins of a region. Abstracts online.
Britain and France in Dispute Over Cave Art
From the Telegraph, British claim the French may have exaggerated their age by 18,000 years under official pressure to promote them as the oldest cave paintings in the world.
The Cave of Lascaux
The French Ministry of Culture provides a virtual tour of this famous Paleolithic cave with text links on its history and artwork.
Cave Reveals Spectacular Secrets
From the BBC, French archaeologists find a cave in the Dordogne covered with drawings which they think are almost 30,000 years old.
An illustrated art-historical analysis of coins of the Coriosolites of Brittany by John Hooker, based on the La Marquanderie hoard from Jersey. Maps of hoard discoveries and mint zones.
History of its discovery, and pictures of the finds, and the scientific research
The French Ministry of Culture describes a Paleolithic art gallery in a cave that can be accessed only through a 175-meter tunnel beneath sea level. Photographs of the animal drawings and hand stencils that decorate it.
Excavations at Colletière
The French Ministry of Culture describes the 'farmer-knights' who settled c.1010 CE on the wooded shores of Paladru lake and the techniques that have uncovered the evidence for them.
France Cave Paintings & Rock Art Archive
Provides photographs and information on the cave paintings of southern France.
Lascaux Cave Paintings and Location
Photographs and information on what may be the most beautiful Paleolithic painted cave in the world.
Saint-Denis: A Town of the Middle Ages
Maps and 3D images, objects, a slide show, games, animations and educational materials reveal the city's portrait and its shape as it changed over time. Includes details of the town's archaeological unit and its work.
Dietler Discovers Statue in France that Reflects an Etruscan Influence
From the Chronicle, life-sized statue of a warrior discovered in southern France reflects a stronger cultural influence for the Etruscan civilization throughout the western Mediterranean region than previously appreciated. (February 19, 2004)
Archaeologists Trace early Britons in Brittany
The Oxford University Gazette reports that excavations at Le Yaudet under Profs. Barry Cunliffe and Patrick Galliou suggest that Britons fled there from the West Country. (December 11, 1997)
Other languages 2
Last update:January 3, 2015 at 13:35:10 UTC
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Agreement On Food Safety
International trade rules continue to change as they adapt to the global economy. Rights and obligations under international trade agreements have challenged the balance of food security, food regulation and trade flows. Article 20 of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) allows governments to act in trade to protect the life or health of humans, animals or plants, unless they discriminate or use it as protectionism in disguise. In addition, two specific WTO agreements deal with food safety and animal and plant health and safety, as well as product standards in general. Both are trying to figure out how to respond to the need to apply standards while avoiding disguised protectionism. These issues are increasingly important due to falling customs barriers, with some comparing them to the sea rocks that occur at low tide. In both cases, it is less likely that a country, when applying international standards, will be legally challenged in the WTO than if it sets its own standards. The agreement still allows countries to apply different standards and different methods of product inspection. So how can an exporting country be sure that the practices it applies to its products are acceptable in an importing country? If an exporting country can demonstrate that the measures it applies to its exports achieve the same level of human health protection as in the importing country, the importing country is expected to accept the standards and methods of the exporting country.
The Agreement contains provisions on control, inspection and authorisation procedures. Governments should inform new or amended sanitary and phytosanitary legislation in advance and establish a national information body providing information. The agreement complements the agreement on technical barriers to trade. The evaluation of the implementation of the HACCP system in contract catering companies and the evaluation of the knowledge, attitudes and practices of grocers were the main objectives of this study. It was carried out in 20 companies throughout Spain, with a visual inspection of the establishments and activities of grocers, as well as the distribution of a self-managing questionnaire among the 105 participating catering workers. In addition, samples of finished surfaces and tableware were taken from each kitchen for microbiological evaluation. The results of the questionnaires reflect a broad knowledge and correct behaviour of respondents with an average or higher level of education, stability in the same workplace and more responsible positions. However, the observation of hygiene practices revealed systematic errors in 60% of the kitchens. Most of the variations observed were related to lack of HACCP training and information, temperature of finished dishes, storage areas, and proper cleaning and disinfection. In summary, this study confirms the inherent difficulties of the restoration company in the effective implementation of the HACCP system, such as. B the lack of well-trained staff, the lack of motivation or responsibility of workers in this system and the lack of financial and economic resources to remedy the shortcomings of the establishments.
Specific education programmes and grants are needed for proper implementation of HACCP in this sector. The agreement also contains a code of conduct for governments and non-governmental or industrial organizations for the preparation, adoption and implementation of voluntary standards. More than 200 standards bodies apply the code. Strengthening intra-African agricultural trade is an opportunity to both boost economic growth and improve access to safe and nutritious food across borders. . . .
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Many good novels in the past have had films produced about their storyline. However, producers often modify the plot, change the characters and introduce new events and ideas to try and make the film more appealing to viewers. As a result the novel Goodnight Mr Tom by Michelle Magorian has been reproduced in the 1998 classic called Good Night Mr Tom starring John Thaw and Nick Robinson. This essay will explore the differences between the book and the film as well as focussing on whether the film has captured the characters of Tom and Will representing them as the novel intended.
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The novel Goodnight Mr Tom by Michelle Magorian is set in Little Weirworld a small town near London, England. The novel was set during World War Two while The Blitz was occurring. This was where the Germans were bombing London, and everyone was instructed to erect black out curtains. Both the novel and film portrays the story of a young boy called William Beech who is sent to live with an old man called Tom Oakley.
In the novel William is depicted as a shy, troubled, young boy, around the age of 9, who is beaten by his abusive, single mother. His mother believes he is a selfish boy. William does not talk much and has been taught to never ask questions. He is “assigned” to old Mr Tom Oakley, a tough widower who lost his young wife and small son many years ago. William finds it difficult at first to communicate and live in the village with many strangers. “No one had ever said they liked him. He had always excepted no one did.”(Chap 6) He vomits from excitement and wets the bed nightly, often fearful he would be in trouble. Mr Tom struggles to reach out to poor Willie, realising he has never been taught to read and write. Tom soon discovered that William is a very talented artist who loves to draw. As William feels more comfortable he meets a friend at the post office named Zacharias Wrench, eventually with other friends they form a group where they come together and write a newspaper. Gradually Mr. Tom’s kindness and encouragement rises above Willie’s fears, and he becomes a happy, normal boy who loves his carer and friend dearly.
In the film the character of William is very similar to the novels portrayal, although he doesn’t seem as weak or frightened. Both the film and the novel allow the readers or viewers to witness the immense changes in William in the way he acts compared to the beginning of the film or novel. Novels are able to explain what goes on in a character’s mind, but films often only show what can be seen and heard, thus we learn about William from the novel than the film. However even though the film did not describe William as much, it gives a fair representation of the character William.
The relationship between Mr Tom and William is central to the film and the novel. However, the limited time frame of the film does not allow for this relationship to be presented with as much detail as the novel. Mr. Tom has a reputation for being unkind and harsh, but the reader soon learns he is withdrawn because he is grieving for his deceased wife and child. While Mr Tom is a stern, old, grumpy man at first, he turns into a lovely, caring man with feelings for his new found child and friend William. Chapter one describes Mr Tom as “Well into his sixties, a healthy, robust, stockily built man with a head of thick white hair.” Mr. Tom always let William be himself, loved him for who he was, and tried desperately to communicate this to him. Mr Tom lives alone in a small house, loves to garden and has a dog called Sam. When William first arrives at his new house, afraid of the barking dog Will attempts to beat Sam. Mr Tom grabs the stick and stops him. Will had been taught that dogs were the devil. Mr Tom struggles to reach out to poor Willie, giving him his first birthday party, taking him fishing and encouraging him to draw. Together they form a trusted friendship enough for Mr Tom to rescue him from London during the bombing. While Mr Tom has been very good for William, this has enabled Mr Tom to also move on and heal from his past loss.
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While the film captures the nicer side of Tom it doesn’t give a fair representation of his tougher side. Both the film and the novel give minimal insight into his past family relationships. The film shows Mr Tom being sad and visiting the grave of his Wife and Son every morning, thus capturing his loneliness and grief, this has been shown better in the film than the novel. While the novel can’t describe everything it does capture the characters feelings, whereas the film can’t include everything in the short space of viewing time. However the film shows good visual representations of Tom an William
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In January we began a survey of the history of American orchestral music with George Bristow, born in 1825. Now in December we end 2016 with two composers who lived into the 1940s, wrapping up an American century with Frederick Shepherd Converse and Carl Busch, representing American music as well as any other two.
New Englander Converse could be a model for the American composer at that time. The son of a wealthy businessman, his musical gifts overrode his father’s desire for him to join the business. He studied composition with John Knowles Paine and George W. Chadwick, then went to Munich and studied with Chadwick’s teacher Joseph Rheinberger. Returning to the States, he taught at Boston’s New England Conservatory of Music (Chadwick having in the meantime become its director), then at Harvard. But after only eight years total of teaching, Converse left academia to compose full-time.
He wrote choral and orchestral works, as well as operas. The Irish-themed The Pipe of Desire was the first opera by a native-born American to see the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. The small Serenade for strings was followed by his grand tone poem, The Mystic Trumpeter, which was based on Walt Whitman, and premiered by the young Philadelphia Orchestra in 1904.
Along with The Mystic Trumpeter, his much later Flivver Ten Million has become his most-played orchestral work. Flivver humorously celebrates the ten-millionth Ford Model T to roll off the conveyor belt. Converse said he wondered “what Mark Twain would have done with such a theme if he had been a musician.”
The Danish composer and violinist Carl Busch studied in Brussels and Paris, and at 25 was invited to Kansas City, Missouri by the Danish consulate there. He formed a string quartet, came to the United States, and stayed. He became the leading musician in Kansas City, directing the Philharmonic Choral Society and the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra.
Busch fell in love with American Western and Native American cultures. Many of his works use home-grown melodies, including, in his Four North American Legends, Chippewa tunes. The so-called Indianist Movement in music, though a short-lived phase, grew out of the urge to find unique American folk elements from which to craft an American classical music. The irony that Americans were partly spurred on in this quest by foreigners has not been lost. Antonin Dvorak famously wrote the very thing in the 1890s while here, and the Danish-American Carl Busch was one of those who led the way.
Discoveries from the Fleisher Collection, Saturday, December 3rd, 5 to 6 pm, with hosts Kile Smith and Jack Moore.
Frederick Shepherd Converse (1871-1940). Serenade (c.1903)
Converse. The Mystic Trumpeter (1904)
Carl Busch (1862-1943). Omaha Indian Love Song; Chippewa Lullaby, from Four North American Legends (1918)
Busch. Elegie (1899)
Converse. Flivver Ten Million (1926)
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Wednesday, October 13, 2010
SEEDS OF CHANGE- JEN CULLERTON JOHNSON
"Those trees you are cutting down today were not planted by you but by those who came before. You must plant trees that will benefit the community to come, like a seedling with sun, good soil, and abundant rain, the roots of our future will bury themselves in the ground and a canopy of hope will reach the sky."
SEEDS OF CHANGE is the biography of Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai. Maathai grew up in Kenya and attended college in the United States. When she returned to Kenya, Matthai was deeply saddened by the deforestation of her country. She started the Greenbelt Movement, a group which restored the Kenyan countryside by planting over thirty million trees. Matthai was a groundbreaker many times over-- when she was growing up, not many girls went to school, or continued on to college, or became university professors. At one point, she was even jailed by corrupt politicians more concerned about profits than reforestation. This is a well-told story with gorgeous, vibrant, richly illustrations (by artist Sonia Lynn Sadler) that beg to be closely examined.
I could use this book in a hundred ways. Our second graders are doing a science unit on trees and plants right now. Almost every day, a very serious seven-year-old reminds me that I should not cut down any trees because they give oxygen to the earth. I'll start by giving the book to them this morning. Our third graders are working on ecosystems and this book would be perfect for that unit. It's also a great biography. Or would be perfect in a unit on courage. Or change. Or the power of the individual. Or it might be fun to look for other books about Nobel Peace Prize winners and string them together. And then there are those illustrations, that just beg to be studied and imitated…
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Japan is set to be nuclear power-free, for just the third time in more than four decades, and with no firm date for re-starting an energy source that has provided about 30 percent of electricity to the world’s third-largest economy.
>Kansai Electric Power Co’s 1,180 MW Ohi No.4 reactor is scheduled to be disconnected from the power grid late on Sunday and then shut for planned maintenance. It is the only one of Japan’s 50 reactors in operation after the nuclear industry came to a virtual halt following the March 2011 Fukushima disaster.
Japan last went without nuclear power in May-June 2012 – the first shutdown since 1970 – a year after a massive earthquake and tsunami triggered reactor meltdowns and radiation leaks at the Fukushima facility. The country’s nuclear reactors provided close to a third of the electricity to keep the $5 trillion economy going before the Fukushima disaster, and utilities have had to spend billions of dollars importing oil, gas and coal to make up for the shortfall. […]
Japan consumes about a third of the world’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) production, and will likely boost LNG demand to record levels over the next couple of years. LNG imports rose 4.4 percent in volume to a record 86.87 million tonnes, and 14.9 percent in value to a record 6.21 trillion yen ($62.1 billion) in the year through March.
Imports are likely to rise to around 88 million tonnes this year and around 90 million tonnes in the year to March 2015, according to projections by the Institute of Energy Economics Japan based on a mid-scenario that 16 reactors will be back on-line by March 2015.<
See on www.scientificamerican.com
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Modern humans crowded out Europes Neanderthals
Scientists have long debated what caused the Neanderthals to die off rather suddenly, making way for the thriving population of more advanced Homo sapiens who likely moved in from Africa.
The latest theory, published in the journal Science, is based on a statistical analysis of artifacts and evidence from the Perigord region of southern France, where lies the largest concentration of Neanderthal and early modern human sites in Europe.
Researchers at the University of Cambridge found more sites where modern humans settled, larger settlement areas, greater densities of tools and bigger amounts of animal and food remains, suggesting Neanderthals were crowded out.
Homo sapiens also likely had more elaborate social networks and possibly sharper brains, as evidenced by the stone tools, jewelry and artwork they left behind which was much more advanced than Neanderthal creations.
Their arrival in such large numbers likely forced Neanderthals from their habitual settlements and into places where food and shelter were harder to find, said lead author Paul Mellars of Cambridge University.
“It was clearly this range of new technological and behavioral innovations which allowed the modern human populations to invade and survive in much larger population numbers than those of the preceding Neanderthals across the whole of the European continent,” he said.
“Faced with this kind of competition, the Neanderthals seem to have retreated initially into more marginal and less attractive regions of the continent.”
The last traces of Neanderthals, who had survived on the continent for some 300,000 years, have been uncovered in caves in modern-day Spain and Gibraltar.
Mellars suggested a final death blow may have been delivered by a harsh cold snap, a theory that has been debated in the scientific community for many years.
The Neanderthals’ extinction may have been “accelerated further by sudden climatic deterioration across the continent around 40,000 years ago,” he said.
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USGS Groundwater Information
Groundwater Resources Program
New & Noteworthy
Press Release: High Plains Aquifer Groundwater Levels Continue to Decline
USGS Groundwater Watch
USGS maintains a network of active wells to provide basic statistics about groundwater levels.
Other Water Topics
USGS in Your State
USGS Water Science Centers are located in each state.
Recession-Curve Displacement Method for Estimating Groundwater Recharge In Humid Regions
References for the Recession-Curve Displacement Method
Bevans, H.E., 1986, Estimating stream-aquifer interactions in coal areas of eastern Kansas by using streamflow records, in Subitzky, Seymour, ed., Selected papers in the Hydrologic Sciences: U.S. Geological Survey Water-Supply Paper 2290, p. 51-64.
Chen, W.P., and Lee, C.H., 2003, Estimating ground-water recharge from streamflow records: Environmental Geology, vol 44., p. 257-265.
