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The Independent Jane
For all the love, romance and scandal in Jane Austen’s books, what they are really about is freedom and independence. Independence of thought and the freedom to choose.
Elizabeth’s refusal of Mr. Collins offer of marriage showed an independence seldom seen in heroines of the day. Her refusal of Mr. Darcy while triggered by anger showed a level of independence that left him shocked and stunned.
The freedom she exhibited in finally accepting him in direct defiance of Lady Catherine and knowing her father would disapprove was unusual even for Austen. In her last book Anne Elliot is persuaded to refuse Captain Wentworth at Lady Russel’s insistence.
Although Jane played by the rules of the day, all of her writing is infused with how she wanted life to be. She ‘screams’ her outrage at the limitations for women in Emma.
When accosted by Mrs. Elton, Jane Fairfax says,
“Excuse me, ma’am, but this is by no means my intention; I make no inquiry myself, and should be sorry to have any made by my friends. When I am quite determined as to the time, I am not at all afraid of being long unemployed. There are places in town, offices, where inquiry would soon produce something — offices for the sale, not quite of human flesh, but of human intellect.”
“Oh! my dear, human flesh! You quite shock me; if you mean a fling at the slave-trade, I assure you Mr. Suckling was always rather a friend to the abolition.”
“I did not mean, I was not thinking of the slave-trade,” replied Jane; “governess-trade, I assure you, was all that I had in view; widely different certainly, as to the guilt of those who carry it on; but as to the greater misery of the victims, I do not know where it lies.”
That same sentiment is emphasized in Emma’s shock when Mrs. Weston tells her of Frank Churchill’s secret engagement to Jane.
“Good God!” cried Emma, “Jane actually on the point of going as governess! What could he mean by such horrible indelicacy? To suffer her to engage herself — to suffer her even to think of such a measure!”
I find it interesting that at the moment of Austen’s birth or there about, John Adams left his farm in Massachusetts for the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Doesn’t sound particularly interesting, I know but consider this.
John Adams left his home in mid-December 1775 to attend an unprecedented meeting of colonial representatives to consider severing ties with their mother country and her monarch; a decision that culminated in a document unlike any ever written. In the mother country, one day in that same cold December a baby girl was born at Steventon Rectory. Her cry was heard by only the people in the house but the years to come would see her pen create works unlike any the world had ever seen.
Comparing Austen’s words with Thomas Jefferson’s may seem a trivialization but I believe that Austen’s impact on the world is no less important than Jefferson’s. The effect of Jane’s writing maybe more subtle than that of the Virginian but it is no less influential.
Jefferson’s words instigated and promoted a revolution, a war of independence. Jane’s words had no such excessive consequence. Still in her own quiet, genteel yet powerful way she declared and promoted the same principles of freedom and self-regulated independence as our American forefathers. In all her novels Jane advocates independence of person and thought, the rights of all and acceptance of responsibility for those rights.
Jane may not have incited military action as Jefferson did but even as an avowed royalist, I doubt not that Jane Austen firmly believed in his declaration of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. | <urn:uuid:0d8a309d-25c5-405d-a08a-c11239f0d717> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://austenauthors.net/the-independent-jane | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97432 | 845 | 2.75 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Tornadoes are the most intense storms on the planet, and they’re never discussed without at least some mention of the term wind shear. Many of us sitting at home, though, have no idea what wind shear is, or if we do, how it affects tornado production.
What is Wind Shear
Wind shear, although it might sound complex, is a simple concept. Wind shear is merely the change in wind with height, in terms of wind direction and speed. I think that we all understand that the wind is generally stronger in the atmosphere over our heads than it is here on the ground, and if we think of the atmosphere in terms of the three dimensions that it has, it should not be surprising that the wind above us might also be blowing from a different direction than the wind at the ground. When that happens–the wind speed and direction vary with height–wind shear is occurring.
Wind Shear and Supercell Thunderstorms
This wind shear is an important part of the process in the development of a supercell thunderstorm, from which the vast majority of strong tornadoes form.
All thunderstorms are produced by a powerful updraft–a surge of air that rises from the ground into the upper levels of the atmosphere, and when this updraft forms in an area where wind shear is present, the updraft is influence by this speed and different direction of the wind above, pushing the column of air in the updraft into a more vertical alignment.
Rain’s Influence on Tornado Production
Needless to say, thunderstorms typically produce very heavy rain, and rain-cooled air is much heavier than the warm air of the updraft, so the rain-cooled air, produces a compensating downdraft (what comes up, must come down). This downdraft pushes the part of the rotating air that was forced in its direction by the stronger wind aloft downward, and the result is a horizontal column of rotating air.
That’s Not a Tornado!
I know what you’re thinking that you’ve seen enough TLC or Discovery Channel shows to know that a horizontal column of air is NOT a tornado; you need a vertical column of air.
This Can Be a Tornado
You’re right, but remember the updraft that is driving the thunderstorm is still working, and it’s able to pull the horizontal, spinning column of air into the thunderstorm, resulting in a vertical column of spinning air.
(NOAA image showing vertical column of air in a supercell thunderstorm)
The result is a rotating thunderstorm capable of producing a tornado, and it would not be possible without wind shear.
(NOAA image showing tornado formation in supercell thunderstorm) | <urn:uuid:7400301c-e625-46d5-be90-1020cf8d52f8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cloudyandcool.com/2009/05/05/wind-shear-and-tornadoes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916764 | 573 | 4.15625 | 4 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Is this bone a Neanderthal flute?
Cave Bear femur fragment from Slovenia, 43+kya
DOUBTS AIRED OVER NEANDERTHAL BONE 'FLUTE'
(AND REPLY BY MUSICOLOGIST BOB FINK)
Science News 153 (April 4, 1998): 215.
By B. Bower
Amid much media fanfare, a research team in 1996 trumpeted an ancient, hollowed out bear bone pierced on one side with four complete or partial holes as the earliest known musical instrument. The perforated bone, found in an Eastern European cave, represents a flute made and played by Neandertals at least 43,000 ye us ago, the scientists contended.
Now it's time to stop the music, say two archaeologists who examined the purported flute last spring. On closer inspection, the bone appears to have been punctured and gnawed by the teeth of an animal -- perhaps a wolf -- as it stripped the limb of meat and marrow report, April Nowell and Philip G. Chase, both of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. "The bone was heavily chewed by one or more carnivores, creating holes that became more rounded due to natural processes after burial," Nowell says. "It provides very weak evidence for the origins of [Stone Age] music." Nowell presented the new analysis at the annual meeting of the Paleoanthropology Society in Seattle last week.
Nowell and Chase examined the bone with the permission of its discoverer, Ivan Turk of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences in Ljubljana (S.N.: 11/23/96, p. 328). Turk knows of their conclusion but still views the specimen as a flute.
Both open ends of the thighbone contain clear signs of gnawing by carnivores, Nowell asserts. Wolves and other animals typically bite off nutrient-rich tissue at the ends of limb bones and extract available marrow. If Neandertals had hollowed out the bone and fashioned holes in it, animals would not have bothered to gnaw it, she says.
Complete and partial holes on the bone's shaft were also made by carnivores, says Nowell. Carnivores typically break open bones with their scissor like cheek teeth. Uneven bone thickness and signs of wear along the borders of the holes, products of extended burial in the soil, indicate that openings made by cheek teeth were at first less rounded and slightly smaller, the researchers hold.
Moreover, the simultaneous pressure of an upper and lower tooth produced a set of opposing holes, one partial and one complete, they maintain.
Prehistoric, carnivore-chewed bear bones in two Spanish caves display circular punctures aligned in much the same way as those on the Slovenian find. In the March Antiquity, Francesco d'Errico of the Institute of Quaternary Prehistory and Geology in Talence, France, and his colleagues describe the Spanish bones.
In a different twist, Bob Fink, an independent musicologist in Canada, has reported
on the Internet
(http://www.webster.sk.ca/greenwich/fl-compl.htm) that the spacing of the two complete and two partial holes on the back of the Slovenian bone conforms to musical notes on the diatonic (do, re, mi. . .) scale.
The bone is too short to incorporate the diatonic scale's seven notes, counter Nowell and Chase. Working with Pennsylvania musicologist Robert Judd, they estimate that the find's 5.7-inch length is less than half that needed to cover the diatonic spectrum. The recent meeting presentation is "a most convincing analysis," comments J. Desmond Clark of the University of California, Berkeley, although it's possible that Neandertals blew single notes through carnivore-chewed holes in the bone.
"We can't exclude that possibility," Nowell responds. "But it's a big leap of faith to conclude that this was an intentionally constructed flute."
TO THE EDITOR, SCIENCE NEWS (REPLY BY BOB FINK, May 1998)
(See an update of this discussion on Bob Fink's web site, November 2000)
The doubts raised by Nowell and Chase (April 4th, DOUBTS AIRED OVER NEANDERTHAL BONE 'FLUTE') saying the Neanderthal Bone is not a flute have these weaknesses:
The alignment of the holes -- all in a row, and all of equivalent diameter, appear to be contrary to most teeth marks, unless some holes were made independently by several animals. The latter case boggles the odds for the holes ending up being in line. It also would be strange that animals homed in on this one bone in a cave full of bones, where no reports of similarly chewed bones have been made.
This claim is harder to believe when it is calculated that chances for holes to
be arranged, by chance, in a pattern that matches the spacings of 4 notes of a
diatonic flute, are only one in hundreds to occur .
The analysis I made on the Internet (http://www.webster.sk.ca/greenwich/fl-compl.htm) regarding the bone being capable of matching 4 notes of the do, re, mi (diatonic) scale included the possibility that the bone was extended with another bone "mouthpiece" sufficiently long to make the notes sound fairly in tune. While Nowell says "it's a big leap of faith to conclude that this was an intentionally constructed flute," it's a bigger leap of faith to accept the immense coincidence that animals blindly created a hole-spacing pattern with holes all in line (in what clearly looks like so many other known bone flutes which are made to play notes in a step-wise scale) and blindly create a pattern that also could play a known acoustic scale if the bone was extended. That's too much coincidence for me to accept. It is more likely that it is an intentionally made flute, although admittedly with only the barest of clues regarding its original condition.
The 5.7 inch figure your article quoted appears erroneous, as the centimeter scale provided by its discoverer, Ivan Turk, indicates the artifact is about 4.3 inches long. However, the unbroken femur would originally have been about 8.5 inches, and the possibility of an additional hole or two exists, to complete a full scale, perhaps aided by the possible thumbhole. However, the full diatonic spectrum is not required as indicated by Nowell and Chase: It could also have been a simpler (but still diatonic) 4 or 5 note scale. Such short-scale flutes are plentiful in homo sapiens history.
Finally, a worn-out or broken flute bone can serve as a scoop for manipulation of food, explaining why animals might chew on its ends later. It is also well-known that dogs chase and maul even sticks, despite their non-nutritional nature. What appears "weak" is not the case for a flute, but the case against it by Nowell and Chase.
Letter to the Editor: Antiquity Journal:
"A Bone to Pick"
By Bob Fink
I have a bone to pick with Francesco d'Errico's viewpoint in the March issue of Antiquity (article too long to reproduce here) regarding the Neanderthal flute found in Slovenia by Ivan Turk. D'Errico argues the bone artifact is not a flute.
D'Errico omits dealing with the best evidence that this bone find is a flute.
Regarding the most important evidence, that of the holes being lined up, neither d'Errico nor Turk make mention of this.
This line-up is remarkable especially if they were made by more than one carnivore, which apparently they'd have to be, based on Turk's analysis of the center-spans of the holes precluding their being made by a single carnivore or bite (Turk,* pp.171-175). To account for this possible difficulty, some doubters do mention "one or more" carnivores (Chase & Nowell, Science News 4/4/98).
My arguments over the past year pointed out the mathematical odds of the lining up of the holes occurring by chance-chewing are too difficult to believe.
The Appendix in my essay ("Neanderthal Flute --A Musicological Analysis") proves that the number of ways a set of 4 random holes could be differently spaced (to produce an audibly different set of tones) are 680 ways. The chances a random set would match the existing fragment's spacing [which also could produce a match to four diatonic notes of the scale] are therefore only one in hundreds. If, in calculating the odds, you also allowed the holes to be out of line, or to be less than 4 holes as well, then the chance of a line-up match is only one from many tens of thousands.
And yet randomness and animal bites still are acceptable to account for holes being in line that could also play some notes of the scale? This is too much coincidence for me to believe occurred by chance.
D'Errico mentions my essay in his article and what he thought it was about, but he overstates my case into being a less believable one. My case simply was that if the bone was long enough (or a shorter bone extended by a mouthpiece insert) then the 4 holes would be consistent and in tune with the sounds of Do, Re, Mi, Fa (or flat Mi, Fa, Sol, and flat La in a minor scale).
In the 5 points I list below, extracted from Turk's monograph in support of this being a flute, d'Errico omits dealing with much of the first, and all of the second, fourth and sixth points.
Turk & Co's monograph shows the presence on site of boring tools, and includes experiments made by Turk's colleague Guiliano Bastiani who successfully produced similar holes in fresh bone using tools of the type found at the site (pp. 176-78 Turk).
They also wrote (pp. 171-75) that:
1. The center-to-center distances of the holes in the artifact are smaller than that of the tooth spans of most carnivores. The smallest tooth spans they found were 45mm, and the holes on the bone are 35mm (or less) apart;
2. Holes bitten are usually at the ends of bones rather than in the center of them;
3. There is an absence of dents, scratches and other signs of gnawing and counter-bites on the artifact;
4. The center-to-center distances do not correspond to the spans of carnivores which could pierce the bone;
5. The diameters of the holes are greater than that producible by a wolf exerting the greatest jaw pressure it had available -- it's doubtful that a wolf's jaws would be strong enough (like a hyena's) to have made the holes, especially in the thickest part of the wall of the artifact.
6. If you accept one or more carnivores, then why did they over-target one bone, when there were so many other bones in the cave site? Only about 4.5% of the juvenile bones were chewed or had holes, according to Turk (p. 117).
* Turk, Ivan (ed.) (1997). Mousterian Bone Flute. Znanstvenoraziskovalni
Center Sazu, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Maintained by Francis F. Steen, Communication Studies, University of California Los Angeles | <urn:uuid:f166f15d-9976-40ed-8a49-8bed360001ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cogweb.ucla.edu/ep/FluteDebate.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957844 | 2,445 | 3.71875 | 4 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
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Lettris is a curious tetris-clone game where all the bricks have the same square shape but different content. Each square carries a letter. To make squares disappear and save space for other squares you have to assemble English words (left, right, up, down) from the falling squares.
Boggle gives you 3 minutes to find as many words (3 letters or more) as you can in a grid of 16 letters. You can also try the grid of 16 letters. Letters must be adjacent and longer words score better. See if you can get into the grid Hall of Fame !
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1.the language of educated people in ancient Rome"Latin is a language as dead as dead can be. It killed the ancient Romans--and now it's killing me"
classical Latin (n.)
Latin inscription in the Colosseum
|Spoken in||Roman republic, Roman empire|
|Region||mare nostrum (Mediterranean)|
|Era||75 BC to the 3rd century AD, when it developed into Late Latin|
|Writing system||Latin alphabet|
|Official language in||Roman republic, Roman empire|
|Regulated by||Schools of grammar and rhetoric|
The range of Latin, 60 AD
Classical Latin in simplest terms is the socio-linguistic register of the Latin language regarded by the enfranchised and empowered populations of the late Roman republic and the Roman empire as good Latin. Most writers during this time made use of it. Any unabridged Latin dictionary informs moderns that Marcus Tullius Cicero and his contemporaries of the late republic while using lingua Latina and sermo Latinus to mean the Latin language as opposed to the Greek or other languages, and sermo vulgaris or sermo vulgi to refer to the vernacular of the uneducated masses, regarded the speech they valued most and in which they wrote as Latinitas, "Latinity", with the implication of good. Sometimes it is called sermo familiaris, "speech of the good families", sermo urbanus, "speech of the city" or rarely sermo nobilis, "noble speech", but mainly besides Latinitas it was Latine (adverb), "in good Latin", or Latinius (comparative degree of adjective), "good Latin."
Latinitas was spoken as well as written. Moreover, it was the language taught by the schools. Prescriptive rules therefore applied to it, and where a special subject was concerned, such as poetry or rhetoric, additional rules applied as well. Now that the spoken Latinitas has become extinct (in favor of various other registers later in date) the rules of the, for the most part, polished (politus) texts may give the appearance of an artificial language, but Latinitas was a form of sermo, or spoken language and as such retains a spontaneity. No authors are noted for the type of rigidity evidenced by stylized art, except possibly the repetitious abbreviations and stock phrases of inscriptions.
Good Latin in philology is "classical" Latin literature. The term refers to the canonicity of works of literature written in Latin in the late Roman republic and the early to middle Roman empire: "that is to say, that of belonging to an exclusive group of authors (or works) that were considered to be emblematic of a certain genre." The term classicus (masculine plural classici) was devised by the Romans themselves to translate Greek ἐγκριθέντες (egkrithentes), "select", referring to authors who wrote in Greek that were considered model. Before then, classis, in addition to being a naval fleet, was a social class in one of the diachronic divisions of Roman society according to property ownership by the Roman constitution. The word is a transliteration of Greek κλῆσις (klēsis) "calling", used to rank army draftees by property from first to fifth class.
Classicus is anything primae classis, "first class", such as the authors of the polished works of Latinitas, or sermo urbanus. It had nuances of the certified and the authentic: testis classicus, "reliable witness." It was in this sense that Marcus Cornelius Fronto (an African-Roman lawyer and language teacher) in the 2nd century AD used scriptores classici, "first-class" or "reliable authors" whose works could be relied upon as model of good Latin. This is the first known reference, possibly innovated at this time, to classical applied to authors by virtue of the authentic language of their works.
In imitation of the Greek grammarians, the Roman ones, such as Quintilian, drew up lists termed indices or ordines on the model of the Greek lists, termed pinakes, considered classical: the recepti scriptores, "select writers." Aulus Gellius includes many authors, such as Plautus, who are currently considered writers of Old Latin and not strictly in the period of classical Latin. The classical Romans distinguished Old Latin as prisca Latinitas and not sermo vulgaris. Each author (and work) in the Roman lists was considered equivalent to one in the Greek; for example Ennius was the Latin Homer, the Aeneid was a new Iliad, and so on. The lists of classical authors were as far as the Roman grammarians went in developing a philology. The topic remained at that point while interest in the classici scriptores declined in the medieval period as the best Latin yielded to medieval Latin, somewhat less than the best by classical standards.
The Renaissance brought a revival of interest in restoring as much of Roman culture as could be restored and with it the return of the concept of classic, "the best." Thomas Sebillet in 1548 (Art Poétique) referred to "les bons et classiques poètes françois", meaning Jean de Meun and Alain Chartier, which was the first modern application of the word. According to Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, the term classical, from classicus, entered modern English in 1599, some 50 years after its re-introduction on the continent. Governor William Bradford in 1648 referred to synods of a separatist church as "classical meetings" in his Dialogue, a report of a meeting between New-England-born "young men" and "ancient men" from Holland and England. In 1715 Laurence Echard's Classical Geographical Dictionary was published. In 1736 Robert Ainsworth's Thesaurus Linguae Latinae Compendarius turned English words and expressions into "proper and classical Latin." In 1768 David Ruhnken (Critical History of the Greek Orators) recast the mold of the view of the classical by applying the word canon to the pinakes of orators, after the Biblical canon or list of authentic books of the Bible. Ruhnken had a kind of secular catechism in mind.
In 1870 Wilhelm Sigismund Teuffel in Geschichte der Römischen Literatur (A History of Roman Literature) innovated the definitive philological classification of classical Latin based on the metaphoric uses of the ancient myth of the Ages of Man, a practice then universally current: a Golden Age and a Silver Age of classical Latin were to be presumed. The practice and Teuffel's classification, with modifications, are still in use. His work was translated into English as soon as published in German by Wilhelm Wagner, who corresponded with Teuffel. Wagner published the English translation in 1873. Teuffel divides the chronology of classical Latin authors into several periods according to political events, rather than by style. Regarding the style of the literary Latin of those periods he had but few comments.
Teuffel was to go on with other editions of his history, but meanwhile it had come out in English almost as soon as it did in German and found immediate favorable reception. In 1877 Charles Thomas Cruttwell produced the first English work along the same lines. In his Preface he refers to "Teuffel's admirable history, without which many chapters in the present work could not have attained completeness" and also gives credit to Wagner.
Cruttwell adopts the same periods with minor differences; however, where Teuffel's work is mainly historical, Cruttwell's work contains detailed analyses of style. Nevertheless like Teuffel he encounters the same problem of trying to summarize the voluminous detail in a way that captures in brief the gist of a few phases of writing styles. Like Teuffel, he has trouble finding a name for the first of the three periods (the current Old Latin phase), calling it mainly "from Livius to Sulla." The language, he says, is "…marked by immaturity of art and language, by a vigorous but ill-disciplined imitation of Greek poetical models, and in prose by a dry sententiousness of style, gradually giving way to a clear and fluent strength…" These abstracts have little meaning to those not well-versed in Latin literature. In fact, Cruttwell admits "The ancients, indeed, saw a difference between Ennius, Pacuvius, and Accius, but it may be questioned whether the advance would be perceptible by us."
Some of Cruttwell's ideas have become stock in Latin philology for better or for worse. While praising the application of rules to classical Latin, most intensely in the Golden Age, he says "In gaining accuracy, however, classical Latin suffered a grievous loss. It became cultivated as distinct from a natural language… Spontaneity, therefore, became impossible and soon invention also ceased… In a certain sense, therefore, Latin was studied as a dead language, while it was still a living." These views are certainly debatable; one might ask how the upper classes of late 16th century Britain, who shared the Renaissance zealousness for the classics, managed to speak spontaneous Latin to each other officially and unofficially after being taught classical Latin by tutors hired for the purpose. Latinitas in the Golden Age was in fact sermo familiaris, the spoken Latin of the Roman upper classes, who sent their children to school to learn it. The debate continues.
A second problem is the appropriateness of Teuffel's scheme to the concept of classical Latin, which Teuffel does not discuss. Cruttwell addresses the problem, however, altering the concept of the classical. As the best Latin is defined as golden Latin, the second of the three periods, the other two periods considered classical are left hanging. While on the one hand assigning to Old Latin the term pre-classical and by implication the term post-classical (or post-Augustan) to silver Latin Cruttwell realizes that this construct is not according to ancient usage and asserts "…the epithet classical is by many restricted to the authors who wrote in it [golden Latin]. It is best, however, not to narrow unnecessarily the sphere of classicity; to exclude Terence on the one hand or Tacitus and Pliny on the other, would savour of artificial restriction rather than that of a natural classification." (This from a scholar who had just been complaining that golden Latin was not a natural language.) The contradiction remains; Terence is and is not a classical author depending on context.
After defining a "First Period" of inscriptional Latin and the literature of the earliest known authors and fragments, to which he assigns no definitive name (he does use the term "Old Roman" at one point), Teuffel presents "the second period", his major, "das goldene Zeitalter der römischen Literatur", the Golden Age of Roman Literature, dated 671 – 767 AUC or 83 BC – 14 AD according to his time reckoning, between the dictatorship of Lucius Cornelius Sulla and the death of the emperor Augustus. Of it Wagner translating Teuffel writes
The golden age of the Roman literature is that period in which the climax was reached in the perfection of form, and in most respects also in the methodical treatment of the subject-matters. It may be subdivided between the generations, in the first of which (the Ciceronian Age) prose culminated, while poetry was principally developed in the Augustan Age.
The Ciceronian Age was dated 671–711 AUC (83 BC – 43 BC), ending just after the assassination of Gaius Julius Caesar, and the Augustan 711–67 AUC (43 BC – 14 AD), ending with the death of Augustus. The Ciceronian Age is further divided by the consulship of Cicero in 691 AUC or 63 BC into a first and second half. Authors are assigned to these periods by years of principal achievements.
The Golden Age had already made an appearance in German philology but in a less systematic way. In Bielfeld's 1770 Elements of universal erudition the author says (in translation): "The Second Age of Latin began about the time of Caesar [his ages are different from Teuffel's], and ended with Tiberius. This is what is called the Augustan Age, which was perhaps of all others the most brilliant, a period at which it should seem as if the greatest men, and the immortal authors, had met together upon the earth, in order to write the Latin language in its utmost purity and perfection." and of Tacitus "…his conceits and sententious style is not that of the golden age…". Teuffel evidently received the ideas of a golden and silver Latin from an existing tradition and embedded them in a new system, transforming them as he thought best.
In Cruttwell's introduction, the Golden Age is dated 80 BC – 14 AD ("from Cicero to Ovid"), which is about the same as Teuffel's. Of this "Second Period" Cruttwell says that it "represents the highest excellence in prose and poetry," paraphrasing Teuffel. The Ciceronian Age is now "the Republican Period" and is dated 80–42 BC through the Battle of Philippi. Later in the book Cruttwell omits Teuffel's first half of the Ciceronian and starts the Golden Age at Cicero's consulship of 63 BC, an error perpetuated into Cruttwell's second edition as well. He must mean 80 BC as he includes Varro in Golden Latin. Teuffel's Augustan Age is Cruttwell's Augustan Epoch, 42 BC – 14 AD.
The literary histories list all authors canonical to the Ciceronian Age even though their works may be fragmentary or may not have survived at all. With the exception of a few major writers, such as Cicero, Caesar, Lucretius and Catullus, ancient accounts of Republican literature are glowing accounts of jurists and orators who wrote prolifically but who now can't be read because their works have been lost, or analyses of language and style that appear insightful but can't be verified because there are no surviving instances. In that sense the pages of literary history are peopled with shadows: Aquilius Gallus, Quintus Hortensius Hortalus, Lucius Licinius Lucullus and many others who left a reputation but no readable works; they are to be presumed in the Golden Age by their associations. A list of some canonical authors of the period, whose works have survived in whole or in part (typically in part, some only short fragments) is as follows:
The Golden Age is divided by the assassination of Julius Caesar. In the wars that followed the Republican generation of literary men was lost, as most of them had taken the losing side; Marcus Tullius Cicero was beheaded in the street as he enquired from his litter what the disturbance was. They were replaced by a new generation that had grown up and been educated under the old and were now to make their mark under the watchful eye of the new emperor. As the demand for great orators was more or less over, the talent shifted emphasis to poetry. Other than the historian Livy, the most remarkable writers of the period were the poets Vergil, Horace, and Ovid. Although Augustus evidenced some toleration to republican sympathizers, he exiled Ovid, and imperial tolerance ended with the continuance of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty.
Augustan writers include:
In his second volume, on the Imperial Period, Teuffel initiated a slight alteration in approach, making it clearer that his terms applied to the Latin and not just to the age, and also changing his dating scheme from years AUC to modern. Although he introduces das silberne Zeitalter der römischen Literatur, "the Silver Age of Roman Literature", 14–117 AD, from the death of Augustus to the death of Trajan, he also mentions regarding a section of a work by Seneca the Elder a wenig Einfluss der silbernen Latinität, a "slight influence of silver Latin." It is clear that he had shifted in thought from golden and silver ages to golden and silver Latin, and not just Latin, but Latinitas, which must at this point be interpreted as classical Latin. He may have been influenced in that regard by one of his sources, E. Opitz, who in 1852 had published a title specimen lexilogiae argenteae latinitatis, mentioning silver Latinity. Although Teuffel's First Period was equivalent to Old Latin and his Second Period was equal to the Golden Age, his Third Period, die römische Kaiserheit, encompasses both the Silver Age and the centuries now termed Late Latin, in which the forms seemed to break loose from their foundation and float freely; that is, literary men appeared uncertain as to what "good Latin" should mean. The last of the Classical Latin is the Silver Latin. The Silver Age is the first of the Imperial Period and is divided into die Zeit der julischen Dynastie, 14–68; die Zeit der flavischen Dynastie, 69–96; and die Zeit des Nerva und Trajan, 96–117. Subsequently Teuffel goes over to a century scheme: 2nd, 3rd, etc., through 6th. His later editions (which came out in the rest of the late 19th century) divide the Imperial Age into parts: the 1st century (Silver Age), the 2nd century: Hadrian and the Antonines and the 3rd through the 6th Centuries. Of the Silver Age proper, pointing out that anything like freedom of speech had vanished with Tiberius, Teuffel says
…the continual apprehension in which men lived caused a restless versatility… Simple or natural composition was considered insipid; the aim of language was to be brilliant… Hence it was dressed up with abundant tinsel of epigrams, rhetorical figures and poetical terms… Mannerism supplanted style, and bombastic pathos took the place of quiet power.
The content of new literary works was continually proscribed by the emperor (by executing or exiling the author), who also played the role of literary man (typically badly). The talent therefore went into a repertory of new and dazzling mannerisms, which Teuffel calls "utter unreality." Crutwell picks up this theme:
The foremost of these [characteristics] is unreality, arising from the extinction of freedom… Hence arose a declamatory tone, which strove by frigid and almost hyterical exaggeration to make up for the healthy stimulus afforded by daily contact with affairs. The vein of artificial rhetoric, antithesis and epigram… owes its origin to this forced contentment with an uncongenial sphere. With the decay of freedom, taste sank…
In Crutwell's view (which had not been expressed by Teuffel), Silver Latin was a "rank, weed-grown garden", a "decline." Cruttwell had already decried what he saw as a loss of spontaneity in Golden Latin. That Teuffel should regard the Silver Age as a loss of natural language and therefore of spontaneity, implying that the Golden Age had it, is passed without comment. Instead, Tiberius brought about a "sudden collapse of letters." The idea of a decline had been dominant in English society since Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Once again, Cruttwell evidences some unease with his stock pronouncements: "The Natural History of Pliny shows how much remained to be done in fields of great interest." The idea of Pliny as a model is not consistent with any sort of decline; moreover, Pliny did his best work under emperors at least as tolerant as Augustus had been. To include some of the best writings of the Silver Age, Cruttwell found he had to extend the period through the death of Marcus Aurelius, 180 AD. The philosophic prose of that good emperor was in no way compatible with either Teuffel's view of unnatural language or Cruttwell's depiction of a decline. Having created these constructs, the two philologists found they could not entirely justify them; apparently, in the worst implications of their views, there was no classical Latin by the ancient definition at all and some of the very best writing of any period in world history was a stilted and degenerate unnatural language.
Writers of the Silver Age include the following.
Of the additional century granted by Cruttwell and others of his point of view to Silver Latin but not by Teuffel the latter says "The second century was a happy period for the Roman State, the happiest indeed during the whole Empire… But in the world of letters the lassitude and enervation, which told of Rome's decline, became unmistakeable… its forte is in imitation." Teuffel, however, excepts the jurists; others find other "exceptions," recasting Teuffels's view.
The style of language refers to repeatable features of speech that are somewhat less general than the fundamental characteristics of the language. The latter give it a unity allowing it to be referenced under a single name. Thus Old Latin, Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin, etc., are not considered different languages, but are all referenced under the name of Latin. This is an ancient practice continued by moderns rather than a philological innovation of recent times. That Latin had case endings is a fundamental feature of the language. Whether a given form of speech prefers to use prepositions such as ad, ex, de for "to", "from" and "of" rather than simple case endings is a matter of style. Latin has a large number of styles. Each and every author has a style, which typically allows his prose or poetry to be identified by experienced Latinists. The problem of comparative literature has been to group styles finding similarities by period, in which case one may speak of Old Latin, Silver Latin, Late Latin as styles or a phase of styles.
The ancient authors themselves first defined style by recognizing different kinds of sermo, or "speech." In making the value judgement that classical Latin was "first class" and that it was better to write with Latinitas they were themselves selecting the literary and upper-class language of the city as a standard style and all sermo that differed from it was a different style; thus in rhetoric Cicero was able to define sublime, intermediate and low styles (within classical Latin) and St. Augustine to recommend the low style for sermons (from sermo). Style therefore is to be defined by differences in speech from a standard. Teuffel defined that standard as Golden Latin. | <urn:uuid:ca387b2a-7df2-4bb1-8e2d-9e82dcdc8b5a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dictionary.sensagent.com/Classical_Latin/en-en/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956578 | 5,107 | 2.859375 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
In some people, macular degeneration advances so slowly that it has little effect on their vision. But in others, the disease progresses faster and may lead to vision loss. Sometimes only one eye is affected, while the other eye remains free of problems for many years. People with dry macular degeneration in one eye often do not notice any changes in their vision. With one eye seeing clearly, they can still drive, read, and see fine details. Some people may notice changes in their vision only if macular degeneration affects both of their eyes. Both dry and wet macular degeneration cause no pain.
Symptoms of macular degeneration include:
Blurred vision —This is an early sign. An example of early findings is that you may need more light for reading and other tasks.
Difficulty seeing details in front of you —You may have a difficult time seeing words in a book or faces.
Blind spot —A small, growing blind spot will appear in the middle of your field of vision. This spot occurs because a group of cells in the macula have stopped working properly. Over time, the blurred spot may get bigger and darker, taking more of your central vision.
Crooked lines —An early symptom of wet macular degeneration is straight lines that will appear crooked or wavy. This happens because the newly formed blood vessels leak fluid under the macula. The fluid raises the macula from its normal place at the back of the eye and distorts your vision.
Lighting —Images appear more gray in color and colors are not as bright
Contact your ophthalmologist immediately for an eye exam if you notice:
- Visual distortions
- Sudden decrease in central vision
- A central blind spot
- Any other visual problems
- Reviewer: Christopher Cheyer, MD
- Update Date: 09/01/2011 - | <urn:uuid:6aba2b8d-0f86-4d64-b8af-a03c21e98c63> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://doctors-hospital.net/your-health/?/19810/Reducing-Your-Risk-of-Macular-Degeneration~Symptoms | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927335 | 384 | 3.328125 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
There are many ways to effectively teach a dog.
Not so long ago, most of the accepted methods for training were forceful or aversive. Unfortunately, some of these methods still are in use among the abusive and uneducated.
One of the pioneers of gentle training techniques was Barbara Woodhouse. This English dog trainer was instrumental in paving the way for today’s nonaversive and positive methods of training. She was a genius at molding behaviors with lures and gently “modeling” a dog into positions without force. But even Woodhouse used some techniques that can be considered rough by today’s standards.
If you have researched dog-training methodologies at all, you probably have noticed that a percentage of the available training books advocate the use of a “choke chain” (otherwise called the training collar). When used properly, this training device relies on aversion to get the dog’s attention or to make a correction when your dog doesn’t respond to a command correctly. A sharp snap of the leash tightens the collar around the dog’s neck, startling the dog with a momentary, low-level pain.
The choke chain is not a training device for leash pullers, as is commonly thought, and when used incorrectly can, at the least, cause misalignment of the spine and trachea damage. At worst, it can cause brain damage and even death. Because there is such a high risk for misuse of this device (you may not realize that the choke chain should be worn with the free ring up, for instance), the training world probably would be much better off without it.
Your efforts to train your dog should focus on building a bond and nurturing trust. This bond becomes the motivator that drives your dog to learn, focus and respond.
Why would anyone want to use force or violence when positive reinforcement works so well? Why should your dog trust you if he knows that you are likely to hit him when he is unfocused or confused? That’s like your supervisor yelling at you when you have problems with a difficult task. Stress won’t help you concentrate or focus better. Abusive treatment of dogs in the name of training, just as abusive handling of employees in the name of supervision, doesn’t work. It does, however, tell us a lot about the trainer.
For any method of dog training to be successful, it must be:
Effective – If it’s not effective, what’s the point?
Efficient – Both you and your dog will become frustrated if training takes too long.
Enjoyable – Fun is an important ingredient in motivating both you and your dog.
The proper execution of any training program is dependent on these three ingredients.
But, ultimately, the most important ingredient in your training program is you, the owner. The trust you nurture in your dog will be evident in his willingness to look to you for leadership and his motivation to work with you in any and all situations. Those qualities are in your dog right now but cannot be developed through the use of harsh training methods.
Dog training can be whatever you want it to be. If you rely on anger and force, the relationship and trust will suffer. If you rely on motivation and reward, while providing appropriate consequences for misdeeds, training just gets better and better.
Julie Winkelman is a certified pet dog trainer and a certified dog trainer. Reach her at www.alphacanineacademy.com. | <urn:uuid:81426048-4862-4bb7-9a74-922f76b4cc47> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://durangoherald.com/article/20130314/COLUMNISTS52/130319783/1001/'We-can't-afford-four-more-years'-- | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955471 | 724 | 2.765625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Fewer rare sea turtles will die on the swordfish industry's longlines in Hawaii under an agreement between environmental groups and the government. The agreement settles a lawsuit challenging the federal government's plans that would have dramatically increase the number of turtles that could be killed. The Turtle Island Restoration Network, Center for Biological Diversity and KAHEA sued the National Marine Fisheries Service for allowing 46 imperiled Pacific loggerhead turtles to be hooked last year. The new court-ordered settlement caps the number at 17 per year. Meanwhile the National Marine Fisheries Service is weighing whether loggerheads need more protection under the Endangered Species Act.
"It made absolutely no sense to have one arm of the National Marine Fisheries Service increasing the lethal capture of loggerheads, while the other arm is in the process of determining whether loggerheads should be uplisted from threatened to endangered," said Todd Steiner, biologist and executive director of Turtle Island Restoration Network. "With extinction looming, these animals need more protection, not less."
"With this decision, Hawaii's public-trust ocean resources can be better managed for our collective best interest, and not just the interests of this commercial fishery," said KAHEA program director Marti Townsend. "This is a victory not just for the turtles, but for Hawaii's people who rely on a healthy, functioning ocean ecosystem."
Conservation groups represented by Earthjustice filed a federal lawsuit challenging a 2009 rule allowing the swordfish fleet to catch nearly three times as many loggerhead sea turtles as previously permitted. This settlement freezes the number at the previous cap of 17 while the government conducts additional environmental studies and decides whether or not to classify the loggerhead as endangered, rather than its current, less-protective status of threatened. For leatherback turtles, the bycatch limit remains at 16 per year. In 2010, eight Pacific leatherbacks and seven loggerheads were caught in the longline fishery, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service. There have already been 4 loggerheads captured in 2011, which has sea turtle conservationists concerned.
"Sea turtles have been swimming the oceans since the time of dinosaurs. But without a change in management, they won't survive our voracious quest for swordfish and tuna," said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "If loggerheads are going to survive in the North Pacific, we need to stop killing them in our fisheries."
"Pacific loggerhead sea turtles are nearly extinct, so this bycatch rollback helps right a serious wrong," said Teri Shore, program director at Turtle Island Restoration Network. "We can't allow these rare sea turtles to disappear for a plate of swordfish. It's tragic that it took a lawsuit to correct this fishery problem."
Swordfish longline vessels trail up to 60 miles of fishing line suspended in the water with floats, with as many as 1,000 baited hooks deployed at regular intervals. Sea turtles become hooked while trying to take bait or become entangled while swimming through the nearly invisible lines. These encounters can drown the turtles or leave them with serious injuries. Sea birds such as albatross dive for the bait and become hooked; marine mammals, including endangered humpback whales and false killer whales, also sometimes become hooked when they swim through the floating lines. | <urn:uuid:e36683d3-ded6-4e38-af4d-7bc73d1ec7e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://earthjustice.org/news/press/2011/endangered-sea-turtles-saved-from-capture-in-hawaii-swordfish-fishery | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950128 | 666 | 3.125 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
A bullock cart or ox cart is a two-wheeled or four-wheeled vehicle pulled by oxen (draught cattle). It is a means of transportation used since ancient times in many parts of the world. They are still used today where modern vehicles are too expensive or the infrastructure does not favor them.
Used especially for carrying goods, the bullock cart is pulled by one or several oxen (bullocks). The cart (also known as a jinker) is attached to a bullock team by a special chain attached to yokes, but a rope may also be used for one or two animals. The driver and any other passengers sit on the front of the cart, while load is placed in the back. Traditionally the cargo was usually agrarian goods and lumber.
Costa Rica
In Costa Rica, ox carts (carretas in the Spanish language) were an important aspect of the daily life and commerce, especially between 1850 to 1935, developing a unique construction and decoration tradition that is still being developed. Costa Rican parades and traditional celebrations are not complete without a traditional ox cart parade.
In 1988, the traditional ox cart was declared as National Symbol of Work by the Costa Rican government.
In 2005, the "Oxherding and Oxcart Traditions in Costa Rica" were included in UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
In Indonesia, Bullock Carts are commonly used in the rural parts of the country, where it is used for transporting goods and carriages and also people. But it is mostly common in Indonesia that there are Horse Car than Bullock Carts on the streets of Indonesia.
Bullock carts were widely used in Malaysia before the introduction of automobiles, and many are still used today. These included passenger vehicles, now used especially for tourists. Passenger carts are usually equipped with awnings for protection against sun and rain, and are often gaily decorated.
See also
|Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ox-drawn carts| | <urn:uuid:4dcad241-2b6b-4970-9112-c67a47a29a2c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullock_cart | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964053 | 415 | 3.453125 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
|Birth name||Norman Percevel Rockwell|
February 3, 1894|
New York City
|Died||November 8, 1978
|Training||National Academy of Design
Art Students League
Norman Percevel Rockwell (February 3, 1894 – November 8, 1978) was a 20th-century American painter and illustrator. His works enjoy a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of American culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life scenarios he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine for more than four decades. Among the best-known of Rockwell's works are the Willie Gillis series, Rosie the Riveter, Saying Grace (1951), The Problem We All Live With, and the Four Freedoms series. He is also noted for his work for the Boy Scouts of America (BSA); producing covers for their publication Boys' Life, calendars, and other illustrations.
Life and works
Early life
Norman Rockwell was born on February 3, 1894, in New York City to Jarvis Waring Rockwell and Anne Mary "Nancy" (born Hill) Rockwell. His earliest American ancestor was John Rockwell (1588–1662), from Somerset, England, who immigrated to America probably in 1635 aboard the ship Hopewell and became one of the first settlers of Windsor, Connecticut. He had one brother, Jarvis Waring Rockwell, Jr., older by a year and a half. Jarvis Waring, Sr., was the manager of the New York office of a Philadelphia textile firm, George Wood, Sons & Company, where he spent his entire career.
Norman transferred from high school to the Chase Art School at the age of 14. He then went on to the National Academy of Design and finally to the Art Students League. There, he was taught by Thomas Fogarty, George Bridgman, and Frank Vincent DuMond; his early works were produced for St. Nicholas Magazine, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) publication Boys' Life and other juvenile publications. Joseph Csatari carried on his legacy and style for the BSA.
As a student, Rockwell was given smaller, less important jobs. His first major breakthrough came in 1912 at age eighteen with his first book illustration for Carl H. Claudy's Tell Me Why: Stories about Mother Nature.
In 1913, the nineteen-year-old Rockwell became the art editor for Boys' Life, published by the Boy Scouts of America, a post he held for three years (1913–1916). As part of that position, he painted several covers, beginning with his first published magazine cover, Scout at Ship's Wheel, appearing on the Boys' Life September 1913 edition.
World War I
During World War I, he tried to enlist into the U.S. Navy but was refused entry because, at 6 feet (1.8 m) tall and 140 pounds (64 kg) he was eight pounds underweight. To compensate, he spent one night gorging himself on bananas, liquids and doughnuts, and weighed enough to enlist the next day. However, he was given the role of a military artist and did not see any action during his tour of duty.
Rockwell's family moved to New Rochelle, New York when Norman was 21 years old and shared a studio with the cartoonist Clyde Forsythe, who worked for The Saturday Evening Post. With Forsythe's help, he submitted his first successful cover painting to the Post in 1916, Mother's Day Off (published on May 20). He followed that success with Circus Barker and Strongman (published on June 3), Gramps at the Plate (August 5), Redhead Loves Hatty Perkins (September 16), People in a Theatre Balcony (October 14) and Man Playing Santa (December 9). Rockwell was published eight times total on the Post cover within the first twelve months. Norman Rockwell published a total of 323 original covers for The Saturday Evening Post over 47 years. His Sharp Harmony appeared on the cover of the issue dated September 26, 1936; it depicts a barber and three clients, enjoying an a cappella song. The image was adopted by SPEBSQSA in its promotion of the art.
Rockwell's success on the cover of the Post led to covers for other magazines of the day, most notably The Literary Digest, The Country Gentleman, Leslie's Weekly, Judge, Peoples Popular Monthly and Life Magazine.
Personal life
Rockwell married his first wife, Irene O'Connor, in 1916. Irene was Rockwell's model in Mother Tucking Children into Bed, published on the cover of The Literary Digest on January 19, 1921. However, the couple were divorced in 1930. Depressed, he moved briefly to Alhambra, California as a guest of his old friend Clyde Forsythe. There he painted some of his best-known paintings including "The Doctor and the Doll". While there he met and married schoolteacher Mary Barstow. The couple returned to New York shortly after their marriage. They had three children: Jarvis Waring, Thomas Rhodes and Peter Barstow. The family lived at 24 Lord Kitchener Road in the Bonnie Crest neighborhood of New Rochelle, New York. Rockwell and his wife were not very religious, although they were members of St. John's Wilmot Church, an Episcopal church near their home, and had their sons baptized there as well. Rockwell moved to Arlington, Vermont, in 1939 where his work began to reflect small-town life.
In 1953, the Rockwell family moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, so that his wife could be treated at the Austen Riggs Center, a psychiatric hospital at 25 Main Street, down Main Street from where Rockwell set up his studio. Rockwell himself received psychiatric treatment from the analyst Erik Erikson, who was on staff at Riggs. Erikson is said to have told the artist that he painted his happiness, but did not live it. In 1959, Mary Barstow Rockwell died unexpectedly of a heart attack.
World War II
In 1943, during World War II, Rockwell painted the Four Freedoms series, which was completed in seven months and resulted in his losing 15 pounds. The series was inspired by a speech by Franklin D. Roosevelt, in which he described four principles for universal rights: Freedom from Want, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, and Freedom from Fear. The paintings were published in 1943 by The Saturday Evening Post. The United States Department of the Treasury later promoted war bonds by exhibiting the originals in 16 cities. Rockwell himself considered "Freedom of Speech" to be the best of the four. That same year, a fire in his studio destroyed numerous original paintings, costumes, and props.
Shortly after the war, Rockwell was contacted by writer Elliott Caplin, brother of cartoonist Al Capp, with the suggestion that the three of them should make a daily comic strip together, with Caplin and his brother writing and Rockwell drawing. King Features Syndicate is reported to have promised a $1,000/week deal, knowing that a Capp-Rockwell collaboration would gain strong public interest. However, the project was ultimately aborted as it turned out that Rockwell, known for his perfectionism as an artist, could not deliver material as fast as required of him for a daily comic strip.
During the late 1940s, Norman Rockwell spent the winter months as artist-in-residence at Otis College of Art and Design. Students occasionally were models for his Saturday Evening Post covers. In 1949, Rockwell donated an original Post cover, "April Fool", to be raffled off in a library fund raiser.
In 1959, his wife Mary died unexpectedly from a heart attack, and Rockwell took time off from his work to grieve. It was during that break that he and his son Thomas produced his autobiography, My Adventures as an Illustrator, which was published in 1960. The Post printed excerpts from this book in eight consecutive issues, the first containing Rockwell's famous Triple Self-Portrait.
Later career
Rockwell married his third wife, retired Milton Academy English teacher Mary Leete "Molly" Punderson, on October 25, 1961. His last painting for the Post was published in 1963, marking the end of a publishing relationship that had included 321 cover paintings. He spent the next ten years painting for Look magazine, where his work depicted his interests in civil rights, poverty and space exploration. In 1968, Rockwell was commissioned to do an album cover portrait of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper for their record The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper. During his long career, he was commissioned to paint the portraits for Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, as well as those of foreign figures, including Gamal Abdel Nasser and Jawaharlal Nehru. One of his last works was a portrait of Judy Garland in 1969.
