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This Atlas for Young Explorers provides just the right amount of information for young minds looking to learn about each state in the union. Sidebars provide stats, the state bird and flower, and interesting facts, while photographs of unique locations surround a state map. Major routes, economy symbols, national parks, major towns, and bodies of water are noted. Organized by region, each new unit includes area statistics, including total area, lowest points, largest lakes, vegetation, population, states included, most/least populous states, etc. Icons next to certain photos point readers to the atlas website with photos, video, audio, games, and additional information. United States maps include physical, natural environment, natural hazard, political, population, migration, and greening maps. 175 indexed pages, hardcover with dust jacket. 14" x 10.5". 3rd Edition.
Customer Reviews for National Geographic United States Atlas for Young Explorers, Third Edition
This product has not yet been reviewed. Click here to continue to the product details page.
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People around the world are celebrating the anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth on February 12, 1809. (Maybe you can find a Darwin Day event near you.) To mark the day, I thought I’d share this quote from The Descent of Man, which has particular resonance for me because it seems related to what I’ve been reading in Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.
As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races. If, indeed, such men are separated from him by great differences in appearance or habits, experience unfortunately shews us how long it is, before we look at them as our fellow-creatures. Sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is, humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions. It is apparently unfelt by savages, except towards their pets. How little the old Romans knew of it is shewn by their abhorrent gladiatorial exhibitions. The very idea of humanity, as far as I could observe, was new to most of the Gauchos of the Pampas. This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings. As soon as this virtue is honoured and practised by some few men, it spreads through instruction and example to the young, and eventually becomes incorporated in public opinion.
The Descent of Man, Chapter III: Comparison Of The Mental Powers Of Man And The Lower Animals
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Extreme, catastrophic flood events like the one that swamped Louisiana last month are becoming more likely because of climate change, according to a hot-off-the-press analysis by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The study found that the record rainfall responsible for last month’s epic floods—the worst natural disaster to hit the United States since superstorm Sandy—was made at least 40 percent more likely by global warming. The researchers arrived at that conclusion by applying a new but increasingly popular statistical approach called “weather attribution.” Details of the analysis, which is currently under peer review, can be found in the open-access journal Hydrology and Earth System Sciences.
“We found human-caused, heat-trapping greenhouse gases can play a measurable role in events such as the August rains that resulted in such devastating floods, affecting so many people,” NOAA geophysicist Karin van der Wiel said in a statement. “While we concluded that 40 percent is the minimum increase in the chances of such rains, we found that the most likely impact of climate change is a near doubling of the odds of such a storm.”
The no-name storm began around August 11th when a low-pressure air mass rumbled up the Gulf of Mexico, stalling out over the Louisiana coast for several days. As I explained at the time, a combination of high air and sea surface temperatures fed an incredible amount of moisture into this system—moisture that was then hauled inland and unleashed over neighborhoods from Baton Rouge to Livingston. Over several days, the storm dumped three times as much rainfall as Hurricane Katrina, with some locations receiving 20 inches of precipitation in just 48 hours. Rivers overflowed and flooding ensued.
By August 17th, flood waters had claimed 13 lives, more than 30,000 people had been rescued, and over 60,000 homes suffered damage.
For some, it’s easy to look at an event like this and pinpoint the fingerprints of climate change. After all, records show that the frequency of heavy downpours has increased along the Gulf Coast since the mid-20th century, which makes sense because a warmer atmosphere can hold and dump more water. And yet, the majority of meteorologists are still reticent to discuss climate change in their reporting, due to a combination of cultural and political factors, and the relative novelty of scientific research tying planet-wide changes to weather.
That’s why the attribution studies now being done by NOAA and others are so critical. They are building a foundation that legitimizes the connection between extreme weather and climate change through statistics.
In the new study, scientists at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and elsewhere examined the risk of devastating, three-day flood events along the central Gulf Coast from the early 20th century to the present. Observational data told the researchers that the frequency of extreme flooding had indeed increased in this part of the country. Using climate models, they were able to reproduce a similar uptick in flood frequency by increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. That’s the attribution part.
According to NOAA’s models, the odds of a Louisiana-like downpour drenching the central Gulf Coast have increased by at least 40 percent since 1900. It’s worth noting that changes in the frequency of heavy downpours are unlikely to be limited to the Gulf Coast. Climate models show that while some areas, notably the southwestern United States, are expected to become drier this century, others, including the midwest and Pacific Northwest, will likely see an uptick in the number of extreme rainfall days.
The point of doing all this is not to arrive at some arcane statistical conclusion. It’s to help emergency responders, planners, and the public understand how weather risks are changing so that we, as a society, can be better prepared. The planet is changing whether we like it or not, and it’s time to adapt.
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Tech moves fast! Stay ahead of the curve with Techopedia!
Join nearly 200,000 subscribers who receive actionable tech insights from Techopedia.
File eXchange Protocol (FXP) is a protocol that allows transferring files from one FTP server to another FTP server using an FXP client. The data is transferred from one remote FTP server to another inter-server without routing the data through the client’s connection.
FXP enables a direct connection between two hosts and reduces the time by removing the middle step of transferring files from an FTP server to a local machine. In a FXP session, there is a standard FTP connection established between two servers by the client. Either of the two servers can be directed to connect to the other to transfer data. The data transfer rate is independent of the Internet connection speed of the client machine because it only depends on the connection speed of the two hosts, which is generally faster than the user’s Internet connection. The standard FTP information, such as transfer progress and connection speed, cannot be seen in client software. A successful or failed transfer is the only message a user sees. All remote servers must support PASV mode, and permit PORT commands, to use FXP.
Though FXP is effective, the network administrators disable FXP in the FTP server software because of the security risks such as server vulnerability to warez and FTP bounce.
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I know that if you're going to inherit from multiple classes that both have the same base, it's much "cleaner" to have them virtually inherit from the base. My question is, what does the "virtual" keyword do and why not just put it on every inheritance to allow later possible multiple inheritance (assuming that fits your model)?
In other words, if I have a class "A" that inherits from "B" and "C" which both inherit from "D" and I know that "A" might (but also might not) be included in some other class' multiple inheritance (say class "F" that inherits from "A" and "G" both) is it OK to do:
Does that make any difference performance/memory wise?Code:
class A : public virtual B, public virtual C
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Click here to learn more.
Let's face it: If you own a cat, you might as well buy stock in a lint roller company. Unless your kitty is a Sphynx — a relatively hairless cat — it’s normal for your little fuzz ball to shed some hair around the house. (Some breeds may also inherit genes for hair loss, such as Siamese cats, who often lose hair on their ears.)
But if your cat is losing abnormal amounts of hair, or if you notice patches of skin devoid of hair, it’s time to visit your veterinarian.
Even if there's absolutely, positively no way that your cat could have fleas, certain patterns of hair loss — especially around the thighs, abdomen, lower back and flanks — are typically caused by them. Many cats with infestations are such good groomers that they lick away any evidence of the buggers. Other tiny external parasites, such as mites and lice, can also cause hair loss.
Cats who are allergic to their food or inhaled substances may experience hair loss around the head and neck, as well as other areas. The exposed skin may appear relatively normal or it may show signs of a secondary bacterial infection, including inflammation or ulceration. Your veterinarian may recommend a trial with a hypoallergenic food, as well as additional allergy tests to get to the bottom of the problem.
Bacterial or fungal infections, an inflammation of the sebaceous glands, or even skin cancer can also lead to hair loss in affected areas.
There are many factors that can also disrupt the normal hair growth cycle, leading to sudden hair loss, such as metabolic or endocrine conditions, pregnancy and drug interactions.
Sudden changes in the household — a new baby or pet or even construction workers in the house — can lead to stress and overgrooming. In this case, the pattern of hair loss tends to be symmetrical and occurs anywhere that the cat can reach with her tongue, including the belly, groin, limbs and flanks. If you find more hairballs than usual on the floor, it may be a clue.
Diseases, such as hyperthyroidism, can also lead to overgrooming. And cats with diabetes often have unkempt coats, hair loss and a greater susceptibility to skin infections. Even inflammation in the urinary tract may cause felines to lick the hair off the skin directly above the bladder.
With so many possible reasons for hair loss, it’s not always easy to find the exact cause of the problem. Your veterinarian may recommend diagnostic tests, including skin scrapes, fungal cultures, blood panels, allergy testing, diet trials or skin biopsies to determine the right diagnosis and treatment for your cat.
With proper treatment, your cat will once again have a full, luxurious coat in most cases. And you’ll still need to keep that lint roller handy.
Like this article? Have a point of view to share? Let us know!
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ITRC Fact Sheet 145
The increasing use of smartphones for daily activities is a growing concern when it comes to personal information that is stored on your device. This information may be in danger of accidental exposure.
Phone Application Access: Before downloading any app, consider reviewing the information the phone app is asking permission to access. Apps for smartphones running on the Android operating system will disclose the information the application is requesting access to in order to run. This access may allow the app to control, change or modify information on your phone.
The information will vary depending on the app’s requirements. For example, the smartphone app may request permission to access the following:
- Network Communication which will allow for full access to the Internet.
- System Tools to prevent the phone from sleeping and allow the app to retrieve running applications.
- Phone Calls may reveal users phone information, state and identity.
- Your personal information which will read owner data and contact data.
- Storage which could allow for SD card content to be modified or deleted.
- Hardware controls which could enable the app to record audio and/or take pictures.
For Android phones, the user has to either allow or deny access to this information. If the user has granted the application permission to the information requested by the app, the user will be able to download the app. However, if the access is denied, the user will not be able to download the app.
For iPhone users, Apple does not require app developers to disclose the information an app will request permission to access. BlackBerry allows the user to modify the apps’ permission levels. For more information refer to ITRC Fact sheet FS 146: Smartphone Privacy and Security.
Updates: App updates and software updates are important to keeping your device and apps up-to-date. These updates are important because they provide solutions to previous app problems, such as bugs, in the device’s operating system. It is important to download the latest updates to protect your device from these problems that may give rise to others.
Email Accounts: Smartphones allow the user to have access to one or more email accounts. These accounts have a continued log-in access, unless disabled. The problem is the user may use email communication for many types of activities. This may include bank account transactions, transfer confirmations, payment confirmations, sending out resumes, retrieving forgotten passwords, and any other form of communication that displays sensitive personal information.
Password protected or not?
Every smartphone can be password protected or locked through a pattern code. Whether it is a feature already present in the phone’s settings or available through downloading an app, a smartphone can be protected. If your smartphone is lost or stolen, it could make a difference in allowing a hacker to gain access to your phone’s information.
For example: The iPhone offers the ‘Passcode Lock’ feature under Settings.
Smartphone Wiping: If available, consider turning on the ‘Data Protection’ feature on your phone. If your smartphone device does not offer a similar feature, consider enrolling in a Data Wiping service. Such services may be available through your cellphone provider. For more information on Wiping Services refer to ITRC Fact Sheet FS 144: Smartphone Safety.
For example: The iPhone offers the “Data Protection” feature under Settings. After 10 failed passcode attempts, all the data on the phone will be erased.
What is Jail-breaking / Rooting? Jail-breaking is breaking into the phone’s operating system to allow the phone to run apps that are not approved for that specific phone. For instance, the smartphone user wants an app that is not available or authorized for use with Apple or Android devices. This process is called “rooting” on the Android platform.
Apple is strict with its applications. It takes several steps to ensure the vetting of applications before they are allowed on the App Store. However, jail-breaking the iPhone will allow users to download apps from the Cydia App Store and to change various features on their phone. The problem with this is that Cydia Apps are not authorized for use by Apple.
Both jail-breaking and rooting are suspected of putting your device at risk for mobile malware, which can result in programs or software being installed to your phone without your knowledge. Malware software can monitor and steal the data stored in your device. Another threat is the fact that jail-breaking or rooting your device requires the user to download a program to a PC or MAC in order to complete the process. This process may put both the smartphone and computer at risk of a malware attack. Many users have reported that certain JailBreakMe programs have infected their devices.
Please note that Apple does not support jail-breaking. In fact, it may be the case that if the iPhone is jail-broken, or an Android device is rooted, the phone’s warranty may be voided.
Applications: A major concern about apps is the type of personal information that apps can access - the information stored in your device. Every app is privy to certain information on a device; however, such information varies widely depending on the type of app that the user downloads.
- Banking applications hold user names and passwords.
- Bill Tracking Applications hold account numbers, company names, dates, etc.
- Fake Text / Fake Telephone Call Applications allow text messages to be sent to recipient. Recipient will receive the text message or phone call under a different name thinking it is someone else. Information may be shared and the user may be sharing information with the wrong individual.
- Credit Card Swiping Applications provide ability to obtain credit card information for payments. However, what happens if safety precautions are not taken to protect the information?
- GPS (Global Positioning System) Applications store information under favorites for Navigation Apps. Also, if GPS is enabled, geotagging is enabled as well.
Accounts linked to Credit Cards: Smartphones can link financial accounts and shopping accounts, like PayPal and Ebay, to credit card or debit card numbers.
- Android Google Market Apps require a PayPal account for purchase.
- Apple’s App Store requires Apple account and password to grant permission to download
- Banking Apps require user ID, password, and sometimes even PIN for access.
- Shopping Apps may memorize account numbers for facilitation of payment.
For safety and privacy, consider inputting information for each transaction as opposed to having the phone memorize the accounts and passwords.
Direct Carrier Billing: Every wireless carrier offers a form of direct carrier billing. Verizon Wireless lets customers buy ringtones, ringback tones, and songs and allows them to pay for the transactions on their monthly phone bill. T-Mobile recently announced the expansion of such direct carrier services to browser-based purchases for any of T-Mobile’s smartphones. This means if you use direct carrier billing and purchase something online, you will be billed for that item in your monthly cell phone bill. The convenience about direct carrier billing is not providing your credit card information when making purchases.
Watch our Hands-On Privacy Videos
Hands-On Privacy with Your Mobile Apps
Hands-On Privacy on Your Mobile Device
Hands-On Privacy on Your Social Media
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More Practice/Help on HCF & LCM Problem Sums
Posted May 11, 2009on:
Problem sums on HCF and LCM can be really tricky as they are not easy to identify. Thus for this post, the main focus is not on going through how to find HCF and LCM (please refer to your notes on those), but more importantly to go through how to determine when to find the HCF and when to find the LCM of the numbers involved in the problem sums.
There will be some problem sums for you to try out at the end of the post, but first let’s take a look at a typical problem involving the HCF.
HCF – A Typical Problem
3 strings of different lengths, 240 cm, 318 cm and 426 cm are to be cut into equal lengths. What is the greatest possible length of each piece?
If you notice, finding the HCF is crucial here because you are trying to find what the 3 numbers have in common, i.e. a common factor. All 3 numbers must be able to be divided by the same number in order for all 3 strings to be cut into equal lengths. HCF is needed here because you are asked to find the greatest possible length.
LCM – A Typical Problem
Two lighthouses flash their lights every 20s and 30s respectively. Given that they flashed together at 7pm, when will they next flash together?
One method to finding the next time the lighthouses flash together is:
20, 40, 60
30, 60, 90
60 is a multiple common to 20 and 30, and thus the lighthouses will flash together in 60s’ time, i.e. at 7:01pm.
This is the same as finding the lowest common multiple, or LCM:
There are other different types of problems involving LCM, but just remember that such questions involve you trying to find a multiple that is common to the numbers involved.
Try out the problem sums below and see if you get them right! The starred ones require a little more thinking ;)
1. As a humanitarian effort, food ration is distributed to each refugee in a refugee camp. If a day’s ration is 284 packets of biscuits, 426 packets of instant noodles and 710 bottles of water, how many refugees are there in the camp? [142 refugees]
2. 294 blue balls, 252 pink balls and 210 yellow balls are distributed equally among some students with none left over. What is the biggest possible number of students? [42 students]
3. A group of girls bought 72 rainbow hairbands, 144 brown and black hairbands, and 216 bright-coloured hairbands. What is the largest possible number of girls in the group? [72 girls]
4. A man has a garden measuring 84 m by 56 m. He wants to divide them equally into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of each square plot? [28 m]
5. Leonard wants to cut identical square as big as he can from a piece of paper 168 mm by 196 mm. What is the length of each square? [28 cm]
6.* 32 girls and 52 boys were on an overseas learning trip, and they were divided into as many groups as possible where the number of groups of girls and the number of groups of boys are the same. How many girls and how many boys are there in each group? [8 girls, 13 boys]
7. A small bus interchange has 2 feeder services that start simultaneously at 9am. Bus number 801 leaves the interchange at 15-min intervals, while bus number 802 leaves at 20-min intervals. On a particular day, how many times did both services leave together from 9 am to 12 noon inclusive? [4 times]
8. Candice, Gerald and Johnny were jumping up a flight of stairs. Candice did 2 steps at a time, Gerald 3 steps at time while Johnny 4 steps at a time. If they started on the bottom step at the same, on which step will all 3 land together the first time? [12th step]
9. Heidi helps out at her mum’s stall every 9 days while her sister every 3 days. When will they be together if they last helped out on June 16 2008? [June 25 2008]
10. A group of students can be further separated into groups of 5, 13 and 17. What is the smallest possible total number of students? [1105 students]
11. Jesslyn goes to the market every 64 days. Christine goes to the same market every 72 days. They met each other one day. How many days later will they meet each other again? [576 days]
12.*Mrs Goh and 3 of her friends went to a supermarket and found that a package of 6 dishcloths cost $10. If they were to share the purchase such that each has the same number of dishcloths, what is the minimum amount each has to pay? [$5]
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This past summer, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment launched 'EcoLiteracy,' a new series meant to facilitate 'better informed decision making for environmental policy.' Each article is written by educators who have found new and interesting ways to teach their students about ecology, management, and conservation. The latest installment in the series, by Carmen Cid and Richard Pouyat, focuses on the ecology of human-dominated landscapes. The authors argue that true ecoliteracy can only be achieved by recognizing humans as an influential and integral part of many modern ecosystems, and by studying those ecosystems in their entirety.
Cid and Pouyat begin by highlighting a major shift that has taken place within the field of ecology in recent years: our growing awareness that humans are an integral and influential part of ecosystems far and wide. Where scientists might previously have investigated 'ecology in the city,' they are increasingly now examining 'ecology of the city.' This shift in perspective allows an improved understanding of 'the feedbacks between the human and biophysical components of ecosystems.'
While this is certainly a step forward, the authors argue that it still falls short of what we can achieve. They promote a more 'human-centered' approach whereby scientists cease to be merely observers, and instead become a more integral part of the ecosystem being examined. This shift to a 'place-based' perspective should inevitably make researchers more aware of the implications and potential applications of their observations, since it facilitates recognition of both the needs of a society and the likely impacts of policy decisions. While place-based work has previously been done in several long-term study sites, these rarely have been areas with large human footprints (in modern times, at least).
One advantage of place-based research is that it increases opportunities for collaborations within the community and the pursuit of citizen science projects. Individuals, organizations, and government bodies would have the opportunity to engage with all steps of the scientific process--something that not would only improve their ecoliteracy, but also potentially foster attachment to nature and investment in, and ownership of, new policies and management practices. These sorts of projects will inevitably be interdisciplinary, which is why, the authors write, 'we need to train some ecologists to work at the interface of science, policy, and management, and to teach graduate students not only research skills but also communication, management, and "people" skills.'
Communicators, managers, scientists, and policy writers can all contribute to designing and advocating these new cross-disciplinary approaches, but Cid and Pouyat believe that ecologists can take the lead by pursuing outreach activities that target a wide range of audiences. Partnerships with NGOs, religious institutions, media organizations, and educators can all be used to improve local knowledge, create dialogues, and solicit participation in collaborative projects. For this to be possible, however, the authors insist that it is crucial for ecologists to 'improve [their] delivery (translation and medication) of ecological knowledge' and 'be actively involved in managing the "supply and demand" of such knowledge.'
Cid, C.R. and Pouyat, R.V. 2013. Making ecology relevant to decision making: the human-centered, place-based approach. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 11(8):447-448.
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In the light of my post a couple of days ago about the newly-released computer game 'Call Of Duty: Black Ops', I found this article very interesting.
Computer games are dangerously addictive and contain powerful psychological devices designed to make some fans play compulsively, a Panorama investigation will reveal tonight.
A simple technique based on a 1950s study of rats feeding themselves by pressing a lever, which encourages repeat behaviour by rewarding it at random, has effectively been adapted for use in gaming and is feared to encourage addiction.
The situation is so serious that the industry body United Kingdom Interactive Entertainment is now calling for more research on the issue and promising to publish advice for parents helping them to look out for excessive and problem gaming traits in their children.
The programme, Panorama: Addicted to Games?, quotes award-winning computer games designer Adrian Hon, chief creative officer of SixToStart, who admitted that that the technique once used on rats was now common place in computer games.
He told the BBC: ‘In the 1950s scientists discovered that rats which had been trained to feed themselves by pressing a lever, would press it obsessively if the food was delivered randomly.
‘People have discovered that this works on humans as well. If you give people a lever or a button to press and give them random rewards, they will press it all the time’.
In computer games, instead of food, players are randomly rewarded with extra lives or extra in-game features. The idea is to create a compulsion loop that keeps them wanting to play on.
The technique, called the variable ratio of reinforcement (or operant conditioning) is simple but powerful and is thought to be one of the reasons people become addicted to slot machines.
Mr Hon added: ‘I think people don’t necessarily understand how powerful some game mechanics can be.
‘It’s one thing to think "OK, I’m playing too much," but it’s another to just stop playing, because some games are designed in a manner that you just don’t want to leave.’
He warned that more and more children and young people in particular could be affected because games are becoming much more widespread and much more powerful.
The arrival of high speed broadband, which is scheduled to be rolled out across the UK in the next five years, will also cause more problems because it will enable easier access to online gaming.
Online games - which allow people to play with and against each other over the internet - have been described by the World Health Organisation as a serious threat to the mental health of young Europeans.
Joe Staley, 21, from Nottingham was so obsessed with Britain’s most popular game, Call of Duty, he lost his place at university.
The game has an 18 certificate and allows people to play rivals online.
He said: ‘I wouldn’t move from my bed. My controller would be at my side table, I would turn it on, play, and then I would realise it was about three o’clock in the afternoon.
‘It could be up to a full 12 hours or more or overnight. I couldn’t physically pull myself away from the game, I could go two or three days without sleep just because I was playing a game, and that to me is an addiction.’
There's more at the link. Interesting and disturbing reading.
I know a great many people dismiss such concerns about computer gaming (particularly those who play them a lot!), but I'm not so sure. In counseling situations, I've frequently encountered individuals who were socially dysfunctional, their relationships deteriorating or collapsed altogether, because of the time they devoted to computer games, either stand-alone or online. Of course, some would argue that they were dysfunctional to begin with, and their use of computer games was thus a symptom, rather than the disease itself. That may or may not be true . . . but what I think is true is that computer games will aggravate any tendencies like that.
Food for thought.
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Definition of root ball in English:
The mass formed by the roots of a plant and the soil surrounding them.
- If a perennial has been in the same location for several years and you've noticed a decline in its flower output, dig up the plant and divide the root ball with a spade or hatchet into two, three or four pieces.
- They should easily survive transplanting as long as the soil around the root ball is not unduly disturbed as you lift the clumps from the garden.
- Tie the ends of the burlap to keep the root ball and soil intact, then lift the shrub - by the burlap and the bottom - into a wheelbarrow and move it to the new spot.
Definition of root ball in:
- US English dictionary
What do you find interesting about this word or phrase?
Comments that don't adhere to our Community Guidelines may be moderated or removed.
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Assembling a traditional tyre with ZEROFLATS requires some practice. In general, it’s the same as assembling a tubless tyre except that it may be more difficult that the tyre holds the air. With the following instrucions, it will be easier. If the tyre isn’t tubeless, you will need access to a compressor. You can try with CO2 cartridges but quite frankly, this is expensive, and doesn’t always work. And the pressure of the CO2 could make the sealant coagulate.
Hang the wheel so that it does not touch the ground throughout the process.
Attach the valve, without tightening. Using hands is sufficient.
Unscrew the valve core.
Assemble the tyre.
Make sure the beads of the tyre are well centered on the rim and it will be easier for you.
With a small brush, paint the inside of the beads of the tyre and rim with soapy water.
Do not apply too much water, just make the surface slippery which helps the beads locate on the rim.
Without applying the valve core, inflate the tyre with the compressor until it sits properly on the rim.
Let it deflate slowly. The tyre should be attached to the rim by the beads. Add a bottle of ZEROFLATS sealant via the valve.
Attach the valve core. Do not allow the wheel to touch the floor.
Inflate with any type of pump or compressor.
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Having an asthma attack feels like drowning. Inflamed, swollen airways make breathing difficult as a sudden spike in mucus production overwhelms narrowed bronchial tubes. Wheezing and coughing lead to pain, panic, and — in the worst cases — death. Eleven people die of asthma every day in the United States, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. Thirty thousand have asthma attacks.
Sara Triest wants to reduce those numbers. Having worked as a respiratory-care practitioner at Children's Hospital in Oakland for 29 years — in the emergency room and pulmonary-care unit and on the wards — she is now a consulting asthma educator, presenting programs for the public on this troubling condition that can be treated with medicine but can be difficult and time-consuming to diagnose.
"In many offices, doctors are allotted maybe ten minutes per patient," Triest lamented. "So it becomes this vicious revolving door as families come through, have that quick visit, yet never get the opportunity to go into depth" about symptoms that might indicate asthma, which can be hereditary, triggered by environmental factors, and linked with allergies.
"Allergies and asthma are first cousins," Triest said. "You can have allergies and no asthma or asthma and no allergies, but it's very common for an individual to have many allergies that trigger their asthma." According to the Mayo Clinic, common asthma triggers include air pollutants, pollen, pet dander, smoke, stress, sulfites in food, and even cockroaches.
"The area around the Port of Oakland has a really high incidence of asthma because of the large number of diesel trucks," said Triest, who teaches a workshop titled "Asthma and Allergies From a Western and Holistic Perspective" at the Emeryville Health and Wellness Center (1240 Powell St., Emeryville) on Wednesday, September 29.
Triest aims to empower participants as she teaches them about respiratory-system anatomy, assesses their breathing patterns, and discusses warning signs, medications, and other self-management steps. She hopes that what they learn "will help them feel assured enough to tell physicians what is and isn't working for them.
"I've seen too many people with asthma fall through the cracks," Triest continued. "Kids come into the emergency room and are hospitalized time after time because their doctors didn't have the time to be of real help. It's no one's fault. It's not the doctors' fault. It's our system that's failing people. It's simply not set up for us to take the time to be with each other. What insurance covers and doesn't cover is insane, and when people die because they can't get asthma medicine — I have no words for this."
Triest also offers programs for the homeless, whose constant exposure to the elements and other irritants puts them at high risk for asthma and allergies.
Providing tools for survival "can be a great comfort" in the face of a terrifying condition, she said. Asthma is about breath, after all. "Without breath, we have no life. It's at our core as human beings." 5:30 p.m., $10. 510-595-0302 or EmeryvilleHealthWellness.com
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Ukhanyo Primary School has recently received the results of the 2017 national systemic tests. Scott Smith, project leader at Masicorp’s Maths Lab at the school, explains the results and puts the very encouraging progress made into perspective for us.
Masicorp’s Maths Lab started operating in mid-year 2015 with 4th graders. In the 2017 school year, the program was expanded to include the 3rd grade teachers and their students. Third grade is an especially important year for all schools because that is when the national systemic tests are conducted for the first time.
The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) conducts systemic tests during October to assess the knowledge and skills of learners in language and mathematics in Grades 3, 6 and 9. The test results inform the WCED and schools across the province of the learner’s performance in language and mathematics, key subject areas that provide the foundation for future learning.
Since October 2017 Ukhanyo has been buzzing with anticipation of the test results. The six third grade teachers, each with 40+ learners in their class, seemed quite excited about the progress that they observed among their learners with Maths as they embraced the Maths Lab teaching model.
On the last week of January the wait was over and results arrived. Everyone was celebrating and many heads turned to see what all the excitement was about.
The graph below shows Ukhanyo’s progress over the last four years of the 3rd grade teaching team. It also compares Ukhanyo with all the schools in the Province that participated in the Systemic Testing Program. More specifically it compares Ukhanyo with the other schools in the province in the same school category or Quintile (i.e., Western Cape schools from a similar socio-economic background).
For the Maths Lab team the most encouraging aspect of the statistics is the 26% improvement from 2016 to 2017, which suggests the Maths Lab made a very big impact.
The 6th grade results were also of interest because this was the first group that spent a full year in the Maths Lab in 2015 as 4th graders. Below are the results for that group. Again the statistic that was of most interest to the Maths Lab Team was the improvement from 2016 to 2017. While the 18.5% increase was due to many factors it highlights the long lasting positive effects that a year in the Maths Lab had on a group of Ukhanyo learners.
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Alexander Graham Bell possessed one of the most fertile and brilliant minds in modern history. Though he is famous for inventing the telephone, he also developed or helped develop a photophone (which wirelessly communicated sound on a beam of light), a proto-metal detector, the airplane that made the first manned flight in the British Commonwealth, and a hydrofoil watercraft that set a marine speed record which stood for a decade.
Bell also had some legendarily eccentric work habits. With his shabby tweed clothes and bushy, often unkempt hair and beard, he was every inch the scientist savant. His offices and laboratories were environments of creative chaos, overflowing with enormous stacks of papers, books, and sketches, and strewn with wires, batteries, and research supplies of all kinds. Bell also preferred to work through the night, going to bed as the sun came up, and sometimes driving himself so hard that the effort brought on migraine headaches. In more relaxed moments, he would skinny-dip in the lake by his summer home, floating on his back while puffing on a lit cigar, and the eruption of a thunderstorm might find him dashing outside in swimsuit and rubber boots to immerse himself in the natural spectacle.
While your mileage in adopting these unconventional habits will vary, there was one unique method of Bell’s that might be more universally worth trying: using location-based prompts to prime your mind for certain tasks.
Alexander Graham Bell’s Use of Location-Based Prompts
When Bell was on to some new idea and feeling a surge of inspiration, he could work with obsessive focus. “There is a sort of telephonic undercurrent going on [in my mind] all the while,” the inventor told his wife Mabel, explaining that he had “periods of restlessness when my brain is crowded with ideas tingling to my fingertips when I am excited and cannot stop for anybody.” During such times, Bell went without food or drink, and asked that no one, not even Mabel, disturb him, lest such interruptions burst the gossamer threads of his emerging ideas. “Thoughts,” Bell said, “are like the precious moments that fly past; once gone they can never be caught again.”
However, while Bell’s focus could be laser-like when he was chasing down a eureka moment, much of the time his mind was in fact quite scattered and distracted. While he liked to tinker and dream, he hated getting down to the brass tacks of experimentation; he detested dealing with details, the painstaking effort required to verify intuitions, the tedious process of making minute recalibrations, and then testing and re-resting variables. Unlike his fellow inventor, Thomas Edison, Bell even hated the work of commercializing his inventions — applying for patents and popularizing and improving that which he had already created (while he was proud of developing the telephone, he considered the fuss entailed in protecting its patent and promoting its use an irritating distraction from his other work). He enjoyed intellectual exploration more for its own sake, than any concrete results.
Part of Bell’s difficulty buckling down also simply had to do with his resplendent imagination and wide-ranging curiosity. He was interested in so many different things that he had trouble thinking about a single idea for any span of time. His mind wished to jump from subject to subject and from observation to observation; he enjoyed reading through encyclopedia entries before going to bed, and carried around a pocket notebook to jot down his frequent and varied insights (he had a knack for finding inspiration in any setting).
As Mabel told her husband, “you like to fly around like a butterfly sipping honey, more or less from a flower here or another flower there.”
Bell’s “flightiness” was actually a big part of his genius, which largely rested on his ability to find novel connections between disparate ideas. But his desire to work on many things at once also greatly hindered his progress in moving forward on any one project.
To bring a little organization to his often fragmented thoughts, Bell came up with a method of using what we’ve chosen to dub “location-based prompts.” “Convinced that his physical surroundings induced specific trains of thoughts,” his biographer explains, “he established particular workspaces for particular purposes.”
Although Bell’s primary residence was in Washington D.C., he had also built a home on the headlands of Camp Breton, a remote island in Nova Scotia. At first, his family just spent their summers there, but as Bell got older, he spent more and more of his time living at this picturesque outpost. Dubbed Beinn Bhreagh, the Bell estate included a large house, a laboratory built inside a wooden shed, and a moored houseboat — the Mabel of Beinn Bhreagh.
As Bell’s daughter recalls, her father divided his time between these three different “workstations,” according to the cognitive task at hand:
“In the little office near the laboratory he occupied his mind with problems connected with the experiments; in his study in the house, he thought and worked over his theories of [flight]; while the Mabel of Beinn Bhreagh was the place to think of genetics and heredity.”
When back in D.C., Bell similarly alternated between three different workspaces: Inside his study at home, he concentrated on answering his voluminous correspondence. At the Volta Bureau, which he founded to conduct research related to the deaf, he focused his work on just that (both his wife and mother were deaf, and working with the hearing impaired was the main passion of his life). When he was in the mood to do more abstract thinking, he retreated to a small hut that sat in his son-in-law’s backyard and overlooked Rock Creek.
Using Location-Based Prompts in Your Own Life
There’s actually some neuroscience that shows why Bell’s location-based prompt method can be effective. Every thought and action you take corresponds to a series of neurons in your brain. And these neurons connect to other neurons to make what researchers call neural maps. For instance, when you think of the color red, you don’t just think of the color itself, but also likely an object, say an apple or a fire truck. The color is connected to something concrete in your brain. And it does this for higher-level actions as well. As Caroline Webb notes in How to Have a Good Day, “if you once spent an afternoon cranking out great work while settled into that window seat [at home], your ‘window seat’ neural network might be connected with the one representing ‘extremely productive and focused behavior.’”
Once this connection is established and reinforced, the brain begins creating a well-worn neural pathway: “If I sit down in X location, then I do Y.” These if-then connections between particular locations and particular behaviors/thoughts can help you settle down to work quicker on a task and prime the flow of certain ideas with less effort. Conversely, these prompts can work against doing a different activity in a certain location than the one your mind primarily associates with it. For example, it can be hard to stay motivated to work out at home (outside a dedicated garage gym), because your mind associates the living room with relaxing and snacking, not putting yourself in a state of sweat and pain.
To use location-based prompts to your advantage, first choose different locations for different tasks; see if there are places that feel naturally conducive to working on certain things. We’re not all lucky enough to have as many interesting options as Bell did, but you can use the same technique with locations limited to the four walls of your own home. For example, you might choose to always do budget-related work at the kitchen table, reading in your easy chair, and meditation in your closet.
Then do your tasks in their assigned locations as consistently as you can. At the same time, try not to use the same location for other tasks (as much as possible; you can’t avoid also eating at your kitchen table, of course), as this will create interference with the association you’re trying to create between that environment and the primary activity you use it for. For example, it’s not advisable to watch television or surf your phone while you lie in bed, because you want your bed to be solely connected with sleeping and nothing else. Doing other things in bed besides snoozing weakens the strength of its location-specific prompt and can make it harder to fall asleep.
By using Bell’s method of location-based prompts, and making certain places part of certain rituals, and you may find it easier to buckle down to your tasks. Do what Bell would — experiment and see if it works for you.
Source: Reluctant Genius: Alexander Graham Bell and the Passion for Invention by Charlotte Gray
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There are tons of literature out there advocating "positive thinking" as the key to happiness. While numerous research findings have brought to light the many benefits of maintaining an optimistic outlook in life, some of us prefer to keep a more realistic perspective and reject adopting a Pollyanna view of the world.
(Image source: Thomas Hawk)
That said, many pop psychology books we see in bookstores today are actually pushing for the latter without adequately revealing the often hidden dangers of holding extreme, unrealistic optimism. Sure, positive thinking is an effective coping mechanism but, as with many things in life, balance is key.
Too much of a good thing is often bad, just as overdosing on water can cause hyponatremia (or water intoxication). We need to ask ourselves how far we can go about with rose-tinted glasses before it actually becomes detrimental to us.
To answer that question, let us observe at the following pitfalls of positive thinking and of holding an overly-optimistic outlook on life:
1. Disregarding Negative Emotions
Sadly, so much focus has been given to the power of positive thinking that we no longer appreciate the goodness of negative emotions. Contrary to what some self-help books may suggest, our psychological well-being doesn’t simply improve when we attempt to will away all our sadness, anger, fear and other unpleasant feelings with positive thoughts.
Think about it. Without feeling the emotional pain that inevitably arises from various setbacks we encounter in our lives, we will never be driven to change things for the better for ourselves and for others. Allowing oneself to feel a wide range of both positive and negative emotions helps one find meaning in life and grow as a human being amid adversities — an essential recipe for cultivating psychological flexibility.
At any rate, forcing negative (or any) thoughts out of our head is not only an attempt in futility; it can even backfire on us.
Lying To Ourselves
In the classic "white bear" experiment, participants were told to ring a bell whenever a white bear flashes in their mind. Suppressing thoughts appear to make things worse, as those who were specifically instructed not to think of a white bear actually rang more times than those who were told to think of one at the onset.
Using positive affirmations to counter negative self-talk may not also work for everyone, as uncovered by a study which found that students with low self-esteem actually felt worse after they were asked to repeat the positive statement "I’m a lovable person" every 15 seconds. Instead of having their mood lifted, the affirmations actually dampens it.