Coes, A.L., Spruill, T.B., and Thomasson, M.J., 2007, Comparison of recharge rates estimated from multiple methods for a shallow unconfined aquifer: Hydrogeology Journal, accessed online Feb 7, 2007 at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10040-006-0123-3
Daniel, J.F., 1976, Estimating groundwater evapotranspiration from streamflow records: Water Resources Research, v. 12, no. 3 p. 360-364.
Delin, G.N., Healy, R.W., Lorenz, D.L., and Nimmo, J.R., 2007, Comparison of local- to regional-scale estimates of ground-water recharge in Minnesota, USA: Journal of Hydrology, vol. 334, no. 1-2, p.231-249.
Dumouchelle, D.H., and Schiefer, M.C., 2002, Use of streamflow records and basin characteristics to estimate ground-water recharge rates in Ohio: Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources, Division of Water, Bulletin 46, 32 p.
Flynn, R.H., and Tasker, G.D., 2004, Generalized estimates from streamflow data of annual and seasonal ground-water-recharge rates for drainage basins in New Hampshire: U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2004-5019 27 p.
Glover, R. E., 1964, Ground-water movement: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Engineering Monograph Series no. 31, p. 31-34.
Halford, K.J., and Mayer, G.C., 2000, Problems associated with estimating ground water discharge and recharge from stream-discharge records: Ground Water, vol. 38, no. 3, p. 331-342.
Lorenz, D.W., and Delin, G.N., A regression model to estimate regional ground-water recharge in Minnesota: Ground Water Vol 45, no. 2, p 196-208.
Mau, D.P., and Winter, T.C., 1996, Estimating ground-water recharge from streamflow hydrographs from a small mountain watershed in a temperate humid climate, New Hampshire, USA: Ground Water, vol. 35, no. 2, p. 291-304.
Risser, D.W., Conger, R.W., Ulrich, J.E., and Asmussen, M.P., 2005a, Estimates of ground-water recharge based on streamflow-hydrograph methods: Pennsylvania: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2005-1333, 30 p.
Risser, D.W., Gburek, W.J., and Folmar, G.J., 2005b, Comparison of methods for estimating ground-water recharge and base flow at a small watershed underlain by fractured bedrock in the eastern United States: U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2005-5038, 31 p.
Rorabaugh, M.I., 1960, Use of water levels in estimating aquifer constants in a finite aquifer: International Association of Scientific Hydrology, Publication 52, p. 314-323
Rorabaugh, M.I., 1964, Estimating changes in bank storage and ground-water contribution to streamflow: International Association of Scientific Hydrology, Publication 63, p. 432-441.
Rorabaugh, M.I. and Simons, W.D., 1966, Exploration of methods relating ground water to surface water, Columbia River basin – second phase: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report, 62 p.
Ruhl, J.F., Kanivetsky, Roman, Shmagin, Boris, 2002, Estimates of recharge to unconfined aquifers and leakage to confined aquifers in the seven-county metropolitan area of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S. Geological Survey Water-Resources Investigations Report 02-4092, 32 p.
Rutledge, A.T., 1997, Model estimated ground-water recharge and hydrograph of ground-water discharge to a stream: U.S. Geol. Survey Water Resources Investigations Report 97-4253, 29 p.
Rutledge, A.T., 1998, Computer programs for describing the recession of ground-water discharge and for estimating mean ground-water recharge and discharge from streamflow data – update: U.S. Geological Survey Water-Resources Investigations Report 98-4148, 43 p.
Rutledge, A.T., 2000, Considerations for use of the RORA program to estimate ground-water recharge from streamflow records: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 00-156, 44 p.
Rutledge, A.T., 2002, User guide for the PULSE program: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 02-455, p. 34.
Rutledge, A.T., 2004, Use of RORA for complex ground-water flow conditions: U.S. Geological Survey Water-Resources Investigations Report 2003-4304, 5 p.
Rutledge, A.T. and Mesko, T.O., 1996, Estimated hydrologic characteristics of shallow aquifer systems in the Valley and Ridge, the Blue Ridge, and the Piedmont physiographic provinces based on analysis of streamflow recession and base flow: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1422-B, 58 p.
Sun, Honging, 2004, Estimating the fate of precipitation from stream discharge: A case study in New Jersey: Bulletin New Jersey Academy of Science, vol 49, no. 2, p. 9-15.
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We all know the human heart helps pump blood throughout our bodies, but there are some components involved in the heart that most people don’t know about. The more we learn about something, the better we can understand. The University of Tokyo created a virtual simulation of the heart and its function.
Using something called the Finite Element Method, they showed the amount of energy consumed in each part of the heart. The virtual representation viewed the heart’s surface and the differences in thickness of the heart’s muscle and interior structure. It goes on to explain how the heart has two sides, in which the right side has the right atrium and ventricle that connect to the pulmonary artery. The left side has the an atrium and ventricle as well but is connected to the aorta.
Located between the left atrium and ventricle is the mitral valve, and aortic valve is located between the left ventricle and the aorta. The lungs give oxygen to the blood which goes from the pulmonary vein into the heart then to the left atrium. The left ventricle, found behind the mitral valve, pumps blood and rotates it 180 degrees in the direction of the aortic valve. Oxygen and nutrients are carried throughout the body when blood is strongly pushed toward the aortic valve and eventually goes through the aorta. The phrase blood pressure comes from the pressure of the aorta. A person’s blood pressure goes up as the heart contracts and goes down as it relaxes.
The more we understand the heart, then the better doctors can more accurately predict a patient’s results. Devices like an ambulatory cardiac monitor help doctors assist patients in regards to their heart’s activity and increase patient’s chances of avoiding any serious heart issues. For more information on ambulatory cardiac monitors, contact Medicomp at (800) 23-HEART.
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It is frequently cited that more than half of us now live in cities. But it might come as more of a surprise to learn that the largest 300 cities, from New York to Guangzhou, account for nearly half (48%) of world economic output ... yet contain only 19% of world population.
Some cities are so powerful economically that they dwarf the rest of their country. The number of jobs they house and GDP they generate can account for almost half of their nations' output, if not more. They are no longer just cities: they are approaching the status of city-state.
London, for example, produces more than 30% of Britain's entire GDP. Neither is it the most extreme example: it is just 30th on our list of cities that most dominate their countries (see below).
The ranking is led by the "classic" city-states – Luxembourg, Macau, Hong Kong, Singapore, places where the city essentially is the country. But look at Brussels (59% of national GDP), Copenhagen (55%) or Tel Aviv (54%). Is it time we start calling them city-states, too?
(Note that in a small number of cases, the metro area boundaries extend beyond country borders. This explains why the GDP and employment of Luxembourg City actually exceed those of Luxembourg country. You could almost say Luxembourg country is a "state-city". More detail here [pdf].)
What's more, even the smaller cities may be on their way toward city-statehood: according to Brookings' Global Metro Monitor, between 2011-12 most cities in the world grew faster than their countries, either in jobs or GDP.
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At the start of the 20th century:
Lawrence produced nearly 25% of all the woolen cloth in the U.S.
65% of manufacturing output, 67% of all the capital invested, and 66% of expenditures for material were from woolen mills.
52% of the city’s wages came from the woolen mills.
“…there are two very desirable luxuries in the city of Lawrence, Mass., among the mill operatives, that is, molasses on their bread and water.”
— Lawrence city official testifying at the March 1912 Congressional hearings on the strike
At the time of the strike half of the workers in the four Lawrence mills of the American Woolen Company were girls between 14 and 18.
Spinners worked in extremely damp and humid rooms and were vulnerable to tuberculosis and pneumonia. In the years before the 1912 strike, one third of Lawrence’s spinners would die before they had worked ten years. According to Dr. Elizabeth Shapleigh, a Lawrence physician at the time of the strike, “A considerable number of the boys and girls die within the first two or three years after beginning work.” Thirty-six of every 100 of all men and women who work in the mills die before or by the time they are 25 years of age.
From the U. S. Immigration Commission (1912): “Thus while probably not over half of the present population is foreign born, only 1/7 of the population is American; that is either not of foreign birth or immediate foreign parentage. The result of this changed situation, due to sixty years of continuous immigration, is both favorable and unfavorable to the assimilation of the immigrant population… The presence of a large semi-Americanized foreign population makes it less and less certain that the newly arrived stranger will be brought into direct contact with American influences and traditions…”
In 1910, 65% of mill workers, most of whom eventually struck, lived in the United States less than 10 years; 47% less than five years. The New England Magazine crudely referred to recent immigrants as “the off-scourings of Southern Europe” who “will not be assimilated and have no sympathy with our institutions.”
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The ease of doing business rankings for 2017 was recently released by the World Bank. It revealed that India has made a rank progress over 2016. That looks pale in front of the 12 ranks progress made in 2016.
The ease of doing business is a composite ranking on 10 parameters (shown in the table below). Though India has improved on the overall rank, its rank has gone down on certain parameters like starting a new business, dealing with construction permits and getting credit, where as it has gone up significantly on certain others like getting electricity and enforcing contracts.
It is to be noted here that India’s absolute performance (as measured in Distance to Frontier or DTF score) has risen across all the parameters (except three where it has remained the same). It’s the other countries who have done better and gone up in the ranking list.
It’s a competitive world and simply doing good is not good enough, a country has to do better than others in order to improve its rank.
World Bank Methodology
Economies are ranked on their ease of doing business, from 1–190. A high ease of doing business ranking means the regulatory environment is more conducive to the starting and operation of a local firm. The rankings are determined by sorting the aggregate distance to frontier scores on 10 topics, each consisting of several indicators, giving equal weight to each topic. The rankings for all economies are benchmarked to June 2016. Read the methodology, explaining how the ease of doing business rankings and the distance to frontier measure are calculated (PDF).
The distance to frontier score helps assess the absolute level of regulatory performance over time. It measures the distance of each economy to the “frontier,” which represents the best performance observed on each of the indicators across all economies in the Doing Business sample since 2005. One can both see the gap between a particular economy’s performance and the best performance at any point in time and assess the absolute change in the economy’s regulatory environment over time as measured by Doing Business. An economy’s distance to frontier is reflected on a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 represents the lowest performance and 100 represent the frontier. For example, a score of 75 in 2016 means an economy was 25 percentage points away from the frontier constructed from the best performances across all economies and across time. A score of 80 in 2017 would indicate the economy is improving. Source – http://www.doingbusiness.org/ /rankings.
India’s Distance to Frontier score on most of the parameters have improved over the last one year.
The road ahead for India – Maximum Governance Analysis
The ease of doing business rank is going to be a key indicator of India’s ability to turn around the various initiatives to its advantage. Many of the key reforms started during the last one decade have evolved. Coupled with massive policy reforms undertaken by the current government, their effects shall come in the next few years. We believe that the cumulative effect of policy reforms, initiatives and capacity building for implementing them shall bring a big impact by 2018 and significantly improve our ease of doing business for 2019 (to be released in 2018). That in a way may serve as a holistic report card for the current government’s ability to help boost economy by building the right environment before the general elections of 2019.
Though there are multiple initiatives and reforms undertaken by the Government, we discuss here three domains of focus for improving India’s ease of doing business rank:
1. A huge opportunity remains in the areas of ‘enforcing contracts’ and ‘resolving insolvency’, both of which fall in the domain of Judiciary. A strong reform measure needs to be taken to bring down the cost of litigation and time taken for judgment and enhance the rate of recovery. India’s current DTF score on both the parameters is in the 30s and offers a big room for improvement. Government recently passed THE INSOLVENCY AND BANKRUPTCY CODE, 2016, which shall help improve the condition.
2. The second area needing great attention is that of ‘dealing with construction permits’, a domain of civic bodies. A large number of processes need to be completed (43 in Mumbai and 29 in Delhi) to get clearance for using physical sites for offices, warehouses, godowns etc. It requires simplification by reducing the number of processes and enhancing the speed of delivery.
3. The third area of big leverage is the ‘paying taxes’ domain. We believe with GST becoming a reality, the number of indirect taxes shall drastically reduce making it a lot simpler. The government is also planning to offer the businesses easier and convenient ways to pay GST.
As discussed in the article Unified Digital Identity for Ease of Doing Business, a big push to ease of doing business can be achieved by giving one single identity to the business entity. Rather than interacting with multiple departments of the government with multiple identities (as many numbers and passwords), can there be a single window, which allows to complete all the formalities of starting and running a business. The case of Singapore CorpPass is a great example. Even in India, the work has begin towards that end with Income Tax integrating with TDS portal and Ministry of Labour and Employment issuing one unique Labour Identity Number (LIN) to comply with as many as 44 regulations related to the work force. Another level of integration at the higher level may be required and add immensely to ease of doing business.
Last but never the least is the need for greater speed and agility in rolling out these reforms. As highlighted at the beginning of the article, it’s the relative progress vis-à-vis other countries that matters.
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They may be small but these mighty berries has a lot to offer.
Here’s the list of their mighty benefits:
1.They Fight Against Diseases
Both wild and cultivated blueberries has the highest total of antioxidant capacity. Antioxidants fight disease-inducing free radicals in our body.
2.Helps in Reducing Weight
Blueberry intake affected genes linked to fat burning and storage.
3.Prevents High Blood Pressure
The Blue- Red pigments found in Blueberries which are called “Anthocyanins” helps prevent high blood pressure by lowering the triglycerides and cholesterol level in the body.
4.Aids in Memory Retention
The good thing about Anthocyanins in blueberries is that, they not only helps prevent high blood pressure, but anthocyanins also increases neuronal signalling in brain centres for better memory retention.
5.Lowers your risk of Having Cancer
Pterostilbene, a compound in blueberries has the ability to suppress colon tumour growth, as well as key inflammatory markers.
6.Protects your Kidneys and Urinary Bladder
Like cranberries, blueberries contains compounds that prevents bacteria from adhering to bladder walls, which helps remove Urinary Tract Infections. (UTI)
Source: Better Health Publishing
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This is ‘What If’
and here’s how you can survive as the last person on earth.
So, you wake up one day
and find that you’re the only person left in the world.
Kind of cool, right?
No obligations, no rules, no limits.
没有了责任 没有了规则 没有了限制
Go for the exotic fruits first.
If your mangos and bananas are imported from overseas,
chances are they’ll be hard to come by.
So eat them while you can, and enjoy every last bite.
You might think that with no one stopping you,
you could go anywhere!
But not so fast!
All those abandoned cars, boats, and planes you see lying around
will be useless in about 2 years when their fuel goes stale.
Guess you’ll be sticking around. But for how long?
If water, food, and shelter are your basic needs,
shelter would be the easiest to come by.
You’d literally have a world of homes to choose from!
But be careful where you settle down.
Cities would become dangerous, since without proper maintenance,
they’d start to fall apart pretty quickly.
Nature’s elements: rain, frost, and heat, would take their toll.
Rot and mold would become widespread,
and vegetation would crack through concrete and break through glass.
But even if you were able to fight back against nature’s reclamation of the land,
all it takes is one bolt of lightning to start a city-wide fire.
And you can’t call the fire department. So run for the hills!
But even the country isn’t all that safe.
First of all, there are predators you’d need to defend against.
Wild dogs, feral cats… bears…
野狗 野猫 熊……
But you’d only have to worry about them as long as you could still breathe.
There are more than 400 nuclear power plants in the world.
And once their automated safety systems
began to fail without human supervision,
there would be meltdowns across the planet,
rendering many regions simply uninhabitable.
In terms of food, the city would be your best bet.
Supermarkets have enough canned and frozen food to last you for decades!
Whereas in the country, crops and livestock would start to dwindle
without proper care or protection from predators.
But if natural is more your style,
you’d have to go back to the old ways of hunting with a spear or a bow,
since ammunition would be limited and harder to come by.