A custodianship of his original paintings and drawings was established with Rockwell's help near his home in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and the Norman Rockwell Museum is still open today year round. Norman Rockwell Museum is the authoritative source for all things Norman Rockwell. The museum's collection is the world's largest, including more than 700 original Rockwell paintings, drawings, and studies. The Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies at the Norman Rockwell Museum is a national research institute dedicated to American illustration art.
When he began suffering poor health, he placed his studio and the contents with the Norman Rockwell Museum, which was formerly known as the Stockbridge Historical Society and even more formerly known as the Old Corner house, in a trust.
For "vivid and affectionate portraits of our country," Rockwell received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States of America's highest civilian honor, in 1977.
Body of work
Norman Rockwell was a prolific artist, producing over 4,000 original works in his lifetime. Most of his works are either in public collections, or have been destroyed in fire or other misfortunes. Rockwell was also commissioned to illustrate over 40 books including Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. His annual contributions for the Boy Scouts' calendars between 1925 and 1976 (Rockwell was a 1939 recipient of the Silver Buffalo Award, the highest adult award given by the Boy Scouts of America), were only slightly overshadowed by his most popular of calendar works: the "Four Seasons" illustrations for Brown & Bigelow that were published for 17 years beginning in 1947 and reproduced in various styles and sizes since 1964. Illustrations for booklets, catalogs, posters (particularly movie promotions), sheet music, stamps, playing cards, and murals (including "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "God Bless the Hills", which was completed in 1936 for the Nassau Inn in Princeton, New Jersey) rounded out Rockwell's œuvre as an illustrator.
In 1969, as a tribute to Rockwell's 75th-year birthday, officials of Brown & Bigelow and the Boy Scouts of America asked Rockwell to pose in Beyond the Easel, the calendar illustration that year.
Rockwell's work was dismissed by serious art critics in his lifetime. Many of his works appear overly sweet in modern critics' eyes, especially the Saturday Evening Post covers, which tend toward idealistic or sentimentalized portrayals of American life – this has led to the often-deprecatory adjective "Rockwellesque". Consequently, Rockwell is not considered a "serious painter" by some contemporary artists, who often regard his work as bourgeois and kitsch. Writer Vladimir Nabokov sneered that Rockwell's brilliant technique was put to "banal" use, and wrote in his book Pnin: "That Dalí is really Norman Rockwell's twin brother kidnapped by Gypsies in babyhood". He is called an "illustrator" instead of an artist by some critics, a designation he did not mind, as it was what he called himself.
However, in his later years, Rockwell began receiving more attention as a painter when he chose more serious subjects such as the series on racism for Look magazine. One example of this more serious work is The Problem We All Live With, which dealt with the issue of school racial integration. The painting depicts a young African American girl, Ruby Bridges, flanked by white federal marshals, walking to school past a wall defaced by racist graffiti.
Rockwell's work was exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2001. Rockwell's Breaking Home Ties sold for $15.4 million at a 2006 Sotheby's auction. A twelve-city U.S. tour of Rockwell's works took place in 2008. In 2008, Rockwell was named the official state artist of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
- In the film Empire of the Sun, a young boy (played by Christian Bale) is put to bed by his loving parents in a scene also inspired by a Rockwell painting—a reproduction of which is later kept by the young boy during his captivity in a prison camp ("Freedom from Fear", 1943).
- The 1994 film Forrest Gump includes a shot in a school that re-creates Rockwell's "Girl with Black Eye" with young Forrest in place of the girl. Much of the film drew heavy visual inspiration from Rockwell's art.
- Film director George Lucas owns Rockwell's original of "The Peach Crop", and his colleague Steven Spielberg owns a sketch of Rockwell's Triple Self-Portrait. Each of the artworks hangs in the respective filmmaker's workspace. Rockwell is a major character in an episode of Lucas’ Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, “Passion for Life.”
- In 2005, Target Co. sold Marshall Field's to Federated Department Stores and the Federated discovered a reproduction of Rockwell's The Clock Mender, which depicted the great clocks of the Marshall Field and Company Building on display. Rockwell had donated the painting depicted on the cover of the November 3, 1945 Saturday Evening Post to the store in 1948.
- On Norman Rockwell's birthday, February 3, 2010, Google featured Rockwell's iconic image of young love "Boy and Girl Gazing at the Moon", which is also known as "Puppy Love", on its home page. The response was so great that day that the Norman Rockwell museum's servers went down under the onslaught.
- "Dreamland", a track from Canadian alternative rock band Our Lady Peace's 2009 album Burn Burn, was inspired by Rockwell's paintings.
Major works
- Scout at Ship's Wheel (first published magazine cover illustration, Boys' Life, September 1913)
- Santa and Scouts in Snow (1913)
- Boy and Baby Carriage (1916; first Saturday Evening Post cover)
- Circus Barker and Strongman (1916)
- Gramps at the Plate (1916)
- Redhead Loves Hatty Perkins (1916)
- People in a Theatre Balcony (1916)
- Tain't You (1917; first Life magazine cover)
- Cousin Reginald Goes to the Country (1917; first Country Gentleman cover)
- Santa and Expense Book (1920)
- Mother Tucking Children into Bed (1921; first wife Irene is the model)
- No Swimming (1921)
- Santa with Elves (1922)
- Doctor and Doll (1929)
- Deadline (1938)
- The Four Freedoms (1943)
- Rosie the Riveter (1943)
- Going and Coming (1947)
- Bottom of the Sixth (or The Three Umpires; 1949)
- The New Television Set (1949)
- Saying Grace (1951)
- The Young Lady with the Shiner (1953)
- Girl at Mirror (1954)
- Breaking Home Ties (1954)
- The Marriage License (1955)
- The Scoutmaster (1956)
- The Runaway (1958)
- A Family Tree (1959)
- Triple Self-Portrait (1960)
- Golden Rule (1961)
- The Problem We All Live With (1964)
- Southern Justice (Murder in Mississippi) (1965)
- New Kids in the Neighborhood (1967)
- Russian Schoolroom (1967)
- The Rookie
- Spirit of 76 (1976) (stolen in 1978 but recovered in 2001 by the FBI's Robert King Wittman)
Other collections
- Norman Rockwell World War II posters, hosted by the University of North Texas Libraries Digital Collections
- Rockwell Collection at the National Museum of American Illustration
- Norman Rockwell and the Art of Scouting at the National Scouting Museum, Irving, TX
See also
- James K. Van Brunt, a frequent model for Rockwell
- William Obanhein, another one of Rockwell's models who would later become famous elsewhere
- Norman Rockwell's World... An American Dream, a 1972 short documentary film
- "Alex Ross Biography". alexrossart.com. Retrieved February 13, 2012.
- About the Saturday Evening Post[dead link]
- Boughton, James (1903). Genealogy of the families of John Rockwell, of Stamford, Connecticut 1641, and Ralph Keeler, of Hartford, Connecticut 1939. W.F. Jones. p. 441.
- Roberts, Gary Boyd, and David Curtis Dearborn (1998). Notable Kin: An Anthology of Columns First Published in the NEHGS Nexus, 1986–1995. Boston, Massachusetts: Carl Boyer in cooperation with the New England Historic Genealogical Society. p. 28. ISBN 978-0-936124-20-9.
- Claridge, Laura P. (2001). Norman Rockwell: A Life. New York, New York: Random House. p. 20,29. ISBN 978-0-375-50453-2.
- Rockwell, Margaret (1998). Norman Rockwell's Growing Up in America. Metro Books. pp. 10–11. ISBN 978-1-56799-598-5.
- SSDI. – SS#: 177-01-3581.
- Claridge. – p.30,47,150.
- Rockwell, Norman, and Thomas Rockwell (1988). Norman Rockwell, My Adventures as an Illustrator. Abrams. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-8109-1563-3.
- "Rockwell and Csatari: A tour de force". Scouting magazine: 6. March–April, 2008.
- "A personal recollection". City of Alhambra. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
- Kamp, David (November 2009). "Norman Rockwell’s American Dream". Vanityfair.com. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
- "A portrait of Norman Rockwell - Berkshire Eagle Online". Berkshireeagle.com. July 3, 2009. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
- Elliott Caplin: Al Capp Remembered (1994)
- Gherman, Beverly (2000) "Norman Rockwell Storyteller with a brush"
- Claridge, p. 581
- Kamp, David. "Erratum: Norman Rockwell Actually Did Rock Well". Vanity Fair. Retrieved February 24, 2011.
- Official List of Silver Buffalo award Recipients (Retrieved July 17, 2007)
- William Hillcourt (1977). Norman Rockwell's World of Scouting. New York: Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 0-8109-1582-0.
- Jim Windolf (February 2008). "Keys to the Kingdom". Vanityfair.com. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
- "Solomon, Deborah, In Praise of Bad Art". New York Times. January 24, 1999. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
- "Art of Illustration". Norman Rockwell Museum. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
- "Norman Rockwell Wins Medal of Freedom". Massmoments.org. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
- Miller, Michelle (November 12, 2010). "Ruby Bridges, Rockwell Muse, Goes Back to School". CBS Evening News with Katie Couric (CBS Interactive Inc.). Retrieved November 13, 2010.
- Norman Rockwell at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.[dead link]
- Gates, Anita (November 24, 1999). "Looking Beyond the Myth-Making Easel of Mr. Thanksgiving". New York Times. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
- RICHARD CORLISS (June 24, 2001). "The World According to Gump". Time.com. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
- Aronovich, Hannah (April 20, 2006). "Field's, Federated and More Feuds". Gothamist. Retrieved April 4, 2008.
- "Norman Rockwell Of Field's Store Goes Missing". NBC5.com. April 21, 2006. Retrieved April 4, 2008.
- Aronovich, Hannah (April 20, 2006). "Field's, Federated and More Feuds". Gothamist. Retrieved September 21, 2009.
- "Dreamland". Songfacts.com. Retrieved May 5, 2010.
- "Rosie the Riveter". Rosie the Riveter. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
- NRM, p. 109
- "The norman rockwell collection". Web.me.com. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
- "Norman Rockwell: Southern Justice (Murder in Mississippi)". Artchive.com. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
- "Museum > Exhibitions - Norman Rockwell and the Art of Scouting". Irving, Texas, USA: National Scouting Museum. Retrieved 16 August 2012.
Further reading
- Buechner, Thomas S (1992). The Norman Rockwell Treasury. Galahad. ISBN 0-88365-411-3.
- Finch, Christopher (1990). Norman Rockwell: 332 Magazine Covers. Abbeville Publishing Group. ISBN 0-89660-000-9.
- Christopher, Finch (1985). Norman Rockwell's America. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. ISBN 0-8109-8071-1.
- Gherman, Beverly (2000). Norman Rockwell: Storyteller with a Brush. ISBN 0-689-82001-1.
- Hennessey, Maureen Hart; Larson, Judy L. (1999). Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People. Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 0-8109-6392-2.
- Rockwell, Tom (2005). Best of Norman Rockwell. Courage Books. ISBN 0-7624-2415-X.
- Schick, Ron (2009). Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera. Little, Brown & Co. ISBN 978-0-316-00693-4.
|Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Norman Rockwell|
|Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Norman Rockwell|
- Booknotes interview with Laura Claridge on Norman Rockwell: A Life, December 2, 2001.
- Gallery of classic graphic design featuring the illustrations of Norman Rockwell.
- Art Directors Club biography, portrait and images of work
- Norman Rockwell at Find a Grave
- Footage of Norman Rockwell sketching a couple
- America, Illustrated – by The New York Times
- Norman Rockwell: Once upon a time there Was the American Dream by Tiziano Thomas Dossena, Bridge Puglia USA, April 2011 | <urn:uuid:6c5322ef-413f-4a69-b643-e15509f4014a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Rockwell | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936494 | 4,950 | 2.859375 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
The names chiseled onto city tenement building entrances are often pretty puzzling.
The typical tenement is more than 100 years old. With the original builders long-gone, who can explain where some of these names come from, and why they were chosen?
Like Novelty Court, on Driggs Avenue in Williamsburg. Actually, a little research turned up an explanation: this used to be the site of the Novelty Theater, according to Cinema Treasures, which disappeared from city directories by the 1920s.
A. Segal’s (Secal’s?) Apartments are also in Williamsburg. But who was A. Segal, and why did he put his first initial and last name on his building?
Blennerhasset sounds like Manhasset, a town in Long Island. I’ve never seen the name anywhere else but on this tenement near Columbia University.
Who was Frances, and how would she feel about the terrible shape the building named for her is in, on Lexington Avenue in East Harlem? | <urn:uuid:983e5733-551c-4c84-be58-6e25791db2ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2011/12/24/the-mysteries-surrounding-some-tenement-names/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97677 | 219 | 2.71875 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
This is an old lecture by linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky (professor at MIT) given at UC Berkeley in 2003. For that evening in the Charles M. and Martha Hitchcock Lecture series, Chomsky examined biolinguistics - the study of relations between physiology and speech.
A second video of Chomsky is featured below, which is the second half of this talk. Fair warning - this is not easy material - Chomsky is speaking to people who are well-versed in this field.
Chomsky has been one the most influential scholars over the last three or four decades - between 1980 and 1992, he was cited as a source more than any other living scholar, and ranked eighth overall.
As background for this lecture, Wikipedia offers a good summary of his influence in linguistics (below the video).
Chomskyan LinguisticsChomskyan linguistics, beginning with his Syntactic Structures, a distillation of his Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory (1955, 75), challenges structural linguistics and introduces transformational grammar. This approach takes utterances (sequences of words) to have a syntax characterized by a formal grammar; in particular, a context-free grammar extended with transformational rules.
Perhaps his most influential and time-tested contribution to the field, is the claim that modeling knowledge of language using a formal grammar accounts for the "productivity" or "creativity" of language. In other words, a formal grammar of a language can explain the ability of a hearer-speaker to produce and interpret an infinite number of utterances, including novel ones, with a limited set of grammatical rules and a finite set of terms. He has always acknowledged his debt to Pāṇini for his modern notion of an explicit generative grammar although it is also related to rationalist ideas of a priori knowledge.
It is a popular misconception that Chomsky proved that language is entirely innate and discovered a "universal grammar" (UG). In fact, Chomsky simply observed that while a human baby and a kitten are both capable of inductive reasoning, if they are exposed to exactly the same linguistic data, the human child will always acquire the ability to understand and produce language, while the kitten will never acquire either ability. Chomsky labeled whatever the relevant capacity the human has which the cat lacks the "language acquisition device" (LAD) and suggested that one of the tasks for linguistics should be to figure out what the LAD is and what constraints it puts on the range of possible human languages. The universal features that would result from these constraints are often termed "universal grammar" or UG.
The Principles and Parameters approach (P&P)—developed in his Pisa 1979 Lectures, later published as Lectures on Government and Binding (LGB)—makes strong claims regarding universal grammar: that the grammatical principles underlying languages are innate and fixed, and the differences among the world's languages can be characterized in terms of parameter settings in the brain (such as the pro-drop parameter, which indicates whether an explicit subject is always required, as in English, or can be optionally dropped, as in Spanish), which are often likened to switches. (Hence the term principles and parameters, often given to this approach.) In this view, a child learning a language need only acquire the necessary lexical items (words, grammatical morphemes, and idioms), and determine the appropriate parameter settings, which can be done based on a few key examples.
Proponents of this view argue that the pace at which children learn languages is inexplicably rapid, unless children have an innate ability to learn languages. The similar steps followed by children all across the world when learning languages, and the fact that children make certain characteristic errors as they learn their first language, whereas other seemingly logical kinds of errors never occur (and, according to Chomsky, should be attested if a purely general, rather than language-specific, learning mechanism were being employed), are also pointed to as motivation for innateness.
More recently, in his Minimalist Program (1995), while retaining the core concept of "principles and parameters," Chomsky attempts a major overhaul of the linguistic machinery involved in the LGB model, stripping from it all but the barest necessary elements, while advocating a general approach to the architecture of the human language faculty that emphasizes principles of economy and optimal design, reverting to a derivational approach to generation, in contrast with the largely representational approach of classic P&P.
Chomsky's ideas have had a strong influence on researchers of the language acquisition in children, though many researchers in this area such as Elizabeth Bates and Michael Tomasello argue very strongly against Chomsky's theories, and instead advocate emergentist or connectionist theories, explaining language with a number of general processing mechanisms in the brain that interact with the extensive and complex social environment in which language is used and learned.
His best-known work in phonology is The Sound Pattern of English (1968), written with Morris Halle (and often known as simply SPE). This work has had a great significance for the development in the field. While phonological theory has since moved beyond "SPE phonology" in many important respects, the SPE system is considered the precursor of some of the most influential phonological theories today, including autosegmental phonology, lexical phonology and optimality theory. Chomsky no longer publishes on phonology. | <urn:uuid:249ad1f9-cb8f-42dd-b955-c4814c5a2452> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://integral-options.blogspot.com/2012/04/noam-chomsky-language-and-mind.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945467 | 1,107 | 2.75 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Deep-space communication improved with electromagnetic radiation antenna
- Robert C. Dye
- Technology Transfer
- (505) 667-3404
Electromagnetic radiation antenna has potential for deep-space communication
- Directed Energy
- Long-range communications
- Medicine (Oncology)
- RADAR imaging applications are countermeasure-resistant
- Communications can be spatially-encrypted
- 4-dimensional volumes of energy can be aimed at a single space-time point for directed energy applications
- Nonspherical decay of the cusp enables low-power communications and propagation over great distances
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) researchers have developed the Lightslinger, a completely new type of antenna that produces tightly-focused packets of electromagnetic radiation fundamentally different from the emissions of conventional transmitters. The device has potential applications in RADAR, directed-energy (non-kinetic kill), secure communications, ultra-long-range communications (e.g., deep-space), medicine (oncology) and astrophysics.
The Lightslinger functions by producing a moving polarization pattern in a ring of alumina. By careful timing of voltages applied to electrodes that surround the alumina, the polarization pattern can be made to move superluminally, i.e., faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. Nobel laureate Vitaly Ginzberg showed both that such superluminal polarization patterns do not violate the principles of special relativity and that they emit electromagnetic radiation. Once a source travels faster than the waves that it emits, it can make contributions at multiple retarded times to a signal received instantaneously at a distance. This effect is already well known in acoustics; when a supersonic airplane accelerates through the speed of sound, a violent “sonic boom” is heard many miles away, even if the airplane itself is rather quiet. The Lightslinger enables the same thing to be done with electromagnetic radiation; i.e., a relatively low-power source can make an “electromagnetic boom”, an intense concentration of radiowaves at a great distance.
The “electromagnetic boom” is due to temporal focusing, that is, focusing in the time domain. Because of this effect, part of the emitted radiation possesses an intensity that decays with distance r as 1/r rather than as the conventional inverse square law, 1/r2. These nonspherically-decaying wavepackets represent a game-changing technology in the applications of electromagnetic radiation.
Development stage: Working prototype
Patent status: Patent pending
Licensing status: Available for exclusive or non-exclusive licensing | <urn:uuid:79bc5d65-38cf-489f-b8c5-6800ff88c6f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://[email protected]/collaboration/tech-transfer/tech-transfer-summaries/electromagnetic-radiation-antenna-has-potential-for-deep-space-communication.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.881394 | 545 | 3.34375 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Schools and Students
Private schools in 1999–2000 were located primarily in central cities (42 percent) and the urban fringe or large towns (40 percent) (table 2). About 18 percent of private schools were found in rural areas. In contrast, 24 percent of all public schools were in central city locations, 45 percent in the urban fringe or large towns, and 31 percent in rural areas. Most schools—61 percent of private and 71 percent of public—were elementary, but 10 percent of private schools and 25 percent of public schools were secondary. Finally, a much higher proportion of private schools (30 percent) were combined schools (usually grades K–12 or 1–12), compared with only 4 percent of public schools.
Figures and Tables
Table 2: Percentage distribution of schools according to community type and level, by sector and private school type: 1999-2000
Table S2: Standard errors for the percentage distribution of schools according to community type and level, by sector and private school type: 1999-2000 | <urn:uuid:700680b4-7ce1-472b-af82-33bd71cae337> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/analysis/2002b-sa01a.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978596 | 207 | 3.015625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
The test team views the use of a pulley as an intermediate step only, and has planned to shift to a reliance on windlasses like those that apparently were used to hoist sails on Egyptian ships.
"The whole approach has been to downgrade the technology," Gharib said. "We first wanted to show that a kite could raise a huge weight at all. Now that we're raising larger and larger stones, we're also preparing to replace the steel scaffolding with wooden poles and the steel pulleys with wooden pulleys like the ones they may have used on Egyptian ships."
For Gharib, the idea of accomplishing heavy tasks with limited manpower is appealing from an engineer's standpoint because it makes more logistical sense.
"You can imagine how hard it is to coordinate the activities of hundreds if not thousands of laborers to accomplish an intricate task," said Gharib. "It's one thing to send thousands of soldiers to attack another army on a battlefield. But an engineering project requires everything to be put precisely into place.
"I prefer to think of the technology as simple, with relatively few people involved," he explained.
Gharib and Graff came up with a way of building a simple structure around the obelisk, with a pulley system mounted in front of the stone. That way, the base of the obelisk would drag on the ground for a few feet as the kite lifted the stone, and the stone would be quite stable once it was pulled upright into a vertical position. If the obelisk were raised with the base as a pivot, the stone would tend to swing past the vertical position and fall the other way.
The top of the obelisk is tied with ropes threaded through the pulleys and attached to the kite. The operation is guided by a couple of workers using ropes attached to the pulleys.
No one has found any evidence that the ancient Egyptians moved stones or any other objects with kites and pulleys. But Clemmons has found some tantalizing hints that the project is on the right track. On a building frieze in a Cairo museum, there is a wing pattern in bas-relief that does not resemble any living bird. Directly below are several men standing near vertical objects that could be ropes.
Gharib's interest in the project is mainly to demonstrate that the technique may be viable.
"We're not Egyptologists," he said. "We're mainly interested in determining whether there is a possibility that the Egyptians were aware of wind power, and whether they used it to make their lives better."
Now that Gharib and his team have successfully raised the four-ton concrete obelisk, they plan to further test the approach using a ten-ton stone, and perhaps an even heavier one after that. Eventually they hope to obtain permission to try using their technique to raise one of the obelisks that still lie in an Egyptian quarry.
"In fact, we may not even need a kite. It could be we can get along with just a drag chute," Gharib said.
An important question is: Was there enough wind in Egypt for a kite or a drag chute to fly? Probably so, as steady winds of up to 30 miles per hour are not unusual in the areas where pyramids and obelisks were found.
(c) 2001 Caltech
SOURCES AND RELATED WEB SITES | <urn:uuid:7989d2d3-3e6d-4a4d-ad8e-e7b19882a89a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/06/0628_caltechobelisk_2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974171 | 709 | 3.578125 | 4 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
This collection consists of digital images of the correspondence of John Muir from 1856-1914. The vast majority of the letters
were sent and received by Muir, although the collection also includes some correspondence of selected family members and colleagues.
Muir’s correspondence offers a unique first-hand perspective on his thoughts and experiences, as well as those of his correspondents,
which include many notable figures in scientific, literary, and political circles of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The
correspondence forms part of the John Muir Papers microfilm set that filmed letters located at over 35 institutions.
A Scottish-born journalist and naturalist, John Muir (1838-1914) studied botany and geology at the University of Wisconsin
(1861-1863). He worked for awhile as a mill hand at the Trout Broom Factory in Meaford, Canada (1864-1866), then at an Indianapolis
carriage factory (1866-1867), until an accident temporarily blinded him and directed his thoughts toward full-time nature
study. Striking out on foot for South America, Muir walked to the Gulf of Mexico (September 1867-January 1868), but a long
illness in Florida led him to change his plans and turn his interests westward. Muir arrived by ship at San Francisco (March
1868), walked to the Sierra Nevada Mountains and began a five year wilderness sojourn (1868-1873) during which he made his
year-round home in the Yosemite Valley. Working as a sheepherder and lumberman when he needed money for supplies, Muir investigated
the length and breadth of the Sierra range, focusing most of his attention on glaciation and its impact on mountain topography.
He began to publish newspaper articles about what he saw in the California mountains and these articles brought him to the
attention of such intellectuals as Asa Gray and Ralph Waldo Emerson, both of whom sought him out during their visits to California.
Encouraged by Jeanne Carr, wife of his one-time botany professor, Ezra S. Carr, Muir took up nature writing as a profession
(1872). He set up winter headquarters in Oakland and began a pattern of spring and summer mountaineering followed by winter
writing based upon his travel journals that he held to until 1880. His treks took him to Mount Shasta (1874, 1875 & 1877),
the Great Basin (1876, 1877, 1878), southern California and the Coast Range (1877), and southern Alaska (1879). Muir found
that he could finance his modest bachelor lifestyle with revenue from contributions published in various San Francisco newspapers
and magazines. During this period he launched the first lobbying effort to protect Sierra forests from wasteful lumbering
Some of the materials in the John Muir Correspondence Collection may be protected by the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.)
and/or by the copyright or neighboring rights laws of other nations. Additionally, the reproduction of some materials may
be restricted by privacy or publicity rights. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing
any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to reproduce or use the item. | <urn:uuid:6f2a750f-0c38-4b95-86ad-7af20a393eac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://oac4.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/hb3z09p2q4/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965514 | 679 | 2.8125 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Complete the following test so you can be sure you understand the material. Your answers are private, and test results are not scored.
When you create a new table in Datasheet view, you must define a primary key field.
You can't use the Lookup Wizard to alter an existing value list.
When you use a template to create a table, you must set data types for the fields in the new table.
Which of the following is the correct syntax for a value list?
'Option 1','Option 2','Option 3'
"Option 1";"Option 2";"Option 3"
"Option 1":"Option 2":"Option 3" | <urn:uuid:21328ea9-4f20-4eeb-8f36-e480bf4e97a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/test-yourself-RZ010288610.aspx?section=9 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.742159 | 136 | 2.5625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
The Bible gives us a clear picture of foolish behavior and its consequences. It’s important for us to recognize these traits in others—and in ourselves. Dealing appropriately with people who behave foolishly requires prayer and wisdom. But remember, that foolish person is not in your life by accident, and you can by God’s grace respond to him or her in a Christ-like manner.
Characteristics of Foolish Behavior
1. Denying, disregarding, or rebelling against God.
The fool says in his heart “There is no God” (Psalm 14:1).
2. Slandering, lying, deceiving
The one who conceals hatred has lying lips, and whoever utters slander is a fool
3. Quick-Tempered A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult (Proverbs 12:16).
4. Acts Impetuously and Without Regard for Consequences
In everything the prudent acts with knowledge, but a fool flaunts his folly. (Proverbs 13:16).
One who is wise is cautious and turns away from evil, but a fool is reckless and careless.
5. Talks endlessly, brags, spouts off frequently.
A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion
The wise lay up knowledge, but the mouth of a fool brings ruin near. (Proverbs 10:14).
A fool’s mouth is his ruin, and his lips are a snare to his soul. (Proverbs 18:7 ).
6. Refuses Advice, Accountability and/or Discipline
A fool despises his father’s instruction, but whoever heeds reproof is prudent
A rebuke goes deeper into a man of understanding than a hundred blows into a fool
7. Handles Money Recklessly
Of what use is money in the hand of a fool, since he has no desire to get wisdom?
In the house of the wise are stores of choice food and oil, but a foolish man devours all
he has (Proverbs 21:20).
8. Quarrels frequently, picks fights, is contentious
Fools get into constant quarrels; they are asking for a beating (Proverbs 18:6 NLT).
A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control
9. Lazy, Lacks Focus and Ambition
Foolish people refuse to work and almost starve (Ecclesiastes 4:5).
A wise person thinks much about death, while the fool thinks only about having a good time now
(Ecclesiastes 7:4 ).
Fools are so exhausted by a little work that they have no strength for even the simplest tasks
(Ecclesiastes 10:15 ).
10. Never Learns from Past Experience
As a do returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats his folly (Proverbs 26:11).
You cannot separate fools from their foolishness, even though you grind them like grain with
mortar and pestle (Proverbs 27:22 ).
How are we to respond to foolish behavior?
1. First and most importantly, we pray for them.
2. Second, watch your attitude and motivation toward these foolish people:
Principle #1 – Don’t be surprised if they refuse good advice.
Don’t waste your breath on fools, for they will despise the wisest advice
(Proverbs 23:9 ).
Principle #2 – Don’t give them honor or luxury.
It is not fitting for a fool to live in luxury – how much worse for a slave to rule over princes!
Like snow in summer or rain in harvest, honor is not fitting for a fool (Proverbs 26:1).
Principle #3 – Don’t argue with foolish people.
Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce
quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to
teach, not resentful (2 Tim. 2:23-24).
Principle #4 – Protect yourself from the resentment and anger caused by foolish people.
A stone is heavy and sand is weighty, but the resentment caused by a fool is heavier than both
(Proverbs 27:3 ).
Stay away from a foolish man, for you will not find knowledge on his lips (Proverbs 14:7).
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We are now selling Lilla Rose! (30% discount on soon to be retired items)
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With discount code: EXTRA20 | <urn:uuid:838d869f-2d2f-432a-b380-608aa039f4f0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://proverbs14verse1.blogspot.com/2012/02/characteristics-of-foolish-behavior.html?showComment=1330368347803 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93071 | 1,040 | 2.625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Each year more than 4 million homeless pets are killed as a result of overpopulation, but families who adopt from animal shelters or rescue groups can help preserve these lives and support the growing trend of socially responsible holiday shopping. Best Friends Animal Society encourages families this holiday season to give the precious gift of life by adopting homeless pets rather than buying from breeders, pet stores or online retailers.
Also, resist the urge to surprise a friend or family member with a living gift. Choosing the right pet is an extremely personal decision, one that should be made carefully by the adults who will be caring for the animal for its 15- to 20-year lifetime. Instead, offer an adoption gift certificate paired with a basket of pet care items or stuffed animal for the holiday itself, and then let the person or family choose the actual pet that feels right to them.
Once you’ve decided to adopt, keep in mind that welcoming a pet into your life is a big decision and requires important preparation. Best Friends offers tips and advice to help make a smooth transition at home:
* Determine roles and responsibilities – Before bringing home a new pet, discuss what roles and responsibilities each family member will take on. Who will be in charge of feeding, walks, changing the litter box and taking your pet for regular visits to the vet? Giving each family member a specific task will help everyone feel involved, especially young children.
* Prep the house – Adding a pet to the house means adding new items to your shopping lists. For dogs, the basics are a collar and leash, chew toys, a kennel and dog bed. Cats need a litter box and litter, a scratching post and a carrying crate for transportation. Also don’t forget food and toys.
* Have your pet spayed/neutered – Spaying or neutering is one of the greatest gifts you can provide your pet and community. It not only helps control the overabundance of pets, but can also help prevent medical and behavioral problems from developing. Most shelters include this with the adoption package or can recommend a local veterinarian in your area, so check with the staff at the shelter before you leave.
* Research community rules and resources – Do a little research on what identification (tags, microchips, etc.) you might need for your pet. Scout out the local dog parks and runs for future outdoor fun, and make sure you know where emergency vet clinics or animal hospitals are located.
* Set limits – Having pre-determined rules will create consistency in training and help make the home a pleasant environment for you and your pet. Will your pet be allowed to snuggle with you in bed or curl up with you on your furniture? Will treats be limited to one a day? It’s important to discuss these questions as a family before your new family member arrives.
An estimated 17 million people will be adding pets to their families this year, so this season, help bring some holiday cheer to a homeless pet by adopting your newest companion. | <urn:uuid:cefe5610-f57c-40d2-938e-5283619dbcb4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://queensledger.com/view/full_story/20992104/article-The-holiday-gift-that-keeps-on-giving--opt-to-adopt-a-pet--save-a-life?instance=pets | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934479 | 614 | 2.59375 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Taking Play Seriously
By ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG
Published: February 17, 2008
On a drizzly Tuesday night in late January, 200 people came out to hear a psychiatrist talk rhapsodically about play -- not just the intense, joyous play of children, but play for all people, at all ages, at all times. (All species too; the lecture featured touching photos of a polar bear and a husky engaging playfully at a snowy outpost in northern Canada.) Stuart Brown, president of the National Institute for Play, was speaking at the New York Public Library's main branch on 42nd Street. He created the institute in 1996, after more than 20 years of psychiatric practice and research persuaded him of the dangerous long-term consequences of play deprivation. In a sold-out talk at the library, he and Krista Tippett, host of the public-radio program ''Speaking of Faith,'' discussed the biological and spiritual underpinnings of play. Brown called play part of the ''developmental sequencing of becoming a human primate. If you look at what produces learning and memory and well-being, play is as fundamental as any other aspect of life, including sleep and dreams.''
The message seemed to resonate with audience members, who asked anxious questions about what seemed to be the loss of play in their children's lives. Their concern came, no doubt, from the recent deluge of eulogies to play . Educators fret that school officials are hacking away at recess to make room for an increasingly crammed curriculum. Psychologists complain that overscheduled kids have no time left for the real business of childhood: idle, creative, unstructured free play. Public health officials link insufficient playtime to a rise in childhood obesity. Parents bemoan the fact that kids don't play the way they themselves did -- or think they did. And everyone seems to worry that without the chance to play stickball or hopscotch out on the street, to play with dolls on the kitchen floor or climb trees in the woods, today's children are missing out on something essential.
The success of ''The Dangerous Book for Boys'' -- which has been on the best-seller list for the last nine months -- and its step-by-step instructions for activities like folding paper airplanes is testament to the generalized longing for play's good old days. So were the questions after Stuart Brown's library talk; one woman asked how her children will learn trust, empathy and social skills when their most frequent playing is done online. Brown told her that while video games do have some play value, a true sense of ''interpersonal nuance'' can be achieved only by a child who is engaging all five senses by playing in the three-dimensional world.
This is part of a larger conversation Americans are having about play. Parents bobble between a nostalgia-infused yearning for their children to play and fear that time spent playing is time lost to more practical pursuits. Alarming headlines about U.S. students falling behind other countries in science and math, combined with the ever-more-intense competition to get kids into college, make parents rush to sign up their children for piano lessons and test-prep courses instead of just leaving them to improvise on their own; playtime versus r?m?uilding.
Discussions about play force us to reckon with our underlying ideas about childhood, sex differences, creativity and success. Do boys play differently than girls? Are children being damaged by staring at computer screens and video games? Are they missing something when fantasy play is populated with characters from Hollywood's imagination and not their own? Most of these issues are too vast to be addressed by a single field of study (let alone a magazine article). But the growing science of play does have much to add to the conversation. Armed with research grounded in evolutionary biology and experimental neuroscience, some scientists have shown themselves eager -- at times perhaps a little too eager -- to promote a scientific argument for play. They have spent the past few decades learning how and why play evolved in animals, generating insights that can inform our understanding of its evolution in humans too. They are studying, from an evolutionary perspective, to what extent play is a luxury that can be dispensed with when there are too many other competing claims on the growing brain, and to what extent it is central to how that brain grows in the first place.
Scientists who study play, in animals and humans alike, are developing a consensus view that play is something more than a way for restless kids to work off steam; more than a way for chubby kids to burn off calories; more than a frivolous luxury. Play, in their view, is a central part of neurological growth and development -- one important way that children build complex, skilled, responsive, socially adept and cognitively flexible brains.
Their work still leaves some questions unanswered, including questions about play's darker, more ambiguous side: is there really an evolutionary or developmental need for dangerous games, say, or for the meanness and hurt feelings that seem to attend so much child's play? Answering these and other questions could help us understand what might be lost if children play less. | <urn:uuid:316c7af5-14e1-4d0b-9576-753e17ef2cc5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9404E7DA1339F934A25751C0A96E9C8B63&scp=2&sq=taking%20play%20seriously&st=cse | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961459 | 1,055 | 2.5625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Classroom Activities for Teaching Sedimentary GeologyThis collection of teaching materials allows for the sharing of ideas and activities within the community of geoscience teachers. Do you have a favorite teaching activity you'd like to share? Please help us expand this collection by contributing your own teaching materials.
Subject: Sedimentary Geology
Results 1 - 4 of 4 matches
Chemical and Physical Weathering Field and Lab Experiment: Development and Testing of Hypotheses part of Activities
Lisa Greer, Washington and Lee University
This exercise combines an integrated field and laboratory experiment with a significant scientific writing assignment to address chemical and physical weathering processes via hypothesis development, experimental ...
Demystifying the Equations of Sedimentary Geology part of Activities
Larry Lemke, Wayne State University
This activity includes three strategies to help students develop a deeper comfort level and stronger intuitive sense for understanding mathematical expressions commonly encountered in sedimentary geology. Each can ...
Digital Sandstone Tutorial part of Activities
Kitty Milliken, University of Texas at Austin, The
The Tutorial Petrographic Image Atlas is designed to give students more exposure to petrographic features than they can get during organized laboratory periods.
Red rock and concretion models from Earth to Mars: Teaching diagenesis part of Activities
Margie Chan, University of Utah
This activity teaches students concepts of terrestrial diagenesis (cementation, fluid flow, porosity and permeability, concretions) and encourages them to apply those concepts to new or unknown settings, including ... | <urn:uuid:f4b8146e-83a2-43e4-8f2c-b3c235ae8afb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/sedimentary/activities.html?q1=sercvocabs__43%253A206 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.898655 | 310 | 3.875 | 4 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
In 1962 President John F. Kennedy’s administration narrowly averted possible nuclear war with the USSR, when CIA operatives spotted Soviet surface-to-surface missiles in Cuba, after a six-week gap in intelligence-gathering flights.
In their forthcoming book Blind over Cuba: The Photo Gap and the Missile Crisis, co-authors David Barrett and Max Holland make the case that the affair was a close call stemming directly from a decision made in a climate of deep distrust between key administration officials and the intelligence community.
Using recently declassified documents, secondary materials, and interviews with several key participants, the authors weave a story of intra-agency conflict, suspicion, and discord that undermined intelligence-gathering, adversely affected internal postmortems conducted after the crisis peaked, and resulted in keeping Congress and the public in the dark about what really happened.
We asked Barrett, a professor of political science at Villanova University, to discuss the actual series of events and what might have happened had the CIA not detected Soviet missiles on Cuba.
The Actual Sequence of Events . . .
“Some months after the Cuban Missile Crisis, an angry member of the Armed Services Committee of the House of Representatives criticized leaders of the Kennedy administration for having let weeks go by in September and early October 1962, without detecting Soviet construction of missile sites in Cuba. It was an intelligence failure as serious as the U.S. ignorance that preceded the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, he said.
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara aggressively denied that there had been an American intelligence failure or ineptitude with regard to Cuba in late summer 1962. McNamara and others persuaded most observers the administration’s performance in the lead-up to the Crisis had been almost flawless, but the legislator was right: The CIA had not sent a U-2 spy aircraft over western Cuba for about a six week period.
There were varying reasons for this, but the most important was that the Kennedy administration did not wish to have a U-2 “incident.” Sending that aircraft over Cuba raised the possibility that Soviet surface-to-air missiles might shoot one down. Since it was arguably against international law for the U.S. to send spy aircrafts over another country, should one be shot down, there would probably be the same sort of uproar as happened in May 1960, when the Soviet Union shot down an American U-2 flying over its territory.
Furthermore, most State Department and CIA authorities did not believe that the USSR would put nuclear-armed missiles into Cuba that could strike the U.S. Therefore, the CIA was told, in effect, not even to request permission to send U-2s over western Cuba. This, at a time when there were growing numbers of reports from Cuban exiles and other sources about suspicious Soviet equipment being brought into the country.As we now know, the Soviets WERE constructing missile sites on what CIA deputy director Richard Helms would call “the business end of Cuba,” i.e., the western end, in the summer/autumn of 1962. Fortunately, by mid-October, the CIA’s director, John McCone, succeeded in persuading President John F. Kennedy to authorize one U-2 flight over that part of Cuba and so it was that Agency representatives could authoritatively inform JFK on October 16th that the construction was underway.The CIA had faced White House and State Department resistance for many weeks about this U-2 matter."
What Could Have Happened . . .
“What if McCone had not succeeded in persuading the President that the U.S. needed to step up aerial surveillance of Cuba in mid-October? What if a few more weeks had passed without that crucial October 14 U-2 flight and its definitive photography of Soviet missile site construction?
Remember to check out Blind over Cuba: The Photo Gap and the Missile Crisis, which is being published this fall!If McCone had been told “no” in the second week of October, perhaps it would have taken more human intelligence, trickling in from Cuba, about such Soviet activity before the President would have approved a risky U-2 flight.The problem JFK would have faced then is that there would have been a significant number of operational medium-range missile launch sites. Those nuclear-equipped missiles could have hit the southern part of the U.S. Meanwhile, the Soviets would also have progressed further in construction of intermediate missile sites; such missiles could have hit most of the continental United States.If JFK had not learned about Soviet nuclear-armed missiles until, say, November 1st, what would the U.S. have done?There is no definitive answer to that question, but I think it’s fair to say that the President would have been under enormous pressure to authorize—quickly--a huge U.S. air strike against Cuba, followed by an American invasion. One thing which discovery of the missile sites in mid-October gave JFK was some time to negotiate effectively with the Soviet Union during the “Thirteen Days” of the crisis. I don’t think there would have been such a luxury if numerous operational missiles were discovered a couple weeks later.No wonder President Kennedy felt great admiration and gratitude toward those at the CIA (with its photo interpreters) and the Air Force (which piloted the key U-2 flight). The intelligence he received on October 16th was invaluable. I think he knew that if that intelligence had not come until some weeks later, there would have been a much greater chance of nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.” | <urn:uuid:7da5e687-07e2-4c8f-9fac-fe3f58c7017a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tamupress.blogspot.com/2012/07/close-call-what-if-cia-had-not-spotted.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977158 | 1,150 | 2.828125 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
By JOHN CARTER
When Abraham Lincoln died from an assassin’s bullet on April 15, 1865, Edwin Stanton remarked to those gathered around his bedside, “Now he belongs to the ages.”
One of the meanings implied in Stanton’s famous statement is that Lincoln would not only be remembered as an iconic figure of the past, but that his spirit would also play a significant role in ages to come.
The Oscar-nominated movie “Lincoln,” which chronicles the struggle to pass the 13th amendment abolishing slavery, has turned our attention again to Lincoln’s legacy and his relevance amid our nation’s present divisions and growing pains.
Here is some of the wit and wisdom of Abraham Lincoln worth pondering:
“As for being president, I feel like the man who was tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail. To the man who asked him how he liked it, he said, ‘If it wasn’t for the honor of the thing, I’d rather walk.’”
“I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.”
“Should my administration prove to be a very wicked one, or what is more probable, a very foolish one, if you the people are true to yourselves and the Constitution, there is but little harm I can do, thank God.”
“Bad promises are better broken than kept.”
“I am not at all concerned that the Lord is on our side in this great struggle, for I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right; but it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation may be on the Lord’s side.”
“I have never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.”
“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.”
“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.”
“The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.”
“The true rule, in determining to embrace or reject anything, is not whether it have any evil in it, but whether it have more evil than good. There are few things wholly evil or wholly good.”
“Some of our generals complain that I impair discipline and subordination in the army by my pardons and respites, but it makes me rested, after a hard day’s work, if I can find some good excuse for saving a man’s life, and I go to bed happy as I think how joyful the signing of my name will make him (a deserter) and his family.”
“I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.”
In addition, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and his second inaugural speech are ever relevant. And you may wish to add your own favorites to these.
Paul’s advice to us in Philippians 4:8 is to “fill your minds with those things that are good and deserve praise: things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and honorable.”
As we celebrate his birthday on the 12th, Lincoln’s words more than meet this standard!
John Carter is a Weatherford resident whose column, “Notes From the Journey,” is published weekly in the Weatherford Democrat. | <urn:uuid:d53f9812-f42b-4039-a509-209a2d5aac9b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://weatherforddemocrat.com/opinion/x1303543173/NOTES-FROM-THE-JOURNEY-Lincoln-is-still-one-for-the-ages | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968393 | 821 | 3.390625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
The chloride ion is formed when the element chlorine picks up one electron to form the anion (negatively charged ion) Cl−. The salts of hydrochloric acid HCl contain chloride ions and are also called chlorides. An example is table salt, which is sodium chloride with the chemical formula NaCl. In water, it dissolves into Na+ and Cl− ions.
The word chloride can also refer to a chemical compound in which one or more chlorine atoms are covalently bonded in the molecule. This means that chlorides can be either inorganic or organic compounds. The simplest example of an inorganic covalently bonded chloride is hydrogen chloride, HCl. A simple example of an organic covalently bonded chloride is chloromethane (CH3Cl), often called methyl chloride.
Other examples of inorganic covalently bonded chlorides which are used as reactants are:
- phosphorus trichloride, phosphorus pentachloride, and thionyl chloride - all three are reactive chlorinating reagents which have been used in a laboratory.
- Disulfur dichloride (SCl2) - used for vulcanization of rubber.
Chloride ions have important physiological roles. For instance, in the central nervous system the inhibitory action of glycine and some of the action of GABA relies on the entry of Cl− into specific neurons.
The contents of this article is licensed from www.wikipedia.org under the GNU Free Documentation License. Click here to see the transparent copy and copyright details | <urn:uuid:4e76b8fd-c479-45d7-8ee7-faf61495aecb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects_encyclopedia/Chloride | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.896893 | 320 | 4.59375 | 5 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
How do you get HIV?
HIV can be passed on when infected bodily fluid, such as blood or semen, is passed into an uninfected person. Semen is the liquid which is released from a man's penis during sex which carries sperm. It can be infected with HIV or AIDS when someone is HIV positive or is carrying the AIDS virus. This can happen during unprotected sex. For example when two people have sex without using a condom when one partner is already infected, or between drug users who inject and share needles.
It can't be transmitted by things like coughing, sneezing, kissing, sharing a toilet seat, swimming pools, sweat and tears. | <urn:uuid:a3e140cd-7f25-48c9-a2f0-a7d0b1954e0d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.childline.org.uk/Explore/SexRelationships/Pages/HIVAIDS.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966757 | 136 | 3.125 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Brain Matures a Few Years Late in ADHD
but Follows Normal Pattern
A 2007 press release from the National Institute of Mental Health discusses brain development in ADHD youths. In some cases, brain development is delayed as much as three years. The full release and related video are available on the NIMH site: Brain Matures a Few Years Late in ADHD, but Follows Normal Pattern.
Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD):
How to Help Children with Autism Learn
From Dr. Lauer and Dr. Beaulieu's talk
Quick facts about Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD)/ Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD)
- Autism is a 'spectrum disorder' meaning that it affects children in different ways and at different times in their development.
- Typically, delays and learning problems can emerge in several areas of functioning including social functioning, communication skills, motor skills, and overall intellectual potential.
- Each child has their own learning style that includes specific learning challenges as well as areas of preserved skills and, at times, exceptional abilities.
- Both autism and Asperger's disorder are on the same continuum but are distinct in their expression.
What are the challenges students with PDD/ASD frequently experience?
- Academic difficulties that can often be misinterpreted as learning disabilities.
- Problems with executive functioning skills.
- Difficulty in forming relationships with peers.
- Emotional difficulties due to learning and social problems such as anxiety, depression, low self-esteem.
- Fear of new situations and trouble adjusting to changes.
- May look like or be misconstrued as attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Nonverbal Learning Disability (NLD), Oppositional-Defiant Disorder or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).
Why choose US to help YOU?
- Our evaluations are conducted by neuropsychologists who have been extensively trained in the early detection of autistic spectrum disorders and in the identification of specific patterns of learning strengths and weaknesses that are often associated with this condition.