They could have perceive them to be too far-fetched from how they truly feel about themselves, and saying them aloud may have even brought to attention their insecurity.
2. Encouraging Magical Thinking
Over-optimism can cloud our minds and lead us to miscalculate risks and make unsound decisions. It cause us to falsely assume that positive things are more likely to happen to us than others, and that we are more invulnerable to negative events than the rest.
Such biasness, otherwise known as optimism bias, is evident in how parents typically believe that their children are more talented than others’, how newlyweds perceive themselves as very unlikely to divorce despite the prevailing high rates, and how we routinely engage in unhealthy lifestyle such as smoking and drinking thinking that we are less likely to succumb to illnesses such as cancer and liver failure.
Do You Believe In Magic?
Optimistic bias may cause us to see things in a less objective manner, but that doesn’t mean it’s all bad. It can spur us into taking that leap of faith to change our situation for the better, when everything seems gloomy. The problem comes when we indulge in magical thinking, choosing to ignore the warning signs which our negative emotions are hinting to us and losing that grip on reality.
We see it in a persistent suitor who, despite presented with obvious clues that the lady of his dreams isn’t the least bit interested in him, clings on to the hope that one day his efforts will pay off. Such a person tends to disregard counter-evidence in order to persevere on with his plans.
3. Creating The Illusion Of Control
A natural outcome of optimism bias is that we begin to think we have more control over the outcomes of events than there really is. Coined the "illusion of control", it is the reason why despite the fact that the winning numbers for a lottery are randomly selected, people are more confident of winning when they are given the liberty to pick the numbers.
As a matter of fact, pathological gamblers often fall prey to such illusion of control. They believe that by adhering to superstitions and engaging in good luck rituals, they can actually significantly improve their chances of winning big.
(Image Source: RegTechFS)
The bottom-line is that psyching ourselves with positive thinking can make us optimistic to the point that we overestimate our ability to determine outcomes. When life presents us with circumstances that are just out of our reach, seeking to gain real control of them is just wishful thinking on our part.
Many frustrations can be avoided when we don’t allow ourselves to get carried away by our enthusiasm and unrealistic optimism. At times like this, positive thinking distracts us from looking at the situation holistically and realistically, preferring instead to paint for us a rosy picture that may not exist.
Read also: 7 Telltale Signs of Facebook Addiction
4. Fostering Complacency
Is it possible for us to imagine the best possible outcome of an upcoming event, tricking our minds into believing that we have already attained it? It appears to be so, at least according to a recent study.
When participants were told to visualize themselves accomplishing something in the best possible way (e.g. winning an essay contest and getting an A on a test), their energy level dropped, resulting in worse performance during the actual event as compared to those participants who were told to imagine more realistic and negative outcomes.
The researchers explained that fantasizing about the most ideal outcome could actually decrease one’s motivation to pursue the goal, since the mind has already gone through the experience of achieving it.
In a similar vein, when researchers analysed financial and demographic information collected from U.S. families, they discovered a clear distinction between optimists (anyone who self-reported a longer life expectancy than what was expected of them based on their demographics) and extreme optimists (top 5% of the optimists) in the way they make financial decisions. In particular, the extreme optimists were less likely to clear outstanding credit card balances, save less money and even work fewer hours than the other optimists.
Regardless of whether the optimism in these individuals was induced by positive thinking or that it was already in their blood, this study shows that too much of it can be bad for us. It is, after all, human nature to become complacent when we get too confident with ourselves.
5. Bearing Undue Responsibility For One’s Thoughts
Too much has been said about how we’re responsible for our thoughts, and how thoughts affect the way we feel and behave. As a result, there is now an unspoken pressure on all of us to replace the negative thoughts we have with positive ones. When we fail to do that, we were led to believe that we are the ones at fault for not trying hard enough to pull ourselves together and "think positively".
Now we have an additional emotion to deal with, on top of what was troubling us in the first place: the guilt for being unable to convince ourselves to be optimistic about our situation! Instead of accepting our fears, worries, anger, etc. at the first instance and deal with the problem head-on, we waste our time and energy by feeling upset with ourselves over perfectly normal emotions..
Read also: Freelancers: How to Deal with Insecurities
Such phenomenon has been well-pointed-out in the thought-provoking book, "Bright-Sided How Positive Thinking is Undermining America", where author Barbara Ehrenreich related her experience with the unhealthy American culture of positive thinking, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
As the pervasive assumption amongst the breast cancer community is that positivity allows one to conquer the illness, patients were pressurised to feel optimistic about their cancer (even to the extent of interpreting it as a gift) despite actually feeling depressed and distressed over it.
For this reason, guilt sets in for those who were unable to stay hopeful, mainly because they saw themselves as liable for having negative thoughts which supposedly contributed to the illness. They even have to keep the negativity to themselves for fear of dragging down the mood of the other seemingly more positive patients.
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Defeat rather than victory brought fame to Comanche.
Comanche, General George Custer's Horse was known as the
sole survivor at the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876.
Comanche was born about 1862, captured in a wild
horse roundup, gelded and sold to the U.S. Army Cavalry on April
3, 1868, for $90. The bay, 925 pounds, standing 15 hands high
with a small white star on his forehead, became the favorite
mount for Captain Myles Keogh of the 7th Cavalry. He participated
in frequent actions of the Regiment and sustained some 12 wounds
as a result of these skirmishes.
He was thought to be a
Two days after the Custer defeat, a burial party investigating
the site found the severely wounded horse and transported him by
steamer to Fort Lincoln, 950 miles away, where he spent the next
year recuperating. Comanche remained here with the 7th Cavalry,
never again to be ridden and under orders excusing him from all
duties. Most of the time he freely roamed the Post and flower
gardens. Only at formal regimental functions was he led, draped
in black, stirrups and boots reversed, at the head of the
When the Cavalry was ordered to Fort Riley, Kansas, in 1888,
Comanche, aging but still in good health, accompanied them and
continued to receive full honors as a symbol of the tragedy at
Little Bighorn. Finally, on November 7, 1891, about 29 years old,
Comanche died of colic.
The officers of the 7th Cavalry, wanting to preserve the horse,
asked Lewis Lindsay Dyche of the University of Kansas to mount
the remains: skin and major bones. For a fee of $400 and on
condition that he be permitted to show the horse in the Chicago
Exposition of 1893, Dyche completed the appropriate taxidermy.
Although there is no record of the fee being paid, the horse was
donated to the university's Museum and property rights are vested
in the University through L.L. Dyche.
Comanche is currently on display in a humidity controlled glass
case at the University of Kansas Museum of Natural History, Dyche
Hall, Lawrence, Kansas.
Back to Famous Horses
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|Creation Date||Not yet implemented|
A utility for determining file types
The file command is used to identify a particular file according to the type of data contained by the file. File can identify many different file types, including ELF binaries, system libraries, RPM packages, and different graphics formats. You should install the file package, since the file command is such a useful utility.
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The NPDES (National Pollution Discharge Elimination System) is a program mandated by the Clean Water Act of 1990, which prohibits the discharge of pollutants to waters of the United States. Stormdrains dump untreated stormwater runoff directly into streams, rivers, and detention basins, and eventually discharge to the ocean. This means oils, grass, weeds, paint, pesticides, and other materials washed into the street eventually find their way into our drinking water.
Montclair oversees a program that includes both public education and enforcement of regulations to ensure that our potable and recreational waters are safe for us and future generations.
The NPDES program includes review of Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plans (SWPPPs) and Water Quality Management Plans (WQMPs), and the City's Local Implementation Plan (LIP). Questions or comments regarding any of these programs may be directed to the Public Works Department, Monday through Thursday from 6:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at (909) 625-9447.
For additional information, visit the San Bernardino County Stormwater Pollution Prevention Program webpage.
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Galileo, Darwin, and Hawking: The Interplay of Science, Reason, and Religion
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 15 бер. 2005 р. - 205 стор.
The history of the interaction between science and religion is fraught with tension, although, as philosopher Phil Dowe demonstrates, many thoughtful and religious people have also found harmony between these two crucial fields. This fascinating book insightfully surveys the relationship of science, reason, and religion, giving special attention to the most contentious topics -- cosmology, evolution, and miracles.
Providing a superb introduction to the philosophy of science, Dowe's Galileo, Darwin, and Hawking contends that there are four basic ways to relate science and religion. Two of them, naturalism and religious science, present these endeavors as antagonistic. By contrast, an independence view understands them as wholly unrelated. Finally, an interaction account sees religion and science as complementary -- perhaps even dependent on one another. Dowe finds this last perspective the most historically and philosophically compelling. He argues his case by exploring the history of science, highlighting the life and work of three scientific giants: Galileo Galilei, Charles Darwin, and Stephen Hawking.
Відгуки відвідувачів - Написати рецензію
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Darwins The Origin of Species
Natural Selection or Special Creation?
Darwin and God
Darwin and Asa Gray
From the Monkey Jibe to the Monkey Trial
Big Bang Cosmology and God
The Kalam Cosmological Argument and the Infinite Universe
Knowledge and Power
The Image of God
Descartes Rationality and the Perspicuity of Nature
Francis Bacons Vision of Science and Technology
Bacon and the Cultural Mandate
TwentiethCentury Critiques of the Baconian Vision
The Mutual Relevance of Science and Religion
Humes Theory of Rational Belief
The Concept of a Miracle
Humes Second Argument against Miracles
Schlesingers Defense of Miracles
Creation and Evolution
Paleys Design Argument
Big Bang Cosmology
The Anthropic Principle
God as an Explanation
Chance and Many Worlds Explanations
The Inverse Gamblers Fallacy
The Observer Selection Effect
Denial of the Need for Explanation
God and Chance
Three Models of Providence
Chance and Providence
Physical Chance Divine Cause
Physical Chance No Divine Cause
The Interaction of Science and Religion
Defeasibility and the God of the Gaps Objection
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According actually appears argued argument Asa Gray Augustine Bacon believe called Calvin cause century chance chapter claims complete concerning conclusion consider cosmology created creation Darwin earth event evidence evolution example existence explanation fact fine-tuned follows function Galileo Genesis given going Gray hand happen human Hume Hume's hypothesis idea independent infer interpretation involves kind knowledge law of nature leads literally matter meaning mechanism mind miracle motion move natural selection never objection observations occurred Origin particular person philosophical physics possible predictions principle probability problem produced proof proved providence quantum mechanics question rational reason relation religious requires science and religion scientific Scripture seems sense simply special creation species success suppose taken testimony theory things thought tion true truth turn understand universe
Сторінка 95 - That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish...
Сторінка 83 - So that, upon the whole, we may conclude, that the Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: and whoever is moved by faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.
Сторінка 77 - So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
Сторінка 126 - It is satisfactory, as showing how transient such impressions are, to remember that the greatest discovery ever made by man, namely, the law of the attraction of gravity, was also attacked by Leibnitz, "as subversive of natural, and inferentially of revealed, religion.
Сторінка 115 - It may metaphorically be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding up all that are good; silently and sensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.
Сторінка 126 - There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
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Dizziness is the disorienting feeling of being unbalanced or lightheaded. You may feel like you’re about to faint or like your surroundings are moving or spinning around you. Both feelings are sometimes accompanied by nausea or vomiting. Dizziness is not a medical condition on its own, but is instead a symptom of an underlying cause.
Some possible causes of dizziness include:
- benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV)
- taking certain medications
- inner ear problems
- circulation problems
- certain conditions, such as anemia, migraines, or anxiety
So, treating your dizziness usually involves treating one of these other aspects.
Certain foods and nutrients may help relieve symptoms of dizziness.
A common cause of dizziness is dehydration. If you feel tired and thirsty and have less frequent urination when you’re dizzy, try drinking water and staying hydrated.
Ginger may help relieve symptoms of motion sickness. It may help also treat nausea in pregnant women. You can take ginger in many forms. Incorporate fresh or ground ginger into your diet, drink ginger tea, or take it in supplement form. However, you should always consult your doctor before taking any kind of supplement, even if it’s natural. Supplements can interfere with other medical conditions you have or medications you take.
According to the , consuming vitamin C can reduce vertigo in people with Meniere’s disease. Foods rich in vitamin C include:
- bell peppers
Vitamin E can help maintain the elasticity of blood vessels, which can help prevent circulation problems. Vitamin E can be found in:
- wheat germ
Foods rich in vitamin B-6 may also help treat dizziness. Some has found that vitamin B-6 supplements helped reduce drug-induced vertigo symptoms. However, more research is needed.
Vitamin B-6 can also help prevent anemia. This vitamin can be found in foods such as:
- lean pork
If your doctor thinks you have anemia, they may encourage you to get more iron. Iron can be found in foods such as:
- red meat
- dark leafy greens
Medications to treat dizziness often focus on treating the underlying condition. Preventative migraine medicine, for example, is often prescribed for people who have vertigo or dizziness with migraines. Anti-anxiety medications can also be prescribed to reduce the severity of the anxiety attacks that cause dizziness.
Other medications that may be used for dizziness include:
- water pills or diuretics, which may be used as treatment for conditions like Meniere’s disease that cause a fluid buildup in the inner ear
- antihistamines and anticholinergics, which are two of the only prescription medications that focus entirely on treating dizziness instead of the underlying condition
- over-the-counter antihistamines, though the nondrowsy variations are less effective at treating dizziness
When you start to feel dizzy, it can often help to lie down as soon as possible. If you have severe cases of vertigo, close your eyes while lying down. If you’re overheated, get a cool drink and move to a shaded, air conditioned area.
The Epley maneuver, which you can do at home, is an exercise that can help treat dizziness, especially from BPPV. It’s designed to dislodge crystals from the ear canals and reduce dizziness.
According to , the Epley maneuver process involves the following steps:
- Sit on a bed and turn your head halfway to the right.
- Lie down on your back while keeping your head turned. A pillow should be under your shoulders only, with your head reclining.
- Hold this position for 30 seconds.
- Turn your head without raising it so it’s looking halfway to the left. Wait another 30 seconds.
- Keeping your head turned, turn your body to the left so that you’re lying on your side. Wait 30 seconds.
- Sit up on your left side.
If you’re prone to dizziness, it can help to know that when undergoing treatment. If you’re more alert to the fact that you may fall or lose your balance, you may be more prepared to prevent an injury.
Migraines may cause dizziness, and acupuncture may help treat discomfort from headaches. Acupuncture is the practice of inserting many tiny, thin needles into specific areas of the skin.
Living a healthy lifestyle can help treat and prevent dizziness.
Try to reduce the amount of stress in your life. Drink plenty of water and get lots of sleep. You should also avoid salt, alcohol, caffeine, and tobacco. According to , frequent consumption of these substances can increase your symptoms.
There are many different causes of dizziness, some less serious than others.
Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) is one of the most common causes of vertigo. It’s caused by specific changes in the positioning of your head. It can cause short episodes of mild to severe dizziness. BPPV is often idiopathic, which means no cause is known, but it can also be caused by a blow to the head. There is an association with BPPV and migraines.
Hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar, is another one of the most common causes of dizziness. Hypotension, or low blood pressure, can also cause both fatigue and dizziness.
Certain medications can also cause dizziness. For example, blood pressure medications may lower your blood pressure too much and lead to dizziness. Sedatives and tranquilizers both have dizziness as a common side effect. Antiseizure drugs and antidepressants can also cause dizziness. Talk to your doctor if you think dizziness is caused by any medications that you take.
Other common causes of dizziness can include:
- inner ear problems, such as infections or fluid buildup, which can affect balance
- circulation problems, including poor blood circulation that prevents adequate blood flow from reaching the brain or inner ear
- heat stroke or becoming overheated
Conditions associated with dizziness
Some conditions are associated with dizziness. These include:
- anemia, or low iron levels
- anxiety disorders, which can cause dizziness during attacks
- neurologic disorders, like multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s, which cause a loss of balance
- chronic migraines
Healthline and our partners may receive a portion of revenues if you make a purchase using a link above.
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In this tutorial, we learn how to assemble a computer from parts. First, you will need to take the motherboard, video card, RAM, hard drive, power supply, CD-rom drive, and the case and make sure you have them all laying out. From here, you will take out the motherboard and plug the RAM in to the appropriate spot for it. This will be located next to the fan on the upper right hand corner of the motherboard. After this, place the motherboard inside of the computer case and then insert in the video card, cd-rom drive and the rest of the parts according to the directions. Make sure you place screws inside and make it secure. When finished, attach the power cable and the back panel, then plug it in and get started!
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Do you have a solid management plan for your diabetes? You should manage your diabetes comprehensively, from medication to diet. These tips will allow you to take a more proactive approach to diabetes.
Every type of food has a number that states its effects on blood sugar. This number is called the "glycemic index". Remember, the lower the GI number, the better for a diabetic!
If you do the same thing every time, your life will be more organized and easier. Don't stumble around looking for items, such as insulin or associated equipment; have a place for it and keep it there. Let your testing become a routine and you won't forget to do it regularly and to write in your log.
These days, diabetics are everywhere. When you don't force yourself to hide, you will take steps to fight the shame and stigma sometimes associated with diabetes.
If you have been diagnosed with diabetes, it is important that you get some sort of sleep apnea test done as soon as you can. To keep yourself in optimal health, it is critical that you treat any sleeping disorder you may have as quickly as possible.
Diabetics should be very cautious when going for a pedicure. Diabetics tend to get bad infections in the feet, so you must be diligent about monitoring any cuts or injuries you receive.
If you are hypoglycemic, you should always have gum or some other type of sugary food handy. Hypoglycemia can attack anywhere, so you should always be prepared. If you didn't eat breakfast then this is especially true, as skipping meals will make your body crave sugar.
Online pharmacies can offer huge discounts on diabetes medications. You can usually set up a regular delivery schedule, so that you can't forget to order it.
Know which foods are low on the glycemic index and will help your body release glucose slowly. For example, most juices, breads, desserts, cereals, and types of pasta are high glycemic index foods. Processed foods are not good for your sugar levels. Instead, try to focus on fresh fruits and vegetables, fish, and meat.
Watching what you eat is of critical importance when you have diabetes. Your blood sugar will be effected differently by various foods, so keep track of what you eat and how it will impact your blood sugar. If you are on insulin, the amount of insulin that you need will depend on the size of a meal. If you carefully consider what you eat, your glucose levels can easily be managed.
Remind yourself consistently why you manage your diabetes. What are your hobbies? What would you undertake if you could? What's holding you back? How can you get around those barriers? By staying focused on what's most important, you'll remain motivated in your diabetes management.
If you have diabetes, cinnamon is a great spice to eat without check my blog
adding sugar, sodium or calories. Cinnamon brings out the natural sweetness in certain foods without the added sugar that can raise blood glucose levels. While researchers are unsure if cinnamon is able to lower glucose level, it's still a diabetic-friendly spice.
It is important that, as a diabetic, you eat read what he said
nutritional foods on a regular basis and check your glucose levels, even when feeling unwell and you have no appetite. Keep the fluids up as well, in order to avoid dehydration.
Smoking isn't healthy for anyone but can be even more unhealthy for a person with diabetes. When you do this you open doors to more unhealthy habits and effects on your body. Smoking causes you to be resistant to insulin, and even if you are currently not a diabetic, it will put you in higher risk of type 2 diabetes development.
It is imperative to keep checking your blood sugar routinely, even though gestational diabetes will usually resolve itself after the birth of your child. Many people believe that your blood sugar will automatically go back to normal after you give birth, but this is often untrue.
Foot problems often plague diabetics. Being careless with your feet, such as walking around barefoot, can lead to complications which might have to be cured through amputation. Following this advice can help ensure you keep your feet healthy even if you have diabetes.
Have all your supplies in one bag and ready to go. It's also good to have a couple other bags so your supplies will always be around. The bags should contain insulin, syringes, and meter hooks, so you are always equipped to handle any sudden fluctuations.
Make it a priority to keep your daily stress to a minimum. People that have diabetes often experience a rise in their blood glucose when under stress. Yoga and meditation can help you feel more relaxed. You can also learn a number of breathing exercises, helpful because you can do them anywhere.
Include vinegar with your meals. Studies have shown that having a few tablespoons of vinegar before your meal can actually cause your blood sugar to rise slower than it normally would after a meal. Vinegar has the ability to slow down the digestion of starch, and keeps your food in your stomach longer.
You need a lot of information to live a happy, healthy life as a diabetic. This disease will be like a dark cloud hanging over your head until you are taking the right steps to manage it. Use this article's information to get a head start improving your diabetes situation.
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New Research Focuses on Hurricane-Driven Rainwater Penetration
The first priority in the wake of the devastating 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons along the U.S. Gulf and Atlantic Coasts has been to upgrade construction requirements to prevent damage from excessive winds and wind-borne debris. Stronger code requirements for impact-resistant windows have since been adopted in many jurisdictions, ranging from those that reference current International Code requirements and ASTM standards E 1886 and E 1996, up to those in defined High Velocity Hurricane Zones that take it up a notch—mainly Miami-Dade County standards TAS-201, TAS-202 and TAS-203 or AAMA 506.
Building codes typically require either structural panels providing glazed opening protection or impact-resistant windows, the latter being comprised of laminated glass in high-strength or reinforced frames.
The tests for determining compliance with these impact requirements are rigorous. For example, for windows to be located less than 30 feet above ground level, the impact of large missiles is simulated by thrusting a 2x4 stud into the product at 50 feet per second, equivalent to 34 mph. For windows located more than 30 feet above ground, the impact of roof gravel and other small objects is simulated by firing a shotgun-like pattern of two-gram ball bearings into the window at a speed of 130 fps, or, 88 mph. To pass these tests, there can be no through-penetration upon impact and no opening formed larger than 3 inches in diameter or tear longer than 5 inches.
All considered, the infrastructure is largely in place to ensure that windows in new construction can offer greatly improved resistance to winds and flying debris.
The next level of improvement is focusing on reducing water penetration. While many might count themselves lucky if protected from serious wind damage and storm surge-induced flooding, water penetration through or around otherwise intact openings from wind-driven rain can result in a significant amount of physical damage, cause occupant displacement and lead to extensive restoration expenses.
At the urging of the Florida Building Commission, the AAMA Southeast Region organization undertook a project in late 2005 to assess test methods and develop a standard of performance for windows capable of resisting water penetration under hurricane conditions. A task group was formed to review existing test methods and develop a rating system, with the caveat that it is impractical to expect any cost-effective building component to completely prevent water leakage when a downpour is slammed against a building at some 100 mph—conditions well in excess of those assumed for code requirements. But, the task group did seek to determine what limits should be imposed on such water penetration and how best to test and rate windows designed to meet such limits.
RATING SEVERE RAIN RESISTANCE
The task group’s first attempt to answer these questions is the most recent draft of the Voluntary Specification for Rating the Severe Wind-Driven Rain Resistance of Windows, Doors and Unit Skylights. It references the ASTM E 2268 Standard Test Method for Water Penetration of Exterior Windows, Skylights and Doors by Rapid Pulsed Air Pressure Difference. The test setup is similar to that used for water penetration testing of windows for compliance with the AAMA/WDMA/CSA/101/I.S. 2/A440-05 window and door standard and its predecessors, which calls for a water spray rate of five gallons per hour per square foot (and simulates a rainfall rate of 8 inches per hour). However, ASTM E 2268 adds a pulsing sequence to better simulate storm conditions and applies water spray at higher wind pressures (up to 42 psf). Test data is evaluated according to a scale of performance levels, indicating successively higher ranges (lower to upper limits) of the required 300 pressure pulsation cycles, with each cycle lasting two seconds. At all performance levels, the amount of water penetration cannot exceed 15 milliliters per meter of sill length.
But the process of drafting this specification has uncovered more questions. For example:
* Do the most intense rains occur in the highest winds, when pressure loading is the most severe? What design pressure best simulates typical hurricane conditions?
* How are raindrop sizes affected by wind speed, terrain and topography? What happens to locations near the shore that are subjected to ocean spray?
* How much of the wind-driven rain actually wets the building’s façade, especially at the corners where wind pressure effects are often enhanced? Should a corner window be designed differently to resist water penetration better than one located in the center expanse of the wall?
BRINGING THE STORM TO THE LAB
To answer these questions, AAMA turned to the University of Florida, where Forrest Masters, an assistant professor of civil and coastal engineering, has gained a national reputation for his bold steps to take some of the mystery out of hurricane effects. Research underway at UF is designed to get a handle on actual wind and rain effects, and then to devise a way to simulate those conditions on demand.
To accomplish the first part of this mission, Masters was a major player in launching the Florida Coastal Monitoring Program. He and his team chase hurricanes, planting six specially instrumented, 33-foot portable towers in the path of hurricanes as they make landfall. So far, the mobile monitors have been deployed into the teeth of some 20 hurricanes since the late 1990s. Capable of withstanding wind gusts up to 200 mph, the towers record and relay information to meteorologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at 15-minute intervals.
In 2007, the AAMA board of directors approved $60,000 to fund the acquisition of what amounts to a very high-tech rain gauge, which will enhance the measurement of hurricane rainfall parameters in Masters’ towers. Known as a precipitation-imaging probe, the instrument will permit real-time measurement of actual hurricane rainfall, including the size of the raindrops and rainfall intensity. Data from the probes collected during this and upcoming Atlantic hurricane seasons will be used to establish a catalog of “wind-driven rain scenarios” for different storm intensities impacting various terrains. The information will be used to calibrate the rain fields produced by UF’s mobile windstorm simulator to recreate hurricane-force winds and wind-driven rain at sufficient scale to test low-rise components and cladding systems.
The windstorm simulator is comprised of eight large diameter industrial-grade fans, coupled through an innovative hydraulic drive system to four 700-horsepower marine diesel engines. A specially designed duct accelerates the fan output to hurricane force, while steering vanes can be manipulated to induce turbulence. Water jets imbedded in the vanes simulate rainfall rates as high as 35 inches per hour. A demonstration of this equipment can be seen on AAMA’s Web site via the following link:
Masters plans to use the wind and rain data from the monitoring towers to calibrate the simulator to accurately reproduce hurricane conditions in the laboratory, enabling realistic testing of hurricane-resistant building products. This will allow the industry to develop more accurate testing methodology, sufficient to conduct meaningful leak-resistance tests and evaluations of windows, doors and wall systems.
Thankfully, there were few hurricanes to monitor during the last hurricane season, so we will continue to work with UF to gather data and answer our questions about water infiltration.
All of these efforts are paving the way for the improvement of hurricane-resistant products–something that should interest code officials, architects, builders and insurance companies who serve the 53 percent of Americans (153 million in all) that NOAA reports as living within the narrow coastal regions. With this many structures susceptible to water damage, this research and its correlation to product testing is vitally important.
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Growing flowering trees or shrubs may seem like an impossible dream in USDA plant hardiness zone 3, where winter temperatures can sink as low as -40 F. (-40 C.). However, there are several flowering trees that grow in zone 3, which in the United States includes areas of North and South Dakota, Montana, Minnesota and Alaska. Read on to learn about a few beautiful and hardy zone 3 flowering trees.
What Trees Bloom in Zone 3?
Here are some popular flowering trees for zone 3 gardens:
Prairiflower Flowering Crabapple (Malus ‘Prairifire’) – This small ornamental tree lights up the landscape with bright red blossoms and maroon leaves that eventually mature to deep green, then puts on a display of bright color in autumn. This flowering crabapple grows in zones 3 through 8.
Arrowwood Viburnum (Viburnum dentatum) – Small but mighty, this viburnumis a symmetrical, rounded tree with creamy white blossoms in spring and glossy red, yellow or purplish foliage in autumn. Arrowwood viburnum is suitable for zones 3 through 8.
Scent and Sensibility Lilac (Lilac syringa x) – Suitable for growing in zones 3 through 7, this hardy lilacis greatly loved by hummingbirds. The fragrant blooms, which last from mid spring to early fall, are beautiful on the tree or in a vase. Scent and Sensibility lilac is available in pink or lilac.
Canadian Red Chokecherry (Prunus virginiana) – Hardy in growing zones 3 through 8, Canadian Red chokecherry provides year-round color, beginning with showy white flowers in spring. The leaves turn from green to deep maroon by summer, then bright yellow and red in autumn. Fall also brings loads of deliciously tart berries.
Summer Wine Ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolious) – This sun-loving tree displays dark purple, arching foliage that lasts throughout the season, with pale pink flowers that bloom in late summer. You can grow this ninebark shrub in zones 3 through 8.
Purpleleaf Sandcherry (Prunus x cistena) – This small ornamental tree produces sweet-smelling pink and white flowers and eye-catching reddish-purple leaves, followed by deep purple berries. Purpleleaf sandcherry is suitable for growing in zones 3 through 7.
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Deep snow, high winds, and equipment glitches didn't stop dozens of observers in New Zealand and Tasmania from recording Pluto's occultation of a bright star on June 29th — just two weeks before New Horizons' close-up flyby.
The stars and planets really were aligned on June 29th. On that date, just two weeks before NASA's New Horizons spacecraft was to dash past Pluto, the celebrated dwarf planet passed directly in front of an obscure 12th-magnitude star in north-central Sagittarius. It's the second-brightest star that Pluto has ever been known to occult, and careful records of the star's disappearance and reappearance could tell researchers a great deal about the state of Pluto's atmosphere at a most opportune time.
Unfortunately, the predicted path of Pluto's "shadow" across Earth was deep in the Southern Hemisphere, largely falling over open water between Australia and Antarctica. But New Zealand and Tasmania were both squarely inside the path limits, so dozens of observers from those countries and elsewhere did their best to make sure this rare celestial opportunity wasn't wasted.
During a stellar occultation by an airless body, such as an asteroid, the star's disappearance and reappearance are very abrupt. But Pluto's extremely tenuous atmosphere creates a more gradual decline and rise, along with nuances that reveal the pressure and temperature of the gas and the presence (or not) of haze layers. This is especially true when the star is bright enough to record its changing light at high speed with a good signal-to-noise ratio.
The effort involved several teams of observers on the ground and a large contingent aboard the SOFIA flying observatory. All of the teams, contacted by Sky & Telescope, report good results.
An especially detailed record came from Mount John Observatory on New Zealand's South Island, where Jay Pasachoff and Bryce Babcock (Williams College) led a team that included resident observers Alan Gilmore and Pam Kilmartin and Williams undergraduates Christina Seeger and Rebecca Durst.
The facility and its 1-meter McLellan Telescope were positioned very near to the occultation's centerline. So the Mount John observers hoped to see a strong central flash, created when the thin atmosphere acts like a lens to refract a concentrated beam of light toward Earth. For this event, it could only occur if the center of Pluto's disk and the star were almost perfectly aligned.
Success was in doubt just one night before, when fierce winds whipped the observatory and the deep snow cover around it at speeds up to 55 miles (85 km) per hour. But the wind abated and the clouds parted when it mattered most. "Yes, we have a central flash! We are oh so pleased," Pasachoff reported afterward. The nearly 2-minute-long event was also captured by Mount John's two 0.6-m telescopes, one operated by Stephen Levine (Lowell Observatory) and the other by Nagoya University observers led by Fumio Abe.
Meanwhile, veteran occultation-chaser Bruno Sicardy (Paris Observatory) had established two observing stations. One was the brand-new, just-opened 1.3-m Harlingten Telescope at Greenhill Observatory near Hobart, Tasmania, where he'd assisted saff astronomers Andrew Cole, Kym Hill, and Barry Giles in recording the event. The other, the robotic 0.6-m Yock-Allen (BOOTES-3) telescope at Lauder, New Zealand, recorded a central flash.
Covering All the Bases
Three groups went to great lengths to make sure the occultation would be seen. John Talbot provided coordination for the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand, and more than two dozen amateur observers fanned out for the event — some observing an occultation for the first time. "Many observers had cloud, and many had equipment problems of some sort," he tells Sky & Telescope. Despite those issues — and interference from a nearly full Moon only 30° away — Talbot concludes, "I would rate this as a very successful campaign and an excellent demonstration of pro-am cooperation."
On the professional side, a collaboration among Williams College, MIT, and Lowell Observatory established a widespread network within the Pluto occultation zone. "We had people at 12 telescopes in nine locations," notes MIT's Amanda Bosh, who became the go-to person for last-minute prediction updates. (The all-critical astrometry used to calculate Pluto's path came from a 1.1-m telescope at Lowell, a 1.55-m scope at the U.S. Naval Observatory's Flagstaff Station, and the 0.6-m SARA telescope at Cerro Tololo in Chile.)
Some of the collaboration's observers, like those at Mount John, witnessed the occultation, while others did not (due to clouds or mechanical problems). Chris Morley was one of the few to see the event from Australia. He established a mobile station 70 km north of Bairnsdale, Victoria.
Not shy about mounting a big observing effort for such an important occultation, Eliot Young (Southwest Research Institute) dispatched seven teams from the United States to New Zealand, Tasmania, and southeastern Australia. Most of these paired a professional observer with an undergraduate student. Some got to use an existing telescope, but others lugged "portable" 14-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes to desirable locations. And often the original plan didn't work out as anticipated.
For example, Amherst College student Jason Mackie and Lowell Observatory's Larry Wasserman got as far as a cattle farm in Napier, New Zealand, only to find that their scope wouldn't track (stripped gears). So they scrambled to join local amateur John Drummond at his observatory in Gisborne, a 3-hour drive up the coast. "We'd gotten up at 2 a.m. for the event, but it was cold and completely overcast," recalls Mackie. It cleared just in time for the event, which lasted 105 seconds, and they were very lucky: "It completely clouded over just a few minutes later."
Carol Carriazo, also from Amherst, headed with Anne Verbischer (University of Virginia) to Greenhill Observatory outside of Hobart. They piggybacked on the visual observations that Sicardy and the facility's staff had planned by adding a dichroic beamsplitter. This allowed them to obtain a near-infrared light curve simultaneously. It was the first trip that Carriazo, just 19, had ever taken outside the U.S., and it proved eventful.
Because of the use of a special filter, the observatory's CCD required repeated machining to mate properly with the telescope and reach focus. But during one focus check, the camera fell roughly 7 feet and "crunched" onto the observatory floor. After that it wouldn't turn on. Luckily, two of the staff astronomers discovered a dislodged wire inside and soldered it back in place, which got the camera working again in time to record the occultation.
Young, who observed from the Anglo-Australian Telescope but saw no cover-up, thinks a careful analysis of all these light curves will show that Pluto's tenuous atmosphere has no haze, despite earlier occultation results to the contrary. And he thinks the starlight probings at various locations around Pluto's disk will ultimately reveal a fairly uniform global temperature. In any case, the rich results from June 29th's event will get a reality check very soon, since New Horizons will monitor occultations of both the Sun and Earth just after it zips past Pluto.
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Copyright © Astronomy Roadshow All rights Reserved
There was a case when a moon rock was given to former Holland Prime Minister Willem Drees during a goodwill tour by the three Apollo 11 astronauts shortly after their moon mission in 1969. When Mr Drees died, a rock went on display at the Amsterdam museum. It was recognised by a geologist that it was not the genuine article; it turned out to be a piece of Petrified Wood.
The legal officials that found this sample in a draw in Mr Drees's home were not geologists and simply assumed the sample was the moon rock in question and was put on display. No geologists were employed at the Art Museum. Four years passed when a geologist visitor recognised the rock as Petrified wood.
All of this particular series of 150 or so original moon rocks given out to be displayed around the world were encased in Perspex but the petrified wood was not. This should have been a give-away but this was not known to the people involved.
The original moon rock given to Mr Drees was never found. The British National Space Centre hires out moon samples as well as Meteorites and Crystals. If one doesn't read the instructions, you may well be examining a meteorite thinking it was lunar material.
What about the other 400kg of samples that is examined by geologists & chemists around the world? Can they not tell the difference between petrified wood & moon rock? A fun story; but human error alone is to blame for the mix up.
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ABOUT PRIMARY VOTING
Primaries are for the political parties to nominate candidates to be on the fall ballot. Texas has open primaries, meaning you can cast a ballot in either party’s primary, regardless of whether you’ve voted in that party’s primary before.
Candidates must receive more than 50 percent of the vote to be nominated. If no candidate gets more than 50 percent, there will be a runoff on May 27.
Once you’ve voted in a party primary, you can vote in that party’s runoffs, if there are any. If you skip the primary, you can vote in either runoff. But you cannot cross over in the runoffs; if you vote in the Republican primary, you can’t vote in the Democratic runoff and vice versa. How and whether you vote in a primary and runoff has no bearing on your vote in the fall general election.
ON THE BALLOT
Statewide offices: Republicans and Democrats will choose nominees for governor, lieutenant governor and other statewide executive and judicial offices. Also up: several seats on the State Board of Education.
Congress: A U.S. Senate seat. All of the state’s 36 U.S. House districts are on the ballot.
Legislature: Each of the 150 Texas House seats is up for election, along with half of the state Senate.
County: District attorneys, county judges and commissioners, constables and criminal and civil judges are up for election.
TIPS FOR VOTING
Valid IDs: You must take one of the following IDs with you to the polls: a Texas driver’s license, a U.S. passport, a state-issued ID card, a state-issued election certificate, a Texas concealed handgun license, a U.S. military ID or a citizenship certificate with a photograph issued by the federal government. With the exception of the citizenship certificate, none of the forms of identification may be expired for more than 60 days.
Verification: An election judge must compare the name on the ID card to the voter registration card or the computerized voter roll maintained at the precinct. If the names don’t match, the election judge can declare them “substantially similar” if the difference is slight; the name is a customary variation, such as a shortened name; or if the name is the same but listed in a different order (such as Mary Jones vs. Mary Jones Smith).