Maybe you could grow your own little vegetable garden,
but that would cut into your water resources.
Without other humans, you’d be without electricity.
Water pumping stations and treatment works would shut down,
and the fresh water kept in reservoirs would go stale quite quickly.
You could rely on bottled water,
and you’d probably have thousands of litres to go through,
but eventually, you’d have to learn how to purify your own.
You’d have to teach yourself a lot of things,
but lucky for you, you’ve got a lot of time on your hands,
and millions of books out there with all the information you’d need
to survive effectively on your own.
So, while it might be hard at first,
you could technically survive as the last human on Earth.
But would you really want to?
Humans evolved together as social creatures in order to survive.
We joined forces against hunger and harsh weather;
and built families and communities to share stories, empathize,
and keep each other happy and healthy.
Human contact has been scientifically proven to build trust and reduce stress.
科学证明 人类的交往可建立信任 减少压力
So, while it’s apt to cramp your style, be glad it’s a small world,
we need each other more than you think!
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Tisbe biminiensis is perhaps the most recognized copepod species in the Reef Aquarium Hobby. This is for good reason as this species’ rapid reproductive rate, outstanding nutritional profile and diverse diet make it perfect for seeding both new and aged aquariums. When it comes to Tisbe and Reefs, one cannot go wrong.
Copepods act as the vital translator between microbial and animal nutrition. Lipids, amino acids, pigments, sugars and other essential nutritious elements all derive from photosynthetic organisms (phytoplankton, photosynthetic bacteria, macroalgae etc.). Copepods are adept at concentrating this nutrition by grazing on these various microbes. Some copepods, such as the pelagic calanoids (Parvocalanus, Pseudodiaptomus) are specifically adapted to strictly open-water life styles, only preying on live microalgae cells. Other copepods are far more cosmopolitan in their diet, and are able to graze on a meride of prey items ranging from live microalgae, to bacteria biofilms, to detritus, to formulated powdered feeds. Tisbe biminiensis is such a copepod of universal hunger.
Tisbe biminiensis is a harpacticoid copepod in the family Tisbidae. The species is tropical in origin, yet is so ubiquitous it may be difficult to discern a specific range. They survive in both oceanic and estuarine environments and rarely seem to survive below 20ppt. Like other harpacticoids, Tisbe are defined by a free-swimming larval stage (nauplii) eventually metamorphosing into a ‘crawling’ adult copepod. The adult Tisbe spends the majority of its time on substrate but will make periodic suarez into open water through a ‘scooting’ locomotion. After mating, females will develop a large egg sac, almost equal to her own body size, composed of several dozen eggs. The egg sac will be larger and more pigmented as females age and/or receive better nutrition. Eggs hatch into nauplii of about (50-75um) in size which metamorphose into a series of adolescent copepodite instars until eventually becoming full grown adults of around (500-750um) in size. Tisbe biminiensis copepods become sexually mature at (5-8) days and can reproduce several times in their (2-4) week life span. Tisbe copepods have a ‘boom and bust’ life cycle characterized by rapid reproduction followed by acute collapse if the population is not controlled by grazing or can expand to new habitat.
Tisbe Copepods as Micro cleanup Crew in the Reef Aquarium
Harpacticoid copepods act as the vital translator of lost nutrition. Wastes of all varieties (uneaten feed, feces, mucus etc.) accrue into the collective detritus. In both wild and aquarium ecosystems, detritus is a largely inaccessible treasure trove of amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins, minerals and probiotics. Both the morphology and behavior of Tisbe copepods have evolved to seek out and utilize such lost nutrition. Tisbe biminiensis is a generalist grazer, possessing specialized mandibles for the consumption of bacterial and microalgal biofilms. Such microorganisms directly utilize inorganic detritus and grow rapidly into complexes, which on-mass, visually dirty the glass and rockwork of aquariums. Pest diatom biofilms have a particular appeal to harpacticoid copepod species due to their likely elevated level of pigments and Golden Fats (ARA/EPA/DHA). Adult Tisbe biminiensis occupy the various substrates where these unattractive biofilms accrue and microscopically scrape these surfaces. Furthermore, adult Tisbe copepods are negatively phototactic, meaning they impulsively flee the light. This means that Tisbe copepods prefer to live in the deepest, darkest crevices where detritus accrues…in the aquarium, this is likely the live rock, mechanical filtration and greater sump. This species will reproduce rapidly in any environment which is remotely favorable, creating a surplus population to colonize and clean new areas of detritus. This collective grazing has an added benefit in these detritus-prone regions as it allows for increased flow and oxygenation…which may promote more favorable microbial communities and reduce future buildup of wastes. This is why harpacticoid copepods are often referred to as an essential micro cleanup crew of reef aquariums.
Pod with Golden Guts
The gastrointestinal infrastructure and microbiome is where the Tisbe jewel sources its sparkle. This species is able to dramatically improve the quality of food received in its diet. The magic behind this are enzymes which are able to elongate and desaturate fatty acids. This means that this species can and will survive and thrive off a variety of inferior food items ranging in nutritional value from detritus to baker’s yeast. They are then capable of converting the lesser fats in their forage into Golden Fats (PUFAs), more suitable for consumption by fish and corals. This is essential for being able to recuperate and recycle waste lipids back into nutritious live feed. Tisbe copepods are also more than capable of utilizing premium quality food items such as powdered coral feeds and live microalgae. When they receive good nutrition from the start, Tisbe copepods exhibit pleasant hallmarks such as enhanced fatty acid profile, accelerated growth, larger adult size, greater pigmentation. Alejos Cabrera et al. 2022 observed over 50% retention of dietary PUFAs (ARA, EPA, DHA) in Tisbe biminiensis fed a diet of live Tisochrysis lutea microalgae. Golden Fats are an important but not isolated aspect to the nutritional potential of this species. The gut of Tisbe biminiensis contains many important elements including enzymes, proteases and probiotics…all of which remain stable and intact until they are bestowed upon the fish or coral lucky enough to consume a Tisbe copepod.
Tisbe Copepods as Functional Fish Food
As localized populations of Tisbe biminiensis copepods increase over time, new generations will be forced into less and less favorable habitat. This is when mass amounts of adult Tisbe copepods will likely be seen on the glass and in other highly illuminated parts of the aquarium. Copepods in these zones are feasting upon photosynthetic biofilms which are likely of a significantly higher nutritional value than unilluminated detritus. Better yet, individual copepods in these areas are highly available to fish. Many species of reef fish such as dragonets (Callionymidae), seahorses (Sygnathidae), and anthias (Anthiinae), are especially adapted to forage for copepods. Such species are defined by a fast metabolism and small cardiac stomach…meaning they display a strong preference for small, live prey offered continuously rather than in large, period feedings. For instance, a single adult mandarin dragonet (Synchiropus splendidus) can consume hundreds to thousands of copepods in a 24 to 72 hour period. It is therefore favorable to have sustained populations of Tisbe copepods colonizing the rockwork, refugium and filtration of a reef aquarium, so that there is a continuous surplus population which becomes discharged into the main tank display.
Because Tisbe biminiensis copepods are able to utilize organic detritus as well as algae/bacterial biofilms as a food source, they truly function as a sustainable fish food. Organics and organisms that would be a pest/chemical liability in excess can become recuperated and recycled in the form of highly nutritious microcrustaceans. Because of their robust gastrointestinal system and microbiome, Tisbe biminiensis is a functional live feed rich in essential amino acids, golden lipids, proteases, enzymes, bioactive vitamins, minerals and probiotics. As long as there are supple Tisbe copepods available, small-mouthed fish will never starve.
Tisbe Copepods As Food for Corals, Anemones & Jellyfish
Tisbe copepods are also invaluable food for a wide range of zooplankton-feeding invertebrates. It is the early nauplii stage which is most valuable as a feed for corals and anemones. Nauplii are free-swimming and can be continuously produced thousand-fold by a robust adult population. Adult Tisbe copepods can also be subject to coral grazing, especially during a ‘feed period’ when pumps are temporarily ceased and coral food (powdered, live microalgae, amino acids) is broadcast or target fed. Adult Tisbe copepods are likely to be attracted to any added coral feeds and will congregate around corals at such times. Feeding high densities of Tisbe copepods from an external culture benefits photosynthetic coral species which are currently very limited in the hobby.
There are many potential applications for this species in the husbandry of various jellyfish species. The circular chrysal-style aquariums used to house many pelagic jellyfish species are often difficult to clean with conventional scrapers. It is therefore highly invaluable to have a dense population of Tisbe pods to reduce accumulation of the exhibit’s unsightly algae/bacterial biofilms, while at the same time, being grazed upon by its jellyfish residents. Utilizing Tisbe, and other copepod species, as a live feed will allow for both the public and private aquarist to have access to a much greater assortment of novel display species.
Tisbe Copepods in Greater Global Aquaculture
There is a growing appreciation of Tisbe copepods for improving the production in commercial aquaculture hatcheries. Tisbe has many advantages over conventional live feed species such as rotifers (Brachionus sp.) and Artemia sp. Firstly, they effectively cover the sixe needs for both of the former, as Tisbe nauplii are comparable in size to even SS rotifers (Brachionus rotundiformis), while adult copepods are the same useful size as newly hatched Artemia franciscana nauplii. Secondly, aquacultured copepods have far less risk of bacterial contamination than dehydrated Artemia cysts, which often arrive coated in Vibrio sp. Spores. Thirdly, Tisbe biminiensis cannot prey on fish/invertebrate larvae even as an adult, unlike adult Artemia. Fourthly, copepods have a far better nutritional profile, having the ability to retain far higher concentrations of the Golden Fats ARA, EPA and DHA. Furthermore, these fats are biocontextualized by an array of copepod enzymes, prebiotics and probiotics. With these advantages in mind, it is no wonder that Tisbe copepods are becoming growingly embraced by commercial marine aquaculture of all kinds.
Kahan et al 1982 used Tisbe biminiensis nauplii and adults as an effective feed for Gilthead Seabream larvae (Sparus aurata), an important food fish species in the Mediterranean. Heath et al 1997 used Tisbe copepods to supplement Artemia nauplii in the feeding of Dover Sole (Solea solea) larvae, observing better growth, survival and pigmentation. Similar findings were observed in larviculture experiments of Turbot (Scopthalamus maximus) as well as various Dab species (Limanada sp.). da Lima et al 2013 used Tisbe copepods to rear the larvae of Cobia (Rachycentron canadum), though noted that success was dependent on dietary enrichment of the copepods with microalgae.
There is also a host of growing evidence that Tisbe biminiensis can be applied to penaeid shrimp farming. Lima et al 2011 noted that the larvae of Pacific White-Legged Shrimp (Litopaneus vannamei) could be successfully fed Tisbe biminiensis nauplii and copepodites. In this study, reduced Vibrio contamination risk was cited as a major advantage of copepod use. The same author proposed the potential of mass-scale Tisbe biminiensis production in salt evaporation ponds traditionally used to cultivate Artemia.
Tisbe Copepods in Advancing a Sustainable Reef Aquarium Industry
Just as it has great potential to enhance the aquaculture of food fish and invertebrates, Tisbe copepods are also actively accelerating the sustainable aquaculture of several reef aquarium species. Olivotto et al 2008 observed marked improvement in the hatchery production (in terms of growth and survival) of Clark’s Anemonefish (Amphiprion clarkii) larvae fed Tisbe biminiensis and rotifers versus rotifers alone. Perhaps no realm of aquaculture has embraced copepods as live feed more than seahorse breeders. Tisbe copepods have been directly applied to the large-scale cultivation of species such as the Slender Seahorse (Hippocampus reidi). Souza-Santos et al 2013 observed strong preferential grazing in H. reidi larvae for Tisbe biminiensis nauplii and rotifers (Brachionus plicatilis) over the nauplii of Artemia salina. There are likely thousands of reef organism larvae which can be fed enriched Tisbe nauplii…making this copepod species an incredibly invaluable tool for advancing the sustainable aquaculture of these organisms for the enjoyment of the Reef Aquarium Industry.
When it comes to the copepod Tisbe biminiensis, there is more than one reason to praise and appreciate this jewel of the reef underground. In external cultures it can be raised at ridiculous densities (200+ individuals/ml!) at a rapid rate. This has made it an invaluable tool for advancing aquaculture both for food security and for the aquarium industry. Because of the ‘crawling’ behavior of this copepod, it is able to survive, thrive and persist in newly cycling or well aged reef aquariums. In both, this species performs profound ecological services, acting as a micro cleanup crew all the while supplying fish, corals and invertebrates with premium microcrustacean live feed. Cleverly applied, Tisbe copepods can be used to introduce a new wave of zooplankton-eating organisms into the hobby. Tough, nutritious and at the service–this is a copepod of the people. When it comes to Tisbe and Reefs, one cannot go wrong.
Alejos Cabrera, R. M., Gaspar Reyes, W. A., Flores Ramos, L., Ynga Huaman, G. A., Ruiz Soto, A., & Nino Velasquez, A. F. (2022). Effect of time in culture on fatty acid composition of copepods Tisbe sp. and Apocyclops sp. Journal of the World Aquaculture Society, 53(2), 475-484.
Ananth, S., & Santhanam, P. (2019). Intensive Culture, Biochemical Composition Analysis, and Use of Zooplankton Tisbe sp.(Copepoda: Harpacticoida) as an Alternative Live Feed for Shrimp Larviculture. In Basic and Applied Zooplankton Biology (pp. 329-362). Springer, Singapore.
Araújo-Castro, C. M. V., & Souza-Santos, L. P. (2005). Are the diatoms Navicula sp. and Thalassiosira fluviatilis suitable to be fed to the benthic harpacticoid copepod Tisbe biminiensis?. Journal of experimental marine biology and ecology, 327(1), 58-69.
Arndt, C., & Sommer, U. (2014). Effect of algal species and concentration on development and fatty acid composition of two harpacticoid copepods, T isbe sp. and T achidius discipes, and a discussion about their suitability for marine fish larvae. Aquaculture Nutrition, 20(1), 44-59.
França, R. C., Amaral, I. P., Santana, W. M., Souza-Santos, L. P., Carvalho Jr, L. B., & Bezerra, R. S. (2010). Proteases from the harpacticoid copepod Tisbe biminiensis: comparative study with enzymes from farmed aquatic animals. Journal of Crustacean Biology, 30(1), 122-128.
Heath, P. L., & Moore, C. G. (1997). Rearing dover sole larvae onTisbe andArtemia diets. Aquaculture International, 5(1), 29-39.
Kahan, D., Uhlig, G., Schwenzer, D., & Horowitz, L. (1982). A simple method for cultivating harpacticoid copepods and offering them to fish larvae. Aquaculture, 26(3-4), 303-310.
de Lima, L. C., & Souza-Santos, L. P. (2007). The ingestion rate of Litopenaeus vannamei larvae as a function of Tisbe biminiensis copepod concentration. Aquaculture, 271(1-4), 411-419.
Lima, L. C., & Souza-Santos, L. P. (2011). Growth of the brine shrimp Artemia fed on offspring of the copepod Tisbe biminiensis Volkmann-Rocco, 1973. Revista Brasileira de Engenharia de Pesca, 6(1), 48-55.
de Lima, L. C. M. (2011). Use of Harpacticoid copepods in aquaculture.
de Lima, L. C., Navarro, D. M., & Souza-Santos, L. P. (2013). Effect of diet on the fatty acid composition of the copepod Tisbe biminiensis. Journal of crustacean biology, 33(3), 372-381.
Lin, Q., Tian, J., Yang, W., Li, M., Hu, W., Shao, J., ... & Wang, K. (2017). Yeast and corn flour supplement to enhance large-scale culture efficiency of marine copepod Tisbe furcata, a potential live food for fish larvae. Israeli Journal of Aquaculture-Bamidgeh, 69, 20892.