- Our evaluations help determine which teaching style is best suited to fit an individuals' specific learning profile; we also offer suggestions regarding compensatory educational approached.
- We work as a team with other learning professionals, advocates and health professionals to enhance the child's potential for success in all settings.
'The design of truly individual treatment plans that exploit strengths and compensate for weaknesses begins with a detailed understanding of how learning is different for children with autism than for those without autism and how learning is different among children with autism.'
— Bryna Siegel, Ph.D., author of Helping Children with Autism Learn
For more information on current research, interventions and programs, follow us on Facebook.
Coming to see you for an evaluation was so helpful and Im so happy that I did this. After struggling for years with ADHD but not knowing thats what it was and almost completely ruining our marriage because of it, your diagnosis helped more than you could know. Now I know that its not just me the diagnosis has turned our lives around and helped me feel more accomplished at work. Thanks again for everything.
Sandy and Bob M. | <urn:uuid:9b0b7a97-4882-4e06-adc0-44f4bbdc3349> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cnld.org/autistic_spectrum_disorders.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951765 | 647 | 3.390625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Download source - 8 Kb
This tutorial is based off of the MSDN Article #ID: Q194873. But, for a beginner, following these MSDN articles can be intimidating to say the least. One of the most often asked questions I see as a Visual C++ and Visual Basic programmer is how to call a VB DLL from VC++. Well, I am hoping to show you exactly that today. I am not going to go over the basic details of COM as this would take too long, so I am assuming you have an understanding of VB, VC++ and a little COM knowledge. It's not too hard to learn; just takes a little time. So let's get started.
The first thing you need to do is fire up Visual Basic 6 (VB 5 should work as well). With VB running, create a new "ActiveX DLL" project. Rename the project to "vbTestCOM" and the class to "clsTestClass". You can do this by clicking in the VB Project Explorer Window on the Project1 item (Step 1), then clicking in the Properties window and selecting the name property (Step 2). Do the same for the Class. Click on the class (Step 3), then the name property and enter the name mentioned above (Step 4). Your project so far should look like the folowing right hand side picture:
Ok, now we are ready to add some code to the VB Class. Click on the "Tools" menu, then select the "Add Procedure" menu item. The Add Procedure window will open up. In this window we need to add some information. First (Step 1) make sure the type is set to Function. Second (Step 2) enter a Function name called "CountStringLength". Finally hit the Ok button and VB will generate the new function in the class.
You should have an empty function with which to work. The first thing we will do is specify a return type and an input parameter. Edit your code to look like this:
Public Function CountStringLength(ByVal strValue As String) As Long
What are we doing here? We are taking one parameter, as a String type in this case, then returning the length through the return type, which is a Long. We specify the input parameter as ByVal, meaning VB will make a copy of this variable and use the copy in the function, rather than the default ByRef, which passes the variable by reference. This way we can be sure that we do not modify the string by accident that was passed to us by the calling program. Let's add the code now.
Public Function CountStringLength(ByVal strValue As String) As Long
If strValue = vbNullString Then
CountStringLength = 0
CountStringLength = Len(strValue)
In the first line of code we are checking to see if the calling program passed us an empty, or NULL, string. If so we return 0 as the length. If the user did pass something other than an empty string, then we count it's length and return the length back to the calling program.
Now would be a good time to save your project. Accept the default names and put it in a safe directory. We need to compile this project now. Go to the File menu and select the "Make vbCOMTest.dll..." menu item.
The compiler will produce a file called surprisingly enough: vbCOMTest.dll. The compiler will also do us the favor of entering this new DLL into the system registry. We have finished the VB side of this project, so let's start the VC++ side of it. Fire up a copy of VC++, then select from the menu, "New Project". The New Project window should appear. Select a "Win32 Console Application" (Step 1), then give it a name of "TestVBCOM" (Step 2). Finally, enter a directory you want to build this project in (Step 3 - your directory will vary from what I have entered).
Click on the "OK" button and the "Win32 Console Application - Step 1 of 1" window will appear. Leave everything on this page as the default, and click the "Finish" button. One final window will appear after this titled "New Project Information". Simply click the "Ok" button here. You should now have an empty Win32 Console project. Press the "Ctrl" and hit the "N" key. Another window titled "New" will appear. Select the "C++ Source File" (Step 1), then enter the new name for this file called, "TestVBCOM.cpp" (Step 2 - make sure the Add to Project checkbox is checked and the correct project name is in the drop down combo box), then click the "Ok" button to finish.
Now we are going to get fancy!
You need to go to your Start Menu in Windows and navigate to the "Visual Studio 6" menu and go into the "Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 Tools" sub-menu. In here you will see an icon with the name "OLE View". Click on it.
The OLE View tool will open up. You will see a window similar to this one:
Collapse all the trees, if they are not already. This will make it easier to navigate to where we want to go. Highlight the "Type Libraries" (Step 1) and expand it. You should see a fairly massive listing. We need to locate our VB DLL. Now, remember what we named the project? Right, we need to look for vbTestCOM. Scroll down until you find this. Once you have found it, double click on it. A new window should appear - the "ITypeLib Viewer" window. We are only interested in the IDL (Interface Definition Language) code on the right side of the window. Select the entire IDL text and hit the "Ctrl" and "C" buttons to copy it to the clipboard.
You can close this window and the OLE View window now as we are done with the tool. We need to add the contents of the IDL file into our VC++ project folder. Go to the folder you told VC++ to create your project in and create a new text file there (If you are in Windows Explorer, you can right click in the directory and select "New" then scroll over following the arrow and select "Text Document"). Rename the text document to "vbCOMTEST.idl". Then double click on the new IDL file (VC++ should open it if you named it correctly with an IDL extension). Now paste the code in the file by pressing the "Ctrl" and "V" keys. The IDL text should be pasted into the file. So far, so good. Now, this IDL file is not going to do us much good until we compile it. That way, VC++ can use the files it generates to talk to the VB DLL. Let's do that now. Open a DOS window and navigate to the directory you created your VC++ project in. Once in that directory, at the prompt you need to type the following to invoke the MIDL compiler:
E:\VCSource\TestVBCOM\TestVBCOM\midl vbTestCOM.idl /h vbTestCOM.h
Hit the "Enter" key and let MIDL do its magic. You should see results similar to the following:
Close the DOS window and head back into VC++. We need to add the newly generated vbTestCOM.h and vbTestCOM_i.c files to the project. You can do this by going to the "Project" menu, then selecting the "Add to Project" item, and scrolling over to the "Files" menu item and clicking on it. A window titled, "Insert Files into Project" will open. Select the two files highlighted in the next picture, then select the "Ok" button.
These two files were generated by MIDL for us, and VC++ needs them in order to talk to the VB DLL (actually VC++ does not need the "vbCOMTest_i.c" file in the project, but it is handy have in the project to review). We are going to add the following code to the "TestVBCOM.cpp" file now, so navigate to that file in VC++ using the "Workspace" window. Open the file by double clicking it and VC++ will display the empty file for editing.
Now add the following code to the "TestVBCOM.cpp" file:
_clsVBTestClass *IVBTestClass = NULL;
hr = CoInitialize(0);
hr = CoCreateInstance( CLSID_clsVBTestClass,
_bstr_t bstrValue("Hello World");
hr = IVBTestClass->CountStringLength(bstrValue,
cout << "The string is: " << ReturnValue << " characters in
length." << endl;
hr = IVBTestClass->Release();
cout << "CoCreateInstance Failed." << endl;
If all the code is entered in correctly, then press the "F7" key to compile this project. Once the project has compiled cleanly, then press the "Ctrl" and the "F5" keys to run it. In the C++ code, we include the MIDL created "vbTestCOM.h" file, the "Comdef.h" file for the _bstr_t class support and the "iostream.h" file for the "cout" support. The rest of the comments should speak for themselves as to what's occurring. This simple tutorial shows how well a person can integrate VB and VC++ apps together using COM. Not too tough actually. | <urn:uuid:a5fbb498-1ce4-4861-9a4d-ac9d31394472> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/21/Beginner-s-Tutorial-Calling-Visual-Basic-ActiveX-D?fid=104&df=90&mpp=10&sort=Position&spc=None&select=1378774&tid=816225&PageFlow=FixedWidth | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.878738 | 2,064 | 2.796875 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
1854-89 THREE DOLLARS INDIAN HEAD
In 1853 the United States negotiated the "Gadsden Purchase"settlement of a boundary dispute with Mexico that resulted in the U.S. acquiring what would become the southern portions of Arizona and New Mexico for ten million dollars. The following year Commodore Matthew Perry embarked upon his famed expedition to re-open Japan to the Western world and establish trade. Spreading beyond its borders in many ways, a few years earlier the United States had joined the worldwide move to uniform postage rates and printed stamps when the Congressional Act of March 3, 1845 authorized the first U.S. postage stamps, and set the local prepaid letter rate at five cents. This set the stage for a close connection between postal and coinage history.
Exactly six years later, the postage rate was reduced to three cents when New York Senator Daniel S. Dickinson fathered legislation that simultaneously initiated coinage of the tiny silver three-cent piece as a public convenience. The large cents then in circulation were cumbersome and unpopular, and the new denomination was designed to facilitate the purchase of stamps without using the hated "coppers."
This reasoning was carried a step further when the Mint Act of February 21, 1853 authorized a three-dollar gold coin. Congress and Mint Director Robert Maskell Patterson were convinced that the new coin would speed purchases of three-cent stamps by the sheet and of the silver three-cent coins in roll quantities. Unfortunately, at no time during the 35-year span of this denomination did public demand justify these hopes. Chief Engraver James Barton Longacre chose an "Indian Princess" for his obverse not a Native American profile, but actually a profile modeled after the Greco-Roman Venus Accroupie statue then in a Philadelphia museum. Longacre used this distinctive sharp-nosed profile on his gold dollar of 1849 and would employ it again on the Indian Head cent of 1859. On the three-dollar coin Liberty is wearing a feathered headdress of equal-sized plumes with a band bearing LIBERTY in raised letters. She's surrounded by the inscription UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Such a headdress dates back to the earliest known drawings of American Indians by French artist Jacques le Moyne du Morgue's sketches of the Florida Timucua tribe who lived near the tragic French colony of Fort Caroline in 1562. It was accepted by engravers and medalists of the day as the design shorthand for "America."
Longacre's reverse depicted a wreath of tobacco, wheat, corn and cotton with a plant at top bearing two conical seed masses. The original wax models of this wreath still exist on brass discs in a Midwestern collection and show how meticulous Longacre was in preparing his design. Encircled by the wreath is the denomination 3 DOLLARS and the date. There are two boldly different reverse types, the small DOLLARS appearing only in 1854 and the large DOLLARS on coins of 1855-89. Many dates show bold "outlining" of letters and devices, resembling a double strike but probably the result of excessive forcing of the design punches into the die steel, causing a hint of their sloping "shoulders" to appear as part of the coin's design. The high points of the obverse design that first show wear are the cheek and hair above the eye; on the reverse, check the bow knot and leaves.
A total of just over 535,000 pieces were issued along with 2058 proofs. The first coins struck were the 15 proofs of 1854. Regular coinage began on May 1, and that first year saw 138,618 pieces struck at Philadelphia (no mintmark), 1,120 at Dahlonega (D), and 24,000 at New Orleans (O). These two branch mints would strike coins only in 1854. San Francisco produced the three-dollar denomination in 1855, 1856, and 1857, again in 1860, and apparently one final piece in 1870. Mintmarks are found below the wreath.
Every U.S. denomination boasts a number of major rarities. The three-dollar gold coinage of 1854-1889 is studded with so many low-mintage dates that the entire series may fairly be called rare. In mint state 1878 is the most common date, followed by the 1879, 1888, 1854 and 1889 issues. Every other date is very rare in high grade, particularly 1858, 1865, 1873 Closed 3 and all the San Francisco issues. Minuscule mintages were the rule in the later years. Proof coins prior to 1859 are extremely rare and more difficult to find than the proof-only issues of 1873 Open 3, 1875 and 1876, but many dates are even rarer in the higher Mint State grades. This is because at least some proofs were saved by well- heeled collectors while few lower-budget collectors showed any interest in higher-grade business strikes of later-date gold. Counterfeits are known for many dates; any suspicious piece should be authenticated.
The rarest date of all is the unique 1870-S, of which only one example was struck for inclusion in the new Mint's cornerstone. Either the coin escaped, or a second was struck as a pocket piece for San Francisco Mint Coiner J.B. Harmstead. In any event, one coin showing traces of jewelry use surfaced in the numismatic market in 1907. It was sold to prominent collector William H. Woodin, and when Thomas L. Elder sold the Woodin collection in 1911, the coin went to Baltimore's Waldo C. Newcomer. Later owned by Virgil Brand, it was next sold by Ted and Carl Brandts of Ohio's Celina Coin Co. and Stack's of New York to Louis C. Eliasberg in 1946 for $11,500. In Bowers and Merena's October 1982 sale of the U.S. Gold Collection, this famous coin sold for a record $687,500.
The three-dollar denomination quietly expired in 1889 along with the gold dollar and nickel three-cent piece. America's coinage was certainly more prosaic without this odd denomination gold piece, but its future popularity with collectors would vastly outstrip the lukewarm public reception it enjoyed during its circulating life. | <urn:uuid:ce5e0d75-e5f8-4ce2-8b94-86d9527d0dd4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.coinsite.com/CoinSite-PF/PParticles/$3goldix.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963839 | 1,295 | 3.671875 | 4 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
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Take the complexity of technology and stir in the complexity of the legal system and what do you get? Software licenses! If you've ever attempted to read one you know how true this is, but you have to know a little about software licensing even if you can't parse all of the fine print.
By: Chris Peters
March 10, 2009
A software license is an agreement between you and the owner of a program which lets you perform certain activities which would otherwise constitute an infringement under copyright law. The software license usually answers questions such as:
The price of the software and the licensing fees, if any, are sometimes discussed in the licensing agreement, but usually it's described elsewhere.
If you read the definitions below and you're still scratching your head, check out Categories of Free and Non-Free Software which includes a helpful diagram.
Free vs Proprietary:
When you hear the phrase "free software" or "free software license," "free" is referring to your rights and permissions ("free as in freedom" or "free as in free speech"). In other words, a free software license gives you more rights than a proprietary license. You can usually copy, modify, and redistribute free software without paying a fee or obtaining permission from the developers and distributors. In most cases "free software" won't cost you anything, but that's not always the case – in this instance the word free is making no assertion whatsoever about the price of the software. Proprietary software puts more restrictions and limits on your legal permission to copy, modify, and distribute the program.
Free, Open-Source or FOSS?
In everyday conversation, there's not much difference between "free software," "open source software," and "FOSS (Free and Open-Source Software)." In other words, you'll hear these terms used interchangeably, and the proponents of free software and the supporters of open-source software agree with one another on most issues. However, the official definition of free software differs somewhat from the official definition of open-source software, and the philosophies underlying those definitions differ as well. For a short description of the difference, read Live and Let License. For a longer discussion from the "free software" side, read Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software. For the "open-source" perspective, read Why Free Software is Too Ambiguous.
Public domain and copyleft.
These terms refer to different categories of free, unrestricted licensing. A copyleft license allows you all the freedoms of a free software license, but adds one restriction. Under a copyleft license, you have to release any modifications under the same terms as the original software. In effect, this blocks companies and developers who want to alter free software and then make their altered version proprietary. In practice, almost all free and open-source software is also copylefted. However, technically you can release "free software" that isn't copylefted. For example, if you developed software and released it under a "public domain" license, it would qualify as free software, but it isn't copyleft. In effect, when you release something into the public domain, you give up all copyrights and rights of ownership.
Shareware and freeware.
These terms don't really refer to licensing, and they're confusing in light of the discussion of free software above. Freeware refers to software (usually small utilities at sites such as Tucows.com) that you can download and install without paying. However, you don't have the right to view the source code, and you may not have the right to copy and redistribute the software. In other words, freeware is proprietary software. Shareware is even more restrictive. In effect, shareware is trial software. You can use it for a limited amount of time (usually 30 or 60 days) and then you're expected to pay to continue using it.
End User Licensing Agreement (EULA).
When you acquire software yourself, directly from a vendor or retailer, or directly from the vendor's Web site, you usually have to indicate by clicking a box that you accept the licensing terms. This "click-through" agreement that no one ever reads is commonly known as a EULA. If you negotiate a large purchase of software with a company, and you sign a contract to seal the agreement, that contract usually replaces or supersedes the EULA.
Most major vendors of proprietary software offer some type of bulk purchasing and volume licensing mechanism. The terms vary widely, but if you order enough software to qualify, the benefits in terms of cost and convenience are significant. Also, not-for-profits sometimes qualify for it with very small initial purchases.
Some of the benefits of volume licensing include:
Lower cost. As with most products, software costs less when you buy more of it.
Ease of installation. Without volume licenses, you usually have to enter a separate activation code (also known as a product key or license key) for each installed copy of the program. On the other hand, volume licenses provide you with a single, organisation-wide activation code, which makes it much easier to find when you need to reinstall the software.
Easier tracking of licenses. Keeping track of how many licenses you own, and how many copies you've actually installed, is a tedious, difficult task. Many volume licensing programs provide an online account which is automatically updated when you obtain or activate a copy of that company's software. These accounts can also coordinate licensing across multiple offices within your organisation.
To learn more about volume licensing from a particular vendor, check out some of the resources below:
Qualified not-for-profits and libraries can receive donated volume licenses for Microsoft products through TechSoup. For more information, check out our introduction to the Microsoft Software Donation Program, and the Microsoft Software Donation Program FAQ. For general information about the volume licensing of Microsoft software, see Volume Licensing Overview.
If you get Microsoft software from TechSoup or other software distributors who work with not-for-profits, you may need to go to the eOpen Web site to locate your Volume license keys. For more information, check out the TechSoup Donation Recipient's Guide to the Microsoft eOpen Web Site.
Always check TechSoup Stock first to see if there's a volume licensing donation program for the software you're interested in. If TechSoup doesn't offer that product or if you need more copies than you can find at TechSoup, search for "volume licensing not-for-profits software" or just "not-for-profits software." For example, when we have an inventory of Adobe products, qualifying and eligible not-for-profits can obtain four individual products or one copy of Creative Suite 4 through TechSoup. If we're out of stock, or you've used up your annual Adobe donation, you can also check TechSoup's special Adobe donation program and also Adobe Solutions for Nonprofits for other discounts available to not-for-profits. For more software-hunting tips, see A Quick Guide to Discounted Software Programs.
Pay close attention to the options and licensing requirements when you acquire server-based software. You might need two different types of license – one for the server software itself, and a set of licenses for all the "clients" accessing the software. Depending on the vendor and the licensing scenario, "client" can refer either to the end users themselves (for example, employees, contractors, clients, and anyone else who uses the software in question) or their computing devices (for example, laptops, desktop computers, smartphones, PDAs, etc.). We'll focus on Microsoft server products, but similar issues can arise with other server applications.
Over the years, Microsoft has released hundreds of server-based applications, and the licensing terms are slightly different for each one. Fortunately, there are common license types and licensing structures across different products. In other words, while a User CAL (Client Access License) for Windows Server is distinct from a User CAL for SharePoint Server, the underlying terms and rights are very similar. The TechSoup product pages for Microsoft software do a good job of describing the differences between products, so we'll focus on the common threads in this article.
Moreover, Microsoft often lets you license a single server application in more than one way, depending on the needs of your organisation. This allows you the flexibility to choose the licenses that best reflect your organisation's usage patterns and thereby cost you the least amount of money. For example, for Windows Server and other products you can acquire licenses on a per-user basis (for example, User CALs) or per-device basis (for example, Device CALs).
The license required to install and run most server applications usually comes bundled with the software itself. So you can install and run most applications "out of the box," as long as you have the right number of client licenses (see the section below for more on that). However, when you're running certain server products on a computer with multiple processors, you may need to get additional licenses. For example, if you run Windows Server 2008 DataCenter edition on a server with two processors, you need a separate license for each processor. SQL Server 2008 works the same way. This type of license is referred to as a processor license. Generally you don't need client licenses for any application that's licensed this way.
Client Licenses for Internal Users
Many Microsoft products, including Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008, require client access licenses for all authenticated internal users (for example, employees, contractors, volunteers, etc.). On the other hand, SQL Server 2008 and other products don't require any client licenses. Read the product description at CTXchange if you're looking for the details about licensing a particular application.
User CALs: User CALs allow each user access to all the instances of a particular server product in an organisation, no matter which device they use to gain access. In other words, if you run five copies of Windows Server 2008 on five separate servers, you only need one User CAL for each person in your organisation who access those servers (or any software installed on those servers), whether they access a single server, all five servers, or some number in between. Each user with a single CAL assigned to them can access the server software from as many devices as they want (for example, desktop computers, laptops, smartphones, etc.). User CALs are a popular licensing option.
Device CALs: Device CALs allow access to all instances of a particular server application from a single device (for example, a desktop computer, a laptop, etc.) in your organisation. Device CALs only make sense when multiple employees use the same computer. For example, in 24-hour call centres different employees on different shifts often use the same machine, so Device CALs make sense in this situation.
Choosing a licensing mode for your Windows Server CALs: With Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008, you use a CAL (either a User CAL or a Device CAL) in one of two licensing modes: per seat or per server. You make this decision when you're installing your Windows Server products, not when you acquire the CALs. The CALs themselves don't have any mode designation, so you can use either a User CAL or a Device CAL in either mode. Per seat mode is the default mode, and the one used most frequently. The description of User CALs and Device CALs above describes the typical per seat mode. In "per server" mode, Windows treats each license as a "simultaneous connection." In other words, if you have 40 CALs, Windows will let 40 authenticated users have access. The 41st user will be denied access. However, in per server mode, each CAL is tied to a particular instance of Windows Server, and you have to acquire a new set of licenses for each new server you build that runs Windows. Therefore, per server mode works for some small organisations with one or two servers and limited access requirements.
You don't "install" client licenses the way you install software. There are ways to automate the tracking of software licenses indirectly, but the server software can't refuse access to a user or device on licensing grounds. The licenses don't leave any "digital footprint" that the server software can read. An exception to this occurs when you license Windows Server in per server mode. In this case, if you have 50 licenses, the 51st authenticated user will be denied access (though anonymous users can still access services).
Some key points to remember about client licensing:
The licensing scenarios described in this section arise less frequently, and are too complex to cover completely in this article, so they're described briefly below along with more comprehensive resources.
You don't need client licenses for anonymous, unauthenticated external users. In other words, if someone accesses your Web site, and that site runs on Internet Information Server (IIS), Microsoft's Web serving software, you don't need a client license for any of those anonymous users.
If you have any authenticated external users who access services on your Windows-based servers, you can obtain CALs to cover their licensing requirements. However, the External Connector License (ECL) is a second option in this scenario. The ECL covers all use by authenticated external users, but it's a lot more expensive than a CAL, so only get one if you'll have a lot of external users. For example, even if you get your licenses through the CTXchange donation program, an ECL for Windows Server 2008 has an £76 administrative fee, while a User CAL for Windows Server 2008 carries a £1 admin fee. If only a handful of external users access your Windows servers, you're better off acquiring User CALs. Also, an ECL only applies to external users and devices. In other words, if you have an ECL, you still have to get a CAL for all employees and contractors.
Even though Terminal Services (TS) is built into Windows Server 2003 and 2008, you need to get a separate TS CAL for each client (i.e. each user or each device) that will access Terminal Services in your organisation. This TS license is in addition to your Windows Server CALs.
Microsoft's System Centre products (a line of enterprise-level administrative software packages) use a special type of license known as a management license (ML). Applications that use this type of licensing include System Center Configuration Manager 2007 and System Center Operations Manager 2007. Any desktop or workstation managed by one of these applications needs a client management license. Any server managed by one of these applications requires a server management license, and there are two types of server management licenses – standard and enterprise. You need one or the other but not both. There are also special licensing requirements if you're managing virtual instances of Windows operating systems. For more information, see TechSoup's Guide to System Center Products and Licensing and Microsoft's white paper on Systems Center licensing.
Some Microsoft server products have two client licensing modes, standard and enterprise. As you might imagine, an Enterprise CAL grants access to more advanced features of a product. Furthermore, with some products, such as Microsoft Exchange, the licenses are additive. In other words, a user needs both a Standard CAL AND an Enterprise CAL in order to access the advanced features. See Exchange Server 2007 Editions and Client Access Licenses for more information.
With virtualisation technologies, multiple operating systems can run simultaneously on a single physical server. Every time you install a Microsoft application, whether on a physical hardware system or a virtual hardware system, you create an "instance" of that application. The number of "instances" of particular application that you can run using a single license varies from product to product. For more information see the Volume Licensing Briefs, Microsoft Licensing for Virtualization and the Windows Server Virtualization Calculator. For TechSoup Stock products, see the product description for more information.
There are a lot of nuances to Microsoft licensing, and also a lot of excellent resources to help you understand different scenarios.
About the Author:
Chris is a former technology writer and technology analyst for TechSoup for Libraries, which aims to provide IT management guidance to libraries. His previous experience includes working at Washington State Library as a technology consultant and technology trainer, and at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as a technology trainer and tech support analyst. He received his M.L.S. from the University of Michigan in 1997.
Originally posted here.
Copyright © 2009 CompuMentor. This work is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.
The latest version of Microsoft Office Professional Plus is an integrated collection of programs, servers, and services designed to work together to enable optimised information work. | <urn:uuid:c337bcd8-6aa1-4f2d-8c48-b916442ebbee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ctt.org/resource_centre/getting_started/learning/understanding_licenses | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910602 | 3,479 | 3.234375 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Aliphatic alcohols occur
naturally in free form (component of the cuticular lipids) but more usually in esterified
(wax esters) or etherified form (glyceryl ethers). Several alcohols belong to aroma
compounds which are found in environmental or food systems (see the website: Flavornet).
They are found with normal, branched (mono- or isoprenoid), saturated or unsaturated of various chain length and sometimes with secondary or even tertiary alcoholic function. An unusual phenolic alcohol is found as a component of glycolipids in Mycobacteria. Some cyclic alcohols have been described in plants.
A classification according to the carbon-chain structure is given below.
1 - Normal-chain alcohols
The carbon chain may be fully saturated or unsaturated (with double and/or triple bonds), it may also be substituted with chlorine, bromine or sulfate groups. Some acetylenic alcohols have been also described.
Among the most common, some are listed below
9-methyl-1-hendecanol (anteisolauryl alcohol)
11-methyl-1-tridecanol (anteisomyristyl alcohol)
14-methyl-1-pentadecanol (isopalmityl alcohol)
13-methyl-1-pentadecanol (anteisopalmityl alcohol)
16-methyl-1-heptadecanol (isostearyl alcohol)
15-methyl-1-pentadecanol (anteisostearyl alcohol)
Free fatty alcohols are not commonly found in epicuticular lipids of insects, although high molecular weight alcohols have been reported in honeybees (Blomquist GJ et al., Insect Biochem 1980, 10, 313). Long-chain alcohols also have been reported in the defensive secretions of scale insects (Byrne DN et al., Physiol Entomol 1988, 13,267). Typically, insects more commonly produce lower molecular weight alcohols. Honeybees produce alcohols of 17–22 carbons, which induce arrestment in parasitic varroa mites (Donze G et al., Arch Insect Biochem Physiol 1998, 37, 129). Two female-specific fatty alcohols, docosanol (C22) and eicosanol (C20), which have been found in epicuticle of Triatoma infestans (a vector of Chagas disease in South America), are able to trigger copulation in males (Cocchiararo-Bastias L et al., J Chem Ecol 2011, 37, 246). Hexadecyl acetate is found in the web of some spiders (Pholcidae) to attract females (Schulz S, J Chem Ecol 2013, 39, 1).
Long-chain alcohols (C18, C24, C28) from the femoral glands in the male lizard Acanthodactylus boskianus play a role in chemical communication as a scent marking pheromone (Khannoon ER et al., Chemoecology 2011, 21, 143).
Various fatty alcohols are found in the waxy film that plants have over their leaves and fruits. Among them, octacosanol (C28:0) is the most frequently cited.
Policosanol is a natural mixture of higher primary aliphatic alcohols isolated and purified from sugar cane (Saccharum officinarum, L.) wax, whose main component is octacosanol but contains also hexacosanol (C26:0) and triacontanol or melissyl alcohol (C30:0). Policosanol is also extracted from a diversity of other natural sources such as beeswax, rice bran, and wheat germ (Irmak S et al., Food Chem 2006, 95, 312) but is also present in the fruits, leaves, and surfaces of plants and whole seeds. A complex policosanol mixture has been identified in peanut (Cherif AO et al., J Agric Food Chem 2010, 58, 12143). More than 20 aliphatic alcohols were identified (C14-C30) and four unsaturated alcohols (C20-24). The total policosanol content of the whole peanut samples varied from 11 to 54 mg/100 g of oil.
This mixture was shown to have cholesterol-lowering effects in rabbits (Arruzazabala ML et al., Biol Res 1994, 27, 205). Octacosanol was also able to suppress lipid accumulation in rats fed on a high-fat diet (Kato S et al., Br J Nutr 1995, 73, 433) and to inhibit platelet aggregation (Arruzazabala ML et al., Thromb Res 1993, 69, 321). The effectiveness of policosanol is still questionable but it has been approved as a cholesterol-lowering drug in over 25 countries (Carbajal D et al., Prostaglandins Leukotrienes Essent Fatty Acids 1998, 58, 61), and it is sold as a lipid-lowering supplement in more than 40 countries. More recent studies in mice question about any action on improvement of lipoprotein profiles (Dullens SPJ et al., J Lipid Res 2008, 49, 790). The authors conclude that individual policosanols, as well as natural policosanol mixtures, have no potential for reducing coronary heart disease risk through effects on serum lipoprotein concentrations. Furthermore, sugar cane policosanol at doses of 20 mg daily has shown no lipid lowering effects in subjects with primary hypercholesterolemia (Francini-Pesenti F et al., Phytother Res 2008, 22, 318). It must be noticed that, for the most part, positive results have been obtained by only one research group in Cuba. Outside Cuba, all groups have failed to validate the cholesterol-lowering efficacy of policosanols (Marinangeli C et al., Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr 2010, 50, 259). Independent studies are required before evaluating the exact value of the therapeutic benefits of that mixture.
An unsaturated analogue of octacosanol, octacosa-10, 19-dien-1-ol was synthesized and was as effective as policosanol in inhibiting the upregulation of HMGCoA reductase (Oliaro-Bosso S et al., Lipids 2009, 44, 907). This work opens promising perspectives for the design of new antiangiogenic compounds (Thippeswamy G et al., Eur J Pharmacol 2008, 588, 141). An unsaturated analogue of octacosanol, octacosa-10, 19-dien-1-ol was synthesized and was as effective as policosanol in inhibiting the upregulation of HMGCoA reductase (Oliaro-Bosso S et al., Lipids 2009, 44, 907). This work opens promising perspectives for the design of new antiangiogenic compounds.
1-Octanol and 3-octanol are components of the mushroom flavor (Maga JA, J Agric Food Chem 1981, 29, 1).
Many alcohols in the C10 to C18 range, and their short-chain acid esters are potent sex or aggregation pheromones. They are mainly found as components of specialized defensive glands, pheromone glands or glands of the reproductive system.
A series of C22 up to C28 saturated n-alcohols, with even carbon numbers predominating, and a maximum at C26 and C28, has been identified in the cyanobacterium Anabaena cylindrica (Abreu-Grobois FA et al., Phytochemistry 1977, 16, 351). Several authors have reported high contents of the 22:0 alcohol in sediments where an algal origin is plausible. For example, the major alcohol in a sample of the lacustrine Green River Shale of Eocene age is also 22:0 which comprises over 50% of the alcohols present (Sever JR et al., Science 1969, 164, 1052)
Long-chain alcohols are known as major surface lipid components (waxes) with chains from C20 up to C34 carbon atoms, odd carbon-chain alcohols being found in only low amounts. Very long-chain methyl-branched alcohols (C38 to C44) and their esters with short-chain acids were shown to be present in insects, mainly during metamorphosis. A series of long-chain alkanols (more than 23 carbon atoms) were identified in settling particles and surface sediments from Japanese lakes and were shown to be produced by planktonic bacteria being thus useful molecular markers (Fukushima K et al., Org Geochem 2005, 36, 311).
Cutin and suberin contain as monomer saturated alcohols from C16 to C22 up to 8% of the total polymers. C18:1 alcohol (oleyl alcohol) is also present.
Long-chain di-alcohols (1,3-alkanediols) have been described in the waxes which impregnate the matrix covering all organs of plants (Vermeer CP et al., Phytochemistry 2003, 62, 433). These compounds forming about 11% of the leaf cuticular waxes of Ricinus communis were identified as homologous unbranched alcohols ranging from C22 to C28 with hydroxyl group at the carbon atoms 1 and 3.
In the leaf cuticular waxes of Myricaria germanica (Tamaricaceae) several alkanediols were identified (Jetter R, Phytochemistry 2000, 55, 169). Hentriacontanediol (C31) with one hydroxyl group in the 12-position and the second one in positions from 2 to 18 is the most abundant diol (9% of the wax). Others were far less abundant : C30-C34 alkanediols with one hydroxyl group on a primary and one on a secondary carbon atom, C25-C43 b-diols and C39-C43 g-diols. Very-long-chain 1,5-alkanediols ranging from C28 to C38, with strong predominance of even carbon numbers, were identified in the cuticular wax of Taxus baccata (Wen M et al., Phytochemistry 2007, 68, 2563). The predominant diol had 32 carbon atoms (29% of the total).
Long-chain saturated C30-C32 diols occur in most marine sediments and in a few instances, such as in Black Sea sediments, they can be the major lipids (de Leeuw JW et al., Geochim Cosmochim Acta 1981, 45, 2281). A microalgal source for these compounds was discovered when Volkman JK et al. (Org Geochem 1992, 18, 131) identified C30-C32 diols in marine eustigmatophytes from the genus Nannochloropsis.
Two nonacosanetriols (7,8,11-nonacosanetriol and 10,12,15-nonacosanetriol) have been isolated from the outer fleshy layer (sarcotesta) of the Ginkgo biloba "fruit" (Zhou G et al., Chem Phys Lipids 2012, 165, 731). They exhibited slight activity of antithrombin and moderate activities of platelet aggregation in vitro.
The chief lipid fraction in the uropygial gland excretion of the domestic hen is a diester wax. The unsaponifiable fraction consists of a series of three homologous compounds, which have been named the uropygiols and identified as 2,3-alkanediols containing 22-24 carbon atoms. These fatty alcohols are esterified by saturated normal C22-C24 fatty acids (Haahti E et al., J Lipid Res 1967, 8, 131).
- Unsaturated alcohols
Some fatty alcohols have one double bond (monounsaturated). Their general formula is:
The unique double bond may be found in different positions: at the C6: i.e. cis-6-octadecen-1-ol (petroselenyl alcohol), C9 i.e cis-9-octadecen-1-ol (oleyl alcohol) and C11 i.e cis-11-octadecen-1-ol (vaccenyl alcohol). Some of these alcohols have insect pheromone activity. As an example, 11-eicosen-1-ol is a major component of the alarm pheromone secreted by the sting apparatus of the worker honeybee. In zooplankton, the cis-11-docosen-1-ol (22:1 (n-11) alcohol) is not only present in high proportion in wax esters (54 to 83%) but may be also predominant in free form (75-94% of free alcohols) in ctenophores (Graeve M et al., Mar Biol 2008, 153, 643). This presence is unexplained because pathways for conversion and catabolism of fatty alcohols in ctenophores are still unknown.
Some short-chain unsaturated alcohols are components of mushroom flavor, such as 1-octen-3-ol, t2-octen-1-ol, and c2-octen-1-ol (Maga JA, J Agric Food Chem 1981, 29, 1).
An acetoxy derivative of a 16-carbon alcohol with one double bond, gyptol (10-acetoxy cis-7-hexadecen-1-ol), was described to be a strong attractive substance secreted by a female moth (Porthetria dispar, "gypsy moth").
A fatty alcohol with two double bonds, bombykol (tr-10,cis-12-hexadecadien-1-ol), was also shown to be excreted as a very strong attractive substance by the female of silk-worm (Bombyx mori).
This first discovery of a pheromone
was made by Butenandt A et al. (Z Naturforsch 1959, 14, 283) who was
formerly Nobel laureate (in 1939) for his work in sex hormones. Another pheromone,
8,10-dodecadienol (codlemone), is secreted by the codling moth Cydia
pomonella, has been used for monitoring and mating in apple and pear
orchards in the USA and Europe. This molecule was also used to monitor the
population of the pea moth Cydia nigricana. Likewise, 7,9-dodecadienol,
the female pheromone of the European grapewine moth Lobesia botrana, was
used to control this important pest in vineyards.
A fatty triol with one double bond, avocadene (16-heptadecene-1,2,4-triol) is found in avocado fruit (Persea americana) and has been tested for anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory properties. These properties are likely related with the curative effects of avocado described for a number of ailments (diarrhea, dysentery, abdominal pains and high blood pressure). Several others heptadecanols with one primary and two secondary alcohol functions and with one double or triple bond have been identified in the leaves of Persea americana (Lee TH et al., Food Chem 2012, 132, 921). One or two of these alcohol groups may be acetylated. These compounds may be related to the known antifungal activity of Persea leaves.
Long-chain alkenols (C37 to C39) with 2 to 4 double bonds, the reduced form of the alkenones, have been described in the benthic haptophyte Chrysotila lamellosa (Rontani JF et al., Phytochemistry 2004, 65, 117). al., 1986). C30 to C32 alcohols having one or two double bonds are significant constituents of the lipids of marine eustigmatophytes of the genus Nannochloropsis (Volkman JK et al., Org Geochem 1992, 18, 131). These microalgae could be partially the source of the alkenols found in some marine sediments.
Two chlorinated derivatives of unusual alcohols were described in a red alga Gracilaria verrucosa (Shoeb M et al., J Nat Prod 2003, 66, 1509). Both compounds have a C12 aliphatic chain chlorinated in position 2 and with one double bond at carbon 2 (compound 1 : 2-chlorododec-2-en-1-ol) or two double bonds at carbon 2 and 11 (compound 2 : 2-chlorododec-2,11-dien-1-ol).
- Acetylenic alcohols
Natural acetylenic alcohols and their derivatives have been isolated from a wide variety of plant species, fungi and invertebrates. Pharmacological studies have revealed that many of them display chemical and medicinal properties.
Monoacetylenic alcohols : were isolated from culture of Clitocybe catinus (Basidiomycetes) and the study of their structure revealed the presence of two or three hydroxyl groups (Armone A et al., Phytochemistry 2000, 53, 1087). One of these compounds is shown below.
Acetylenic alcohols have been also described in a tropical sponge Reniochaline sp (Lee HS et al., Lipids 2009, 44, 71). One of the two described in that species is shown below, it exhibited a significant growth effect against human tumor cell lines.
Polyacetylenic alcohols : Several examples with different chain lengths, unsaturation degrees, and substitution have been reported from terrestrial plants and marine organisms. Food plants of the Apiaceae (Umbellifereae) plant family such as carrots, celery and parsley, are known to contain several bioactive bisacetylenic alcohols. The main plant sources of these compounds are Angelica dahurica, Heracleum sp and Crithmum maritimum (falcarindiol, falcarinol), red ginseng (Panax ginseng) (panaxacol, panaxydol, panaxytriol), Cicuta virosa (virol A), and Clibadium sylvestre (cunaniol). All these compounds display antibiotic or cytotoxic activities.
Polyacetylenes have been isolated from the stems of Oplopanax elatus (Araliaceae), plant used in Korean and Chinese traditional medicine for anti-inflammatory and analgesic purposes (Yang MC et al., J Nat Prod 2010, 73, 801). Among the most efficient in inhibiting the formation of nitric oxide in LPS-induced cells is a seventeen-carbon diyne diol with an epoxy cycle, oploxyne A. Other parent compounds without the epoxy group were also described.
J. Sci. Food Agric. 2003,
83, 1010). Falcarinl
has potent anticancer properties on primary mammary epithelial cells and was
compared with that of
b-carotene. These results might be important in developing
new cancer treatments with simple and common vegetables. At high concentrations,
falcarinol is capable to induce contact dermatitis.
Falcarinol, a seventeen-carbon diyne fatty alcohol (1,9-heptadecadiene-4,6-diyn-3-ol), was first isolated from Falcaria vulgaris (Bohlmann F et al., Chem Ber 1966, 99, 3552) as well as from Korean ginseng (Takahashi et al., Yakugaku Zasshi 1966, 86, 1053). It was also isolated from carrot (Hansen SL et al.
Falcarinol protects the
vegetable from fungal diseases, it showed biphasic activity, having stimulatory
effects between 0.01 and 0.05 µg per ml and inhibitory effects between 1 and 10
µg per ml, whereas b-carotene
showed no effect in the concentration range 0.001–100 µg per ml (Hansen SL
et al., J Sci Food Agric 2003, 83, 1010). Experiments with
macrophage cells have shown that falcarinol (and its C-8 hydroxylated
derivative, falcarindiol) reduced nitric oxide production, suggesting that these
polyacetylenes are responsible for anti-inflammatory bioactivity (Metzger
BT et al., J Agric Food Chem 2008, 56, 3554). Falcarindiol was first
reported as phytochemicals in carrots (Daucus carota) (Bentley RK et
al., J Chem Soc 1969, 685). Besides falcarinol, falcarindiol, and
falcarindiol 3-acetate, nine additional bisacetylene alcohols were identified in
Daucus carota (Schmiech L et al., J Agric Food Chem 2009, 57, 11030).
Experiments with human intestinal cells demonstrate that aliphatic C17-polyacetylenes (panaxydol, falcarinol, falcarindiol) are potential anticancer principles of carrots and related vegetables (parsley, celery, parsnip, fennel) and that synergistic interaction between bioactive polyacetylenes may be important for their bioactivity (Purup S et al., J Agric Food Chem 2009, 57, 8290). Compounds very similar to falcarinol and extracted from Panax japonicus are potent a-glucosidase inhibitors (Chan HH et al., Phytochemistry 2010, 71, 1360). These inhibitors may potentially reduce the progression of diabetes by decreasing digestion and absorption of carbohydrates.
The water dropwort (Oenanthe crocata), which lives near streams in the Northern Hemisphere, contains a violent toxin, cicutoxin, resulting in convultions and respiratory paralysis (Uwai K et al., J Med Chem 2000, 43, 4508).
The biochemistry and bioactivity of polyacetylenes are presented in a review (Christensen LP et al., J Pharm Biomed Anal 2006, 41, 683) as well methods for the isolation and quantification of these compounds.
Many other polyacetylenic alcohols were found in primitive marine organisms,
such as sponges and ascidians. These invertebrates have no physical defenses and
thus they have developed efficient chemical mechanisms such as polyacetylenic
metabolites to resist predators and bacteria.
A C36 linear diacetylene alcohol named lembehyne was found in an Indonesian marine sponge (Haliclona sp) (Aoki S et al., Tetrahedron 2000, 56, 9945) and was later able to induce neuronal differentiation in neuroblastoma cell (Aoki S et al., Biochem Biophys Res Comm 2001, 289, 558).
Several polyacetylenic alcohols with 22 carbon atoms were isolated and identified in lipid extract from a Red Sea sponge, Callyspongia sp (Youssef DT et al., J Nat Prod 2003, 66, 679). Their physical study revealed the presence of 4 triple bonds and one, two or three double bonds. The structure of one of these Callyspongenols is given below.
Several di- and
tri-acetylenic di-alcohols with a chain of 26 up to 31 carbon atoms, named strongylodiols,
have been isolated from a Petrosia Okinawan marine sponge (Watanabe K
et al., J Nat Prod 2005, 68, 1001). Some of them have cytotoxic
Several polyacetylenic alcohols with 21 carbon atoms were isolated from a marine ascidian (Polyclinidae) and were determined to have two triple bonds combined with a conjugated dienyne group (Gavagnin M et al., Lipids 2004, 39, 681). Some of them have an additional hydroxyl group or only three double bonds. The structure of one of these molecules is given below.
Several brominated polyacetylenic diols with cytotoxic properties were isolated from a Philippines sponge Diplastrella sp (Lerch ML et al., J Nat Prod 2003, 66, 667). One of these molecules is shown below.
A comprehensive survey of acetylenic alcohols in plant and invertebrates with information on their anticancer activity has been released by Dembitsky VM (Lipids 2006, 41, 883).
- Sulfated alcohols
Long-chain di-hydroxy alcohols in which both the primary and secondary hydroxyl groups are converted to sulfate esters and one to five chlorine atoms are introduced at various places have been discovered in the alga Ochromonas danica (Chrysophyceae, Chrysophyta) where they constitute 15% of the total lipids (Haines TH, Biochem J 1969, 113, 565). An example of these chlorosulfolipids is given below. There may be several types of chlorine addition : one at R4, two at R3 and R5 or R1 and R2, five at R1 to R5 and six at R1 to R6.
Similar molecules with a 24 carbon
chain was also described in Ochromonas malhamensis (review in Dembitsky
VM et al., Prog Lipid Res 2002, 41, 315 and in Bedke DK et
al., Nat Prod Rep 2011, 28, 15). It was suggested that the
chlorosulfolipids replace sulfoquinovosyl diglyceride, since when the later is
high the former is low and vice versa. They have been associated with the human
toxicity of the mussel-derived lipids (Diarrhetic Shellfish Poisoning).
Several of these chlorosulfolipids have also been identified from more than 30 species of both freshwater and marine algae belonging to green (Chlorophyceae), brown (Phaeophyceae), red (Rhodophyceae) macrophytic algae (Mercer EI et al., Phytochemistry 1979, 18, 457), and other microalgal species (Mercer EI et al., Phytochemistry 1975, 14, 1545).
Some fatty alcohols, such as dodecanol (lauryl or dodecyl alcohol), are used for the manufacture of detergents after sulphonation (by action of SO3 gas). The salt sodium laurylsulfate (or sodium dodecylsulfate) is a detergent and strong anionic surfactant, used in biochemistry and in the composition of cosmetic products (shampoos, toothpastes).
2 - Branched-chain alcohols
In 1936, Stodola et al. characterized an optically active substance recovered on saponification of ‘‘purified waxes’’ of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, determined its global formula and proposed to name it phthiocerol (Stodola FH et al., J Biol Chem 1936, 114, 467). In 1959, after several chemical studies, its structure was determined as a mixture of C36 and C34b-glycols. It has been proposed that the term phthiocerol be reserved for the original 3-methoxy congener (phthiocerol A) and that the term phthioglycol be used to refer to the family of compounds (Onwueme KC et al., Prog Lipid Res 2005, 44, 259).
Among the most important saturated isopranols found in plants or in geological sediments are those having two (tetrahydrogeraniol), three (farnesanol), or four (phytanol) isoprenoid units. Pristanol (2,6,10,14-tetramethyl-1-pentadecanol) is tetramethylated but with only three complete isoprenoid units.
B - Unsaturated polyisoprenoids (prenols or polyprenols)
They have the following general structure :
These molecules consist of several up to more than 100 isoprene residues linked head-to-tail, with a hydroxy group at one end (a-residue) and a hydrogen atom at the other (w-end).
- 1. all trans forms : They have the following structure:
Some important members of the series are as follows:
Number of isoprene unit
Number of carbons
Long-chain trans-polyprenol (n>8) have been
characterized from Eucommia ulmoides.
Geraniol (from rose oil) is a monoterpene (2 isoprene units). It has a rose-like odor and is commonly used in perfumes and as several fruit flavors. Geraniol is also an effective mosquito repellent. Inversely, it can attract bees as it is produced by the scent glands of honey bees to help them mark nectar-bearing flowers and locate the entrances to their hives.