The election judge will also verify the voter’s address before providing a ballot. The voter may have to sign an affidavit confirming his or her identity; the process is quick, but if enough voters have ID issues, delays are possible. In Dallas and some other counties, voters can opt to have their name changed in the registration database to match their ID, to avoid future problems.
Provisional voting: Officials urge voters to cast a ballot even if they have ID issues. The ballot would be considered provisional until the voter can obtain an ID and present it to the county voting office within six days. If the voter doesn’t meet the deadline, the ballot is not counted.
From staff and wire reports
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Learn in a few easy steps how to begin your satire writing career - page 2. Writing a satire essay can be fun and exciting with these easy tips it is all about providing your thoughts on a particular subject by using irony and sarcasm. Satirical essays use humor, hyperbole and irony to criticize or poke fun at a subject they are often aimed at political candidates, celebrities or current events. How to write satire about current events satire is the art of bringing attention to a particular problem, fault or issue by blending criticism with humor.
This learning packet offers definitions and tips for writing irony, satire, and tragedy by learning the elements of these genres, students will be able to. ← back to essays & articles many professional comedians and comedy writers consider satire to be the highest, most sophisticated form of humor this is because. Looking for some satire writing tips satire is the use of irony, sarcasm and humor to critize or show the ignorance of people.
How to start writing satire [page 1 of 2] writing satire is a very personal thing and there are certainly a number of different forms and degrees of satirical work.
Satire is a unique literary genre authors like jonathan swift used it to make poignant arguments about society and culture but it's not easy to do.
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Raymond Murphy. 1998. Introduction.
Grammar in Use
Grammar in Use is a textbook for intermediate students of English who need to study and practice using the grammar of the language. It can be used as a classroom text or for self-study. It will be especially useful in cases where, in the teacher’s view, existing course materials do not provide adequate coverage of grammar.
The book is intended mainly for intermediate students (that is, students who have already studied the basic structures of English). It concentrates on those structures which intermediate students want to use but which often cause difficulty. The book will probably be most useful at middle- and upper-intermediate levels (where all or nearly all of the material will be relevant), and can serve both as a basis for review and as a means of practicing new material. The book will also be useful for more advanced students who still make a lot of grammatical mistakes and who need a book for reference and practice. The book is not intended to be used by beginning-level students.
How the book is organized
The book consists of 124 units, each of which concentrates on a particular point of grammar. Some areas (for example, the present perfect or the use of articles) are covered in more than one unit. In each unit there are explanations and examples (left-hand page) and exercises (right-hand page), except for Unit 112, which is a double unit.
At the beginning of the book the Contents pages provide a full list of units, and there is a detailed Index at the end for easy reference.
There are also four Appendixes at the end of the book: “List of Present and Past Tenses,” “Regular and Irregular Verbs,” “Spelling”, and “Short Forms.” It might be useful for the teacher to draw students’ attention to these.
Using the book
It is certainly not intended that anyone should work through this book from beginning to end. It is for the teacher to decide what to teach and in what order to teach it, so the book is best used selectively and flexibly.
The book can be used with the whole class or with individual students. When using the book with the whole class, it is suggested that teachers teach the grammar points concerned in whatever way they want. In this case the left-hand page is not used actively during the lesson but serves as a record of what has been taught and can be referred to by the student in the future. The exercises can then be done in class or as homework. Alternatively (and additionally), individual students can be directed to study certain units of the book by themselves if they have particular difficulties not shared by other students in their class.
A separate answer key is available for teachers and self-study users.
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Volume 11 – Number 10
S. Pacific Arts Festival in Papua New Guinea
Fiji and Micronesia
Tahiti Maohi Drama
Artists of Guam and Hawaii
Cover. Jade (nephrite) fish-hook pendant made by Maori craftsman in the 19th century, from Taranaki, New Zealand. Photograph by Brain Brake.
The Pacific is stunning in its immensity: it comprises one-third of the Earth’s surface and exceeds the total of the globe’s combined land area. Yet only 500,000 of its 64 million square miles make up what are known as the Pacific Islands. And the giant island New Guinea represents 60% of the total, followed by New Zealand with 20%. The remaining 100,000 square miles are divided among more than 10,000 islands. These islands and Australia, collectively known as Oceania, are the subjects of this special regional issue.
Distinctions are finer than demographics can suggest among Oceania cultures. They are broadly distinguished by ethnogeographic categories: Australia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. Within this frame our special issue looks at Papua New Guinea and Fiji, both in Melanesia, and the mask art of the region as a whole. We visit Ponape and Yap in the U.S. Trust Territories of Micronesia and get close-up views of Guam through the lens of a local photographer. The Polynesian arts of dramatic dance (Tahiti), Maori carving (New Zealand) and tattooing (Samoa) are reviewed. Running through the issue is the subsidiary theme of Asians in the Pacific: Indians in Fiji, the Chinese in the goldfield days of Australia and New Zealand, and Japanese culture in Hawaii.
Fred S. Armentrout
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Diet problems research
This page of the diet problems and cancer section is about research into the causes, prevention and treatments of diet problems. There is information about
All treatments have to be fully researched before they can be adopted as standard treatment for everyone. This is so that
- We can be sure they work
- We can be sure they work better than the treatments that are available at the moment
- They are known to be safe
First of all, treatments are developed and tested in laboratories. For ethical and safety reasons, experimental treatments must be tested in the laboratory before they can be tried in patients. If a treatment described here is said to be at the laboratory stage of research, it is not ready for patients and is not available either within or outside the NHS.
Tests in patients are called clinical trials. The trials and research section has information about what trials are including information about the 4 phases of trials. If you are interested in taking part in a clinical trial, visit our searchable database of clinical trials recruiting in the UK. If there is a trial you are interested in, print it off and take it to your own specialist. If the trial is suitable for you, your doctor will need to make the referral to the research team.
All the new approaches are the subject of ongoing research. Until studies are completed and new treatments are found to work, these treatments cannot be used to treat diet problems in people with cancer.
A lot of research in nutrition and cancer is into preventing cancer through diet. Over the past 20 years scientists have developed better drugs to help control sickness. But there hasn’t been much research into controlling cachexia. This is changing and doctors are trying hard to find new methods of helping people with this condition.
One new trial is looking for biochemical markers in the blood that will help identify people who are likely to develop cachexia. Early treatment might then prevent the symptoms of cachexia.
The types of drugs being tested include
- Drugs that block cytokines
- Drugs that improve appetite
- Non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs
Drugs that block cytokines
Scientists already know that natural chemicals made by cancers called cytokines are involved in causing weight loss and cachexia. This has led to research into finding drugs to help block cytokines. These drugs may help to reverse the wasting and weight loss that happens in cachexia. This research is still in very early stages of development and no one is sure how successful it will be. The key is likely to lie in blocking several of these cytokines at once because they all interact with each other.
Thalidomide is being used in clinical trials to help people with cachexia. This drug was responsible for birth defects in the late 1950s and early 1960s and so got a bad name. Despite this, it is only dangerous if taken in pregnancy. The drug seems to work in cachexia by interfering with certain cytokines. Early trial results suggest that thalidomide improves appetite and helps control sickness in people with cachexia. A Cochrane review of the research so far says that there is not enough information to recommend it as a treatment at the moment. There is a larger UK trial looking at thalidomide for cachexia. The researchers hope to find out if it helps people who have cachexia due to stomach, oesophageal, pancreatic or small bowel cancer.
A recent review of research showed that megestrol acetate increases appetite and weight gain, but is no more effective than steroids. As both types of drugs have side effects, more research is needed to find out how much megestrol acetate improves overall quality of life.
Other appetite stimulants being tested include cannabinoids. These drugs are made from the cannabis plant, also known as marijuana. Some studies have found that smoking cannabis or eating it can help to control sickness and pain and increase appetite. But one recent phase 3 trial failed to show that cannabinoids improved appetite or quality of life. Neither does it seem to help people put on weight. We have more information about cannabinoids in our sickness section.
Ghrelin is an appetite regulating hormone found in the stomach lining. Early clinical trials show that ghrelin helps to improve appetite and weight in people who have cancer. More research is needed to see if these are lasting effects.
Steroids can help improve appetite, food intake and sense of well being in people with cachexia. But they don't tend to help you put on weight, except from fluid retention.
Some scientists believe that malnutrition and cancer cachexia may be a response to inflammation caused by the presence of a tumour in the body. This has led to research into using non steroidal anti inflammatories (NSAIDs) to help prevent and treat malnutrition in people with cancer.
One small trial of 135 patients with cancer who had severe malnutrition showed that an NSAID called indomethacin may help. Half the patients were given indomethacin and half were given a dummy pill (placebo). The people who took indomethacin had better overall survival. More trials are needed in this area before we know how well this type of treatment will work.
Researchers are looking at combining treatments for weight and muscle loss in people with lung or pancreatic cancer. The study is called pre MENAC. The aim of this study is to find out if food supplements, diet and exercise advice and a NSAID called celecoxib can help with weight loss, lack of appetite and fatigue.
Remember - anti inflammatory drugs can be dangerous. You should not take them regularly without checking with your doctor. This is particularly true if you have a history of stomach ulcer, bleeding disorders or are taking drugs to thin your blood (warfarin or heparin).
Some food supplements may help people with cachexia. One promising nutrient is fish oil, which contains omega-3 fatty acids. These fatty acids are important chemicals that the body needs to function normally. But they are not made naturally in the body and we have to get them from our diet. Foods rich in omega 3 fatty acids include oily fish, such as mackerel, salmon, tuna and sardines. They are also in several oils, including rapeseed, linseed, walnut, soya and flax. Dark green vegetables contain a little too. The 3 fatty acids that make up omega 3 are
- Alpha linolenic acid
- Eicosapentaenoic acid and
- Docosahexaenoic acid
These fatty acids can prevent cancer in animals and this may also be the case with humans but we have no evidence of that yet. In early stage clinical trials, fish oil supplements have stabilised or increased the weight of people with pancreatic cancer who have cachexia. The fatty acids may decrease some of the toxins made by the cancer that are believed to cause cachexia. The side effects of these supplements are mild to moderate and include
- Loose, fatty looking bowel motions
- Fishy tasting burps
A product called ProSure has been developed from this line of research. ProSure is a high protein drink with the fish oil eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) added to it. Some people with cachexia who drank between 1.5 and 2 packs a day of ProSure did gain fat and muscle bulk. So far, ProSure is only available in a few hospitals in the UK, but it can only be prescribed by your GP if you have pancreatic cancer. Another omega 3 enriched supplement is Forticare. It is more concentrated and claims not to have such a fishy after taste. It's also only available for people with pancreatic cancer.
NOURISH is a trial to see if taking a supplement powder helps improve the problem of weight and muscle loss in people with lung cancer.
A review of the literature looking into fish oils was published in 2013. This found that they do control some of the symptoms of cancer such as cachexia and weight loss. We need more research before we will know how these supplements work. And to make sure that they are not affecting how well cancer treatments are working.
Researchers are also looking into whether giving supplements before surgery can help people recover afterwards. The POSiCC trial is looking at giving a drink supplement to people before bowel surgery. It aims to find out if giving this alongside diet advice is better than just diet advice.
Some scientists believe that antioxidant vitamins and minerals may help to prevent cancer when included in a healthy, balanced diet. There have also been some very early stage trials suggesting that antioxidants may help prevent cachexia in people with cancer. We don't know for sure whether any of this is true because it is very difficult to prove. In theory, antioxidants help protect body cells from damage by oxygen particles called free radicals.
Antioxidants, vitamin and mineral supplements are not routinely advised for people with cancer as there is no proof that they help, especially not single nutrients or supplements that are a higher dose than the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA). In 2008, an overview of studies of giving antioxidants to prevent illness found that people who took antioxidants (Vitamin A, beta-carotene, and vitamin E) actually had a higher risk of becoming ill or dying. Another overview in 2004 looked at studies where antioxidants had been used to try to prevent digestive system cancers. The review found a higher risk of dying in people who took
- Beta-carotene with vitamin A
- Beta-carotene and vitamin E
A study called SELECT looked into whether taking selenium and vitamin E could prevent prostate cancer. The researchers found that slightly more men who had taken the supplements developed prostate cancer. We need more research to understand why this was so and to look into what that means for people who already have cancer.
One unpublished trial found some evidence to suggest that the antioxidants lipolic acid (ALA) and N-acetyl cysteine (NAC) helped to prevent cachexia in people with lung cancer, when taken in combination with the appetite stimulant medroxyprogesterone. But we need a lot more research into these agents before we can tell how useful they really are. Cachexia in people with cancer is a very complex problem. Finding ways to successfully manage and control it will need a lot more research. Many scientists believe that combinations of treatments will be needed.
Recent studies show that exercise may help to control muscle wasting linked to cachexia. Data suggests that progressive resistance exercise training (PRT) may increase muscle mass and strength. It may also improve physical functioning and quality of life. PRT involves a low number of muscle movements performed against increasing levels of resistance. More research is needed to see how well this type of exercise works.
We have information about a study looking at the role of exercise in people with lung or digestive system cancer who have weight and muscle loss.
About 4 out of 10 people are underweight when they are admitted to hospital. But many people lose weight during their hospital stay. So overall, nearly 6 out of 10 people in hospital (60%) at any one time are poorly nourished (malnourished).
People who are most at risk of being malnourished are those who have
- Had treatment for cancer
- Had major surgery to the digestive system - the stomach, bowel or gullet (oesophagus)
- Serious bone fractures
- Chronic illness (long term heart disease or lung disease for example)
The Government has recently drawn up some proposals aimed at structuring meal times on hospital wards including
- No visitors during meal times so that patients can concentrate on eating
- No staff meal breaks during patient meal times so that there are more staff around to help We have more information here about hospital meals.
Being poorly nourished is known as malnutrition. About 2 million people in Britain are malnourished and this affects their health and ability to work. Some people are more at risk than others. To help improve things, the Malnutrition Advisory Group (MAG) of the British Association for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (BAPEN) have launched a programme called the ‘Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool’ (MUST). This tool is simple to use and available to GPs and other people working in health care. They should use the tool to identify adults who are at risk or already malnourished and may benefit from help with their diet. There is detailed information about MUST on their website.
Question about cancer? Contact our information nurse team
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Are cloud communication protocols secure?
There’s security and there’s security. While a hacker might not break the encrypted communication directly, that doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways.
Dear Control Engineering: I was reading the article about networking protocols, and there is a statement that Skype, and by implication, other cloud technologies, are secure. Is this true?
Yes, it is if you are specific about what means exactly. Let’s digress for a moment and consider a historical parallel. Back during WWII, the German armed services used a device called an Enigma machine that encrypted messages sent by radio using Morse code. While the allies were able to intercept the radio traffic, without breaking the code, they were unable to understand the messages. So, there were enormous efforts to find ways to break the process. Those stories are fascinating and you can read them elsewhere, but successes usually came as a result of sloppy radio operators or largely brute force methods to simply try every possible key using early electro-mechanical computers.
Modern encryption is far more complex. The AES (advanced encryption standard) used with most communication on the Internet can employ a 256-bit key which would require 2200 operations to break by brute force. So it isn’t possible to decode the information by intercepting the transmission. That doesn’t mean it is secure necessarily. A determined hacker will simply find another way, and that probably means getting the message by going after one of the people that is sending or receiving. Even if the code is unbreakable, if someone breaks into my computer from outside, he or she can likely see the same information I can. My security depends on how well I protect the information once it is decoded. Using my earlier analogy, it would be like looking over the radio operator’s shoulder and seeing the message in plain text before it’s encoded.
Peter Welander, [email protected]
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We all love chocolate for its delicious flavor and taste. But did you know that it is has many health benefits too? Most of the health benefits are attributed to dark chocolate. Next time you enjoy some organic dark chocolate you can say no to the guilt!
- Chocolate is high in antioxidants called polyphenols. These are the antioxidants that are in green tea and red wine. They are protective against heart disease and may also lower cholesterol.
- Chocolate is high in magnesium. This helps aids relaxation and well-being.
- Chocolate is a rich source of theobromine, a close relative of caffeine. Theobromine may add to the mood elevating affects of chocolate.
- Chocolate is high in phenylalanine which is the neurotransmitter that produces endorphins. Endorphins are our natural painkillers and promote a sense of well-being.
- The fat in chocolate comes from cocoa butter and is rich in oleic acid and stearic acid similar to olive oil. These may benefit healthy cholesterol levels.
- Chocolate is high in a chemical called anandanine. This chemical my give the feeling of elation and bliss associated with chocolate.
- Chocolate can raise the levels of serotonin, which helps with feeling of anxiety and depression.
Find yourself some organic fair trade chocolate and enjoy the benefits of food as medicine. We are please to introduce to you the Wei of Chocolate. Wonderful organic dark chocolate infused with essential oils and flower essences. Each flavor has special benefits. The chocolates are meant to melt in your mouth while your meditate and savor the flavor. What a delicious way to incorporate mindfulness into your life.
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Alain Plante, ENVS 100: "Introduction to Environmental Science"
Recitation is designed to be workshop where you will apply lecture content to help develop quantitative skills and a deeper understanding of the course material. This recitation is not a review of lecture material. Each week, you will work in small groups on the key elements of the recitation assignment and how it relates to lecture material. Please bring your calculator and/or laptop to every recitation because we will be accessing online data sources and using Excel (or equivalent) frequently in-class.
Recitations are where you will develop your data literacy skills (and thus fulfill your QDA requirement). The problems addressed in recitation will be lecture-relevant, but will be larger and more complex. The skills you will develop will include:
- data acquisition: find and download real-world (sometimes real-time) data from online sources
- data processing: "cleaning" data to put in usable form and remove unnecessary or incorrect items
- data analysis: manipulate data using various statistical analyses to answer specific questions
- data visualization: represent data in meaningful visual forms (e.g., graphs and tables)
Weekly recitation materials will be posted on Canvas the week before recitation. You are expected to review the content of the recitation materials before coming to class.
Recitation will serve as a "workshop" for you to begin the week's assignment.
Assignments are due at beginning of the following week's recitation period, unless otherwise noted.
No late assignments will be accepted, you will automatically receive a zero.
Allocations of points in recitation assignments are outlined in the grading rubrics on Canvas. Each assignment is weighed equally, but graded out of differing amounts of points. Some assignments will be submitted in pairs, while others will be submitted individually. All students are expected to comply with the Code of Academic Integrity.
Cam Grey, Ancient History 027: "Ancient Rome"
Most of the skills development in this course will happen in recitations, using the Recitation Readings as the principlal materials. Each week students will be expected to have read carefully, and in detail all of that week's Rectiations Readings, and be prepared to discuss them. Part of preparation for this exercise involves knowing basic information like the identity, dates of birth and death, and geographical origin of an ancient author, and what his or her text is more breadly about. In order to help you to find this information -- and to utilize the tools you will need in preparing for the Final Exam -- we will, episodically thoughtout the semester, consult resources from this course's Library Lounge website (linked from Canvas.)
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Subject Level Acceleration Information
What is subject acceleration?
An individual subject acceleration is the practice of assigning a student, who meets the specified criteria, to content instructed at a higher grade level with the purpose of meeting the high achieving or gifted student’s unique needs.
Example: A 5th grade student attends a 6th grade math class each day based upon the needs of the student who has consistently performed at such high achievement levels that his/her needs cannot be met at the student’s current grade level . The student meets the recommended criteria for placement into the seventh grade math class based upon a variety of data points, holistic criteria, and team feedback.
How do I know if my child is a good candidate for acceleration?
A student is considered a good candidate if he/she has done each of the following:
• Clearly demonstrated consistent high ability in one or two subject areas
• Clearly demonstrated accelerated performance in one or two subject areas when compared to his or her age-mates
• Has Full Scale IQ or cognitive score at least one standard deviation above the mean (115 – guideline provided by Iowa Acceleration Scale, instrument required for use by Ohio Department of Education for whole grade acceleration)
• Consistently scores in Advanced category on state assessments (if available) for the are being considered for acceleration
• Likes challenges
• Has good school attendance
• Demonstrates a positive attitude, neither over-estimating or under-estimating his/her ability
• Completes assignments with care
• Is motivated to do well
• Adapts easily socially and emotionally to new and/or challenging environments
• Received challenging and enriching instruction but still cannot have his/her needs met at the current grade level
My child says that he/she is bored. Does this mean that he/she should be accelerated?
This statement in isolation is not a reason to refer a student for the acceleration process. It is important to understand that being “bored” can have a number of meanings. It does not always have to mean that the curriculum is not challenging enough. In some instances, it can actually mean that something may be a little too challenging for the student, so the student is using avoidance to engage in the task. Through dialogue with your child and his/her teacher, it is important to get some insight on what exactly being “bored” means. Is it too easy? Too hard? Not an area of interest? Something else?
After talking with my child’s teacher, we believe that after receiving challenging and enriching differentiated instruction, his/her needs are not best met in current placement. What should we do?
Sometimes despite numerous enrichment and extension opportunities being provided, it is possible that your child needs the additional challenge of a subject or whole grade acceleration. This intervention is for a small percentage of the population, and a student need not be identified as gifted in order to be referred for acceleration.
A number of factors, including quantitative and qualitative, are used by an acceleration team to make an informed decision on best placement for a student. This becomes a permanent placement after the nine week transition period. A student who just qualifies is probably not the ideal candidate for acceleration. One must examine the potential for long-term achievement. Accelerated students should be expected to achieve, relative to their new grade peers, at a high level that is generally comparable to their performance in their previous grade. These students are typically in the top 10% in a class and one would expect them to remain in the top 10% throughout their academic career. Thus, test scores should be strong in order for acceleration to be successful. With a subject acceleration a student then is assessed at that grade level for any state testing.
For more information on acceleration, visit the Acceleration Institute website. For families considering whether or not acceleration is the right intervention for their child, contact the child’s teacher to get an idea of the student’s progress within the classroom and what extension and enrichment opportunities have been implemented in the classroom to stretch and engage the learner. You may also contact the gifted services department with any questions about acceleration.
More information about acceleration and the state model acceleration policy may also be found by visiting the webpage at the Ohio Department of Education.
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This Graphing Square Root Functions lesson plan also includes:
- Join to access all included materials
Learners graph square root functions by using transformation. In this square root functions lesson plan, students also describe the vertical stretch, reflection, and horizontal and vertical shift of the function.
45 Views 57 Downloads CCSS: Adaptable
- This resource is only available on an unencrypted HTTP website. It should be fine for general use, but don’t use it to share any personally identifiable information
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Have you ever given thought to how powerful the written word is? Safety speakers and safety professionals are primarily communicators. Understanding the tools we use to communicate is critical to our success.
In our field, you often hear phrases such as, “walking your talk,” “being a safety example” and the ever popular, “actions speak louder than words.” I would suggest words are, in fact, actions.
Words are actions
In my Safety For Leaders presentation, I teach what you talk about and how often you talk about these things sends a powerful message. If you talk about something every day and something else only once a week people quickly learn what is most important to you. Also, do the words of your leaders come from their personal experience and belief or from a power point presentation showing numbers and statistics?
Everyone in the audience knows safety is a value when a leader shares personal experiences.
YouTube understands the power of written words
Even YouTube understands the importance of words. YouTube encourages providers of video content to add transcriptions to their video.
Why do they do this?
You might think it is for close captioning, but that isn’t the primary reason. The key reason is words are searchable on the internet and that makes any video you post searchable by Google and any other search engine. It basically means your video can now be found by someone if a part of the dialogue contains their search term. Even in a world where video is their primary product, YouTube understands the power of the written word.
Ways you can use the written word for safety
- Newsletters - electronic and printed
- Emails - What percentages of emails in your company discuss safety?
- Text messages
Editing and the written word
Another reason the written word is powerful is it has staying power. For that reason, it is good to have someone edit or just read any significant writings you put out for public consumption. It is tempting to be sloppy when it comes to emails, but if you don’t do a good job on a safety email and your other written communications are more accurate it sends a subliminal message of importance or lack thereof.
One day, I was in a hurry to get a newsletter out and I sent it without having Sandie edit it for me. The opening line was supposed to be, “Here We Go...” Unfortunately, I didn’t see that it actually said, “He We Go...” Believe me, I still hear about that mistake.
Have fun using words to convey a safety message.
Until next week,
I'll be, "Watching Out For Everyone's Safety™"
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Cystoscopy means literally to look at the bladder with a scope. The expert urologists at Georgia Urology have performed many cystoscopes, so they’re extremely qualified to explain all about this medical procedure.
Why Should You Get a Cystoscopy?
Reasons for doing a cystoscopy include evaluation of lower urinary tract when there is blood in the urine. Similarly, a cystoscopy might be part of the evaluation for recurrent infections or issues of incontinence. Patients with a history of bladder tumors are followed in this way. Ultimately, cystoscopy is a diagnostic test to find the source of the problem and develop a treatment plan.
How Does Cystoscopy Work?
This procedure can be performed awake or asleep, in the office, the surgery center, or in the hospital. To reach the bladder, the scope normally goes through the urethra which, in men, includes the prostate. When this procedure is done in the office or surgery center, the urologist will most likely use a flexible scope. This means the scope can go around bends and curves. Overall, the procedure is mildly more uncomfortable than having a catheter placed.
In the office setting, a cystoscopy normally takes about five minutes to perform. The patient will be prepped and often given lidocaine jelly to numb the tissues. The most discomfort comes with passing the scope into the bladder. After that, there is a sensation of bladder fullness as the urologist instills water into the bladder. It is not unusual to experience some discomfort urinating after the procedure and blood can occasionally be seen. This will most likely clear. Drinking more fluids helps “flush” the bladder. Expect to recover within the next few days.
What Happens After a Cystoscopy?
Your urologist should be able to share the findings with you after the procedure is completed. In some cases, you will need to go to the hospital for a more involved procedure. Other times, you can be followed in a routine manner in the office. In either case, the cystoscopy is an important test to evaluate your lower urinary tract and can be well tolerated with little downtime.
If you have any more questions about this medical testing, click here to contact the urologists at Georgia Urology!
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The Horrible History of the "Comfort Women" and the Fight to Suppress Their StoryHistorians/History
[A] conference of historians, psychoanalysts, and artists, gathered to reflect on the relation of education to the Holocaust, watched the videotaped testimony of the woman in an attempt to better understand the era. A lively debate ensued. The testimony was not accurate, historians claimed. The number of chimneys was misrepresented. Historically, only one chimney was blown up, not all four. Since the memory of the testifying woman turned out to be, in this way, fallible, one could not accept--nor give credence to--her account of the events. It was utterly important to remain accurate, [lest] the revisionists in history discredit everything. A psychoanalyst . . . profoundly disagreed. “The woman was testifying,” he insisted, “not to the number of the chimneys blown up, but to something else, more radical, more crucial: the reality of an unimaginable occurrence.” --Dori Laub
In recent years, women’s testimonies have provided crucial evidence for challenging normative views of history. Testimony as such has been “an act of memory situated in time,” “vital” to historical knowledge, as it “dislocate[d] established frameworks and shift[ed] paradigms” of the discipline. The power of words has also been evident in current educational practices. Teachers working at different levels of education--from a classroom where twelfth grade students read I, Rigoberta Menchu to a classroom at Yale where college students watched films of Holocaust survivors-- have reported that the testimonial narratives of previously marginalized voices have powerful transformative effects upon the consciousness and actions of students.
The use of testimony in history, however, often brings with it tension, uncertainty, and conflict--be it epistemological, methodological, ethical, or otherwise--with respect to research and teaching practices. As one critic observes, I, Rigoberta Menchu “played a conspicuous role in the ideological conflicts that burst out in the field of education in the United States” in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Clearly, history involves social and cultural struggles over interpretations of the past. Feminist historian Joan Scott has called this the “politics of history,” as historical interpretations are “not fixed . . . but are rather dynamic, always in flux.” It is important that historians attend to the “conflictual processes that establish meanings . . . [and] the play of force involved in any society’s construction and implementation of meanings.”
This article examines the Japanese controversy over the “comfort women” (ianfu) system during Japan’s Asia-Pacific War (1931-1945) and attempts to include that history in school textbooks. The testimonies given by former comfort women in the 1990s forever changed the paradigm of historical research on the subject and became the focus of charged debate among intellectuals of different disciplinary and ideological backgrounds, as well as the target of Japanese neonationalist attacks.
The existence of comfort women was ubiquitous knowledge in Japan from the late 1930s, despite censorship. In the 1990s, feminist movements inside and outside Japan, and above all the victims who broke silence and gave testimonies, showed the direct role of the Japanese state and military in creating and maintaining a system of forced prostitution and systematic rape of women from colonized and occupied territories. When the voices of victims were reinforced by the research findings of Japanese scholars who unearthed documents proving the role of the Japanese military in maintaining the system, official denials melted away. By examining the process, through which the challenges to the normative interpretation were posed and the ways they were countered, this article provides a comparative perspective for understanding contemporary controversies over women’s voices, testimony, and history generally.
Challenges to the Meaning of Comfort Women in Postwar Japan
A number of reports, diaries, and memoirs published in Japan during and after World War II mentioned military comfort facilities on various war fronts and throughout territories occupied by Japanese imperial forces. In these writings, the term ianfu (comfort women) was a euphemism for prostitutes who provided sex to men in service. Although the story had no place in Japan’s official war history, it was told and retold privately as a nostalgic (and sometimes romantic) episode in men’s memoirs and novels.
In the 1970s and 1980s, several publications appeared that took somewhat more critical views of the comfort women issue. One of the first was a book written by the non-fiction writer Senda Kako in 1973. Senda, a former journalist, conducted extensive research and interviews, and from these he concluded that the women's situations had been “pitiful.” Senda's work was based almost wholly on sources and recollections of Japanese men who had served in the war--only a few Japanese former comfort women spoke of their experiences, and the two Korean former comfort women he interviewed remained silent. Senda’s book became a best seller. The term he used for the women jugun -ianfu (comfort women serving in the war), would later become contentious, came to have a wide circulation.
Feminist approaches began to appear after the Japanese journalist and feminist Matsui Yayori (1934-2003) took up the issue. In 1984, Matsui published a short article in Asahi Shinbun, which marked the first time for any major newspaper to address the issue. Matsui’s interviewee, a former comfort woman whose name was not disclosed, was a Korean living in Thailand. She spoke of her experience this way:
The life of comfort women was this--during the day doing laundry of soldiers’ clothes, cleaning the barracks, and some heavy labor such as carrying ammunition, and at night being the plaything for the soldiers. There were days when I was made to serve scores of men beginning in the morning. When I resisted--even just a little--I was beaten by the supervisor, pulled by my hair, and dragged around half-naked. It was a subhuman life.
Matsui’s article triggered no significant public reaction. It was only
after the successes of South Korean democratic and feminist movements in the
late 1980s, freeing former comfort women to speak of their experiences for the
first time, that the issue became international, forcing the Japanese government
to recognize the comfort women as a significant part of Japan’s unresolved
war issues. Yun Chung-ok, a professor at Korea's Ewha Womans University, was
an important catalyst in this development. In the late 1980's she met with Matsui
to exchange information about the comfort women, and in 1990 she wrote a series
of reports on the issue for a Korean newspaper. Yun’s reports ignited
and enraged the South Korean public, prompting calls for redress from the Japanese
government. They also catalyzed Japanese women’s groups and political
parties, many of which began to call for a governmental inquiry into the issue
as a war atrocity.
In a Diet session in June 1991, the Japanese government denied the involvement of the wartime state and its military in the matter--further enraging South Koreans. Former comfort woman Kim Hak-soon was so angry that she decided to “come out” as a way of forcing the Japanese government to confront the issue. She was the first Korean woman residing in South Korea to reveal herself in public as a former comfort woman. In the fall of 1991, Kim testified before the Japanese public. Her testimony, translated, recorded, and later published, began with her half century of silence and the decision eventually to break that silence:
For these fifty years, I have lived, by bearing and again bearing [the unbearable]. For fifty years, I have had a heavy, painful feeling, but kept thinking in my heart about telling my experience some day. . . As I try to speak now, my heart pounds against my chest, because what happened in the past was something extremely unconscionable . . . Why does [the Japanese government] tell such a lie [to deny its knowledge of comfort women system]? Actually, I was made into a comfort woman, and I’m here alive.
Kim’s testimony was the most significant event in establishing a new interpretation
of the comfort women system. Hearing her story on Japanese television, historian
Yoshimi Yoshiaki went straight to the archives of the Self-Defense Agency (Boeicho),
where he found evidence that conclusively demonstrated the involvement of the
Japanese Imperial Army in organizing the comfort women system for its soldiers
(though the nature of the comfort women system and the state/military involvement,
including the use of force and coercion, still required further study). In 1992,
he published his findings in major Japanese newspapers. Faced with documentary
evidence from its own archives, the Japanese government had no choice but to
acknowledge military involvement, and Prime Minister Miyazawa Kiichi officially
apologized to South Korea.
In 1993, a Japanese government hearing for fifteen former comfort women in Seoul revealed that many women had been made to serve as comfort women involuntarily. Later that year, Chief Cabinet Secretary Kono Yohei made an official statement (danwa), essentially admitting that the Japanese Imperial Army had been directly and indirectly involved in the establishment and administration of comfort facilities. The government also acknowledged that coercion had been used in the recruitment and retention of the women, and called for historical research and education aimed at remembering the fact. The Kono statement became the basis for addressing the issue of comfort women in education, and by 1997 almost all school history textbooks and those in related subjects included a brief reference to comfort women. One history textbook for junior high school read, “[M]any women, such as Korean women, were sent to the front as comfort women serving in the war.” Such statements, however bland, served as a legitimate window through which teachers and students could address the issue in classrooms.
Subsequent historical research has uncovered more disturbing details about the comfort women system. Scholars estimate that between fifty thousand and two hundred thousand women were enslaved to provide sexual service to Japanese officers and soldiers. The majority of these women were Korean and Chinese (there were also some Japanese), but they included women from many other countries, including Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia, East Timor, Malaya, and Holland. Many non-Japanese women were minors, rounded up by deception or under conditions of debt slavery, and some were violently abducted.
Prostitution for military personnel in war zones and occupied territories was widely practiced during and prior to World War II, but Japan’s comfort women system was unusual in the extreme forms of coercion and oppression imposed on women, including teenage girls brought from Korea and Taiwan. The evidence reveals that state and military authorities at the highest levels were extensively involved in the policymaking, establishment, and maintenance of the system, and in recruiting and transporting women across international borders.
One result of both the Japanese government's apologies and of recent scholarship on comfort women was backlash from neonationalist groups. In particular, neonationalists objected strongly to both the government’s admission of state involvement in the matter and to the inclusion of the issue in school textbooks. They have attacked politicians who support the government’s apologies as well as historians' findings about comfort women. They have also targeted contradictions in the testimonies of comfort women in an effort to discredit their accounts.
Neonationalists vs. Progressive and Feminist Historians
Making and keeping the issue of comfort women controversial has been one of the most effective strategies pursued by neonationalists. In particular, they have focused on minor or technical details of the facts presented by women’s testimonies and historical research, pointing out errors and the impossibility of verification. For example, in the early 1990s, some school textbooks referred to the women in question as jugun -ianfu (comfort women serving in the war). Neonationalists, however, argued that jugun -ianfu was not the “historical term,” meaning that it was not the term that was used officially (and unofficially) during the war. Therefore, they have insisted, the term must be deleted from school textbooks.
There is a modicum of truth in the nationalist claim: the term jugun -ianfu was a postwar invention, gaining a wide currency with Senda’s work. During the war, the military officially called the comfort facilities ianjo or ianshisetsu (ian means “comfort”), designating for the most part the military comfort facilities but sometimes referring to private brothels. For example, one of the key documents Yoshimi discovered in 1991 (one that led to Prime Minister Miyazawa’s official apology in 1992) was subject indexed as “Gun Ianjo Jugyofu-to Boshu ni kansuru Ken” (Matters concerning the recruitment of women to work in military comfort stations). The women were variously called as ianfu (comfort women), shugyofu (women of indecent occupation), shakufu (women serving sake), and tokushu-ianfu (special kind of comfort women), but not jugun -ianfu .
Semantic issues aside, however, neonationalist efforts to undermine the history of the comfort women--and to erase it from school textbooks--seem manipulative at best. They argue, for example, that the term jugun , as part of a compound noun (e.g., jugun-kisha, the term for war correspondents; and jugun-kangofu, the term for war nurses), indicates the status of gunzoku, or civilian war workers (those officially on the payroll of the army and/or navy). The comfort women, they argue, were not in that category. Historians such as Yoshimi have refuted this argument by pointing out that the term jugun was (and is) commonly used to mean “going to the front,” or “serving in the war,” and as such it was not used in the same way as gunzoku. For example, most war correspondents were not employed by the Japanese military (the army only came to have its own correspondents after 1942), but regardless of their employment status, they were (and are) usually called jugun -kisha.
Moreover, Yoshimi and others have pointed out the obvious fact that terms used in historical research (and education) are not necessarily the precise terms that were used during the period under study. (For example, people in the medieval period never called their time medieval.) In their view, the real problem with the use of the term jugun -ianfu in school textbooks is not that it was not officially used in wartime since the term became commonplace in recent years. Rather it that it is euphemistic. “Comfort” (ian) hardly convey a situation of the women that was, in fact, enslavement. The point is well taken. Although many scholars at present prefer using the term gun-ianfu (military comfort women) or Nihongun-ianfu (Japanese military comfort women) for its preciseness, what is critical, whatever term is used, is that explanation be provided.