Ma, X., & Johnson, K. B. (2017). Comparative phototaxis of calanoid and harpacticoid copepods. Marine biology, 164(1), 1-13.
Mélo, R. C. S., Santos, L. P. D. S., Brito, A. P. M., Gouveia, A. D. A., Marçal, C., & Cavalli, R. O. (2016). Use of the microalga Nannochloropsis occulata in the rearing of newborn longsnout seahorse Hippocampus reidi (Syngnathidae) juveniles. Aquaculture Research, 47(12), 3934-3941.
Miliou, H., Moraitou-Apostolopoulou, M., & Argyridou, M. (1992). Biochemical composition of Tisbe holothuriae (Copepoda: Harpacticoida) and its differentiation in relation to developmental stages. Ophelia, 36(2), 159-166.
Nanton, D. A., & Castell, J. D. (1998). The effects of dietary fatty acids on the fatty acid composition of the harpacticoid copepod, Tisbe sp., for use as a live food for marine fish larvae. Aquaculture, 163(3-4), 251-261.
Olivotto, I., Avella, M. A., Sampaolesi, G., Piccinetti, C. C., Ruiz, P. N., & Carnevali, O. (2008). Breeding and rearing the longsnout seahorse Hippocampus reidi: rearing and feeding studies. Aquaculture, 283(1-4), 92-96.
Olivotto, I., Capriotti, F., Buttino, I., Avella, A. M., Vitiello, V., Maradonna, F., & Carnevali, O. (2008). The use of harpacticoid copepods as live prey for Amphiprion clarkii larviculture: effects on larval survival and growth. Aquaculture, 274(2-4), 347-352.
Pinto, C. S., Souza-Santos, L. P., & Santos, P. J. P. (2001). Development and population dynamics of Tisbe biminiensis (Copepoda: Harpacticoida) reared on different diets. Aquaculture, 198(3-4), 253-267.
Puello-Cruz, A. C., González-Rodríguez, B., García-Ortega, A., & Gómez, S. (2004). Use of a tropical harpacticoid copepod Tisbe monozota Bowman, 1962 (Copepoda: Harpacticoida: Tisbidae) as live food in marine larviculture. Contributions to the study of East Pacific Crustaceans, 3, 177-187.
Ribeiro, A. C., & Souza-Santos, L. P. (2011). Mass culture and offspring production of marine harpacticoid copepod Tisbe biminiensis. Aquaculture, 321(3-4), 280-288.
Ribeiro, A. C., & Souza-Santos, L. P. (2013). Mass culture of the harpacticoid copepod tisbe biminiensis fed inert diets. Blue Biotechnology Journal, 2(4), 583.
Sales, R., Mélo, R. C. S., de Moraes Junior, R. M., da Silva, R. C. S., Cavalli, R. O., Navarro, D. M. D. A. F., & de Souza Santos, L. P. (2016). Production and use of a flocculated paste of Nannochloropsis oculata for rearing newborn seahorse Hippocampus reidi. Algal Research, 17, 142-149.
Silva, R., Vinagre, C., Kitahara, M. V., Acorsi, I. V., Mizrahi, D., & Flores, A. A. (2019). Sun coral invasion of shallow rocky reefs: effects on mobile invertebrate assemblages in Southeastern Brazil. Biological Invasions, 21(4), 1339-1350.
Souza‐Santos, L. P., Pastor, J. M., Ferreira, N. G., Costa, W. M., Araújo‐Castro, C. M., & Santos, P. J. (2006). Developing the harpacticoid copepod Tisbe biminiensis culture: testing for salinity tolerance, ration levels, presence of sediment and density dependent analyses. Aquaculture Research, 37(15), 1516-1523.
Souza-Santos, L. P., Regis, C. G., Mélo, R. C., & Cavalli, R. O. (2013). Prey selection of juvenile seahorse Hippocampus reidi. Aquaculture, 404, 35-40.
Støttrup, J. G., & Norsker, N. H. (1997). Production and use of copepods in marine fish larviculture. Aquaculture, 155(1-4), 231-247.
Støttrup, J. G. (2000). The elusive copepods: their production and suitability in marine aquaculture. Aquaculture Research, 31(8‐9), 703-711.
Willadino, L., Souza-Santos, L. P., Mélo, R. C., Brito, A. P., Barros, N. C., Araújo-Castro, C. M., ... & Cavalli, R. O. (2012). Ingestion rate, survival and growth of newly released seahorse Hippocampus reidi fed exclusively on cultured live food items. Aquaculture, 360, 10-16.
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Santuario Nuestra Señora de las Lajas
Church history from Viva Travel
One day in 1750 (more or less), María Mueses de Quiñónez was walking from Potosí to Ipiales. Upon her back she carried her young, deaf-mute daughter Rosa. They decided to rest at Pastarán cave on the banks of the Río Guáitra. When doña María awoke from a nap, she discovered her daughter had wandered off. Upon finding her, Rosa said, “Mamacita, the Mestiza called to me!” She pointed to an image of a woman holding a child and two men.
Thus begins the story of Santuario Nuestra Señora de las Lajas.A small adobe chapel was built to protect the image of the Virgin in the shallow cave, forming the “altar screen” of the temple. Over the centuries it expanded to the impressive neo-Gothic structure that now spans the Guáitra River. Many Colombians and Ecuadorians make the pilgrimage to this site, beseeching the Virgin Mary for her intercession. The cliff walls are covered with thousands of plaques thanking her for miracles. (The Vatican only recognizes one.)
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The hen harrier in England could soon become extinct, with its survival haging by athread, warn conservationists. Figures show just seven pairs of the bird of prey had nested successfully this year. According to an annual survey, only 12 pairs attempted to nest, while the number of pairs successfully raising chicks to fledging, seven, was just one more than last year. Three years ago, the number was 14.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds calculates there is sufficient habitat for 300 pairs in England, but that persecution of hen harriers remains "devastatingly common" despite the birds having full legal protection.
Of the successful pairs, five nested on the United Utilities estate in the Forest of Bowland in Lancashire, the remaining stronghold of the bird in England.
Dr Mark Avery, the society's director of conservation, said: "Persecution, associated with land managed for driven-grouse shooting, remains the main reason for the hundreds of missing pairs.
"Even though these birds now have the full protection of the law, the persecution of birds of prey remains devastatingly common."
And he said: "Now that the future of the hen harrier in England hangs by a thread, we now need to consider all measures necessary to prevent the extinction of this bird in our uplands."
Hen harriers come into conflict with upland grouse shoots as they eat the game birds.
The RSPB is calling on the Government to address the problem of illegal persecution, and as a first step wants the coalition to confirm that the future of the National Wildlife Crime Unit is secure.
Dr Avery said: "It is shocking that protected birds of prey are still being killed illegally in the UK.
"In this International Year of Biodiversity, we challenge the coalition government to provide the leadership and political will necessary to address the problem and reiterate our challenge to moorland owners and managers to allow hen harriers to settle and breed."
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The Speech: The Story Behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream
Monday, November 18, 2013 - 7:00pm
Please join us at Shepherd University for a lecture and discussion by Gary Younge on the topic of the American values and ideals given expression in the famous "I Have a Dream" speech of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., drawing on the subject of his most recent book, The Speech: The Story behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream (2013).
Sponsored by The George Washington Institute of Living Ethics
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It was a sweltering eighty-seven degrees when Martin Luther King Jr. took the stage at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. He was the final speaker after a long day. The crowd, which numbered in the tens of thousands, had begun to leave. King took a deep breath and threw back his shoulders. ‘I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.'—From the Introduction
Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his powerful “I Have a Dream Speech” on August 28, 1963. Fifty years later, the speech endures as a defining moment in the civil rights movement. It continues to be heralded as a beacon in the ongoing struggle for racial equality. This gripping book unearths the fascinating chronicle behind “The Speech” and the revealing events surrounding the March on Washington.
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From ABC News' Chief Medical Editor Dr. Timothy Johnson:
Today's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) contains two articles ? and an excellent editorial ? addressing the question of whether the benefits of the Gardasil vaccine outweigh its risks. The vaccine is designed to prevent infection by two strains of the HPV (Human Papilloma Virus); these strains are said to account for about 70% of cervical cancer cases. The vaccine is now recommended for 11-12 year old girls before they become sexually active. For the first time in my career, I cannot recommend a vaccine for its intended population ? in this case, young girls. Therefore I am going to say that any parent considering this vaccine for their daughter should read the editorial in JAMA
and then talk to their doctor before deciding.
"The theory behind the vaccine is sound: If HPV infection can be prevented, cancer will not occur. But in practice, the issue is more complex. First, there are more than 100 different types of HPV and at least 15 of them are oncogenic. The current vaccines target only 2 oncongenic strains: HPV-16 and HPV-18. Second, the relationship between infection at a young age and development of cancer 20 to 40 years later is not known. HPV is the most prevalent sexually transmitted infection, with an estimated 79% infection rate over a lifetime. The virus does not appear to be very harmful because almost all HPV infections are cleared by the immune system. In a few women, infection persists and some women may develop precancerous cervical lesions and eventually cervical cancer. It is currently impossible to predict in which women this will occur and why. Likewise, it is impossible to predict exactly what effect vaccination of young girls and women will have on the incidence of cervical cancer 20 to 40 years from now. The true effect of the vaccine can be determined only through clinical trials and long-term follow-up."
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Know more about the Product
Digital Thermometer. Thermometers are probably one of the most important tools in cooking and baking. In restaurants, fine dinings, or a pastry shop, cooks and bakers are alike. For them to be able to cook or bake probably, they must know the current temperature of the food or liquid substance that they are about to use or serve.
- Measuring Range -58F- 572F (-50C- 300C)
- Display Resolution +-0.1
- Measuring Accuracy +-1 degree at temperature from -4F- 392F (-20C- 200C). +-2 degrees at other temperatures
- Talking and LED night function
- Auto Shut Off
- Reads Temperature in 4 Seconds
- Talking and LED Display:
- A tool that can broadcast the current temperature of your food to voice.
- LED lit display.
- Fast Reading Thermometer:
- Reads temperature in 4 seconds.
- Auto shut off function.
- The temperature can be viewed at Fahrenheit or Celsius.
- Wide Temperature Range:
- Measuring Range from -58F TO 572F (-50C- 300C).
- With just +/- 1 degree deviation at temperatures from 4F- 392F (20C- 200C)
- +-2 degrees at other temperatures
Digital Instant Read Thermometer
If you’re into cooking or baking or both, there’s a high possibility that you have used a traditional temperature measuring tools such as the classic cooking thermometer. These classic temperature measuring tools usually take about 20 to 30 seconds of holding it steady to get the right temperature of either your food or a liquid substance.
With the Surround Point Digital Thermometer, you can get an almost 100% accurate temperature reading in just 4 seconds with +/- 1-degree deviation at temperatures from 4F- 392F (20C- 200C). It’s quite easy to use too. With its long stainless steel sharp probe, you can easily slide it into any kind of meat.
This digital temperature measuring tool also comes with a speaker that tells you the temperature reading. Making it an ideal cook tool thermometer for people who are visually impaired.
Furthermore, its small compact and user-friendly design make it a space-saving tool and operatable by anyone.
Other Ideal Uses
This tool is also great for other uses.
Keep your chocolate fondue melted and delicious at the right temperature with this tool. Furthermore, make pastries or desserts without compromising the taste because of temperature misreading.
Setting The Right Temperature For Baby Bath
We all know that bathing babies are not like any ordinary bath. Babies are sensitive to temperatures, they have a lot of difficulties regulating their base temperature, which is around 37°- 37.5°C. They are very sensitive to variations in temperature, whether cold or hot. That is why it’s important to make sure that their bath time will be comfortable for them. With this tool, you can easily make sure that the bathwater is comfortably warm but not hot before putting your baby in. Water that’s warmed to about 37 degrees C (98.6 degrees F) is just right.
Our Verdict – Surround Point Digital Thermometer
Overall, the Surround Point Digital Thermometer is a great tool for measuring temperature as fast as possible without compromising accuracy and precision. What makes this tool great is its fast temperature reading, its capable of telling you the temperature via display or voice, and its compact and user-friendly design. However, the downside of this tool is the use of batter. Unlike traditional thermometers that work without the need for electricity or battery, this thermometer requires a battery to operate. It’s also not waterproof so that’s one thing to note of when using this tool.
You can also try ThermoPro TP20 Wireless Remote Digital Cooking Food Meat Thermometer it has features of probe and wire can withstand up to 716°F (380°C), timer and temperature settings, and splash-proof receiver.
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- What is Flooding in Great Britain?
- How Floods in Great Britain Affect People, Wildlife and the Environment
- Navigating Flooding in Great Britain Step-by-Step: What You Need to Know Today
- Frequently Asked Questions About Flooding in Great Britain: Your Ultimate Guide
- Top 5 Facts You Should Know About Flooding in Great Britain
- Human Intervention and Climate Change: Examining the Causes of Frequent Flooding in Great Britain
- Dealing with the Aftermath of Flooding in Great Britain: Recovery, Aid and Support Services Available
- Table with useful data:
- Information from an Expert
- Historical fact:
What is Flooding in Great Britain?
Flooding in great britain is an event where water overflows onto land that is normally dry causing damage to property, infrastructure and sometimes loss of life. Areas vulnerable to flooding include low-lying regions surrounding rivers, coasts or areas without adequate drainage systems.
Some must-know facts about flooding in Great Britain are:
1. The UK has a long history of experiencing some of the most severe floods with almost 5 million people living at risk of flooding.
2. Climate change and increased rainfall intensity have led experts to predict that flood risks may increase further across many parts of the country.
3. Flood warnings can be issued by the Environment Agency who monitor river levels regularly through gauges installed at various locations throughout the UK coastline.
Using a paragraph works well for this featured snippet as it succinctly summarizes what flooding in Great Britain means while also providing vital information on why and how it happens. Adding specific data such as those provided creates more interest around its effect giving audiences looking for general Information reason not just awareness but also perspectives they probably haven’t thought about before concerning severe weather patterns like these one resulting from climate change .
How Floods in Great Britain Affect People, Wildlife and the Environment
Floods are natural disasters that impact not only people but also the environment and wildlife. The United Kingdom, specifically Great Britain, has been no stranger to floods in recent years. These catastrophic events have disrupted life for both humans and animals alike, and have caused significant damage to the natural ecosystem.
Firstly, let’s start with how floods affect people in Great Britain. Whether it be homes, businesses or infrastructure; flooding can cause a great deal of destruction leading to financial as well as emotional loss for those affected by it. Homes get submerged underwater leading to dampness which causes mold growth and other health hazards impacting individuals living there long-term resulting in either an expensive renovation process or moving out altogether. Flooded roads lead to traffic chaos causing inconvenience leaving travelers stranded without any means of transportation which may result in delayed work or school commitments affecting them indirectly too.
Not only does this disrupt daily lives but also tourism is negatively impacted due to closed attractions during the high season making an adverse economic effect on small towns dependent upon tourist trade. Furthermore, food suppliers lose crops resulting from excess water that impacts agricultural production posing further problems both for farmers and citizens’ nutrition supply chain.
Now let’s discuss how flood affects Wildlife: When extreme weather conditions amplify such calamities like overflowing rivers habitats are destroyed forcing land-based species most at risk including deer populations seeking safety while drowning risks aquatic inhabitants like fish who need a specific level of oxygen concentration within their habitat force them to shift location sometimes triggering migrating movements threatening some delicate ecosystems’ survival dependant primarily on balance stimulating dangerous advantages through predators being driven outside their usual hunting ground.
Furthermore, floods prompt soil erosion weakening many indigenous trees whose roots corrode as they cannot access adequate support required under more stable soil-less entrenchment risking extinction of certain animal species suffering from scarce breeding opportunities along with limited shelter involving death rates piling up- thus slow-paced repopulation difficult given less opportunity area available following rampant flooding repercussions.