Farnesol is a sesquiterpene (3 isoprene units). It is the prenol that corresponds to the carbon skeleton of the simplest juvenile hormone described for the first time in insects in 1961 (Schmialek PZ, Z Naturforsch 1961, 16b, 461; Wigglesworth VB, J Insect Physiol 1961, 7, 73). It is present in many essential oils such as citronella, neroli, cyclamen, lemon grass, rose, and others. It is used in perfumery to emphasize the odors of sweet floral perfumes. It is especially used in lilac perfumes. As a pheromone, farnesol is a natural pesticide for mites. The dimorphic fungus Candida albicans has been shown to use farnesol as quorum-sensing molecule (Hornby JM et al., Appl Environ Microbiol 2001, 67, 2982).
Geranylgeraniol is a diterpene (4 isoprene units). Geraniol and geranylgeraniol are important molecules in the synthesis of various terpenes, the acylation of proteins and the synthesis of vitamins (Vitamins E and K). The covalent addition of phosphorylated derivatives of typical isoprenoids, farnesyl pyrophosphate and geranylgeranyl pyrophosphate, to proteins is a process (prenylation) common to G protein subunits. These isoprenylated proteins have key roles in membrane attachment leading to central functionality in cell biology and pathology.
Solanesol, discovered in tobacco leaves in 1956 (Rowland RL et al., J Am Chem Soc 1956, 78, 4680), may be an important precursor of the tumorigenic polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons of smoke but is also a possible side chain for plastoquinone. Solanesol is also present in the leaves of other Solanaceae plants including tomato, potato, eggplant and pepper. It has useful medicinal properties and is known to possess anti-bacterial, anti-inflammation, and anti-ulcer activities (Khidyrova NK et al., Chem Nat Compd 2002, 38, 107). Industrially, solanesol is extracted from Solanaceae leaves (about 450 tons in 2008) and used as an intermediate in the synthesis of coenzyme Q10 and vitamin K analogues.
Spadicol was discovered in the spadix (inflorescence) of the Araceae Arum maculatum (Hemming FW et al., Proc R Soc London 1963, 158, 291). Its presence is likely related to its presence in the ubiquinone as the side-chain.
Phytol is a partially saturated diterpene, a monounsaturated derivative of geranylgeraniol which is part of the chlorophyll molecule :
- 2. ditrans-polycis-prenols, such as the bacteria prenol and betulaprenol types. In general, bacteria, as all prokaryotic cells, possess ditrans-polycis-prenols containing between 10 and 12 units, the most abundant being undecaprenol (trivial name bactoprenol).
Betulaprenols with n = 3-6 were
isolated from the woody tissue of Betula verrucosa (Wellburn AR et
al., Nature 1966, 212, 1364), and bacterial polyprenol with n = 8 were
isolated from Lactobacillus plantarum (Gough DP et al., Biochem J
1970, 118, 167). Betulaprenol-like species with 14 to 22 isoprene units have
been discovered in leaves of Ginkgo biloba (Ibata K et al., Biochem J
1983, 213, 305).
Polyisoprenoid alcohols are accumulated in the cells most often as free alcohols and/or esters with carboxylic acids. A fraction of polyisoprenoid phosphates has also been detected, and this form is sometimes predominant in dividing cells and Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Adair WL et al., Arch Biochem Biophys 1987, 259, 589).
- 3. tritrans-polycis-prenols, of the ficaprenol type.Some of the earliest samples were obtained from Ficus elastica, giving rise to the trivial names ficaprenol-11 and ficaprenol-12 (Stone KJ et al. Biochem J 1967, 102, 325).
In plants, the diversity of polyprenols is much broader, their chain length covers the broad spectrum of compounds ranging from 6 up to 130 carbon atoms (Rezanka T et al., J Chromatogr A 2001, 936, 95).
- 4. dolichol types, the a
terminal is saturated.
Most eukaryotic cells contain one type of polyisoprenoid alcohols with one a-saturated isoprenoid unit (2,3-dihydro polycis-prenols) which have been called dolichol by Pennock JF et al. (Nature 1960, 186, 470), a derivative of prenols. Most of these carry two trans units at the w-end of the chain.
Dolichols (fro the Greek dolikos: long) have the general structure :
Dolichols isolated from yeast or
animal cells consist mainly of seven to eight compounds, those with 16, 18, or
19 isoprenoid units being the most abundant (Ragg SS, Biochem Biophys Res
Comm 1998, 243, 1).
Dolichol amount was shown to be increased in the brain gray matter of elderly (Pullarkat RK
et al., J Biol Chem 1982, 257, 5991). Dolichols with 19, 22 and 23
isoprenoid units were described as early as 1972 in marine invertebrates (Walton
MJ et al., Biochem J 1972, 127, 471). Furthermore, the pattern of their distribution may be
considered as a chemotaxonomic criterion. It has been reported that a high
proportion of dolichols is esterified to fatty acids. As an example, 85-90% of
dolichols are esterified in mouse testis (Potter
J et al., Biochem Biophys Res Comm 1983, 110, 512). In addition, dolichyl
dolichoate has been found in bovine thyroid (Steen
L. et al., Biochim Biophys Acta, 1984, 796, 294).
They are well known for their important role as glycosyl carrier in a phosphorylated form in the synthesis of polysaccharides and glycoproteins in yeast cells, and animals. Dolichyl phosphate is an obligatory intermediate in the biosynthesis of N-glycosidically linked oligosaccharide chains. Conversely, they have been identified as the predominant isoprenoid form in roots (Skorupinska-Tudek K et al., Lipids 2003, 38, 981) and in mushroom tissue (Wojtas M et al., Chem Phys Lipids 2004, 130, 109). Similar compounds (ficaprenols) have the same metabolic function in plants.
The repartition of the various types of polyisoprenoid alcohols between plants and animals and their metabolism have been extensively discussed (Swiezewska E et al., Prog Lipid Res 2005, 44, 235). Biosynthesis of polyisoprenoid alcohols and their biological role have been reviewed in 2005 (Swiezewska E et al., Prog Lipid Res 2005, 44, 235).
3 - Phenolic alcohols
Among the simple phenolic alcohols, monolignols are the source materials for biosynthesis of both lignans and lignin. The starting material for production of monolignols (phenylpropanoid) is the amino acid phenylalanine. There are two main monolignols: coniferyl alcohol and sinapyl alcohol. Para-coumaryl alcohol is similar to conipheryl alcohol but without the methoxy group.
Conipheryl alcohol is found in both gymnosperm and angiosperm
plants. Sinapyl alcohol and para-coumaryl alcohol, the other two lignin
monomers, are found in angiosperm plants and grasses. Conipheryl esters (conypheryl
8-methylnonanoate) have been described in the fruits of the pepper, Capsicum
baccatum (Kobata K et al., Phytochemistry 2008, 69, 1179). These
compounds displayed an agonist activity for transient receptor potential
vanilloid 1 (capsaicin receptor) as the well known capsaicinoids present in
these plant species.
Complex phenolic alcohols (phenolphthiocerol) were shown to be components of Mycobacterium glycolipids which are termed glycosides of phenolphthiocerol dimycocerosate (Smith DW et al., Nature 1960, 186, 887) belonging to the large family of "mycosides". The chain length differs according to the homologues, 18 and 20 carbon atoms in mycosides A, and B, respectively. One of these phenolphthiocerols is shown below.
An analogue component but with a ketone group instead of the methoxy group, a phenolphthiodiolone, has been detected in mycoside A (Fournie JJ et al., J Biol Chem 1987, 262, 3174).
An alcohol with a furan group, identified as 3-(4-methylfuran-3-yl)propan-1-ol, has been isolated from a fungal endophyte living in a plant, Setaria viridis (Nakajima H et al., J Agric Food Chem 2010, 58, 2882). That compound was found to have a repellent effect on an insect, Eysarcoris viridis, which is a major pest of rice.
Some cyclic alkyl polyols have been reported in plants. Among the various form present in an Anacardiaceae, Tapirira guianensis, from South America, two displayed anti-protozoal (Plasmodium falciparum) and anti-bacterial (Staphylococcus spp) activities (Roumy V et al., Phytochemistry 2009, 70, 305). The structure shown below is that of a trihydroxy-alcohol containing a cyclohexene ring.
As emphasized by the
authors, external application of the active plant extract or of the
purified compounds could represent an accessible therapeutic alternative to
classical medicine against leishmaniasis.
aldehydes are found in free form, but also in the form of vinyl ether (known as alk-1-enyl
ether) integated in glycerides and phospholipids (plasmalogens).
The free aldehydes can be as fatty acids saturated or unsaturated. They have a general formula CH3(CH2)nCHO with n=6 to 20 or greater. The most common is palmitaldehyde (hexadecanal) with a 16 carbon chain. Normal monoenoic aldehydes are analogous to the monoenoic fatty acids.
It must be noticed that an aldehyde function may be found at a terminal (w) position while an acid function is present at the other end of the carbon chain (oxo fatty acids). These compounds have important signaling properties in plants.
Long-chain aldehydes have been described in the waxes which impregnate the matrix covering all organs of plants (Vermeer CP et al., Phytochemistry 2003, 62, 433). These compounds forming about 7% of the leaf cuticular waxes of Ricinus communis were identified as homologous unbranched aldehydes ranging from C22 to C28 with a hydroxyl group at the carbon 3. Long-chain 5-hydroxyaldehydes with chain lengths from C24 to C36, the C28 chain being the most abundant, were identified in the cuticular wax of Taxus baccata needles (Wen M et al., Phytochemistry 2007, 68, 2563). Long-chain aliphatic aldehydes with chain-length from C22 to C30 are also present in virgin olive oils, hexacosanal (C26) being the most abundant aldehyde (Perez-Camino MC et al., Food Chem 2012, 132, 1451).
Aldehydes may be produced during decomposition of fatty acid hydroperoxides following a peroxidation attack. Several aldehydes (hexanal, heptanal..) belong to aroma compounds which are found in environmental or food systems (see the website: Flavornet). Aldehydes (mono- or di-unsaturated) with 5 to 9 carbon atoms are produced by mosses (Bryophyta) after mechanical wounding (Croisier E et al., Phytochemistry 2010, 71, 574). It was shown that they were produced by oxidative fragmentation of polyunsaturated fatty acids (C18, C20). Trans-2-nonenal is an unsaturated aldehyde with an unpleasant odor generated during the peroxidation of polyunsaturated fatty acids. It participates to body odor and is found mainly covalently bound to protein in vivo (Ishino K et al., J Biol Chem 2010, 285, 15302).
Fatty aldehydes may be determined easily by TLC or gas liquid chromatography (follow that link). The most common method for the determination of aldehydes involves derivatization with an acidic solution of 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine to form corresponding hydrazones followed by HPLC separation and UV–VIS detection. An optimized derivatization procedure for the determination of aliphatic C1-C10 aldehydes has been described (Stafiej A et al., J Biochem Biophys Meth 2006, 69, 15).
Other short-chain aldehydes (octadienal, octatrienal, heptadienal) are produced via a lipoxygenase-mediated pathway from polyunsaturated fatty acids esterifying glycolipids in marine diatoms (D'Ippolito G et al., Biochim Biophys Acta 2004, 1686, 100). Heighteen species of diatoms have been shown to release unsaturated aldehydes (C7:2, C8:2, C8:3, C10:2, and C10:3) upon cell disruption (Wichard T et al., J Chem Ecol 2005, 31, 949).
Several short-chain aldehydes were shown to induce deleterious effects on zooplankton crustaceans and thus limiting the water secondary production (birth-control aldehydes) (D'Ippolito G et al., Tetrahedron Lett 2002, 43, 6133). In laboratory experiments, three decatrienal isomers produced by various diatoms were shown to arrest embryonic development in copepod and sea urchins and have antiproliferative and apoptotic effects on carcinoma cells (Miralto A et al., Nature 1999, 402, 173). Later, the copepod recruitment in blooms of planktonic diatom was shown to be suppressed by ingestion of dinoflagellate aldehydes (Nature 2004, 429, 403). It was demonstrated that diatoms can accurately sense a potent 2E,4E/Z-decadienal and employ it as a signaling molecule to control diatom population sizes (Vardi A et al., PLoS Biol 2006, 4, e60). This aldehyde triggered a dose-dependent calcium transient that has derived from intracellular store. Subsequently, calcium increase led to nitric oxide (NO) generation by a calcium-dependent NO synthase-like activity, resulting in cell death in diatoms.
Myeloperoxidase-derived chlorinated aldehydes with plasmalogens has been reported. Thus, the vinyl-ether bond of plasmalogens is susceptible to attack by HOCl to yield a lysophospholipid and an
Both these chloro-fatty aldehydes have been detected in neutrophils activated
with PMA (Thukkani
AK et al., J Biol Chem 2002, 277, 3842) and in human atherosclerotic
AK et al., Circulation 2003, 108, 3128). Furthermore,
2-chlorohexadecanal was shown to induce COX-2 expression in human coronary
artery endothelial cells (Messner
MC et al., Lipids 2008, 43, 581). These data suggest that
2-chlorohexadecanal and possibly its metabolite 2-chlorohexadecanoic acid, both produced during leukocyte activation, may alter vascular endothelial cell
function by upregulation of COX-2 expression.
Long after the demonstration of the presence of iodinated lipids in thyroid (besides iodinated aminoacids), it was shown that the major iodinated lipid formed in thyroid when incubated in vitro with iodide was 2-iodohexadecanal (Pereira A et al, J Biol Chem 1990, 265, 17018). In rat and dog thyroid, 2-iodooctadecanal was determined to be more abundant that the 16-carbon aldehyde. These compounds, which are thought to play a role in the regulation of thyroid function, were recently shown to be formed by the attack of reactive iodine on the vinyl ether group of PE plasmalogen. This attack generates an unstable iodinated derivative which breaks into lysophosphatidylethanolamine and 2-iodo aldehydes (Panneels V et al, J Biol Chem 1996, 271, 23006).
In some bacteria, aldehyde analogs of cyclopropane fatty acids were described.
Several fatty aldehydes are known to have pheromone functions. Studies in African and Asian countries have shown that the use of 10,12-hexadecadienal could be effective for control of the spiny bollworm Earias insulana, a cotton pest. The sex pheromone of the navel orange worm, Amyelois transitella, 11,13-hexadecadienal, is usually used in the control of this citric pest.
A branched saturated aldehyde (3,5,9-trimethyldodecenal, stylopsal) has been identified as a female-produced sex pheromone in Stylops (Strepsiptera), an entomophagous endoparasitic insect (Cvacka J et al., J Chem Ecol 2012, 38, 1483).
Several isoprenoid aldehydes are important in insect biology as pheromones and in botany as volatile odorous substances. Some examples are given below:
These three terpenic aldehydes are produced in large amounts by
the mandibular glands of ants and may function as defensive repellents (Regnier
FE et al., J Insect Physiol 1968, 14, 955). In contrast, the same molecules
have a role of recruiting pheromones in honeybees
Citral, a mixture of the tautomers geranial (trans-citral) and neral (cis-citral) is a major component (more than 60%) of the lemongrass (Cymbopogon flexuosus) oil. Lemongrass is widely used, particularly in Southeast Asia and Brazil, as a food flavoring, as a perfume, and for its medicinal properties (analgesic and anti-inflammatory). It was found that citral is a major suppressor of COX-2 expression and an activator of PPARa and g (Katsukawa M et al., Biochim Biophys Acta 2010, 1801, 1214).
It was demonstrated that damaged leaves released 2-hexenal, among other C6-volatile aldehydes, produced from the catalytic activity of hydroperoxide lyase (Turlings TC et al., Proc Ntl Acad Sci USA 1995, 92, 4169). These compounds, considered as signal molecules, can trigger several responses in neighboring plants and may also act as antimicrobial agents (Farmer EE, Nature 2001, 411, 854).
One important constituent of this group of aldehydes is retinal, one active form of vitamin A involved in the light reception of animal eyes but also in bacteria as a component of the proton pump.
Retinal exist in two forms, a cis and a trans isomer. On illumination with
white light, the visual pigment, rhodopsin is converted to a mixture of a protein (opsin)
and trans-retinal. This isomer must be transformed into the cis form by retinal isomerase
before it combines again with opsin (dark phase). Both isomers can be reduced to retinol (vitamin A) by a NADH dependent alcohol dehydrogenase.
Retinol is stocked in retina mainly in an acylated form.
Cinnamic aldehyde (cinnamaldehyde) is the key flavor compound in cinnamon essential oil extracted from Cinnamomum zeylanicum and Cinnamomum cassia bark. Investigations have revealed than that benzyl aldehyde activates the Nrf2-dependent antioxidant response in human epithelial colon cells (Wondrak GT et al., Molecules 2010, 15, 3338). Cinnamic aldehyde may therefore represent a precious chemopreventive dietary factor targeting colorectal carcinogenesis. | <urn:uuid:545660ca-1ae5-41b7-b614-1a9c88f961c3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cyberlipid.org/simple/simp0003.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.881417 | 10,975 | 3.0625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
How to Check Your Dog’s Pulse
6 of 7 in Series: The Essentials of Dog Care for a Healthy Pet
To check your dog’s pulse, you need to locate the femoral artery, which lies just below the skin on the inside of the back legs, between two large muscles where the leg joins the body.
With your dog standing, reach around in front of the rear leg where it joins his body, and slide your fingers into the groin area. You can feel the femoral artery pumping each time the heart beats.
When you have found the artery with your dog standing, try it with your dog lying on his side. Count how many pulses you feel in 15 seconds and multiply by 4 to get the number of beats per minute. Dogs normally have a pulse between 70 and 120 beats per minute. In puppies, the pulse ranges from 120 to 160 beats per minute.
Become familiar with your dog’s pulse rate and how his pulse feels when he is relaxed as well as after exercise.
If you have reason to believe your dog is suffering from an emergency, a dramatic change in pulse (such as, a slowed pulse indicating shock) can be one sign and symptom. | <urn:uuid:c5b7ff1c-c303-4447-bd3a-5dc50802f12c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-check-your-dogs-pulse.seriesId-111403.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953371 | 248 | 2.765625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Rainy Day Painting
Create your very own creepy, haunted castle sitting in a turbulent field of flowing grass, eerily surrounded by dark, ominous clouds.
Fireworks are such an exciting part of part of summer festivities, but it's sad when the show is over. Keep them alive all year long with watercolor fireworks.
Show your high schooler how to celebrate Mary Cassatt, an Impressionist painter, by creating a mother-child painting in her style.
Put your individual fingerprint on the 100th Day of School (literally!) with this activity.
Show your preschooler how to make a print of a butterfly using her hand as a tool--a great way to stimulate her sense of touch.
Use marbles and paint to explore the wild world of shapes and color...and build kindergarten writing strength, too.
Introduce your kindergartener to some art history by showing him how to create an everyday object print, Andy Warhol-style.
Celebrate the changing seasons with this fun, hands-on art activity that will teach your child about the different colors of the seasons.
Help your preschooler begin reading and writing the printed word by connecting simple letter recognition exercises with this easy art project: alphabet trees! | <urn:uuid:b9953fa3-a9b1-49a2-8a31-a2bff8d508c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.education.com/collection/zapkode/rainy-day-painting/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914055 | 253 | 3.453125 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
the energy [r]evolution
The climate change imperative demands nothing short of an Energy [R]evolution. The expert consensus is that this fundamental shift must begin immediately and be well underway within the next ten years in order to avert the worst impacts. What is needed is a complete transformation of the way we produce, consume and distribute energy, while at the same time maintaining economic growth. Nothing short of such a revolution will enable us to limit global warming to less than a rise in temperature of 2° Celsius, above which the impacts become devastating.
Current electricity generation relies mainly on burning fossil fuels, with their associated CO2 emissions, in very large power stations which waste much of their primary input energy. More energy is lost as the power is moved around the electricity grid network and converted from high transmission voltage down to a supply suitable for domestic or commercial consumers. The system is innately vulnerable to disruption: localised technical, weather-related or even deliberately caused faults can quickly cascade, resulting in widespread blackouts. Whichever technology is used to generate electricity within this old fashioned configuration, it will inevitably be subject to some, or all, of these problems. At the core of the Energy [R]evolution there therefore needs to be a change in the way that energy is both produced and distributed.
4.1 key principles
the energy [r]evolution can be achieved by adhering to five key principles:
1.respect natural limits – phase out fossil fuels by the end of this century We must learn to respect natural limits. There is only so much carbon that the atmosphere can absorb. Each year humans emit over 25 billion tonnes of carbon equivalent; we are literally filling up the sky. Geological resources of coal could provide several hundred years of fuel, but we cannot burn them and keep within safe limits. Oil and coal development must be ended. The global Energy [R]evolution scenario has a target to reduce energy related CO2 emissions to a maximum of 10 Gigatonnes (Gt) by 2050 and phase out fossil fuels by 2085.
2.equity and fairness As long as there are natural limits there needs to be a fair distribution of benefits and costs within societies, between nations and between present and future generations. At one extreme, a third of the world’s population has no access to electricity, whilst the most industrialised countries consume much more than their fair share.
The effects of climate change on the poorest communities are exacerbated by massive global energy inequality. If we are to address climate change, one of the core principles must be equity and fairness, so that the benefits of energy services – such as light, heat, power and transport – are available for all: north and south, rich and poor. Only in this way can we create true energy security, as well as the conditions for genuine human wellbeing.
The Advanced Energy [R]evolution scenario has a target to achieve energy equity as soon as technically possible. By 2050 the average per capita emission should be between 1 and 2 tonnes of CO2.
3.implement clean, renewable solutions and decentralise energy systems. There is no energy shortage. All we need to do is use existing technologies to harness energy effectively and efficiently. Renewable energy and energy efficiency measures are ready, viable and increasingly competitive. Wind, solar and other renewable energy technologies have experienced double digit market growth for the past decade.
Just as climate change is real, so is the renewable energy sector. Sustainable decentralised energy systems produce less carbon emissions, are cheaper and involve less dependence on imported fuel. They create more jobs and empower local communities. Decentralised systems are more secure and more efficient. This is what the Energy [R]evolution must aim to create.
To stop the earth’s climate spinning out of control, most of the world’s fossil fuel reserves – coal, oil and gas – must remain in the ground. Our goal is for humans to live within the natural limits of our small planet.
4.decouple growth from fossil fuel use Starting in the developed countries, economic growth must be fully decoupled from fossil fuel usage. It is a fallacy to suggest that economic growth must be predicated on their increased combustion.
We need to use the energy we produce much more efficiently, and we need to make the transition to renewable energy and away from fossil fuels quickly in order to enable clean and sustainable growth.
5.phase out dirty, unsustainable energyWe need to phase out coal and nuclear power. We cannot continue to build coal plants at a time when emissions pose a real and present danger to both ecosystems and people. And we cannot continue to fuel the myriad nuclear threats by pretending nuclear power can in any way help to combat climate change. There is no role for nuclear power in the Energy [R]evolution. | <urn:uuid:b6cc700a-55c3-47a6-baaf-dbe7c04a4b04> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.energyblueprint.info/1332.0.html?L=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938335 | 982 | 3.3125 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Hold the salt: UCLA engineers develop revolutionary new desalination membrane
Process uses atmospheric pressure plasma to create filtering 'brush layer'
Desalination can become more economical and used as a viable alternate water resource.
By Wileen Wong Kromhout
Originally published in UCLA Newsroom
Researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have unveiled a new class of reverse-osmosis membranes for desalination that resist the clogging which typically occurs when seawater, brackish water and waste water are purified.
The highly permeable, surface-structured membrane can easily be incorporated into today's commercial production system, the researchers say, and could help to significantly reduce desalination operating costs. Their findings appear in the current issue of the Journal of Materials Chemistry.
Reverse-osmosis (RO) desalination uses high pressure to force polluted water through the pores of a membrane. While water molecules pass through the pores, mineral salt ions, bacteria and other impurities cannot. Over time, these particles build up on the membrane's surface, leading to clogging and membrane damage. This scaling and fouling places higher energy demands on the pumping system and necessitates costly cleanup and membrane replacement.
The new UCLA membrane's novel surface topography and chemistry allow it to avoid such drawbacks.
"Besides possessing high water permeability, the new membrane also shows high rejection characteristics and long-term stability," said Nancy H. Lin, a UCLA Engineering senior researcher and the study's lead author. "Structuring the membrane surface does not require a long reaction time, high reaction temperature or the use of a vacuum chamber. The anti-scaling property, which can increase membrane life and decrease operational costs, is superior to existing commercial membranes."
The new membrane was synthesized through a three-step process. First, researchers synthesized a polyamide thin-film composite membrane using conventional interfacial polymerization. Next, they activated the polyamide surface with atmospheric pressure plasma to create active sites on the surface. Finally, these active sites were used to initiate a graft polymerization reaction with a monomer solution to create a polymer "brush layer" on the polyamide surface. This graft polymerization is carried out for a specific period of time at a specific temperature in order to control the brush layer thickness and topography.
"In the early years, surface plasma treatment could only be accomplished in a vacuum chamber," said Yoram Cohen, UCLA professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and a corresponding author of the study. "It wasn't practical for large-scale commercialization because thousands of meters of membranes could not be synthesized in a vacuum chamber. It's too costly. But now, with the advent of atmospheric pressure plasma, we don't even need to initiate the reaction chemically. It's as simple as brushing the surface with plasma, and it can be done for almost any surface."
In this new membrane, the polymer chains of the tethered brush layer are in constant motion. The chains are chemically anchored to the surface and are thus more thermally stable, relative to physically coated polymer films. Water flow also adds to the brush layer's movement, making it extremely difficult for bacteria and other colloidal matter to anchor to the surface of the membrane.
"If you've ever snorkeled, you'll know that sea kelp move back and forth with the current or water flow," Cohen said. "So imagine that you have this varied structure with continuous movement. Protein or bacteria need to be able to anchor to multiple spots on the membrane to attach themselves to the surface — a task which is extremely difficult to attain due to the constant motion of the brush layer. The polymer chains protect and screen the membrane surface underneath."
Another factor in preventing adhesion is the surface charge of the membrane. Cohen's team is able to choose the chemistry of the brush layer to impart the desired surface charge, enabling the membrane to repel molecules of an opposite charge.
The team's next step is to expand the membrane synthesis into a much larger, continuous process and to optimize the new membrane's performance for different water sources.
"We want to be able to narrow down and create a membrane selection system for different water sources that have different fouling tendencies," Lin said. "With such knowledge, one can optimize the membrane surface properties with different polymer brush layers to delay or prevent the onset of membrane fouling and scaling.
"The cost of desalination will therefore decrease when we reduce the cost of chemicals [used for membrane cleaning], as well as process operation [for membrane replacement]. Desalination can become more economical and used as a viable alternate water resource."
Cohen's team, in collaboration with the UCLA Water Technology Research (WaTeR) Center, is currently carrying out specific studies to test the performance of the new membrane's fouling properties under field conditions.
"We work directly with industry and water agencies on everything that we're doing here in water technology," Cohen said. "The reason for this is simple: If we are to accelerate the transfer of knowledge technology from the university to the real world, where those solutions are needed, we have to make sure we address the real issues. This also provides our students with a tremendous opportunity to work with industry, government and local agencies."
A paper providing a preliminary introduction to the new membrane also appeared in the Journal of Membrane Science last month.
Published: Thursday, April 08, 2010 | <urn:uuid:c0b175bb-65fb-420e-a881-a80b91d00ecd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.environment.ucla.edu/water/news/article.asp?parentid=6178 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924981 | 1,115 | 2.8125 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Traffic barricades can be used to redirect or restrict traffic in areas of highway construction or repair. They are typically made from wood, steel, plastic, fiberglass, or a combination of these materials. Many manufacturers have switched to the use of recycled materials in both the supporting frame and rails of the barricades. EPA's designation covers only Types I and II traffic barricades.
EPA's Recovered Materials Advisory Notice (RMAN) recommends recycled-content levels for purchasing traffic barricades as shown in the table below.
EPA's Recommended Recovered Materials Content Levels
for Traffic Barricades (Types I and II) ¹
|Material||Postconsumer Content (%)||Total Recovered Materials Content (%)|
(HDPE, LDPE, PET)
1The recommended materials content levels for steel in this table reflect the fact that the designated items can be made from steel manufactured in either a Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF) or an Electric Arc Furnace (EAF). Steel from the BDF process contains 25-30% total recovered materials, of which 16% is postconsumer steel. Steel from the EAF process contains a total of 100% recovered steel, of which 67% is postconsumer.
of Manufacturers and Suppliers
This database identifies manufacturers and suppliers of traffic barricades containing recovered materials.
Buy-Recycled Series: Transportation Products (PDF) (7 pp, 89K, About PDF)
This fact sheet highlights the transportation products designated in the CPG, including traffic barricades, and includes case studies, recommended recovered-content levels, and a list of resources.
Technical Background Documents
These background documents include EPA's product research on recovered-content traffic barricades as well as a more detailed overview of the history and regulatory requirements of the CPG process. | <urn:uuid:606e0bdc-95c7-42f5-a7a6-890b7ac8b653> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/tools/cpg/products/barricds.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.85791 | 371 | 2.6875 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
SAN ANGELO, Texas — MOSCOW (AP) The head of Russia's space agency said Tuesday that cosmic radiation was the most likely cause of the failure of a Mars moon probe that crashed to Earth this month, and suggested that a low-quality imported component may have been vulnerable to the radiation. Vladimir Popovkin also said a manned launch to the International Space Station is being postponed from March 30 because of faults found in the Soyuz capsule.
The statements underline an array of trouble that has afflicted the country's vaunted space program in recent months, including the August crash of a supply ship for the space station and last month's crash of a communications satellite.
Since the end of the U.S. space shuttle program last year, Russian craft are the only means to send crew to and from the ISS.
The unmanned Phobos-Ground probe was to have gone to the Mars moon of Phobos, taken soil samples and brought them back. But it became stuck in Earth orbit soon after its launch on Nov. 9. It fell out of orbit on Jan. 15, reportedly off the coast of Chile, but no fragments have been found.
The failure was a severe embarrassment to Russia, and Popovkin initially suggested it could have been due to foreign sabotage.
But on Tuesday he said in televised remarks that an investigation showed the probable cause was "localized influence of heavily radiated space particles."
Popovkin, speaking in the city of Voronezh where the report was presented to Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, said two units of the Phobos-Ground probe's onboard computer system went into an energy-saving "restart" mode, apparently due to the radiation, while the craft was in its second orbital circuit.
It was not immediately clear why the units could not be brought out of that mode.
Popovkin said that some microchips used on the craft were imported and possibly of inadequate quality to resist radiation. He did not specify where the chips were manufactured.
Yuri Koptev, a former space agency head who led the Phobos-Ground investigation, said 62 percent of the microchips used in the probe were "industrial" class, a less-sophisticated level than should be used in space flight.
Popovkin said the craft's builder, Moscow-based NPO Lavochkin, should have taken into account the possibility of radiation interfering with the operation and said Lavochkin officials would face punishment for the oversight.
Popovkin later announced that a March 30 planned launch of three astronauts to the space station will be postponed "likely until the end of April" because of problems with the capsule. He did not specify, but the state news agency RIA Novosti cited the director of Russia's cosmonaut-training program as saying leaks had been found in the capsule's seals.
It would be the second significant postponement of a manned Russian launch in the past year. The August crash of the supply ship pushed back a manned launch to the ISS because the booster rocket that failed in the crash was similar to the ones used in manned missions. | <urn:uuid:fe10118b-a42c-4bff-bcb7-7ab62838ca60> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gosanangelo.com/news/2012/jan/31/1501lt-ap-eu-russia-falling-spacecraft0515-for/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972907 | 640 | 2.5625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Gay and Lesbian Issues
The adolescent years are full of challenges, many related to sex and sexual identity. These issues can be especially difficult for teens who are (or think they may be) homosexual. Homosexual teens deserve the same understanding and respect as heterosexual teens, and it is important for everyone to know the facts about homosexuality. Here are the basics.
Each of us has a biological sex (we have a male or female body), a gender identity (we feel like a male or female), and a sexual orientation (we are attracted to males or females). Homosexuality refers to a person's sexual orientation; homosexual teen-agers have strong romantic or sexual feelings for a person of the same sex. Heterosexual teen-agers are attracted to people of the opposite sex, and bisexual teens are attracted to people of both sexes.
The word "gay" is used to describe both men and women who are homosexual, with the word "lesbian" specifically referring to a homosexual woman. It is estimated that 10 percent of the population in the United States and throughout the world is lesbian or gay.
Although scientists don't know why some people are homosexual and others are not, most believe that homosexuality is a normal variation of sexual orientation. It may be genetic, result from natural substances (hormones) in the body, be influenced by the environment before or after birth, or, most likely, several of these things working in combination. Homosexual teens are found in all types of families. Homosexuality is not caused by "bad parenting." If your teen is gay, it is not because of anything you or anyone else did.
Homosexuality also is not something a person chooses, nor is it an illness that can be cured. According to the American Psychiatric Association, so-called therapies such as "reparative therapy" and "transformational ministry" don't work and actually can be harmful, causing guilt and anxiety in homosexual teens.
Not all teen-agers who are attracted to members of the same sex are homosexual. Many teens experiment with their sexuality during adolescence, in much the same way that they experiment with clothing, body art or music. This brief sexual experimentation is thought to be a normal part of sexual development. For homosexual teens, the attraction to people of the same sex is stronger and longer lasting.
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Every family is different. While one parent may find out by chance that a teen is homosexual, others may hear directly from their teen in person, in a letter or by a phone call. When a teen tells other people that he is homosexual, it's called "coming out." Although this process sometimes can be difficult or painful for families, it also can be a time of tremendous growth. It is important to remember that all teens need their family's support and acceptance, especially when they are dealing with sensitive issues.
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"Coming out" can be scary and painful, and parents need to reassure their children that they will not be loved any less for sharing the truth about themselves. If your teen tells you he is gay, let him know that you love him unconditionally, and accept him no matter what.
Show your teen that you care by learning more about homosexuality. Read books on the subject or check out reputable Web sites (such as www.pflag.org). Talk to some adults you know who are gay. Look for organizations or support groups in your community that can give you information on homosexuality. It will be easier for you to support your teen when you know more and are comfortable with the subject.
Parents may worry about how friends, neighbors and family will react to their teen's homosexuality. It is usually best not to share any information without your teen-ager's permission. Unfortunately, prejudice against homosexuals is widespread, mostly due to ignorance and fear. When your teen is ready for you to let others know, you should talk with them about your teen's sexual orientation and help them to understand, by using what you have learned.
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Growing up as a homosexual in a mostly heterosexual society often is not easy. Gay and lesbian adolescents sometimes must cope with unfair, prejudiced, and even violent behavior at school, at home and in the community. They may feel fear or be alone and unsupported. This can push some teens to use drugs and alcohol, engage in risky sexual behavior, or even attempt suicide. It is important that homosexual teens feel supported by their parents and always able to talk openly with them about these issues.
Overall, most gay and lesbian youth grow up to be well-adjusted and happy adults, with successful careers and family lives.
Books for parents of the newly out:
"Is it A Choice? Answers to 300 Most Asked Questions About Gay and Lesbian People" by Eric Marcus
"Loving Someone Gay" by Don Clark, Ph.D.
"My Child is Gay" by Bryce McDougall, editor
Last updated May 29, 2011 | <urn:uuid:83d99630-30d5-4811-bdcf-250bf5d3fac5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/WSIHW000/34970/34997/362814.html?d=dmtChildGuide | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961853 | 1,006 | 3.59375 | 4 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
In addition, health issues, such as pain, asthma, restless legs syndrome, and back problems, also can contribute to lack of sleep. So can some medications, such as decongestants, steroids and some medicines for high blood pressure, asthma or depression.
Secrets of good sleep
You can take steps to shift your body and mind into more beneficial sleep habits:
- Keep your bedroom dark, quiet, comfortable and cool. “Making your bedroom a sanctuary conducive for sleep can make a significant difference in the quality of sleep you get,” says Dr. Wolfson.
- Go to sleep and wake up at the same time, even on weekends. Doing so helps keep your internal “circadian clock” in balance, which signals your body to sleep and wake in a regular pattern.
- Establish a regular, relaxing bedtime routine that might include reading a book, listening to soothing music or doing something else you find relaxing. “A relaxing, routine activity right before bedtime helps separate your sleep time from activities that can make it more difficult to fall asleep or remain asleep,” says Dr. Wolfson. “Parents know that a bedtime routine can help children get a good night’s sleep. Doing the same for themselves can have the same results.”
- Make sure your mattress is comfortable and supportive. Good-quality mattresses generally last about 10 years. Have comfortable pillows and make the room attractive and inviting.
- Avoid caffeine close to bedtime. Caffeine products, such as coffee, tea and colas, remain in the body, on average, from three to five hours, but they can affect some people up to 12 hours later.
- Avoid alcohol close to bedtime. Many people think of alcohol as a sedative, but it actually disrupts sleep, causing nighttime awakenings.
- Quit smoking. Nicotine is a stimulant that can make it more difficult for smokers to fall asleep, stay asleep and wake in the morning. Smokers should never smoke in bed or when they’re sleepy.
- Finish eating at least two or three hours before your regular bedtime. Be aware that large, high-fat or spicy meals may cause heartburn, which leads to difficulty falling asleep and discomfort during the night.
- Exercise regularly but complete your workout at least a few hours before bedtime. Exercising regularly makes it easier to fall asleep and contributes to sounder sleep. However, working out right before going to bed will make falling asleep more difficult.
- Find ways to manage stress and anxiety. Relaxation exercises, meditation or deep breathing work for many people.
“If there are problems or issues keeping you awake, try writing them in a notebook and putting it away,” suggests Dr. Wolfson. “That way, you’ve registered your concerns but become free to put them aside until morning.”
When to seek help
If your sleep problems persist for longer than a week and are bothersome, or if sleepiness interferes with the way you feel or function during the day, don’t self-medicate with sleeping pills; make an appointment with your doctor.
“The key to better sleep is recognizing you’re not getting enough deep, restorative sleep, and then doing something about it,” says Dr. Wolfson. “Failure to do so puts you and others at risk.” | <urn:uuid:1cbff567-0d53-485f-b0da-b9c3af53d7f1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kcra.com/Gets-the-ZZZs-you-need/-/11798090/18014276/-/item/1/-/14d2jl9/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94624 | 712 | 2.75 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Most Active Stories
Sun September 25, 2011
Launch Logistics: Speedy Rocket, Slow Electronics
Weird things jump out at me in press releases.
Take the press kit NASA prepared for the GRAIL mission. GRAIL consists of two nearly identical spacecraft that are on their way to the moon. Once there, they will make a precise map of the moon's gravitational field. Such a map will help scientists refine their theories about how the moon formed and what the interior is made of.
So I'm reading through the GRAIL press kit, learning about the size of the spacecraft (washing machine-sized), how long it will take to make the map (approximately three months), and where the mission control room is (at a Lockheed Martin facility just outside of Denver).
I also learn that GRAIL can launch any day between Sept. 9 and Oct. 19. And then I get to this sentence:
"On each day, there are two separate, instantaneous launch opportunities separated in time by approximately 39 minutes."
That's weird. Now, I wasn't surprised that this mission had an extremely precise launch opportunity — "instantaneous" means the launch window is essentially a second long. I know you have to wait until the moon's orbit around the Earth, and Earth's orbit around the sun, and the Earth's rotation around its axis are all in exactly the right position before you can launch your rocket.
But what's up with two instantaneous launch opportunities. Why 39 minutes apart?
I called the NASA press office. They were stumped and promised they'd find someone who could give me the answer. In the meantime, I called several universities with large aerospace programs, and asked if anyone there had the answer.
Nope. Nada. Nothing.
So now this is beginning to bug me. I'm also beginning to worry. If an aerospace engineer can't figure this out, how am I ever going to understand it?
While I'm pondering this, GRAIL deputy project manager Tom Hoffman called. I asked him about the two instantaneous launch opportunities.
"It's a pretty simple answer not driven by the mission at all," Hoffman told me. "It's driven by the launch vehicle."
The launch vehicle? Not orbital mechanics or a complex trajectory? The problem, Hoffman said, is some slow electronics.
There is actually a launch window of 40 minutes or so each day. Modern computers in modern rockets can calculate the precise direction the rocket needs to launch on a second-by-second basis. But GRAIL was launching on a Delta II rocket, and Hoffman told me the Delta II rocket is a rather old design. It's been around for more than 20 years, "and so the rocket just can't, it can't do that internally, in its own computer system. It basically has to be fed all the information," he said.
Hoffman said it takes about 39 minutes to load in the new information, and then check to make sure that it was loaded correctly.
Not the answer I was expecting, but there's something oddly pleasing about a brand-new space mission launching with some rather old electronics.
Whatever works ... as the saying goes. | <urn:uuid:a9a03c48-37f0-4107-92ff-4b61e412d876> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kenw.org/post/launch-logistics-speedy-rocket-slow-electronics | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967178 | 657 | 2.546875 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Ulva spp. on freshwater-influenced or unstable upper eulittoral rock
Ecological and functional relationships
The community predominantly consists of algae which cover the rock surface and creates a patchy canopy. In doing so, the algae provides an amenable habitat in an otherwise hostile environment, exploitable on a temporary basis by other species. For instance, Ulva intestinalis provides shelter for the orange harpacticoid copepod, Tigriopus brevicornis, and the chironomid larva of Halocladius fucicola (McAllen, 1999). The copepod and chironomid species utilize the hollow thalli of Ulva intestinalis as a moist refuge from desiccation when rockpools completely dry. Several hundred individuals of Tigriopus brevicornis have been observed in a single thallus of Ulva intestinalis (McAllen, 1999). The occasional grazing gastropods that survive in this biotope no doubt graze Ulva.
Seasonal and longer term change
- During the winter, elevated levels of freshwater runoff would be expected owing to seasonal rainfall. Also, winter storm action may disturb the relatively soft substratum of chalk and firm mud, or boulders may be overturned.
- Seasonal fluctuation in the abundance of Ulva spp. Would therefore be expected with the biotope thriving in winter months. Porphyra also tends to be regarded as a winter seaweed, abundant from late autumn to the succeeding spring, owing to the fact that the blade shaped fronds of the gametophyte develop in early autumn, whilst the microscopic filamentous stages of the spring and summer are less apparent (see recruitment process, below).
Habitat structure and complexity
Habitat complexity in this biotope is relatively limited in comparison to other biotopes. The upper shore substrata, consisting of chalk, firm mud, bedrock or boulders, will probably offer a variety of surfaces for colonization, whilst the patchy covering of ephemeral algae provides a refuge for faunal species and an additional substratum for colonization. However, species diversity in this biotope is poor owing to disturbance and changes in the prevailing environmental factors, e.g. desiccation, salinity and temperature. Only species able to tolerate changes/disturbance or those able to seek refuge will thrive.
The biotope is characterized by primary producers. Rocky shore communities are highly productive and are an important source of food and nutrients for neighbouring terrestrial and marine ecosystems (Hill et al., 1998). Macroalgae exude considerable amounts of dissolved organic carbon which is taken up readily by bacteria and may even be taken up directly by some larger invertebrates. Dissolved organic carbon, algal fragments and microbial film organisms are continually removed by the sea. This may enter the food chain of local, subtidal ecosystems, or be exported further offshore. Rocky shores make a contribution to the food of many marine species through the production of planktonic larvae and propagules which contribute to pelagic food chains.
The life histories of common algae on the shore are generally complex and varied, but follow a basic pattern, whereby there is an alternation of a haploid, gamete-producing phase (gametophyte-producing eggs and sperm) and a diploid spore-producing (sporophyte) phase. All have dispersive phases which are circulated around in the water column before settling on the rock and growing into a germling (Hawkins & Jones, 1992).
Ulva intestinalis is generally considered to be an opportunistic species, with an 'r-type' strategy for survival. The r-strategists have a high growth rate and high reproductive rate. For instance, the thalli of Ulva intestinalis, which arise from spores and zygotes, grow within a few weeks into thalli that reproduce again, and the majority of the cell contents are converted into reproductive cells. The species is also capable of dispersal over a considerable distance. For instance, Amsler & Searles (1980) showed that 'swarmers' of a coastal population of Ulva reached exposed artificial substrata on a submarine plateau 35 km away.
The life cycle of Porphyra involves a heteromorphic (of different form) alternation of generations, that are either blade shaped or filamentous. Two kinds of reproductive bodies (male and female (carpogonium)) are found on the blade shaped frond of Porphyra that is abundant during winter. On release these fuse and thereafter, division of the fertilized carpogonium is mitotic, and packets of diploid carpospores are formed. The released carpospores develop into the 'conchocelis' phase (the diploid sporophyte consisting of microscopic filaments), which bore into shells (and probably the chalk rock) and grow vegetatively. The conchocelis filaments reproduce asexually. In the presence of decreasing day length and falling temperatures, terminal cells of the conchocelis phase produce conchospores inside conchosporangia. Meiosis occurs during the germination of the conchospore and produces the macroscopic gametophyte (blade shaped phase) and the cycle is repeated (Cole & Conway, 1980).
Time for community to reach maturity
Disturbance is an important factor structuring the biotope, consequently the biotope is characterized by ephemeral algae able to rapidly exploit newly available substrata and that are tolerant of changes in the prevailing conditions, e.g. temperature, salinity and desiccation. For instance, following the Torrey Canyon tanker oil spill in mid March 1967, which bleached filamentous algae such as Ulva and adhered to the thin fronds of Porphyra, which after a few weeks became brittle and were washed away, regeneration of Porphyra and Ulva was noted by the end of April at Marazion, Cornwall. Similarly, at Sennen Cove where rocks had completely lost their cover of Porphyra and Ulva during April, by mid-May had occasional blade-shaped fronds of Porphyra sp. up to 15 cm long. These had either regenerated from basal parts of the 'Porphyra' phase or from the 'conchocelis' phase on the rocks (see recruitment processes). By mid-August these regenerated specimens were common and well grown but darkly pigmented and reproductively immature. Besides the Porphyra, a very thick coating of Ulva (as Enteromorpha) was recorded in mid-August (Smith 1968). Such evidence suggests that the community would reach maturity relatively rapidly and probably be considered mature in terms of the species present and ability to reproduce well within six months.
No text entered.
This review can be cited as follows:
Ulva spp. on freshwater-influenced or unstable upper eulittoral rock.
Marine Life Information Network: Biology and Sensitivity Key Information Sub-programme [on-line].
Plymouth: Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom.
Available from: <http://www.marlin.ac.uk/habitatecology.php?habitatid=104&code=2004> | <urn:uuid:13da434f-f140-49e3-8fdb-67019653693a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.marlin.ac.uk/habitatecology.php?habitatid=104&code=2004&code=2004 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912592 | 1,520 | 3.625 | 4 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
History of the Indians of the United States
by Angie Debo
The political, social, and military conflicts and foul-ups between the Indians and whites from the colonial era to the 1970s.
6 x 9 450 pages, index, maps, illustrated, paperbound
#300 Indians in the US $24.95
by Barry C. Kent
Culturally and linguistically, the Susquehannocks closely resembled the Iroquois of New York state. Actually, they were a fiercely independent nation that lived along the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania and Maryland. They often invaded the tribes of lower Maryland. This is a detailed narrative of the Susquehannocks' lifestyle, villages,
and artifacts. Also describes their relationship with the Conestogas, Conoy, Shawnee, Delaware, and other tribes that lived along the river.