Another point of dispute has been over the types, agents, and extent of coercion. Neonationalists have made an issue of the term kyosei-renko (taking by force), a compound noun commonly used to refer to the Korean and Chinese men brought to Japan to labor in places such as coalmines and factories during the war. Neonationlists has made an issue of it since attacking the 1997 edition junior high school textbooks for their use of the term kyosei-renko in relation to the comfort women. By defining the term as an act of “something like slave hunting by the military and /or government authorities” (a narrower definition than most historians’ usage signifying the involuntary nature on the part of the workers), they argue that no (documentary) evidence has been found to suggest that kyosei-renko took place in recruiting comfort women. They also argue that official documents indicate that the military and police instructed traffickers to follow the law and regulations in their recruitment of comfort women (procuring women for prostitution was legal, but regulated), and that the testimony of Yoshida Seiji, the only person who publicly acknowledged the violent means he and his co-workers used to recruit comfort women, lacks credibility in several key issues such as dates and places.
The neonationalist arguments were (and are) misleading. First, no 1997 edition junior high history textbooks used the term kyosei-renko in describing the comfort women. The term kyoseiteki (forcibly) appeared in one text and the term renkoshite (took) appeared in another, but not kyosei-renko .
Second, it is illogical to suggest that no state or military force was used because no written official order has been discovered. While admitting that they have found no official documents that ordered the use of military or police force for the recruitment of women--in particular, in colonized regions such as Korea and Taiwan--Yoshimi and others emphasize the fact that many wartime official records were destroyed by the military at Japan’s surrender. Besides, the state and its military had no need to use so explicit a language as “use force to round up women and send them to comfort facilities” to achieve its goals.
In the absence of official documents sanctioning the use of force, progressive and feminist historians have presented other evidence to document the fact that the military and government authorities were directly involved in the procurement, shipping, and management of the comfort women, and were aware of traffickers’ use of violence and deceptive tactics. Overwhelmng evidence shows that colonial authorities in essence condoned such traffickers’ behavior as well as their trading very young girls in Korea and Taiwan.
In addition, detailed testimonies by former comfort women document cases in occupied territories, such as China and Southeast Asia, where government and military authorities themselves took women by force. Finally, coercion was widespread not only in the recruitment of women, but also in forcing them to stay and work in the comfort facilities. Yoshimi and others suggest that the neonationalist focus on the term kyosei-renko is simply a smokescreen to divert (public) attention from the main issue: the coercive nature of the military comfort women system.
Progressive and feminist historians seem to be winning the empirical and analytical debate. But if the neonationalists have lost many points, they continue to circulate their views not only through that part of the media that they dominate such as the Sankei Shimbun, but throughout the mainstream mass media. And if progressive and feminist historians dominate the discussion in historical circles, neonationalists exhibit formidable strength in the popular arena where the controversy has attracted a large audience. For example, Kobayashi Yoshinori, a popular cartoonist who had once fought on behalf of some AIDS victims, has published a series of best-selling comics in magazines and volumes, promoting neonationalist arguments on the war. The ability of neonationalists to keep the issue controversial has led the public to feel that the issues remain unresolved.
Right-wing political pressures led a number of textbook publishers to remove references to comfort women from their 2002 edition junior high history textbooks. Out of eight texts, only one included the phrase comfort women (ianfu ) and two others included the phrase comfort facility (ianshisetsu). This trend continues as none of the 2006 edition textbook drafts refers to comfort women. One text mentions the issue, but only in a footnote touching on the recent development by which the unresolved issues of war have been brought to the Japanese court.
A “Poststructuralist” Feminist Critique of “Positivism” in History:
Fluctuating the Progressive /Feminist Camp
In the battles between neo nationalists and progressive/feminist historians, some critics have looked to “postmodern” approaches to replace empirical approaches to the issue of comfort women. In a provocative essay, noted Japanese feminist Ueno Chizuko criticizes as “positivist” (jissho-shugi) the arguments of both neonationalists and progressive/feminist historians. Citing “poststructuralist” theories, Ueno maintains that the issue of comfort women is linked to fundamental questions about the methodology of historical studies. She asks: “[I]s a historical ‘fact’ such a simple thing that it looks the same to whoever looks at it?”
According to Ueno, the positivist approach accepts written documents as the first and only legitimate source for the study of history (bunshoshiryo shijo-shugi). This has allowed neonationalists to discredit the testimonies of former comfort women on the grounds that no official documents have been found showing that the state and the military took women by force. In her view, progressive and feminist historians have erred in attempting to refute the nationalists by advancing the positivist study of history. Commenting on a televised debate on the issue, Ueno charges that:
Yoshimi Yoshiaki, a conscientious historian who has contributed most vigorously in discovering the historical materials concerning the issue of comfort women, driven into a corner by the questioning of [nationalists such as] Kobayashi Yoshinori, finally admitted that no written historical materials exist that prove in due form the involvement of the Japanese military. If [one] stands on the doctrine of the written historical material as the first and only source, [one] has no choice but to admit “no.” It became more or less a shared understanding that the documents Yoshimi found [and reported in 1992] can be indirect evidence for kyosei-renko (taking by force), but not the historical source that substantiates it as a fact.
At the heart of Ueno's interpretation is the suggestion that positivism “denies
the ‘evidentiary power’ of the victims’ testimonies,”
and, thus, discredits “the ‘reality’ [experienced and told
by] the victims.” Ueno holds that to negate the testimonies of the former
comfort women is to trample their dignity underfoot. Instead, she argues for
the importance of recognizing “a variety of histories,” or “pluralistic
histories,” which would represent history from individuals' differing
realities. This means that there is no necessity to choose just one history
from the variety.
Progressive Historians’ Reply to Ueno
Ueno’s argument created a stir among progressive and feminist historians.
For example, Yoshimi responded that no serious Japanese historian today holds
that written historical material is the first and only source for the study
of history, still less that official state documents are the only legitimate
historical sources. He also noted that it is common sense among historians that
“the picture of history is not unitary even in cases where [historians]
address the same object.” Yoshimi cited the difference between two versions
of a life history told by the same former comfort woman (a Resident Korean living
in Okinawa). That difference, he suggested, is based on the differences between
the interviewers’ social locations and positions--one a Japanese feminist,
and the other a Korean support group.
Yoshimi maintains that historical facts need to be reconstructed utilizing diverse sources such as official and unofficial documents, testimonies, and other kinds of evidence; and that theories and methods of history are tools for historical analysis and reconstruction. In his view, a reconstructed history needs to be evaluated in terms of its persuasiveness and logical coherence--which for him is “verification.” Yoshimi questions whether Ueno’s position that there are no “facts” or “truths” in history, only “realities reconstructed from given perspectives” ultimately suggests that one’s viewpoint is the only thing that matters in studies of history. This, for Yoshimi, is highly problematic. As he puts it:
If so, . . . which “reality” to choose would be decided by determining which [viewpoint] to choose from the [various] “viewpoints” that construct it [history]. This would result in either agnosticism, or the situation of [choosing based on] beliefs and tastes, i.e., which viewpoint one believes or prefers.
“At least, if it’s scholarship,” Yoshimi argues, “it
should be questioned which reality, from among various ‘realities’ reconstructed, has persuasive power and which has a basis.”
Yoshimi rejects Ueno’s view that pointing out the exaggerations and mistakes in the victims’ testimonies is to deny the power of testimonial evidence. It is natural that mistakes or inconsistencies occur in testimony concerning events half a century earlier, just as mistakes and inconsistencies, not to mention deliberate falsehoods and obfuscation sometimes found in official war documents, may be found in documentary evidence. For example, a woman testified that she had been forced to work in a military comfort facility in the late 1930s in Japan, but since no military comfort facilities are known to have existed inside Japan at that time, Yoshimi holds that it is difficult to take this particular testimony at face value. In another example, a former comfort woman gave contradictory accounts—on one occasion, she stated that she had been taken by force, but on another occasion, she stated she had accepted the job to earn money. Yoshimi reminds us that the fact that the woman consented to be sent to the front (in this case Burma) does not absolve the military from responsibility for its brutal treatment of her within the comfort women system, leading her to attempt to commit suicide by drowning. He states, “I would like [Ueno] to consider this kind of effort [required] for the reconstruction of the reality.”
Yoshimi’s point highlights the fact that oral history involves careful piecing together and assessment of information given in multiple testimonies. This is all the more true when the evidence pertains to events of half a century earlier. While Yoshimi acknowledges the possibility of a (postmodernist) examination of testimonies as (contemporary) discursive practices, he insists that the current controversy over the comfort women issue is principally over the historical facts. Therefore, his efforts have been geared toward the reconstruction of those facts.
Other historians have joined the debate. I would like to consider the insights of one of them, Yasumaru Yoshio, a specialist on the history of Japanese thought. While finding some value in Ueno’s argument, Yasumaru disagrees with her assessment of Yoshimi as a positivist. Yasumaru points out that Yoshimi began his study because he was deeply moved by the testimony of Kim Hak-soon, meaning that at the heart of his study are his sensibility and ethics. Having taken up the subject, Yoshimi has brought to bears his skills and knowledge as an historian.
One important issue to Yasumaru is the activities of traffickers in the colonies who were active agents and mediators between the women and the military, and who played a major part in the everyday violence, including taking women by force or kidnapping them. Without their existence and systematic operations, Yasumaru argues, it would have been impossible for the state to collect such a large number of women. Extending Yasumaru’s arguments, it is clear that historians and educators need to examine critically not only the direct role of the imperial state and military but also the dynamics of class, gender, race, and ethnicity that shaped the ideologies and praxis of colonial relations in order to grasp the milieu within which the traffickers committed everyday violence.
The Nationalist Appropriation of Postmodern Vocabulary
While the debate over the appropriate paradigm for historical research has continued within the progressive/feminist camp, some neonationalists have begun to speak a kind of postmodern discourse, with their own particular twist. They are calling for the construction of a Japanese history from “the Japanese perspective,” stressing unity and coherence.
For example, Sakamoto Takao, a historian of Japanese political thought, has argued that no education is value-neutral and that the purpose of education, especially history education, is to foster “national consciousness.” In his view, “history is a story,” and the Japanese history taught in schools should be “a story of the formation of a nation, a people,” which aims at the construction of a sense of national unity.
Sakamoto here employs the discourse of a national history that is not necessarily based on verified facts drawn from studies of history, but one in which facts are “fittingly woven into the story” in order to enhance its reality. In Sakamoto’s view, concepts such as “state” and “nation” are, in some sense, fictions. “However,” he contends, human beings “cannot live without fictions,” and “efforts” by human beings “to maintain the fictions” are needed. The vocabulary used here may have been borrowed from recent postmodern literature, but it curiously (and ironically) serves modernist ends, specifically the construction of a national unity by [re]instituting and privileging national history.
Sakamoto's neonationalist postmodern discourse finds echoes among those in mass media and on the lecture circuit, indicating that it has gained some currency in the public arena. In the fall of 1996, for example, Sakurai Yoshiko, a former television news anchor woman and current freelance journalist, gave a lecture at an in-service teacher training program held by the Yokohama Education Board for the promotion of international understanding. Sakurai spoke on the comfort women issue and textbook questions. She began by stating that “all the textbooks . . . assume ‘taken by force’ as a major premise; however, . . it is my conviction that [the women] were not ‘taken by force.’”
The problem, in her view, was the “structure of the Japanese psyche,” which was “self-tormenting.” She then proceeded to argue for the concept of history as a story (monogatari) of a nation.
What I’d like to say is that history is a story…It is a story of individuals, and at the same time it should be a story of the respective nation. Therefore, … it should be natural that Japan has its own way of viewing [history]. It is natural that . . . China has its own view and Korea has its own view, and it is natural and reasonable that all three are separate [and different].
For Sakurai, Japan’s (hi)story needs to be told from the Japanese perspective,
that is, a perspective through which the younger generation come to love the
The new postmodern line put forth by the nationalists also seems to blur the line between “fact” and “fiction.” In fact, Fujioka Nobukatsu, an educational scholar and long a central figure in the neonationalist attack on history textbooks, has even argued that the inclusion of “lies” in history books (and, by implication, textbooks) is acceptable for certain purposes, for instance, to make the story “colorful.” Fujioka has disclosed that in the 1990s, when he was involved in authoring Takasugi Shinsaku, a series of history books for children (intended to aid their understanding of history lessons in schools), he included some fictitious stories. As he puts it:
To write [a history] based only on verified historical truths makes . . . [it] insipid and dry. I changed my policy for the lack of an alternative--I had no choice but to write from my own imagination to a great extent.
It seems that neonationalists are in the process of reformulating their discursive
strategy to appropriate (selectively) certain postmodern concepts such as “history
as story” to serve the purpose of creating an idealized history of a pure
Japanese nation. It is a project that resonates with dominant wartime ideologies
As we have seen, one of the primary nationalist strategies has been to focus on the details of historical findings on comfort women, to point out errors or the impossibility of verifying certain claims, and on that basis suggest the impossibility of verifying any part of the history of comfort women. At the same time, they seek to relativize the epistemological status of any claim concerning historical facts and argue for a choice of stories from any number of “equally valid” stories. The notion of “history as story” serves as a license to construct any kind of story as history, including fictive stories with real names. This is a clever move for neonationalists, one that is worrisome for progressive/feminist historians. For, if neonationalists are unable to win the battle over empirical research and testimony, perhaps they can win with fictional narratives appealing to the national pride and patriotic spirit.
The testimonies of former comfort women that appeared in the early 1990s spurred intense controversy over the representation of wartime Japan's military comfort women system. The controversy has been intense and prolonged, not only because it reflects the political and ideological struggle(s) between progressives and neonationalists in Japan and the geopolitics and diplomacy involving Japan and its neighbors, but also because of the intellectual and moral challenges posed to the societies involved in general, and historians and educators specifically.
In the conventional legal context, “testimony is provided, and is called for, when the facts upon which justice must pronounce its verdict are not clear, when historical accuracy is in doubt, and when both the truth and its supporting elements of evidence are called into question.” In other words, it settles the dispute. In contemporary society, testimony given by victims and the oppressed has been used in research and education to provide crucial evidence to document traumatic events, including the Second World War, the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and diverse war atrocities. In so doing, it has acquired another function—unsettling the (dominant, normative) truth.
Indeed, the testimonies of former comfort women have changed the interpretive framework for research on the issue and for what counts as truth. As a result, a much richer, detailed, and more critical understanding of the events and processes that defined the comfort women system becomes possible. At the same time, however, the emphasis placed by some proponents of the comfort women on the truth of their testimonies has backfired. Japanese neonationalists, by focusing on minor details and contradictions, have effectively made (and kept) controversial both the women's testimonies and historians’ findings that draw both on testimonies and archival research. Progressive and feminist historians have fought back and won a number of empirical debates on the basis of expert knowledge, but neonationalists have succeeded in confusing public audiences, including many school teachers.
How should historians and educators use the voices and testimonies of comfort women, as well as those of other marginalized groups? It seems to me that we should strive for a sensitive, sensible, and critical approach to them. First, we should understand that oral testimony is an important and unique source of information, one that is particularly important if we are to gain access to the experience of victims, but that it is only one of many types of sources that historians and educators should consult. Like any other source, its value needs to be assessed rigorously, its internal consistency examined closely, and, when used as part of the factual narratives that historians construct, it should be used in conjunction with multiple official and unofficial documents—print or otherwise—to create a wider and deeper understanding of complex phenomena of the past. The testimony of the comfort women, where it can be verified and reinforced, is among the most compelling and important kinds of evidence available for documenting the women’s experience and the interplay between official policies and the peoples of colonized and occupied territories under wartime conditions.
Second, gender is a critically important category for understanding what took place more than half a century ago and for grasping how it has been represented since. In my view, the foremost significance of testimony lies in its power to provide a lived perspective, a lens through which historians and educators can (and should) reexamine and reinterpret every historical source available. We should look at history of the war through the eyes of comfort women. It can change the meanings and interpretations of events by shedding a different light on other historical materials, and so it can yield new knowledge. In this case, the research illuminates how gender relations and ideology, embedded in nationalism, militarism, colonialism, and ethnocentrism, shaped history, and how statist and male perspectives on that history can be challenged. The women’s testimonies help visualize a new, counter history of war and colonialism, providing rare insight into a range of issues as experienced and remembered by an important group of women whose voices had been silenced for more than half a century.
Third, we should not conflate the problem of method with that of perspective. The evidence produced by a testimony, while often powerful and compelling, is by its nature partial and limited. It is the historians’ task to probe the relationship between “fragmentary evidence” and the lived perspective (or “holistic truth”) to comprehend the full experience of comfort women and the role of the state in crafting the comfort women system. To be sure, some testimony is difficult--or virtually impossible--to verify given the fact that the Japanese government and military deliberately destroyed the key documents at Japan’s defeat. However, the value of the perspective is not undermined by discrepancies and inconsistencies in individual accounts. Rather, taken as a group, the testimonies of comfort women from many countries constitute a powerful and coherent set of lenses to examine the nature of the comfort women system and the war. Incorporating the perspective(s) of the victims into historical research and education is not only a profoundly important intellectual act, it is also among the most important ethical and political responsibilities of historians and educators.
Finally, it is urgent to educate students and the public about the complex issues involved in the relationship between history and testimony, so that they can meet the intellectual and moral challenges that the history of comfort women and other sensitive historical issues pose for later generations. Postmodern debates can help to sensitize students and the public to become informed listeners and readers of testimonies and to effectively engage the controversies surrounding them. Those who hold classic, commonsensical notions of historical objectivity, and who emphasize teaching only “the facts,” may remain vulnerable in contemporary debates over history and testimony, if only because they are less equipped to deal with attacks employing postmodern language as in the case of “history as story.” Today’s effective citizenship requires understanding of the nature, power, and limits of testimonies in constructing historical knowledge, as such knowledge is a major source of national identity.
*I would like to thank Hiro Inokuchi, Richard Minear, and Mark Selden for comments and suggestions.
Dori Laub, “Bearing Witness, or the Vicissitudes of Listening,” in Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (London: Routledge, 1992), 59-60.
Allen Carey-Webb, "Transformative Voices," in Allen Carey-Webb and Stephen Benz, eds., Teaching and testimony: Rigoberta Menchu and the North American Classroom (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 7.
See, for example, June Kuzmeskus, "Writing Their Way to Compassionate Citizenship: Rigoberta Menchu and Activating High School Learners," in Carey-Webb and Benz, Teaching and Testimony, 123-131.
Shoshana Felman, "Education and Crisis, Or the Vicissitudes of Teaching," in Felman and Laub, Testimony, 1-56.
Mary Louise Pratt, “I, Rigoberta Menshu and the ‘Culture Wars,’” in Arturo Arias, ed. The Rigoberta Menchu Controversy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 30.
Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (NY: Columbia University Press, 1988), 5.
In this article, I employ the term “comfort women” (hereafter without quotation marks) because it has been the term most widely used, though I am aware that the term was (and is) a euphemism. Scores of volumes and articles on the topic (written in Japanese, Korean, and English) have been published since the early 1990s. This article discusses the most important works comprising that literature.
Historical controversy is not new in Japan. Since 1945, Japan has been the setting of a hard-fought struggle over the official history of World War II. See Yoshiko Nozaki and Hiromitsu Inokuchi, "Japanese Education, Nationalism, and Ienaga Saburo’s Textbook Lawsuits," in Laura Hein and Mark Selden, eds., Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany, and the United States (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 2000), 96-126; and Yoshiko Nozaki, “Japanese Politics and the History Textbook Controversy, 1945-2001,” in Edward Vickers and Alisa Jones, eds., History Education and National Identity in East Asia (London: RoutledgeFalmer, 2005), 275-305.
For testimonies and accounts by former comfort women, see, for example, Maria Rosa Henson, A Filipina’s Story of Prostitution and Slavery under the Japanese Military (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield, 1999); and Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, True Stories of the Korean Comfort Women, ed. Keith Howard (London: Cassell Academic, 1996).
For other aspects of the controversy, see Yoshiko Nozaki, "Feminism, Nationalism, and the Japanese Textbook Controversy over 'Comfort Women,'" in France Winddance Twine and Kathleen M. Blee, eds., Feminism & Antiracism: International Struggles for Justice (NY: New York University Press, 2001), 170-189. See also Laura Hein, "Savage Irony: The Imaginative Power of the 'Military Comfort Women'" in the 1990s, Gender & History (1999), 11(2): 336-372.
See, for example, Hyakusatsu ga Kataru “Ianjyo” Otoko no Honne: Ajia-zeniki ni “Inanjyo” ga Atta [The “comfort facility” and men’s confessions told in one hundred books: There were “comfort facilities” all over Asia], ed. Takasaki Ryuji (Tokyo: Nashinokisha, 1994). Takasaki finds approximately one hundred diaries and memoirs that referred to having directly witnessed the comfort facilities and/or comfort women. Those published during the war were censored so that their references were oblique.
Japanese and Korean names in this article follow East Asian name order (except author information for English publications).
The first writer to take up the issue was Senda Kako, who published Jugun Ianfu [Military comfort women] (Tokyo: Futabasha, 1973). Senda also wrote several bestsellers on the topic in the 1970s. In Korea, several publications appeared in the 1970s. For further discussion, see Takasaki Soji, Hannichi Kanjyo [Anti-Japanese sentiments] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1993), 128-129; and Kasahara Tokushi et al. eds. Rekishi no Jijitsu o do Ninteishi do Oshieruka [How to verify and teach the historical facts] (Tokyo: Kyoiku Shuppankai, 1997), 160-161.
Matsui Yayori, "Kankoku-fujin no Ikita Michi" [The road a Korean woman took to live], Asahi Shinbun, evening edition (November 2, 1984), 5. At the time of Matsui’s interview, the woman lived in Thailand. The article included a photo of her visiting her family in Korea in 1984, but did not mention her name.
For Yun’s activities, see George Hicks, The Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War (NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994), 173-178.
In the next few years, approximately two hundred Korean former comfort women followed in Kim’s footsteps.
Kaiho Shuppansha ed., Kim Hakusun-san no Shogen: “Jugun Ianfu Mondai” o Tou [The testimony of Kim Hak-soon: An inquiry into the issue of military comfort women] (Osaka: Kaiho Shuppansha, 1993), 3-4.
For further discussion, see Nozaki, "Feminism, Nationalism, and the Japanese Textbook Controversy over 'Comfort Women.'"
Haruo Sasayama et al., Chugaku Shakai: Rekishi [Junior High School Social Studies: History] (Tokyo: Kyoikushuppan, 1997), 261.
Two excellent book length historical studies on comfort women have been published in English: Yoshimi Yoshiaki, Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military during World War II, S. O’Brien, Translator (NY: Columbia University Press, 2000) (Original work published 1995); and Yuki Tanaka, Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War II and the US Occupation (London: Routledge, 2002).
Yoshimi, Comfort Women, 29. No documents discovered to date reveal the proportions of nationalities or ethnic groups among comfort women.
See, for example, Louise White, "Prostitution in Nairobi during World War II, 1939-45," in The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990), 147-184. See also Tanaka, Japan’s Comfort Women, 84-132.
Tanaka, Japan’s Comfort Women, 180-181.
In several cases, their criticisms of historical research turned out to be flawed due to their own lack of expert knowledge. Right-wing nationalists published numerous volumes and articles on the comfort women issue in the 1990s. For example, Uesugi Chitoshi, Kensho “Jugun Ianfu”: Jugun Ianfu Mondai Nyumon [The verification of the “military comfort women”: Introduction to the issue of military comfort women], revised and enlarged edition (Tokyo: Zenbosha, 1996).
Neonationalists continue to employ this discourse. For example, in June 2005, Minister of Education and Science Nakayama Nariaki stated that the term jugun -ianfu did not exist at the time of the war, so it was good to see the school textbooks have eliminated the term.
For the translation of the document, see Yoshimi, Comfort Women, 58.
For the issue of the terms, see also Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Hiroshi Hayashi (eds.) Kyodo Kenkyu Nihongun-Ianfu [Joint research on Japanese military comfort women] (Tokyo: Otsukishoten, 1995).
Yoshimi Yoshiaki and Kawada Fumiko, eds.,“Jugun ianfu ” o meguru sanju no uso to shinjitsu [Thirty lies and truths surrounding “military comfort women”] (Tokyo: Otsuki Shoten, 1997), 9-10.
For example, Yoshida Seiji, Chosenjin Ianfu to Nihonjin: Moto Shimonoseki Rohodoin Bucho no Shuki [Korean comfort women and the Japanese: Former Shimonoseki labor conscription manager’s memoir] (Tokyo: Shin Jinbutsu Oraisha, 1977) and Watashi no Senso Hanzai: Chosenjin Kyosei Renko [My war crimes: Taking Koreans by force] (Tokyo: San’ichi Shobo, 1983). In these volumes, Yoshida described his use of deception and coercion in recruitment of Korean women for the comfort system as an officer at an employment bureau in Shimonoseki, Japan. Employment bureau offices during the war were involved in local labor conscription.
Hiroshi Tanabe, Shinpen Atarashii Shakai: Rekishi [New social studies new edition: History] (Tokyo: Tokyoshoseki, 1997), 263; and Ko Atsuta et al., Chugaku Shakai: Rekishiteki Bunya [Junior high social studies: Hisorical area] (Osaka: Osakashosei, 1997), 261. See alsoYoshimi and Kawada, "Jugun ianfu ," 63-65. Some high school textbooks published in previous years used the term in describing the comfort women; it appears that neonationalists targeted the junior high texts without reading them closely. See, for example, Shozo Sakamoto et al., Koto Gakko Nihonshi: B [Senior high Japanese history: B] (Tokyo: Daiichigakushusha, 1995), 322.
Yoshimi and Kawada, "Jugun ianfu ," 22-24. Yoshimi notes that some non-Japanese official documents (the U.S. military documents in the case of Korea and the Dutch military documents in the case of Indonesia) refer to the fact that the women were taken forcibly by the Japanese authorities. See Yoshimi Yoshiaki, "'Jyugun Ianfu' Mondai to Rekishizo: Ueno Chizuko-shi ni Kotaeru” [The issue of “comfort women” and the view on history: Responding to Ueno Chizuko], in Nihon no Senso Sekinin Shiryo Senta, Simpozium Nashonarizumu, 125.
Yoshimi and Kawada, "Jugun ianfu ," 20-31.
Kota Kodama et al., Watashitachi no Chugakushakai: Rekishiteki Bunya [Our social studies: historical area] (Tokyo: Nihonshoseki, 2002), 180; Hideo Kuroda et al., Shakaika Chugakko no Rekishi: Nihon no Ayumi to Sekai no Ugoki [Social studies history: Japan’s steps and the world currents] (Tokyo: Teikokushoin, 2002), 221; and Yujiro Oguchi et al., Shin Chugakko Rekishi: Nihon no Rekishi to Sekai [New junior high history: Japanese history and the world] (Tokyo: Shimizushoin, 2002), 189. The textbooks also eliminated references to other Japanese war atrocities. See Nozaki, “Japanese Politics and History Textbook Controversy,” 295.
Controversy has erupted since mid 2004 over the 2006 edition textbooks to be published in the spring of 2006. For a brief report on the drafts, see Ishii Tateo, “Subete no Kyokasho kara ‘Ianfu’ ga Kieta [Comfort women disappeared from all the textbooks], Shukan Kinyobi, (April 22, 2005), 554: 12-13.
Ueno Chizuko, “Kioku no Seijigaku: Kokumin, Kojin, Watashi” [The politics of memory: Nation, individuals, and I], Impaction, (1997), 103: 154-174. In Japan, jissho-shugi is a historical research paradigm that stresses verification by empirical evidence (historical sources), which may not be exactly the same thing as positivism in Western historical studies. The article is one of Ueno's first on the topic. In my view, while Ueno has a point, her characterization of progressive/feminist historians as bunshoshiryo shijo-shugi here is wrong, since they also stress the legitimacy and importance of oral testimony. In subsequent publications on the same topic, Ueno revised her description of the progressive and feminist historians slightly to present them in a more positive light. See also Chizuko Ueno, Nationalism and Gender, Beverley Yamamoto, Translator (Sydney: Trans Pacific Press, 2005).
Ueno "Kioku no Seijigaku,” 159.
Ueno, "Kioku no Seijigaku," 159. Ueno's commentary lacks the precise knowledge exemplified by Yoshimi’s research that proved “military involvement,” but not “kyosei-renko ” (taking by force). The issue of military involvement cannot be reduced to the question of kyosei-renko .
Ueno, "Kioku no Seijigaku," 159-166. Ueno Chizuko, "Jenda-shi to Rekishigaku no Hoho" [Gender history and the methods of history], in Nihon no Senso Sekinin Shiryo Senta, ed., Simpozium Nashonarizumu to “Ianfu” Mondai (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1998), 30.
Yoshimi, "'Jyugun Ianfu' Mondai," 128-130.
Ibid., 130.
Ibid., 131.
The first Japanese military comfort facility was built in Shanghai in 1931. The number increased after 1937 as the Japanese invasion expanded to other areas. Comfort facilities inside Japan developed in places such as Okinawa and Hokkaido in later years. See Yoshimi, Comfort Women, 44-57, 88-91.
Yoshimi, "'Jyugun Ianfu' Mondai," 133.
Yasumaru Yoshio, "'Ianfu' mondai to rekishigaku: Yasumaru Yoshio ni kiku” [The issue of “comfort women” and the studies of history: Interview with Yoshio Yasumaru], in Nihon no Senso Sekinin Shiryo Senta, Simpozium Nashonarizumu, 209.
Sakamoto Takao, "Rekishi Kyokasho wa Ikani Kakarerubekika” [How should history textbooks be written?], Seiron (1997), 297:50. The nationalist effort to produce and sell their own history textbook to high schools was unsuccessful in the 1980s, but it was intensified in the 1990s. Sakamoto’s argument was made in the context of the debates among neonationalists over their history textbook project of the 1990s. Against some prominent nationalists who argued that history teaching in schools should be abolished altogether since it cannot be neutral, Sakamoto rearticulated the need for (nationalist) history with postmodern discourses.
For a good analysis of Sakamoto’s argument, see Iwasaki Minoru "Bokyaku no tameno 'kokumin no monogatari': 'Rairekiron' no raireki o kangaeru" [“A story for a nation” for the purpose of oblivion: Thoughts on the origin of the “origin” theory], in Komori Yoichi and Takahashi Tetsuya, eds., Nashonaru Hisutori o Koete (Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1998), 175-193.
Sakurai, who was previously involved in some progressive causes, has positioned herself in the neonationalist camp in the comfort women v.
Sakurai Yoshiko, "Janarisuto Sakurai Yoshiko ga Mita Nihon, Gakko, Kodomo" [Japan, schools and children in the eyes of journalist Yoshiko Sakurai], lecture given at the Heisei 8-nendo Kyoiku Kadai Kenshukai, the Yokohama City School Board (October 3, 1996).
Ibid., 13.
The book title is the name of a Japanese samurai hero in the Meiji Restoration of 1968.
See also Shinji Takashima, “Kingendaishi Kyoiku ‘Kaikaku’ Undo no Mondaiten 4 [The problems of the ‘reform’ movement of teaching modern and contemporary history], Senso Sekinin Kenkyu, (1998), 19: 92. Fujioka argues that the “lies” should be within a limit of “common sense.” It follows that the real question might be what kinds of “lies” are actually inserted. Interestingly, one lie he included was very phallocentric. The (hi)story states that when the hero was born, his parents and grandparents were extremely happy to see the baby was a boy, a successor of the family, and included the line that “[his father] made really sure that the baby in the bath water…had a penis.” See Fujioka Nobukatsu, "Ronso kingendaishi kyoiku no kaikaku, 21: Rekishi jinbutsu shirizu ‘Takasugi Shinsaku’ o kaite, Meiji-ishin to buhsi 2" [The debate on the reform of modern and contemporary history education, no. 21: On writing about ‘Takasugi Shinsaku’ for the historical figure series, the Meiji Restoration and samurai, no. 2], Gendai Kyoiku Kagaku (1997), 494: 112-113. For a discussion of masculinist tendency of Fujioka and his followers, see also Hein, "Savage Irony," 360-364.
For analysis of the politics of the controversy, see Nozaki, "Feminism, Nationalism, and the Japanese Textbook Controversy over 'Comfort Women'"; and Nozaki, “Japanese politics and the history textbook controversy, 1945-2001.”
See also Daqing Yang, “The Challenges of the Nanjing Massacre: Reflections on Historical Inquiry,” in Joshua A. Fogel, ed., The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography, 133-179.
Felman, "Education and Crisis," 6.
See also Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, 28-50.
Long ago, feminist historian Gerda Lerner asserted that “The central question raised by women’s history is: what would history be like if it were seen through the eyes of women and ordered by values they define?” Lerner, The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 162.
See Elizabeth Ellsworth, Teaching Positions: Difference, Pedagogy, and the Power of Address (New York: Teachers College Press, 1997). It is also important to understand that the victims themselves may have difficulties making sense of what happened to them. See Lawrence L. Langer, Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991).
Yang, “The Challenges of the Nanjing Massacre,” 144.
In addition, the Japanese government has not yet declassified a large volume of wartime documents.
This article was prepared for Japan Focus and posted on July 29, 2005.
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Why am I in the shape I am in?
There are many factors that make us all unique in our physical appearance. Our physical constitution is created something like this…
Genetic traits from the family bloodline
+ Physical activity
+ Environmental and social conditions
+ Nutrition and economical status
+ Mental and emotional activity and interaction
= Our physical state
Much of society is focused on the first four factors in this equation. The final and highly influential factor – our emotional and mental state – is the basis of the mind-body connection.
The Mind-Body Connection – How does it work?
The word psychosomatic (psyche-soma) means mind-body. It refers to the connection between the body and the mind.
The mind-body connection is based on the principle that the nature of the mind is reflected in the state of the body. It explains why every body is different. No two minds are the same and neither will you find two bodies the same.
Even identical twins are more alike at birth than any other time in their lives. Why? Because as they develop their own unique personalities and their bodies change to reflect their individual state of mind.
When we heal the body, through balancing the mind-body connection, we call it psychosomatic healing.
The Process – How Does Psychosomatic Healing Work?
Psychosomatic healing, like many other healing therapies, is based on the principle that awareness of our patterns of behaviour sparks a change in our attitudes. An overview of the psychosomatic healing process looks something like this:
- Analysis of the body’s shape and characteristics brings…
- Awareness of certain mental and emotional tendencies which leads to…
- Insights about our character and why we do the things we do which sparks…
- Change in our attitudes and behaviours.
There are tell-tale signs in your structure, posture and build that give away how you have experienced life. A trained eye can tell why you are in the shape you are in…
Using the Mind-Body Connection to Heal – What is Psychosomatic Therapy?
Psychosomatic therapy uses the principles of mind-body connection to bring our attention to physical traits that have been caused by repetitive thought and emotional patterns over time. It is designed to increase self-awareness and facilitate the healing processes by offering constructive ways to influence mind-body balance.
Take a look at how these emotions affect different aspects of the physical body:
A psychosomatic therapist is equipped to bring our awareness to the state of our body-mind. During a psychosomatic therapy session, various aspects of the body are examined to provide an insight into a person’s emotional and mental tendencies including:
- Each major area of the body and its relation to other areas
- The balance of male-female energy
- Patterns of energy flow through the chakras including any blockages that inhibit this flow
- Posture and body language
- Breathing patterns
- Quality, quantity and distribution of body tissue, skin and muscle
- The condition of the major chakras
- Overall body type and structure
Each aspect of the body is analysed according to the principles of the mind-body connection to give an overall personality profile. In other words, the body reveals how our strengths and weaknesses affect how we tend to experience life – the good, bad and the ugly!
Once the therapist has a basic understanding of the person’s emotional and mental tendencies, he or she teaches constructive ways to use these strengths and weaknesses to improve our overall life experience.
To find out more go to Body-Mind-Soul Symbolism.
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The new church building at Kinkuni
The work of the Dutch Reformed Church in the Kunene region of north-west Namibia led to the founding of congregations on the northern side of the Kunene River in Angola. These newly formed Angolan congregations needed denominational ties in Angola and as such a relationship between the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa and the Igreja Evangélica Reformada de Angola (IERA or Evangelical Reformed Church of Angola) developed.
Angola is a vast country stretching along the western coast of Southern Africa and is one of Africa’s major oil producers. It borders on Namibia, Zambia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Following the withdrawal of the Portuguese colonial powers in 1975, rival former liberation movements plunged the country from independence directly into a bloody civil war that lasted 27 years and only came to an end in 2002. While Angola is determined to heal the scars left by the war, separatists threaten to destabilise the country further by opposing the government in the oil-rich enclave of the Cabinda Province.
The Portuguese started to trade with the peoples of Angola in the fifteenth century. A sad history of exploitation, the slave trade, and corruption unfolded. The first Portuguese settlement was established in Luanda in 1575. Portugal has colonized Angola since 1655 and formally incorporated it as an overseas province in 1951. In the 1950s and 1960s liberation movements were formed, but it was an uprising of workers undergoing forced labour on plantations that set off clashes between the Angolan people and the Portuguese rule in 1961. The struggle continued until 1975 when the Portuguese left the country and Angola became independent.
The MPLA gained control through the support of Cuba and the former USSR. Their rule was contested by UNITA, which was backed by the USA, and South Africa and FNLA, which was supported by China. (It is noteworthy that the leaders of the three independence movements, MPLA, UNITA, and FLNA were all children of Protestant pastors.) 16 years of civil war followed until a peace agreement was reached in 1991. Elections were held, but UNITA was dissatisfied with the results and thus continued fighting until 4 April 2002 (almost two months after the death of Jonas Savimbi). From 1975 up to 1990, Angola had been governed by one party and a centralised economic system. In 1991 it became a multiparty democracy with an open market economy.