Finally, let’s consider how floods impact the environment: The aftermath of a flood event can have long-term effects on environmental health. Water pollution levels rise due to an influx of industrial and agricultural waste products unable to be processed by sewage systems leading to unsanitary conditions-and requiring consolidation into suitable tech hence becoming more environmentally friendly for future use. This impacts aquatic biodiversity, flora communities and discharges toxins causing mishaps in humans suffering from deadly diseases ultimately impacting overall ecosystems’ delicate balance which may lead some species susceptible intolerable exposure living within such contaminated waters.
Additionally, prevailing flood disruptions increase greenhouse gases forcing several countries including GBR looking at innovation renewable energy options as natural resources slowly erode making most vulnerable threatened by climate change measurements noted globally prompting aggressive green-tech opportunities with alternative sources powering rural towns lacking power lines exponentially increasing safety measures through clean-energy adaptation suggesting realizations following concerning matters about global warming disrupting otherwise balanced ecology surrounding Great Britain- highlighting moving towards sustainable solutions becomes paramount importance soon rather than later!
In conclusion, Floods significantly impact people’s livelihoods; animals lose habitat diversity whilst ecosystems suffer under pollution damaging all species’ viability consequently evolved over many years sustaining healthy practices. Therefore emphasis upon working together urgently would afford feasible innovations creating higher community continuity prosperity supporting more dignified approaches undoubtedly vital stepping stones securing prosperous earth awaiting mankind boldly taking modern trends advancing evolution forward!
Navigating Flooding in Great Britain Step-by-Step: What You Need to Know Today
Flooding has become increasingly common in Great Britain with climate change and a rapidly growing population. The effects of flooding can be devastating, from loss of life to property damage and disruption of daily activities. However, navigating flooding doesn’t need to feel overwhelming or chaotic. There are plenty of steps you can take today to mitigate the impact of floods.
Secondly, you should consider safeguarding your home before a flood occurs. This could include installing water-resistant doors and windows which minimise the amount of water entering a building during a flood plus making use sandbags around doors that might let crawl spaces fill up quickly with water etc.
If you live in an area prone to frequent flooding, it’s worth investing in flood insurance policy which ensures compensation if any destruction is caused due to unforeseen circumstances. Always make sure that your possessions and valuables are properly insured too!.
Thirdly, create an emergency kit made up survival supplies including high nutrition food items stored safely away from potential Flooding Areas thus allowing easy access provided this package includes basic medical necessities like band-aids Gauze And alcohol wipes along with other essential day-to-day essentials like phone chargers and batteries
Fourthly, know evacuation routes out of danger zones especially flash-flood-prone areas while recording key contacts related organisations i.e government agencies as well as family members who may aid rescue operations all Furthermore so always be vigilant since Floods occur at irregular times – not just after rainstorms!
Finally note: It’s also advisable never drive through flooded roads since visibility isn’t perfect in them causing even minor pools filled by heavy rains full setbacks once vehicles submerge – this could put yours-mine-ours lives at higher risk!
In conclusion, with good planning and foresight, navigating flooding in Great Britain doesn’t have to be a difficult task filled with overwhelming panic and confusion. By taking practical measures such as staying informed about flood warnings issued by relevant authorities or safeguarding your property against the worst-case scenario floods you can effectively manage potential disaster situations. After all – preparation is key when it comes down to safeguarding resources , valuables && human lives alike ensuring survival during inevitable natural disasters like flooding that occur worldwide regularly.
Frequently Asked Questions About Flooding in Great Britain: Your Ultimate Guide
Flooding in Great Britain can be a major concern for many people, particularly during the winter months when heavy rainfall and snowmelt can cause rivers to overflow their banks. Given the increased frequency of severe weather events attributed to global warming, it’s important to educate yourself about flooding should you find yourself at risk.
In this ultimate guide, we’re going to answer some frequently asked questions about flooding in Great Britain so that you stay safe and well-informed!
Q: What is flooding?
Flooding occurs when water overflows onto land that is usually dry. This can happen when there has been heavy rain or fast melting snow which causes rivers, lakes or other bodies of water to rise above their normal levels. Flooding can also occur as a result of human activities such as blocking natural drainage paths with buildings, roads or litter.
Q: How common is flooding in Great Britain?
Great Britain experiences frequent episodes of flooding due to its geography and climate. Winter storms often bring extreme weather conditions causing widespread damage across large areas from Scotland down through England’s West Country and Wales.
Q: Where are the most flood-prone areas in Great Britain?
The Environment Agency specifies more than 5 million homes and businesses are situated within postcodes deemed ‘high-risk’: on top of that 3 million more properties are expected to come under threat with the upcoming decade if urgent action isn’t taken against Climate Change–so no one area stands out above another although low-lying river valleys tend overall have higher exposure compared with upland landscapes where morphologies would naturally discourage settlement.
Q: Can I protect my property from flooding?
There are several steps you can take before floods arrive:
-Investing into flood barriers
Make sure vulnerable objects like power sockets and carpets aren’t too close to floors prone suddenly arriving right inside your house; try taking less irreplaceable items upstairs first followed by heavier appliances then abandoning your gas and electric supplies. It’s also wise keep foodstuffs out of lower cupboards or you run the risk of cross-contaminating produce.
Q: What should I do during a flood?
It’s important not to panic, but have an emergency plan in place before floods arrive so that everyone knows what they need if disaster strikes!
If it’s safe to do so, move valuable items upstairs or take them with you when evacuating your home/family vehicle away from waterlogged danger zones–make sure gas/electric services are switched off first though!
Most importantly, stay tuned into any updates from emergency situations happening real-time information via established regional news outlets- likely repeated on social media; local authorities’ accounts on Facebook/Twitter will provide options for force assistance.
A quick recap:
Flooding can devastate lives and livelihoods alike as well as cause distressing upheavals within neighbourhood areas. So we know preventing flooding is unlikely under circumstances where nature collides with anthropocentric factors. Preparedness may lessen negative effects. Keep track of weather advisory alerts and educate yourself properly in how best to react- this way there’ll be less uncertainty when those warnings ring true.. The next time there is severe weather heading our way, make sure you’re prepared! Stay vigilant folks!
Top 5 Facts You Should Know About Flooding in Great Britain
Flooding in Great Britain is a serious issue that should not be taken lightly. Every year, numerous parts of the country experience devastating effects due to excessive rainfall, tidal surges or any other factors which may cause water levels to rise beyond their capacity.
Here are 5 significant facts you need to know about flooding in Great Britain:
1. Flooding has become more frequent and severe:
Climate change is one of the biggest reasons behind the increased frequency and severity of floods in Great Britain. With climate reports suggesting increases in heavy rainfall over certain regions, it’s no wonder why we see news headlines warning residents about potential flood threats on an almost weekly basis.
2. The economic impact can be colossal:
Aside from causing personal devastation for those directly affected by floods, they can also have a huge impact on local businesses and economies as well. Insurance premiums skyrocket following every major flooding event; roads and infrastructure are damaged leading to costly repairs, and tourism industries often suffer severely.
3. Your home insurance policy does not necessarily cover flood damage:
Many homeowners falsely believe that their regular home insurance policies provide sufficient coverage against flood damages but this isn’t always true. Specialised “flood insurance” must typically be purchased separately or bundled into your existing plan at an additional cost if you want comprehensive protection against potential water-related disasters within your property.
4. You don’t need to live near a river or coastline to be at risk:
Although many image floods being caused only by rivers bursting their banks or coastal areas being battered by stormy seas, flooding can happen anywhere – even miles away from any body of water! Blocked drainage systems (caused by littering habits) faulty plumbing installations could result in water damage owing tens thousands pounds worth repair costs if left unattended – so keep drains clear!
5.Responding promptly through Flood Warnings saves lives:
Monitoring updates issued via government channels such as social media platforms will help you to prepare and act accordingly in the event of a potential flood, from how to safely protect yourself during the emergency through life-saving steps you can take immediately until rescue mission team arrives. Speed may truly be critical as even water levels that appear harmless at first glance could suddenly become dangerously high in mere seconds.
In conclusion, being aware about flooding situations around Great Britain will help you to plan ahead – which is always beneficial regardless if it spells security against your property or your personal safety & those among whom you love. Keep track of the latest communications by following credible sources but remember: better preparedness provides optimum defence!
Human Intervention and Climate Change: Examining the Causes of Frequent Flooding in Great Britain
Climate change, as a result of human intervention, has been responsible for numerous natural disasters across the world. In recent times, Great Britain has experienced an increase in flooding incidents which have left many people wondering about the causes of these occurrences.
Human action such as deforestation and industrialization contribute greatly to climate change resulting in warmer ocean temperatures that have caused widespread flooding. The increased frequency of hurricanes and typhoons are one of their products leading humanity towards unimaginable floods.
Furthermore, modern-day settlements are located on floodplains or coastal areas without due consideration given to risks posed by rising sea levels or water catchment systems built around them specifically because urban development is necessary considering population growth trends within the UK’s territory over decades. This disregard for nature’s inherent cycles leads us towards this unnatural flooding surge happening now.
Another common cause of frequent floods in Great Britain is poor drainage infrastructure – our undersized drainage channels cannot cope with heavy rainfall patterns throughout different parts hence increasing the likelihood of flash flooding especially if other preventative measures aren’t deployed beforehand at vulnerable regions including low-lying terrains near flowing rivers rushing through cities/municipal centres alike.
In addition, there may be some immediate contributions from anthropogenic factors; waste materials deposited carelessly like plastic bottles widely found outside our homes gradually find their way into gutters blocking flood drains which pose major setbacks during times already ravaged by overflowing streams/rivers until respective agencies complete long-term cleanup drives maybe weeks after all damages incurred per region/situation
It’s important therefore not just to make bold statements calling out effects but also acknowledging intentional/harmful actions by humans ourselves that ultimately lead us onto unforeseen routes directly threatening life support systems & properties in general even though we possess knowledge enabling management/prevention mechanisms/actions against avoidable loss upon them happening.
To summarize, although it would be impossible to eliminate any chance of natural phenomena like dry spells resulting in droughts or intense precipitation leading to floods, we can keep man-made interferences to a minimum by recognizing these all-important factors in order to limit our impact. By acknowledging the causes of frequent flooding in Great Britain and taking appropriate action where necessary, we can create a safer environment for ourselves, our loved ones and flora/fauna that depend on this rich ecosystem supporting us daily as partakers within it.
Dealing with the Aftermath of Flooding in Great Britain: Recovery, Aid and Support Services Available
Floods are becoming increasingly common in Great Britain as the country experiences periods of intense rainfall and unpredictable weather patterns. This can leave many people with a sense of vulnerability, stress and despair as their homes become submerged under water. But don’t worry – help is at hand! There are numerous recovery, aid and support services available to those affected by flooding.
One of the first things you should do if your home has been flooded is contact your insurer or broker. Most insurance policies cover flood damage but it’s essential that you check this out in order to take advantage of the coverage afforded by your policy.
In addition to insurance providers, there are various charities providing aid for victims of flooding such as The British Red Cross and The Salvation Army. Both organisations offer practical assistance along with emotional support during these difficult times.
Furthermore, local authorities also provide information and resources for individuals who have been impacted by floods. Informational leaflets regarding flood prevention techniques as well as cleanup operations provides some much-needed guidance on how affected persons can be better prepared next time around (fingers crossed!).
If you’re struggling with repairing damage caused by floods then government grants may be worth exploring. Depending upon individual circumstances homeowners may qualify for funding towards repair costs from central government funds administered via Local Authorities across Great Britain.
It’s just not humans suffering losses due to frequent flooding – our cute animal friends often get caught up too! RSPCA offers 24 hour advice lines during natural disasters aiming at supervising animal welfare in disaster-hit regions throughout UK including rescuing distressed pets/animals f wild species without owners present!
On top of all these different supports those still looking for further assistance might want to look into available volunteer opportunities wherein they could make a real difference at least marginally mitigating threats posed my worsening environmental calamities plaguing UK!
When coping with post-flood trauma one shouldn’t shy away from seeking professional help.. Here therapists/counsellors play a pivotal role lending patients years of valuable experience to aid recovery from emotional stress.
Finally, various online resources offer support services such as discussion boards for those affected and links to relevant emergency departments offering immediate relief. We hope our brief overview helps you navigate through this difficult time – the bottom line? Don’t lose hope! Help is available if needed!
Table with useful data:
|Year||Number of Floods||Worst Affected Areas||Estimated Cost|
|2019||34||Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Gloucestershire||£110 million|
|2018||98||Cumbria, Lancashire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Suffolk||£1.2 billion|
|2017||46||Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Norfolk, Suffolk||£0.6 billion|
|2016||62||Cumbria, Northumberland, Lancashire, Yorkshire||£1.3 billion|
Information from an Expert
As an expert in the field of flooding, I can attest to the fact that Great Britain has seen a rise in flood incidents over recent years. The causes are multifaceted and include increased urbanization, climate change and more extreme weather events. It’s essential for individuals and communities to take steps towards flood prevention such as investing in appropriate infrastructure or taking measures like planting trees which absorb water. Adapting to changes brought about by these challenges is critical, and only through concerted efforts can we hope to mitigate this growing problem facing many regions throughout the UK.
From 1607 to 1930, Great Britain experienced several devastating floods that caused significant damage and loss of life. The most severe of these occurred in January 1607 when floodwaters swept across the Bristol Channel and killed an estimated 2,000 people.
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Stabilize and restore the landscape and community following a wildfire event.
Post-fire recovery efforts can affect susceptibility. Explore your community’s risk.
About Post-Fire Recovery
It can take months and even years to recover from the emotional, financial, and ecological impacts of a wildfire. The healing process for a community requires extensive resources and support.
Landscape stabilization and rebuilding homes and communities following a wildfire can be stressful and overwhelming. While immediate action is needed to address landscape rehabilitation, infrastructure repairs, post-fire flooding mitigation, and neighborhood restoration, long-term care is required to ensure personal well-being, financial stability, community health, and a renewed sense of place. Pre-fire mitigation steps—such as wildfire preparedness, home hardening, land use planning, and addressing community health and safety—can reduce the work required to recover post-fire.
After the Fire: Resources for Recovery
The Natural Resources Conservation Service is available to assist with site specific questions and provide technical assistance for landowners as they begin to restore the landscape following a fire. In addition, there may be financial assistance available through regular Environmental Quality Incentives Program or special state initiatives to help address resource concerns on private and tribal land.
After the Flames
After the Flames is a curated list of post-fire recovery and restoration information. The resources are useful for communities as they work to establish plans and priorities that protect citizens, homes, essential infrastructure, and resources from the destruction that occurs after a catastrophic wildfire. After the Flames is an initiative of Coalitions and Collaboratives, Inc. (COCO).
AIM: Action, Implementation & Mitigation
The Action, Implementation, and Mitigation Program (AIM) seeks to increase local capacity and support for wildfire risk reduction activities in high risk communities. Selected participants in AIM will receive technical and financial support and become affiliate members of Coalitions and Collaboratives, Inc. (COCO).
Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) Teams
The BAER program is designed to address emergency stabilization issues related to wildland fire. The BAER teams perform emergency stabilization actions within one year of wildfire containment. These actions are intended to stabilize and prevent unacceptable degradation to natural and cultural resources, minimize threats to life or property resulting from the effects of a fire, or to repair, replace, or construct physical improvements necessary to prevent degradation of land or resources.
Community Mitigation Assistance Team (CMAT)
Community Mitigation Assistance Teams are a national interagency resource designed to work collaboratively with local partners to build sustainable mitigation programs focused on community fire adaptation actions on the ground. A CMAT works with communities at high risk of wildfire to analyze their mitigation programs and barriers, develop workable solutions to help move mitigation forward, share best mitigation practices for achieving outcomes, and build successful partnerships.
FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant Program
The Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) manages several grant opportunities for wildfire in their Hazard Mitigation Assistance program. The Hazard Mitigation Grant Program Post-Fire provides mitigation assistance for Fire Management Assistance declarations on or after October 5, 2018.
Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network
The Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network connects and supports people and communities who are striving to live more safely with wildfire. The purpose of FAC Net is to exchange information, collaborate to enhance the practice of fire adaptation, and work together and at multiple scales to help communities live safely with fire. This includes embracing resiliency concepts and taking action before, during and after wildfires. They offer a Fire Adapted Communities Self-Assessment Tool (FAC SAT) to help communities assess their level of fire adaptation and track their capacity to live safely with fire over time
NACo County Wildfire Playbook
The National Association of Counties (NACo) produced this county leadership guide to help communities become more fire adapted and learn to live with wildland fire. The playbook has been designed by county commissioners, for county commissioners, as they endeavor to fortify and protect communities from high severity impacts of wildland fire.
Research & Science
- After the Fire. Federal Emergency Management Agency. (2019). Emmitsburg, MD: U.S. Fire Administration.
- Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) Program. (n.d.). USDA Forest Service.
- Recovering from the wildfires. (2020). American Psychological Association.
- Wildfire recovery as a “hot moment” for creating fire-adapted communities. Schumann RL, Mockrin M, Syphard A, Whittaker J, Price O, Gaither CJ, Emrich CT, & Butsic V. (2020). International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 42. 101354.
- Wildfire Recovery: Ways to Move Forward. (2006). Wildfire Recovery, 1(1). Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Extension Service.
Learn how these actions align with federal policies and initiatives.
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This process involves primarily "white" fat found mainly in the fat cells that lie under our skin. This is our energy, or calorie storage fat. The "brown" fat, or the "good" fat, actually burns calories for body heat. This fat is deeper and surrounds and protects our organs. Normal fatty acid metabolism supports and nourishes the brown fat. The storage, or white, fat is where our body puts the extra calories from dietary sources that we do not utilize. When we diet regularly or our weight goes up and down, our internal weight control system fears starvation and will store more fat as energy for the future. With repeated weight loss and weight gain, the same number of calories in our diet may keep us at a higher weight because we have a higher set point.
When we have developed more fat cells during our growth periods (infancy and adolescence), we will tend to have more fat, a slower metabolism, and a higher set point, and we will be more likely to have a higher weight. Once this pattern develops, such as by being overweight early in life, it is very hard to change. It takes work and a new self-image! Regular exercise and increasing exercise capacity are the main physical ways to improve the set point and lose weight and then to be able to maintain our weight with a reasonable number of calories. This is a far healthier approach than taking thyroid pills or one of the many possible diet stimulants.
Other ideas about individual weight suggest two opposing views. One school says that people are thin because they do not overeat as much as fat people, since they are guided more by internal signals of hunger and the types of food that their bodies want. Overweight people on the other hand respond more to external signals, such as the presence of food or other people and social situations, or they may react more emotionally to the normal internal messages.
Others believe that obese people do not really eat a great deal more than thin people; they just have a different set point and a slower metabolic rate. Heredity and early conditioning play a major role here. Heavier people’s food choices may not be as wholesome as those of thin people, with higher-fat and higher-calorie foods predominating. Malnutrition from nutrient deficiencies and food allergies can also be influential. Obesity is really a combination of these many factors. Of course, most of us know overweight people who eat a lot of food. Then again, we may know overweight people who eat lightly, as well as trim people who can really put it away. Most overweight people, I believe, have overeaten at some point to develop their capacity for obesity, unless there is some hormonal imbalance, which is not very common.
We need to start as early as possible to achieve dietary control. Children need both wholesome, nutritious foods and loving guidance! Only about 10 percent of elementary school children are overweight, yet between 20 and 30 percent of high schoolers are at least moderately obese. To lose weight and maintain it, behavior must change. Behavior modification is a form of therapy that can be effective in helping us change from an overweight person to a trimmer one. This can be practiced by ourselves or with the help of a close friend, spouse, or diet "buddy," but a behavioral or other counselor can often assist with it.
An important beginning is to try to get in touch with our level of hunger. Most "fat" people do not eat from hunger; in fact, many rarely experience this natural guide to eating. Using an eating diary to evaluate what, when, and where we eat, how much, our level of hunger, and what else we are doing at the time can be very revealing. An example of this form is found in Taking Charge of Your Weight and Well-Being by Joyce Nash and Linda Ormiston (Bull Publishing Co., Palo Alto, CA., 1978). Keeping such a diary for several weeks can help us to see more clearly our relationship to eating. We can then make a plan incorporating our new, positive habits and use new rules to change our behavior in weak areas. For example, if we snack while we make dinner or pick at the leftovers in the kitchen, we can make a commitment to eat food only at the dining room table and allow no eating in the kitchen or when standing. It may be difficult at first; constant awareness is needed. Behaviorists claim that it takes three weeks to change a habit and create a new one, so keep at it. Part of our eating behavior is affected by psychological aspects, such as our self-image, relationships to family or partner, sexuality, and general stress. Often, counseling is important to help change behavior to meet our dietary challenge.
Successfully achieving a new weight means changing our diet, not "going on a diet." When we return to our old, "normal" diet, we will create the same body we had before, and likely add another pound or three. First we change our diet by substituting wholesome foods for the more high-calorie and chemical foods in the diet. Next, we work to create good habits. The following list offers some suggestions for behavior patterns, food choices, and activities to help reach and maintain our optimum weight.
Before beginning a new diet plan, a health evaluation may be important, especially for those with recent weight gain or symptoms of medical problems. Before embarking on any low-calorie diets, we should have a complete exam, general biochemistry panel, and, if over 45, an electrocardiogram. A complete thyroid hormone panel is often useful to rule out low thyroid function, which could be a cause of weight gain or difficulty in losing weight. Blood fats, protein, potassium, and calcium levels are also important monitors in the process of weight loss. A positive side effect of diet change and weight loss is reduction of blood cholesterol and triglycerides and high blood pressure, yet also watching for mineral depletions, particularly of potassium, is a good idea.
A food allergy evaluation may be a valuable step on the path to a trim and healthier body. Many people have internal reactions to foods, with increased immune response, cellular irritation, and many possible symptoms. These can cause inflammatory activity and water retention, as well as poor utilization of other foods. Currently, the best way to isolate problem foods is a blood test that measures levels of IgG antibodies to specific food antigens (the protein stimuli of the food). This reveals delayed or "hidden" food allergy or hypersensitivity. Measuring IgE levels can determine foods causing more immediate reactions, such as hives, asthma, or eczema, though these reactions are relatively uncommon, which is why skin tests, which measure the IgE reactions, are not very helpful. Cytotoxic testing, looking at cellular reactions, is no longer used because interpretations of its results were too subjective. Antibody measurement is more reproducible.
Testing food reactions ourselves by trying different foods in the diet and observing how we feel can be very useful for the astute person, but the reactions may involve other variables besides the foods. TV doctor Dean Edell feels that the best method is double-blind testing—giving patients encapsulated dried foods as well as placebos, without the patient or tester knowing which is which, or even what food is being tested. This is a good method, but it is time consuming, and it assumes that food reactions occur so dramatically and immediately that people can be aware of them. Some reactions do happen at once, but many are more subtle and occur 12–24 hours later. Avoiding the causes of these quieter internal reactions contributes to the body’s fine-tuning and makes weight loss easier. Food allergy testing followed by a rotation diet avoiding the reactive foods plays an essential part in reaching and maintaining optimum weight and health (see more in the Allergy program in this chapter).
Several possible diets can be used as long-term plans for people who have problems maintaining their optimum weight. These are all generally healthier diets than those of the general population. There are literally thousands of quick-weight-loss, low-calorie, nutrient-deficient diets available to consumers. That is not what we are looking for to achieve our goals. I do not usually recommend fasting for weight loss, but if someone wants to lose a quick five to ten pounds in a short period of time, I will work with them, after an evaluation, with the overall intention of using that period to create a new eating plan to be used when the fast is over. Fasting is very valuable at increasing food awareness and sensitivity to both bad and good foods and eliminating addictive food and eating patterns, so that people can come back to eating with new enthusiasm and attention. A one-day-a-week fast on water or juices can be a valuable tool for many people who want to lose or maintain weight as it reemphasizes the importance of food choices and food awareness.
Behavior Patterns for Optimum Weight
- Focus on decreasing caloric intake and increasing calories out (exercise).
- Eat most foods early in the day for best utilization of calories.
- Drink eight to ten glasses of water daily, but not with meals.
- Drink two glasses of water 30 minutes before meals to reduce appetite.
- Eat lots of fruits and vegetables—as snacks, too.
- Walk a lot and exercise regularly.
- Avoid fats in the diet—they are more caloric.
- Use only low-fat or nonfat milk products.
- Minimize salad dressings, cream soup, and meats.
- Lessen or avoid alcohol and caffeine; minimize salt intake.
- Rotate foods—eat a variety; isolate allergenic foods and avoid them.
- Practice food combining.
- See a nutritionist to help with the eating plan or for food-habit counseling.
- Use smaller plate and portions.
- Fill up first on lower calorie foods, such as soups or vegetable.
- Avoid high-calories snacks and desserts.
- Wait 10–15 minutes before taking seconds—hunger will decrease.
- At restaurants, avoid overeating and take any extra food home.
- Take at least 20–30 minutes to eat a meal, even snacks.
- Eat at only one or two places in the home.
- Sit and relax before eating.
- Avoid eating while watching TV, driving, or doing other things.
- Shop for food only after eating, not when hungry.
- Create a schedule for eating.
- Plan meals and food choices ahead, snacks included.
- Carry food with you to work or when going out so that you have the right choices.
- Put snacks and sweet foods away at home.
- Stay out of the kitchen, cupboard, and refrigerator unless preparing food.
- Plan activities to occupy your free time when you might snack.
- Tell family and friends to support you and not push food.
- If you blow it, go right back to your plan, and do not make it an excuse to indulge.
- Weigh yourself only once every week or two.
- Learn about food, fats, calories, and so on , so you know what you are doing.
- Keep a good self-image and positive attitude toward life.
- Allow yourself to indulge (within reason) once weekly without guilt or self-judgement.
- Realize that it is ultimately up to you.
The essential aspects of a healthy weight-loss diet are lean protein (for example, fish and poultry), low fat, and lots of vegetables. High-fiber foods, with some complex carbohydrates, are also helpful, especially with an orientation to vegetables and vegetable-protein combinations such as grains and legumes. Eating a variety of foods and rotating those foods every few days is important. Cold-pressed vegetable oils are the main fats, with some low-fat dairy products if tolerated. Saturated and hydrogenated fats are minimized. Refined sugar and flour foods, including baked goods, candy, sodas, and other sweets, are avoided. Alcohol is out, and caffeine is minimized. We need to drink lots of water instead to support normal weight and healthy skin and internal functions.
Meals are restructured to include a moderate breakfast, great lunch, and light dinner. Snacks are low-calorie foods, such as fruits, vegetables, popcorn, or crackers. Overeating is prohibited. We must take breaks during big meals to let the body balance and let us know whether it needs more food. It usually does not; we really require a lot less food than our overweight mind tells us. Our satiation meter needs to be turned down, and that will take a golden key, which is not always easy to find. It may require going through our past, our emotional and psychological barriers, to find our creative spark and drive to be our best self and not let food interfere with this path of power. It really takes responsibility and a commitment to our new body-to-be, and a knowledge and belief that we can do it. We need to think more about eating to survive and feeding our body with the best possible fuel. Taking the time to eat, chewing each bite thoroughly, is essential to short-term digestion and absorption and the long-term health of the whole digestive tract. Being aware of the process of eating and of what food is eaten is a must.
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State's eighth-graders need to improve writing
CALIFORNIA National testing of eighth-graders finds just 25% in state perform at grade level
Published 4:00 am, Friday, April 4, 2008
California's eighth-graders write well enough to convey information, but their words and sentence structures "are often simple and unvaried," according to the latest state-by-state writing test known as the Nation's Report Card.
Yet the simple and unvaried truth is that 13-year-olds in nearly all states write in similarly bland fashion, labeled "sufficient."
Results released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Education show that only one state - New Jersey - reached the "skillful" level, in which students routinely churn out clearly organized essays. No state reached the "excellent" level, where readers feel compelled to read to the end.
Within the national band of sufficient mediocrity, eighth-graders in California write less well than their peers, ranking 38th out of 47 states and jurisdictions that took part in the survey.
That means just 25 percent of the state's eighth-graders scored at grade level in writing, compared with 56 percent in top-ranked New Jersey.
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The national average was 31 percent writing at grade level. Mississippi posted the lowest scores, with 15 percent scoring at grade level.
California students have improved, however. The writing test was last administered in 2002, when 23 percent of the state's students scored at grade level. In 1998, 20 percent did as well.
Depending on the year, the test is given to a sampling of students in grades 4, 8 or 12 in a variety of subjects. State participation is voluntary. This writing test was administered in 2007 to 165,000 students nationwide in grades 8 and 12, with state results provided only for eighth-graders.
Most educators take the Nation's Report Card seriously because it serves as a sort of academic Olympics in which states are pitted against each other, emerging as academic stars or duds.
But a frequent criticism is that the scoring is unfair because states with large numbers of English learners and low-income students - like California - are compared with sample groups that are primarily white and more affluent.
On Thursday, state Superintendent Jack O'Connell noted that California had more English learners taking the test than any other state. He said that when similar groups of students are stacked up against each other, California looks better.
"It is of interest to note that when compared to the national results, California's English learner population scored the same as English learners nationally, although the average score for English learners fell far below their counterparts who are fluent in English," he said.
Nearly half of California students tested were Latino, compared with 19 percent nationwide. Just under a third were white, compared with 58 percent nationwide. About 12 percent were Asian American, compared with 5 percent nationwide. And 7 percent were black, compared with 17 percent nationwide.
-- To see the full report, go to links.sfgate.com/ZCXK.
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Earth Day 2015 marks 45 years of celebrating this one of a kind planet that we call home. Started in 1970, Earth Day organizations have spawned both grass-roots movements as well as the EPA, or environmental protection agency. Many laws that protect both the land and the wildlife we share this earth with have come from the EPA and related organizations.
And despite being in its 45th year, the purposes behind Earth day are more important now than they ever were. Every year we have more tools with which to protect the earth and to decrease our carbon footprint. And every year we need to start creating new eco-friendly habits, and inspiring others to do the same. But don’t get daunted: you can take small steps that will lead to big changes down the road.
Consider volunteering at a recycling center, or organizing a local recycling drive. Or research the local addresses and phone numbers for recycling facilities, and what they offer, to share at school, work, and extra curricular activities. Even reusing scrap paper, biking or carpooling to work, and supporting eco-friendly products helps. And be sure to share your tips and tricks with others. Because sometimes the biggest thing holding people back from change is researching the who, what, when, where, and how.
Even doing something as simple as wearing eco-green pins to spread the word and start conversations with people can help inspire change. PinMart has an entire line of pins that are made from recycled materials, and can be worn year round to remind others to do their part on Earth Day, and every day.
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Guest Blog provided by UNH Cooperative Extension’s Education Center
For many vegetable gardeners, peak harvest season has passed and we find ourselves solemnly imagining how life will be without the option of harvesting fresh produce for our plates daily. Luckily there is still time to try seeding some cool season crops that can handle colder temperatures and actually taste better once cool weather arrives.
To start with, you will want to make sure that your soil is well prepared and free of large soil clods and rocks. Most greens seeds are small and won’t germinate as well in such conditions. While working the soil, apply a balanced fertilizer to ensure that your greens are well-fed throughout remainder of the season.