6" x 9" 440 pages, index, illustrated, maps, paperbound
#372 Susquehanna's Indians $16.95
Indians and World War II
by Alison R. Bernstein
The impact of World War II on Indian affairs was more provound and lasting than that of any other event or policy, including FDR's Indian New Deal and eforts to terminate federal responsibility for tribes under Eisenhower. Focusing on the period from 1941 to 1947, Bernstein explains why termination and tribal self-determination wer logical results of the Indians' World War II experiences in battle and on the home front. Includes a brief story of the Navajo Marine Codetalkers and Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian who helped raise the flag at Iwo Jima.
5½" x 8½" 247 pages, index, some photos, paperbound
#373 Indians & WWII $19.95
FAX: 717 464-3250 | <urn:uuid:24918d75-915c-4e00-b5b9-a827162bb127> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.redrosestudio.com/Cat%2016%20Indians.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.874074 | 374 | 3.515625 | 4 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
LABDIEN [Hello]! My name is Hannah Rosenthal, and I am the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism at the U.S. Department of State. In Latvian, envoy means “Īpašā sūtne”. Thank you for inviting me here today to speak to you about the importance of diversity and respect for others. I am always eager to speak to young students because so much of my work depends on your help.
As the Special Envoy, it is my job to monitor anti-Semitic incidents and combat such intolerance. “Anti-Semitism” simply means hatred for Jewish people. I monitor anti-Semitic incidents such as vandalism of religious places, anti-Semitic speech, and even violence against Jews.
But the truth is, I am in the relationship-building business. I am here today to tell you that young people and students can have an impact and do what I do. We must all share and strive for the same mission: to combat hate and intolerance to create a more peaceful and just world.
In order to fight hatred, we must begin with respecting the dignity of every individual, regardless of his or her beliefs. In fact, our differences make us human. You may have heard about the concept of the “Other,” or in Latvian, “svešinieks”. There are individuals in this world who would like us to view some people as outside the larger human family.
The desire to stamp out or suppress or ostracize certain individuals because of who they are, how they worship, or who they love is an obstacle for all members of society. Intolerance prevents us from creating a just and peaceful society. Meanwhile, we, as society, must not stand by idly. When we stand by passively, we also pay a price.
Terrible things can happen when intolerance and racism take hold in a society, across a continent. Hitler’s Nazi ideology called for racial purity and targeted the Jews as an Other that needed to be exterminated. Some of you may know that yesterday communities around the world observed Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day. Yom HaShoah is a day to remember the victims of the Holocaust and to commemorate the individuals – including some Latvians -- who risked their lives to save the Jews. I understand Latvia has its own official Holocaust Remembrance Day on July 4. While we officially commemorate the Holocaust on these days, we must carry their lessons with us every day. We must stand against attitudes that value some individuals below others. We must expand the circle of rights and opportunities to all people – advancing their freedoms and possibilities.
Intolerance is a moral, a political, and a social problem. But it is also a solvable one. It is not unchangeable. We are not born hating. Somewhere we learn to hate. We can, in fact, make hatred and intolerance something of the past. But this demands our attention. It’s not easy work, but it is urgent work.
At the U.S. Department of State (which is like the Foreign Ministry in Latvia) I work within the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. The primary and overarching goal of the Bureau is to promote freedom and democracy and protect human rights around the world. We are constantly strengthening our policies and pushing ourselves and others to break down former walls of intolerance. Over the past three years, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has made the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people – “LGBT” in shorthand -- a priority of our human rights policy. As Secretary Clinton emphatically stated, “Gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights.”
In the United States, we are inspired by the idea that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. The United States has a strong multi-ethnic heritage. Over the course of centuries, many people have immigrated to the United States in hopes of a better life with more opportunities. We embrace this diversity and continue to uphold these values in our everyday lives, actions and laws.
I am learning that Latvia too has a diverse and multicultural history. Various tribes -- the Livs, the Letts, and the Cours -- lived here for many centuries. People from Belarus, Germany, Russia, Sweden, Ukraine, and many other places have played an important part in Latvia’s history. Jews have also contributed to Latvia’s heritage since the sixteenth century. In the eighteenth century, a Jewish man named Abraham Kuntze invented the famous Rigas Balzam (Latvia’s signature liquor). Latvia’s Jews backed the independence movement in the early twentieth century, with hundreds volunteering for service in the Latvian Army and fighting heroically during the war for independence. Latvia’s Jews thrived during the independence period of the 1920s and 30s, serving in parliament and helping write Latvia’s constitution. Zigfrids Meierovics, the first Foreign Minister of Latvia, and twice Prime Minister, had a Jewish father.
Sadly, when the Soviets arrived in Latvia in 1940, they shut down Jewish institutions and seized Jews’ property. When the Soviets deported tens of thousands of Latvians to Siberia, hundreds of Latvian Jews were deported as well. And then, just over one year later, the Holocaust followed and approximately 70,000 of Latvia’s Jews – almost 90 percent – were murdered by the Nazis and their accomplices.
And yet, the Jewish people survived in Latvia. In the 1980s and 90s, Latvia’s Jews once again supported Latvian independence from the Soviet Union, lending their efforts to those of the Popular Front of Latvia. Jews stood on the barricades in 1991. Today, Jews – along with all other Latvians -- are free to practice their faith and to celebrate their culture in a free Latvia. Latvian society is richer, and more diverse, because of the contributions of all these people.
Of course, neither Latvia, nor the United States, is perfect. There are people in both of our countries who do not believe in diversity and respect in every society. However, if we condemn their words of hate, we can spread the message of dignity and respect.
Anti-Semitism and other forms of hatred attack the very idea that every individual is born free and equal in dignity and rights. But Jews, Christians, Muslims and all religious communities are all part of the same family we call humanity. As a child of a Holocaust survivor, anti-Semitism is something very personal to me. My father was arrested – on Kristallnacht, the unofficial pogrom that many think started the Holocaust – and sent with many fellow Jews to prison and then to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. And he was the lucky one – every other person in his family was murdered at Auschwitz. I have dedicated my life to eradicating anti-Semitism and intolerance with a sense of urgency and passion that only my father could give me.
At the State Department, we are trying to make human rights a human reality. As the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, I have recognized that this will not be possible without the help of you, our youth and future leaders.
Last year my colleague Farah Pandith, the Special Representative to Muslims Communities, and I launched a virtual campaign called “2011 Hours Against Hate,” using Facebook. Perhaps you have heard of it? We are asking you, young people around the world, to pledge a number of hours to volunteer to help or serve a population different than their own. We ask that you work with people who may look different, or pray differently or live differently. For example, a young Jew might volunteer time to read books at a Muslim pre-school, or a Russian Orthodox at a Jewish clinic, or a Muslim at a Baha’i food pantry, or a straight woman at an LGBT center. We want to encourage YOU to walk a mile in another person’s shoes. And while our goal was to get 2011 hours pledged, at the end of last year youth all over the world had pledged tens of thousands of hours.
The campaign was, in fact, so successful that we continued it into 2012. Thanks to a group of British non-governmental organizations, we are now also partnering with the London Olympic and Paralympic Games! In January, the London Olympic and Paralympics approved our application to have 2012 Hours Against Hate branded with the Olympics logo. We can now leverage the energy surrounding the 2012 Olympics to encourage athletes and fans alike to participate in combating hate and pledging their time to help or serve someone who is different from them.
Farah and I have met hundreds of young people – students and young professionals – in Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia. They want to DO something. And I have a feeling that YOU want to DO something too. Last summer, Farah and I met with youth and interfaith leaders in Jordan, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia, and discussed reaching out to others, increasing tolerance and understanding among different religious groups, and addressed intolerance in their textbooks and lessons. Last month we traveled to Albania to encourage students from Tirana University and the local Madrasah to participate in 2012 Hours Against Hate. We held a panel discussion on the importance of religious diversity, and encouraged Albanian youth to live up to their country’s important legacy of acceptance and courage: Albania was the only country that saved all of its Jews during the Holocaust. Really, we have just begun.
So while I fight anti-Semitism, I am also aware that hate is hate. Nothing justifies it – not economic instability, not international events, not isolated incidents of hate.
Since the beginning of humankind, hate has been around, but since then too, good people of all faiths and backgrounds have worked to combat it. The Jewish tradition tells us that “you are not required to complete the task, but neither are you free to desist from it.”
Together, we must confront and combat the many forms of hatred in our world today. Where there is hatred born of ignorance, we must teach and inspire. Where there is hatred born of blindness, we must expose people to a larger world of ideas and reach out, especially to youth, so they can see beyond their immediate circumstances. Where there is hatred whipped up by irresponsible leaders, we must call them out and answer as strongly as we can – and make their message totally unacceptable to all people of conscience.
Thank you again for inviting me here to speak to you today. I am now happy and excited to answer your questions. | <urn:uuid:98ec614b-daef-452c-9e5b-ae03965de10f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/rm/2012/189162.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962984 | 2,200 | 2.90625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Giant Water Scavenger Beetle
|Geographical Range||North America|
|Scientific Name||Hydrophilus triangularis|
|Conservation Status||Not listed by IUCN|
The name says it all. This large beetle lives in water, where it scavenges vegetation and insect parts. The insect can store a supply of air within its silvery belly, much like a deep-sea diver stores air in a tank. | <urn:uuid:469863a4-9f80-47c2-ad04-ee7f0adecfd5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.stlzoo.org/animals/abouttheanimals/invertebrates/insects/beetles/giantwaterscavengerbeetle/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.834391 | 91 | 3.078125 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
January 23, 2007:
The paper by researchers at Yale, the University of Winnipeg, Stony Brook University, and led by University of Florida paleontologist Jonathan Bloch reconstructs the base of the primate family tree by comparing skeletal and fossil specimens representing more than 85 modern and extinct species. The team also discovered two 56-million-year-old fossils, including the most primitive primate skeleton ever described.
In the two-part study, an extensive evaluation of skeletal structures provides evidence that plesiadapiforms, a group of archaic mammals once thought to be more closely related to flying lemurs, are the most primitive primates. The team analyzed 173 characteristics of modern primates, tree shrews, flying lemurs with plesiadapiform skeletons to determine their evolutionary relationships. High-resolution CT scanning made fine resolution of inaccessible structures inside the skulls possible.
"This is the first study to bring it all together," said co-author Eric Sargis, associate professor of anthropology at Yale University and Assistant Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History. "The extensive dataset, the number and type of characteristics we were able to compare, and the availability of full skeletons, let us test far more than any previous study."
At least five major features characterize modern primates: relatively large brains, enhanced vision and eyes that face forward, a specialized ability to leap, nails instead of claws on at least the first toes, and specialized grasping hands and feet. Plesiadapiforms have some but not all of these traits. The article argues that these early primates may have acquired the traits over 10 million years in incremental changes to exploit their environment.
While the study did not include a molecular evaluation of the samples, according to Sargis, these results are consistent with molecular studies on related living groups. Compatibility with the independent molecular data increases the researchers' confidence in their own results.
Bloch discovered the new plesiadapiform species, Ignacius clarkforkensis and Dryomomys szalayi, just outside Yellowstone National Park in the Bighorn Basin with co-author Doug Boyer, a graduate student in anatomical sciences at Stony Brook. Previously, based only on skulls and isolated bones, scientists proposed that Ignacius was not an archaic primate, but instead a gliding mammal related to flying lemurs. However, analysis of a more complete and well-preserved skeleton by Bloch and his team altered this idea.
"These fossil finds from Wyoming show that our earliest primate ancestors were the size of a mouse, ate fruit and lived in the trees," said study leader Jonathan Bloch, a vertebrate paleontology curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History. "It is remarkable to think we are still discovering new fossil species in an area studied by paleontologists for over 100 years."
Researchers previously hypothesized plesiadapiforms as the ancestors of modern primates, but the idea generated strong debate within the primatology community. This study places the origins of Plesiadapiforms in the Paleocene, about 65 (million) to 55 million years ago in the period between the extinction of the dinosaurs and the first appearance of a number of undisputed members of the modern orders of mammals.
"Plesiadapiforms have long been one of the most controversial groups in mammalian phylogeny," said Michael J. Novacek, curator of paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History. "First, they are somewhere near primates and us. Second, historically they have offered tantalizing, but very often incomplete, fossil evidence. But the specimens in their study are beautifully and spectacularly preserved."
"The results of this study suggest that plesiadapiforms are the critical taxa to study in understanding the earliest phases of human evolution. As such, they should be of very broad interest to biologists, paleontologists, and anthropologists," said co-author Mary Silcox, professor of anthropology at the University of Winnipeg.
"This collaboration is the first to bring together evidence from all regions of the skeleton, and offers a well-supported perspective on the structure of the earliest part of the primate family tree," Bloch said.
The research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, Field Museum of Natural History, Yale University, Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (Canada), University of Winnipeg, the Paleobiological Fund, and The Wenner--Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. | <urn:uuid:3fb03c5f-56af-4237-afa9-75336a1587b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.strangeark.com/blogarchive/2007_01_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94408 | 932 | 3.8125 | 4 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
THL Toolbox > Audio-Video > Overview
Contributor(s): David Germano, James Graves, Chelsea Hall, Eric Woelfel.
New developments in digital technology and the Web offer exciting new possibilities for the incorporation of audio-video into new areas of research, publication and teaching. They also allow us for the first time to use and explore audio-video creatively in ways previously only possible with texts, such as providing for powerful ways to search media files and giving users tools to creatively alter audio-video files to incorporate into their own work. However, working with audio-video can also be very frustrating, and thus THL has expended considerable energies in developing tools and documentation to provide a systematic framework for the creation, delivery and use of audio-video in research, publication and teaching.
For a beginner's lesson on how to use the AV Database website, please see: Using the THL AV Database.
The overall process from start to finish can be divided into five distinct phases:
- Create the audio-video through recording sessions
- Technically process the media into edited segments in formats usable on a computer
- Catalog the resultant media titles with metadata
- Linguistically process the media titles with transcription, translation, annotation and timecoding
- Package the media title into research publications, or into instructional units, including integration with reference databases, for delivery to end users
Given the demands of such a process, it is vital that an integrated set of tools with proper manuals and broader documentation are available which are free, open source, and suited for educational purposes. We are creating comprehensive documentation for each phase, which themselves involve a series of internal steps and processes often requiring separate documentation. As a whole, these materials form the basis for our training and reference with regard to audio-video materials.
1. Determine a title to be produced.
- Review/screen recorded material (i.e., video tapes) and decide how they might be broken down into discrete titles. Each title will be its own video. Consult standardized guidelines for generating titles, including standardized phraseology, etc.
- Generating Titles & Credits for Recordings
2. Propose a title (and corresponding credits for each title) and have them checked by Germano.
- (Typically, it's best to prepare a batch of titles and their corresponding credits, and submit that to Germano, rather than submitting titles to him one-by-one.)
3. Send the approved titles and credits to Penam in Lhasa, or a local Tibetan assigned to the task like Tsering Wangchuk and Tsering Perlo to be rendered into Tibetan and Chinese.
4. Meanwhile digitize and edit your titles in Final Cut Pro, inserting blank title and credit slates whose trilingual information can be added later, once translations are ready.
5. Complete catalog entries in BOTH the physical media (i.e., tapes) database AND Audio-Video database.
- Physical Media Database: Make sure the content of the tape is properly described in the physical media database. Also include the recording date, the tape format (i.e., NTSC, PAL, HD, etc.), and other useful data about the tape itself and its recording.
- AV Database: Give a short description of the title’s content, fill out the relevant metadata (like language, etc.), propose collection classifications if not obvious, & record as much information as you can about participants involved in your title, under the "Credits" tab of each AVDB entry
- Consult with a native Tibetan speaker to help process participant information on handwritten forms as necessary. (Often such forms are filled out in the cursive script, not dbu can, and may therefore be harder to understand.)
6. Compress each title in Final Cut Pro, making sure you've included ending credits. Upload the files to the server after compression and after converting the audio files to MPEG-3 and generating thumbnails.
7. Alert a Transcription Center that the compression is ready for transcription, and eventual translation.
8. If relevant, once transcribed, it can be further processed for use in an instructional unit or other presentational context (see making language instructional units).
NOTE: If possible, use the fields under the workflow tab in order to mark processes as completed. In addition, you should keep track of the workflow in a more comprehensive fashion using the status reports for av, ie: titles waiting to be approved, completed titles, etc. In the future, we hope the new AV database will allow for tracking of workflow so that everyone involved can easily fnd what titles need to be translated, etc. by using the database itself. | <urn:uuid:3c5658e7-c38b-4074-9e1d-6519a90175a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thlib.org/tools/wiki/Overview%20of%20Working%20with%20Audio-Video%20in%20THDL.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901082 | 961 | 2.734375 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Who Was Martin Luther King, Jr.?
ISBN 9780448478050 | 112 pages | 27 Dec 2007 | Grosset & Dunlap | 5.59 x 7.67in | 8 - 12 years
Summary of Who Was Martin Luther King, Jr.? Summary of Who Was Martin Luther King, Jr.? Reviews for Who Was Martin Luther King, Jr.? An Excerpt from Who Was Martin Luther King, Jr.?
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was only 25 when he helped organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott and was soon organizing black people across the country in support of the right to vote, desegregation, and other basic civil rights. Maintaining nonviolent and peaceful tactics even when his life was threatened, King was also an advocate for the poor and spoke out against racial and economic injustice until his death—from an assassin’s bullet—in 1968. With clearly written text that explains this tumultuous time in history and 80 black-and-white illustrations, this Who Was…? celebrates the vision and the legacy of a remarkable man.
To keep up-to-date, input your email address, and we will contact you on publication
Please alert me via email when: | <urn:uuid:58ca579d-7d43-496c-ad02-96666b414a67> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780448478050,00.html?Who_Was_Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.?_Bonnie_Bader | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.897125 | 245 | 3.1875 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
What is Rainwater Harvesting?
Rainwater harvesting is an ancient practice of catching and holding rain for later use. In a rainwater harvesting system, rain is gathered from a building rooftop or other source and is held in large containers for future use, such as watering gardens or washing cars. This practice reduces the demand on water resources and is excellent during times of drought.
Why is it Important?
In addition to reducing the demand on our water sources (especially important during drought), rainwater harvesting also helps prevent water pollution. Surprised?
Here’s why: the success of the 1972 Clean Water Act has meant that the greatest threat to New York’s waterbodies comes not from industrial sources, but rather through the small actions we all make in our daily lives. For example, in a rain storm, the oil, pesticides, animal waste, and litter from our lawns, sidewalks, driveways, and streets are washed down into our sewers. This is called non-point source (NPS) pollution because the pollutants come from too many sources to be identified. Rainwater harvesting diverts water from becoming polluted stormwater; instead, this captured rainwater may be used to irrigate gardens near where it falls.
In New York City, keeping rainwater out of the sewer system is very important. That’s because the city has an old combined sewer system that uses the same pipes to transport both household waste and stormwater to sewage treatment plants. During heavy rains, the system overloads; then untreated sewage and contaminated stormwater overflow into our rivers and estuary, with serious consequences:
Who is Harvesting Rainwater in New York City?
Back in 2002, a drought emergency pushed many community gardens to the brink of extinction. For the first time in twenty years, community gardeners were denied permission to use fire hydrants, the primary source of water for most community gardens. This crisis led to the formation of the Water Resources Group (WRG), an open collaboration of community gardening and environmental organizations. With help from the WRG, rainwater harvesting systems have now been built as demonstration sites in twenty NYC community gardens.
At community gardens that harvest rainwater, rain is diverted from the gutters of adjacent buildings and is stored in tanks in the gardens. A 1-inch rainfall on a 1,000-square-foot roof produces 600 gallons of water. The tanks are mosquito proof, so the standing water does not encourage West Nile virus. Because rainwater is chlorine free, it is better than tap water for plant growth, meaning healthier plants. And it’s free!
What are Other Cities Doing?
Many cities have adopted creative, low-cost ways to stop wasting rainwater by diverting it from their sewage systems and putting it to use where it falls. Here are some examples:
What Can I Do?
Spread the word! Educate those around you on the importance of lifestyle decisions.
Tell people not to litter, dump oil down storm drains, or overfertilize their lawns.
Install a rainwater harvesting system at your home, school, business, or local community center.
Contact your local elected officials, and let them know you support rainwater harvesting!
Supporting rainwater harvesting Jade Boat Loans | <urn:uuid:14a860e9-8430-426b-8c1a-80c7f022fb96> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.waterresourcesgroup.org/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942301 | 671 | 3.890625 | 4 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Henry Evans is a mute quadriplegic, having suffered a stroke when he was just 40 years old. Following extensive therapy, Henry regained the ability to move his head and use a finger, which allows him to operate computers. Last year, Henry caught a TV interview of Georgia Tech Professor Charlie Kemp showing research with the Willow Garage PR2 robot. Willow Garage and Professor Kemp were contacted by Henry shortly afterwards, and we have been collaborating since then.
We are currently exploring ways for Henry to use a PR2 robot as his surrogate. Every day, people take for granted the simple act of scratching an itch. In Henry's case, 2-3 times every hour of every day he gets an itch he can't scratch. With the aid of a PR2, Henry was able to scratch an itch for himself for the first time in 10 years.
While this is only a first step, it demonstrates how people with severe physical disabilities could use personal robots to gain independence. In another example, Henry recently used the PR2 to shave his cheek. We are actively researching ways for Henry and others to perform tasks like these on a daily basis.
Currently, Henry uses a head tracker to operate a variety of experimental user interfaces. These interfaces allow him to directly move the robot's body, including its arms and head. They also let him invoke autonomous actions, such as navigating in a room and reaching out to a location.
Robots that complement human abilities are extremely valuable, especially when they help us do things that we can't do by ourselves. Our goal is to get robots in homes to help people like Henry and Jane Evans. This is just the beginning.
Leila Takayama Recognized by MIT Technology Review's TR35 Listing of the World's Top Young Innovators for 2012 | <urn:uuid:a598bb26-9bcf-4c37-b446-316a1826452a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.willowgarage.com/blog/2011/07/13/robots-humanity?page=4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968431 | 363 | 3.015625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
On behalf of Gov. Mark Schweiker, Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Secretary David E. Hess announced that this month's episode of the Emmy-award-winning television series GreenWorks for Pennsylvania features stories about people working to protect Pennsylvania's watersheds.
"Raising awareness of the role watersheds play in our environment is one of the cornerstones of Pennsylvania's `Growing Greener' program," Hess said. "The current episode of GreenWorks features people of all ages learning about, protecting and restoring Pennsylvania's watersheds.
GreenWorks, produced in a video-magazine format, takes viewers across the Commonwealth to spotlight people doing positive things for the environment. GreenWorks is supported by DEP and the Environmental Fund for Pennsylvania (EFP). The current episode runs through October. This month's episode includes these features.
* The Radnor Middle School Watershed Program in Delaware County, which takes students out of the classroom and into the field to learn about watersheds first hand.
* Members of the Delaware RiverKeepers, who worked on mitigating stream bank erosion by clearing, regrading and covering a stream bank with a biodegradable mesh of coconut fibers allowing native plants to regain a healthy foothold.
* The Pottstown Watershed Alliance, which removed an old dam in the Manatawny Creek in Pottstown, Montgomery County, to improve water quality.
* Members of the Swatara Creek Watershed Association and DEP staff, which cleaned up 33 acres of abandoned mine drainage in Schuylkill County.
* The River Sojourn 2001, where people from all walks of life canoed and kayaked on Pennsylvania rivers to connect with and appreciate the beauty and power of the state's natural water resources.
"We all depend on rivers and watersheds for drinking water and more," EFP Executive Director Timothy J. Schlitzer said. "I hope this program will deepen viewers' understanding and respect for what it takes to protect our precious waterways."
EFP funds environmental education and improvement projects from contributions made through employee payroll-deduction programs established by businesses and the Commonwealth and other donations.
The series reaches more than five million households in Pennsylvania through 83 cable television stations as well as the Public Broadcasting Service.
For a listing of stations carrying GreenWorks and information on particular broadcasts, visit the GreenWorks website through the PA PowerPort at www.state.pa.us, directly at www.GreenWorks.tv, or call EFP at 1-800-PAGREEN ext. 1. | <urn:uuid:8eb9e2b6-423a-4071-a262-e351d76dcaf3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wwdmag.com/igreenworksi-episode-focuses-watersheds | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936065 | 519 | 2.546875 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
"Caring, Effective, Middle/High School Math Tutor"
...Sometimes it is just more practice that is needed, but in any case it is very important that students know math facts, operations, decimals, fractions, ratios, percents, and proportions extremely well. They must also have general "number sense." I bring a lot of experience helping students learn these basics, which are the key building blocks of...
10 subjects, including algebra 1 | <urn:uuid:f4f74643-3c40-4c5d-8c6f-610835c3c8b8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wyzant.com/Trenton_NJ_Factoring_tutors.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965409 | 95 | 2.59375 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Why is my paper pink?
The color of today’s paper is probably quite a shock to many of our readers, and that is just the effect we are hoping for.
Today marks the beginning of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and this edition of The Yazoo Herald is dedicated to raising awareness about the importance of early detection and encouraging support for efforts to help find a cure.
Most of us know someone who has been affected by breast cancer. Besides some forms of skin cancer, it is the most common cancer in women.
It doesn’t discriminate. Breast cancer rates are equally high among women of all races. The Center of Disease Control reports that it is the highest cause of death by cancer among Hispanic women and the second-leading cancer cause of death among white and black women. One in eight women in the United States will suffer from invasive breast cancer at some point in their lives.
Fortunately, breast cancer deaths have been decreasing since 1990 as detection and treatment improve, reducing the mortality rate to 3 in 100. If you’re reading this and you haven’t had an examination, it’s time to make an appointment.
Last Updated (Friday, 30 September 2011 18:19) | <urn:uuid:6b5d0ec8-8dc7-4252-be65-524a63366d63> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.yazooherald.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1607:why-is-my-paper-pink&Itemid=1&el_mcal_month=11&el_mcal_year=2012 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964992 | 249 | 2.78125 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Not Just for Kids
The Hunt for Falling Leaves...
Nature's Color on the Ground
by Mary Catherine Ball
Being a reporter, I am always looking for an adventure. Last week, I found one.
I left work to go on a simple journey, but it turned out to be much more.
First, I crossed a mud-ridden stream. Then, I came face to face with flying creatures, fighting to get near me. I even endured webmakers spinning my hair into a shiny maze.
Where did I go? Into the woods, of course. Why? I wanted to gather some fallen leaves.
My luck was good that day. I was able to spy lots of different kinds of leaves lying on the ground. Some were leaves I had never seen. Some were still green, while others were changing to their autumn colors.
Have you ever hunted for leaves? I wonder if you know the names of five of the trees that live in your neighborhood? I bet the answer is no.
Well, me neither. So I had five of the leaves analyzed. I had found the leaves from an oak, a beech, a sweet gum tree and more.
Now, I invite you to make this journey.
Narrow body with pointy edges
Narrow body with pointy edges
May grow berries
Good for sap & color
3 distinct leafs
May grow nuts
This is your task...
Travel to the deep, dark woods (in the daylight) to find these 5 leaves. Cut out the page and take it with you. Make sure you can match your discovery with mine. Happy leaf-hunting!
Stone Soup October 9 (11:30am)-Enjoy lunch and a show. After you eat peanut butter & jelly, watch Stone Soup, performed by the Lost Caravan. Lunch is at noon; show starts at 12:30. Chesapeake Music Hall, Off Rt. 50 approaching the Bay Bridge: 410/406-0306.
All Aboard October 9 & 10 (2pm)-Chug a chug to Zany Brainy for train fun. Listen to stories and sing railroad songs. Build your own trains. Ages 3+. Zany Brainy, Annap. Harb. Ctr.: 410/266-1447.
Tiny Tots Fall for Nature Tues. Oct 12 (10:30am-noon) Three- to five-year-olds (and their adult) hike into the woods to hear autumn stories, gather leaves and make a craft. Bring a bag lunch to enjoy w/apple cider @ King's Landing Park, Huntingtown. $3 rsvp: 800/735-2258.
Spooky Stories in the Woods Tues. Oct. 12 (10:30-noon)-Hike with a ranger to a clearing in the woods. Listen to autumn stories and drink warm apple cider. Gather leaves to make a craft. Bring a bag lunch. Kings Landing Park, Huntingtown: 410/535-5327.
Musical Minds Wed. Oct. 13 (4-4:45pm)-Music makes the world go round. So sing, listen to stories and play musical instruments. Ages 2-4. Chesapeake Children's Museum, Festival at Riva. $8.50; rsvp: 410/266-0677.
Nature Designs Deadline Oct. 15-Create your favorite nature scene out of clay or on paper to win prizes. Age categories are 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12 years. Place winners win nature books or statues. All art forms accepted. Take your masterpiece to Wild Bird Center, Annapolis Harbour Center: 410/573-0345.
Tiny Tots get in Touch with Mother Nature Sat. Oct 16 (10-10:30am)
Tiny tots (2-3 w/adult) learn nature by touch, feeling the many different
textures rough and soft in the world around us. @ Battle Creek Cypress Swamp,
Prince Frederick: 800/735-2258.
| Issue 40 |
Volume VII Number 40
October 7-13, 1999
New Bay Times
| Homepage |
| Back to Archives | | <urn:uuid:373cc951-d17e-4d57-b0f5-122effe3a054> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bayweekly.com/old-site/year99/issue7_40/kids7_40.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936883 | 869 | 2.5625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Intellectual disability begins in childhood. People with intellectual disability have limits in their mental functioning seen in below-average intelligence (IQ) tests and in their ability to communicate, socialize, and take care of their everyday needs. The degree of disability can vary from person to person. It can be categorized as mild, moderate, severe, or profound.
Some causes of intellectual disability can be prevented with proper medical care. Children diagnosed with an intellectual disability are most successful when they get help early in life. If you suspect that your child may have an intellectual disability, contact your doctor.
Several hundred causes of intellectual disability have been discovered, but many are still unknown. The most common ones are:
Biomedical causes resulting from:
- Abnormal genes inherited from parents
- Errors when genes combine, such as Down syndrome and Fragile X syndrome
- Nutritional deficiencies
- Metabolic conditions, such as phenylketonuria (PKU), galactosemia , and congenital hypothyroidism
- Developmental brain abnormality, such as hydrocephalus and brain malformation
- Infections during pregnancy, such as:
- Behavioral issues during pregnancy, such as:
Problems at birth, such as:
- Premature delivery or low birth weight
- Baby doesn’t get enough oxygen during birth
- Baby is injured during birth
Factors during childhood, such as:
- Nutritional deficiencies
- Illnesses or infections that affect the brain, including meningitis , encephalitis , chickenpox , whooping cough , and measles
- Exposure to lead , mercury , and other toxins
- Head injury or near drowning
- Social factors, such as child stimulation and adult responsiveness
- Educational deficiencies
A child could be at higher risk for intellectual disability due to any of the causes listed above, or due to intellectual disability in other family members. If you are concerned that your child is at risk, tell your child's doctor.
Symptoms appear before a child reaches age 18. Symptoms vary depending on the degree of the intellectual disability. If you think your child has any of these symptoms, do not assume it is due to intellectual disability. These symptoms may be caused by other, less serious health conditions.
- Learning and developing more slowly than other children of the same age
- Difficulty communicating or socializing with others
- Lower than average scores on IQ tests
- Trouble learning in school
- Inability to do everyday things like getting dressed or using the bathroom without help
- Difficulty hearing, seeing, walking, or talking
- Inability to think logically
The following categories are often used to describe the level of intellectual disability:
- IQ 50-70
- Slower than normal in all areas
- No unusual physical signs
- Can learn practical skills
- Reading and math skills up to grades 3-6
- Can conform socially
- Can learn daily task skills
- Functions in society
- IQ 35-49
- Noticeable delays, particularly speech
- May have unusual physical signs
- Can learn simple communication
- Can learn elementary health and safety skills
- Can participate in simple activities and self-care
- Can perform supervised tasks
- Can travel alone to familiar places
- IQ 20-34
- Significant delays in some areas; may walk late
- Little or no communication skills, but some understanding of speech with some response
- Can be taught daily routines and repetitive activities
- May be trained in simple self-care
- Needs direction and supervision socially
- IQ <20
- Significant delays in all areas
- Congenital abnormalities present
- Needs close supervision
- Requires attendant care
- May respond to regular physical and social activity
- Not capable of self-care
If you suspect your child is not developing skills on time, tell the doctor as soon as possible. Your doctor will ask about your child’s symptoms and medical history. A physical exam will be done. Standardized tests may be given that measure:
- Intelligence—IQ tests measure a person’s ability to do things such as think abstractly, learn, and solve problems. A child may have intellectual disability if IQ test results are 70 or below.
Adaptive behavior—These are skills needed to function in everyday life, including:
- Conceptual skills like reading and writing
- Social skills like responsibility and self-esteem
- Practical skills like the ability to eat, use the bathroom, and get dressed
Children with intellectual disability have a higher risk for other disabilities such as hearing impairment , visual problems, seizures , attention deficit hyperactivity disorder , or orthopaedic conditions. Additional testing may be needed to check for other conditions.
Talk with your doctor about the best treatment plan for your child. Treatment is most helpful if it begins as early as possible. Treatment includes:
- Early intervention programming for infants and toddlers up to age three
- Family counseling
- Human development training, including emotional skills and hand-eye coordination
- Special education programs
- Life skills training, such as preparing food, bathing
- Job coaching
- Social opportunities
- Housing services
To help reduce your child’s chance of becoming intellectually disabled, take the following steps:
- During pregnancy:
- Have your newborn screened for conditions that may produce intellectual disability.
- Have your child properly immunized .
- Schedule regular visits to the pediatrician.
- Use child safety seats and bicycle helmets.
- Remove lead-based paint from your home.
- Keep poisonous household products out of reach .
- Aspirin is not recommended for children or teens with a current or recent viral infection. This is because of the risk of Reye's syndrome , which can cause neurological problems. Ask your doctor which medicines are safe for your child.
- Reviewer: Rimas Lukas, MD
- Review Date: 03/2013 -
- Update Date: 00/31/2013 - | <urn:uuid:9966e685-a44f-44d0-bc28-77804eba9bae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blakemedicalcenter.com/your-health/?/96644/Intellectual-disability | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928851 | 1,224 | 3.328125 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)
Passed in 1996, The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) denies federal recognition of gay marriages and gives each state the right to refuse recognition of same-sex marriage licenses issued by other states. The act does not prohibit states from allowing gay marriages, but neither does it obligate states to recognize the gay marriages from other states. For the first time in history, the federal government defines marriage in the Act as a "legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife," and spouse is defined as "a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife." Marriages that do not fit this description are not eligible for any benefits offered by the federal government.
For More Information on DOMA, see Senate Subcommittee Hearing on the Proposed Federal Defense of Marriage Act. | <urn:uuid:1932bf59-c93f-4c7c-a5f7-346d3a9e87e1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://community.pflag.org/page.aspx?pid=560 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960965 | 169 | 3 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
12. June 2012 10:55
Retinal hemorrhage occurs when the blood vessels in the retina get damaged or ruptured, leading to abnormal bleeding. The retina, which is composed of rods and cones is the region of the eye responsible for sensitivity to light, and vision. The retinal vein and artery, along with a dense network of capillaries, are responsible for transmitting the blood supply to the retina. When these blood vessels are damaged, due to any reason, this affects the blood supply to the retina, which in turn leads to a decrease in visual acuity. Diabetic retinopathy is the leading cause of blindness in people aged between 20 and 65.
The dense network of cells in the retina is extremely sensitive, and can be damaged with even a slight trauma.
The causes due to which this damage might occur include:
- High blood pressure
- Forceful blows in the head region
- Child abuse in infants
- Improper development of blood vessels in infants born prematurely
- Blurred vision
- Spotted vision
- Lines in the field of vision
- Blind spots
- Distorted vision
- Progressive vision loss
- The disease is diagnosed by an ophthalmologist, who uses an opthalmoscope to examine the internal structure of the eye.
- Another method that is commonly used to detect the abnormalities in the blood vessels is a fluorescein angiography test, in which a fluorescent dye is injected into the patient’s bloodstream, after which photographs are clicked to view the blood vessels.
- In some cases, the physician might also order for a blood test to be performed.
- The disorder is self-limiting in most patients, with more than 85% cases healing on their own.
- The most common treatment for retinal hemorrhages is laser treatment, in which a laser beam is used to remove the affected blood vessels.
- If the disease is caused by some underlying medical condition like diabetes or hypertension, the treatment focuses on eliminating that disorder.
- Injection of anti-VEGF drugs like Avestin has been found to be effective in the treatment of hemorrhages associated with the growth of new vessels.
- The administration of various nutritional and herbal supplements like antioxidants, omega-3-rich foods, antioxidant vitamins, zinc, lutein, pine bark extract, grape seed extract, etc. has also been found to be effective in improving the symptoms of the disease.
We at Killeen Eyecare center are renowned throughout Killeen for providing the highest quality eye care to all our patients. We help them maintain healthy eyes and treat various eye diseases using most sophisticated instruments. For more details, you can visit us at 416 North Gray Street, Killeen, TX 76541, Downtown Killeen or call at 254-634-7805.
Eye Doctor Killeen - Eye Doctor Fort Hood | <urn:uuid:0a57e8d8-1439-48dd-8688-080cf98e78c5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://killeeneyecarecenter.com/blog/post/Retinal-Hemorrhage-Symptoms-Diagnosis-And-Treatment.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931752 | 596 | 3.59375 | 4 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Types of literature
PRIMARY SOURCES are publications that report the results of original research. They may be in the form of conference papers, monographic series, technical reports, theses and dissertations, or journal articles. Because they present information in its original form (that is, it has not been interpreted or condensed or otherwise “repackaged” by other writers), these are considered primary sources. The works present new thinking/discoveries/results and unite them with the existing knowledge base. Journal articles that report original research are one of the more common and important steps in the information sharing cycle. They often go through a process in which they are “peer reviewed” by other experts who evaluate the work and findings before publication.
SECONDARY SOURCES are those which are published about the primary literature, that generalize, analyze, interpret, evaluate or otherwise “add value” to the original information, OR which simplify the process of finding and evaluating the primary literature. Some examples of secondary sources are “review” articles and indexes or bibliographies, such as PubMed or the ScienceDirect.
TERTIARY SOURCES compile or digest information from primary or secondary sources that has become widely accepted. They aim to provide a broad overview of a topic, or data, already proven facts, and definitions, often presented in a convenient form. They provide no new information. These include “reference” types of works such as textbooks, encyclopedias, fact books, guides and handbooks, and computer databases such as The Handbook of the Microbiological Media and SciFinder.
GRAY LITERATURE are source materials not available through the usual systems of publication (e.g., books or periodicals) and distribution. Gray literature includes conference proceedings, dissertations, technical reports, and working papers. Locating this type of literature is a little more difficult, but there are finding tools such as Dissertations Abstracts and PapersFirst.
What is a literature review?
A literature review discusses published information in a particular subject area, and sometimes information in a particular subject area within a certain time period.
A literature review can be just a simple summary of the sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis. A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information. It might give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations. Or it might trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates. And depending on the situation, the literature review may evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant.
But how is a literature review different from an academic research paper?
While the main focus of an academic research paper is to support your own argument, the focus of a literature review is to summarize and synthesize the arguments and ideas of others. The academic research paper also covers a range of sources, but it is usually a select number of sources, because the emphasis is on the argument. Likewise, a literature review can also have an "argument," but it is not as important as covering a number of sources. In short, an academic research paper and a literature review contain some of the same elements. In fact, many academic research papers will contain a literature review section. But it is the aspect of the study (the argument or the sources) that is emphasized that determines what type of document it is.
Why do we write literature reviews?
Literature reviews provide you with a handy guide to a particular topic. If you have limited time to conduct research, literature reviews can give you an overview or act as a stepping stone. For professionals, they are useful reports that keep them up to date with what is current in the field. For scholars, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the writer in his or her field. Literature reviews also provide a solid background for a research paper's investigation. Comprehensive knowledge of the literature of the field is essential to most research papers.
Who writes these things, anyway?
Literature reviews are written occasionally in the humanities, but mostly in the sciences and social sciences; in experiment and lab reports, they constitute a section of the paper. Sometimes a literature review is written as a paper in itself.
Excerpt from “Literature Reviews” from The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (http://writingcenter.unc.edu/resources/handouts-demos/specific-writing-assignments/literature-reviews), 2007.
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knowledge is from the heart as well as the mind. It is not a mere
mental perception of the forms of things or a knowledge of their
material nature; it must include the soul of things, the divine ideas
that they enshrine.
Everything is dependent on the small things: relaxation - you
always relax more; acceptance, oneself and others - can always try;
house-cleaning - will always be just as difficult, but at least you
have done it before. It is important to do all these little things
Question: - How can we discern
whether it is the divine conscience animating us and directing us in a
certain direction, or the
animal soul seeking release from seemingly unfavorable environments:
Answer: - The divine conscience acts in all struggles for betterment, but clouded more or less in each by reason of education and habit of thought; hence it varies in brightness. It is not possible to make a hard-and-fast fixed rule for finding out what is the animating motive. If we are trying to get into a better state, it is for us to decide if that be simply and wholly selfish. All actions are surrounded by desire as the rust is round the polished metal or the smoke round the fire, but we must try. So if we fix for ourselves the rule that we will try to do the best we can for others, we will generally be led right. If we rely on the higher self and aspire to be guided by it, we will be led to the right even if the road goes through pain, for sorrow and pain are necessary for purification of the soul. But if we wish to run away from an environment because we do not like it and without trying to live in it while not of it, we are not altering ourselves but simply altering the circumstances, and may not always gain anything.
Questioner: What is your attitude to the early teachings of Theosophy, the Blavatsky type? Do you consider we have deteriorated or advanced?
KRISHNAMURTI: I am afraid I do not know, because I do not know what Madame Blavatsky's teachings are. Why should I? Why should you know of someone else's teachings? You know, there is only one truth, and therefore there is only one way, which is not distant from the truth; there is only one method to that truth, because the means are not distinct from the end.
Now you who have studied Madame Blavatsky's and the latest Theosophy, or whatever it is, why do you want to be students of books instead of students of life? Why do you set up leaders and ask whose teachings are better? Don't you see? Please, I am not being harsh, or anything of that kind. Don't you see? You are Christians; find out what is true and false in Christianity—and you will then find out what is true. Find out what is true and false in your environment with all its oppressions and cruelties, and then you will find out what is true. Why do you want philosophies? Because life is an ugly thing, and you hope to run away from it through philosophy. Life is so empty, dull, stupid, ignominious, and you want something to bring romanticism into your world, some hope, some lingering, haunting feeling; whereas, if you really faced the world as it is, and tackled it, you would find it something much more, infinitely greater than any philosophy, greater than any book in the world, greater than any teaching or greater than any teacher.
We have really lost all sense of feeling, feeling for the oppressed, and feeling for the oppressor. You only feel when you are oppressed. So gradually we have intellectually explained away all our feelings, our sensitiveness, our delicate perceptions, until we are absolutely shallow; and to fill that shallowness, to enrich ourselves, we study books.
The Theosophical Society has had three objects for more than a century. They are:
Of these three objects the first has been considered the most important, at least since the time H.P. Blavatsky and H.S. Olcott arrived in India in 1879. Strangely enough the 'mission-statement' of the Theosophical Society in Wheaton (Adyar) rephrases the above, but leaves brotherhood out. It is as follows:
To encourage open-minded enquiry into world religions, philosophy, science, and the arts in order to understand the wisdom of the ages, respect the unity of all life, and help people explore spiritual self-transformation.
A mission statement is merely another word for aim or object. So one would expect the three objects of the Theosophical Society to agree precisely with the mission-statement. One would also expect the wording of the mission-statement to be more modern. In that vein it would have been a nice challenge if the board of directors of the US-section of the TS had found a new sex-neutral way of saying that people should treat each other well. What else does a 'nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity (etc)' mean? But to leave it all out is really going too far for me, and for several of the people I met in Wheaton this summer. This mission-statement sounds selfish to me. Great: I find an organisation where people will help me with my self-transformation en where my open enquiry into religions, spirituality and science will be supported. Wonderful. And there is no suggestion that I personally need to do anything at all. I don't need to practice loving kindness. I don't need to find tolerance in my heart for those I've learned to despise or ignore. I will perhaps learn to respect the unity of all life in abstract, but there is no need for me to do anything practical at all...
I'm obviously being cynical. In actual fact the attempt to form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or color is work. It means a constant attempt to overcome my conditioning. It means reaching out to people. It means practicing kindness. It means learning to deal with people I may not like. I find it very disappointing that the TS in America has edited this very important attempt out of its 'mission statement' and hope they will change things soon.
Each summer the American Section of the Theosophical Society (TS) has a gathering that is both business meeting and summer school. Non-members of the TS are not explicitly invited, but in practice nothing is done to discourage them from coming either. The atmosphere of the gathering was both very familiar to me, as strange and new. Familiar, as it was as comfortable talking to these overseas theosophists, as it has always been talking to theosophists here in the Netherlands. Strange as well, as inevitably things are done differently, when there is a different host-country.
The opening was a lot former than I'm used to seeing it. 'evening dress optional' says it all, I think. For those who have not been to Olcott for this: evening dress means suits and ties and dresses and in the case of theosophists: saris and Indian dresses in general. First Betty Bland, the national president of the TS in the USA, welcomed us. Then there were prayers from 'all the world's religions', though this is obviously practically impossible there were a lot. The atmosphere of that ceremony was more informal than I saw it in India. It looked like people could just come up and give whatever prayer they wanted. Among the many prayers more than one Christian denomination was represented, as well as Islam, the gayatri mantra and a humanist prayer. The opening ended with greetings from all over the world. I gave greetings from the Netherlands and the International Theosophical Centre at Naarden also in the Netherlands.
The business meeting consisted of reports from the various departments. I was surprised to see the work that went into making it literally entertaining. The Quest Bookshop even got a (fake) sťance on the way in which Annie Besant appeared. This is certainly different from how I'm used to seeing it, but I enjoyed myself anyhow.
The theme of the school was 'Theosophy in action'. Radha Burnier, international president, gave most of the lectures. Room had been made for Diana Chapotin's coverage of the Order of Service, John Algeo and Joy Mills. After the main lecture, each morning, there were group discussion that were - as usual - very interesting. In the afternoon there were usually lectures, workshops and meditation classes. To be honest I wasn't impressed with what I saw of the meditation classes. Theosophists don't have a reputation of being very good at meditation and this didn't help any in my book. The morning meditation even reminded me of group hypnosis. A bad sign that confirmed this impression was that several people told me that they had a tendency to fall asleep during the morning-meditation.
The lectures were very good. Radha Burnier's opening lecture was about finding balance. She meant finding a balance between the development of buddhi (roughly intuition), thought, emotion and action. If there is insight, don't act on it immediately. Let it germinate, it will express itself naturally in action or words at some point. Spiritual aspiration as well needs to be in harmony. Too much of it leads to ambition, too much tension or waste of energy. Mental balance includes overcoming the duality of thought. This means that likes and dislikes will disappear and we will neither accept nor reject what IS.
Diana Chapotin, in her lecture about the Theosophical Order of Service (TOS), stressed that theosophists are active in social service in various ways. One of the main ways is individual action. She meant that theosophists all over the world are active in social work through organisations that have nothing to do with theosophy. The second way in which theosophists are active practically in the world is through the activities of local theosophical lodges and sections. The TOS complements all that with very specific projects in area's like education, animal welfare, vegetarianism and help in case of natural disasters like recently Katrina. On an organisational level TOS-groups are led by theosophists, but the volunteers don't have to be members. Though any kind of social work can be taken on, it is necessary that central theosophical values behind the work are communicated regularly to keep the work theosophical. Diana explained that the work of the TOS has grown dramatically recently under her leadership. She can't cope on her own anymore and a reorganisation is necessary.