The Roman Catholic Church has played a dominant role in the country since the Portuguese’s arrival in the country. While statistical information varies, some sources estimate that about 50% of the population practice Roman Catholicism, while about 25% are Protestants, and about 25% practice indigenous beliefs.
Due to decades of struggle and war, it is not easy to distinguish between denominational affiliations in Angola. IERA trace their origins back to the work of an Anglican layperson, Archibald Patterson (1899-1983) from the Low Anglican Church of St. Clement Parish in Liverpool. He started his work in 1922 in Kikaya, near Uige from where he moved to Sanza Pombo and founded the Kinkuni Mission, about 8 km from Sanza Pombo and 150 km from Uige city on June 6, 1934. He then moved to Kimbele on 18 May 1939 and founded the Kimbele Mission, 250 km from Uíge city. Patterson and the Swiss missionary Ernest Niclaus, from the Evangelical Church of Bienne, are regarded as the founders of what is IERA today. Other missionaries from the United Kingdom, invited by Patterson to come and help in Angola, also played a part in establishing the church.
IERA was founded in 1922. Their seminary was built at Kinkuni in 1940, but was destroyed twice; first in 1961 by the Portuguese and again, after it had been rebuilt in 1978, during the civil war in 1987. Kinkuni became well-known for being a centre that offered training in skills, such as carpentry, shoemaking, blacksmithing, and farming. It also offered primary school education and the training of pastors. The pastors who were trained here thus also learned other skills and were called masters for both teaching the Bible and practicing their trade wherever they served.
In 2004, two years after the end of the Angolan Civil War, a special relationship was established between the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (DRCSA) and IERA. A delegation for visiting churches and seminaries in Angola was formed and consisted of the following members:
Many Angolans returning to their country after the war has formed Reformed congregations in southern Angola.
Prof. Jurgens Hendriks writes about this visit: “The delegation wanted to reach out to these congregations and establish a link between them and IERA. The delegates were also eager to establish ties between the DRC and IERA. Although the roads were relatively clear from landmines, the average speed of the convoy was 40 km per hour over a distance of 4 000 Angolan kilometers. There was little left of the roads after the war; car wrecks indicated the direction for the delegation to take.
“In Luanda the group met with the IERA executive and an agreement was reached and signed. The delegation visited Kinkuni where IERA requested their support to rebuild their seminary.”
IERA has 600 congregations with a total of approximately 250 000 members and it is still growing. There are 404 pastors of whom some have had only primary school education and courses in biblical subjects as training. 80% of them are close to retirement. Kinkuni is still used as a training centre. After the visit in 2004, rebuilding the centre has become a joint project of IERA, NetACT, and the DRC. It is the most suitable place for a seminary for a number of reasons. First, it is in the centre of the vast majority of IERA congregations. In fact, 480 IERA congregations are situated in Uige Province. The seminary will be ecumenical in nature, especially for the Bakongo, Kimbundo, and Tchokwe people in this region of Angola and the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo as well as the Congo Republic (Brazzaville). Luanda, where most of IERA’s theological training currently takes place, is a very expensive and overcrowded city. Most IERA congregations are founded in rural areas thus it is not ideal to train pastors in an urban environment such as Luanda. By contrast, training done at Kinkuni will work equally well for rural and urban congregations. True to the initiative of its founders, IERA is busy developing Kinkuni as a skills-training seminary.
Good relationships are also maintained between congregations in the south of Angola and the DRC Namibia, especially through the work done by Rev. Jacob Schoeman.
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How high is Siachen Glacier?
The Siachen glacier has an elevation of 5500 metres approximately. The Siachen glacier is considered to be the largest single source of fresh water on the Indian subcontinent. It is located in the Karakoram range. Siachen is the source of the Nubra River that eventually feeds the mighty Indus - the major water source that irrigates the Punjab plains in Pakistan.
The Siachen Glacier is located in the eastern Karakoram range in the Himalayas, just northeast of the point NJ9842 where the Line of Control between India and Pakistan ends. At 76 km long, it is the longest glacier in the Karakoram and second-longest in the world's non-polar areas.
Other than Siachen, which are the other glacial sources of river water in India?
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What are hormones, and what do hormones do?
Over our lifetimes, our bodies undergo a series of extraordinary metamorphoses: we grow, experience puberty, and many of us reproduce. Behind the scenes, the endocrine system works constantly to orchestrate these changes.
Hormones are messengers that are released mainly by glands, and they travel in the bloodstream through all parts of the body to targeted cells. Hormones then tell these cells what to do.
This video explains how this system regulates everything from your sleep to the rhythm of your beating heart, exerting its influence over each and every one of your cells.
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ATLANTA–As the nation marks the first anniversary of one of the largest tornado outbreaks in U.S. history, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are teaming up this week to save lives from severe weather.
The two agencies encourage the public nationally and in FEMA Region IV, which encompasses Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, to “know your risk, take action, and be a force of nature” by taking proactive preparedness measures and inspiring others to do the same. While the type and severity of threats vary across FEMA’s 10 Regions, the need to be prepared is universal.
Last April, tornadoes raked the central and southern United States, spawning more than 300 tornadoes and claiming hundreds of lives. That devastating, historic outbreak was only one of many weather-related tragedies in 2011, which now holds the record for the greatest number of multi-billion dollar weather disasters in the nation’s history.
The country has already experienced early and destructive tornado outbreaks in the Midwest and South this year over the last two months, including a significant number of tornadoes last weekend. May is the peak season for tornadoes, so it is important to take action now.
“The damaging tornadoes that struck this year, causing widespread devastation as well as loss of life, also spurred many amazing and heroic survival stories,” said NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D. “In every one of these stories people heard the warning, understood a weather hazard was imminent and took immediate action. We can build a Weather-Ready Nation by empowering people with the information they need to take preparedness actions across the country.”
“One of the lessons we can take away from the recent tornado outbreaks is that severe weather can happen anytime, anywhere,” said FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate. “While we can’t control where or when it might hit, we can take steps in advance to prepare and that’s why we are asking people to pledge to prepare, and share with others so they will do the same.”
“If we learned anything from last April, it is that we lost too many lives,” said FEMA Region IV Administrator Phil May. “A prepared public is our nation’s most valuable resource in a disaster, and through disaster preparedness we can save lives.”
To “be a force of nature,” FEMA and NOAA encourage citizens to prepare for extreme weather by following these guidelines:
Know your risk: The first step to becoming weather-ready is to understand the type of hazardous weather that can affect where you live and work, and how the weather could impact you and your family. Check the weather forecast regularly and sign up for alerts from your local emergency management officials. Severe weather comes in many forms and your shelter plan should include all types of local hazards.
Take action: Pledge to develop an emergency plan based on your local weather hazards and practice how and where to take shelter. Create or refresh an emergency kit for needed food, supplies and medication. Post your plan where visitors can see it. Learn what you can do to strengthen your home or business against severe weather. Obtain a NOAA Weather Radio. Download FEMA’s mobile app so you can access important safety tips on what to do before and during severe weather. Understand the weather warning system and become a certified storm spotter through the National Weather Service.
Be a force of nature: Once you have taken action, tell your family, friends, school staff and co-workers about how they can prepare. Share the resources and alert systems you discovered with your social media network. Studies show individuals need to receive messages a number of ways before acting – and you can be one of those sources. When you go to shelter during a warning, send a text, tweet or post a status update so your friends and family know. You might just save their lives, too. For more information on how you can participate, visit www.ready.gov/severeweather.
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Heavy metals are what one might call “the unknown killers” since these probably cause and aggravate most health conditions in our bodies. These tiny pieces of metals, easily embedded inside body tissues, are inside the human body as a result of the toxic environment we live in now.
Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt in his article “A Comprehensive Review of Heavy Metal Detoxification and Clinical Pearls from 30 Years of Medical Practice” explained that heavy metals are neurotoxins, absorbed by nerve endings and travels inside the neuron to the cell body. The body is constantly trying to cleanse these neurotoxins through a natural body cleansing process using the available exit routes: the liver, kidney, skin and exhaled air and detox mechanisms include acetylation, sulfation, glucuronidation and oxidation. The liver is a most important organ in these body cleansing processes since most elimination products are expelled with the bile into the small intestine.
This article draws attention to the following questions:
What are the most dangerous heavy metals accumulate in our bodies and how?
Can I take heavy metals out from the body?
Some of the most popular heavy metals:
Lack of toxicity of lead means that there is no clearly defined symptoms, but there may be more subtle signs of poisoning, because, like radiation, lead is a cumulative poison. Once in the body, it accumulates in bones, liver and kidneys. Even moderate levels can lead to kidney impairment and immune suppression.
Obvious symptoms of lead poisoning are severe weakness, spasms in the abdominal area, and paralysis. Asymptomatic, but also dangerous is the constant presence of lead in blood. It affects the formation of hemoglobin and causes anemia. There may be disturbances of the psyche.
Now the main sources of lead poisoning are components of many colors used in the home, the water flowing through pipes coated with lead. It is desirable in the first place to avoid these factors. Other sources are listed below.
Emissions of aircraft engines
Oil of lead-based paint
bone meal fertilizer from
Ceramic coating on porcelain
dust and particles from lead-based paints
pipes made of lead or lead-coated
The process of lead ore from motor fuel with a high content of lead (exhaust)
vegetables grown near highways
Cramping abdominal pain;
Violations of brain activity;
Effect on the formation of hemoglobin;
Impaired fertility in women;
Violations of growth and development of infants;
Effects on the synthesis of vitamin D, leading to calcium deficiency;
Loss of appetite;
Weakening of the immuneeneral weakness
Mercury is widely used since Roman times to the present day. In ancient Rome, the mercury used to clean silver and gold from the impurities. From ancient times to the present day miners and working treatment plants have suffered from various diseases. There are other dangerous professions. The expression "mad as a hatter" because hatter constantly exposed to mercury compounds used in the manufacture of felt hats, and then often went crazy.
In addition to the grounds of insanity of mercury poisoning include pallor, tooth loss, impaired brain activity and changes in motor reflexes. Prolonged contact with mercury is possible coma and death.
Of the mercury comes into contact with the gradual dissolution of the "silver" dental fillings. Some fillings from amalgam contains 40-50% mercury. These seals are a permanent source of poison in the body. Fortunately, dentists now use other materials for these purposes. Under the action of mercury is reduced immunity. Mercury reduces the number of white blood cells, including T cells, which kill foreign substances in the body. Dr. David Eglman said that after the removal of the patient six amalgam fillings was observed 26% increase in the number of T cells. To make sure that it is no coincidence, he again set the seal 4 patients and found 18% reduction in the number of T cells.In the United States since 1900 has been used in chemistry, agriculture and industry, more than 160 million pounds of mercury. Mercury is a cumulative poison. She enters the environment as toxic fumes or toxic organic form known as methylmercury. Methylmercury enters the water and accumulates in the food chain. Sources and effects of mercury are listed below.
• Chemical Fertilizers
• contaminated species of large fish
• creams and some cosmetics (especially creams to soften the skin)
• industrial waste
• water-based paints
• A variety of reactions allergichekie
• Birth defects
• Violations of brain activity
• disturbance of the connective tissue of elbow and knee joints
• blurred vision, cataracts, blindness
• kidney disease
• Weight Loss
• tooth loss
• neurological disorders that lead to epilepsy, stroke, and extensive klerozu
• weakening of the immune system
• adverse effects on fetal development
• reducing the number of white blood cells
Cadmium, tin, reminiscent, too, threatens our health. It may be more dangerous than lead. Cadmium dust and fumes are highly toxic. Exposure to cadmium can lead to serious kidney disease and lung cancer and contributes to the development. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health found that about 1.5 million U.S. workers are constantly exposed to cadmium. According to the EPA, each year about 700 tons of cadmium released into the atmosphere from furnaces, smelters and other industrial plants. This metal is widely used in nickel-cadmium batteries, solders and other alloys as a pigment and hardener in the manufacture of plastics. Cadmium plating protects the steel from corrosion.
Several recent studies have shown that smokers have significant amounts of cadmium in the body. "Passive smokers", ie the people around smokers also get a certain amount of cadmium. Cadmium - a cumulative poison and causes varying degrees of poisoning. It causes high blood pressure, accumulates in the kidneys and reduces immunity. Excess cadmium in the body reduces life expectancy, causes anemia, affects the metabolism of zinc, leads to diseases of the lungs and reduces the number of T cells in the body. General immunity is reduced due to dysfunction of organs (liver, kidney), vital for the immune system and reduce the number of T cells.
Sources:• smoke cigars and cigarettes
• Drinking water
• fertile soil
• Industrial air pollution
• smoke from chimneys
• processed cereals
• suppression of antibody
• skin peeling
• heart disease
• Violation of calcium metabolism
• kidney disease
• Hair loss
• loss of zinc by the body
Despite the fact that aluminum is a light metal, it has recently considered toxic. For many years no one suspected that he might be absorbed in the body, and therefore it is still used in the manufacture of kitchen utensils. Aluminum is also used in the manufacture of many medical devices, as well as added in the form of sodium alyumosulfata in many processes during sintering of powders. Sometimes it is found in drinking water.
Elimination of sources of aluminum, such as kitchen utensils, aluminum foil, an antioxidant, it is extremely important because the food is usually there is some amount of aluminum from natural sources (soil). Like other impurities, the concentration of aluminum increases when moving up the food chain. In patients with Alzheimer's disease (senile dementia), the amount of aluminum in the nerve cells of the brain is four times higher than normal.
Large doses of aluminum may contribute to the disease. In addition, aluminum can cause a heightened excitability and disturbances of psychomotor reactions in children, anemia, headaches, kidney and liver, and dementia in elderly patients, colitis and neurological changes associated with Parkinson's disease.
• Banks of aluminum;
• aluminum foil
• Compacting powders with sodium alyumosulfatom
• Some types of cheese
• Drinking water
• baking pans and
• continued use of table salt
• drugs to reduce gastric acidity
• Stabilized aspirin
• Alzheimer's disease
• changes in the cells of the brain and nervous system
• suppression of parathyroid function
• thyroid dysfunction
• dialysis dementia
• aggressive adolescents
• irritability in children
• low levels of calcium
• neurological changes
As we can see that accumulate metals in the body may eventually lead to serious diseases. There are various detoxification methods to cleanse the body from heavy metal such as the intake of drugs specifically developed for heavy metal detoxification or going on a detox diet.
One of the most efficient ways to get rid of toxins it the medical device "DETA-AP" which is running on the principles of bio-resonance therapy and provides a number of programs for detoxification and purification of the body. It can effectively, quickly and without any side effects help you to restore your health and prevent development of the serious diseases.
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Glioblastoma multiforme, or GBM, is the most common and, unfortunately, the most aggressive form of primary brain tumors. Despite best available current multi-modality therapies, 90% of GBM patients live less than 2 years. Current therapies, such as surgical resection, radiation therapy and standard chemotherapies, do succeed in killing a large portion of existing tumor cells. Unfortunately they fail to kill them all, and recent studies have shown that a small subpopulation of tumor stem cells are relatively resistant to current therapies, and serve as a pool of cells to allow tumor repopulation and recurrence once standard therapies have completed. More effective ways of killing an even larger proportion of existing tumor cells as well as a means of preventing tumor stem cells from re-populating the tumor after therapy are both desperately needed.
We have identified a very promising extra-cellular matrix protein EFEMP1 with the ability to aid tumor cell killing through a novel anti-angiogenic effect preventing formation of a tumor blood supply, as well as the ability to prevent tumor cell recurrence or re-population by suppressing tumor stem cell activation as well as its anti-angiogenic effect. As a protein normally produced by normal glial cells, and normally present in non-tumor brain tissue, this protein is likely to have minimal toxicity if utilized as a therapeutic agent.
This project is designed to (1) prove the therapeutic potential of EFEMP1 in appropriate animal brain tumor models using human-derived GBM cells that contain tumor stem cells, (2) identify the best form of the protein to utilize for maximizing therapeutic potential, (3) identify the best initial dose of EFEMP1 for testing in GBM patients, (4) identify the best method for protein delivery, and (5) ultimately test EFEMP1 for both effectiveness and potential toxicity in GBM patients. If successful, this study has the potential to significantly improve the quality of life as well as survival potential for patients suffering with GBM.
Statement of Benefit to California:
Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most common form of primary brain tumor seen in humans. Unfortunately, it is not only the most aggressive and malignant form of brain tumor, it is the most aggressive and malignant tumor arising from any human organ system. In the United States in 2009, 12,920 people died of GBM. With 12% of the US populations, this translates into ~1,550 California citizens dying from GBM. GBM not only has significant impact on patient survival, it has devastating effects on the brain itself throughout the course of the disease. As the master organ controlling all other body functions, brain function has a dominant impact on California citizen quality of life, productivity in the work place, and functional independence. As they can no longer work, they often lose employer health insurance coverage and often have to rely on State and County medical support programs. More than 50% of GBM patients become divorced within a year of clinical diagnosis. As they lose functional independence, and their family social support networks fragment and disintegrate, they come to require extensive support service resources investments.
A new, safe, and low toxicity therapy based on this novel extracellular matrix protein has strong potential for not only increasing the effectiveness of current multimodality treatments such as surgical resection, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy, but also preventing tumor recurrence/repopulation after completion of conventional therapies through a suppressive effect on GBM tumor stem cells. As such, there is enormous potential for improving, both, patient survival, as well as quality of life and functional independence for California GBM patients.
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| 0.94487 | 748 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Borealis (cut ship)
|The contents of this article have been cut.|
The subject matter of this article contains in-development information that was cut from the final version of an official and/or canonical source and appears in no other canonical source. It may also contain incomplete information since not all cut material is publicly known.
This article is about the location cut from Half-Life 2. For the Aperture Science ship, see Borealis.
20th century as an icebreaker
Damaged by the Combine in c. 202-
- 1 Overview
- 2 Appearances
- 3 Fate
- 4 Behind the scenes
- 5 Gallery
- 6 List of appearances
- 7 See also
- 8 Notes
- 9 References
- 10 External links
The Borealis went through many changes during the project's development. Originally unnamed with the generic moniker "ship", it was first called the Hyperborea before being given the title Borealis. It is believed to be one of the earliest levels that Valve created for the game. Work on the ship dates back to May of 1999, six months after they published the original Half-Life.
By the time it was cut, the Borealis featured a fully realized and realistically modeled interior, the intended gameplay taking place on the lower four decks and upper three levels of the vessel. The location featured the character Odell, the ship's engineer. Much of the combat on board focused on Overwatch Soldiers, although Stalkers, Headcrabs, and Zombies are also encountered.
Throughout the evolution of Half-Life 2's storyline, the Borealis is known to occupy two distinct placements in the overall plot. In both iterations, Gordon Freeman would have entered the vessel and, with the help of Odell, made his way to the mini-submarine stored on board which would be used to travel to Kraken Base located under the sea.
In one of the early versions of the storyline, the game was planned to begin with Gordon initially standing on a bed of ice surrounded by a thick fog. The player would hear a ship bell tolling and follow it until discovering the source of the sound, the ice-locked Borealis. The player would then enter the vessel through a hole in the hull.[a]
Once on board, the player would meet the ship's engineer, Odell, who was to explain the backstory of the ship. It was used by the resistance to deliver supplies to an ice station and the underwater Kraken Base located in the Arctic regions. Many members of the crew were scientists acting undercover for the resistance while the rest were unaware of their affiliation.
The ship became ice-locked while delivering supplies to Kraken. Enemy warships[b] soon discovered their location and bombarded it with sacktick pods, killing most of the crew. Odell determined that the creatures were vulnerable to cold temperatures, so he shut off the generator to allow the vessel to ice over. He attempted to send a distress call but failed as the radios had been previously disabled by the scientists to prevent anyone from discovering where they were. The player would then work with Odell to eventually escape the Borealis in a mini-submarine down to Kraken Base.
In this last known incarnation, the Borealis was depicted as a scientific research ship used by the Combine. Gordon Freeman was to reach the Borealis by a tugboat found at the shore near the Air Exchange. He would board the vessel and meet Odell, working with him to pilot it towards the Arctic regions. At some point during the trip, they are attacked by Combine forces, leaving the ship heavily damaged. They make their way through the interior, traversing many sections that are catching fire or already burning, and eventually escape in a mini-submarine to Kraken Base.
It is not certain what the Combine were using the ship for, but it wasn't necessarily for research purposes. The vessel carries Zombies and Headcrabs kept in a freezer area, the corpses of several hung on meat hooks, and some live specimens stored inside shipping containers. One Stalker is found inside a hanging cage in the rear crane room. At the ship's front is a large structure which appears to have pierced through several decks. Held in place by a myriad of chains and pipes, the structure holds a number of tanks which house apparently frozen Combine Assassins.
Half-Life 2 leak
The Borealis can be found in the WC map pack in many forms, including unfinished and partially playable maps with no interconnections, test maps, and demonstration maps created for promotional events which do not reflect the actual state of the level at the time.
The oldest version available in the map pack is "nov_bor_001" by Aaron Barber from January 5, 2001. There are even older versions by Randy Lundeen referenced in the batch files for compiling the maps "hyper" and "hyper_fog", both batch files being dated July 29, 1999. The prefix "d3", a designation that represents the third day of the storyline, was first used on March 27, 2002.
ai_guide1 and devtest
Odell only appears in two Borealis-related maps. In the map "ai_guide1" (July 2002), a test level for the engine's "tour guide" AI design, Odell leads the player through various areas as he performs a series of scripted sequences. The player begins on a side deck alongside Odell who seems to be unaware that the crew has been killed in an attack. Odell attempts to enter through a locked door and calls for anyone inside, but after receiving no response, he takes out a welding torch to forcefully cut it open.
Inside, they discover a tape recorder in the captain's room with a message left on it. The machine plays a distress call from Kraken Base, although this is likely a placeholder left over from a previous iteration of the storyline.[c] The internal name for the sound entity calls the message the "captain's log". After listening to the recording, Odell wonders out loud what the crew might have been carrying, then suggesting that they head to the submarine and escape. In the next and final area, the two witness a Stalker quickly race by, startling Odell.
Odell is present in another test map called "devtest" (October 7, 2002) where he is found in a Level 2 hallway. He simply walks up a ladder to the room on the Main Deck. The script and the intended dialog, which doesn't play, for this encounter appears to have been copied directly from the previous "ai_guide1" map, thus they don't fit the scene in question.
demo_arctic and coastline
The Borealis can be seen in an Arctic-themed map called "demo_arctic" which was last edited on September 9, 2001. The ship is shown to be fully ice-locked near a small encampment composed of prefabricated buildings and hangars. A cave that houses a small cabin is also close by. The ship emits a warning bell sound from its bow, but it cannot be climbed into as it has no interior. The camp may related to the ice station mentioned in the earliest timeline by Odell.
According to Marc Laidlaw, the map was created as a concept test for building this type of Arctic environment. It did not have any gameplay associated with it. While the level appears similar to the description of the game’s starting point from the original timeline, Laidlaw denied this theory.
The Borealis, along with other partially sunk ships, appears in two prototype maps called "coastline_map01" and "coastline_prison", both last edited in July of 2003. These levels show an overview of Gordon's journey along the Coast on the highway. The Borealis is placed past Lighthouse Point near Nova Prospekt. It is unknown if this appearance is related to the story or was simply used as a placeholder.
The Borealis, along with the rest of the locations in the Arctic regions, is believed to have been cut from the game in late 2002. The last edited Borealis-related maps are from August of that year.[d] Many of its props can be still found in the final game. Some prop models originally kept in the "props_borealis" folder were moved to generic prop folders, such as the meat hooks from the freezer and the ship's doors, one becoming featured as the entrance to the Vortigaunt Camp. Odell's face was recycled for Odessa Cubbage. In Half-Life 2: Episode Two, the vessel was brought back for an unrelated role in the storyline as an Aperture Science ship.
Behind the scenes
The creation and successive iterations of the Borealis maps are attributed to Randy Lundeen, Aaron Barber, and Dario Casali with the assistance of Marc Laidlaw and John Guthrie, the latter of which worked mostly on the test and demonstration variants. Josh Weier implemented the Fire Extinguisher mechanics that were included in the maps.
The Borealis was based on the Polar Star, a real world icebreaker owned by the United States Coast Guard. During the development of Half-Life 2, Valve had traveled to Seattle's docks to do research and found that the ship's crew members happened to be fans of the original Half-Life. They allowed the developers to enter and take photographic reference material. Pictures of the trench art made by the members of the ship's various aviation detachment units (AVDET) were used as wall textures in the game.
In 2002, the development team created a set of demonstration maps which included the Borealis to present segments of Half-Life 2 for upcoming promotional events. When Gabe Newell was shown the footage, he decided it wasn't good enough to exhibit publicly, so the team decided the game would not appear at that year's E3 event. While the game would eventually appear the following year at E3 2003, the Borealis still did not receive a public demonstration. However, the ship was shown in private meetings at the time to display the engine's particle effects and water technology.
Some of these maps can be found in the WC map pack. They are very detailed and include several unique additions such as dead Borealis workers, who don't appear in any other version of the ship, and extra props to show off the engine's physics. These demonstrations feature a Combine Gunship, an encounter not present in any of the main development versions of the maps.
Team Fortress 2
In 1999, Valve released two screenshots of Team Fortress 2: Brotherhood of Arms, an unpublished early incarnation of the game, to showcase the detail possible in their character models using Intel's multi-resolution mesh technology. These screenshots show the characters in what appears to be the interior of an early version of the Borealis, as confirmed by Marc Laidlaw.
The map "d3_tug_01_011.vmf" (June 20, 2002) would serve as an entrance to the ship in the second timeline. It is believed that the player would get on board through a starboard side deck from the tugboat, hence the name of the map. The submarine used to escape only appears within the ship itself in the map "d3_borealis_01", dated March 27, 2002, located in the Level 3 Hangar. It is possible that the player was to use the ship's crane to lift the submarine out of this hangar room and place it into the sea.
Although the Flare Gun does not appear in any of the leaked maps, there are pyrotechnic lockers found in various areas of the ship. It is possible that the player was to acquire the weapon and ammunition from these lockers. The player was to use the Fire Extinguisher to put out spreading fires and use special chargers found around the ship to replenish it.
Several cardboard boxes with the name "Arbeit Laboratories" ("Arbeit" meaning "work" in German) can be found in the storage areas of the Borealis. According to Marc Laidlaw, this was just a temporary texture from an artist, the name bearing no storyline significance. These boxes are also present in early versions of City 17's Terminal.
Although it does not appear in any of the maps, a photo of a puppy in a picture frame can be found in the props folder for the ship. The dog in the photo, named Moosh, belongs to Valve artist Dhabih Eng and was three weeks old when it was taken. Another notable unused prop is a map in a tube. The label on it reads "Travis is cool", which is most likely a nod to Travis Brady, another artist who worked at the company at the time.
The name Borealis comes from "Boreas", a wind god in the Greek mythology. "Borealis" is related to the term "aurora borealis", the northern polar lights only visible in the Northern Hemisphere. Hyperborea, the early name for the ship, was the name of the land of the Hyperboreans, a mythical people who lived far to the north of Thrace where it was said they lived in paradise. "Hyperborea" means "beyond the Boreas", thus beyond the land of the wind god Boreas.
Half-Life 2 leak
Dead Fast Headcrab and Zombies in Level 2's walk-in freezer.
List of appearances
- The Half-Life 2 leak includes a "liblist.gam" file, a data file used by GoldSrc-era games to load various engine settings. It defines the map "Hyper_001" as the starting point of the game, affirming the earliest known storyline that began on the Borealis, then known as the Hyperborea.
- At this point in the game's development, the game's antagonist force, which ultimately became the Combine, had yet to be fleshed out or even named.
- In the distress call audio file, the person on the line states the base is in critical condition thinking the ship was going to send someone down to help, unaware of the ship's situation. The file is found in a folder for Hyperborea sounds from May of 1999. It is unknown where it was to be used on the ship.
- While some Borealis-related maps in Aaron Barber's folder are indicated to have last been edited on December 12, 2002, this file modification date does not reflect actual map development.
- In one incarnation of the ship, the freezer includes a metal container with a frozen Zombie inside it. This container blocks the ground hatch entrance of the room. The frozen Zombie uses a unique model which is not present in the leak.
- The tugboat that would take the player to the Borealis is not present in any related map. The following variants were taken from various Wasteland maps found in the WC map pack. These tugs are combinations of brushes and several modular models found in the Borealis props folder.
- Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar
- WC map pack
- Half-Life 2 leak
- In Half-Life 2 leak, the sound files in the folder "ambient/hyper" are dated May 1999.
- Half-Life 2 cut content on Facepunch (April 17, 2016)
- Marc Laidlaw on the Borealis (February 4, 2017)
- The Final Hours of Half-Life 2 on GameSpot
- Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar, page 128
- Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar, page 177
- WC map pack (d3_borealis_01.vmf) (March 27, 2002)
- Info received from Valve on ValveTime.net (January 24, 2009)
- Marc Laidlaw on the Arctic base (February 9, 2017)
- WC map pack (jweier/firespread.vmf) (August 8, 2002)
- Half-Life 2 preview on IGN (May 8, 2003)
- Half-Life 2 preview on GameSpy (May 8, 2003) (archived)
- The Final Hours of Half-Life 2
- Half-Life 2 preview on Computer and Video Games (May 28, 2003) (archived)
- Half-Life 2 preview on Shacknews (2003) (archived)
- Team Fortress 2 official website (archived)
- Marc Laidlaw on the Borealis maps being used in Team Fortress 2 (November 14, 2014)
- Marc Laidlaw on Arbeit Laboratories (March 2011)
- Dhabih Eng's post on Facebook (April 24, 2009)
- WC map pack (d3_borealis_07.vmf) (May 29, 2002)
|Vehicles, vessels and transportation|
|Aperture Science transportation||Borealis · Teleportation|
|Black Mesa transportation||Black Mesa SUV · Black Mesa Transit System · Black Mesa truck · Rail cart · Teleportation|
|Black Ops transportation||AH-64 Apache · M44 cargo truck|
|HECU transportation||AH-64 Apache · Jet · M1A1 Abrams · M2A3 Bradley · M44 cargo truck · Osprey Heliplane|
|Combine transportations||Advisor Platform · Armored Personnel Carrier · Hunter-Chopper · Razor Train · Teleportation|
|Resistance transportation||Airboat · Mil Mi-8 · Muscle Car · Scout Car · Teleportation|
|Xen transportation||Alien Craft · Teleportation|
|Trainstations||City 17 Trainstation · Depot · Technical Trainstation|
|Other||Rail transport · Road transport|
|Black Ops (cut)||Osprey Heliplane|
|Combine (cut)||AirEx Truck · C-130 · Combine SWAT Truck · M2A3 Bradley · Merkava · Osprey Heliplane · School Bus|
|Resistance (cut)||Borealis · C-130 · Jalopy · Jet Ski · Osprey Heliplane · Submarine|
|Other (cut)||Digger · Stealth|
|
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Note the methodological similarities between calculating Witchcraft's planetary hours and calculating Judaism's halachic hours. Both Witchcraft and Judaism use these time calculations to determine the best time to do ritual work.
CALCULATING PLANETARY HOURS
Source: Bewitching Ways
The planetary days are divided into 24 planetary hours with the first hour of the day beginning at sunrise and the last hour of the day ending at sunrise of the next planetary day. The period that extends from sunrise to sunset (daylight) is divided into 12 hours and the period extending from sunset to sunrise of the next day (nighttime) is also divided into 12 hours giving the 24 hours of the planetary day. However, the term Hour does not necessarily mean 60 minutes.
These influences can either help or dissolve your effort so it is important to calculate carefully.
Your planetary hours are specific to your exact location. In order to calculate your planetary hours, you will need to know the sunrise and sunset for your area. You can get this from your local newscast, newspaper or online.
Now comes the math.
1. Figure out how many minutes there will be between Sunrise and sunset
For example, say the sunrise is 6 a.m. and sunset is 8 p.m. There would be 840 minutes of daylight.
2. You then divide that number by 12 to get the number of minutes in each planetary hour of the day.
840/12= 70. So, each day planetary hour in our example would be 70 minutes long.
3. Divide your day hours into planetary hours using the minutes as your guide for increment
hour 1 in our example: 6-7:10 a.m.
Hour 2: 7:10-8:20 a.m. etc.
4. Repeat process for time between Sunset and Sunrise (for the next day) to figure out your night planetary hours.
CALCULATING HALACHIC HOURS
Source: Halachic Times (original source taken offline, info abstracted from earlier Craftwork Of A Jewitch entry, new source - from Ask Moses - What is 'Halachic Time' or a "Halachic Hour'?)
The normal calendar that we use divides a day into 24 equal hours. Normally, noon is approximately the midpoint between sunrise and sunset, and of course midnight is approximately the midpoint between sunset and sunrise. This is thrown off, of course, by daylight savings time and other minor factors.
The "Jewish day" (daytime part) divides the time between sunrise and sunset into 12 equal parts that are often called "halachic hours". Since on average, sunrise is around 6am and sunset is around 6pm, we can call sunrise "Halachic 6am" and sunset "Halachic 6pm". This will then make it easy to describe the 12 halachic hours of daylight.
The times for morning, afternoon, and evening prayers are based on the notion of the halachic day. Also, the times for the start and end of the Sabbath, fasts, etc.. all use the Halachic day, although in some cases fixed times are used. For example, candlelighting on Friday night is always 18 real minutes before sunset, not 18 halachic minutes.
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Nurseries are used to grow and propagate plants. While some nurseries specialize in only flowers and plants, others grow trees and shrubs. Nursery plants are often grown in greenhouses, which are glass or plastic buildings designed to protect young plants from adverse weather conditions. One of the greatest challenges of nursery or greenhouse caretakers is fighting the many types of diseases that can afflict plants.
Crown and Root Rot
Plants most susceptible to crown and root rot include gerbera daisies, pansies and gloxinias. Although the disease can occur at any stage of growth, it typically attacks after flowering begins. Symptoms are stunted growth and off-color foliage. The disease causes a plant to wilt rapidly where a plant appears healthy one day, but then suddenly wilts and declines. Crown and root rot can be spread by overhead watering which splashes the pathogen to other plants.
Southern wilt, which particularly attacks geranium producers, is most common in the southeastern region of the United States. Symptoms of the disease include the lower leaves wilting which improve overnight only to reoccur the following day. The wilt spreads up the plant, leading to its eventual death. Other symptoms are brown vascular discoloration that's visible on stems.
Black Root Rot
Black root rot causes considerable loss in greenhouse plants, with pansies and vincas being the most vulnerable for the disease. Because the fungus of black root disease damages a plant's root, it hinders the root from absorbing nutrients. This root injury causes plants to show symptoms of nutritional stress, such as the yellowing of younger growth. Rather than a healthy white color, the roots of infected plants range from off-white or gray to black, depending on the severity and stage of the disease.
Aerial blight, which causes intense damage to a plant's aerial portion, is a serious disease which mainly afflicts vincas. The first signs of aerial blight occur on leaves which begin to rapidly collapse. Next the infection hits the leaf petiole in the area where it's attached to the plant stem. The fungus continues growing to the plant's base, resulting in death if wet conditions continue.
Bacterial blight can wipe out an entire crop of plants with the most endangered ones including begonias, geraniums and zinnias. Water-soaked leaf spotting, along with the browning of leaf margins, is an initial symptom. Other symptoms are inverted "V" patterns developing. The next symptom is lesions turning copper in color as the disease progresses. Leaf collapse, followed by plant wilting and more plant decline, are continuing symptoms.
Impatiens Necrotic Spot Virus
Impatiens necrotic spot virus, known as INSV, is one of the more severe diseases affecting nursery crops. Chrysanthemums, begonias, exacum, impatiens, vincas and gloxinias are some of the plants most at risk. The disease is mostly carried by tiny insects called thrips. INSV has various symptoms such as black ring spots which afflict impatiens. Other symptoms include black foliar lesions and stem lesions. Symptoms usually depend on the stage of the disease and other cultural variables.
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Taking Effective Minutes
In most community groups having a record of meetings is a vital part of being effective. The group’s recorder holds the responsibility of making sure the minutes accurately reflect the course of the meeting by recording discussions, decisions and actions, and task assignments.
Taking effective minutes for a group meeting can be a difficult task, from deciding what is pertinent to be recorded to making sure the facts are straight. In our own hometown, Brushy Fork found the answers to some of the questions we’ve been asked about taking minutes.
The Berea Community School’s Committee on Committees compiled a list of suggestions to other school committees about what to include in minutes. This list was designed to fit the situation at the school, so not all the suggestions are pertinent to community groups. But these ideas will provide a good start for recorders who may be unclear on how to go about taking good minutes.
- Committee name
- Date of meeting
- Names of committee members present
- Any decisions made
Good to include:
- Time the meeting began and ended
- Names of others present, if they chose to introduce themselves
- Summary of major points made in reports and discussions
- Names of people who presented reports
- Attachments of documents relevant to the committee’s discussions
- Follow-up summary: who agreed to do what
- Point-by-point account of discussions
- Specifying who said what in a discussion
- Reports on off-track discussions
- Optional items that could embarrass someone
Other considerations (added by Brushy Fork):
- The minutes should be approved at the next meeting.