In certain soils that are very clumpy or tend to form a crust when dry, make a very small trench or depression just 1/8 inch deep. I generally use a board turned with a corner pointed down and press lightly to make the depression. The end of a hoe handle can also be used to mark out the row and leave the shallow trench. Seeding into this trench and covering with a fine seed starting mix or compost will ensure that germinating seedlings can easily push up through the soil surface. Another good technique for sowing greens mixes is to simply take a metal garden rake, the one with the thick metal teeth, and rake one direction across the bed down the entire length. Do this only to a depth appropriate for the crops you are sowing, often only ¼ inch deep. This will make several of the shallow planting trenches to hold your seeds. Then broadcast your mix across the entire bed, scattering the seeds so that you have one land every inch or so. Next, simply rake very lightly across the bed again, but this time rake perpendicular to the direction you raked before. This will cover the majority of your greens seeds with enough soil for good germination. That’s it. Water sufficiently to moisten the top inch of soil and seeding is complete.
Once your greens are seeded, they absolutely must remain moist during the germination and establishment period. A watering wand with a gentle shower setting is a good choice to avoid washing soil and seeds out of the rows while watering. The first two weeks from seeding through germination, emergence and early growth are critical where adequate moisture is concerned. Thin seedlings as needed and keep weeds under control, especially early on as the greens become established.
What type of greens can be grown during the late summer, fall and into winter?
A basic mesclun, or salad mix is a great choice. If you like a bit of a spicy bite in your mix, consider sowing mustards, arugula, mizuna and tatsoi. You can purchase pre-made mixes or create your own custom tailored to your own taste preferences.
Some crops are hardier than others or simply quicker to grow to a harvestable size. The most reliable group includes spinach, baby kale, tatsoi and claytonia. Next would be arugula, mizuna, cress and pac choi, followed by baby lettuces, baby Swiss chard and radishes.
Planting calendars for winter harvest of these crops are available online, and the best of them take into consideration the effect that shorter days have on plant growth rates. All of the crops listed in this article can be grown under protective covering such as a small hoop structure when seeded as late as the third full week in September, while the hardiest options like spinach, baby kale tatsoi and claytonia could be seeded up until mid-October. Of course, gardeners farther north would need to plant on the early side for best results.
One of the great things about growing greens late in the season is that many of the pest and disease pressures that we deal with early in the season begin to lighten up. Additionally, the sunny days and cool night temperatures result in higher sugar levels in the plants, which means great flavor on the plate.
Protect Your Plantings
To really get the most out of your planting, you’ll need to use floating row covers to help protect your greens from cold temperatures, drying winds and early frosts. This lightweight spun-bonded fabric allows light, water and air to pass through it, but offers a few degrees of frost protection that could result in a substantially extended harvest season.
Floating row covers get their name because they are actually used by some growers by just pulling them over the plants and allowing them to “float” or rest on top. During heavy frosts, the plants can still get burnt where they are in contact with the fabric. To remedy this, use heavy gauge wire, pvc piping, or even metal conduit bent into the shape of an arch and placed every 4 to 5 feet down the bed. Essentially, you are making a tiny hoop house with a protected microclimate inside. Consider using the heavier weight row covers, which are measured in ounces per square yard. Clear plastic can also be used for this purpose, but much greater care should be taken in managing ventilation to avoid buildup of excess heat and humidity. Adding a layer of clear plastic over the row cover after a few heavy frosts will provide additional protection and extend the harvest further yet. Experimenting with seeding dates, crop mixes and season extension techniques can result is harvest well in to the fall and winter.
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Only 10% of South African snakes are venomous (I am not sure of the proportion in other countries), the younger snakes having a higher concentration of venom that the adult snakes.
Snakes have either teeth or fangs. Fangs can either be found in the back of the mouth or in the front, and can either inject the venom into your skin or squirt it into your eyes. Problems that you will face are:
Can you identify the snake? Most people cannot.
Is the snake venomous? This can only be known by the identity of the snake.
If the snake is venomous, what type of venom was injected into you? Once again, the identity of the snake will solve this one.
How long will you live for? That depends on how old the snake was, how much venom was actually injected and the concentration of the venom.
TYPES OF VENOMOUS SNAKE BITES
Cobras and Mambas inject Neurotoxic venom which will affect the nervous system and cause initial muscle weakness, blurred vision, difficulty in swallowing and breathing and eventually paralysis.
Adders inject Cytotoxic venom which will cause massive swelling and bruising to the area that was bitten, and could eventually burst the skin open.
Boomslange and Vine Snakes inject Haemotoxic venom which destroys the platelets in the blood and causes major internal bleeding in the lungs, liver, kidneys, spleen etc., and blood will also leak out of all orifices in your body, including minor wounds and bruises.
Berg Adders are highly dangerous as they inject both Neurotoxic and Cytotoxic venom into you.
TREATMENT OF SNAKE BITES
What NOT to do:
Do not panic and run around as this will increase the blood circulation and transport the venom quicker around the body.
Do not make a tourniquet (this means to tie a cloth tightly around the arm or leg) as this will kill the arm or leg below it and it might have to be amputated later, as well as concentrate the venom (if it was a venomous bite) in the area and kill that body part off quicker.
Do not cut and try to suck out the venom as we see them do in cowboy movies, as the venom will still get absorbed into your blood stream through your gums and cheeks.
What TO do:
Do loosen the clothing, reassure the patient, and keep him calm and quiet.
Do dress the wound with a bandage and keep it cool (in the shade). This will stop your blood vessels dilating and decrease the blood flow in that area.
Do watch the patient carefully, if he loses consciousness, apply the ABC's (see below).
The ABC's (these three things are useful to remember in the majority of first aid situations):
A = Airways, tilt his neck backwards to get the tongue away from the back of his throat and stop him from choking on it. Do not put a blanket or anything under his head.
B = Breathing, look, listen and feel to check if he is still breathing. If he has stopped breathing, give him one breath every five seconds.
C = Circulation, check his pulse in his neck, on either side of his windpipe, or listen for a heartbeat by putting your ear next to his chest.
Once the situation has been assessed, then get help as quickly as possible. He would need to get to hospital soon. In hospital, if the snake is unknown, they would treat the patient symptomatically, that is, they would put him on a breathing machine if he stops breathing, give antibiotics if he shows signs of infection, etc.
Most people that get brought to hospital for snake bites, don't know much about the snake, so the practice of giving the patient an anti-venom is only done is certain cases.
(Besides, anti-venom is only housed in Cape Town and Pretoria, so anyone hiking in the Drakensberg - South Africa - and that gets bitten by a snake, will probably get brought to a Durban hospital, hence the symptomatic treatment which is given - this applies to South Africa).
Short note about the author
Gerald Crawford was born in South Africa, studied electronics, telecommunication, eco-travel and african travel concepts. He taught responsible tourism in South Africa. If you have any questions or comments please e-mail me on. E-mail Address: [email protected] Website Address: http://www.12234455.co.za.
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Otto made his first public appearance as a representative of the House of Habsburg at the tender age of four, at the funeral of his great-great-uncle Emperor Franz Joseph in November 1916.
The funeral procession was an impressive spectacle and remained engraved on the memory of many participants and onlookers. The young Otto walked behind the catafalque wearing a brilliant white tunic with a black sash which stood out against the sombre procession. As a symbol of innocence and new beginnings he attracted the sympathy of the crowd in a time of war-weariness and lack of hope. The child’s presence was a public relations coup, given that the dynasty no longer enjoyed undivided support after the death of the aged emperor.
As a child Otto experienced the fruitless efforts of his parents to regain the power they had lost. Aged nine he witnessed his father’s death agony: Karl insisted that his son be present so that he could see ‘how a Christian returns to his Creator’.
As he was the eldest son, Otto was groomed to be his father’s successor after the latter’s early death. From his earliest years he was brought up as the future head of the dynasty who might one day regain the throne. Thus immediately after his father’s death Otto was addressed as Imperial Majesty, and those around him had to accord him every obeisance due to an emperor, despite the straitened circumstances they were living in. When Otto attained his majority in 1930, his mother put the political legacy of his father into his hands and he was formally recognized as the head of the dynasty.
This claim was also reflected in his education: taught at first by private tutors, for the last few years of his schooling he attended the secondary school run by the Benedictine Abbey at Clairvaux in Luxemburg. Even his school leaving exams were co-opted as a declaration of his status: the former emperor’s son was examined by a panel of Austrian and Hungarian teachers in accordance with the regulations that had pertained before 1918.
After this he began to study law and political science at the University of Leuven in Belgium, where he was matriculated under the pseudonym ‘Count of Bar’. The latter was one of the titles borne by the head of the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty, and was also a clear reference to his Lotharingian roots.
While spending a term studying in Berlin in 1932/33 he witnessed the National Socialist takeover of power on 31 January 1933 and left Germany immediately. In 1935 he completed his studies and received his doctorate in law. In 1936 he began to be active in the Pan-Europa movement. This had been founded by the Bohemian aristocrat Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi with the aim of uniting Europe on the principles of democracy and Christian ideals as a counterweight to the totalitarian tendencies of the chauvinist-nationalist and Communist factions.
In the meantime the political climate in Austria had changed, and public opinion – at least in Conservative-Catholic circles – increasingly began to see positive sides to the Habsburg legacy. Otto won support from the ‘Iron Ring’ monarchist association which became a platform for the hitherto unorganized legitimist tendencies.
In 1931 Otto was made a freeman of the town of Ampass in Tyrol. This was the first sign of a changed attitude towards the dynasty. This initiative gradually became a veritable movement; by 1938 Otto had been made a freeman of 1,603 towns in Austria.
Translation: Sophie Kidd
Baier, Stephan; Demmerle, Eva: Otto von Habsburg, Die Biografie. 5. Aufl., Amalthea, Wien 2007
Brook-Shepherd, Gordon: Otto von Habsburg. Biografie. Verlag Styria, Graz-Wien-Köln, 2002
Leidinger, Hannes; Moritz, Verena; Schippler, Berndt: Schwarzbuch der Habsburger. Die unrühmliche Geschichte eines Herrscherhauses, 2. Auflage, Innsbruck, Wien 2010
Riedl, Joachim: Ein letzter Hauch der Monarchie. Mit dem Tod von Otto Habsburg geht ein Kapitel österreichischer Geschichte endgültig zu Ende. In: Wochenzeitung Die Zeit, Nr. 28, 7. Juli 2011, Österreich-Ausgabe, S. 14.
- The Habsburgs in exile I: from Switzerland to Madeira
- Attempts to regain power
- Putsch attempts in Hungary
- Habsburgs in exile II: 1922-1945
- Zita – to the very last for ‘God, Emperor and Fatherland’
- Otto, the last ‘crown prince’
- Otto and Austrofascism
- The ‘Habsburg Crisis’
- The beatification of Emperor Karl I
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Number of schools
Medium Home Price
Median Household Income
Wenatchee is the largest city in Chelan County and technically sits on the West side of the Columbia river. East Wenatchee is literally right across the river, but lies in Douglas County and is considered a separate entity. Wenatchee might be most famous for the apple orchards that are liberally scattered throughout the area. There is quite the history of hydroelectric power activity in the area as well, with multiple dams in close proximity to Wenatchee.
- Wenatchee is currently the the 33rd largest city in the State of Washington.
- According to the latest Census data taken in 2010, Wenatchee is home to about 32,000 residents.
- It used to known as the Buckle of the Power Belt of the Northwest. This was because of all the hydroelectric power generated in the region.
- Wenatchee was named for an Indian tribe. The original spelling was “Wenatchi”.
- Physical size: About 8 sq miles.
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For more than a decade, no single issue has caused more frustration or curiosity for Python novices and experts alike than the Global Interpreter Lock.
An Open Question
Every field has one. A problem that has been written off as too difficult, too time consuming. Merely mentioning an attempt to solve it raises eyebrows. Long after the community at large has moved on, it is taken up by those on the fringe. Attempts by novices are undertaken for no other reason than the difficulty of the problem and the imagined accolades that would accompany a solution. The open question in Computer Science of whether P = NP is such a problem. An answer to the affirmative has the possibility to literally change the world, provided a "reasonable" polynomial time algorithm is presented. Python's hardest problem is less difficult than crafting a proof of P = NP, to be sure. Nevertheless, it has not received a satisfactory solution to date, and the practical implications of a solution would be similarly transformative. Thus, it's easy to see why so many in the Python community are interested in an answer to the question: "What can be done about the Global Interpreter Lock?"
A Low Level Look at Python
To understand the GIL and its implications, we must start at Python's foundations. Languages like C++ are compiled languages, so named because a program is fed in to a compiler where it is parsed according to the language's grammar, transformed into a language agnostic intermediate representation, and linked into an executable comprised of highly optimized machine code. The compiler is able to optimize the code so aggressively because it is seeing the whole program (or large, self-contained chunks) at once. This allows it to reason about interactions between different language constructs and make informed decisions about optimization.
In contrast, Python is an interpreted language. The program is fed into an interpreter in order to be run. The interpreter has no knowledge of the program before it is run; rather, it knows the rules of Python and is capable of dynamically applying those rules. It too has optimizations, but optimizations of a rather different class. Since the interpreter cannot reason about the program proper, most of Python's optimizations are optimizations of the interpreter itself. A faster interpreter means faster program execution "for free". That is, when the interpreter is optimized, Python programs need not change to realize the benefit.
This is an important point, so it bears repeating. The execution speed of a Python program, all other things being equal, is directly tied to the "speed" of the interpreter. No matter how much optimization you do within your program itself, your program's execution speed is still tied to how efficiently the interpreter can execute your code. It is clear, then, why much work has been devoted to optimizing the Python interpreter. It is the closest thing to a free lunch Python programmers can get.
The Free Lunch Is Over
Or is it? A generation of programmers have learned to write code while Moore's Law was delivering hardware based speedups with predictable timing. If one wrote code that was slow, simply waiting a bit for faster processors was oftentimes the easiest solution. Indeed, Moore's law still holds true and likely will for quite a bit longer, but the way in which it holds has fundamentally changed. No longer are clock rates steadily increasing to dizzying speeds. Instead, multiple cores are used to take advantage of transistor density increases. Programs wishing to capitalize on new processors must be rewritten to exploit parallelism.
When most developers hear "parallelism" the immediately think of multi-threaded programs. Utilizing multiple threads of execution is by far the most common way to take advantage of multi-core systems. While multi-threaded programming is a good deal tougher than "sequential" programming, the careful programmer may nevertheless exploit parallelizable portions of his or her code to great effect. The implementation language should be an afterthought, since almost all heavily used modern languages support multi-threaded programming.
A Surprising Fact
Now we come to the crux of the issue. To take advantage of multi-core systems, Python must support multiple threads of execution. Being an interpreted language, Python's interpreter must be written in such a way so that doing so is both safe and performant. We all know the issues that multi-threaded programming can present. The interpreter must be mindful not to operate on internally shared data from different threads. It must also manage user's threads in such a way that the maximum amount of computation is being performed at all times.
What, then, is the mechanism by which data is protected from simultaneous access by different threads? The Global Interpreter Lock. The name is instructive. Quite literally, it is a global (in the sense of the interpreter) lock (in the sense of a mutex or similar construct) on the interpreter. This approach is certainly safe, but it has (for the new Python programmer), a startling implication: in any Python program, no matter how many threads and how many processors are present, only one thread is being executed at any time.
Many discover this fact by accident. Newsgroups and message boards are littered with messages from Python novices and experts alike asking "why does my newly multi-threaded Python program run slower than when it had only one thread?" Many feel silly even asking the question, since of course a program with two threads where before there was just one will be faster (assuming that the work is indeed parallelizable). In fact, the question is asked so frequently that Python experts have crafted a standard answer: "Do not use multiple threads. Use multiple processes." But this answer is even more confusing than its question. I shouldn't use multiple threads in Python? How can multi-threading in a language as popular as Python be so broken as to have experts recommending against its use? Surely I'm missing something?