Joy Mills gave a public lecture on the vitality of living truth. She stressed the difference between living wisdom and book wisdom. Theosophists always risk not going beyond book wisdom. If we really see the truth, our heart and our whole being will change. That's the power of living truth. In order for that to happen, we need to actually practice truth as we know it (not as we want it to be) in our daily lives. Every experience that broadens our sensitivity, mirrors living truth for us. In modern thought the interconnectedness of everything is becoming quite clear. H.P. Blavatsky actually went one step further: she saw everything as one living being, One Life. The theory of Gaia shows this on the level of the earth, but for Blavatsky it's true of the whole universe. Breath is used as an image of that Oneness.
Radha's second lecture dealt with a very central theme: growing in wisdom. In this lecture she repeated a theme that threads through her Watchtower pieces in The Theosophist as well: Humanity grows in knowledge, but not in wisdom. The knowledge that has been developed over the past two centuries leads to destruction because there is no knowledge on what is right in the long run. It is relatively easy to develop knowledge. It is very hard to find out what right action is. We don't realise enough that in hurting someone else, we hurt ourselves. Wisdom leads to a peaceful, sensitive world. Knowledge leads to pride and this can only be challenged by becoming aware of the limitations of knowledge. Otherwise knowledge leads to a feeling of separateness. On the other hand it is necessary to learn to think independently and become aware to what extent we are all influenced by others. An example she gave is that the simple life is no longer seen as ideal. Everybody wants to live as is portrayed on television. In all her lectures this week Radha reminded us that our personal problems need to come second. Growth in wisdom means growth in altruism and that means forgetting self. Our personal problems and our joys are both temporary. We make them bigger than they are. Why is suffering such a large problem? The TS was founded to fight prejudice. Prejudice hinders an insight into real problems and can only be dissolved by a feeling of connectedness with all human beings. Our altruism needs to become universal. The Buddha said: it's better to give a little lovingly, than to give a lot without love.
It was very impressive to hear the report of theosophists living near the area where Katrina hit. There were slides as accompanying there very personal report. The most important insight I got from that was that storms are normal for the people in this region. Normally people do not leave in case of a storm. Despite that fact, and this has not been stressed enough, this was the most successful evacuation in history. Around 90-95% of the people in the New Orleans region were evacuated. We were told that criminals always stay behind so they can loot. This is part of the pattern. Because this storm did so much more damage than most other storms, everything got bigger than usual.
John Algeo spoke about the most holy mission of theosophy. He started by saying that Blavatsky in her final five years on earth, had left a legacy of five:
These three letters were the backbone to Johns two lectures. They give direction to Theosophical work in the world. Blavatsky's last years were tough, but John stressed that out of disaster, blessings often come. Disasters mix things up. Tibetan Buddhism would never have spread to the West as it has, if China hadn't invaded Tibet. In her 1891 letter, Blavatsky mainly spoke of living theosophy, not the teachings. In her first letter she stressed the aim of the Theosophical Society to unite people of all nations and altruism. Organisations are important, but they can't created holiness, health or wholeness. We have to become fully human, that is what the word master signifies: to master ourselves. There can only be harmony in organisations, if opposites are balanced, not through wiping out differences. In his second lecture he returned to the theme of unifying people of all nations. He also pointed out that every wise administration knows that things can't be forced. No rule can open the heart-mind of people. No group is safe from fundamentalism. Theosophists too run this risk, though in real theosophy there can be no dogmas, because it is based on real insight and rational thinking. Real theosophy reflects divine reason, the reason of Buddhi. John closed with Blavatsky's words in the last letter to the American Conventions: to be theosophists, live theosophy.
In her next lecture Radha talked about growing in Love. Love is our true being, that aspect of ourselves which is one with every other. Love is beyond words, it's part of Universal Life. It is necessary to feel affection for kids and animals. Continually looking for security, that wish masks a desire for Love. Our world is dark, there is little friendship, little Love. How do we remove the barriers that separate us from our essential nature: Love? To this practical question, Radha's answer is to be more sensitive. We have to feel as others feel, without identifying with their pain. You can't help others by going along with their pain, but you have to know what it is. Right action requires going beyond social custom and convention and being really sensitive. This sensitivity doesn't hinder our happiness. Our real nature isn't just Love, it's also Bliss. But we need to become conscious of other people. Unkind thoughts hurt others, and ultimately ourselves. They are like a hungry wolf that eats up our best tendencies. Annie Besant said that if we can't see God in others, we must be the worst possible atheists. The problem with gossip is that it is superficial. We have to learn to look under the surface, without judgment of any kind. The habit to criticize strengthens the ego. Be a missionary of Love and generosity. Be prepared to give of yourself. Don't just do what is necessary, but actively contribute to the welfare of people in conversation. Every tendency of personality has to disappear. That way of looking teaches us to overcome pettiness. The first step is the last step, because the direction in which we move is of primary importance.
Radha's final lecture was called 'purification through action'. Real wisdom is in seeing action in non-action and non-action in action. The central question she asked: what is right action? Each of us has to decide that for ourselves. Keep in mind that our energy impacts the world, not just our actions. Everything is interconnected. That's why abstaining from action isn't the same thing as freedom from action. When actions create problems, it's not right action. Right action is necessary, but we have to avoid identifying with it. In everything you do, ask yourself if there is egoism involved. The tricky part is that even that thought is in a way selfish. We need an inner balance that is independent of success or failure. Success and failure are part of the ups and downs of life, but we don't have to inwardly get involved in that. The risk of accomplishment is that one starts thinking: I can do this. That feeling can get in the way of right action. The problem with selfish action is that even if the short-term result seems good, it's never permanent. Radha closed with one of Krishnamurti's insights: actions that are a product of the past, don't work. Action only works if it's the consequence of right insight. This lecture was very insightful, but I missed one aspect that the title does suggest: that sometimes insight follows unselfish action. Right action can help clean the personality. One has to start somewhere.
The final session was a question and answer round with Radha Burnier, Joy Mills and John Algeo. The questions had come in through the internet and from the discussion groups. What follows is a selection. Can Muslims become members of the Theosophical Society? Yes, we have Muslim members in Indonesia, India and Pakistan. Radha stressed that Muslim women aren't forced to stay at home in all countries. In many countries they are free. Why do people ignore the Middle Path? The middle path is hard, said Radha, people prefer it easy. It's hard to overcome the tendency to overdo things. A question was asked about loving yourself. Joy Mills answered that it is important to look at yourself objectively. Observe yourself, it is unnecessary to become emotional or judgmental about yourself. Loving yourself means accepting what is, and resolving to change. Radha asks what it means to love yourself. Can you love your shadow? Reality IS, it doesn't need to be loved.
As this summary shows, the lectures were very interesting and deep. I really enjoyed myself and met some very good people. | <urn:uuid:94c05889-67fb-45ec-b0e9-6e5f7d80bc05> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lucifer7.katinkahesselink.net/i/2006/9.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973784 | 4,095 | 2.53125 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
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Click the "World File" link located above the
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As" menu item. On FireFox, right-click on the
image and select the "Save Image
As" menu item.
The web browser
will display a "Save Picture As" window. There will be "File name:" field
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the Save As window. Change the name of the file to your liking
and click the Save button. Windows
users, you should make sure you end your filename with the .jpg . All
images downloaded from
Microsoft MSR Maps are in the Jpeg image | <urn:uuid:ac458d88-099d-46dc-94ec-3a58670022d5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://msrmaps.com/map.aspx?t=2&s=14&lon=-114.123029667485&lat=40.1056927135721&w=800&h=600&opt=2&f=Tahoma,Verdana,Arial&fs=8&fc=ffffff99 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.744034 | 345 | 2.8125 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Glasses-free 3D is something available on just a handful of TVs, which manage it only through complicated hardware, and at no small cost.
Still, the effect is pretty smooth and no more tiresome for the eyes than glasses-assisted technology, from what we've been able to gather.
There is one more accomplishment that tech experts are looking for: holographic television, which offers a different perspective at the action, depending on the angle from which one beholds the TV.
Researchers from the Massachusetts institute of Technology (MIT) claim to have created something of the sort.
Called Tensor Display, it uses several layers of liquid crystal displays (LCDs) with a refresh rate of 360 Hz per second.
The technique is different from the one used in Nintendo's 3DS
, which has two layers of LCD screens (the bottom for light and dark bands and the top for the two slightly offset images).
The problem with this old method (a century old really) is that the only way so far known for creating multiple perspectives would rely on complicated hardware and algorithms. Hundreds of perspectives would have to be produced in order to suit a moving viewer, and that means that too much info has to be displayed at once.
Every frame of the stereo-3D video would need the screen to flicker 10 times, each with a different pattern. Thus, a convincing stereo-3D illusion would need a 1,000 Hz refresh rate.
MIT's Tensor Display lowers that requirement by using a higher number of LCDs, although it does bring another problem: the pattern calculation becomes more complex. Fortunately, the researcher had a convenient factor to exploit: not all aspects of a scene change with the viewing angle. This reduced the amount of information that needed to be sent to the LCD screens.
The end result was a panel that produces stereo-3D images based on calculations similar to those behind CT, X-ray and computed tomography, of all things (they produce 3D images of internal organs).
The Media Lab researchers will demo a Tensor Display prototype at Siggraph 2012 (5-9 August), made of three LCD panels. A second model will have two LCDs with a sheet of lenses between them (refract light left and right), primarily for wider viewing angles (50 degrees rather than 20).
Practical and commercial applications should appear soon, or at least sooner than any alternatives.
“Holography works, it’s beautiful, nothing can touch its quality. The problem, of course, is that holograms don’t move,” said
Douglas Lanman, a postdoc at the Media Lab.
“To make them move, you need to create a hologram in real time, and to do that, you need little tiny pixels, smaller than anything we can build at large volume at low cost. So the question is, what do we have now? We have LCDs. They are incredibly mature, and they are cheap.” | <urn:uuid:efffa1be-d968-41f5-b3e7-ddb772865645> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.softpedia.com/news/MIT-Creates-New-Glasses-Free-Stereo-3D-TV-Technology-281825.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948979 | 619 | 2.734375 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft is expected to discover its 1,000TH comet this summer.
The SOHO spacecraft is a joint effort between NASA and the European Space Agency. It has accounted for approximately one-half of all comet discoveries with computed orbits in the history of astronomy.
"Before SOHO was launched, only 16 sun grazing comets had been discovered by space observatories. Based on that experience, who could have predicted SOHO would discover more than 60 times that number, and in only nine years," said Dr. Chris St. Cyr. He is senior project scientist for NASA's Living With a Star program at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "This is truly a remarkable achievement!"
About 85 percent of the comets SOHO discovered belongs to the Kreutz group of sun grazing comets, so named because their orbits take them very close to Earth's star. The Kreutz sun grazers pass within 500,000 miles of the star's visible surface. Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, is about 36 million miles from the solar surface.
SOHO has also been used to discover three other well-populated comet groups: the Meyer, with at least 55 members; Marsden, with at least 21 members; and the Kracht, with 24 members. These groups are named after the astronomers who suggested the comets are related, because they have similar orbits.
Many comet discoveries were made by amateurs using SOHO images on the Internet. SOHO comet hunters come from all over the world. The United States, United Kingdom, China, Japan, Taiwan, Russia, Ukraine, France, Germany, and Lithuania are among the many countries whose citizens have used SOHO to chase comets.
Almost all of SOHO's comets are discovered using images from its Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) instrument. LASCO is used to observe the faint, multimillion-degree outer atmosphere of the sun, called the corona. A disk in the instrument is used to make an artificial eclipse, blocking direct light from the sun, so the much fainter corona can be seen. Sun grazing comets are discovered when they enter LASCO's field of view as they pass close by the star.
"Building coronagraphs like LASCO is still more art than science, because the light we are trying to detect is very faint," said Dr. Joe Gurman, U.S. project scientist for SOHO at Goddard. "Any imperfections in the optics or dust in the instrument will scatter the light, making the images too noisy to be useful. Discovering almost 1,000 comets since SOHO's launch on December 2, 1995 is a testament to the skill of the LASCO team."
SOHO successfully completed its primary mission in April 1998. It has enough fuel to remain on station to keep hunting comets for decades if the LASCO continues to function.
For information about SOHO on the Internet, visit:
Explore further: Long-term warming, short-term variability: Why climate change is still an issue | <urn:uuid:78cbe1bd-1849-4138-b59a-5521e93122a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://phys.org/news4969.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943417 | 663 | 4 | 4 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
People who struggle to find enough food to eat are poor. The World Bank’s poverty line is an income of less than $1.25 a day. Financial Times readers, who spend more than that amount on their morning newspaper, are in no position to dispute that judgment. In the past two decades, economic growth in China and India has reduced global poverty by an unprecedented amount. That achievement is not diminished because some individuals in both these countries have become very rich. Fundamentally, poverty is about absolute deprivation.Kay observes that there is also a relative definition of poverty:
Under the definition that I have proposed on this blog for wealth, poverty would simply be an absence of wealth, or a deficit of valued outcomes.
The median income is the level that equal numbers of people are above and below, so that a rise in Sir Martin Sorrell’s bonus does not lead anyone into poverty – that would confuse poverty and inequality. But the choice of median income as a reference level has a wider significance. It encapsulates the idea that in a rich society, poverty is an enforced inability to participate in the everyday activities of that society. You might therefore be poor if you lack access to antibiotics or Facebook, even though in this respect you are no worse off than the Sun King or John D. Rockefeller, and in other respects considerably better off than most people in the world.
However, to define poverty as social exclusion takes the definition far away from the assessment of income. It is not hard to imagine places in which few, if any, people experience a sense of exclusion. These might include both sophisticated societies with high incomes per head – towns in Scandinavia – and simple cultures without access to modern essentials – rural villages in the developing world. Poverty becomes a cultural and political phenomenon rather than an economic one.
But once we define poverty in terms of outcomes beyond simple incomes as measured in currency units, we have indeed entered the territory of culture and politics, and ultimately, what constitutes a life worth living.
Just as GDP doesn't measure all that matters when it comes to wealth, I am deeply skeptical of efforts to define multi-dimensional metrics of "poverty" that integrate different valued outcomes. Statistics are indeed important inputs to policy, and I prefer mine simple and transparent.
So let's leave poverty defined in terms of absolute income, as defined by the World Bank and others. If we care about obesity, lack of access to antibiotics or even Facebook -- all perfectly legitimate valued outcomes -- then let's track these outcomes on their merits and based on transparent variables that measure these outcomes. Just don't label these issues "poverty" as it will conflate arguments about what it means to be wealthy with efforts to attain whatever valued outcomes we as a society decide to pursue. | <urn:uuid:b3e96514-e784-44b4-9bdd-92774b612428> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2012/06/just-dont-call-it-poverty.html?showComment=1340574487936 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954915 | 562 | 3 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Technology Review has a writeup on the latest advance in the lab towards an invisibility cloak made of metamaterials, described this week in Science. We've been following this technology since the beginning. The breakthrough is software that lets researchers design materials that are both low-loss and wideband. "The cloak that the researchers built works with wavelengths of light ranging from about 1 to 18 gigahertz — a swath as broad as the visible spectrum. No one has yet made a cloaking device that works in the visible spectrum, and those metamaterials that have been fabricated tend to work only with narrow bands of light. But a cloak that made an object invisible to light of only one color would not be of much use. Similarly, a cloaking device can't afford to be lossy: if it lets just a little bit of light reflect off the object it's supposed to cloak, it's no longer effective. The cloak that Smith built is very low loss, successfully rerouting almost all the light that hits it." | <urn:uuid:e3c7fcf8-dc52-4cf0-abe7-0f2837fb7923> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/01/18/2015249/a-step-toward-an-invisibility-cloak/insightful-comments | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973959 | 210 | 2.96875 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
At NIDA's last Drug Facts Chat Day, Razorfang asked this question:
"can you get viruses from drugs?"
The answer to this might surprise you. Although you can't get viruses directly from drugs, using drugs can increase your chances of catching a virus like HIV (the virus that causes AIDS). In fact, behaviors associated with drug abuse are one of the biggest factors in the spread of HIV across the US.
That's because drugs can mess up your judgment and lead to bad decisions—bad decisions like unsafe sex. And risky sex can lead to more than pregnancy. It can also lead to becoming infected with HIV or other sexually transmitted viruses. | <urn:uuid:44248e42-0913-4e31-82b8-00ab86f92227> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://teens.drugabuse.gov/comment/8210 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963204 | 134 | 2.5625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Courtesy Iona Knapp
Iona Knapp, right, has been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, a potential precursor to Alzheimer's disease. Like 1 in 7 people with Alzheimer's or other dementias, the 65-year-old Lake Monticello, Va., woman lives alone. Her daughter, Sharon Mullen, lives 90 minutes away, in Manassas.
Iona Knapp’s father died of Alzheimer’s disease and her late mother suffered from dementia. Now, the 65-year-old Lake Monticello, Va., woman has been diagnosed herself with mild cognitive impairment, or MCI, and she fears their fate soon may be her own.
The trouble is, Knapp lives by herself, which would make her one of 5.4 million people in the U.S. living with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias -- and one of 800,000 Americans doing it alone, according to a new report issued Thursday by the Alzheimer’s Association.
The report, “2012 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures,” estimates that one in seven people with Alzheimer's or dementia lives alone, and that up to half of those people have no identifiable caregiver. Most are older women with milder impairment.
“That’s a huge issue,” said Dr. Kenneth Langa, professor of medicine at the University of Michigan, and an expert on the economics and demographics of Alzheimer’s Disease.
As the baby boom generation ages, more and more people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s will be living alone, sometimes because they choose to do so, but also because a spouse has died, or because they have few or no children living nearby, said Langa, who wasn’t involved in the new report.
The analysis finds that Alzheimer’s costs the country about $200 billion per year in Medicare, Medicaid, and personal out-of-pocket expenses. As enormous as that cost is, it takes 15.2 million unpaid caregivers, usually family members, to keep it from rising even higher.
The personal impact on living alone with Alzheimer’s, dementia, or even MCI like Knapp’s, can be dramatic compared to living with a caregiver. Patients who live alone have a much higher risk of wandering off, suffering bad falls, missing medication and doctor appointments, and exacerbating other medical conditions like heart disease or diabetes. Ultimately that’s not only harmful to those people, but it ratchets up costs, too.
As Knapp herself discovered when she served as an unpaid caregiver to her mother, living alone has a host of practical costs and dangers.
When she accompanied her mother to the bank one day, “the teller said, ‘Your mother is way overdrawn. She has no money,’” Knapp recalled. “I looked back over the past two years of records, and found my mother had bankrupted herself.”
Now, she said, “I imagine my own future. I meet with my attorney on Friday. I want to talk to him about all kinds of things I can put in place so my older daughter can step in and take over financially.”
Such advanced planning is critical for anybody with Alzheimer’s, but especially for those who live alone, said Angela Geiger, chief strategy officer for the Alzheimer’s Association.
Legal and logistical considerations like advanced directives, power of attorney designations, and answers about who will be part of the care team must be addressed. None of these decisions is pleasant, Geiger explained, but they must be addressed.
“You really want to say, ‘Here are the two or three triggers for me. I’d like to go to assisted living as soon as possible,’ or, ‘Do I want to stay in my house as long as possible?' 'Who pays my bills?’”
While Knapp wrestles with those decisions, she’s trying to adapt so she can continue to live by herself, independently, for as long as possible. But it’s a challenge. She writes reminders on a white board. She programs appointments into her smart phone.
Such tactics aren’t foolproof, though: This week, she missed a doctor’s appointment.
Knapp is considering the purchase of an alarm button she can wear to alert emergency services in case she finds herself injured or lost. She’s also thinking of selling her house, and moving into senior housing close to her daughter, Sharon Mullen, whose family lives in Manassas, Va. Transportation will be available there, she hopes, because she’s already growing worried about her own driving. “There are times now, when I’ll be, like, ‘Where am I going?’”
The Alzheimer’s Association has created an online social network called ALZ Connected, in an effort to provide support, especially for those who find it tough to get out for in-person group support meetings.
According to Langa, barring some miracle of science -- and the science of Alzheimer’s and dementia has been frustrating so far -- the population of Alzheimer’s and dementia sufferers is going to grow significantly over the next decade. And because of America’s changing demographics, more and more of those people will be living alone.
“To me that is one of the key issues going forward, from a public policy standpoint,” he said. “What will the care-giving resources be?”
Do you live alone? Do you worry about what you'll do if you have health issues? Tell us on Facebook.
New Alzheimer's criteria would change diagnosis for millions
Cancer drug reverses Alzheimer's in mice
Obama increases Alzheimer's research funding | <urn:uuid:5b21fa17-f991-4edc-bfc0-a6ed528436d1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://usnews.nbcnews.com/alzheimers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954327 | 1,218 | 2.640625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
While any kind of dog can attack, some breeds are more prone to attacks than others. In fact, some dogs are more likely than others to kill humans.
The Centers of Disease Control estimates that more than 4.7 million people are bitten by dogs every year. Of those, 20 percent require medical attention.
In a 15-year study (1979-1994) a total of 239 deaths were reported as a result of injuries from dog attacks in the United States. Through its research, the CDC compiled a list of the dogs most responsible for human fatalities. They are as follows:
The study found that most dog-bite-related deaths happened to children. But, according to the CDC there are steps children (and adults) can take cut down the risk of a dog attack from family pets as well as dogs they are not familiar with:
-Don't approach an unfamiliar dog.
-If an unfamiliar dog approaches you, stay motionless.
-Don't run from a dog or scream.
-If a dog knocks you down, roll into a ball and stay still.
-Avoid looking directly into a dog's eyes.
-Leave a dog alone that is sleeping, eating or taking care of puppies.
-Let a dog see and sniff you before petting it.
-Don't play with a dog unless there is an adult present.
-If a dog bites you, tell an adult immediately.
But, the CDC's report says most attacks are preventable in three ways:
1. "Owner and public education. Dog owners, through proper selection, socialization, training, care, and treatment of a dog, can reduce the likelihood of owning a dog that will eventually bite. Male and unspayed/unneutered dogs are more likely to bite than are female and spayed/neutered dogs."
2. "Animal control at the community level. Animal-control programs should be supported, and laws for regulating dangerous or vicious dogs should be promulgated and enforced vigorously. For example, in this report, 30% of dog-bite-related deaths resulted from groups of owned dogs that were free roaming off the owner's property."
3. "Bite reporting. Evaluation of prevention efforts requires improved surveillance for dog bites. Dog bites should be reported as required by local or state ordinances, and reports of such incidents should include information about the circumstances of the bite; ownership, breed, sex, age, spay/neuter status, and history of prior aggression of the animal; and the nature of restraint before the bite incident."
CDC officials did make one important note about its list: The reporting of the breed was subjective. There is no way to determine if the identification of the breed was correct. Also, there is no way to verify if the dog was a purebred or a mixed breed.
Copyright 2011 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | <urn:uuid:da55ad67-a163-461b-9317-72c3b8b457e2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.abc2news.com/dpp/lifestyle/pets/which-dogs-are-most-likely-to-kill-humans%3F | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953044 | 609 | 3.53125 | 4 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Threatened birds of the world: the official source for birds on the IUCN Red List.
Barcelona: Lynx Edicions, 2000.
Quarto, laminated boards, 852 pp. colour illustrations, maps.
This comprehensive volume documents globally threatened species whether extinct in the wild, critical, endangered or vulnerable and includes notes on identification, range and population, ecology, threats, conservation, targets and references. Also includes listing of lower risk species. | <urn:uuid:e2bb2a4d-a52f-477d-9b91-bd61560a5466> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.andrewisles.com/all-stock/publication/15236 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.791501 | 98 | 2.5625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
ASIA NEWS NETWORK
WE KNOW ASIA BETTER
Publication Date : 04-09-2012
With health and wellness gaining prominence in people’s wish lists, there is now a growing awareness of healthier choices.
Here are more answers for your myriad of options. Pick a wellness plan that will suit you best.
Please explain—what’s all the fuss over over nitrates and nitrites?
Multiple choice: Which meal would you consider supportive of brain health?
a) Scrambled eggs cooked in butter plus a generous topping of cheese and sour cream
b) Green salad with lean chicken or turkey ham topped with low-fat Caesar salad dressing.
A is the healthier meal. For one, eggs are nutritious and are considered brain food.
Vegetables are very good for you; however, we do not know about the toppings. Perhaps the ham is laced with preservatives and additives, including aspartame and nitrite. By itself, nitrite isn’t so bad. But when it is eaten, it can transform into nitrosamine compounds, considered potent cancer-causing chemicals.
This occurs when a chemical reaction happens between nitrate (added to food) and amines (found in protein that is present in the body).
Added to processed foods, this chemical, also known as sodium nitrite or potassium nitrite, prevents the contamination of foods by controlling the toxin production of clostridium botulinum (which causes botulism). In the US, these chemicals are allowed to be used, setting the limit to one part nitrite to 120 parts per million.
Nitrates for fertilisers are suspected to enter the food and water supply. And this is why proper farming is a big issue.
Nitrite and nitrosamine are linked with increased cancer of the colon, lung, pancreas, liver, etc.
How to neutralise nitrite poisoning? Take megadoses of vitamin C and E, beta-carotene and flavonoids.
Visit your dentist
How do I cure bad breath?
Would you believe that billions of bacteria, fungi, viruses and parasites live in our mouths? It’s true. There are over 600 species of bacteria that claim our mouths as their home. An overgrowth of bacteria leads to tooth decay and gum disease. It could, one day, lead to tooth loss. If you are brushing, flossing and gargling regularly, then you shouldn’t have a real problem.
But if you don’t, then it’s time to visit your dentist. Dental plaque, a sticky, grainy film that grows on teeth due to the mixture of bacteria with the sugars and starches from the food you eat, causes bad breath. Tartar is the hardened plaque build-up after so much dental neglect.
Brush or floss twice daily, thrice if you can. Do not sleep without doing your cleansing ritual. Eradicate parasites from your tummy.
Looking at yourself in the mirror and then smiling is a practice that can get you started on better dental health. Run your tongue over your teeth. If it feels grainy, then it’s time for your dental check-up and cleaning.
Make it a habit to take two acidophilus (good bacteria) capsules daily.
Consider digestive enzymes, one to three tablets daily or eat fresh, raw (uncooked) fruits and vegetables.
Juice fresh veggies/fruits as your morning starter, tonic and cleanser.
Chlorophyll tablets could be taken.
Steep parsley leaves in hot water and sip as a tea.
Rule out parasites. See your doctor.
Alternation to steroids
Are there any legal and natural supplements as an alternative to steroids? I am a professional athlete.
Yes there are. Called branched chain amino acids (BCAA’s), these are compound of leucine, valine and isoleucine. Considered natural anabolic muscle-building supplements, they are a principal source of calories for the human muscle, especially effective during an intense workout.
BCAAs can also reduce the appetite while producing glycogen which balances insulin secretion.
More importantly, it promotes lean muscle mass and distribution.
Supplements should be taken 30 minutes before a workout. | <urn:uuid:48afad8f-d635-44ff-ae7f-6e3c50a37916> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.asianewsnet.net/news-35955.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918251 | 896 | 2.625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Bolivia: Coca-chewing protest outside US embassy
Indigenous activists in Bolivia have been holding a mass coca-chewing protest as part of campaign to end an international ban on the practice.
Hundreds of people chewed the leaf outside the US embassy in La Paz and in other cities across the country.
Bolivia wants to amend a UN drugs treaty that bans chewing coca, which is an ancient tradition in the Andes.
But the US has said it will veto the amendment because coca is also the raw material for making cocaine.
The protesters outside the US embassy also displayed products made from coca, including soft drinks, toothpaste, sweets and ointments.
They were supporting a Bolivian government campaign to amend the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs to remove language that bans the chewing of coca leaf.
The convention stipulates that coca-chewing be eliminated within 25 years of the convention coming into effect in 1964.
Bolivia says that is discriminatory, given that coca use is so deeply rooted in the indigenous culture of the Andes.Eradication
The US is opposed to changing the UN convention because it says it would weaken the fight against cocaine production.
In a statement, the US embassy said Washington recognised coca-chewing as a "traditional custom" of Bolivia's indigenous peoples but could not support the amendment.
"The position of the US government in not supporting the amendment is based on the importance of maintaining the integrity of the UN convention, which is an important tool in the fight against drug-trafficking," it said.
The US is the world's largest consumer of cocaine and has been leading efforts to eradicate coca production in the Andes for decades.
Bolivia is the world's first biggest producer of cocaine after Peru and Colombia, and much of its coca crop is used to make the illegal drug.
Bolivian President Evo Morales has long advocated the recognition of coca as a plant of great medicinal, cultural and religious importance that is distinct from cocaine.
As well as being Bolivia's first indigenous head of state, Mr Morales is also a former coca-grower and leader of a coca-growers trade union.
The Bolivian amendment would come into effect on 31 January only if there were no objections. | <urn:uuid:a63f6870-f496-4355-adfd-f3296c1577e5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12292661 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966039 | 484 | 2.703125 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Visit a Travel Clinic Before Going AbroadEn Español (Spanish Version)
Food and Water-borne Illnesses | Vaccination Requirements | Travel Clinic Services | Post-travel Care
With the age of aviation, traveling the world has not only become easier, but it is also an enriching experience. Although some of us may stay within the limits of our national borders, many of us will travel to exotic locales in countries with varying degrees of sanitation and standards of hygiene. The risk of food- or water-borne illnesses, as well as more harmful diseases while on vacation, including malaria and yellow fever, can be a reality of travel. Despite these significant health risks, many will not seek medical advice before a trip. But whether your destination is Cancun or Calcutta, it may be well worth the time to visit a travel health clinic before your departure.
The following individuals should seek medical advice before traveling abroad:
- Infants and young children
- Those with chronic conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, irritable bowel syndrome, epilepsy, or HIV infection
- Cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy
- Persons on prescription medications including H-2 blockers and antacids
- Pregnant women
While these individuals must take extra precautions when traveling, anyone planning a trip overseas should consider seeking medical advice from a travel clinic.
Food and Water-borne Illnesses
Food- and water-borne illnesses, such as traveler’s diarrhea, are the most common maladies faced during travel. Contaminated food and water can be sources of infection from Escherichia coli, bacillary dysentery, and hepatitis A—all of which can lead to severe dehydration. In general, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends drinking only bottled water (be sure it is a fresh bottle by checking the seal) and avoiding undercooked or raw foods (especially vegetable and fruits), dairy products, shellfish, or food that has been allowed to cool to room temperature. Based on the country you will be visiting, a travel health clinic can provide you with a complete list of CDC precautions and recommendations along with necessary antibiotics and water sanitation devices.
Depending on your destination, general health risks can range from the common cold to typhoid fever. The World Health Organization (WHO) cites malaria as one of the most serious risks to international travelers. This potentially fatal disease, transmitted through mosquito bites, occurs in more than 100 countries—many of which are popular destinations, such as Mexico, the Caribbean, India, Egypt, and South Africa. Also of concern are vaccine-preventable hepatitis A and B, both of which can cause liver damage.
Travel health clinics can provide you with information about the year-round health risks that exist in your destination and alert you about new outbreaks that may arise prior to your time of travel. They will also provide you with the recommended immunizations and antibiotics to safeguard against tropical and other illnesses. Of main concern are the following:
- Hepatitis A or B—Mexico, Central and South America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, the Caribbean, eastern and southern Europe
- Malaria—Asia, Africa, the Middle East, the South Pacific, Mexico, Eastern Europe, Central America, and the Caribbean
- Traveler’s diarrhea—Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East
- Yellow fever—Africa and South America
- Cholera—Southeast Asia
- Typhoid—Asia, Africa, Soviet Union
- Japanese encephalitis—Southeast Asia
While some countries only recommend that visitors get vaccinated before arriving, others require vaccination as a condition of entry, and will inspect health records to verify that the necessary vaccinations have been taken. In these countries, anyone who has not been vaccinated may be quarantined until they have been, or denied entry altogether. A travel health clinic can determine the vaccination requirements for your destination, administer inoculations and provide you with the necessary documentation, such as an International Certificate of Vaccination as well as other travel health records, which can be updated before each trip.
Travel Clinic Services
Your destination, length of stay, itinerary, and previous medical history are important factors to consider when seeking travel health advice. The staffs at most travel health clinics consist of physicians and nurse practitioners with specialized degrees in infectious diseases or tropical medicine. They are qualified to develop a travel care plan customized to your individual health needs; administer vaccines and booster shots for polio or measles, mumps, and rubella; and write prescriptions for antibiotics and other medications. It is important to make an appointment 4-6 weeks in advance of your trip. This will give you enough time to begin a malaria vaccine regimen if you need to, and for vaccinations to boost your immune system before your trip.
In general, services provided by most travel health clinics include:
- CDC and WHO information about health risks and recommendations in your area of travel
- United States State Department travel advisories; consulate information
- Pre-travel counseling based on destination, length of stay, and medical history, including how to care for chronic conditions while traveling
- An individualized plan of prevention and treatment, including recommendations for food and water safety, and recommendations for avoiding insect-borne diseases
- Vaccinations for influenza; hepatitis A and B; yellow fever; typhoid; polio; tetanus/diphtheria; Japanese encephalitis; measles, mumps, and rubella; and rabies
- Vaccination certificates required by some countries before entry
- Antibiotics or over-the-counter medications for diarrhea or prescriptions for malaria prevention
- Permanent medical records listing any present illness as well as medical needs
- A list of recommended doctors or clinics abroad
- Information about traveler’s medical insurance, which provides affordable coverage for medical emergencies (also check with your current provider)
- Tests to determine whether any illnesses were acquired abroad
- Treatment of any illnesses acquired abroad
Another essential aspect of travel clinic services is post-travel care. This is particularly important for those with chronic conditions and anyone experiencing persistent health problems upon their return, including the following:
- Fever (seek immediate attention if you have traveled to an area where malaria is prevalent)
- Urinary tract or genital infections
- Skin disorders
Many hospitals and medical centers provide travel health services. The following site can provide you with a list of travel health clinics in your area: http://http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
United States State Department
World Health Organization
Aurora Health Care Travelers Clinic. Staying healthy abroad starts with healthy advice at home. Available at: http://www.aurorahealthcare.org/services/travelclinic/index.asp. Accessed July 2005.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Pre-and post-travel general health recommendations. Health Information for International Travel, 2005-2006. Available at: http://www.2ncid.cdc.gov/travel/yb/utls/ybGet.asp?section=recs&obj=food-drink-risks.htm. Accessed July 2005.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Malaria and Travelers. Available at: www.cdc.gov/malaria/travel/index.htm. Accessed July 2005.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Vaccination Certificate Requirements for Direct Travel from the United States to Other Countries. Available at: www.cdc.gov/travel/vaccinations/cert-requirements2.htm. Accessed July 2005.
Internal Medicine Doctors for Adults. Health Care Topics: Travel Immunization. Available at: www.doctorsforadults.com/topics/dfa_travel.htm. Accessed July 2005.
MayoClinic.com. Global travel: Advance planning can prevent illness. Available at: http://www.mayoclinic.com/invoke.cfm:id=HQ00760. Accessed July 2005.
Medical College of Wisconsin. Health Risks of Travel Range from Unusual to Mundane. Available at: http://healthlink.mcw.edu/article/1031002363.html. Accessed July 2005.
MedicalNewsService.com. American Society of Travel Agents Urge Healthy Travel for Consumers. Available at: http://www.medicalnewsservice.com/fullstory.cfm?storyID=3029&fback=yes. Accessed July 2005.
Medical University of South Carolina. Travel Clinic. Available at: http://www.muschealth.com/medical_services/specialty_listing/travelclinic/. Accessed July 2005.
See a doctor before you travel. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. Available at: http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/page/see-doctor.htm. Created July 31, 2008. Updated January 13, 2011. Accessed August 8, 2011.
Tulane University. Clinic Keeps Travelers Fit. Available at: http://www2.tulane.edu/article_news_details.cfm?ArticleID=5752. Accessed July 2005.
UMass Memorial Medical Center. Traveler’s Health Services. Available at: http://www.umassmemorial.org/ummhc/hospitals/med_center/services/travelers/index.cfm. Accessed July 2005.
University of Connecticut Health Center. The International Traveler’s Medical Service. Available at: http://health/uchc.edu/clinicalservices/travel/. Accessed July 2005.
University of Maryland Medical Center. Travel Medicine. Guide for the Adventurous Traveler. Available at: http://www.umm.edu/travel/guide.htm.AccessedAccessed July 2005.
University of Texas Health Services. Travel Medicine. Available at: http://www.uth.tmc.edu/uths/travel.html. Accessed July 2005.
United States State Department. Medical Information for Americans Traveling Abroad. Available at: http://travel.state.gov/travel/tips/health/health_1185.html. Accessed July 2005.
Vanderbilt International Travel Clinic. Health Services You’ll Receive After You Return. Available at: http://www.vanderbilttravelclinic.com/services/after.html. Accessed July 2005.
Vanderbilt International Travel Clinic. Health Services You’ll Receive Before you travel. Available at: http://www.vanderbiltclinic.com/services/before.html. Accessed July 2005.
Last reviewed August 2011 by Brian Randall, MD
Please be aware that this information is provided to supplement the care provided by your physician. It is neither intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice. CALL YOUR HEALTHCARE PROVIDER IMMEDIATELY IF YOU THINK YOU MAY HAVE A MEDICAL EMERGENCY. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider prior to starting any new treatment or with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. | <urn:uuid:edbef51d-99a0-49d5-9d34-e03973b12633> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bermudahospitals.bm/health-wellness/TherapeuticCenters.asp?chunkiid=95461 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.895883 | 2,304 | 2.96875 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Glucose is a type of sugar. It comes from food, and is also created in the liver. Glucose travels through the body in the blood. It moves from the blood to cells with the help of a hormone called insulin. Once glucose is in those cells, it can be used for energy.
Diabetes is a condition that makes it difficult for the body to use glucose. This causes a buildup of glucose in the blood. It also means the body is not getting enough energy. Type 2 diabetes is one type of diabetes. It is the most common type.
Medication, lifestyle changes, and monitoring can help control blood glucose levels.
Type 2 diabetes is often caused by a combination of factors. One factor is that your body begins to make less insulin. A second factor is that your body becomes resistant to insulin. This means there is insulin in your body, but your body cannot use it effectively. Insulin resistance is often related to excess body fat.
The doctor will ask about your symptoms and medical history. You will also be asked about your family history. A physical exam will be done.
Diagnosis is based on the results of blood testing. American Diabetes Association (ADA) recommends diagnosis be made if you have one of the following:
Symptoms of diabetes and a
random blood test
with a blood sugar level greater than or equal to 200 mg/dL (11.1 mmol/L)
- Fasting blood sugar test—Done after you have not eaten for eight or more hours—Showing blood sugar levels greater than or equal to 126 mg/dL (7 mmol/L) on two different days
- Glucose tolerance test—Measuring blood sugar two hours after you eat glucose—Showing glucose levels greater than or equal to 200 mg/dL (11.1 mmol/L)
- HbA1c level of 6.5% or higher—Indicates poor blood sugar control over the past 2-4 months
mg/dL = milligrams per deciliter of blood; mmol/L = millimole per liter of blood
Treatment aims to:
- Maintain blood sugar at levels as close to normal as possible
- Prevent or delay complications
- Control other conditions that you may have, like high blood pressure and high cholesterol
Food and drinks have a direct effect on your blood glucose level. Eating healthy meals can help you control your blood glucose. It will also help your overall health. Some basic tips include:
If you are overweight, weight loss will help your body use insulin better. Talk to your doctor about a healthy weight goal. You and your doctor or dietitian can make a safe meal plan for you.
These options may help you lose weight:
Physical activity can:
- Make the body more sensitive to insulin
- Help you reach and maintain a healthy weight
- Lower the levels of fat in your blood
exercise is any activity that increases your heart rate. Resistance training helps build muscle strength. Both types of exercise help to improve
long-term glucose control. Regular exercise can also help reduce your risk of heart disease.
Talk to your doctor about an activity plan. Ask about any precautions you may need to take.
Certain medicines will help to manage blood glucose levels.
Medication taken by mouth may include:
- Metformin—To reduce the amount of glucose made by the body and to make the body more sensitive to insulin
Medications that encourage the pancreas to make more insulin such as sulfonylureas (glyburide,
tolazamide), dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors (saxagliptin,
Insulin sensitizers such as
pioglitazone—To help the body use insulin better
Starch blockers such as
miglitol—To decrease the amount of glucose absorbed into the blood
Some medicine needs to be given through injections, such as:
Incretin-mimetics such as
stimulate the pancreas to produce insulin and decrease appetite (can assist with weight loss)
Amylin analogs such as
replace a protein of the pancreas that is low in people with type 2 diabetes
Insulin may be needed if:
- The body does not make enough of its own insulin.
- Blood glucose levels cannot be controlled with lifestyle changes and medicine.
Insulin is given through injections.
Blood Glucose Testing
You can check the level of glucose in your blood with a blood glucose meter. Checking your blood glucose levels
during the day can help you stay on track. It will also help your doctor determine if your treatment is working. Keeping track of blood sugar levels is especially important if you take insulin.
Regular testing may not be needed if your diabetes is under control and you don't take insulin. Talk with your doctor before stopping blood sugar monitoring.
may also be done at your doctor's office. This is a measure of blood glucose control over a long period of time. Doctors advise that most people keep their HbA1c levels below 7%. Your exact goal may be different. Keeping HbA1c in your goal range can help lower the chance of complications.
Decreasing Risk of Complications
Over a long period of time, high blood glucose levels can damage vital organs. The kidneys, eyes, and nerves are most affected. Diabetes can also increase your risk of heart disease.
Maintaining goal blood glucose levels is the first step to lowering your risk of these complications. Other steps include:
- Take good care of your feet. Be on the lookout for any sores or irritated areas. Keep your feet dry and clean.
- Have your eyes checked once a year.
- Don't smoke. If you do, look for programs or products that can help you quit.
- Plan medical visits as recommended. | <urn:uuid:da329173-6e70-42f5-aa09-933ea8352a2f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bidmc.org/YourHealth/ConditionsAZ/Congestiveheartfailure.aspx?ChunkID=11902 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911804 | 1,210 | 3.6875 | 4 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
First ever direct measurement of the Earth’s rotation
Geodesists are pinpointing the orientation of the Earth’s axis using the world’s most stable ring laser
A group with researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG) are the first to plot changes in the Earth’s axis through laboratory measurements. To do this, they constructed the world’s most stable ring laser in an underground lab and used it to determine changes in the Earth’s rotation. Previously, scientists were only able to track shifts in the polar axis indirectly by monitoring fixed objects in space. Capturing the tilt of the Earth’s axis and its rotational velocity is crucial for precise positional information on Earth – and thus for the accurate functioning of modern navigation systems, for instance. The scientists’ work has been recognized an Exceptional Research Spotlight by the American Physical Society.
The Earth wobbles. Like a spinning top touched in mid-spin, its rotational axis fluctuates in relation to space. This is partly caused by gravitation from the sun and the moon. At the same time, the Earth’s rotational axis constantly changes relative to the Earth’s surface. On the one hand, this is caused by variation in atmospheric pressure, ocean loading and wind. These elements combine in an effect known as the Chandler wobble to create polar motion. Named after the scientist who discovered it, this phenomenon has a period of around 435 days. On the other hand, an event known as the “annual wobble” causes the rotational axis to move over a period of a year. This is due to the Earth’s elliptical orbit around the sun. These two effects cause the Earth’s axis to migrate irregularly along a circular path with a radius of up to six meters.
Capturing these movements is crucial to create a reliable coordinate system that can feed navigation systems or project trajectory paths in space travel. “Locating a point to the exact centimeter for global positioning is an extremely dynamic process – after all, at our latitude, we are moving at around 350 meters to the east per second,” explains Prof. Karl Ulrich Schreiber, meanwhile as station director of the geodetic observatory Wettzell where the ring laser is settled. Karl Ulrich Schreiber had directed the project in TUM’s Research Section Satellite Geodesy. The geodetic observatory Wettzell is run together by TUM and BKG.
The researchers have succeeded in corroborating the Chandler and annual wobble measurements based on the data captured by radio telescopes. They now aim to make the apparatus more accurate, enabling them to determine changes in the Earth’s rotational axis over a single day. The scientists also plan to make the ring laser capable of continuous operation so that it can run for a period of years without any deviations. “In simple terms,” concludes Schreiber, “in future, we want to be able to just pop down into the basement and find out how fast the Earth is accurately turning right now."
For more information please visit the TU München homepage http://portal.mytum.de/pressestelle/pressemitteilungen/NewsArticle_20111220_100621/newsarticle_view?. | <urn:uuid:d4281798-7278-4727-a736-be4cecc072f8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bkg.bund.de/nn_149566/sid_0F335650A0F77C3C47FE83A10BEB41EC/nsc_true/EN/News/01News/N2011/2011__12__27ring-laser.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909265 | 710 | 3.921875 | 4 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
A common virus that affects 50-70% of adults. If a woman acquires cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection during pregnancy, there is about a 15% chance that her infant will have infection and serious complications. Women who have had CMV infection and who are considering breastfeeding their prematurely born infant should check first with their child's doctor since there is a risk of transmitting the virus to the infant through breast milk. Prematurely born infants may not be able to fight off the CMV infection as do infants born at term. CMV infection is usually a mild infection in adults. Infants born to women who have had CMV long before they became pregnant are at low risk of having an infant with serious CMV infection. | <urn:uuid:2f752b52-9aba-4aab-b8c0-9d6efd875aa8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.childrensmn.org/Manuals/Glossary/A/025679.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986543 | 150 | 3 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
the National Science Foundation
Available Languages: English, Spanish
This classroom-tested learning module gives a condensed, easily-understood view of the development of atomic theory from the late 19th through early 20th century. The key idea was the discovery that the atom is not an "indivisible" particle, but consists of smaller constituents: the proton, neutron, and electron. It discusses the contributions of John Dalton, J.J. Thomson, Ernest Rutherford, and James Chadwick, whose experiments revolutionized the world view of atomic structure. See Related Materials for a link to Part 2 of this series.
atomic structure, cathode ray experiment, electron, helium atom, history of atom, history of the atom, hydrogen atom, neutron, proton
Metadata instance created
July 12, 2011
by Caroline Hall
October 10, 2012
by Caroline Hall
Last Update when Cataloged:
January 1, 2006
AAAS Benchmark Alignments (2008 Version)
4. The Physical Setting
4D. The Structure of Matter
6-8: 4D/M1a. All matter is made up of atoms, which are far too small to see directly through a microscope.
9-12: 4D/H1. Atoms are made of a positively charged nucleus surrounded by negatively charged electrons. The nucleus is a tiny fraction of the volume of an atom but makes up almost all of its mass. The nucleus is composed of protons and neutrons which have roughly the same mass but differ in that protons are positively charged while neutrons have no electric charge.
9-12: 4D/H2. The number of protons in the nucleus determines what an atom's electron configuration can be and so defines the element. An atom's electron configuration, particularly the outermost electrons, determines how the atom can interact with other atoms. Atoms form bonds to other atoms by transferring or sharing electrons.
10. Historical Perspectives
10F. Understanding Fire
9-12: 10F/H1. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, the idea of atoms reemerged in response to questions about the structure of matter, the nature of fire, and the basis of chemical phenomena.
9-12: 10F/H3. In the early 1800s, British chemist and physicist John Dalton united the concepts of atoms and elements. He proposed two ideas that laid the groundwork for modern chemistry: first, that elements are formed from small, indivisible particles called atoms, which are identical for a given element but different from any other element; and second, that chemical compounds are formed from atoms by combining a definite number of each type of atom to form one molecule of the compound.
9-12: 10F/H4. Dalton figured out how the relative weights of the atoms could be determined experimentally. His idea that every substance had a unique atomic composition provided an explanation for why substances were made up of elements in specific proportions.