- Copies of minutes should be sent to all group members (especially helpful to inform those who were not present!). The group might choose to send minutes to anyone else they want to keep informed of their work, such as local officials or stakeholders in the group’s efforts.
—adapted from a handout designed by Berea Community School Committee on Committees
Download this file to print as a handout.
|
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|
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At a time when millions of kids are prescribed mind-interrupting pharmaceuticals, over-scheduled with activities, and bubble-wrapped to protect them from life’s hard edges, it turns out there’s one thing kids need more than anything else: time outdoors.
As in, unstructured, unsupervised time to tromp through meadows, explore forests and creeks, prowl coastlines, and roll in the grass. Common sense has been trying to tell us this for years, and now research is confirming it: Mother Nature is a kid’s best medicine.
Alas, today’s younger generations – along with their parents – are headed in the opposite direction. Firmly planted indoors, hermetically sealed-off from the outside world, eyes glued to blue screens instead of blue skies. If kids are on the move at all, it’s almost always inside an automobile being whisked from one adult-structured and sanctioned activity to the next.
You already know the result: epidemic rates of anxiety, depression, and apathy that now are beginning to carry over into young adulthood.
Teach Your Kids to Hug a Tree
In perhaps the largest study to date on the relationship between access to green spaces and the mental wellbeing of children, Dutch researchers from Aarhus University combined the geographical footprint of satellite imagery and mental disease diagnoses within that same area, to contrast kids’ proximity to green spaces and their risk of developing one of 16 mental disorders later in life.
In other words, they compared the mental wellbeing of kids with easy access to nature, and kids without. The study, which ran from 1985 to 2013 and covered roughly one million Danes, demonstrated that kids who were surrounded by large amounts of green space had a 55% lower risk of developing a mental disorder.
“If we were talking about a new medicine that had this kind of effect the buzz would be huge,” said Kelly Lambert, a neuroscientist at the University of Richmond. “These results suggest that being able to go for a walk in the park as a kid is just as impactful.”
Child development and mental health experts were not surprised by the results of the Danish study. For years now, researchers have shown the myriad ill effects that air and noise pollution and the absence of green spaces have on the psyches of all people, including kids.
Similarly, research has demonstrated that communities that place a premium on green spaces usually enjoy stronger social ties along with populations more likely to be physically active (which brings with it boosts in cognitive development).
“There is increasing evidence that the natural environment plays a larger role for mental health than previously thought,” said Kristine Engemann, a postdoc at Aarhus’s Department of Bioscience and study leader. “Our study is important in giving us a better understanding of its importance across the broader population.”
The Blue Screen Blues
It’s not surprising that summer camp counselors consistently report how happy their campers become when they leave their digital devices behind and immerse themselves in camp activities. In a recent interview with Kelly Carman, camp director for Girl Scouts of the Sierra Nevada, Carman reported without their devices, “kids become more present, more ‘there.’ We see a strong correlation between kids being outdoors and kids’ happiness,” she said.
Meanwhile, we’re seeing more and more evidence that kids are struggling with anxiety and depression, thanks to nearly endless access to digital devices. Matrix-like, these kids are plugged in 24 hours a day and are showing the results.
What’s a parent to do? Lead by example. Get your kids outdoors, biking, hiking, canoeing, camping, gardening. Anything that gets kids outdoors, breathing fresh air, feeling the sun on their faces, seeing trees and flowers. The verdict is in: Mother Nature is good medicine for kids.
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The George W. Bush administration had a stated policy of trying to isolate Venezuela from its neighbors, and the strategy ended up isolating Washington instead. President Obama, in his first meeting with hemispheric leaders in Trinidad in 2009, promised to turn a new page. But today, his administration finds itself even more isolated than that of his predecessor, and for much the same reasons.
Consider the lopsided vote on Venezuela at the Organization of American States earlier this month. Not only did the OAS reject Washington’s attempt to get the organization to intervene in Venezuela, but to add insult to injury, 29 countries passed a resolution expressing their solidarity with the government of President Nicolás Maduro, with only 3 against. It is hard to imagine a more resounding diplomatic defeat in a body where the US government still has a disproportionate influence.
The Obama administration seems surrealistically unaware that this is a different hemisphere than it was 15 years ago. Governments representing the majority of Latin America are now from the left, including Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Venezuela in South America and El Salvador and Nicaragua in Central America. These governments emphatically reject Washington’s depiction of the recent events in Venezuela as a government trying to “repress peaceful protesters.” Instead, they share Maduro’s view that the protests are an attempt to overthrow a democratically elected government, which has been the stated goal of the protest movement’s leadership from the beginning. Even President Michelle Bachelet of Chile, who is reluctant to criticize Washington, used the word “destabilization” to describe the protests. These governments see that Washington is using its muscle to support this effort.
They have seen this movie before. In 2002, the Bush administration “provided training, institution building, and other support to individuals and organizations understood to be actively involved in the military coup” that briefly overthrew then-President Hugo Chávez, according to the State Department. After the coup failed, Washington stepped up funding to opposition groups, which has continued to this day.
These leaders respect Maduro and have every reason to believe him when he says he is trying to prevent violence. The government has arrested at least 21 security officers so far. Despite crimes committed by individual security officers, there is no evidence that Maduro’s administration has intended to use violence to repress dissent. Since the protests began, most of the deaths associated with them have been at the hands of protesters, not security forces.
Ecuador and Bolivia also faced violent protests when right-wing forces similar to those leading the opposition in Venezuela tried to topple their governments in 2008 and 2010, respectively. South America, led by Brazil, rallied to their cause in these cases. They did the same for Venezuela last April when people were killed (in that case almost all Chavistas) in demonstrations against Maduro’s election victory. There, too, they saw Washington on the wrong side, pouring fuel on the flames by refusing to recognize the results of a democratic election that were completely certain. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and her still well-loved predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, denounced US “interference.”
The Obama administration’s manipulation of the OAS in the aftermath of the 2009 military coup in Honduras — to help the legitimize the dictatorship — spurred the rest of the region to form a new hemispheric organization, CELAC, without the United States and Canada. True to form, it was only the United States and Canada, joined by the right-wing government of Panama, that objected to the March 7 OAS resolution.
The rest of the hemisphere will oppose any attempt by the United States to put a relatively small number of protesters led by right-wing politicians on an equal footing with a democratically elected government — which is similar to what Washington did when it arranged “mediation” between the Honduran dictatorship and the democratically elected government it overthrew in 2009. The region sees Washington as trying to delegitimize the government of Venezuela, thereby encouraging violence and destabilization.
If the Obama administration wants to improve its relations with the region, it could start by joining the rest of the hemisphere in accepting the results of democratic elections.Oliver Stone is an Academy Award-winning director, screenwriter, and producer. Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, co-wrote Stone’s documentary “South of the Border.’’
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Remember the time you were 8, lying on your back on the terrace or in your garden staring at the sky? Suddenly you would hear a noise and see trails of white clouds being formed in the blue sky. You would then call out to your siblings and ask them to come look at it and be fascinated by the beauty of it. What if now I told you that there was a purpose behind that beauty and that those “trails of white clouds in the blue sky” were a part of the plan of the government to control and regulate everything that you do, see, eat, believe, etc.
The formation of the contrails, i.e., the condensation trails, is attributed to the scientific condensation process that occurs due to the extremely low temperatures in the higher atmosphere. This conspiracy theory is based on the belief that the government takes advantage of this phenomenon to release certain chemicals in the form of ‘chemtrails’ into the Earth’s atmosphere. The purpose of this is an attempt to modify the weather, control the human population, control thoughts, manage solar radiation, or biological and chemical warfare. Some also believe that it is done for the profit of drug companies by inducing diseases in the population. So, that’s basically controlling a person’s entire life.
The Birth Of The Chemtrails Conspiracy Theory
Now, whenever we talk about a conspiracy theory or an event that cannot be explained enough for satisfaction, more than 50% of the time, it has to do with the US. So, this one also originated there. It all started when the United States Air Force (USAF) published a weather modification report in 1996 associating it with chemtrails left behind by aircraft. This belief was popularized by people who put it on the internet forums and talked about it on late-night radio shows. By 2000, a lot of “important” agencies like NASA, EPA, and FAA had published reports stating otherwise, which only heightened the belief that the government was trying to cover something up.
Strengthening Of The Belief
- After WWII, pictures of aircrafts containing barrels allegedly containing chemicals started doing the rounds. The government said that those barrels had water and were there to stimulate the weight of soldiers on board to check the center of gravity. The proponents, however, claim to have noticed aerosol dispersion systems there.
- A 2007 Louisiana television station report found lower levels of air to suspiciously contain unsafe levels of barium.
- ‘Contrails’ comes from the words condensation and trails. These are simple trails that are left behind by aircraft due to condensation caused due to extremely low temperatures in the higher atmosphere and disappear from the sky in a very short time. ‘Chemtrails,’ on the other hand, comes from the words chemical and trails. These, when left behind by aircraft, stay in the sky for a significantly longer time.
- Also, artificial climate modification has had a long history, and it is actually a thing. For instance, cloud seeding was used by the Chinese authorities to ensure that the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics wasn’t washed out. Most believers of the theory look at weather modifications as the main purpose of chemtrails.
Opinion Of The People
According to a BBC report, the proponents believe that this is a global conspiracy, and it involves the national governments, UN, scientific associations, big businesses, and the military. Suzanne Maher, a believer of the Chemtrails theory, says, “Twenty or thirty years ago, we still had aircraft and had a beautiful blue sky. There were no trails.” The scientific community, however, has dismissed any such happening even after some reports have given evidence of the presence of chemicals in the air.
A survey by Cooperative Congressional Election Study shows that almost 9% of those questioned believed this theory to be ‘absolutely true’ while another 19% believed it to be ‘somewhat true.’
It is true that the media controls our minds, and that is why even the most absurd seeming claims hold a chance to be true.
Read also – Do Fairies Actually Exist?
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Precious and non-Precious Metal Futures
In the modern day world of technology, metals have never been more important for society to continue moving forward and maintain the infrastructure already in place. Though the mining and processing of metals has matured with the cultures that rely on them, man’s reverence and dependence on metals is anything but new. Historically, metals have always been seen as an investment regardless of how technology changes and demand for these highly conductive products grow. Used to portray wealth and power through the ages, metals drive markets and define cultures.
Metals are usually classified as either precious or non-precious, depending on their rarity, worth and usage. Precious metals are rare and can be used in currencies or for industrial needs. The most common metals markets are gold, silver, platinum, palladium, aluminum, copper, lead, nickel, tin and zinc which can be traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) and the London Metal Exchange (LME). These are not the only exchanges that trade metals, gold is especially popular, but they are the most commonly used for futures and options.
Popular Metals Futures Contracts
Gold – Arguably the most revered metal and volatile of all the metals contracts, gold has a long history of affecting cultures even before the written word. With the evolution of technology to incorporate precious metals and a long standing history of representing affluence, gold is a heavy hitter that moves other markets when it moves.
Silver – Like gold, silver is regarded as both ornamental and practical. Used for jewelry and tableware as well as industrial uses such as photographic emulsions, electronic circuits, and batteries, silver remains one of the most traded metals on the market.
Copper – Although copper is a non-precious metal, it is widely used to conduct electricity and because of this our electrical and communication infrastructure is completely dependent on this malleable metal. It is also used to produce brass and bronze. At our current state of technology, copper has consistent demand.
Metal Futures Resources
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Radiotherapy for breast cancer does involve an increase in risk of heart disease, but for most women it is very small and greatly outweighed by the benefits of treatment.
The research, by scientists at the University of Oxford and in Scandinavia, involved over 2,000 women treated with radiotherapy in Denmark and Sweden. Their study was able to calculate for the first time how much radiotherapy for breast cancer increases the risk of heart disease.
The findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, can now be used by doctors to help treat patients more appropriately.
It has long been known that radiotherapy reduces the risk of breast cancer returning for many women after it has been removed by surgery. And in October 2011, the same Oxford researchers completed a large study showing that radiotherapy after breast-conserving surgery halves the chances of the cancer coming back in the 10 years following diagnosis.
But during radiotherapy, the heart usually receives some incidental radiation exposure, particularly if the cancer is in the left breast or if the lymph nodes inside the chest are irradiated.
Until now, doctors have been uncertain as to whether modern radiotherapy still increased the risk of heart disease and, if it did, how big the risk was. This research has, for the first time, produced a dose-response relationship for ischaemic heart disease, which is the most common form of heart disease.
This means that doctors will be able to predict the size of the risk for each woman by calculating the amount of radiation that reaches the heart and assessing the woman’s other cardiac risk factors.
‘We carried out this work because doctors could not reliably estimate the risk of heart disease in women treated with radiotherapy for breast cancer,’ explained lead researcher Professor Sarah Darby from the Clinical Trial Service Unit (CTSU) at the University of Oxford. ‘Doctors can now estimate the risk and know that in most cases it will be very small so that they can reassure their patients. In addition, the few women for whom radiotherapy poses undue risk can now be identified, so that alternative techniques can be considered.’
Dr Carolyn Taylor, another study author from Oxford University’s CTSU, added: ‘Already our work is being used in cancer centres throughout the world and we’ve heard it’s making a difference to patients. It’s important to remember that for most women treated today the benefits of breast cancer radiotherapy far outweigh the risks.’
The amount of radiotherapy given is measured in Gray (Gy). For women with right-sided breast cancer, most radiotherapy regimens expose the heart to 1–2 Gy. For left-sided breast cancer, the amount that reaches the heart varies widely but is usually higher.
But this does not necessarily mean that a woman will have a substantial risk of heart disease if she has radiotherapy. For example, for a 50 year old woman who receives a heart dose of 3 Gy during radiotherapy, her risk of dying from ischaemic heart disease by the time she is 80 would increase from 1.9% to 2.4%.
There are a few women for whom radiotherapy would cause a substantial increase in the risk of heart disease if radiotherapy is given in the usual way. This includes women who are already at increased risk of heart disease (particularly those who have already had a heart attack) and women for whom the distance between the heart and the chest wall is very small. This research enables such women to be identified, so that alternative radiotherapy techniques can be considered.
The study was supported by funding from Cancer Research UK, the British Heart Foundation, and the Medical Research Council, and by grants from the European Commission and the Department of Health.
Kate Law, director of clinical research at Cancer Research UK, said: ‘Radiotherapy is a very effective treatment for breast cancer and has played a major role in improving survival for the disease to over 85 per cent. This research means that doctors will be able to reassure most women that the risk of heart disease from radiotherapy is small. Also, for the first time, women who would be at substantial risk if they had radiotherapy can be identified and alternative techniques considered.’
See original story here.
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Communities across the Philippines could become more environmentally sustainable, thanks to the University of the Philippines-Diliman College of Science (UPD-CS). UP has developed a new automated environment monitor, which undergoes regular testing procedures for future nationwide deployment.
At the behest of UPD Chancellor Fidel Nemenzo, who prioritized the protection and preservation of UPD’s natural environment in his vision for the campus, the UPD-CS led other colleges and institutions in the university in setting up sophisticated sensors for keeping an eye on the environment around the clock. The Chancellor appointed the multi-sectoral Task Force on Environmental Sustainability (TFES) to create environmental action points for a possible model for a green campus, which could then serve as the prototype for green spaces nationwide.
Two key action points determined by the expert team are the deployment in the UPD-CS’ National Science Complex (NSC) of the AirboxSense system for real-time air quality reporting to the general public, and the establishment of an air and water quality monitoring network with the Diliman Environmental Management Office.
The AirboxSense was co-developed by UP and foreign university partners with funding from the Asia-India Science, Technology, and Innovation Cooperation (Aistic).
“Air quality monitoring using AirboxSense in the NSC started in August 2022. It’s an initiative between the Philippines, Malaysia, and India to put up these monitoring devices for air quality control,” explained Dr. Mylene Cayetano, a professor at the UPD-CS’ Institute of Environmental Science and Meteorology (IESM), a member of the UPD TFES, and the Philippine Principal Investigator for the Aistic.
To complement the AirboxSense data, IESM undertakes regular monitoring of the University’s various creeks and streams: Water samples are collected at least once a month and analyzed in the laboratory to assess factors such as the presence of excessive nutrients and suspended solids, irregular pH, and alkalinity, among other parameters.
The UPD-CS also aims to lessen its ecological footprint through solar power installations throughout the NSC. By considering the optimal size and placement of solar panels, Cayetano and her colleagues were able to determine the best ways to address the campus’ energy needs. Solar panels can save energy for the UPD-CS by lessening the dependency on fossil fuels during the daytime.
“Together with UPD-CS scientists Dr. Lillian Jennifer Rodriguez and Ms. Jelaine Gan, we calculated the area of all rooftops of the CS buildings. We determined the surface area of the rooftops facing south. Then we proposed how many solar panels we would need to install in CS so that we would not be dependent on fossil fuels, and eventually transform into an efficient campus,” said Cayetano. “UPD-CS Dean Giovanni Tapang presented this idea to Chancellor Fidel, and it aligns with the Chancellor’s initiative to make UPD an environmentally sustainable campus,” she added.
Deployment beyond UP
Going beyond the confines of the University, the UPD-CS and the IESM collaborated with the Rotary Club of Makati on a system that reports real-time data on air quality via the Airtoday.ph website. The system was also initially designed to record and display air quality data on other areas outside the UPD, including the Lung Center of the Philippines and EDSA Muñoz.
“Picking up from this initiative, other initiatives arise towards a smart campus and environmental sustainability,” Cayetano said. She cited the UPD Electrical and Electronics Engineering Institute (EEEI) for helping automate the AirboxSense through the UP Center for Air Research (UP Care) program. Cayetano also highlighted the Robust Optical Aerosol Monitor (ROAM) developed by Dr. Len Herald Lim of the Institute of Chemistry, which could be deployed outside UPD in the future.
Cayetano believes that these projects are of nationwide significance: The information they gather and the data they record will greatly help organizations and institutions across the country in finding solutions to environmental issues. “The information and data will eventually tell the numbers. Where are we? Where is the baseline? What were our emissions when there were no activities during the pandemic? What emissions increased when activities such as face-to-face classes and the opening of the UPD campus and offices resumed? By knowing these, we know where to stand. By knowing those numbers, we will know how to manage the impacts on the environment of such activities.”
Through these and other initiatives, UPD’s TFES is spearheading the creation of tailor-fit approaches to environmental challenges that can be implemented outside the campus. Data collected from these initiatives can also be used by local governments and other decision-makers in managing localized environmental activities. (Story and photos courtesy of UPD-CS Science Communications)
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Plasterboard – Life after use
Gypsum board, also referred to as plasterboards, drywall, wallboards and gyprock, is a wall or ceiling panel made of a gypsum core surrounded with a paper lining.
Since 2006 disposal of plasterboard waste with a high sulphate content has not been permitted in general landfill. It can only be landfilled at a site with a mono-cell – a separate cell which only accepts high sulphate waste.
Plasterboards contain calcium sulphate dehydrate. As gypsum breaks down, a toxic hydrogen sulphide gas is created. Whilst the bacteria is killed when exposed to air, the airless, moist landfill sites provide perfect conditions for inhabiting this bacteria. During its breakdown gypsum can release up to a quarter of its weight in hydrogen sulphide gas. In addition to this, methanogenic bacteria will break down the paper sandwiching the plasterboard, and releasing harmful methane gas into the environment. .
Waste from new construction
Waste from new construction generally takes the form of onsite plasterboard off-cuts and typically represents around 15% of the plasterboard used onsite. To reduce this amount, waste producers have started to make ‘made-to-measure’ boards. Unfortunately, the use of these has been limited with very few buyers actually purchasing them. Recycling from new construction waste is referred to as post-consumer recycled gypsum.
Waste from demolition and reconstruction
This is plasterboard which may have been in use for many years and likely to be contaminated with screws, nails, wood, insulation, wall coverings etc. All of these must be fully removed before the plasterboard can be recycled – a process known as decontaminating. Once recycled the plasterboard is known as post-consumer recycled gypsum.
Waste from manufacture
Waste from manufacture generally consists of rejects and non-spec products generated during the manufacturing process. Usually this is recycled within the plant itself as part of its protocol on waste avoidance. Waste recycled in this manner is called production waste derived recycled gypsum.
Gypsum recycled from plasterboard waste is typically used in plasterboard manufacture, cement manufacture and land improvement in agriculture. Recycling one metric ton of gypsum will save 28 kwh of energy and 4lbs of aluminium.
Initiatives to recycle gypsum
Major UK plasterboard manufacturers including British Gypsum, Knauf and Siniat operate waste take back schemes whereby old bags of plasterboard can be exchanged for used plasterboard. Specialist plants will then reprocess this old plasterboard to form new.
There are also smaller local schemes in operation throughout the UK as well as a number of plasterboard recyclers who will accept plasterboard free of charge.
Benefits of recycling gypsum
Recycling gypsum provides a range of advantages.
Firstly, it enables manufacturers to reduce emissions as less energy is used during the process of recycling gypsum than using raw gypsum. Additionally, transportation energy emissions are reduced as a result of less raw, mined gypsum being required, and significant cost savings can be made through selling recycled gypsum. For example, the cost of sending one skip of waste plasterboard to landfill is approximately £2000. As savings of around £500 can be made by sending a similar amount of waste to a collection scheme or gypsum recycle centre, the financial incentive for doing this is apparent. Recycling centres also provide a stable source of high quality materials, saving the need of constantly sourcing suppliers. Furthermore, in an increasingly environmentally conscious climate, a company which is actively seen to have an effective strategy for recycling and reusing waste products will present a responsible environmental image.
Life after recycling
The following examples show how recycled gypsum can be effectively utilised.
Gypsum can easily be recycled into a new piece of plasterboard. Waste gypsum is sorted and stripped of its paper lining and mixed with new gypsum through the process, resulting in top quality plasterboards – similar to an original non-recycled equivalent.
Recycled gypsum can also be used as a major component in the process of cement manufacture, serving to reduce the setting time of the concrete.
Recycled gypsum is an excellent fertiliser and enhancement for soil. Not only does gypsum loosen compacted soils, but it also increases water infiltration and adds nutrients such as calcium and sulphur back into the soil. It is therefore a vital addition when promoting sustainability in irrigated soils.
Compost also benefits from the addition of recycled gypsum through a similar method seen with soil. The compost can extract its required nutrients from the gypsum, and benefit from this natural means of enhancement.
If you have any plasterboard which you are unsure how to dispose of properly, please contact us on 330 0297 3071 or email us, [email protected]. We will be delighted to arrange safe, reliable and cost effective disposal methods for you.
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In The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene tells the story of the “whisky priest,” a minister whose brokenness is evident to many of the other characters, and perhaps most especially to himself. A revolution has stripped the church of its external trappings, exposing the whisky priest’s sins, and, as the book continues, also his grace. Throughout the novel, the priest becomes holy as he grows in his ability to see the image of God in others:
“When you visualized a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity—that was a quality God’s image carried with it. When you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hatred was a failure of the imagination” (1).
Greene’s use of “image” and “imagination” in these lines is not coincidental. If by being made in the image of God we have the capacity to see the world through God’s eyes, then a failure to image God is not a fault of the one who is hated, but rather of the one who hates. When I hate, I cannot imagine the world as God does because I do not perceive others through God’s loving gaze. In doing so, I deny that the person I despise is made in God’s image, and darken the image of God within myself: my divine imagination fails.
In Holy Thursday’s gospel, Jesus teaches us to imagine ourselves and others anew through the image of God. How? By standing with the ones who are hated. When he washes the disciples’ feet, Jesus places himself in the posture of a servant, and of a particular sort. While offering guests the opportunity to wash their own feet was a common form of hospitality in Jesus’ culture, some scripture scholars believe washing the feet of others would have been beneath the dignity of a Jewish servant. Further, Jesus’ attire (v. 5) and his use of the word doulos (v. 16) are clues that by washing others’ feet Jesus is acting as a slave. Moreover, Leviticus put limitations on Jewish people owning other Jews as slaves; to act as a slave in a Jewish context suggests Jesus has assumed the religious status of a gentile (Lev. 25: 39-45).
By kneeling at the disciples’ feet, Jesus stands for those who are by definition “outside” of the community, who are brought “inside” for the sake of utility rather than dignity. This is the context for Peter’s initial, vehement refusal to have his feet washed. The Jesus we have met through John’s gospel names himself “I am,” claiming God’s identity as his own (John 8:58, cf. Exodus 3:14). As he washes the disciples’ feet, Jesus radically corrects their spiritual imagination: they are compelled to look upon the divine image in a gentile slave, one of the despised “others.”
Following the foot washing, Jesus asks “Do you realize what I have done for you?” (v.12). Like all eager students, I rush to answer, “Yes, teacher! I get it!” Yet perhaps in thinking too generally I fall short of the teacher’s intent. What Jesus has done is service—but what kind? Washing the feet of those who are already invited inside qualifies as service, but it doesn’t capture the depths of Jesus’ action. In John’s gospel, Jesus serves more radically by compelling me to see God’s image in the other. God’s image is refashioned in me as I learn to see others with love rather than with hate.
Jesus indicates “I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do” (v. 15). I believe we live out Christ’s model of service by standing in solidarity with the despised ones, insisting to all that we are each made in the divine image and that hatred is a failure of the imagination.
(1) Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), 131.
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| 0.970473 | 905 | 2.578125 | 3 |
African American History Forum
Pre-Civil War African Americans Residents
In 1860 (or any other year) BEFORE The U.S. Civil War, Were There More Free African Americans In The North Or The South?
In today's LunchBunch Chat Session at AfriGeneas, the discussion of the number of FPOC (Free People Of Color) in the north vs. the south was a topic of discussion.
Is there any reliable data that leans towards proving that either the Southern States or the Northern States can claim to have had more free African Americans during that time?
Should the U.S. Federal Census be the only criteria used to make this determination? If not, then how should this be determined?
Has there been any reasonable and/or reliable research to prove either/or?
Please keep in mind, that sources should be cited. Also, what reliable/reasonable criteria is being used to determine the 'race' or ethnicity of the people counted?
Should only people identified (on the Federal census) as "Negro", "Black", "Colored", or "Mulatto" be considered in this study? Are the people who were charged with gathering the info on census', mostly reliable (by today's standards)?
Consider too, that the records are (mostly) all we have to go by. Tell us about research that you know of, or have done.
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CC-MAIN-2018-05
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http://www.afrigeneas.com/forum-history/index.cgi/md/read/id/65/sbj/pre-civil-war-african-americans-residents/
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-05/segments/1516084892238.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20180123191341-20180123211341-00119.warc.gz
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| 0.952274 | 285 | 3.265625 | 3 |
In the last post in this series we saw some simple examples of linear programs, derived the concept of a dual linear program, and saw the duality theorem and the complementary slackness conditions which give a rough sketch of the stopping criterion for an algorithm. This time we’ll go ahead and write this algorithm for solving linear programs, and next time we’ll apply the algorithm to an industry-strength version of the nutrition problem we saw last time. The algorithm we’ll implement is called the simplex algorithm. It was the first algorithm for solving linear programs, invented in the 1940’s by George Dantzig, and it’s still the leading practical algorithm, and it was a key part of a Nobel Prize. It’s by far one of the most important algorithms ever devised.
As usual, we’ll post all of the code written in the making of this post on this blog’s Github page.
Slack variables and equality constraints
The simplex algorithm can solve any kind of linear program, but it only accepts a special form of the program as input. So first we have to do some manipulations. Recall that the primal form of a linear program was the following minimization problem.
where the brackets mean “dot product.” And its dual is
The linear program can actually have more complicated constraints than just the ones above. In general, one might want to have “greater than” and “less than” constraints in the same problem. It turns out that this isn’t any harder, and moreover the simplex algorithm only uses equality constraints, and with some finicky algebra we can turn any set of inequality or equality constraints into a set of equality constraints.
We’ll call our goal the “standard form,” which is as follows:
It seems impossible to get the usual minimization/maximization problem into standard form until you realize there’s nothing stopping you from adding more variables to the problem. That is, say we’re given a constraint like:
we can add a new variable , called a slack variable, so that we get an equality:
And now we can just impose that . The idea is that represents how much “slack” there is in the inequality, and you can always choose it to make the condition an equality. So if the equality holds and the variables are nonnegative, then the will still satisfy their original inequality. For “greater than” constraints, we can do the same thing but subtract a nonnegative variable. Finally, if we have a minimization problem “” we can convert it to .
So, to combine all of this together, if we have the following linear program with each kind of constraint,
We can add new variables , and write it as
By defining the vector variable and and to have as appropriately for the new variables, we see that the system is written in standard form.
This is the kind of tedious transformation we can automate with a program. Assuming there are variables, the input consists of the vector of length , and three matrix-vector pairs representing the three kinds of constraints. It’s a bit annoying to describe, but the essential idea is that we compute a rectangular “identity” matrix whose diagonal entries are , and then join this with the original constraint matrix row-wise. The reader can see the full implementation in the Github repository for this post, though we won’t use this particular functionality in the algorithm that follows.
There are some other additional things we could do: for example there might be some variables that are completely unrestricted. What you do in this case is take an unrestricted variable and replace it by the difference of two unrestricted variables . For simplicity we’ll ignore this, but it would be a fruitful exercise for the reader to augment the function to account for these.
What happened to the slackness conditions?
The “standard form” of our linear program raises an obvious question: how can the complementary slackness conditions make sense if everything is an equality? It turns out that one can redo all the work one did for linear programs of the form we gave last time (minimize w.r.t. greater-than constraints) for programs in the new “standard form” above. We even get the same complementary slackness conditions! If you want to, you can do this entire routine quite a bit faster if you invoke the power of Lagrangians. We won’t do that here, but the tool shows up as a way to work with primal-dual conversions in many other parts of mathematics, so it’s a good buzzword to keep in mind.
In our case, the only difference with the complementary slackness conditions is that one of the two is trivial: . This is because if our candidate solution is feasible, then it will have to satisfy already. The other one, that , is the only one we need to worry about.
Again, the complementary slackness conditions give us inspiration here. Recall that, informally, they say that when a variable is used at all, it is used as much as it can be to fulfill its constraint (the corresponding dual constraint is tight). So a solution will correspond to a choice of some variables which are either used or not, and a choice of nonzero variables will correspond to a solution. We even saw this happen in the last post when we observed that broccoli trumps oranges. If we can get a good handle on how to navigate the set of these solutions, then we’ll have a nifty algorithm.
Let’s make this official and lay out our assumptions.
Extreme points and basic solutions
Remember that the graphical way to solve a linear program is to look at the line (or hyperplane) given by and keep increasing (or decreasing it, if you are minimizing) until the very last moment when this line touches the region of feasible solutions. Also recall that the “feasible region” is just the set of all solutions to , that is the solutions that satisfy the constraints. We imagined this picture:
The constraints define a convex area of “feasible solutions.” Image source: Wikipedia.
With this geometric intuition it’s clear that there will always be an optimal solution on a vertex of the feasible region. These points are called extreme points of the feasible region. But because we will almost never work in the plane again (even introducing slack variables makes us relatively high dimensional!) we want an algebraic characterization of these extreme points.
If you have a little bit of practice with convex sets the correct definition is very natural. Recall that a set is convex if for any two points every point on the line segment between and is also in . An algebraic way to say this (thinking of these points now as vectors) is that every point when . Now an extreme point is just a point that isn’t on the inside of any such line, i.e. can’t be written this way for . For example,
A convex set with extremal points in red. Image credit Wikipedia.
Another way to say this is that if is an extreme point then whenever can be written as for some , then actually . Now since our constraints are all linear (and there are a finite number of them) they won’t define a convex set with weird curves like the one above. This means that there are a finite number of extreme points that just correspond to the intersections of some of the constraints. So there are at most possibilities.
Indeed we want a characterization of extreme points that’s specific to linear programs in standard form, “.” And here is one.
Definition: Let be an matrix with . A solution to is called basic if at most of its entries are nonzero.
The reason we call it “basic” is because, under some mild assumptions we describe below, a basic solution corresponds to a vector space basis of . Which basis? The one given by the columns of used in the basic solution. We don’t need to talk about bases like this, though, so in the event of a headache just think of the basis as a set of size corresponding to the nonzero entries of the basic solution.
Indeed, what we’re doing here is looking at the matrix formed by taking the columns of whose indices are in , and the vector in the same way, and looking at the equation . If all the parts of that we removed were zero then this will hold if and only if . One might worry that is not invertible, so we’ll go ahead and assume it is. In fact, we’ll assume that every set of columns of forms a basis and that the rows of are also linearly independent. This isn’t without loss of generality because if some rows or columns are not linearly independent, we can remove the offending constraints and variables without changing the set of solutions (this is why it’s so nice to work with the standard form).
Moreover, we’ll assume that every basic solution has exactly nonzero variables. A basic solution which doesn’t satisfy this assumption is called degenerate, and they’ll essentially be special corner cases in the simplex algorithm. Finally, we call a basic solution feasible if (in addition to satisfying ) it satisfies . Now that we’ve made all these assumptions it’s easy to see that choosing nonzero variables uniquely determines a basic feasible solution. Again calling the sub-matrix for a basis , it’s just . Now to finish our characterization, we just have to show that under the same assumptions basic feasible solutions are exactly the extremal points of the feasible region.
Proposition: A vector is a basic feasible solution if and only if it’s an extreme point of the set .
Proof. For one direction, suppose you have a basic feasible solution , and say we write it as for some . We want to show that this implies . Since all of these points are in the feasible region, all of their coordinates are nonnegative. So whenever a coordinate it must be that both . Since has exactly zero entries, it must be that both have at least zero entries, and hence are both basic. By our non-degeneracy assumption they both then have exactly nonzero entries. Let be the set of the nonzero indices of . Because , we have . Now has all of its nonzero entries in , and because the columns of are linearly independent, the fact that implies .
In the other direction, suppose that you have some extreme point which is feasible but not basic. In other words, there are more than nonzero entries of , and we’ll call the indices where . The columns of are linearly dependent (since they’re vectors in ), and so let be a nontrivial linear combination of the columns of . Add zeros to make the into a length vector , so that . Now
And if we pick sufficiently small will still be nonnegative, because the only entries we’re changing of are the strictly positive ones. Then for , but this is very embarrassing for who was supposed to be an extreme point.
Now that we know extreme points are the same as basic feasible solutions, we need to show that any linear program that has some solution has a basic feasible solution. This is clear geometrically: any time you have an optimum it has to either lie on a line or at a vertex, and if it lies on a line then you can slide it to a vertex without changing its value. Nevertheless, it is a useful exercise to go through the algebra.
Theorem. Whenever a linear program is feasible and bounded, it has a basic feasible solution.
Proof. Let be an optimal solution to the LP. If has at most nonzero entries then it’s a basic solution and by the non-degeneracy assumption it must have exactly nonzero entries. In this case there’s nothing to do, so suppose that has nonzero entries. It can’t be a basic feasible solution, and hence is not an extreme point of the set of feasible solutions (as proved by the last theorem). So write it as for some feasible and .
The only thing we know about is it’s optimal. Let be the cost vector, and the optimality says that , and . We claim that in fact these are equal, that are both optimal as well. Indeed, say were not optimal, then
Which can be rearranged to show that . Unfortunately for , this implies that it was not optimal all along:
An identical argument works to show is optimal, too. Now we claim we can use to get a new solution that has fewer than nonzero entries. Once we show this we’re done: inductively repeat the argument with the smaller solution until we get down to exactly nonzero variables. As before we know that must have at least as many zeros as . If they have more zeros we’re done. And if they have exactly as many zeros we can do the following trick. Write for a we’ll choose later. Note that no matter the , is optimal. Rewriting , we just have to pick a that ensures one of the nonzero coefficients of is zeroed out while maintaining nonnegativity. Indeed, we can just look at the index which minimizes and use . .
So we have an immediate (and inefficient) combinatorial algorithm: enumerate all subsets of size , compute the corresponding basic feasible solution , and see which gives the biggest objective value. The problem is that, even if we knew the value of , this would take time , and it’s not uncommon for to be in the tens or hundreds (and if we don’t know the trivial search is exponential).
So we have to be smarter, and this is where the simplex tableau comes in.
The simplex tableau
Now say you have any basis and any feasible solution . For now might not be a basic solution, and even if it is, its basis of nonzero entries might not be the same as . We can decompose the equation into the basis part and the non basis part:
and solving the equation for gives
It may look like we’re making a wicked abuse of notation here, but both and are vectors of length so the dimensions actually do work out. Now our feasible solution has to satisfy , and the entries of are all nonnegative, so it must be that and , and by the equality above as well. Now let’s write the maximization objective by expanding it first in terms of the , and then expanding .
If we want to maximize the objective, we can just maximize this last line. There are two cases. In the first, the vector and . In the above equation, this tells us that making any component of bigger will decrease the overall objective. In other words, . Picking (with zeros in the non basis part) meets this bound and hence must be optimal. In other words, no matter what basis we’ve chosen (i.e., no matter the candidate basic feasible solution), if the two conditions hold then we’re done.
Now the crux of the algorithm is the second case: if the conditions aren’t met, we can pick a positive index of and increase the corresponding value of to increase the objective value. As we do this, other variables in the solution will change as well (by decreasing), and we have to stop when one of them hits zero. In doing so, this changes the basis by removing one index and adding another. In reality, we’ll figure out how much to increase ahead of time, and the change will correspond to a single elementary row-operation in a matrix.
Indeed, the matrix we’ll use to represent all of this data is called a tableau in the literature. The columns of the tableau will correspond to variables, and the rows to constraints. The last row of the tableau will maintain a candidate solution to the dual problem. Here’s a rough picture to keep the different parts clear while we go through the details.