Sadly, nothing has been missed. Due to the design of the Python interpreter, using multiple threads to increase performance is at best a difficult task. At worst, it will decrease (sometimes significantly) the speed of your program. A freshman CS undergrad could tell you what to expect when threads are all competing for a single shared resource. The results are often not pretty. That said, there are many times that multi-threading works well, and it is perhaps a testament to both the interpreter implementation and the core developers that there are not more complaints about Python's multi-threading performance.
What Now? Panic?
So what, then, can be done? Are we as Python developers meant to give up the idea of using multiple threads to exploit parallelism? Why does the GIL need to guarantee only one thread is running at a time anyway? Couldn't finer-grained locks be added to protect individual objects from simultaneous access? And why has no one attempted something like this before?
These are useful questions with interesting answers. The GIL protects access to things like the current thread state and heap allocated object for garbage collection. There is nothing special about the Python language, however, that requires the use of a GIL. It is an artifact of the implementation. There are alternative Python interpreters (and compilers) that do not make use of a GIL. For CPython, though, it's been there pretty much since the beginning.
So why not get rid of it? Many are not aware, but this was attempted back in 1999 for Python 1.5 in the oft-cited but poorly understood "free threading" patches from Greg Stein. In the patches, the GIL was completely removed and replaced with finer grained locking. Its removal, however, came at the expense of execution speed for single-threaded programs. It was perhaps 40% slower when running with a single thread. Two threads showed an increase in speed, but beyond that the benefits did not scale linearly with the number of cores. Because of the degradation in execution speed, the patches were rejected and largely forgotten.
The GIL is Hard. Let's Go Shopping!
The "free threading" patches are instructive, though, in that they demonstrate a fundamental point about the Python interpreter: removing the GIL is hard. Since the time of the patches, the interpreter has come to rely on more global state, making the removal of today's GIL that much more difficult. It should be noted that it is precisely for this reason that many become interested in attempting to remove the GIL in the first place; hard problems are fun.
But perhaps this is all a bit misguided. Let's consider what would happen if we had a magical patch that removed the GIL with no performance penalty to single threaded Python code. We would have what we said we wanted all along: a threading API that properly makes use of all processors simultaneously. Now that we've got what we want, is it actually a good thing?
Thread based programming is hard. There are no two ways about it. Every time one thinks he or she understands everything there is to know about how threading works, a new wrinkle is uncovered. A number of high-profile language designers and researchers have come out against the threading model because it is simply too difficult to get right with any reasonable degree of consistency. As anyone who has written a multi-threaded application can tell you, both developing and debugging are exponentially more difficult compared to a single threaded program. The programmer's mental model, while well suited for sequential programs, just doesn't match the parallel execution model. The GIL, then, unintentionally serves to help protect a programmer from his or her self. While synchronization primitives are still required when using threads, the GIL actually helps preserve consistency of data between threads.
It seems, then, that Python's most difficult question may be asking the wrong thing. There's a good reason that Python experts recommend using multiple processes instead of multiple threads, and it's not to hide the inadequacies of the Python threading implementation. Rather, it is to encourage developers to use a safer and more straightforward concurrency model and reserve multi-threaded programming for when it is absolutely necessary. To many, it is not clear what, if any, is the "best" model for parallel programming. What is clear to most, however, is multiple threads is not it.
As for the GIL, don't think it just sits there static and unanalyzed. Python 3.2 saw a new GIL implementation by Antoine Pitrou with encouraging results. It was the first major change to the GIL since 1992. The change is too large to explain here, but at a high level, the old GIL counted Python instructions to determine when it was time to give up the GIL. As it turns out, a single Python instruction can comprise a large amount of work, as they don't translate 1:1 to machine instructions. In the new GIL, a hard timeout is used to instruct the current thread to give up the lock. When a second thread requests the lock, the thread currently holding it is compelled to release it after 5ms (that is, it checks if it needs to release it every 5ms). This leads to more predictable switching between threads when work is available.
It is not a perfect change, however. Perhaps the most active researcher into the effect of the GIL on various types of work is David Beazley. In addition to what is likely the most in-depth look at the pre-3.2 GIL, he has researched the new GIL implementation and discovered a number of interesting program profiles for which even the new GIL performs quite poorly. He continues to drive the discussion surrounding the GIL forward with practical research and published results.
Regardless of one's personal feelings about Python's Global Interpreter Lock, it remains the language's most difficult technical challenge. To understand its implications requires a thorough understanding of operating system design, multi-threaded programming, C, interpreter design, and the CPython interpreter implementation. Those prerequisites alone preclude many developers from investigating it more thoroughly. Nevertheless, the GIL shows no signs of going away any time soon. For the time being, it will continue to both confuse and surprise those new to the language while simultaneously intriguing those interested in trying to solve very difficult technical problems.
The preceding is based on my research to date into the Python interpreter. While there are many other parts of the interpreter I hope to write about, none is more well known than the Global Interpreter Lock. The technical details were researched thoroughly against the CPython repository tip, though I imagine there are some inaccuracies. If you spot one, please let me know so that I may correct it as quickly as possible.Posted on by Jeff Knupp
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Ever wonder how you can remember the lyrics of a song that was popular and you sang along with maybe 20 years ago, but still forget what you may have had for breakfast?
We spend a lifetime using our brains during every waking and sleeping moment to acquire knowledge. Some refer to our brains as the infinite resource being able to solve a multitude of problems on a daily basis. It is obvious that we must have knowledge to solve problems in our work or home whether it be social, emotional or even functional. In order to be successful in formulating a pathway for solution, we need a reservoir of information and data that we acquire from our reading, communicating with others, and by doing formal study. Having facts, ideas, and methods available in our memories we can analyze, conclude, and understand. The more knowledge we gain, the more curious we become and innovation is not far behind.
So the question is; What are the best techniques for students to study so that they may retain the greatest amount of knowledge which they need in their daily schooling? The brain makes connections on bits of information it is presented and formulates ideas on what follows in memory. Cognitive scientists have been working for years on how the brain processes thoughts and makes sense of various stimuli. The latest research suggests that spaced repetition is one of the most powerful vehicles to help us learn. Simply quizzing ourselves often pays great benefits. Each time our brain tries and is successful in retrieving information, the greater its capacity to solidify in memory. As an independent school, we find that reviewing information or practicing at the right time is critical for durable learning. Spaced repetition or “Distributed Practice” refers to reviews that take place after some time from the original learning event, as opposed to reviews that occur immediately following the original learning event (termed massed practice).
Using Spaced Practice takes a little of planning to begin with; however, in the long run information will remain in memory longer and will actually reduce study time. Here’s how it works! Using a vehicle such as flash cards is the easiest way to begin. Studying your cards for five hours spread out over two weeks is better than the same five hours all at once. Review information from each class, but not immediately after class. After reviewing information from the most recent class, make sure to go back and study important older information to keep it fresh. Just like in sports, practice makes perfect. Using flash cards or apps. like Anki or Quizlet are much more powerful than just re-reading your class notes. At first this may seem difficult and you may forget some information from day-to-day, but this is actually a good thing! A little struggle forces the brain to retrieve information from memory making topics more understandable and cased in stone as they say. Creating small spaces between study while doing a little bit over time adds up in the future.
In the research literature, the learning advantage of distributed over massed practice is known as the spacing effect. In general, the research is clear that spaced practice is superior for long-term learning and retention. The reason that spaced repetition seems to work is that each time the information you are attempting to remember is recalled your brain has to search for this information and this deep process of retrieval over time strengthens the neural connections. It is also thought that this practice is the secret to long term retention of knowledge since this process helps connect related material and presents the brain with the opportunity to become creative to solve problems in life.
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TRAIL TO EAGLE
Significance of the Eagle Scout Rank
The fact that a young man is an Eagle Scout has always carried with it a special significance, not only in Scouting but also as he enters higher education, business or industry, and community service. The award is a performance-based achievement whose standards have been well-maintained over the years. Not every boy who joins a Boy Scout troop earns the Eagle Scout rank; only about 5% of all Boy Scouts do so. This represents more than 2 million Boy Scouts who have earned the rank since 1912. Nevertheless, the goals of Scouting—citizenship training, character development, and personal fitness—remain important for all Scouts, whether or not they attain the Eagle Scout rank.
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Borage nutrition facts
Borage or bee plant is one of the chosen culinary herbs used by our grandmothers to make their meals look and taste better, be it to make popular green sauce, to garnish salads or to pamper children with candied flowers! This ancient garden herb exudes characteristic cucumber aroma to the recipes it added to...thus making it as one of the most sought after herb in the households.
Botanically, it belongs to the family of Borabinaceae, of the genus Borago and has scientific name: Borago officinalis. The herb is known also as starflower since it bears five petal deep blue color star-shaped beautiful flowers in clusters. Some other common names include bee bread, burrage, common bugloss...etc.
Borage is annual hollow stemmed plant with bristly hairs and reaches about 75-90 cm in height. It grows in plentiful all over the wild highlands of Eastern Europe and Asia Minor regions.
The plant features broad oval shaped dark green fuzzy leaves. In general, its leaves are harvested from the plant just after the flower buds form but before flowering. Younger leaves are used in salads while older leaves are used as greens. However, as the plant gets older, the leaves get tougher, larger, more fuzzy, and bitter in taste.
Health benefits of borage
Borage is one of very popular culinary herb especially in Mediterranean countries. The herb contains many notable phyto-nutrients, minerals, and vitamins that are essential for optimum health and wellness.
The herb parts contain essential fatty acid gamma-linolenic acid (GLA), typically in concentrations of 17-20%. Linolenic acid is omega-6 fatty acid that play vital role in restoration of joint health, immunity, healthy skin and mucus membranes.
Fresh burrage herb has high levels of vitamin C (ascorbic acid); provide 35 mcg or 60% of RDA per 100 g. Vitamin C is one of the powerful natural anti-oxidant help remove harmful free radicals from the body. Along with other anti-oxidants, it has immune booster, wound healing and anti-viral effects.
Burrage herb contains very high levels of vitamin A (140% of RDA) and carotenes . Both these compounds are powerful flavonoid anti-oxidants. Together, they act as protective scavengers against oxygen-derived free radicals and reactive oxygen species (ROS) that play a role in aging and various disease processes.
Vitamin A is known to have antioxidant properties and is essential for vision. It is also required for maintaining healthy mucus membranes and skin. Consumption of natural foods rich in vitamin A and carotenes are known to help body protect from lung and oral cavity cancers.
The herb has good amount of minerals like iron (41% of RDA), calcium, potassium, manganese, copper, zinc, and magnesium. Potassium is an important component of cell and body fluids, which helps control heart rate and blood pressure. Manganese is used by the body as a co-factor for the antioxidant enzyme, superoxide dismutase. Iron is an important co-factor for cytochrome oxidase enzyme in the cellular metabolism. In addition, being a component of hemoglobin inside the red blood cells, it determines the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood.
The herb is one of the good sources of B-complex vitamins, particularly rich in niacin (vitamin B-3). Niacin helps lower LDL cholesterol levels in the body. In addition, it has riboflavin, thiamin, pyridoxine, and folates in adequate levels. These vitamins function as co-factors in the enzymatic metabolism inside the body.
|Principle||Nutrient Value||Percentage of RDA|
|Total Fat||0.70 g||2%|
|Pantothenic acid||0.041 mg||1%|
|Vitamin A||4200 IU||140%|
|Vitamin C||35 mg||60%|
Selection and storage
Borage should be fresh for use in salads and in cooking. While buying from the markets look for fresh herb leaves with stout succulent stem and delicate cucumber flavor, which emanate when you hold the plant from short distance. Like other greens such as spinach, borage can stay fresh only for few days and looses flavor rather sooner. In addition, unlike other herbs (like oregano); dried borage leaves are out of flavor and hence used only when they are fresh.
Avoid sunken, yellow or dried leaves as they are out of flavor and taste.
Once at home, store borage as you do it for spinach or like any other greens.
Preparation and serving methods:
Wash fresh herb in cold running water or rinse for few minutes to remove any dust or any pesticide residues. The herb can be used in large quantities like green vegetables. Remove tough leaves and stem using paring knife.
Here are some cooking tips:
Young tender borage leaves add flavor of cucumber to salads.
Mature leaves can be used as a green vegetable in much the same way as spinach. It mixes well with other greens, green beans, carrots, potato, tomato etc.
Tender leaves used to make cool juice with added lemonade.
Borage flowers are often cooked in batter as fritters. They can also be candied.
Borage is one of the common ingredients along with parsley, chervil, chives, watercress, sorrel, and salad burnet in the preparation of traditional German green sauce.
Fresh herb can also be added to sausages, pizza and in poultry stuffing.
Borage tea is popular refreshing drink in the European countries.
Medicinal uses of borage herb
Borage herb parts especially its seeds contain many health benefiting essential oil such as gamma-linolenic acid. This omega-6 fatty acid (18:3 fats) has recommended in the treatment of arthritis, dermatitis, pre-menstrual painful conditions... etc.
- An infusion of leaves and seeds is used in traditional medicines to increase breast milk production in the nursing mothers.
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Origin of percipientClassical Latin percipiens, present participle of percipere: see perceive
Origin of percipientLatin percipiēns percipient- present participle of percipere to perceive ; see perceive .
- per·cip′i·ence per·cip′i·en·cy
(comparative more percipient, superlative most percipient)
- Having the ability to perceive, especially to perceive quickly.
- (psychology, education, dated) Perceiving events only in the moment, without reflection, as a very young child.
- Over time children advance from the percipient stage to the perceptive stage, in which they begin to reflect on the significance of events.
From Latin percipient-, root of percipiens, present participle of percipio (“to perceive")
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National Rehabilitation Awareness Week is a time to celebrate all of the wonderful ways rehabilitation can help individuals get back to doing the things they love. But what exactly qualifies as “rehab” and what does a rehab professional do? There are several disciplines within rehab and many settings where rehab professionals work including physical therapy and occupational therapy.
Physical therapy requires the care and guidance of a licensed physical therapist or PT. PT’s are skilled in performing examinations, diagnosis, and using evidence-based practice to develop a treatment plan. All PT’s are required to have a bachelor’s and master’s degree or clinical doctorate.
For many patients, it’s now easier than ever to get physical therapy. You can schedule directly with a PT and we will send the doctor of your choice our initial evaluation with plan of care. We also accept referrals from the following providers: MD’s, PA’s, NP’s, DO’s, PDM’s, DDS’s and DC’s.
Physical Therapy Assistants (PTA’s) are licensed clinicians that work under the supervision of a PT to provide care. They hold an associate’s degree from an accredited school and many also have a bachelor’s degree. Both PT’s and PTA’s must complete 30 hours of continuing education every 2 years to maintain their licenses.
Similar to physical therapy, the purpose of occupational therapy is to enable people to fulfill, or work towards fulfilling, their potential as occupational beings. Occupational therapists promote function, quality of life and the realization of potential in a person experiencing occupational deprivation, imbalance or alienation.
If your life is interrupted due to a developmental problem, orthopedic or neurological injury or disease or having difficulty with normal limitations that occur with aging, occupational therapy may help you gain/regain life skills, adapt the environment to make activities of daily living easier or teach you to compensate in order to be as independent as possible.
After earning a master’s degree from an accredited Occupational Therapy program, an OT may work in schools, hospitals or independent clinics. OTs serve persons with hand injuries, after stroke, spinal cord injuries, neurological disease, head injury including concussion, cerebral palsy, Down Syndrome, autism and many more. So if you cannot put on your socks or you can no longer sign your name, Occupational Therapists can help you learn ways to return to self care, home care, work and leisure tasks.
Esther Hendler, MOT is an Occupational Therapist at Ochsner Therapy and Wellness in Metairie. To schedule an appointment, please call 504-842-4348.
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