This resource is part of a Physics Front Topical Unit.
Topic: Particles and Interactions and the Standard Model Unit Title: History and Discovery
This classroom-tested learning module gives a condensed, easily-understood view of the development of atomic theory from the late 19th through early 20th century. The key idea was the discovery that the atom is not an "indivisible" particle, but consists of smaller constituents: the proton, neutron, and electron. It discusses the contributions of John Dalton, J.J. Thomson, Ernest Rutherford, and James Chadwick, whose experiments revolutionized the world view of atomic structure.
%0 Electronic Source %A Carpi, Anthony %D January 1, 2006 %T Visionlearning: Atomic Theory I %I Visionlearning %V 2013 %N 21 May 2013 %8 January 1, 2006 %9 text/html %U http://www.visionlearning.com/library/module_viewer.php?mid=50&l=
Disclaimer: ComPADRE offers citation styles as a guide only. We cannot offer interpretations about citations as this is an automated procedure. Please refer to the style manuals in the Citation Source Information area for clarifications. | <urn:uuid:e5d364b6-d557-47e6-b078-62ea4b57c2d1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.compadre.org/precollege/items/detail.cfm?ID=11307 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.896148 | 860 | 3.4375 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Questions Relating To The Future Of Humankind
By Jason G. Brent
24 October, 2011
WE HAVE COME A LONG WAY FROM THE NUCLEAR BOMBS DROPPED ON JAPAN IN 1945--20,000 TONS TNT EQUIVILENT--- TO NUCLEAR DEVICES WHICH PRODUCE OVER 57,000,000 TONS TNT EQUIVILENT.
1. After many years of thinking and research I could come up only with three ways by which the growth of the human population can be reduced to zero or made negative, if that were necessary for the survival of our species.
a) By war, with or without weapons of mass destruction, starvation, disease, ethnic cleansing, rape, mutilation, and other horrors. This most likely would occur as humanity got close to the carrying capacity of the earth and almost certainly would occur after humankind reached or exceeded the earth's carrying capacity.
b) By the voluntary action of all of humanity. This most likely would occur prior to reaching the carrying capacity of the Earth. Of course, this also could happen after humanity reached or exceeded the carrying capacity of the Earth and be used to reduce the human population to the carrying capacity of the Earth without violence---provided the horrors in (a) above have not commenced. This action would include education of women, raising their standard of living, modifying the culture of many societies, increasing the standard of living of all of humanity, and many other actions of a similar nature. Voluntary action includes any and all non-violent steps humankind could take to reduce population growth to zero or make it negative except coercive action.
c) By the coercive action of society limiting the number of children a person or a couple could produce. This most likely would occur prior to reaching the carrying capacity of the Earth. Of course, it could also be used to reduce human population to the carrying capacity of the Earth after humanity has exceeded the carrying capacity of the Earth, provided the horrors in (a) above have not commenced.
There isn't a single accepted definition of "carrying capacity". For the purposes of this essay I will define "carrying capacity" as the number of human beings combined with the average per capita usage of resources which will permit that number of human beings to exist and survive on this planet for a minimum of 1000 years. An alternative definition of "carrying capacity" is the number of human beings combined with the average per capita usage of resources which if exceeded even for a short period of time will result in the inability of the Earth provide the resources necessary for civilization to continue causing a rapid and horrendous decline in the human population. While no one knows what the carrying capacity of the Earth may be, it cannot be infinite-- it must be finite. No matter how much the average per capita usage of resources is reduced the Earth could not support 1 trillion human beings. Similarly, if the per capita usage of resources were increased such that each human being used 30 times the amount of resources used by the average American is highly unlikely that the Earth could support 1 billion human beings.
At present human population is growing. It is highly likely that the average per capita usage of resources will continue to increase due to the rapidly growing economies of India and China and the growing economies of many of the other nations of the world. Therefore, a very strong case can be made that humanity will shortly exceed the carrying capacity of the Earth, if humanity already has not exceeded that capacity. If humanity exceeds the carrying capacity and takes no immediate action to reduce the population and/or the usage of resources to reduce it's impact on the planet below carrying capacity, then humans will enter into a violent competitions for the resources necessary to survive and the horrors set forth in 1(a) will occur. In simple terms, it will be each and every man/group/religion/nation/culture against every other man/group/religion/nation/culture in order to obtain resources which the Earth can provide so that the individual survives-- pure violent Darwinism. Billions will die and die horribly and more importantly the catastrophe will use up and/or destroy any remaining resources such that civilization will be unable to restart forever or at least for thousands of years
2. Does society, no matter how defined, have a right to limit the number of children a person produces by coercion or is the right to determine how many children a person produces absolute and society has no right to interfere with that decision? In considering this question limit yourself to the right I have set forth above and do not consider how that right could or would be enforced and whether enforcing that right would be harmful or beneficial to society. Those questions and any and all others would have to be considered, evaluated and discussed only if the right to limit the number of children a person produces by coercion exists in society. As far as I have been able to determine after doing many years of research I could not find a single human right that was not subject to control or modification by society. Even the right to life is not absolute-- many nations and cultures take away right to life when a person has committed certain types of murder. The right walk the streets as a free person is not an absolute right-- almost every nation or culture takes away that right and places a person in prison when a serious/heinous crime has been committed. Your reasons for your answer are requested.
3. While United Nations issues about eight different projections of the future human population, the most quoted and accepted projection is the "medium" projection. The most recent medium projection/estimation/prediction/prognostication (use whatever word you desire) issued by the UN predicts that the human population will exceed 10 billion and still be growing by the year 2100. Do you agree with that prediction after giving due consideration to the rate by which humanity is using the limited finite nonrenewable resources of our planet and the rate our species is using resources normally considered renewable? Do you agree with that prediction after giving consideration to the projected increase in per capita usage of resources by the nations of the world and in particular by the ever increasing per capita usage of resources of China and India? You may want to review the work of Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute as to the future usage of resources by China. Do you believe that the carrying capacity of the Earth, no matter how defined, is substantially less than 10 billion of our species and that the continued population growth will result in the collapse of society/the social order/civilization and the horrors set forth in paragraph 1 (a) above will happen prior to the year 2100? You may want to consult the works of William Catton, Richard Heinberg, Chris Clugston, David Pimental, James Lovelock and many others. Clugston's work can be viewed free of charge on his web site www.wakeupamerika.com (it is spelled with a 'k" and not a "c")-- pay particular attention to his book "Scarcity". The reasons for your answers to these questions would be most appreciated.
Since no rational person would want to control population growth by the horrors set forth in paragraph 1(a) above, there are in reality only two ways to control population growth/reduce population growth to zero/make it negative. No one can present a logically and factually supported case that the voluntary action (as defined in paragraph 1 above) of humanity will reduce population growth to zero prior to the commencement of the horrors described in paragraph 1(a) with absolute certainty. In other words, there is some level of probability that if humanity were to limit itself to voluntary action to control population growth that action will fail and humanity will exceed the carrying capacity of the Earth such that the horrors described in paragraph 1(a) would occur. No one knows what is the chance of success or what is the chance of failure of voluntary action-- no one knows if the chance of success is 70% and the chance of failure is 30% or 80/20 or 60/40 or 50/50 or any other combination of numbers. However, there is a chance of failure and failure will lead to the collapse of society/the collapse of the social order/the destruction of civilization and to the horrors described in paragraph 1(a).
More importantly, there is a vastly greater chance of failure of voluntary action if population growth not only has to be reduced to zero but made negative to substantially reduce the human population from the current 7 billion or from the future 10 billion (year 2100) to a much lower number in order for our species to survive for a reasonable period of time. A number of experts (whatever the word "expert" means) ( David Pimental of Cornell University and James Lovelock of Gaia fame, for example) have presented factually and logically supported cases that the Earth's carrying capacity is 2 billion or less of our species. Humanity ignores at its peril the work of these experts. If the chance of success/failure is one set of numbers for voluntary action relating to reducing population growth zero, then there is a second set of numbers for success/failure in which the success side of the equation is substantially reduced and failure side of the equation is substantially increased in considering voluntary action in relation to population reduction.
Since chance of failure of voluntary action could result in the horrific deaths of billions, perhaps as many as 9.6 billion--(10.1 billion alive in 2100 less the possible carrying capacity of 0.5 billion = reduction of 9.6 billion),the question becomes---- what level of possible failure of voluntary action is acceptable to humankind? Of course, the number of horrific deaths could be substantially less than 9.6 billion. However, since no one can guarantee with 100% certainty that the voluntary action will not prevent a substantial number of horrific deaths, the leaders of humanity have a duty to convene one or more conferences of the best minds presently on our planet to evaluate and consider coercive population control. It cannot be denied that many arguments can be made against coercive population control--- the experiment in India a number of years ago was a failure, humanity could equate coercive population control with the actions of Adolph Hitler or racists, it will take as long to impose coercive control as to make voluntary action successful and many others.
Coercive population control need not be discriminatory. If each couple in the entire world were limited to one child, no religion, group, nationality, race, culture, etc., would benefit at the expense of any other religion, group, nationality, race or culture.
This essay is not intended discuss or debate the advantages/disadvantages, or the problems/benefits of coercive population control. Rather, the purpose of this essay is to show that humanity must consider and evaluate coercive population control because there is a substantial, but undefined, risk that voluntary action will lead to the horrific deaths of a substantial number of human beings in the very near future----probably before the year 2050 and almost certainly before the year 2100.
Jason G. Brent [email protected]
Comments are not moderated. Please be responsible and civil in your postings and stay within the topic discussed in the article too. If you find inappropriate comments, just Flag (Report) them and they will move into moderation que. | <urn:uuid:2ce07bc9-b917-4f76-92c8-dedc32b62fed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.countercurrents.org/brent241011.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943221 | 2,299 | 2.5625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Micro vs Macro
Micro and macro are prefixes that are used before words to make them small or big respectively. This is true with micro and macroeconomics, micro and macro evolution, microorganism, micro lens and macro lens, micro finance and macro finance, and so on. The list of words that makes use of these prefixes is long and exhaustive. Many people confuse between micro and macro despite knowing that these prefixes signify small and large respectively. This article takes a closer look at the two prefixes to find out their differences.
To understand the difference between micro and macro, let us take up the example of micro and macro evolution. To signify evolution that takes place within a single species, the word microevolution is used whereas evolution that transcends the boundaries of species and takes place on a very large scale is termed as macroevolution. Though the principles of evolution such as genetics, mutation, natural selection, and migration remain the same across microevolution as well as macro evolution, this distinction between microevolution and macroevolution is a great way to explain this natural phenomenon.
Another field of study that makes use of micro and macro is economics. While the study of the overall economy and how it works is called macroeconomics, microeconomics focuses on the individual person, company, or industry. Thus, the study of GDP, employment, inflation etc. in an economy is classified under macroeconomics. Microeconomics is the study of forces of demand and supply inside a particular industry effecting the goods and services. So it is macroeconomics when economists choose to concentrate upon the state of the economy in a nation whereas the study of a single market or industry remains within the realms of microeconomics.
There is also the study of finance where these two prefixes are commonly used. Thus, we have microfinance where the focus is upon the monetary needs and requirements of a single individual where there is also macro finance where financing by the banks or other financial institutions is of very large nature.
Micro and macro are derived from Greek language where micro means small and macro refers to large. These prefixes are used in many fields of study such as finance, economics, evolution etc. where we have words like micro finance and macro finance, micro evolution and macro evolution etc. Studying something at a small level is micro while studying it on a large scale is macro analysis. Financing the needs of an individual may be micro financing whereas the financial needs of a builder requiring money for a very large infrastructural project may be referred to as macro finance. | <urn:uuid:837ed974-3d4d-4f45-9652-e4dbceee85e2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-micro-and-vs-macro/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941696 | 524 | 3.375 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
— Copyright Dorothy Sloan 2013 —
Early Railroad Map of Missouri & Eastern Kansas
Very Rare Pocket Map
389. [MAP]. WELLS, J[ohn] G[aylord]. Wells’ New Rail Road and Township Map of Missouri and Eastern Kansas from the Latest Government Surveys. J.G. Wells, 11 Beekman St. New York. 1857. Scale of Miles... Explanation [with symbols] State Capital. County Towns. Rail Roads. Proposed Rail Roads. [pictorial seal] Great Seal of the State of Missouri [below lower neat line at left] Lith. V. Keil 181 William St. N.Y. [centered below lower ornamental border] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by J.G. Wells, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York. New York, 1857. Lithograph map of Eastern Kansas, all of Missouri, and parts of Indian Territory, Nebraska, Iowa, Arkansas, and Illinois, printed on bank note paper, full hand coloring, borders in bright rose pink, ornate border of grapes, grape leaves, Native American portrait in oval at each corner; neat line to neat line: 42.8 x 63 cm; border to border: 51 x 71 cm; overall sheet size: 60 x 79 cm; folded into original green embossed cloth (14.7 x 9.5 cm), title lettered in gilt on upper cover (Wells’ New Map of Missouri and Eastern Kansas), printed yellow endpaper affixed to inside upper cover (Wells’ List of New Publications). Mild age toning to map, a few stains at top left, clean splits at a few folds (no losses), overall a fine copy with brilliant color. Uncommon (one copy of the 1858 edition located by OCLC, University of Virginia at Charlottesville).
First edition. Not in Modelski’s railroad bibliographies, or other standard sources. Railroads began to be important in the region in the late 1850s, but ironically, the only railroad shown on this map is the Pacific Railroad Line between St. Louis (“The Gateway to the West”) and Jefferson City, with shorter trunk lines to the north and south of St. Louis. Slowly the emigrant and other trails were being replaced by railroad tracks. On the other hand, several proposed lines are indicated, such as one from Jefferson City to Kansas City, and another from Keosauqua, Iowa, to Kansas City. Tooley lists cartographer J.G. Wells (1821-1880) but notes only one map (Ohio) by him. Other located publications indicate that he was active principally in 1857. Circa 1856, Wells published a map of Kansas and Nebraska. In 1857 Wells published an extraordinary amount of material, such as pocket guides for Iowa (Howes W250), Nebraska (Howes W251), and popular guides, such as Wells’ National Hand-Book, and even a book on how to be your own attorney. Other maps by Wells in 1857 include New Sectional Map of Minnesota (1857); New Sectional Map of Kansas (1857); Kansas and Nebraska (1857); New Sectional Map of Nebraska (sold at our Auction 20 in 2007 @ $8,225). He also published an undated panoramic map of the Civil War in the 1860s (one copy located at University of Virginia at Charlottesville). The list of Wells’ forty publications on the front pastedown is impressive. The mysterious Wells’ cartographic output was short-lived and vigorous, and all his maps are very rare.
DSRB Home | e-mail: [email protected] | <urn:uuid:7b93de28-e698-4499-90cf-bb90fe483356> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dsloan.com/Auctions/A23/item-map-wells-missouri-1857.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925482 | 781 | 2.625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
The Smart Student's Handbook provides information to motivate and guide students on the path to a successful academic career. It will also help parents and organizations that are sponsoring students to monitor their educational performance.
Author Leevon Washington Phillips's unique scholastic guide is filled with valuable information to help students get and stay organized, such as:
- Goals for individual terms and the year as a whole
- Study, assignment, and examination tips
- Assignment and performance tracking forms
- Class and study timetables
- A monthly planner/journal
By helping students to better organize their studies, The Smart Student's Handbook inspires students to succeed in their academic pursuits, provides a means of assessing performance, and identifies areas that need improvement. | <urn:uuid:24255169-51bf-43ab-a750-94bad62e0b57> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ebookmall.com/ebook/the-smart-student-s-handbook/leevon-phillips/9780595376575 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939863 | 147 | 2.890625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Fast Food Tied to Asthma, Eczema and Hay Fever in Kids
MONDAY, Jan. 14 (HealthDay News) -- Kids who eat fast food three or more times a week are likely to have more severe allergic reactions, a large new international study suggests.
These include bouts of asthma, eczema and hay fever (rhinitis). And although the study doesn't prove that those burgers, chicken snacks and fries cause these problems, the evidence of an association is compelling, researchers say.
"The study adds to a growing body of evidence of the possible harms of fast foods," said study co-author Hywel Williams, a professor of dermato-epidemiology at the University of Nottingham, in England.
"Whether the evidence we have found is strong enough to recommend a reduction of fast food intake for those with allergies is a matter of debate," he added.
These finding are important, Williams said, because this is the largest study to date on allergies in young people across the world and the findings are remarkably consistent globally for both boys and girls and regardless of family income.
"If true, the findings have big public health implications given that these allergic disorders appear to be on the increase and because fast food is so popular," he said.
However, Williams cautioned that fast food might not be causing these problems. "It could be due to other factors linked to behavior that we have not measured, or it could be due to biases that occur in studies that measure disease and ask about previous food intake," he said.
In addition, this association between fast foods and severe allergies does not necessarily mean that eating less fast food will reduce the severity of disease of asthma, hay fever or eczema (an itchy skin disorder), Williams said.
The report was published in the Jan. 14 online issue of Thorax.
Williams and colleagues collected data on more than 319,000 teens aged 13 and 14 from 51 countries and more than 181,000 kids aged 6 and 7 from 31 countries. All of the children were part of a single study on child asthma and allergies.
Kids and their parents were asked about whether they suffered from asthma or runny or blocked nose along with itchy and watery eyes and eczema. Participants also described in detail what they ate during the week.
Fast food was linked to those conditions in both older and younger children.
Consuming three or more weekly fast food meals was associated with a 39 percent increased risk of severe asthma among teens And three such meals for younger children was associated with a 27 percent increased risk of severe asthma, as well higher risk of rhinitis and eczema.
Fruit, however, appeared to reduce the incidence and severity of these conditions for all the children, and for incidence and severity of wheeze and rhinitis among the teens.
According to Williams, three or more weekly servings of fruit reduced the severity of symptoms 11 percent among the teens and 14 percent among the children.
When looked at closely, the data among children was not as convincing as among teens. However, fast food meals were still associated with symptoms except for current eczema, and in poorer countries, except for current and severe asthma.
"Eating fast food is not healthy for a multitude of reasons," said Samantha Heller, an exercise physiologist and clinical nutrition coordinator at the Center for Cancer Care at Griffin Hospital in Derby, Conn.
It's notorious for being high in sodium, saturated fat, trans fats and refined and processed carbohydrates, and low in essential healthy nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, healthy unsaturated fats and fiber, she said.
"I cannot imagine any parent would choose the convenience of fast food over their child's health if they fully understood how deleterious a diet of fast and junk food is to children," Heller added.
Healthy compounds like vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and healthy fats are essential players in whole-body immunity. Kids eating fast food regularly are subject not only to the disease-promoting and inflammatory effects of trans and saturated fats, excess sodium and refined carbohydrates but also likely to suffer from deficiencies of essential health-promoting compounds, Heller said.
"This can lead to chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, behavior problems, and as this study suggests, possibly asthma, eczema and colds," she said.
Eating at home more often not only saves money but also keeps families healthier, Heller said.
"For example, you can make healthy fast-food dishes in your own kitchen, such as black bean veggie burgers on whole-wheat buns with tomato and avocado, mashed potatoes with low-fat milk and olive oil or roasted sweet potato fries," she suggested.
For more about healthy eating for children, visit the Nemours Foundation.
SOURCES: Hywel Williams, Ph.D., professor of dermato-epidemiology, University of Nottingham, U.K.; Samantha Heller, M.S., R.D., exercise physiologist and clinical nutrition coordinator, Center for Cancer Care, Griffin Hospital, Derby, Conn.; Jan. 14, 2013, Thorax, online | <urn:uuid:a8ce4f8e-c062-43bf-83ca-a02e25f36188> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.harperhutzel.org/taxonomy/relateddocuments.aspx?id=0&ContentTypeId=6&ContentID=672480 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966542 | 1,057 | 2.6875 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Leaf Characteristics (PK1) This set introduces simple vocabulary to describe the physical features of 40 North American tree, garden, and house plant leaves. First - The child sorts 9 leaf characteristics cards (3" x 4") onto 3 control cards (10-3/8” x 5¼”) that identify characteristics of Leaf Types, Leaf Veins, and Leaf Margins. Second - After learning the 9 characteristics of leaves, it is time to describe the 3 characteristics of just one leaf. A leaf card is selected from the 40 leaf cards provided (3" x 4"). The child selects the 3 characteristics cards (type, venation, margin) that describe that leaf, and places them on the blank Leaf Identification card (10-3/8” x 5¼”). Real leaves can be used in this exercise as well. Background information is included for the teacher.
Leaves (PK1C) This set consists of 40 DUPLICATE leaf cards (80 cards total). One group of 20 cards illustrates familiar leaves such as dandelion, marigold, and ivy. The second group illustrates common North American tree leaves such as oak, maple, and cottonwood. These are the same leaf cards found in In-Print for Children's “Leaf Characteristics” activity.
Flowers (FL1) This set is designed to help children recognize and to name 20 common flowers, many of which are commercially available throughout the year. This duplicate set of picture cards can be used in simple matching exercises, or in 3-part matching activities if one set is cut apart. The 40 photocards (3¼” x 4") are in full-color and laminated. Flower background information is included for the teacher.
Nuts (PK3) Nuts are nourishing snacks and learning how they grow will make eating them all the more fun! This set of 22 two-color cards (5½” x 3½”) of plant and nut illustrations represents eleven edible nuts/seeds. The child pairs the illustration cards of the nuts in their growing stage to the cards of the nuts in and out of their shells. Make the activity even more successful by bringing the real nuts into the classroom.
Kitchen Herbs & Spices (PK5) This set help children to learn about 20 plants that give us herbs and spices. The delicately drawn, 2-color illustrations clearly show the parts of the plants that give us edible leaves, seeds, stems, bark, bulbs, and berries. Create an aromatic and tasty exercise by having the children pair real herbs and spices with these cards (4½” x 6¼”).
Plants We Eat (PK9) Learn more about food plants and their different edible parts. This set classifies 18 plant foods into six groups: roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruits, and seeds. A duplicate set of 18 labeled picture/definition cards (6" x 6") shows plants in their growing stage with only their “food” portion in color. One set of picture/ definition cards is spiral bound into 6 control booklets that include definitions of the root, stem, leaf, flower, fruit, and seed. The other set of picture/ definition cards are to be cut apart for 2 or 3-part matching exercises. Plant description cards can be used for “Who am I?” games with our plant picture cards or with real foods. Both cards and booklets are laminated.
Plants We Eat Replicards (PK9w) Six replicards are photocopied to produce worksheets for an extension exercise using our set Plants We Eat (PK9). Children color and label the worksheets, which illustrate three plant examples for each of the following groups: roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruits, and seeds. The Plants We Eat booklets serve as controls. After worksheets (8½” x 11") are colored and labeled, they can be cut apart, stapled together, and made into six take-home booklets. These booklets may generate lively family dinner-table discussions: “A potato is a what?”
Plants - Who am I? (WP) This beginning activity for lower elementary strengthens both reading and listening skills, and provides children with simple facts about 10 plants. The set consists of duplicate, labeled picture cards with descriptive text and features plants different from those in the First Knowledge: Plant Stories (see below). The set of cards with text ending in “Who am I?” is cut apart into 10 picture cards, 10 plant name cards, and 10 text cards. The other set is left whole. Cards are used for picture-to-text card matching exercises and for playing the “Who am I” game. Cards measure 6½” x 4" and are in full color and laminated.
First Knowledge: Plant Stories (PK7) This set consists of 19 duplicate plant picture/text cards. One set is cut apart for 3-part matching activities, and the other set is placed in the green, 6-ring mini-binder labeled Plants. The teacher has the option of changing the cards in the binder as needed. The children can match the 3-part cards (6" x 3¾”) to the cards in the binder, practice reading, learn about the diverse characteristics of these plants, and then play “Who am I?” The eight angiosperms picture cards can be sorted beneath two cards that name and define Monocots and Dicots. These activities prepare children for later work with our Plant Kingdom Chart & Cards (see below), which illustrates the same plants.
Plant Kingdom Chart and Cards (PK6) Our 4-color plastic paper chart and cards represents the current classification of the plant kingdom (not illustrated here) – the same as is used in secondary and college level biology courses. This classification organizes the plant kingdom in a straightforward manner with simple definitions and examples under each heading. Firs the plants are categorized as either Nonvascular Plants (Bryophytes) or Vascular Plants. Then the Vascular plants are divided into two groups: Seedless Plants or Seed Plants. Seed Plants are divided into two groups: Gymnosperms and Angiosperms with sub-categories. Nineteen picture cards (2¼” x 3") illustrate the currently recognized phyla of the plant kingdom. Children match the 19 plant picture cards to the pictures on the chart (18" x 32"). Text on the back of the picture cards describes each plant. Advanced students can recreate the chart with the title cards provided, using the chart as a control of error. Background information is provided.
Parts of a Mushroom Parts of a gilled mushroom are highlighted and labeled on six 2-color cards (3" x 5"). Photocopy the Replicard (8½” x 11") to make quarter page worksheets. The child colors and labels the worksheets, using the picture cards as a guide. Completed worksheets can be stapled together to make a booklet for “Parts of a Mushroom”. (In-Print product code FK1)
Fungi (FK4) Members of the Fungus Kingdom have a wide variety of forms. Children see fungi everywhere, such as mold on food, or mushrooms on the lawn. This duplicate set of labeled picture cards shows 12 common fungi found indoors and out. Fungi illustrated: blue cheese fungus, bolete, coral fungus, cup fungus, jelly fungus, lichens, mildew, milky mushrooms, mold, and morel. Background information is included. Pictures cards (3½” x 4½”) are in full color and laminated.
Classification of the Fungus KingdomChart and Cards (FK3) This classification of the Fungus Kingdom organizes 18 representative fungi into four major groups and two important fungal partnerships: Chytrids, Yoke Fungi, Sac Fungi, Club Fungi, Lichens, Mycorrhizae. Children match the 18 picture cards (2-7/8” x 2-3/8”) to the pictures on the 2-color chart (18" x 16"). After this activity, they can sort the picture cards under the label cards for the 5 fungus groups, using the chart as the control. Description of each fungus type is printed on the back of the picture cards. Background information is included for the teacher. This chart is printed on vinyl and does not need to be laminated. | <urn:uuid:d8d399d3-71ef-4f88-8432-8aa6553e707a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.in-printforchildren.com/3201/4285.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927978 | 1,788 | 3.96875 | 4 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Education for Sustainable Diversity (ESD), as defined by the Office for Inclusion, is the practice of acquiring knowledge about and becoming aware of ways in which our beliefs and biases impact the quality of relationships among people from different cultural groups around the world.
The goal of the Office for Inclusion is to support a campus community that understands how to fully integrate the University’s core values of diversity and inclusion into campus work and learning environments. ESD serves to provide opportunities for people to better understand the complexities of and synergies between, the issues threatening our intercultural sustainability and assess their own values and those of the society in which they live in. ESD seeks to engage people in negotiating a sustainable future, making decisions and acting on them. To do this effectively, the following skills are essential to ESD:
- Envisioning -- being able to imagine a better future. The premise is if we recognize and begin to understand the issues that obstruct intercultural respect, we will be better able to work through issues and find ways to respect each other.
- Critical thinking and reflection -- learning to question our current belief systems and to recognize the assumptions underlying our knowledge, perspective and opinions. Critical thinking skills help people learn to examine social and cultural structures in the context of sustainable intercultural development.
- Systemic thinking -- acknowledging complexities and looking for links and synergies when trying to find solutions to problems.
- Building partnerships -- promoting dialogue and negotiation, learning to work together.
- Participation in decision-making -- empowering people.
- Interactive theatre uses customized and uniquely designed sketches performed by actors to address specific issues, and allow for open and guided discussion between the audience and actors to find solutions to issues.
- Customized small-group workshops, large-group presentations, and symposia featuring themes around diversity, inclusion and social justice.
- e-learning tools custom designed for large audiences on specific topics
- Topics include: MSU's anti-discrimination policies, diversity/inclusion, best practices
For more information or to request a service, please contact the main office at 517-353-3922. | <urn:uuid:1c9f4e73-1cdf-478b-9eec-7d653882b9d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.inclusion.msu.edu/Education/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932283 | 432 | 3.15625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Its an interesting question. But since doctors dont really know the answer, youve caught the scientific community napping as well. Even so, several things come to mind.
The first thing to consider is the possibility that you nap because you have daytime sleepiness. If so, then what might be the cause?
- Do you take any medicine that might make you sleepy? Review your prescriptions with your pharmacist or next time you visit your doctor.
- Have you started having problems sleeping at night? If you sleep well at night and wake up refreshed, dont worry. But if you feel groggy or have early morning headaches, you may have sleep apnea or some other cause of interrupted sleep.
- Could you be depressed? Ask yourself if you no longer enjoy activities that previously gave you pleasure, and whether you are feeling low.
It sounds as if your nap is voluntary and enjoyable. So it probably does not reflect an underlying sleep disturbance. If it refreshes your day without making it hard for you to sleep at night, snooze away.
For most people, a 20- to 40-minute nap between noon and 4:00 p.m. is the best way to catch a few winks without disturbing the sleep-wake cycle. But remember to give yourself a good 10 minutes to wake up gently before you engage in mentally or physically demanding tasks.
When NASA and the FAA studied napping in airline pilots, they found that napping improved mental alertness and performance. Many night shift workers are also perked up by naps as brief as 1520 minutes.
Do naps improve overall health? Napping is the exception in America. But afternoon siestas are the rule in many Mediterranean and Latin American countries.
Scientists have learned that blood pressure drops during a siesta. But it rises abruptly on awakening. Is this meaningful? Probably not, but we cant be sure.
Until doctors dream up a way to resolve the contradiction, there is no reason for you to deprive yourself of a pleasurable nap. | <urn:uuid:9d2bde1e-1e7e-474a-836e-2062e6902a13> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/WSI/4464/8488.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944306 | 415 | 2.546875 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Breakthroughs bring the next two major leaps in computing power into sight
Breakthroughs might make quantum computing, replacement for silicon practical within a decade
One of the best things about covering technology is that you're always on the edge of a completely new generation of stuff that will make everything completely different than it ever was before, even before the last generation made everything different.
"Completely different" always seems pretty much the same, with a few more complications, higher costs and a couple of cool new capabilities, of course.
Unless you look back a decade or two and see that everything is completely different from the way it was then…
Must be some conceptual myopia that keeps us in happy suspense over the future, nostalgic wonder at the past and bored annoyance with the present.
The next future to get excited about is going to be really cool, though.
You know how long scientists have been working on quantum computers that will be incomparably more powerful than the ones we have now because don't have to be built on a "bit" that's either a 1 or a zero? They would use a piece of quantum data called a qubit (or qbit, consistent with everything in the quantum world, the spelling wants to be two things at once), that can exist in several states at the same time. That would turn the most basic function in computing from a toggle switch to a dial with many settings.
Multiply the number of pieces of data in the lowest-level function of the computer and you increase its power logarithmically.
Making it happen has been a trick; they've been under development for 20 years and probably won't show up for another 10.
Teams of Austrian scientists may cut that time down a bit with a system they developed they say can create digital models of quantum-computing systems to make testing and development of both theory and manufacturing issues quicker and easier.
They did it the same way Lord of the Rings brought Gollum to life: putting a living example in front of cameras and taking detailed pictures they could use to recreate the image in any other digital environment.
Rather than an actor, the photo subject was a calcium atom, drastically cooled to slow its motion, then manipulated it using lasers, putting it through a set of paces predicted by quantum-mechanical theory, and recorded the results.
Abstracting those results lets the computer model predict the behavior of almost any other quantum particle or environment, making it possible to use the quantum version of a CAD/CAM system to develop and test new approaches to the systems that will actually become quantum computers, according to a paper published in the journal Science by researchers from the University of Innsbruck and the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI).
Far sooner than quantum computers will blow our digitized minds, transistors made from grapheme rather than chunkier materials will allow designers to create processors far more dense – and therefore more potentially powerful – than anything theoretically possible using silicon and metallic alloys we rely on now.
Graphene is a one-atom-thick layer of carbon that offers almost no resistance to electricity flowing through it, but doesn't naturally contain electrons at two energy levels, as silicon does. Silicon transistors flip on or off by shifting electrons from one energy level to another.
Even silicon doesn't work that way naturally. It has to be "doped" with impurities to change its properties as a semiconductor.
For graphene to work the same way, researchers have to add inverters that that mimic the dual energy levels of silicon. So far they only work at 320 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (77 degrees Kelvin).
Researchers at Purdue's Birck Nanotechnology Center built a version that operates at room temperature, removing the main barrier to graphene as a practical option for computer systems design
The researchers, led by doctoral candidate Hong-Yan Chen presented their paper at the Device Research Conference in Santa Barbara. Calif. in June to publicize their results with the inverter.
Real application will have to wait for Chen or others to integrate the design into a working circuit based on graphene rather than silicon.
Systems built on graphene have the potential to boost the computing power of current processors by orders of magnitude while reducing their size and energy use, but only if they operate in offices not cooled to 77 degrees Kelvin.
It will still be a few years before graphene starts showing up in airline magazines, let alone in IT budgets. We'll probably be tired of them, too, by the time quantum computers show up, but there's just no satisfying some people.
Read more of Kevin Fogarty's CoreIT blog and follow the latest IT news at ITworld. Follow Kevin on Twitter at @KevinFogarty. For the latest IT news, analysis and how-tos, follow ITworld on Twitter and Facebook. | <urn:uuid:3ca19734-477a-46c8-bb68-c661817a1a5c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.itworld.com/print/201819 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951048 | 1,000 | 3.109375 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Some school districts are returning to an old idea, AP reports. They’re grouping students by performance rather than age. The boldest experiment will start in Kansas City, Missouri schools this fall when 17,000 students will switch to the new system.
Students — often of varying ages — work at their own pace, meeting with teachers to decide what part of the curriculum to tackle. Teachers still instruct students as a group if it’s needed, but often students are working individually or in small groups on projects that are tailored to their skill level.
For instance, in a classroom learning about currency, one group could draw pictures of pennies and nickels. A student who has mastered that skill might use pretend money to practice making change.
Students who progress quickly can finish high school material early and move forward with college coursework. Alternatively, in some districts, high-schoolers who need extra time can stick around for another year.
Advocates say the approach cuts down on discipline problems because advanced students aren’t bored and struggling students aren’t frustrated.
Kansas City’s traditional public schools have seen enrollment fall by half as students move to suburbs or enroll in charter or private schools; 40 percent of schools are closing. The district spent $2 billion in state desegregation case funds without raising test scores. Kansas City is desperate. Superintendent John Covington will start the new system in elementary schools.
“This system precludes us from labeling children failures,” Covington said. “It’s not that you’ve failed, it’s just that at this point you haven’t mastered the competencies yet and when you do, you will move to the next level.”
In a Marzano Research Laboratory study of 15 school districts in Alaska, Colorado and Florida, “researchers found that students who learned through the different approach were 2.5 times more likely to score at a level that shows they have a good grasp of the material on exams for reading, writing, and mathematics.”
Greg Johnson, director of curriculum and instruction for the Bering Strait School District in Alaska, recalled that before the switch there were students who had been on honor roll throughout high school then failed a test the state requires for graduation.
Now, he said if students are on pace to pass a class like Algebra I, the likelihood of them passing the state exam covering that material is more than 90 percent.
Teachers love the new approach, Johnson says. | <urn:uuid:7a7b90ba-eed4-41d7-a644-0c07f7f1e18e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.joannejacobs.com/2010/07/kansas-city-updates-grade-levels/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954696 | 523 | 2.609375 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Our district has created a process for the Response to Intervention which we call A4L (Assessment for Learning). Regardless of the name of the program, the work that happens to help support students is sound. Our teachers understand that the first two levels of intervention are done in class. When a student requires something other than the standard curriculum instruction, teachers are to start documenting what they are doing for that student and why. Teachers work in their Professional Learning Communities to get support with this work. Once every six weeks, the PLC is replaced by an A4L meeting where all of the specialists meet along with the team to make sure that all students are making progress. These meetings allow for all the players to be in the same place at the same time. Also, the group is able to draw from each others' strengths for strategies and ideas. The documentation for the students in the intervention process is kept in the grade level's team notebook so that all the data for the students is in the same place and is in a format that is accessible. | <urn:uuid:3682f932-4996-4085-828a-3e7a0c037eae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.laketravis.txed.net/Page/12941 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967943 | 210 | 2.984375 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Author and Audience: The book of 2 Thessalonians was written by Paul and addressed to the church at Thessalonica (see 2 Thessalonians 1:1; 3:17). Paul wrote this letter around A.D. 50–51 (see Bible Dictionary, (“Pauline Epistles,” p. 743).
Historical Background: The similarities between this letter and 1 Thessalonians are so strong that many believe they were written within six months of each other. Paul wrote it soon after hearing the reports of Silas and Timothy when they returned from delivering his first letter. For more information see the introduction to the book of 1 Thessalonians (p. 208). | <urn:uuid:5144f6d5-8745-41f0-b57a-8a9a2e6e2c68> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lds.org/manual/new-testament-teacher-resource-manual/the-second-epistle-of-paul-the-apostle-to-the-thessalonians/084?lang=eng | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97404 | 149 | 2.578125 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Breaking the COX code
Using the team approach
Editor’s Note: This story, first published in 2004, has been updated.
Prostaglandins, which were first isolated from the prostate gland in 1936, are very rapidly metabolized, or broken down, making measurement in the blood difficult. Researchers at Vanderbilt led by John Oates, M.D., developed methods for measuring levels of prostaglandin metabolites (breakdown products) in the urine using mass spectrometry.
Using this technique, the research team—which by the late 1970s included L. Jackson Roberts, M.D.—identified prostaglandin D2 as a product of the human mast cell and demonstrated its release during allergic asthma.
With colleagues including Garret A. FitzGerald, M.D., now chair of Pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania, Oates and Roberts showed that low doses of aspirin blocked the production of thromboxane, a prostaglandin made by platelets that causes blood clotting and constriction of blood vessels. Their findings supported the use of low dose aspirin to prevent heart attacks.
In the early 1990s, Vanderbilt researchers led by Ray DuBois, M.D., Ph.D., discovered a link between the COX-2 enzyme and colon cancer. That work helped lead to current tests of COX-2 inhibitors as a potential way to prevent cancer.
In 2004 another group led by the late Jason Morrow, M.D., and David H. Johnson, M.D., director of the Hematology-Oncology division at Vanderbilt, reported that urine levels of a prostaglandin metabolite called PGE-M could predict the effectiveness of a COX-2 inhibitor in patients with non-small cell lung cancer. This suggests, Morrow said in 2004, “that the measurement of these inflammatory ‘mediators’ and their suppression may be useful in the treatment of lung cancer.”
COX enzymes also may play a role in Alzheimer’s disease. In addition to prostaglandins, the COX pathway can lead to the production of highly reactive molecular compounds called levuglandins, which, in turn, can form “adducts,” or irreversible attachments to proteins that may be toxic to nerve cells.
Also in 2004, Oates and his colleagues at Vanderbilt and Johns Hopkins University reported that they found a 12-fold increase in the level of adducts in the brains of patients who had Alzheimer’s disease compared to age-matched control brains.
“These are the first clear data showing that COX products are elevated in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease,” says Oates, Thomas F. Frist Professor of Medicine and professor of Pharmacology.
Vanderbilt currently is participating in a national trial to see if long-term use of COX inhibitors will reduce the incidence of the disease. | <urn:uuid:0428aaca-1b84-4407-9b6f-93b230a692b3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/lens/article/?id=110&pg=999 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943982 | 607 | 2.9375 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
: the study of the conformation of the skull based on the belief that it is indicative of mental faculties and character
Study of the shape of the skull as an indication of mental abilities and character traits. Franz Joseph Gall stated the principle that each of the innate mental faculties is based in a specific brain region (organ), whose size reflects the faculty's prominence in a person and is reflected by the skull's surface. He examined the skulls of persons with particular traits (including criminal traits) for a feature he could identify with it. His followers Johann Kaspar Spurzheim (1776–1832) and George Combe (1788–1858) divided the scalp into areas they labeled with traits such as combativeness, cautiousness, and form perception. Though popular well into the 20th century, phrenology has been wholly discredited. | <urn:uuid:0946e91b-14ac-49fc-8c05-8dc7853d40e6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/phrenology | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949755 | 170 | 3.578125 | 4 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
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Before approximately the 14th century there were two hundredweights in England, one of 100 pounds, and one of 108 pounds. In 1340, King Edward III changed the value of the stone from 12 pounds to 14 pounds. Since a hundredweight is 8 stones, the 100-pound hundredweight became 112 pounds.
A unit of mass equal to one-millionth of a gram.
Long Hundredweights (UK) to Micrograms
Mobile phone converter app
Whilst every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the metric calculators and charts given on this site, we cannot make a guarantee or be held responsible for any errors that have been made. If you spot an error on this site, we would be grateful if you could report it to us by using the contact link at the top of this page and we will endeavour to correct it as soon as possible.
Created:Fri 31 Oct 2003 this page last updated:: Wed 08 Feb 2013 | <urn:uuid:9e70284c-9ca7-43d0-806d-423eb01c432f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.metric-conversions.org/weight/long-hundredweights-to-micrograms.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903425 | 309 | 2.921875 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
INDIA INFO: India - More Indian Musical Instruments
by V.A.Ponmelil (Feedback)
More Indian Musical Instruments
Chitra Veena / Gotu Vadhyam
The Chitraveena which is also referred to as the gotuvadhyam is one of the most exquisite instruments. It is a 21 stringed fretless lute similar to Vichitraveena.
It contains a flat top, two resonant chambers, and a hollow stem of wood. While the right hand plectrums pluck the strings, the left hand slides a piece of wood over the strings.
It is one of the oldest instruments of the world and the forerunner of the fretted Saraswati Veena.
The word Jaltarang means "waves in water". The jaltarang is an interesting ancient musical instrument consisting of a series of tuned bowls arranged in a semicircle around the performer.
The bowls are of different sizes and are tuned precisely to the pitches of various ragas by adding appropriate amounts of water. The instrument is played by striking the inside edge of the bowls with two small wooden sticks, one held in each hand.
Jal tarang is not very common and is normally found in the accompaniment of kathak dancers.
The Morsing is a tiny instrument which is held in the left hand, the prongs against the upper and lower front teeth.
The tongue, which protrudes from the mouth, is made of spring steel. This is plucked with the Index finger of the right hand (backwards, not forwards) while the tone and timbre are adjusted by changing the shape of the mouth cavity and moving the tongue. Further control of the sound can be achieved with the breath.
Like the mridangam, the morsing is tuned to the Shruti and fine tuning is achieved by placing small amounts of bee's wax on the end of the tongue.
The Shank is one of the ancient instruments of India. It is also referred to as the sushirvadya which is associated with religious functions.
In India it is considered very sacred. It is being regarded as one of the attributes of Lord Vishnu. Before using, the Shankh is drilled in such a way as to produce a hole at the base taking care that the natural hole is not disturbed. In Athar¬Veda, one finds reference to Shankh, though it existed long, before. In Bhagvad Gita, during the time of war, Shankh had played an important role. It also has different names like Panch Janya Shankh, Devadatt Shankh, Mahashan Ponder Shankh and more.
Even in Valmiki's Ramayna, the mention of a Shankh can be traced. In the temples, Shankh is played in the mornings and evenings during the prayers. In homes, it is played before the starting of havan, yagnopavit, marriage, etc.
The Kombu is a wind instrument or a kind of trumpet which is usually played along with the Panchavadyam or the Pandi Melam or the Panchari melam. This musical instrument is like a long horn and is usually seen in Kerala state of South India.
Travel Information on top destinations of India
Hill Stations of India | <urn:uuid:d883f592-7d49-4425-b333-5e5fa1fcfd30> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newkerala.com/india/Indian-Music/Indian-Musical-Instruments/More-Indian-Musical-Instruments.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953942 | 697 | 3.265625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Evolution can fall well short of perfection. Claire Ainsworth and Michael Le Page assess where life has gone spectacularly wrong
THE ascent of Mount Everest's 8848 metres without bottled oxygen in 1978 suggests that human lungs are pretty impressive organs. But that achievement pales in comparison with the feat of the griffon vulture that set the record for the highest recorded bird flight in 1975 when it was sucked into the engine of a plane flying at 11,264 metres.
Birds can fly so high partly because of the way their lungs work. Air flows through bird lungs in one direction only, pumped through by interlinked air sacs on either side. This gives them numerous advantages over lungs like our own. In mammals' two-way lungs, not as much fresh air reaches the deepest parts of the lungs, and incoming air is diluted by the oxygen-poor air that remains after ...
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Walter Bagehot (February 3, 1826 – March 24, 1877) was a British journalist, political analyst and economist, famous for his analysis of British Parliament and money market. Under his leadership The Economist became one of world’s leading business and political journals. Bagehot recognized that economics in not just a matter of the external, material aspects of financial transactions, but also involves the internal aspects of people's desires, motivations, and personality. Thus, he always emphasized social issues in his writings, and endeavored to make issues of government transparent to the public. Bagehot had an original and insightful mind, recognizing that the character of leaders was often more important than their political affiliation or beliefs. His work has continued to inform and inspire debate, contributing to our understanding of the functioning of human society and its improvement.
Walter Bagehot was born in on February 3, 1826, in Langport, Somerset, England, the son of a local banker. He attended the University College London, where he earned a Master's degree in mathematics in 1848. He studied law and was called to the Bar, but decided not to practice, instead joining his father in the banking business, in Stuckey & Co. in the west of England.
While still working as a banker, Bagehot started to write, first for some periodicals, and then for The National Review. He soon became the editor of the paper. In 1857, he met James Wilson, founder and editor of The Economist, a political and financial weekly newsmagazine. Bagehot married Wilson’s daughter in 1858.
In 1860, Bagehot succeeded his father-in-law, James Wilson, as editor of The Economist. After taking over he expanded the publication's reporting on the United States and on politics, and is considered to have increased its influence among policymakers. Bagehot became influential in both politics and economics, among whose friends were statesmen George Cornewall Lewis and Grant Duff, Lord Carnarvon, Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, and the governor and directors of the Bank of England.
Bagehot made several attempts to be elected as a Member of Parliament, but without success. He remained at the head of The Economist for the rest of his life. He died suddenly on March 24, 1877 in his home in Langport, Somerset, England, at the age of 51.
Bagehot was a person with a whole variety of interests. He wrote on the topics of economics, politics, law, literature, and so forth. He remains most famous however for his three books: The English Constitution (1867), Physics and Politics (1872), and Lombard Street (1873). In addition to these volumes, he commanded substantial influence through his editorship of The Economist.
The English Constitution
In 1867, Bagehot wrote The English Constitution which explored the constitution of the United Kingdom, specifically the functioning of the British Parliament and the British monarchy, and the contrasts between British and American government. Bagehot revealed how the Parliament operated as it were "behind a curtain," hidden from public knowledge. He divided the constitution into two components:
- The Dignified – symbolic side of the constitution, and
- The Efficient - the real face of the constitution, the way things actually work and get done.
Instead of describing the constitution from the point of the law, as a lawyer would, Bagehot focused on the practical implications of the constitution, as experienced by the common man. The book soon became widely popular, ensuring Bagehot worldwide fame.