But to make it work we do a slick trick, which is to “left-multiply everything” by . In particular, if we have an LP given by , then for any basis it’s equivalent to the LP given by (just multiply your solution to the new program by to get a solution to the old one). And so the actual tableau will be of this form.
When we say it’s in this form, it’s really only true up to rearranging columns. This is because the chosen basis will always be represented by an identity matrix (as it is to start with), so to find the basis you can find the embedded identity sub-matrix. In fact, the beginning of the simplex algorithm will have the initial basis sitting in the last few columns of the tableau.
Let’s look a little bit closer at the last row. The first portion is zero because is the identity. But furthermore with this trick the dual LP involves everywhere there’s a variable. In particular, joining all but the last column of the last row of the tableau, we have the vector , and setting we get a candidate solution for the dual. What makes the trick even slicker is that is already the candidate solution , since is the identity. So we’re implicitly keeping track of two solutions here, one for the primal LP, given by the last column of the tableau, and one for the dual, contained in the last row of the tableau.
I told you the last row was the dual solution, so why all the other crap there? This is the final slick in the trick: the last row further encodes the complementary slackness conditions. Now that we recognize the dual candidate sitting there, the complementary slackness conditions simply ask for the last row to be non-positive (this is just another way of saying what we said at the beginning of this section!). You should check this, but it gives us a stopping criterion: if the last row is non-positive then stop and output the last column.
The simplex algorithm
Now (finally!) we can describe and implement the simplex algorithm in its full glory. Recall that our informal setup has been:
- Find an initial basic feasible solution, and set up the corresponding tableau.
- Find a positive index of the last row, and increase the corresponding variable (adding it to the basis) just enough to make another variable from the basis zero (removing it from the basis).
- Repeat step 2 until the last row is nonpositive.
- Output the last column.
This is almost correct, except for some details about how increasing the corresponding variables works. What we’ll really do is represent the basis variables as pivots (ones in the tableau) and then the first 1 in each row will be the variable whose value is given by the entry in the last column of that row. So, for example, the last entry in the first row may be the optimal value for , if the fifth column is the first entry in row 1 to have a 1.
As we describe the algorithm, we’ll illustrate it running on a simple example. In doing this we’ll see what all the different parts of the tableau correspond to from the previous section in each step of the algorithm.
Spoiler alert: the optimum is and the value of the max is 8.
So let’s be more programmatically formal about this. The main routine is essentially pseudocode, and the difficulty is in implementing the helper functions
def simplex(c, A, b):
tableau = initialTableau(c, A, b)
pivot = findPivotIndex(tableau)
return primalSolution(tableau), objectiveValue(tableau)
Let’s start with the initial tableau. We’ll assume the user’s inputs already include the slack variables. In particular, our example data before adding slack is
c = [3, 2]
A = [[1, 2], [1, -1]]
b = [4, 1]
And after adding slack:
c = [3, 2, 0, 0]
A = [[1, 2, 1, 0],
[1, -1, 0, 1]]
b = [4, 1]
Now to set up the initial tableau we need an initial feasible solution in mind. The reader is recommended to work this part out with a pencil, since it’s much easier to write down than it is to explain. Since we introduced slack variables, our initial feasible solution (basis) can just be . And so is just the slack variables, is the zero vector, and is the 2×2 identity matrix. Now , which is just the original two columns of we started with, and . For the last row, is zero so the part under is the zero vector. The part under is just .
Rather than move columns around every time the basis changes, we’ll keep the tableau columns in order of . In other words, for our example the initial tableau should look like this.
[[ 1, 2, 1, 0, 4],
[ 1, -1, 0, 1, 1],
[ 3, 2, 0, 0, 0]]
initialTableau is just a matter of putting the data in the right place.
def initialTableau(c, A, b):
tableau = [row[:] + [x] for row, x in zip(A, b)]
tableau.append(c[:] + )
As an aside: in the event that we don’t start with the trivial basic feasible solution of “trivially use the slack variables,” we’d have to do a lot more work in this function. Next, the
objectiveValue() functions are simple, because they just extract the encoded information out from the tableau (some helper functions are omitted for brevity).
# the pivot columns denote which variables are used
columns = transpose(tableau)
indices = [j for j, col in enumerate(columns[:-1]) if isPivotCol(col)]
return list(zip(indices, columns[-1]))
canImprove() function just checks if there’s a nonnegative entry in the last row
lastRow = tableau[-1]
return any(x > 0 for x in lastRow[:-1])
Let’s run the first loop of our simplex algorithm. The first step is checking to see if anything can be improved (in our example it can). Then we have to find a pivot entry in the tableau. This part includes some edge-case checking, but if the edge cases aren’t a problem then the strategy is simple: find a positive entry corresponding to some entry of , and then pick an appropriate entry in that column to use as the pivot. Pivoting increases the value of (from zero) to whatever is the largest we can make it without making some other variables become negative. As we’ve said before, we’ll stop increasing when some other variable hits zero, and we can compute which will be the first to do so by looking at the current values of (in the last column of the tableau), and seeing how pivoting will affect them. If you stare at it for long enough, it becomes clear that the first variable to hit zero will be the entry of the basis for which is minimal (and has to be positve). This is because, in order to maintain the linear equalities, every entry of will be decreased by that value during a pivot, and we can’t let any of the variables become negative.
All of this results in the following function, where we have left out the degeneracy/unboundedness checks.
[UPDATE 2018-04-21]: The pivot choices are not as simple as I thought at the time I wrote this. See the discussion on this issue, but the short story is that I was increasing the variable too much, and to fix it it’s easier to update the pivot column choice to be the smallest positive entry of the last row. The code on github is updated to reflect that, but this post will remain unchanged.
# pick first nonzero index of the last row
column = [i for i,x in enumerate(tableau[-1][:-1]) if x > 0]
quotients = [(i, r[-1] / r[column]) for i,r in enumerate(tableau[:-1]) if r[column] > 0]
# pick row index minimizing the quotient
row = min(quotients, key=lambda x: x)
return row, column
For our example, the minimizer is the entry (second row, first column). Pivoting is just doing the usual elementary row operations (we covered this in a primer a while back on row-reduction). The pivot function we use here is no different, and in particular mutates the list in place.
def pivotAbout(tableau, pivot):
i,j = pivot
pivotDenom = tableau[i][j]
tableau[i] = [x / pivotDenom for x in tableau[i]]
for k,row in enumerate(tableau):
if k != i:
pivotRowMultiple = [y * tableau[k][j] for y in tableau[i]]
tableau[k] = [x - y for x,y in zip(tableau[k], pivotRowMultiple)]
And in our example pivoting around the chosen entry gives the new tableau.
[[ 0., 3., 1., -1., 3.],
[ 1., -1., 0., 1., 1.],
[ 0., 5., 0., -3., -3.]]
In particular, is now , since our pivot removed the second slack variable from the basis. Currently our solution has . Notice how the identity submatrix is still sitting in there, the columns are just swapped around.
There’s still a positive entry in the bottom row, so let’s continue. The next pivot is (0,1), and pivoting around that entry gives the following tableau:
[[ 0. , 1. , 0.33333333, -0.33333333, 1. ],
[ 1. , 0. , 0.33333333, 0.66666667, 2. ],
[ 0. , 0. , -1.66666667, -1.33333333, -8. ]]
And because all of the entries in the bottom row are negative, we’re done. We read off the solution as we described, so that the first variable is 2 and the second is 1, and the objective value is the opposite of the bottom right entry, 8.
To see all of the source code, including the edge-case-checking we left out of this post, see the Github repository for this post.
Obvious questions and sad answers
An obvious question is: what is the runtime of the simplex algorithm? Is it polynomial in the size of the tableau? Is it even guaranteed to stop at some point? The surprising truth is that nobody knows the answer to all of these questions! Originally (in the 1940’s) the simplex algorithm actually had an exponential runtime in the worst case, though this was not known until 1972. And indeed, to this day while some variations are known to terminate, no variation is known to have polynomial runtime in the worst case. Some of the choices we made in our implementation (for example, picking the first column with a positive entry in the bottom row) have the potential to cycle, i.e., variables leave and enter the basis without changing the objective at all. Doing something like picking a random positive column, or picking the column which will increase the objective value by the largest amount are alternatives. Unfortunately, every single pivot-picking rule is known to give rise to exponential-time simplex algorithms in the worst case (in fact, this was discovered as recently as 2011!). So it remains open whether there is a variant of the simplex method that runs in guaranteed polynomial time.
But then, in a stunning turn of events, Leonid Khachiyan proved in the 70’s that in fact linear programs can always be solved in polynomial time, via a completely different algorithm called the ellipsoid method. Following that was a method called the interior point method, which is significantly more efficient. Both of these algorithms generalize to problems that are harder than linear programming as well, so we will probably cover them in the distant future of this blog.
Despite the celebratory nature of these two results, people still use the simplex algorithm for industrial applications of linear programming. The reason is that it’s much faster in practice, and much simpler to implement and experiment with.
The next obvious question has to do with the poignant observation that whole numbers are great. That is, you often want the solution to your problem to involve integers, and not real numbers. But adding the constraint that the variables in a linear program need to be integer valued (even just 0-1 valued!) is NP-complete. This problem is called integer linear programming, or just integer programming (IP). So we can’t hope to solve IP, and rightly so: the reader can verify easily that boolean satisfiability instances can be written as linear programs where each clause corresponds to a constraint.
This brings up a very interesting theoretical issue: if we take an integer program and just remove the integrality constraints, and solve the resulting linear program, how far away are the two solutions? If they’re close, then we can hope to give a good approximation to the integer program by solving the linear program and somehow turning the resulting solution back into an integer solution. In fact this is a very popular technique called LP-rounding. We’ll also likely cover that on this blog at some point.
Oh there’s so much to do and so little time! Until next time.
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| 0.911636 | 6,352 | 3.8125 | 4 |
Get Mad Too!
Things to do instead
of blowing your top and yelling at your kid
© Lynne Namka, Ed. D.
anger as an emotion is normal human behavior. As a response,
you have choices. Choose from the productive expressions of
anger. Tell yourself ... "It's OK to be angry. I choose to
use my anger constructively." Anger can be a signal that something
in your life needs changing. When your personal resources
are exhausted, you are more likely to be angry. Plan alternative
fun things for your child to do when you are fatigued or ill.
your own stomach, fists, and jaw. Observe how your body starts
to tense up and react automatically when you feel threat.
Know whn you are mad! Analyze your ownpatterns of responding
to anger; know what your typical anger response is. Watch
yourself as the heat starts to rise. Observing yourself may
help break into your regular anger response. Break into your
regular response pattern. Remember to breathe.
your tongue when the angry words start to arise. Gently, of
course, to remind yourself to inhibit your angry verbal or
deeply, then state your anger in a firm voice, "I feel angry,
when you____." Make this formula a habit in your family by
your using it often. If you have problems saying it, practice
on the dog or the mirror at first.
yourself for a short time before going into problem solving
the days of the week, months of the year or counting to
ten in a foreign language.
Dial a Joke, The Weather, the Daily Prayer or Time.
a walk or weed the garden
your anger by cleaning the house. Vacuum while you cool
a self-soothing exercise. Massage your arms and neck.
Hug yourself. Take a warm bath. Smell a flower. Pet an
animal. Hug a Teddy bear. As the National Committee for
Prevention of Child Abuse says, "Take time out. Dont take
it out on your kid!" Know it's okay to be angry.
a negative anger reaction by going directly into problem solving.
Don't try to fix blame. Determine what is needed to correct
the situation. Contribute to the solution, not the problem.
Parents Anonymous or a sympathetic friend. Make sure your
child realizes you are reaching out for help in anger reduction
not calling someone to blame him or her.
- If you
continue to get angry at your child, seek professional help
or take a parent training group. Whatever the cost, it is
a bargain in providing stress reduction in your household.
Short term therapy often offers techniques to insure good
mental health for you and your child. The amount of money
and time you use in learning practical tools of communication
and discipline are an investment in your child's future.
To Angries Out
Talk, Trust and Feel Therapeutics.
All Rights Reserved
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| 0.866806 | 625 | 3.40625 | 3 |
**Today, we have a guest post from graduate student, Emily Meineke — Enjoy!**
There was a time when people weren’t so connected. It was a big deal 500 years ago to cross the Atlantic, much less the Pacific. Nowadays you could be in Japan in less than 24 hours with a martini in your hand.
Recently, there have been a lot of new stories about humans being more connected than ever before, but maybe the coolest I’ve heard—I’m an entomologist, get ready—is that being more connected makes us more like ants. The way that we connect to one another through Facebook looks a lot like how ants connect to one another. Some ants are like the celebrities of Facebook, using their antennae to talk to many other ants, whereas most ants – like most of us – talk to relatively few. If you are a relative loner, in other words, you are not, evolutionarily speaking, alone.
Not only are some ant networks like human Facebook networks, Mandi Traud, a Ph.D. student in Biomathematics here at NC State, is asking in her new research if ant networks could be like caveman networks. Caveman networks work like this: If you were a Neanderthal, you would live in a cave with family members. Ideally, your cave would have everything you needed: food nearby, shelter, presumably some kick-ass drawings of buffalo, and you would not go to anyone else’s cave. . . unless, you know, you wanted to make a baby Neanderthal. Then you’d head out into the night singing, one supposes, your best Neanderthal Marvin Gaye.
So if you could go back in time and watch the caveman network from above, you’d see most Neanderthals staying in the caves they grew up in. Occasionally, some would move to other caves1, 2. Mandi thinks certain ants, particularly those that are friendly with ants of the same species living in different, but nearby hills, might sometimes go to those other anthills and talk to the ants there; but mostly they would stay with their sisters near the hills where they were born. If this caveman network model holds true, we’d expect the ants to move around exactly the same as Neanderthals, just on a smaller scale and singing different (more chemical) songs.
Mandi’s study is a cool example of how science begins. She pulled together separate facts about social animals to form an interesting question. And it turns out the first step to answering her question is where I came in — I helped her paint ants while she was working on display at the Nature Research Center in Raleigh. (Yes, the first step to seeing if ants are like cavemen is to paint their rear ends and watch them scuttle around under a black light. Let’s see you try that with a caveman).
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We all know someone who has been consistently dieting for years. Maybe that someone is you. In fact, according to recent market research, over 60% of Americans are dieting with most trying to lose or maintain body weight. 1
There is an abundance of information available about dieting and weight loss and everyone seems to be an expert. There are websites, news stories, talk shows, friend, family and infomercials that have the magic solution for weight loss. It can get so confusing - Should we eat carbs? Which carbs are good and which carbs are bad? Am I getting enough protein? I saw this on doctor Oz, should I take it? This worked for my sister, will it work for me?
We try lots of different things to make weight loss easier and longer lasting, but it’s becoming obvious that understanding a few basic concepts can help all of us achieve our goals.
It may be tough to accept, but losing weight takes dedication and persistence. According to the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR), successful individuals implement permanent changes to their lifestyle, including watching calorie intake and increasing physical activity. 3-5 These basic concepts are no secret to most of us. Recent market research suggests consumers understand that weight loss takes time and willpower, and that extreme strategies are often not successful.
The basic strategies that lead to successful weight management are largely based on the foundational concept of Energy Balance:
“Calories In” is the food we eat and “Calories Out” is the energy we burn moving our bodies (physical activity energy expenditure), digesting food (thermic effect of food) and keeping our bodies and cells functioning properly (also known as our basal metabolic rate).
If Calories In = Calories Out, we maintain our weight. If Calories In < Calories Out, we create an energy deficit which results in us losing weight, and if Calories In > Calories Out we store extra energy in the form of fat and start to gain weight. It takes a deficit of 3,500 calories to lose one pound of fat, so losing weight requires eating a little less each day and burning more calories during exercise.
Although this is a very simplified view of the big picture, it provides an easy guide that everyone can understand for the basics of weight loss and weight maintenance. Many of the individuals who report successful weight loss and weight maintenance have achieved this by keeping track of what they eat and how much they exercise. This is because they have a better idea of whether or not they’re in energy balance.
Now this is where it gets tricky - Keeping track of your diet and making smart decisions is more difficult than it sounds. We know we need to eat more nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables. We realize that drinking water is good for us. We also know that a diet consisting of fast food and processed snacks is something that we should limit or avoid, but does that mean we succeed at doing these things? Often times, no. In fact, research on eating behaviors suggests that the harder we try, the less successful we are at controlling what we're eating. 6-10 The more we limit our diet, the stronger the cravings get and the more likely we are to binge. As research progresses on eating behaviors and the negative impact of strict dietary restraint, we have to keep in mind that moderation is key.
So, how do we achieve moderation when we put so much pressure on ourselves to lose weight and maintain weight? The key is allowing ourselves to eat a balanced, whole-food diet that allows us to indulge in moderation, while we maintain our physical activity. But this is another task that can be easier said than done. How do we resist the urge to eat the whole pint of ice cream or two pieces of cake when we have that craving? Or how do we resist becoming members of the clean plate club when we eat at a delicious restaurant that has huge portion sizes?
There are many factors in your body that influence your appetite. To indicate you're full, your body sends a hormonal signal to your brain, telling you to stop eating. One strategy to help control your cravings is to increase these feelings of satiety.
There are several supplements available to help increase feelings of satiety. Things like added fiber and protein are common in the market today. But to help specifically increase these satiety signals, a specialty ingredient called Slendesta® can be added to a wide range of supplements and foods to help control hunger.
Slendesta is a natural potato protein called Proteinase Inhibitor II or PI2. PI2 enhances the release of the satiety hormone called Cholecystokinin or CCK. CCK is released every time we eat, to signal to our brains when we are full and ready to stop eating. PI2 helps extend the CCK signaling, to help us feel full quicker and longer. When you eat healthy, exercise and take 300 mg of Slendesta 30 to 60 minutes before your 2 largest meals of the day, you can feel full longer, without any side effects.
So even though there isn’t a magic solution, there are steps you can take to help achieve and maintain your weight loss goals. Moderation is important and can be realized by controlling our hunger cravings. And to help achieve your goals without completely sacrificing the treats you enjoy, products with Slendesta can provide the control you need to live a healthy life. Look for supplements containing Slendesta on the label.
1. Mintel. Diet Trends US - September 2016. 2016.
2. Klem ML, Wing RR, McGuire MT, Seagle HM, Hill JO. A descriptive study of individuals successful at long-term maintenance of substantial weight loss. The American journal of clinical nutrition. 1997;66(2):239-246.
3. Thomas JG, Bond DS, Phelan S, Hill JO, Wing RR. Weight-loss maintenance for 10 years in the National Weight Control Registry. American journal of preventive medicine. 2014;46(1):17-23.
4. Wyatt HR, Grunwald GK, Mosca CL, Klem ML, Wing RR, Hill JO. Long‐term weight loss and breakfast in subjects in the National Weight Control Registry. Obesity research. 2002;10(2):78-82.
5. Schembre SM, Albright CL, Lim U, et al. Associations between weight-related eating behaviors and adiposity in postmenopausal Japanese American and white women. Physiol Behav. 2012;106(5):651-656.
6. de Lauzon B, Romon M, Deschamps V, et al. The Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire-R18 is able to distinguish among different eating patterns in a general population. J Nutr. 2004;134(9):2372-2380.
7. Poehlman ET, Viers HF, Detzer M. Influence of physical activity and dietary restraint on resting energy expenditure in young nonobese females. Can J Physiol Pharmacol. 1991;69(3):320-326.
8. Rutters F, Nieuwenhuizen AG, Lemmens SGT, Born JM, Westerterp-Plantenga MS. Hyperactivity of the HPA axis is related to dietary restraint in normal weight women. Physiology & Behavior. 2009;96(2):315-319.
9. Westenhoefer J, Broeckmann P, Munch AK, Pudel V. Cognitive control of eating behaviour and the disinhibition effect. Appetite. 1994;23(1):27-41.
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This Speak Up study found that as the digital learner has emerged over the past ten years, we have noticed a significant shift in the student perspective on using technology for learning. In 2003, the students’ focus was on getting access to the Internet and the tools that would facilitate that access. Learning how to circumvent or mitigate the obstacles in their school that limited that access was also an important goal. Today, while access is still not universal for all students, for the majority of the students across all grades, their attention is on how to use a wide range of digital tools and resources to enable a highly personalized learning experience. This self-initiated evolution from access to personalization provides an interesting model for thinking about the adoption and adaption of emerging technologies within the school also.
Speak Up (2013). From chalkboards to tablets: The emergence of the K-12 digital learner. St. Davids, PA: Speak Up.
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There is a common misconception that mobile phones are the only devices at risk of causing harm. This is because mobile phones were the first common devices on the market using this kind of radiation and therefore, more research has been done on these than more modern technology. It should be noted that radiation from mobile phones has been shown to create biological effects while simply in standby mode and even when off, due to intermittent emissions that occur (if the battery is present and charged) whilst the phone is in these modes.
Common devices that emit radiation documented to be harmful include (but not exclusively):
There is now growing evidence to demonstrate harmful effects of Wi-Fi also and the Group 2b Carcinogenic classification applies to all RF sources. Additionally, it can be seen from the information below, that tablets, wireless computers and routers can produce higher power density emissions than mobile phones and even mobile phone base stations at 100m. France has now banned Wi-fi in nurseries and limited it’s use for those under 6yrs.
Despite the advice in The Stewart Report (commissioned by the Government in 2000) to avoid the beam of greatest intensity from mobile phone masts in areas involving sensitive populations, we are now placing higher power density emissions inside buildings, sometimes close to or touching individuals (especially in the case of laptops or tablets). This is of concern to us all, and particularly in the case of children using these devices in schools as they are a vulnerable group who are also potentially non-consenting and non-benefitting.
The Department of Health states: “children and young people under 16 should be encouraged to use mobile phones for essential purposes only” and a medical doctors appeal (signed by more than 1,000 physicians) states “Children below the age of 8 should not use cell phones and cordless phones; children and adolescents between the ages 8 and 16 should also not use cell phones or only use them in the case of an emergency.” The same caution clearly exists for tablets given that the SARs are comparable and in many cases can even be higher. There is considerable evidence that all living systems are vulnerable. Therefore cautions should extend to all groups, and biologically based safety limits are emergently required to protect all living systems.
Smartphones v Tablets (Thank you to Alasdair Philips for this research and calculation)
SAR from 11 modern smart phones: 0.35-0.80 W/kg
SAR for iPad3 (Wi-fi on): 0.39-0.51 W/kg
Smartphones use Adaptive Power Control (APC), which allows a phone to decrease its power output when high power is not necessary. For example, 3G/UMTS mobile phones can lower their power output to around 1/1000th of their maximum power, so that average SAR exposure is a tiny fraction of their maximum SAR value. Tablets, including iPads, and most laptops do not have APC and could therefore be emitting considerably higher average power densities than mobile phones, as all data bursts take place at maximum power.
None of the devices above were adequately pre-market safety tested for use by children. Mobile phones were tested for safety on SAM (Specific Anthropomorphic Mannequin). SAM represents the 90th percentile of US military recruits. He has a body weight of 100kg and a head weighing 5kg which is composed of a non-living, uniform density substance. SAM’s head bears no resemblance to that of a child, a woman, or even an average man. Other RF emitting devices have undergone even less health safety testing than mobile phones.
Additionally, the safety limit used to test this (SAM) model was the ICNIRP obsolete threshold (see Safety Limits section). This only verifies that if you hold your phone more than the specified distance from your head (usually around 15mm) you are unlikely to ‘heat’ certain areas of the brain. It offers no protection against the numerous, copiously documented non-thermal harmful effects. Furthermore, the dosimetric quantity (measurement) used for assessment was Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) and SAR cannot be accurately estimated for an organ such as the brain.
Surprisingly, given the high intensity threshold deemed safe in this country, literature has demonstrated that even the unprotective ICNIRP limits can be exceeded during normal use of devices. Industry themselves admit their concerns regarding safety of their own RF emitting devices.
Author of page Dr. Erica Mallery-Blythe, see credits for graphics owners. If you wish to use or discuss any content from this site, please contact the relevant author / owner either directly or via ‘contact’ above. A link to the references for each section will also be coming soon.
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1. (used with a sing. verb) Physics that deals with the relationships and conversions between heat and other forms of energy.
2. (used with a pl. verb) Thermodynamic phenomena and processes.
Thermodynamics is the branch of physics that deals with the relationships between heat and other forms of energy. Four basic laws have been established.
Copyright © 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices
Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:
The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.
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First observed in the British Expeditionary Forces in 1915, a trench fever caused some 500,000 soldiers to become ill during World War I.
Since then, disease synonymous with battlefield. But now, new research from an international team of scientists has uncovered evidence that defies this longstanding belief.
The study, published this week in “PLOS ONE“, Outlining the discovery of DNA evidence of this disease among civilians thousands of years before World War I. In total, the team analyzed bone and tooth fragments from 145 living individuals from the 1st to 19th centuries. About 20% of them had traces of Bartonellaniversana, the bacteria that cause the disease. oyster sauce.
Davide Tanasi, an associate professor in the USF̵7;s Department of History and a member of the Institute for Advanced Studies of Culture and Environment, unearthed the remains for this project from a Roman cemetery in Syracuse, Sicily. Tanasi, also the director of USF’s Institute for Digital Exploration, first started working on the site to better understand the eating habits and health of the Christian community living there in the 3rd century. and 4. Through collaboration with French epidemiologists, the researchers used real-time polymerase chain reaction testing to detect B’s DNA in the remains.
“After you get sick, there are diseases, like typhus, that can leave traces in your DNA and can integrate your DNA with other information,” says Tanasi. “This means that once a person dies, even 2,000 years ago, they can still find traces of the bacteria that infected them.”
Tanasi said the discovery shed light on the complex history of the trench fever and began answering historical questions about the lives of Christian citizens in the area during the 3rd and 4th centuries.
Archeology is not just the study of the past, but also something that can make the present better through research about the past, he said. “The better we understand the behavior of these bacteria in the past, the more we can design plans to address them, stop them and eliminate them in the present.”
While most illnesses are associated with World War I and World War II, occurrence of trench fever is still reported today, most notably among the homeless. This bacterium is spread to humans by contact with body lice (Pediculus humanus corporis), making poor personal hygiene a major factor in its rate of spread and infection. The researchers hope that by tracking the historical progression of B. weights, they can identify ways to better manage the spread of today’s disease.
For Tanasi, his work with the remains unearthed in Sicily continued. Through stable isotope analysis, his team looked at the diets and lives of people who used to live in the area. He hopes this work will answer further questions about the lifestyle and health of the Christian community in Roman Syracuse.
Title image credit: University of South Florida
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I’ve recently been spending quite a bit of time deliberating empathy. Yes, empathy, feeling the same emotions as another person or setting yourself in someone else’s shoes.
All these popular ideas about the unbridgeable relationship between the subject and the object has made me feel a little alienated. (I guess that’s normal, I guess.) A story about Rousseau watching his “Maman” put a piece of food in her mouth and realizing he would never know how it must taste comes to mind, and that just sends shivers up my back telling me there’s something a little off.
The Kantian philosopher Cassirer says we don’t understand the world on its own terms. Instead, to understand objective things, we have to understand it in relation to other things. We need an interpretive structure, a scaffold that explains the relations of all the objects to each other.
This scaffold is an interpretive lens through which we see the world. The lens adds a layer of unreal things we cannot push aside, because we can’t understand the world without them. For example, we cannot see the formula for gravity written on Newton’s apple, but without the idea of gravity we cannot understand that the apple always falls to the ground.
In effect, the interpretive lens is like seeing ghosts every moment we look at the world around us. The things we recognize and our relationship to those things are all ghosts. (One question I should talk about sometime may be: what’s the difference between the scientific ghosts we see today and the ghosts and spirits our ancestors talked about? But that’s worth a whole different post.)
Kant says that since we cannot prove the objective world exists, we must have faith in its existence to be able to understand it. I imagine that without Kant’s faith, we would go crazy, but I also think that empathy has a large deal to do with our sanity. Thanks to empathy, we can reinforce subjective interpretations by sharing them with other people. For all I know, you might even be able to feel empathy for something inanimate like art or a natural scene, but there the term begins to lose its firm footing.
Exactly this idea about Empathy is something I got from another Ted talk by Daniel Goleman, a psychologist who works on theories of compassion. He gave me the hint to look at research done in social neuroscience, a new field of study that uses MRI technology to scientifically study social and emotional responses.
So, I found an article (published in 2006, so a little old for a science article) summarizing work on empathy in social neuroscience by Decety and Jackson. They summarized inquiry on empathy like this:
There is strong evidence that, in the domain of emotion processing and empathic understanding, people use the same neural circuits for themselves and for others. These circuits provide a functional bridge between first-person and third-person information, which paves the way for intersubjective transactions between self and others. These circuits can also be activated when one adopts the perspective of the other. (Decety and Jackson, 2006)
First off, I think it’s funny how they use the word “circuits” to explain phenomena in the brain. It’s like our brains are complex computers. I won’t go into my ideas about that now, saying instead that this sounds similar to emotional bonds, which often serve as the goal in art. Art perpetually attempts to build or reinforce that bridge between the “first-person and third-person” in creative ways.
This is all a little similar to the introduction to the Kokinshu completed in the 10th century. Ki no Tsurayuki wrote it like this:
Japanese poetry (in contrast to Chinese poetry) makes the human heart its seed and ten thousand words its leaves. The people in this world have many matters on their minds, and everyone tries to express these matters, making them visible or audible. If you hear a bush warbler among the flowers or the voice of frogs living in the water, you’ll see that all living things write poetry. That which can move heaven and earth without using force, move the hearts of invisible demons and gods, soften relations between men and women, and make friendly the hearts of fierce warriors, is poetry. (my translation)
Here, Ki no Tsurayuki said that the whole world can be understood through poetry. Poetry can be the necessary interpretive lens I just wrote about, but more than that, he said that poetry can cause empathy in all beings in this world. Poetry can be a diplomatic device fostering understanding and peace.
Going back to the scientific research, the studies Decety and Jackson cite used narratives and photographs to evoke empathy in the test takers. Narratives and photographs are a form of art, so I wonder what level of abstraction in art still produces an empathetic response? Also, are empathetic responses different for people of different cultural backgrounds? In other words, does familiarity with the context of a narrative or image aid the creation of empathy?
I don’t think I need science to know the answers. Certainly, people familiar with abstract art or with art from another culture gain more from it than someone without that familiarity. The strength of the emotive response has a lot to do with how well you can recreate the same conditions in your own imagination.
The scientific study brings out one more point of interest:
However, were this bridging between self and other absolute, experiencing another’s distress state as one’s own experience could lead to empathic overarousal, in which the focus would then become one’s own feelings of stress rather than the other’s need. Self-agency and emotion-regulatory mechanisms thus play a crucial role in maintaining a boundary between self and other. (Decety and Jackson, 2006)
Here (and more clearly elsewhere in the article) we see empathy is the result of imagining the situation of the other. It is also necessary to know one’s emotional limits. Someone who gives and gives a great deal of emotional support to other people ends up feeling lonely and depressed themselves. The challenge, therefore is to promote positive empathy. Therefore, it seems to me that empathy has to be fostered. It requires a level of guidance and familiarity, and if you understand empathy as the foundation of morality, then the necessity for fostering empathy is self-evident.
The Decety and Jackson article can be downloaded here as a pdf.
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|Mail to a friend · Print this article · Previous Columns|
Tony Phillips' Take on Math in the Media
A monthly survey of math news
This month's topics:
Morning Edition for April 10, 2009, carried a piece by Joe Palca ("Mining for the 'Prime' Jewels of Numbers") about the search for "the world's largest prime number." A serious possible misunderstanding is averted when, at the end of the next paragraph, he specifies: "But there's always a larger one to find." This is after telling us about the latest contender in words we can understand: "if you write 10 digits per inch--all 12,978,189 of them--the number would extend for 20.45 miles." Palca mentions that the recent largest primes have been Mersenne primes and that the "current reigning champ ... was discovered last summer as part of a program called the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, or GIMPS." Palca asked Chris Caldwell (UTM), one of the mathematicians behind this gigantic distributed computing effort, why it was worth the trouble. Cadwell answers with an analogy: when he went to Washington, he took his kids to see the Hope Diamond at the National Museum of Natural History. "Mersennes, in a way, are kind of like a large diamond. Nobody there looking at the Hope Diamond ever asks, 'Why did they bother to dig it up?' or 'What is it good for?' - even though it really isn't good for much other than to just hang there and people to look at. And in many ways the Mersennes play that same role - that they really are the jewels of number theory."
Some of the gaps in Palca's presentation (e.g. what is a Mersenne prime?) are filled in a companion piece ("See The Largest Known Prime, All 13 Million Digits") by Andrew Price, on the same NPR webpage. But neither cites Euclid or mentions that 211-1 = 2047 = 89 x 23, elementary but meaningful in this context.
A double pendulum with labels for lengths, masses, angular cordinates and velocities; the motion-tracking data fed into Schmidt and Lipson's algorithm (color codes match the diagram); the conserved quantity the algorithm detected: the system's Hamiltonian. Adapted from an image kindly provided by Hod Lipson.
Recently two Cornell scientists have found an algorithmic way to "identify and document analytical laws that underlie physical phenomena in nature." As Michael Schmidt and Hod Lipson describe their work in Science (April 3, 2009), "A key challenge to finding analytic relations automatically is defining algorithmically what makes a correlation in observed data important and insightful." They propose what they call "a principle for the identification of nontriviality," and exhibit its application to the analysis of motion-tracking data from various physical systems; for example the double pendulum illustrated above, where the conserved quantity detected by their algorithm is the system's Hamiltonian. To test the significance ("non-triviality") of a quantity f(x,y), detected by their algorithm to be constant, their idea is to measure the discrepancy between the implicit derivative δy/δx = (∂f/∂x)/(∂f/∂y) calculated from f, and the implicit derivative Δy/Δx = (dy/dt)/(dx/dt) calculated from the continuing stream of data. "In higher-dimensional systems, multiple variable pairings and higher-order derivatives yield a plethora of criteria to use."
Schmidt and Lipson give several examples of how reasonable their algorithm is. In the case of the double pendulum, when the algorithm was only given data measured in high-energy runs, it "fixated" on angular momentum, which is conserved (to good approximation) in that context. On the other hand, "given only data from low-velocity in-phase oscillations, the algorithm fixated on small-angle approximations and uncoupled energy terms." Finally, "By combining the chaotic data with low-velocity in-phase oscillation data, the algorithm converged onto the precise energy laws after several hours of computation." The paper's title is "Distilling Free-Form Natural Laws from Experimental Data."
Part I of this story is tucked inside a long profile of the famous physicist in the March 25 2009 New York Times Magazine (The article, by Nicholas Dawidoff, stirred up a firestorm of outraged commentary because it allowed Dyson to present his iconoclastic views on global warming). Dyson participates in Jason, a small super-classified think-tank the government runs "each summer near San Diego." At lunch, one of the scientists "will idly wonder if there is an integer where, if you take its last digit and move it to the front, turning, say, 112 to 211, it's possible to exactly double the value. Dyson will immediately say, 'Oh, that's not difficult,' allow two short beats to pass and then add, 'but of course the smallest such number is 18 digits long.'" The meal ends in silence with nobody having "the slightest idea how Freeman could have known such a fact or, even more terrifying, could have derived it in his head in about two seconds." (This last quote from William Press, who presumably was there).
Part II is in the online New York Times, in two installments of the TierneyLab, a science blog on the website. On April 6, John Tierny posts the Dawidoff quote, along with an analysis from Pradeep Mutalik (Medical Informatics, Yale). "In fact, the procedure to find the answer requires no more than 4th-grade arithmetic skills. I know, because I actually showed my fourth-grader daughter, Maya, how to do it, and she had no problem whatsoever in computing the answer." Mutalik calls the number in Dawidoff's account the Dyson number for 2, generalizes the problem to finding the Dyson number for n (moving the last digit to first place multiplies the original number by n), defines "reverse Dyson numbers," etc.
On April 10, Tierney publishes Mutalik's 4-th grade daughter's solution. (Meanwhile he had heard from Freeman Dyson: "I am sure I had seen the problem before .... Mr. Dawidoff made a big deal out of something very ordinary. The problem is well known among recreational mathematicians.") As instructed by her father, she started with a 2 on the right side of a sheet of paper, and extended towards the left as follows. The second digit is twice the first, the third is twice the second, etc., with "carries" added in as she went along. She stopped when she found a number starting with 10....
2 42 842 16842 136842 736842 14736842 94736842 1894736842 17894736842 157894736842 1157894736842 3157894736842 63157894736842 1263157894736842 5263157894736842 105263157894736842
Moving the last 2 to the front gives 210526315789473684, manifestly twice 105263157894736842. The April 10 blog also contains Dr. Mutalik's explanation of the phenomenon in terms of arithmetic mod 19.
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Avestan Ǝrəxša, Middle Persian Ēraš, a heroic archer in Iranian legend. The Avesta (Yašt 8.6) refers to what was apparently a familiar episode in the epic tradition.