He criticized American presidential system, claiming that it lacked flexibility and accountability. While in the English parliament real debates took place, after which changes could take place, in the American Congress debates had no power, since the President made the final decision. In Bagehot's view:
a parliamentary system educates the public, while a presidential system corrupts it. (The English Constitution 1867)
He also criticized the way American presidents are chosen, saying:
Under a presidential constitution the preliminary caucuses that choose the president need not care as to the ultimate fitness of the man they choose. They are solely concerned with his attractiveness as a candidate. (The English Constitution, 1867)
Physics and Politics
Bagehot wrote Physics and Politics in 1872, in which he tried to apply the principles of evolution to human societies. The subtitle of the book reads: Thoughts on the Application of the Principles of "Natural Selection" and "Inheritance" to Political Society. The book represented a pioneering effort to make a relationship between the natural and the social sciences. Bagehot explained the functioning of the market, and how it affects the behavior of the people. For example, he believed that people tend to invest money when the mood of the market is positive, and restrain from it when it comes to a negative phase.
In this book Bagehot also reflected on the psychology of politics, especially on the personality of a leader. He stressed two things as essential for leadership: the personality of a leader and his motivation. Bagehot believed that motivation played one of the key roles in good leadership, and that the personality of a leader often counted more than the policy he endorsed:
It is the life of teachers which is catching, not their tenets.” (Physics and Politics 1872)
Bagehot claimed that the personal example of the leader sets the tone for the whole governance. That is why “character issues” are so important for any government. Character "issues" still play an important role in deciding the potential candidate for any leadership position in today’s modern world.
Bagehot coined the expression "the cake of custom," denoting the sets of customs that any society is rooted in. Bagehot believed that customs develop and evolve throughout human history, with the best organized groups overthrowing the poorly organized groups. In this sense Bagehot’s views are a clear example of cultural selection, closer to Lamarckian than Darwinian evolution. The central problem in his book was to understand why Europeans could break away from tradition and “the cake of custom” and instead focus on progress and novelty. He saw tradition as important in keeping societies cohesive, but also believed that diversity was essential for progress:
The great difficulty which history records is not that of the first step, but that of the second step. What is most evident is not the difficulty of getting a fixed law, but getting out of a fixed law; not of cementing (as upon a former occasion I phrased it) a cake of custom, but of breaking the cake of custom; not of making the first preservative habit, but of breaking through it, and reaching something better. (Physics and Politics 1872)
In his famous Lombard Street (1873), Bagehot explained the theory behind the banking system, using insights from the English money market. As with his analysis of the English constitution six years earlier, Bagehot described the English banking system through the eyes of a simple person, as experienced in everyday life.
Bagehot showed that the English money system was solely relying on the central bank, the Bank of England. Bagehot had warned that the whole reserve was in the central bank, under no effectual penalty of failure. He proposed several ideas how to improve that system.
Bagehot’s work can be closely associated with the English historicist tradition. He did not directly oppose Classical economics, but advocated for its reorganization. He claimed that economics needed to incorporate more factors in its theory, such as cultural and social factors, in order to be more accurate in theorizing about economic processes.
Bagehot was one of the first to study the relationship between physical and social sciences from a sociological perspective. In his contributions to sociological theory through historical studies, Bagehot may be compared to his contemporary Henry Maine. He also developed a distinct theory of central banking, many points of which continue to be valued.
With his analysis of English and United States political systems in the English Constitution, Bagehot influenced Woodrow Wilson to write his Congressional Government.
In honor of his achievements and his work as its editor, The Economist named its weekly column on British politics after him. Every year the British Political Studies Association awards the Walter Bagehot Prize for the best dissertation in the field of government and public administration.
- Bagehot, Walter. 1848. Review of Mill's Principles of Political Economy. Prospective Review, 4(16), 460-502.
- Bagehot, Walter. 1858. Estimates of Some Englishmen and Scotchmen. London: Chapman and Hall.
- Bagehot, Walter. 1875. A New Standard of Value. The Economist, November 20.
- Bagehot, Walter. 1879. Literary Studies. London: Longmans, Green and Co.
- Bagehot, Walter. 1998. (original 1880). Economic Studies. Augustus M Kelley Pubs. ISBN 0678008523
- Bagehot, Walter. 2001. (original 1867). The English Constitution. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0192839756
- Bagehot, Walter. 2001. (original 1873). Lombard Street: A description of the money market. Adamant Media Corporation. ISBN 140210006X
- Bagehot, Walter. 2001. (original 1877). Some Articles on the Depreciation of Silver and on Topics Connected with It. Adamant Media Corporation. ISBN 140216288X
- Bagehot, Walter. 2001. (original 1889). The Works of Walter Bagehot. Adamant Media Corporation. ISBN 1421254530
- Bagehot, Walter. 2006. (original 1881). Biographical Studies. Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 1428608400
- Bagehot, Walter. 2006. (original 1872). Physics and Politics. Dodo Press. ISBN 1406504408
- Bagehot, Walter. 2006. (original 1885). The Postulates of English Political Economy. Cosimo. ISBN 1596053771
- Barrington, Russell. 1914. Life of Walter Bagehot. Longmans, Green and Co.
- Buchan, Alastair. 1960. The spare chancellor: The life of Walter Bagehot. Michigan State University Press. ISBN 087013051X
- Cousin, John William. 1910. A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. New York, E.P. Dutton.
- Morgan, Forrest. 1995. The Works of Walter Bagehot. Routledge. ISBN 0415131545
- Orel, Harold. 1984. Victorian Literary Critics: George Henry Lewes, Walter Bagehot, Richard Holt Hutton, Leslie Stephen, Andrew Lang, George Saintsbury, and Edmund Goss. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0312843046
- Sisson C. H. 1972. The case of Walter Bagehot. Faber and Faber Ltd. ISBN 0571095011
- Stevas, Norman. 1959. Walter Bagehot a Study of His Life and Thought Together with a Selection from His Political Writings. Indiana University Press.
- Sullivan, Harry R. 1975. Walter Bagehot. Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0805710183
All links retrieved December 6, 2012.
- Bagehot and the Age of Discussion – Commentary on Bagehot’s Physics and Politics
- Major Works – Some full-text works of Walter Bagehot
- Quotations from Walter Bagehot
- Walter Bagehot – Biography
- Works by Walter Bagehot. Project Gutenberg
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Does Thinness Raise Alzheimer's Risk?
< Nov. 23, 2011 > -- In the search for early markers of Alzheimer's disease - in hopes of eventually preventing it - researchers have found that low body weight may somehow play a role.
In a study published this week in the journal Neurology, people with early signs of Alzheimer's disease were more likely to be underweight or have a low body mass index (BMI).
Earlier studies found that people who are overweight in middle age or earlier are at higher risk for Alzheimer's later in life. Other studies have shown that being overweight later in life seems to protect against the disease.
More research needed
What the latest study findings mean for diagnosing or preventing Alzheimer's disease is unclear.
"A long history of declining weight or BMI could aid the diagnostic process," says study author Eric Vidoni, Ph.D., at the University of Kansas. But, he adds, it's too early "to make body composition part of the diagnostic toolbox."
Dr. Vidoni and colleagues studied brain imaging and analyzed cerebrospinal fluid in 506 people. Study participants ranged from those with no memory problems to others with Alzheimer's.
Impact of body weight
People who had evidence of Alzheimer's - either in brain scans or protein levels in the cerebrospinal fluid - were more likely to have a lower BMI than those who did not show early evidence of the disease.
The researchers aren't sure why body weight might have a bearing on Alzheimer's risk. They speculate that the disease may affect the hippocampus, the area of the brain that controls metabolism and appetite. Or, they say, perhaps inflammation is driving both the drop in BMI and the cognitive changes that are the hallmark of Alzheimer's.
For more information on health and wellness, please visit health information modules on this website.
Although you can't control certain risk factors for Alzheimer's disease like advancing age, you can reduce your odds of developing the condition. The latest findings show you can reduce risk by:
Always talk with your health care provider to find out more information.
(Our Organization is not responsible for the content of Internet sites.) | <urn:uuid:02eab517-43e9-4b5b-a99e-db4f220d208d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nyhq.org/diw/Content.asp?PageID=DIW010334&More=DIW | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940347 | 440 | 2.875 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
LESSON ONE: Transforming Everyday Objects
Marcel Duchamp: Bicycle Wheel, bicycle wheel on wooden stool, 1963 (Henley-on-Thames, Richard Hamilton Collection); © 2007 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris, photo credit: Cameraphoto/Art Resource, NY
Man Ray: Rayograph, gelatin silver print, 29.4×23.2 cm, 1923 (New York, Museum of Modern Art); © 2007 Man Ray Trust/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris, photo © The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Meret Oppenheim: Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure), fur-lined cup, diam. 109 mm, saucer, diam. 237 mm, spoon, l. 202 mm, overall, h. 73 mm, 1936 (New York, Museum of Modern Art); © 2007 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ProLitteris, Zurich, photo © Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY
Dada and Surrealist artists questioned long-held assumptions about what a work of art should be about and how it should be made. Rather than creating every element of their artworks, they boldly selected everyday, manufactured objects and either modified and combined them with other items or simply se-lected them and called them “art.” In this lesson students will consider their own criteria for something to be called a work of art, and then explore three works of art that may challenge their definitions.
Students will consider their own definitions of art.
Students will consider how Dada and Surrealist artists challenged conventional ideas of art.
Students will be introduced to Readymades and photograms.
Ask your students to take a moment to think about what makes something a work of art. Does art have to be seen in a specific place? Where does one encounter art? What is art supposed to accomplish? Who is it for?
Ask your students to create an individual list of their criteria. Then, divide your students into small groups to discuss and debate the results and come up with a final list. Finally, ask each group to share with the class what they think is the most important criteria and what is the most contested criteria for something to be called a work of art. Write these on the chalkboard for the class to review and discuss.
Show your students the image of Bicycle Wheel. Ask your students if Marcel Duchamp’s sculp-ture fulfills any of their criteria for something to be called a work of art. Ask them to support their obser-vations with visual evidence.
Inform your students that Duchamp made this work by fastening a Bicycle Wheel to a kitchen stool. Ask your students to consider the fact that Duchamp rendered these two functional objects unus-able. Make certain that your students notice that there is no tire on the Bicycle Wheel.
To challenge accepted notions of art, Duchamp selected mass-produced, often functional objects from everyday life for his artworks, which he called Readymades. He did this to shift viewers’ engagement with a work of art from what he called the “retinal” (there to please the eye) to the “intellectual” (“in the service of the mind.”) [H. H. Arnason and Marla F. Prather, History of Modern Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Photography (Fourth Edition) (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1998), 274.] By doing so, Duchamp subverted the traditional notion that beauty is a defining characteristic of art.
Inform your students that Bicycle Wheel is the third version of this work. The first, now lost, was made in 1913, almost forty years earlier. Because the materials Duchamp selected to be Readymades were mass-produced, he did not consider any Readymade to be “original.”
Ask your students to revisit their list of criteria for something to be called a work of art. Ask them to list criteria related specifically to the visual aspects of a work of art (such as “beauty” or realistic rendering).
Duchamp said of Bicycle Wheel, “In 1913 I had the happy idea to fasten a Bicycle Wheel to a kitchen stool and watch it turn.” [John Elderfield, ed., Studies in Modern Art 2: Essays on Assemblage (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1992), 135.] Bicycle Wheel is a kinetic sculpture that depends on motion for effect. Although Duchamp selected items for his Readymades without regard to their so-called beauty, he said, “To see that wheel turning was very soothing, very comforting . . . I en-joyed looking at it, just as I enjoy looking at the flames dancing in a fireplace.” [Francis M. Naumann, The Mary and William Sisler Collection (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1984), 160.] By en-couraging viewers to spin Bicycle Wheel, Duchamp challenged the common expectation that works of art should not to be touched.
Show your students Rayograph. Ask your students to name recognizable shapes in this work. Ask them to support their findings with visual evidence. How do they think this image was made?
Inform your students that Rayograph was made by Man Ray, an American artist who was well-known for his portrait and fashion photography. Man Ray transformed everyday objects into mysterious images by placing them on photographic paper, exposing them to light, and oftentimes repeating this process with additional objects and exposures. When photographic paper is developed in chemicals, the areas blocked from light by objects placed on the paper earlier on will remain light, and the areas exposed to light will turn black. Man Ray discovered the technique of making photograms by chance, when he placed some objects in his darkroom on light-sensitive paper and accidentally exposed them to light. He liked the resulting images and experimented with the process for years to come. He likened the technique, now known as the photogram, to “painting with light,” calling the images rayographs, after his assumed name.
Now that your students have identified some recognizable objects used to make Rayograph, ask them to consider which of those objects might have been translucent and which might have been opaque, based on the tone of the shapes in the photogram.
Now show your students Meret Oppenheim’s sculpture Object (Déjeuner en fourrure). Both Rayograph and Object were made using everyday objects and materials not traditionally used for making art, which, when combined, challenge ideas of reality in unexpected ways. Ask your students what those everyday objects are and how they have been transformed by the artists.
Ask your students to name some traditional uses for the individual materials (cup, spoon, saucer, fur) used to make Object. Ask your students what choices they think Oppenheim made to transform these materials and objects.
In 1936, the Swiss artist Oppenheim was at a café in Paris with her friends Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar. Oppenheim was wearing a bracelet she had made from fur-lined, polished metal tubing. Picasso joked that one could cover anything with fur, to which Oppenheim replied, “Even this cup and saucer.” [Bice Curiger, Meret Oppenheim: Defiance in the Face of Freedom (Zurich, Frankfurt, New York: PARKETT Publishers Inc., 1989), 39.] Her tea was getting cold, and she reportedly called out, “Waiter, a little more fur!” Soon after, when asked to participate in a Surrealist exhibition, she bought a cup, saucer, and spoon at a department store and lined them with the fur of a Chinese gazelle. [Josephine Withers, “The Famous Fur-Lined Teacup and the Anonymous Meret Oppenheim” (New York: Arts Magazine, Vol. 52, Novem-ber 1977), 88-93.]
Duchamp, Oppenheim, and Man Ray transformed everyday objects into Readymades, Surrealist objects, and photograms. Ask your students to review the images of the three artworks in this lesson and discuss the similarities and differences between these artists’ transformation of everyday objects.
Art and Controversy
At the time they were made, works of art like Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel and Oppenheim’s Object were controversial. Critics called Duchamp’s Readymades immoral and vulgar—even plagiaristic. Overwhelmed by the publicity Object received, Oppenheim sunk into a twenty-year depres-sion that greatly inhibited her creative production.
Ask your students to conduct research on a work of art that has recently been met with controversy. Each student should find at least two articles that critique the work of art. Have your students write a one-page summary of the issues addressed in these articles. Students should consider how and why the work chal-lenged and upset critics. Was the controversial reception related to the representation, the medium, the scale, the cost, or the location of the work? After completing the assignment, ask your students to share their findings with the class. Keep a list of shared critiques among the work’s various receptions.
Make a Photogram
If your school has a darkroom, have your students make photograms. Each student should collect several small objects from school, home, and the outside to place on photographic paper. Their collection should include a range of translucent and opaque objects to allow different levels of light to shine through. Stu-dents may want to overlap objects or use their hands to cover parts of the light-sensitive paper. Once the objects are arranged on the paper in a darkroom, have your students expose the paper to light for several seconds (probably about five to ten seconds, depending on the level of light) then develop, fix, rinse, and dry the paper. Allow for a few sheets of photographic paper per student so that they can experiment with different arrangements and exposures. After the photograms are complete, have your students discuss the different results that they achieved. Students may also make negatives of their photograms by placing them on top of a fresh sheet of photographic paper and covering the two with a sheet of glass. After ex-posing this to light, they can develop the paper to get the negative of the original photogram.
Encourage your students to try FAUXtogram, an activity available on Red Studio, MoMA's Web site for teens.
GROVE ART ONLINE: Suggested Reading
Below is a list of selected articles which provide more information on the specific topics discussed in this lesson. | <urn:uuid:31fab53b-eb78-4e38-ae2c-77d787710125> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oxfordartonline.com/public/page/lessons/Unit5Lesson1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946177 | 2,260 | 3.859375 | 4 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
ActiveMQ via C# using Apache.NMS Part 1
Java Message Service (JMS) is the de facto standard for asynchronous messaging between loosely coupled, distributed applications. Per the specification, it provides a common way for Java application to create, send, receive and read messages. This is great for enterprises or organizations whose architecture depends upon a single platform (Java), but the reality is that most organizations have hi-bred architectures consisting of Java and .NET (and others). Oftentimes these systems need to communicate using common messaging schematics: ActiveMQ and Apache.NMS satisfy this integration requirement.
The JMS specification outlines the requirements for system communication between Java Messaging Middleware and the clients that use them. Products that implement the JMS specification do so by developing a provider that supports the set of JMS interfaces and messaging semantics. Examples of JMS providers include open source offerings such as ActiveMQ, HornetQ and GlassFish and proprietary offerings such as SonicMQ and WebSphere MQ. The specification simply makes it easier for third parties to develop providers.
All messaging in JMS is peer-2-peer; clients are either JMS or non JMS applications that send and receive messages via a provider. JMS applications are pure Java based applications whereas non JMS use JMS styled APIs such as ActiveMQ.NMS which uses OpenWire, a cross language wire protocol that allows native access to the ActiveMQ provider.
JMS messaging schematics are defined into two separate domains: queue based and topic based applications. Queue based or more formally, point-to-point (PTP) clients rely on “senders” sending messages to specific queues and “receivers” registering as listeners to the queue. In scenarios where more a queue has more than one listener, the messages are delivered in a round-robin fashion between each listener; only one copy of the message is delivered. Think of this as something like a phone call between you and another person.
Topic based application follow the publish/subscribe metaphor in which (in most cases) a single publisher client publishes a message to a topic and all subscribers to that topic receive a copy. This type of messaging metaphor is often referred to as broadcast messaging because a single client sends messages to all client subscribers. This is some analogous to a TV station broadcasting a television show to you and any other people who wish to “subscribe” to a specific channel.
JMS API Basics
The JMS Standard defines a series of interfaces that client applications and providers use to send messages and receive messages. From a client perspective, this makes learning the various JMS implementations relatively easy, since once you learn one you can apply what you learned to another implementation relatively easily and NMS is no exception. The core components of JMS are as follows: ConnectionFactory, Connection, Destination, Session, MessageProducer, and MessageConsumer. The following diagram illustrates communication and creational aspects of each object:
NMS supplies similar interfaces to the .NET world which allows for clients to send messages to and from the ActiveMQ JMS via OpenWire. A quick rundown of the NMS interfaces are as follows:
Note that the Apache.NMS namespace contains several more interfaces and classes, but these are the essential interfaces that map to the JMS specification. The following diagram illustrates the signature that each interface provides:
The interfaces above are all part of the Apache.NMS 1.30 API available for download here. In order to use NMS in your .NET code you also need to down load the Apache.NMS.ActiveMQ client as well and to test your code, you will need to download and install the ActiveMQ broker, which is written in Java so it requires the JRE to be installed as well. The following table provides links to each download:
For my examples I will be using the latest release of Apache.NMS and Apache.NMS.ActiveMQ as of this writing time. You should simple pick the latest version that is stable. The same applies for ActiveMQ and the JDK/JRE…note that you only need the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) to host install ActiveMQ. Install the JDK if you want to take advantage of some the tools that it offers for working with JMS providers.
To start ActiveMQ, install the JRE (if you do not already have it installed – most people do already) and unzip the ActiveMQ release into a directory…in directory will do. Open a command prompt and navigate to the folder with the ActiveMQ release and locate the “bin” folder, then type ‘activemq”. You should see something like the following:
Download and install the Apache.NMS and Apache.NMS.ActiveMQ libraries from the links defined in the table above. Unzip them into a directory on your hard drive, so that you can reference them from Visual Studio.
Open Visual Studio 2008/2010 and create a new Windows project of type “Class Library”:
And once the project is created, using the “Add Reference” dialog, browse to the directory where you unzipped the Apache.NMS files defined above and a reference to the Apache.NMS.dll. Do the same for the Apache.NMS.ActiveMQ download. Note that each download contains builds for several different .NET versions; I chose the “net-3.5” version of each dll since I am using VS 2008 and targeting the 3.5 version of .NET.
For my examples you will also need to install the latest and greatest version NUnit from www.nunit.org. After you have installed NUnit, add a reference to the nunit.framework.dll. Note that any unit testing framework should work.
Add three classes to the project:
- A test harness class (ApacheNMSActiveMQTests.cs)
- A publisher class (TopicPublisher.cs)
- A subscriber class (TopicSubscriber.cs).
Your solution explorer should look something like the following:
The test harness will be used to demonstrate the use of the two other classes. The TopicPublisher class represents a container for a message producer and the TopicSubcriber represents a container for a message consumer.
The publisher, TopicPublisher is a simple container/wrapper class that allows a client to easily send messages to a topic. Remember from my previous discussion about topics that topics allow for broadcast messaging scenarios: a single publisher sends a message to one or more subscribers and that all subscribers will receive a copy of the message.
Message producers typically have a lifetime equal to the amount of time it takes to send a message, however for performance reasons you can extend the life out to the length of the application’s lifetime.
Like the TopicPublisher above, the TopicSubscriber class is container/wrapper class that allows clients to “listen in” or “subscribe” to a topic.
The TopicSubscriber class is typically has a lifetime that is the equal to the lifetime of the application. The reason is pretty obvious: a publisher always knows when it will publish, but a subscriber never knows when the publisher will send the message. What the subscriber does is create a permanent “listener” to the topic, when a publisher sends a message to the topic, the subscriber will receive and process the message.
The following unit test shows the classes above used in conjunction with the Apache.NMS and Apache.NMS.ActiveMQ API’s to send and receive messages to ActiveMQ which is Java based, from the .NET world!
Here is quick rundown of the ApachNMSActiveMQTests class:
- Declare variables for the required NMS objects and the TopicSubscriber
- Declare variables for the broker URI, the topic to subscribe/publish to, and the client and consumer ids
- Create a ConnectionFactory object, create and start a Connection, and then create a Session to work with.
- Create and start the TopicSubscriber which will be a listener/subscriber to the “TestTopic” topic. Also, to receive messages you must register an event handler or lambda expression with the MessageReceivedDelegate delegate. In this example I in-lined a lambda expression for simplicity.
- On the test the method, create a temporary publisher and send a message to the topic.
- Tear down and dispose of the subscriber and Session.
- Tear down and dispose of the Connection.
After you run the unit test you should see something like the following message:
Note that ActiveMQ must be up and running for the example to work. | <urn:uuid:73b23611-c6f1-4577-9ef2-cbb95d8098c3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rantdriven.com/2010/07/default.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.888875 | 1,808 | 2.625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Ever wonder what would happen if every single adult in the U.S. took a few hours each month to support a program that supports the well-being of children? Perhaps you would choose to advocate for a child in an unstable environment; or a child in poor health; or one who is struggling with their academics; or one who facing a bully? What kind of impact would that make on the future of our country?
I recently came across some information about National Make a Difference in Children Month; a grassroots call to action sponsored by long-time child advocate, Kim Ratz. The intention of this annual observance is to bring awareness on how our actions can make a positive difference to a child.
Ms. Ratz outlines 4 key actions we can take to have a direct impact on the life of a child on her Website:
1. Pick one (or more) event or activity to do with a child … that will make some kind of positive difference or impact on that child. Need ideas? Read 100+ Ways to Make a Difference to Children.
2. Support an organization that serves children …It could be your local community ed. or schools, YMCA, Boy or Girl Scouts, place of worship, park and recreation or any other organization that serves kids.
3. Tell your policy makers to support initiatives that are good for kids … like your school board, city council, county commissioners, state legislators & congressional delegation; summer is generally a more relaxed time to communicate with them. Share your own story about Making a Difference to Children … and WHY it’s important to support programs for children …
4. Tell other people about this campaign …like your neighbors, relatives, friends, people at work, worship, school or play.
Here are some more ideas from Early Childhood News and Resources on how you can make a difference to a child this month:
- Volunteer at a local center that helps teen or single mothers (or fathers)
- Volunteer with your local elementary school
- Help at a soup kitchen for needy families
- Help at church with Sunday School, VBS or another faith-based program
- Locate a service in your area that assists homeless children with school supplies, medical care or social-emotional development
- Volunteer to read for kids at your local library
- Teach classes at a local rec center or community center: arts, crafts, reading, sports, ASL, music, etc.
- Offer your time at the Foundation for the Blind (they often run children’s classes)
- Find a local farm that hosts classes for special needs kiddos and volunteer there (horse therapy, etc)
- Don’t have time to volunteer your time? How about a simple donation?
What can YOU do to help a child in need? Share your ideas and inspiration! | <urn:uuid:a9bc1e4e-7dcc-4fb4-8dfb-781c02a919cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.schoodoodle.com/weblog/2011/07/05/july-is-national-make-a-difference-in-children-month/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948812 | 580 | 2.59375 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Reading Classic Literatures
Classic literature, even though they were written fifty or hundred years ago, still has the power to affect the readers. The gift of literature to educate and inspire people transcends time. Unfortunately, not all people like to read classic literature. Sometimes, to understand classic literature, you have to be mature enough to enjoy and comprehend these writings.
Although we read classic literature because we have to do a report in school, we can also read them for enjoyment. You may have heard of famous authors of classical novels on the television and internet, you can check out their writings and their books.
If you really want to get into the habit of reading classical literature, you can start by reading 30 minutes every day. You should have a dictionary near you when reading classical novels since the words used are always deep or its meaning has changed over time.
To have a better understanding of the setting and the plot of the story, you can make a little background research on the era or its time period. You can also research on the background of the author.
You really have to follow the structure of the story. Most classical literature have complex storyline and plots which makes it hard sometimes to follow the story. The character development is also very extensive. Seeing the overall theme of the story is very important as well as following the basic development of the characters and their story.
There are literature companions that you can buy to help you get started with the classical literature. An example of a literature companion is the "Oxford Companion to Classical Literature."
Another key to understanding classic literature is by understanding the use of the footnotes. These classical literature are full of footnotes that references the social and culture elements of their time. | <urn:uuid:007f5583-acd1-46d2-9f51-3956850b8832> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.studyguide.org/reading-classic-literatures | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97326 | 348 | 3.203125 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Image: Sierra Nevada Corporation
Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Dream Chaser spacecraft is being prepared for its first test flights as part of NASA’s commercial space program, and it’s a design that wouldn’t look out of place on a poster stuck to a 10-year-old’s wall.
The Dream Chaser is one of three vehicles competing for NASA contracts to replace the space shuttle orbiters for transporting astronauts to the International Space Station and elsewhere in low Earth orbit. Unlike its capsule competitors from Boeing and SpaceX, the Dream Chaser is a flying, lifting body design that could land on a runway, much closer in concept to the orbiters that were retired in 2011.
Sierra Nevada announced that it will be partnering with veteran space vehicle maker and aerospace juggernaut Lockheed Martin to build the second Dream Chaser vehicle. The two companies will also collaborate on ongoing parts of NASA’s commercial crew program, which is currently in the Certification Products Contract phase. Sierra Nevada, SpaceX and Boeing are developing versions of their space vehicles that will meet NASA certification for safety and performance.
“The SNC team is thrilled that Lockheed Martin will be joining our expanding world-class team of partner organizations,” said Mark Sirangelo, head of Sierra Nevada’s space system group.
Lockheed Martin will build the next Dream Chaser at the facility in Michaud, Louisiana where the external tanks for the space shuttles were made. The company is no stranger to the current commercial space programs as it builds the Atlas V rocket (in a joint venture with Boeing) to be used by the Dream Chaser as well as Boeing’s CST-100 spacecraft.
Sierra Nevada says the first Dream Chaser spacecraft is currently bring prepared for transport at the company’s facility in Colorado. In the next few weeks SNC expects to transport the vehicle to Edwards Air Force Base in California’s Mojave Desert where flight testing will take place.
The Dream Chaser will be dropped from a helicopter at 12,000 feet and and is expected to reach speeds of around 300 knots (345 mph) before landing at a touchdown speed of around 180 knots (207 mph). For the initial test flights, the Dream Chaser will glide to the ground autonomously without a pilot. The glide flights are scheduled to begin within the next two months and Sierra Nevada says the flight test vehicle will make just a few flights to gather the data necessary to further refine the flight characteristics of the design.
The second Dream Chaser – built by Lockheed Martin – will be the vehicle used for sub-orbital flight testing that the company hopes will begin in the next two years. NASA is expected announce at least two companies to fly astronauts to low earth orbit by 2017.
Via FlowingData: http://flowingdata.com/ | <urn:uuid:4abc34f9-9bde-4342-be02-fb5417a2e9d5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.valveinteractive.com/press/tag/sierra-nevada/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93216 | 571 | 2.65625 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To establish in office; install.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To set or place; establish, as in a rank or condition.
- To invest.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To set, place, or establish, as in a rank, office, or condition; to install; to invest.
- From in- + state. (Wiktionary)
“North Carolina improved to 21-1 in instate tournament games, including 6-0 in games played here - home to Atlantic Coast Conference rival Wake Forest.”
“While this was not a war, the instate was the same.”
“But, the difficult national environment for Democrats coupled with a surge in Republican energy instate -- the result of the passage of a stringent immigration bill -- quickly turned the race into a serious contest.”
“Soccer Board of Directors voted to re-instate the provisional sanction.”
“After a first refusal, Obama says he'll now re-instate solar water heating to the White House roof, and will add photo-voltaic cells that will generate electricity.”
“If we want to avoid catastrophic climate change and avoid climate disaster, we need to instate a moratorium on drilling in the Arctic.”
“I think only money from instate sources should be allowed to pay for the campaign.”
“This seems like more of a power play to me: they want a worldwide governing body to oversee this and have them instate rules in place that will change our lives forever.”
“It's time to re-instate the tax breaks from the 2000-2004 period and we all have to face the fact that these bills must be paid.”
“Then if Congress really thinks this is incorrect, they can re-instate them.”
These user-created lists contain the word ‘instate’.
The only letters without a "satine" bingo possibility: J, Q, Y
Words found through Wordie's random word function. I didn't take phrases, foreign, misspelled, or madeupical words, so I looked at about 200 words to assemble this list.
I was surprise...
Looking for tweets for instate. | <urn:uuid:7182c3f0-5278-41e6-ae9b-bc961c31adc2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wordnik.com/words/instate | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933995 | 497 | 2.984375 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Volume 11, Number 3—March 2005
Rumor Surveillance and Avian Influenza H5N1
We describe the enhanced rumor surveillance during the avian influenza H5N1 outbreak in 2004. The World Health Organization’s Western Pacific Regional Office identified 40 rumors; 9 were verified to be true. Rumor surveillance informed immediate public health action and prevented unnecessary and costly responses.
In January 2004, 14 persons in Vietnam were admitted to provincial hospitals with severe respiratory illness (1). Avian influenza H5N1 was detected in samples from 3 of these patients. Health officials and the World Health Organization (WHO) were concerned, as these were sporadic cases of an influenza strain that normally infects birds exclusively (2). Furthermore, little was known about the extent of the outbreak, its potential for international spread, and the possible evolution of a pandemic influenza strain. WHO issued an international public health alert on January 13, 2004, to inform the world about the outbreak (1).
News of the outbreak led to international anxiety and the propagation of unofficial outbreak reports or disease rumors (3). These rumors could have led countries to impose trade and travel restrictions with negative social, economic, and health consequences (3,4). To protect both the international community and the affected countries, WHO introduced enhanced rumor surveillance for reports of avian influenza H5N1, a process of investigating unofficial reports of disease events to determine their veracity. Rumor surveillance aims to decrease the potential for misinformation and misunderstanding and to inform the public and health officials about disease outbreaks, facilitate a rapid response, and promote public health preparedness (3).
Rumor surveillance is a passive process, where rumors are identified from media reports, professional groups, the public, and persons in the WHO network, which is made up of WHO headquarters, country offices, and WHO Collaborating Centers. In an enhanced system, rumor surveillance is intensified by actively seeking out rumors and undertaking more rigorous follow up. This surveillance includes analyzing more media sources and regularly requesting information from the WHO network about outbreak events. Previous studies have examined the role of enhanced rumor surveillance during public health emergencies, such as the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 and the outbreak of Ebola in Uganda in 2000 (5,6). However, research has not examined the role of rumor surveillance in multicountry or regional outbreaks.
The importance of rumor surveillance is likely to increase as the international community considers the revised draft of the International Health Regulations (IHR). Article 8 of the IHR Working Paper (7) states, “WHO, in consultation with the health administration of the State concerned, shall verify rumors of public health risks which may involve or result in international spread of disease.”
During the avian influenza outbreak, WHO’s Western Pacific Regional Office (WPRO) was the focal point for identifying rumors and coordinating their investigations in the region (8). WPRO covers 37 nations and stretches from China in the north and west, to New Zealand in the south, and to French Polynesia in the east (9). This study examines whether the enhanced rumor surveillance undertaken by WPRO during the first 40 days of the outbreak achieved its aims of 1) offering timely assistance to potentially affected nations, 2) prompting countries to undertake preparedness measures appropriate to their level of risk of being affected, and 3) informing the public and the international community about relevant events.
WPRO designated a rumor surveillance officer to develop and implement the rumor surveillance system for avian influenza in animals and humans. This officer actively assessed media sources and email-based public health discussion and regularly contacted the WHO network to identify rumors. Media sources included journalists visiting WPRO and Web sites for television networks and newspapers. Most were English-based media sources; however, some were also in Japanese and Arabic. To increase the scope of the active media search, this officer also accessed the Global Public Health Intelligence Network (10), an electronic surveillance system that continuously monitors >600 media sources and biomedical journals in a number of languages, including Chinese, Spanish, English, and French.
Each rumor was followed up by an email or a telephone request to the relevant WHO country office to investigate its veracity. The WHO country office in turn sought verification from the country’s health authorities. Overall, the onus of the verification process was in the hands of the affected countries’ health authorities. The authorities had to demonstrate to WHO that appropriate investigations were conducted to deem rumors correct or incorrect. To ensure this process, WHO sometimes supported rumor verification by assisting in laboratory testing or shipment of isolates.
Once available, the outcome of the investigation was disseminated to WHO stakeholders, including the outbreak response team. For events reported in the media, WPRO’s media officers made information publicly available through press releases and media interviews, as well as providing up-to-date information on the WHO Web site (http://www.who.int).
From January 20 to February 26, 2004, a total of 40 rumors were identified, most within 4 weeks of the outbreak alert (Figure). The rumors concerned 12 countries and 1 special administrative region. Of the total rumors received, 19 (48%) were received from the media, 18 (45%) from the WHO network, 2 (5%) from embassy staff living in affected countries, and 1 (2%) from ProMED Digest with a media source as the origin. Nine (23%) rumors were confirmed to be true events: 5 in China and 1 each in Cambodia, Japan, Laos, and South Korea. Of the incorrect rumors, 6 were in China, 6 in Laos, 4 in Vietnam, 4 and in Hong Kong, 3 in Cambodia, 2 in Germany, and 1 each in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore.
The average period for verification of true events was 2.7 days (range 1–5 days). The average period to verify that a rumor was incorrect was 9.3 days (range 1–26 days). Sixty percent of the rumors related to human outbreaks, of which 1 was true, and 40% to animal outbreaks, of which 8 were true. The Table provides examples of rumors received during the 40-day study, the outcomes of the investigation, and the public health action taken. The remaining 32 rumors are not shown for reasons of brevity and privacy; however, not all rumors resulted in public health action after the verification process. This finding was expected because the high sensitivity of the system decreased the predictive value positive.
WPRO’s enhanced rumor surveillance system identified many rumors. Most were identified in the first few weeks after the public health alert. A similar pattern was also observed during the 2003 SARS outbreak, when most rumors were received within the first 7 weeks of the public health alert (11). The decreased rate of rumor detection later in the outbreak is consistent with Allport and Postman’s basic law of rumor (12). According to this law, the amount of rumors in circulation is roughly equal to the importance of the rumor multiplied by the uncertainty surrounding the rumor. We found that, as more information became available about the outbreaks and about the H5N1 virus, fewer rumors circulated. This decrease was despite the fact that the importance of the disease remained high because of the ongoing risk for evolution of a pandemic influenza strain.
Through rumor surveillance, WHO assisted affected countries by issuing guidelines, providing technical expertise, and mobilizing supplies. Unaffected countries also took action by banning the importation of poultry from affected countries. This action was crucial in preventing the further spread of avian influenza.
An important part of rumor surveillance is the timely dissemination of accurate information to reduce misunderstanding and unwarranted concern, especially for rumors reported in the media. One example was the need to address the international concern that arose about the rumor that pigs were infected with avian influenza (13). If the rumor had not been reported to be incorrect publicly after the verification process, health authorities may have heightened avian influenza surveillance to include the investigation of persons with symptoms of influenza and a history of contact with pigs.
The literature lacks guidance on how to establish and operate enhanced rumor surveillance during large outbreaks. Based on our experience and drawing on the recommendations in standard texts on public health surveillance (14,15), we suggest the following criteria for developing rumor surveillance: 1) Define the goals of surveillance as part of an early warning system in which each rumor deserves investigation to determine its veracity; 2) Apply a case definition that will have a high level of sensitivity (and therefore a relatively lower specificity) to identify the event of interest early in the outbreak; 3) Articulate clearly the steps to be undertaken to assess the veracity of the rumor, the criteria for deeming the verification process complete, and the ethics and confidentiality in conducting investigations; 4) Clarify the actions to be taken if the rumored events are true, or incorrect, or if the response of the verifying authority lacks credibility; 5) Delegate responsibility for data collection, management of the rumor database, and verification to a person trained in surveillance. This person must have access to relevant national and international networks and appropriate negotiation skills to investigate the veracity of the rumors. In selected instances, multilingual staff may be essential; 6) Include among the data sources print and electronic media, the Global Public Health Intelligence Network, national health authorities, and professional bodies and networks. Consider mechanisms for the public to report rumors through a hotline or an email address; 7) Develop mechanisms to provide regular updates on current verification activities, the number of rumors investigated, and their outcomes to the outbreak response team; 8) Provide regular feedback on the outcomes of investigations to those who provided data, and where appropriate, to the international community; and 9) Evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the investigations and upgrade the rumor surveillance system through a process of continuous quality improvement.
Ms. Samaan is completing a field epidemiology training program at the Australian National University and is currently working at the Australian Department of Health and Ageing. Her research interests include emergency disease outbreak response and mental health epidemiology.
We thank Roseanne Muller and Janet Li for their comments.
This research was supported by the Masters of Applied Epidemiology Program at Australian National University.
The Masters of Applied Epidemiology Program is funded by the Australian Department of Health and Ageing.
- World Health Organization. Avian influenza A (H5N1) in humans and poultry in Viet Nam. [cited 2003 May 14]. Available from http://www.who.int/csr/don/2004_01_13/en/
- Yuen KY, Chan PK, Peiris M, Tsang DN, Que TL, Shortridge KF, Clinical features and rapid viral diagnosis of human disease associated with avian influenza H5N1 virus. Lancet. 1998;351:467–71.
- Grein TW, Kamara KO, Rodier G, Plant AJ, Bovier P, Ryan MJ, Rumors of disease in the global village: outbreak verification. Emerg Infect Dis. 2000;6:97–102.
- Health Canada. Learning from SARS: renewal of public health in Canada, October 2003. [cited 2003 May 14]. Available from http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/english/protection/warnings/sars/learning.html
- Rahu M. Health effects of the Chernobyl accident: fears, rumors and the truth. Eur J Cancer. 2003;39:295–9.
- Okware SI, Omaswa FG, Zaramba S, Opio A, Lutwama JJ, Kamugisha J, An outbreak of Ebola in Uganda. Trop Med Int Health. 2002;7:1068–75.
- World Health Organization. International health regulations: working paper for regional consultations. [cited 2004 Jun 21]. Available from http://www.who.int/csr/resources/publications/csrpublications/en/index8.htm
- World Organization for Animal Health. Update on avian influenza in animals in Asia. [cited 2004 May 15]. Available from http://www.oie.int/downld/AVIAN%20INFLUENZA/A_AI-Asia.htm
- World Health Organization Western Pacific Regional Office. In brief. [cited 2004 Oct 6]. Available from http://www.wpro.who.int/in_brief.asp
- World Health Organization. Epidemic intelligence—systematic event detection. [cited 2004 Oct 6]. Available from http://www.who.int/csr/alertresponse/epidemicintelligence/en/
- Muller R. Chasing rumors: a field placement with the WHO SARS team in Manila April–June 2003. The Northern Territory Disease Control Bulletin 2003;10:1–4. Available from: http://www.nt.gov.au/health/cdc/bulletin/June_2003.pdf
- Allport GW, Postman L. The psychology of rumor. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston; 1947.
- Health e-line. Bird flu death toll hits 18, pigs in focus. Reuters Health Online. 2004 Feb 6. Available from http://www.nt.gov.au/health/cdc/bulletin
- Teutsch SM, Churchill RE, eds. Principles and practice of public health surveillance. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press; 2000.
- Thacker SB, Birkhead GS. Surveillance. In: Gregg MB, editor. Field epidemiology. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press; 2002. p. 26–50.
Suggested citation for this article: Samaan G, Patel M, Olowokure B, Roces MC, Oshitani H, and the World Health Organization Outbreak Response Team. Rumor surveillance and avian influenza. Emerg Infect Dis [serial on the Internet] 2005 Mar [date cited]. http://dx.doi.org/10.3201/eid1103.040657
1WHO Western Pacific Region Team: Richard Brown, Maria Roces, Elizabeth Miranda, Peter Cordingley, Karen Shaw, Masahiro Ueno, Kumi Ueno, Lance Jennings, Akira Suzuki, Reiko Sato, Kevin Carroll, and Clara Witt.
Comments to the Authors
Lessons from the History of Quarantine, from Plague to Influenza A | <urn:uuid:35b1806c-e026-4097-aa0c-64e1d238bdf3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/11/3/04-0657_article.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923009 | 2,959 | 2.9375 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Japan has been hit by the worst crisis since 1945, as an earthquake and tsunami have killed 10,000, destroyed tens of thousands of buildings, displaced hundreds of thousands, and left millions without power or water. As the nation braces for more aftershocks, people have resorted to using sea water in an attempt to prevent a nuclear meltdown from adding a third catastrophe, which has already leaked and caused a mass evacuation. According to Greenpeace,
"We are told by the nuclear industry that things like this cannot happen with modern reactors, yet Japan is in the middle of a nuclear crisis with potentially devastating consequences…The evolving situation at Fukushima remains far from clear, but what we do know is that contamination from the release of Cesium-137 poses a significant health risk to anyone exposed. Cesium-137 has been one if the isotopes causing the greatest health impacts following the Chernobyl disaster, because it can remain in the environment and food chain for 300 years.”
Whereas the first two catastrophe’s were natural and unpredictable, a nuclear meltdown is entirely unnatural and entirely predictable. According to the local anti-nuclear group, Citizens’ Nuclear Information Centre,
The nuclear crisis comes a month before the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, the largest nuclear meltdown in history, which showered Europe in a radioactive cloud causing a quarter of a million cancers, 100,000 of them fatal. As of this writing the disaster in Japan is already the third worst in history, behind Chernobyl and the Three Mile Island partial meltdown in 1979, and comes only 12 years after a fatal overexposure of workers at a nuclear plant in Tokaimura, Japan. Even without the inherent risk of a meltdown, nuclear power is a threat to health. The problem is not just the few terrible times when they don't work, but the daily experience of when they do work. As climate campaigner George Monbiot wrote more than a decade ago,
“The children of women who have worked in nuclear installations, according to a study by the National Radiological Protection Board, are eleven times more likely to contract cancer than the children of workers in non-radioactive industries. You can tell how close to [the nuclear plant in] Sellafield children live by the amount of plutonium in their teeth.”
Add to this the morbidity and mortality or working in uranium mines and the dangers of disposing of radioactive waste, and you have negative health impacts at every stage of nuclear power (for a summary see the UK’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament). Despite this, governments have invested massively in the nuclear industry and globalized the risk. Canada has exported nuclear reactors while building seven of its own, and despite concerns about safety the Ontario government plans on investing $36 billion into nuclear power at the same time as its backing off wind power.
REASONS AND EXCUSES
While nuclear power is a clear and present danger to the health of the planet and its people, it is a thriving industry driven by economic and military competition. Vandana Shiva—who studied nuclear physics and now leads the climate justice movement in India—has exposed the hypocrisy of US hostility to Iranian nuclear power when it is doing the same thing to promote nuclear power and weapons in India as a bulwark against China:
As Shiva summarized in her book Soil Not Oil, “nuclear winter is not an alternative to global warming”, and it is a tragedy that Japan has become the test case against both military and civilian arms of the nuclear industry--from the atomic bomb 65 years ago to the nuclear meltdown today. But instead of admitting the problems of nuclear power, the nuclear industry and its supporters have greenwashed it and presented it as a solution to global warming. Some environmentalists, such as Gaia theorist James Lovelock, have fallen prey to these claims. Lovelock, whose ideas are driven by apocalyptic predictions and an extreme pessimism, has gone so far as to claim that “nuclear power is the only green solution”.While former US president George Bush defended his country’s 103 nuclear power plants as not producing "a single pound of air pollution or greenhouses gases”, Dr. Helen Caldicott has refuted the claim in her important book Nuclear Power is Not the Answer, which proves that even without meltdowns nuclear power is a threat to the planet:
The false dichotomy between carbon emissions and nuclear power is also refuted by those developing the Tar Sands, who have proposed using nuclear power to pump Tar Sands oil.
PEOPLE POWER, GREEN JOBS
Fortunately there are growing anti-nuclear campaigns uniting indigenous groups, NGOs and the broader climate justice movement to challenge nuclear power in all its stages—from mining to use to waste disporal. As Vandana Shiva writes in Soil Not Oil,
Meanwhile in Canada indigenous groups are leading opposition to transportation of nuclear waste through the Great Lakes and their surrounding communities, declaring “what we do to the land, we do to ourselves.” Last year the German government extended nuclear power against the will of the majority but after news of the leak in Japan, 50,000 people formed a human chain from a nuclear reactor to Stuttgart demanding an end to nuclear power.
Uniting these campaigns with the labour movement raises the demands of good green jobs for all, to transform our oil and nuclear economy into one based on ecological and social sustainability and justice. Instead of the billions in subsidies for the nuclear industry, governments could be investing in solar, wind and clean electricity, while retrofitting buildings, which could solve the economic and climate crises without the inherent dangers of nuclear power. As Greenpeace wrote,
"Our thoughts continue to be with the Japanese people as they face the threat of a nuclear disaster, following already devastating earthquake and tsunami. The authorities must focus on keeping people safe, and avoiding any further releases of radioactivity...Greenpeace is calling for the phase out of existing reactors, and no construction of new commercial nuclear reactors. Governments should invest in renewable energy resources that are not only environmentally sound but also affordable and reliable.” | <urn:uuid:f8f50eee-35e0-4fe2-8425-891ee98718b0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://yourheartsontheleft.blogspot.com/2011/03/nuclear-meltdown-is-not-alternative-to.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947521 | 1,235 | 3.1875 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |
Photography - Overview
The millions of photographs in the Museum's collections compose a vast mosaic of the nation's history. Photographs accompany most artifact collections. Thousands of images document engineering projects, for example, and more record the steel, petroleum, and railroad industries.
Some 150,000 images capture the history, art, and science of photography. Nineteenth-century photography, from its initial development by W. H. F. Talbot and Louis Daguerre, is especially well represented and includes cased images, paper photographs, and apparatus. Glass stereographs and news-service negatives by the Underwood & Underwood firm document life in America between the 1890s and the 1930s. The history of amateur photography and photojournalism are preserved here, along with the work of 20th-century masters such as Richard Avedon and Edward Weston. Thousands of cameras and other equipment represent the technical and business side of the field. | <urn:uuid:4c09ccb6-b489-4574-9e82-73f3859b7df4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/subjects/photography?edan_start=0&edan_fq=name%253A%2522U.S.+Forest+Service%2522 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924803 | 190 | 3.046875 | 3 | HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu/sample-100BT |