ĀRAŠ, Avestan ƎRƎXŠA, Middle Persian ĒRAŠ, a heroic archer in Iranian legend.
i. In older literature.
ii. In modern literature.
i. In Older Literature
The Avesta (Yašt 8.6) refers to what was apparently a familiar episode in the epic tradition: Ǝrəxša “of the swift arrow, having the swiftest arrow among the Aryans” shot an arrow from Mount Airyō.xšaoθa to Mount Xᵛanvant. The identity of these places is unknown. V. Minorsky tentatively identified the latter mountain with the Homāvan mentioned in Šāh-nāma and Vīs o Rāmīn, apparently a peak in northeastern Khorasan (BSOAS 9, 1943, p. 760). Thus his shot was supposed to be eastward, perhaps to the Harī-rūd region. The Mid. Pers. text Māh ī Frawardīn Rōz ī Xurdād (sec. 22, Pahlavi Texts, p. 104) also alludes to this event; it was on the auspicious 6th of Frawardīn that “Manūčihr and Ēraš of the swift arrow (šēbāg-tīr) took back the land from Afrāsyāb the Turanian.” By contrast, Dādistān ī Mēnōg ī Xrad 27.44 (ed. T. D. Anklesaria, Bombay, 1913) refers simply to Manūčehr as the one who retook the Iranian territory from Padišxwār-gar (Ṭabarestān) to Bun ī Gōzag. The latter region is probably to be located between Gōzgān and the Oxus (see J. Markwart, Wehrot und Arang, Leiden, 1938, p. 14; Ḥodūd al-ʿālam, tr. and comm. Minorsky, p. 331).
The legend of Āraš is given with full details only in sources of the Islamic period, though these vary somewhat among themselves; e.g., Ṯaʿālebī, although he does allude to the common tradition, places Āraš in the reign of Zav, son of Ṭahmāsp (Ḡorar, pp. 108, 133), and Bīrūnī (Āṯār al-bāqīa, p. 220) and Gardīzī (Zayn al-aḵbār, p.243), in contrast with the Mid. Pers. Māh ī Frawardīn text, give the date of the mighty bowshot as the 13th of the month Tīr, i.e., during the festival of Tīragān. Presumably this difference is due to the attraction exercised by the homonymy of “Tīr” (identified later with the god Tištār) or tīr “arrow.”
The archer’s name appears as follows: Ēraš (Ṭabarī, I, p. 435.7, II, p. 997; Ebn al-Aṯīr, I, p. 166); Āraššēbāṭīr, a later form of the name but including the epithet with it (Ṭabarī, I, p. 435.6, II, p. 992); Āraš-e Šewātīr (Moǰmal, p. 90); Araš, for Āraš (Ṯaʿālebī, Ḡorar, p. 107; Bīrūnī, loc. cit.) and Āraš (Maqdesī, Badʾ III, p. 146; Baḷʿamī, Tarǰama-ye Tārīḵ-e Ṭabarī, Tehran, 1337 Š., p. 36; Moǰmal, p. 43; Šāh-nāma, Moscow ed., VIII, p. 66.235, IX, p. 273.317; Gorgānī, Vīs o Rāmīn, Tehran, 1337 Š., line 330; Maṛʿašī, Tārīḵ-e Ṭabarestān, ed. B. Dorn, St. Petersburg, 1850, p. 18). His feat occurred in these circumstances: After Afrāsīāb had surrounded the Pišdadian king, Manūčehr, in Ṭabarestān, both agreed to make peace. Manūčehr requested that the Turanian return to him a piece of land the width of a bow-shot, and Afrāsīāb assented. An angel (in Bīrūnī it is “Esfandārmaḏ,” i.e., the Beneficent Immortal Spandārmad) instructed Manūčehr to prepare a special bow and arrow; wood, feather, and iron point were taken from a special forest, eagle, and mine (Ḡorar, p. 133). The skilled archer Āraš was commanded to shoot. According to Bīrūnī, Āraš displayed himself naked and said: “Behold! my body is free of any wound or sickness; but after this bowshot I will be destroyed.” At dawn he shot and was immediately torn to pieces. (Ṯaʿālebī agrees with this. A later tradition has him survive and become head of the archers; see Ṭabarī and Ṭabaqāt-e Nāṣerī, ed. Ḥabībī, Kabul, 1342 Š., I, p. 140.) God commanded the wind to bear the arrow as far as the remote regions of Khorasan, and in this way the boundary between the Iranian and Turanian kingdoms was established.
The place Āraš shot the arrow is variously idenlified: Ṭabarestān (Ṭabarī, Ṯaʿālebī, Maqdesī, Ebn al-Aṯīr, Maṛʿašī), a mountain of Rūyān (Bīrūnī; Gardīzī), the fortress of Āmol (Moǰmal), Mount Damāvand (Baḷʿamī), or Sārī (Vīs o Rāmīn). The place where it landed (or was borne by the wind or an angel) is also reported differently but with general geographical harmony: by the river of Balḵ (Ṭabarī , Ebn al-Aṯīr), Ṭoḵārestān (Maqdesī, Gardīzī), the banks of the Oxus (Baḷʿamī). Bīrūnī has it descend between “Farḡāna” and “Ṭabarestān;” these are probably to be understood as Farḵār and Ṭāleqān or Ṭoḵārestān (Minorsky, Ḥodūd al-ʿālam, p. 330). In Ṯaʿālebī’s account the arrow was borne to the district of Ḵolm (east of Balḵ); it landed at sunset at a place called “Kūzīn,” a name easily emended to *Gōzbon, the Bun ī Gōzag of the Mid. Pers. account (see also Ḥodūd al-ʿālam, ibid.). This name also accounts for Bīrūnī’s idea that the arrow struck a walnut tree (ǰowz). Other accounts deviate from the older tradition represented in these texts, probably under the influence of fluctuations in the understanding of where Iran’s eastern border actually lay. The Moǰmal gives the landing place as ʿAqaba-ye Mozdūrān, which was between Nīšāpūr and Saraḵs (Ebn Ḵordāḏbeh, p. 202). Marv is named in Vīs o Rāmīn and in Maṛʿašī, Tārīḵ-e Ṭabarestān.
Bibliography: See also Th. Nöldeke, “Der Beste der arischen Pfeilschützen im Awesta und im Tabarî,” ZDMG 35, 1881, pp. 445-47. R. v. Stackelberg, “Iranica,” ZDMG 45, 1891, pp. 620-28. On the suggested identification of Āraš with the bowman on the reverse of Arsacid coins see V. G. Lukonin, in Camb. Hist. Iran III, 1983, p. 686 with references.
ii. In Modern Literature
The story of Āraš appears neither in courtly epic and romance nor in popular literature, and was essentially lost to the Persian literary world until revived by E. Yār-e Šāṭer (Yarshater) in his Dāstānhā-ye Īrān-e Bāstān (Tehran, 1336 Š./1957-58). The theme of Āraš struck a chord among writers and poets and it was quickly taken up, becoming the subject of four works in the ensuing nine years. The first was a multi-form work by Arslān Pūryā entitled Āraš-e tīr-andāz (Tehran, 1338 Š./1959-60; second printing, Tehran, 1357 Š./1978-79 has the title Āraš šīvā-tīr), which begins with a qaṣīda of seventy lines, followed by a one-act play and finally a prose version of the story. Next came Sīāvoš Kasrāʾīʾs long poem in free verse called Āsraš-e kamāngīr (Tehran, 1338 Š./ 1959-60). Then followed “Āraš dar qalamrow-e tardīd,” a short story by Nāder Ebrāhīmī (Tehran, 1342 Š./1963-64), and finally a maṯnawī in the meter ramal by Mehrdād Avestā with the title Ḥamāsa-ye Āraš (Mašhad, 1344 Š./1965-66). In 1340 Š./1961-62 a literary journal called Āraš was founded in Tehran, which ran for about eight years.
Three of these works present Āraš as the savior of Iran from the tyranny of Afrāsīāb. In the troubled times following the Moṣaddeq period, the story of Āraš appears to have symbolized for many Iranians their political hopes, while Ebrāhīmī’s story, where Āraš fails in his mission through a lack of will, expresses the frustration of these hopes.
Bibliography: W. Hanaway, “Popular Literature in Iran,” in P. Chelkowski, ed., Iran: Continuity and Variety, New York, 1971, pp. 70-73.
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- January 17, 2016
- Posted by: emobile
- Category: News, Trending Issues
Pregnant women in any trimester have been advised to avoid travelling to some countries due to recent outbreaks of Zika Virus. CDC says those who must travel, as well as women who are thinking about becoming pregnant, should talk to their doctor first and “strictly follow steps to avoid mosquito bites” during their trip.
Zika transmission is ongoing in Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname, Venezuela, and the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico.
‘Zika virus is caused by certain mosquito which has been linked to brain damage in babies. The virus first appeared on the South American continent in May. Although only one person in five ever gets symptoms, and even then it often causes only mild rashes, red eyes and fevers, women who have had it, particularly in the first trimester of pregnancy, appear to be much more likely to have children with small heads and damaged brains, a condition called microcephaly. Zika virus has been found in brain tissue and amniotic fluid from babies who died in the womb or were born with microcephaly by both Brazilian and American scientists. Microcephaly has several other causes, including genetic defects, alcohol exposure in pregnancy, or rubella or cytomegalovirus in the mother during pregnancy.’
The ways and manners of penetration of Zika into the placenta is still a misery yet unresolved ‘Scientists do not know why or how Zika crosses the placenta and enters the fetal brain to do damage. It is not related to rubella or cytomegalovirus, but is related to yellow fever (Yellow fever is caused by a virus carried by mosquitoes. You can catch this disease if you are bitten by a mosquito infected with this virus. If a person is bitten by an infected mosquito, symptoms usually develop 3 – 6 days later), dengue and West Nile virus, which are not widely known to harm embryos’.
There is no vaccine for Zika, but the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has been working on possible vaccine in the last one month, said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the institute’s director.
“We believe this is a fairly serious problem,” said Dr. Lyle R. Petersen, chief of vector-borne diseases for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “This virus is spreading throughout the Americas. We didn’t feel we could wait.”
‘This appears to be the first time the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised pregnant women to avoid a specific region. The warning is expected to affect the travel industry and could affect the Summer Olympics, set for Brazil in August ‘says NY times. Since the outbreak over a thousand babies had been born with various brain defects.
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Enables fowarding of directed broadcasts. When this is turned on for an interface, the interface will respond to broadcast messages that are sent to its subnet.
In this example, IP directed-broadcasts is enabled on in fa0/0 on R2. A broadcast is sent and the response from both interfaces is received. Next, we issue an IP directed-broadcast to the subnet of fa0/0. Since ip directed-broadcast is enabled on this inteface, it responds.
|R2(config-if)#do ping 255.255.255.255 repeat 1Type escape sequence to abort.
Sending 1, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 255.255.255.255, timeout is 2 seconds:
Reply to request 0 from 10.1.1.1, 28 ms
|R2(config-if)#do ping 10.1.1.255 repeat 1Type escape sequence to abort.
Sending 1, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 10.1.1.255, timeout is 2 seconds:
Reply to request 0 from 10.1.1.1, 24 ms
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This week’s Fish of the Week is the common clownfish (Amphiprion ocellaris). Found in coral reefs off the coast of Australia and Southeast Asia, these fish form a symbiotic relationship with certain species of anemone in which they are found: the clownfish protects the anemone from being eaten by other species of fish, whilst the anemone provides the clownfish with protection from predators with its stinging tentacles. The clownfish remains unharmed by the anemone’s stinging cells (nematocysts) due to their specialised mucus coating, which the anemone recognizes as ‘friend’ and does not try to harm. All clownfish are born male and have the ability to turn female, although once they have turned they cannot change back. This often occurs when two males have paired off and the larger, more dominant male becomes female. Clownfish have been easily bred in captivity for many years which has led to many designer varieties, and has made them a relatively hardy marine fish. This, and their relatively small size, usually reaching around 11cm/4.3 inches, makes them great aquarium inhabitants.
Fish of the week is a feature we run on our Facebook page. Like our page to enjoy fish of the week, product information and much more!
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Best Practices in the Kitchen
Learning, understanding and changing food safety behavior through simple everyday practices can help make a substantial difference in reducing the incidence of foodborne illness. Based on a 2010 survey of consumers, NSF International developed the following list of food safety best practices for the home:
Not all handwashing creates equal results
It’s important to always wash hands with soap and warm water before cooking as well as after handling raw meat and poultry. Warm water is recommended because it is effective at removing grease and grime as it increases soap's ability to penetrate dirt and oils found on the skin. Lather your hands for at least 20 seconds before rinsing off the soap and drying.
Rely on a food thermometer rather than visual cues to determine doneness
Always use a food thermometer to ensure that meat and poultry are thoroughly cooked to the proper internal temperature as follows:
|Whole or ground poultry||165º F|
|Ground meats (other than poultry)||160º F|
|Fresh fin fish||145º F|
|Fresh pork, beef, veal||145º F with a three-minute rest time|
Rest time refers to the time the meat needs to stand without carving or consuming once it has reached a minimum safe cooking temperature. During the three minutes after meat is removed from the heat source and allowed to stand, its temperature remains constant or continues to rise, which helps destroy harmful bacteria.
Don’t rely on sight to gauge if meat or poultry is cooked to the proper temperature, as meats can change color before reaching a temperature sufficient to kill bacteria.
Defrost foods safely
If you need to defrost food, don’t place it on the counter to thaw at room temperature. Instead, use one of the following methods:
- Place covered food in a shallow pan or on a plate on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator until thawed.
- Use a microwave to defrost. If using this method, you must finish cooking the food immediately after thawing as the cooking process has already started.
Most meats and other foods can be cooked from a frozen state, although quality may not be the same. Be sure to remove all packaging materials before placing the frozen food in a pan and set the oven for the normal temperature recommended for that item. It will take approximately 50 percent longer to cook meat or poultry that is frozen compared to defrosted.
Know when to wash produce
Pre-packaged produce that is in an open package or does not specifically state it is has been pre-washed should be washed before consuming. Wash produce in a colander to help avoid cross contamination from the sink surface. It isn’t necessary to re-wash pre-packaged produce provided that the package is tightly sealed and the label indicates that it was pre-washed and is ready to eat.
Use microwaves properly
Microwaves aren’t what kill bacteria – it’s the heat generated by microwaves that can kill bacteria in foods provided the food item is heated to a safe internal temperature. Microwaves can cook unevenly, even when equipped with a turntable, due to foods' irregular shape or thickness. They can also leave cold spots in food where harmful bacteria can survive. Follow package instructions and rotate and stir foods during the cooking process if the instructions call for it. Observe any stand times as called for in the directions. Check the temperature of microwaved foods with a food thermometer in several spots to ensure doneness.
Avoid stale party platters
Whether you are attending a party or giving one, remember the two-hour rule — never eat perishable foods that have been sitting out at room temperatures for more than two hours.
Discard leftovers promptly
Leftovers need to be placed promptly in the refrigerator and should be consumed within three to four days and disposed of thereafter. If you don’t plan to consume leftovers right away, consider freezing them, which can preserve food safely for longer durations.
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Coding in Scratch : Projects Workbook (DK Workbooks)
Get kids building exciting computer projects, such as animations, games, and mini-movies, with DK Workbooks: Coding in Scratch: Projects Workbook. Perfect for children ages 6–9 who are new to coding, this highly visual workbook is a fun introduction to Scratch, a free computer coding programming language.
With easy-to-follow directions and fun pixel art, DK Workbooks: Coding in Scratch: Projects Workbook helps kids understand the basics of programming and how to create cool projects in Scratch through fun, hands-on learning experiences. All they need is a desktop or laptop with Adobe 10.2 or later, and an internet connection to download Scratch 2.0. Coding can be done without download on https://scratch.mit.edu.
Kids can light up the night sky with their own colorful messages and drawings or make their own music and become the ultimate DJ. They can create a digital portrait of a pet and customize the pictures with sounds and animations, or test their knowledge with a times tables quiz. This workbook is filled with open-ended projects that use art, music, sound effects, and math and can be shared online with friends. Kids can even test their coding knowledge with written vocabulary and programming quizzes at the end of each project.
Supporting STEM education initiatives, computer coding teaches kids how to think creatively, work collaboratively, and reason systematically, and is quickly becoming a necessary and sought-after skill. DK's computer coding books are full of fun exercises with step-by-step guidance, making them the perfect introductory tools for building vital skills in computer programming.
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The untimely extinction of the golden toad in a Costa Rican rainforest in the late 1980s just may have been the first in a long list of species driven to extinction by global warming. In the 8 January issue of Nature, a team of researchers concludes that if climate warming proceeds unchecked, 15% to 37% of the 1103 plant and animal species they examined will disappear by 2050.
"Losing all of these species is not absolutely inevitable," says lead author Chris Thomas, a conservation biologist at the University of Leeds, U.K. A substantial number could be saved, Thomas says, by "making the right political and economic decisions."
In a collaborative tour de force, scientists from across the globe came together to collectively analyze how changes in climate may affect various organisms. To predict which creatures are in danger of extinction, the teams used computer modeling and information from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to compare the way habitats look today with how they may be altered by climate change. They also investigated whether particular species will be able to emigrate if their current territories become unfit.
The authors speculate that many other ecological problems could also erupt from changes in climate. For instance, species that move to a more suitable region or try to make do with their changed environments may have to battle invaders. And some creatures may face serious hurdles because the area between old and new destinations could also be rendered uninhabitable. Butterflies in Britain may be a good example of this, Thomas says. His work shows that many butterfly species that should have moved to more appropriate climates by now have not.
Until now, conservationists have pointed to habitat loss, direct overexploitation, and species invasions as the chief hazards to species survival, says Thomas. But the new study makes it "clear that climate change needs to be ranked among these as a major threat," he says.
The study does a "very nice job" of using different approaches to show that climate change is a dominant force, says Thomas Lovejoy, president of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment in Washington, D.C. "I think the single most important public policy [issue] here is agreeing on what the limit should be on greenhouse gas concentration," he says. "We've got to come to grips with where to draw the line."
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“The Workshop on Aging Population and Health: The Longitudinal Study and the Role of Population Collaborators in Community Based Care for Older People” was held by the General Department for Population and Family Planning (GOPFP) under the Ministry
Health in partnership with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) of Japan and the Institute of Population, Health and Development (PHAD).
aging is one of the most significant social transformations globally with one in 11 people in the world over age 65 this year, said GOPFP Deputy General Director Nguyen Thi Ngoc Lan in her opening remarks.
Vietnam officially entered an “aging phase” in 2011 with 7 percent of the population above age 65, she said. This year, the figure grew to 8.3 percent, equivalent to over 8 million people.
Such rapid pace of aging has placed great burden on Vietnam’s health care for the elderly but the country has yet to prepare for that, she said.
In 2018, the ERIA teamed up with the PHAD to conduct a longitudinal study on the older people and health of the elderly on about 6,050 older people in 10 cities and provinces in Vietnam from December 1, 2018 to May 31, 2019.
The findings show that over 57 percent of old people asked were women, over 82 percent of them got married, and about 70 percent lived in rural areas. The percentage of the older people who live alone is relatively low, around 11 percent for women and 4 percent for men.
It also reveals the elderly’s health status. Accordingly, more than 62 percent of the respondents said they were suffering from high blood pressure, 86 percent of whom were receiving treatment. About 40 percent did not know they have high blood pressure.
About 56 percent were satisfied with sleep, over 6 percent showed signs of depression and 4.4 percent showed signs of dementia. About 91 percent owned a health insurance card.
Speaking at the event, Dr. Nguyen Ngoc Quynh, a programme official from the UNFPA, said that the population aging in Vietnam is partly due to falling birth rates in all six socio-economic regions and ethnic minority groups.
Vietnam needs to have a health care strategy and ensure good health for the elderly during their life circle, he said, stressing the importance of initial health care, preventive care, medical and non-medical care, health care services at home and in the community.
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The jet stream is a river of wind that blows horizontally through the upper layers of the troposphere, generally from west to east, at an altitude of 20,000 - 50,000 feet (6,100 - 9,144 meters), or about 7 miles (11 kilometers) up.
A jet stream develops where air masses of differing temperatures meet. For this reason, surface temperatures determine where the jet stream will form. The greater the difference in temperature, the faster the wind velocity inside the jet stream. Jet streams can flow up to 200 mph (322 km/h), are 1000's of miles long, 100's of miles wide, and a few miles thick.
Where the jet stream begins
o Air warmed in the tropics around the equator fuels the jet stream as it rises. Hitting the tropopause at about 58,000 feet (the layer of the atmosphere separating the troposphere from the stratosphere), it is drawn toward the colder air at the north and south poles.
Jet Stream Atmospheric Positions
Positions of jet streams in the atmosphere. Arrows indicate directions of mean motions in a meridional plane.
How it forms a convection cell
o At higher latitudes, the warm air cools and sinks, drawing more warm air in behind it. The cooled air flows back towards the equator, creating a loop or convection cell.
Why the jet stream flows on an easterly course
As the earth rotates on its axis, so does the air around it. Due to this easterly rotation, rising warm air builds up momentum going the same direction. Thus, the jet stream cannot flow due north or due south, but makes an angular approach from the west, toward both poles.
Why the jet stream is so fast
o Objects and air at the equator rotate around the earth's axis much faster than they do at more northerly or southerly latitudes. Thus, as the warmer air is drawn toward the poles, it moves faster, relative to the earth's surface. Because the rising warm air feeding the jet stream happens all along the equator, the effects accumulate, giving rise to high-speed winds.
The size of the jet stream
o The jet stream is no more than three miles thick, a few hundred miles wide and circles the earth. The size changes as temperature and other air masses meet the jet stream, causing it to shift its course.
o Jet streams move around the Earth in a narrow band. They are created by the difference in temperatures between two air masses, usually cold polar air and warm tropical air. The temperature variance creates gradients in air pressure, which in turn affects the strength of the winds in the jet stream. The greater the variance, the greater the wind speed. Jet stream winds normally are 100 to 200 mph but can reach speeds as high as 300 mph.
o A jet stream develops where air masses of differing temperatures meet, so surface temperatures help determine where they will form. The jet stream is snakelike, undulating like a river, because of the pressures on either side from the warm and cold air masses.
When the jet stream is pushed south by a cold air mass, it allows high pressure to sink and create colder-than-normal weather in the South. In the opposite situation, when northern regions get warmer than normal, the jet stream has been pushed north by tropical air.
Jet streams travel from west to east in both hemispheres.
o Jet streams were discovered in the 1920s by meteorologist Wasburo Ooishi, who was using weather balloons for his study of high elevation wind patterns over Japan. In 1939, German meteorologist H. Seilkopf was the first to use the term "jet stream" in a published scientific paper.
However, it wasn't until World War II, when the Japanese used the jet stream for fire balloon attacks on the American mainland, that the upper-level winds gained public recognition. Wiley Post, an American aviation pioneer, is credited with being the first person to fly within a jet stream. He and other WWII military pilots flying Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers found the jet stream made high altitude flights difficult.
o Currents travel at varying wind speeds within a jet stream, with the greatest speeds at the core. A jet stream contains jet streaks, where the wind velocity is higher than the rest of the stream. The jet streaks cause air to rise, lowering the air pressure at the Earth's surface. When surface pressures are low, the rising air can form clouds, precipitation and storms.
o Jet streams play a major role in air travel. Eastbound flights usually take less flying time than westbound flights because of help from the fast-moving air. Jet streams can contain wind shear, a violent and sudden change in wind direction and speed, which is a major threat in air travel. Wind shear has caused airliners to suddenly lose altitude, putting them in danger of crashing. In 1988, the FAA decided that all commercial aircraft must have wind-shear warning systems, but it wasn't until 1996 that all airlines had them on-board.
Types of Jet Streams !!!
SUBTROPICAL JET STREAMS.— These jets, like the polar-front jets, are best developed in winter and early spring. During summer, in the Northern Hemisphere, the subtropical jet weakens considerably, and it is only identifiable in sporadic velocity streaks around the globe. During winter, subtropical jets intensify and can be found between 20° and 50° latitude. Their maximum speed approaches 300 knots, although these higher wind speeds are associated with their merger with polar-front jets. The core is most frequently found between 35,000 and 40,000 feet. A subsidence motion accompanies subtropical jets and gives rise to predominantly fair weather in areas they pass over. These jets are also remarkably persistent from time to time, but they do fluctuate daily. Sometimes they drift northward and merge with a polar-front jet. Over Asia in summer, the subtropical jet is replaced by the tropical easterly jet stream.
TROPICAL EASTERLY JET STREAM.— This jet occurs near the tropopause over Southeast Asia, India, and Africa during summer. The strongest winds are over southern India, but they are not as intense as the winds encountered in polar-front or subtropical jet streams. This jet is closely connected to the Indian and African sum-mer monsoons. The existence of this jet implies that there is a deep layer of warm air to the north of the jet and colder air to the south over the In-dian Ocean. This warm air is of course associ-ated with the maximum heating taking place over India in summer, while the colder air is over the ocean. The difference in heating and cooling and the ensuing pressure gradient is what drives this jet.
POLAR-NIGHT JET STREAM.— This jet meanders through the upper stratosphere over the poles. It occurs only during the long winter night. Remember, night is 6 months long over the pole in which winter is occurring. The polarstratosphere undergoes appreciable cooling due to the lack of solar radiation. The horizontal temperature gradient is strongly established bet-ween the equator and the pole, and the pressure gradient creates this westerly jet. The temperature gradient breaks down intermittently during middle and late winter in the Northern Hemisphere; therefore, the jet is intermittent at these times. In the Southern Hemisphere the temperature gradient and jet disappear rather abruptly near the time of the spring equinox.
Detailed explanation on how the Jet Streams affect the Monsoons and the Indian Sub Continent ?
Jet Streams are fast flowing winds blowing in a narrow zone in the high altitude above 12000 m in troposphere. There are a number of separate jet streams whose speed varies from 110 km/h in summer to about 184 km/h in winter.In winter the sub-tropical westerly jet streams bring rain to the western part of India, especially Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab. In summer the sub-tropical easterly jet blows over Peninsular India approximately at 14ON and bring some rain and storm.
|There are different jet streams and in respect of the climate and monsoons of India it is the Subtropical Jet Stream (STJ) and the countering easterly jet that are most important. As the summertime approaches there is increased solar heating of the Indian subcontinent, this has a tendency to form a cyclonic monsoon cell situated between the Indian Ocean and southern Asia. This cell is blocked by the STJ which tends to blow to the south of the Himalayas, as long as the STJ is in this position the development of summer monsoons is inhibited. During the summer months the STJ deflects northwards and crosses over the Himalayan Range. The altitude of the mountains initially disrupts the jet but once it has cleared the summits it is able to reform over central Asia. With the STJ out of the way the subcontinental monsoon cell develops very quickly indeed, often in a matter of a few days. Warmth and moisture are fed into the cell by a lower level tropical jet stream which brings with it air masses laden with moisture from the Indian Ocean. As these air masses are forced upward by north India’s mountainous terrain the air is cooled and compressed, it easily reaches it’s saturation vapour point and the excess moisture is dissipated out in the form of monsoon rains. The end of the monsoon season is brought about when the atmosphere over the Tibetan Plateau begins to cool, this enables the STJ to transition back across the Himalayas. This leads to the formation of a cyclonic winter monsoon cell typified by sinking air masses over India and relatively moisture free winds that blow seaward. This gives rise to relatively settled and dry weather over India during the winter months. This year has been something of an exception. Atmospheric changes over the southern Pacific Ocean led to warmer than usual waters flowing into the Indian Ocean. This provided additional moisture to feed the monsoon systems. Further to the north the polar jet stream stalled due to being countered by Rossby Waves, there was a large kink in the stream and this was centred over Russia. The stalled system prevented weather systems being drawn across Russia and the kink acted as a barrier trapping hot air to the south and cold air to the north. The consequence of this static mass of hot air was the heatwave that devastated Russia. With the jet stream stalled the STJ was unable to transit across the Himalayas as it would do ordinarily, the monsoon cell to the south, fed by warmer waters in the Indian Ocean, had nowhere to go and as a consequence it deposited vast amounts of rain over Pakistan, Himalchal Pradesh amd Jammu and Kashmir and this led to extensive flooding. |
The Somali Jet
The monsoon wind that is deflected to the north as it crosses the equator is further deflected to the east by the mountains of Africa. The progress of the southwest monsoon towards India is greatly aided by the onset of certain jet streams including the crucial Somali jet that transits Kenya, Somalia and Sahel and exits the African coast at 9 degrees north at low level and very fast. J. Findlater, a British meteorologist observed this low level jet stream was found to be most pronounced between 1.0 and 1.5 km above the ground. It was observed to flow from Mauritius and the northern part of the island of Madagascar before reaching the coast of Kenya at about 3º S. Subsequently it ran over the plains of Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia before reaching the coast again around 9º N. The jet stream appears to be fed by a stream of air, which moves northwards from the Mozambique Channel.
The major part of this low level jet penetrates into East Africa during May and, subsequently, traverses the northern parts of the Arabian Sea before reaching India in June. Observations suggest that the strongest cross equatorial flow from the southern to the northern hemisphere during the Asian Summer Monsoon is in the region of the low level jet. This has intrigued meteorologists, because it is not clear why the major flow of air from the southern to northern hemisphere should take place along a narrow preferred zone off the East African coast. The importance of the low level jet arises from the fact that its path around 9º N coincides with a zone of coastal upwelling. As the strong winds drive away the surface coastal waters towards the east, extremely cold water from the depths of the sea rise upwards to preserve the continuity of mass. This upwelling is brought about by strong low level winds. After the low level jet moves towards the Indian coastline around 9º N, it separates into two branches. One appears to move to the northern parts of the Indian Peninsula while the other recurves towards the southern half of the Indian coastline and Sri Lanka. It is still not clear why the jet separates into two branches. Findlater analysed the wind profile for the months of July and August and found a relationship between the cross-equatorial airflow, between 1.0 and 1.5 km, over Kenya and the rainfall over western India. He opined that an increase in the cross-equatorial flow was followed by an increase in rainfall over the west coast.
The Somali Current
Oceanographers have been interested in yet another phenomenon, which appears to have some relationship with the low level jet stream off the coast of eastern Africa. This ocean current named the Somali Current, flows northward from the equator to 9º N, where it separates from the coast. It is a fairly strong current with a velocity maximum of 2 m m/s, but speeds as large as 3 m m/s have also been observed. The Somali Current may be considered to be a western boundary current of the Indian Ocean. But, its peculiar feature is a reversal in direction with the onset of the summer monsoon. In winter, this current is from north to the south running southwards from the coast of Arabia to the east African coastline; but with the advent of the summer monsoon it reverses its direction and flows from the south to the north. This suggests a relationship with the reversal of monsoon winds, but usually the oceans respond very slowly to changes in atmospheric circulation and oceanographers have wondered why the Somali Current reverses its direction and reaches its maximum speed nearly a month earlier than the onset of southwesterly monsoon winds.
Sub-tropical Westerly and Tropical Jet Streams
Certain interesting changes take place in the upper atmosphere with the advent of the summer monsoon. Towards the end of May, a narrow stream of air, which moves from the west to the east over northern India, suddenly weakens and moves to a new location far to the north of the Himalayas. This is known as sub-tropical westerly jet stream. Its movement towards the north is one of the main features associated with the onset of the monsoon over India. As the westerly jet moves north, yet another jet stream sets in over the southern half of the Indian peninsula. This flows in the reverse direction from the east to west. It is called tropical easterly jet, and it exhibits periodic movements to the north and south of its mean location during the hundred-day monsoon season beginning with the first of June and ending around mid-September.
The altitude at which the winds attain their maximum strength in the tropical easterly jet is around 150 hPa, but the maximum winds associated with the sub-tropical westerly jet occur at a lower altitude of 300 hPa. A remarkable feature of the tropical easterly jet is that it can be traced in the upper troposphere right up to the west coast of Africa. HPa refers to 'hecta Pascal' and is a unit of measure of atmospheric air pressure
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"Bath Salts" drugs were involved in nearly 23,000 Emergency Department Visits In One Year
A new national report reveals that "bath salts," a group of drugs containing amphetamine-type stimulants, were linked to an estimated 22,904 visits to hospital emergency departments in 2011. The report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is the first national study to track bath salts drugs to hospital emergency department visits since these drugs emerged a few years ago.
"Although bath salts drugs are sometimes claimed to be 'legal highs' or are promoted with labels to mask their real purpose, they can be extremely dangerous when used," said Dr. Elinore McCance-Katz, SAMHSA's chief medical officer. "Bath salts drugs can cause heart problems, high blood pressure, seizures, addiction, suicidal thoughts, psychosis and, in some cases, death – especially when combined with the use of other drugs."
The SAMHSA report shows that about two-thirds (67 percent) of emergency department visits involving bath salts also involved the use of another drug. Only 33 percent of the bath salts-related visits to emergency departments involved just the use of bath salts; 15 percent of the visits involved combined use with marijuana or synthetic forms of marijuana, and 52 percent involved the use of other drugs.
In 2011 there were nearly 2.5 million emergency department visits involving drug misuse or abuse.
SAMHSA-supported programs help prevent and treat the use of all dangerous substances – traditional and non-traditional – in communities across the nation.The programs work with the health care providers, law enforcement officials, schools, parent groups and other concerned community members to help raise awareness of all forms of substance use disorders and develop effective approaches for preventing and treating them.
The report, entitled "Bath Salts" Were Involved in over 20,000 Drug-Related Emergency Department Visits in 2011, is based on findings from a 2011 Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) report.DAWN is a public health surveillance system that monitors drug-related hospital emergency department visits and drug-related deaths to track the impact of drug use, misuse, and abuse in the United States.The complete survey findings will be available starting at 9 am September 17, 2013 on the SAMHSA web site at: http://www.samhsa.gov/data/spotlight/spot117-bath-salts-2013.pdf.
To learn more about the nonmedical use of drugs, including ways to prevent misuse, visit http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/synthetic-cathinones-bath-salts.
September 17, 2013
Find out what women really need.
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| 0.942907 | 562 | 2.546875 | 3 |
The hepatitis B virus is contagious from person to person. Hepatitis B, or HBV, is spread via blood, semen, or another bodily fluid. The most common Hepatitis B causes are:
Sexual intercourse (with an infected person)
Sharing of needles and other drug paraphernalia
Sharing shaving razors or toothbrushes
Direct contact with the open sores or blood of a hepatitis B victim
Hospital-infected needles and equipment
Birth to a hepatitis B mother
Hepatitis B is not necessarily chronic that is, lasting a lifetime but the younger a person is, the more likely it becomes that the hepatitis B virus will remain in the body. According to the Centers for Disease Control, or CDC, about 90 percent of those infected with hepatitis B when they are babies will become chronic, but from ages 1 to 5, the odds of hepatitis B lasting a lifetime drop to less than 50 percent. Among older children and adults, the risk drops to a mere 6 percent.
Unlike hepatitis A, hepatitis B is not spread through food or water, or by sharing eating utensils, or hugging, kissing, holding hands, coughing, sneezing, or breastfeeding. The most vulnerable hepatitis B populations are gay men, those who have a sexually transmitted disease or multiple sex partners, those who use hypodermic drugs and share needles, hemodialysis patients, and people who work around blood (medical personnel and phlebotomists).
There is a hepatitis B vaccine, routinely given two weeks in advance, and a hepatitis B immune globulin (HBIG) which can be used to help protect those who think they have been exposed within the last 24 hours. Like hepatitis A, hepatitis B confers immunity. That is, once you recover from the acute phase, you will not get hepatitis B again.
However, even if you have recovered and test negative for hepatitis B, health professionals recommend that you do not donate blood or semen. Surprisingly, a recent study on heart/lung transplants shows no added risk to recipients from organs taken from antigen- or antibody-positive former hepatitis B patients.
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| 0.897376 | 440 | 3.375 | 3 |
CP Publication 10 Sample Papers CBSE Term 2 2021-22 is a valuable tool to understand the new pattern of the CBSE Term 2 examination. The book consists of 10 Sample Questions Papers [SQPs] with a blueprint issued by CBSE in January 2022 followed by the latest CBSE 2021-22 Term 2 Sample Question Paper [SQP] thus making a complete set of 10 SQPs. Furthermore, new typologies of subjective question sets including VSA, SA, LA type questions are given in the book. Hints and explanations are provided at the end of each SQP to reach the answer accurately.
It is well known fact that Practice is a key to achieve perfection and the same is applicable for scoring high marks in board examination also. We have observed that knowledge alone is not sufficient to achieve high marks. One needs to learn the skills to translate knowledge into performance on examination day. For this purpose, we feel immense pleasure in introducing this 10 Sample Question Papers for CBSE Board Term 2 examination.
These papers have been designed keeping in mind the latest pattern of examination. These question papers provide opportunity to student to practice in examination like environment by practicing 10 times before the actual examinations. Practicing these paper improves student exam taking skills and scoring ability. It also builds student s examination temperament.
Key features of the books are-
Students are advised to take all papers in examination like environment with full sincerity in prescribed time limit, so that they get fully tuned for the examination environment and ensure very good performance in exams.
|Brand||Career Point Kota|
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CCCalc is a simple tool for simple calculations. Imagine a calculator with tape, where you can correct any printed character, and the tape recalculates everything itself.
It performs four basic arithmetic operations, percent calculations and also calculates square roots. It allows you to have as many digits in your numbers as you need without limitations. Number of fractional digits and rounding-off are tunable. Any number may be commented by a text side notes. CCCalc saves the whole calculation history automatically and thus allows you to correct any misprint at any moment, or easily reuse previously typed numbers or expressions. It provides the complete set of memory operations, such as memory add or subtract. Memory volume of CCCalc is not limited to just one slot. This memory is also visible and even editable.
To calculate with CCCalc, simply use the same key sequences as for an ordinary desktop or pocket calculator. The response shall be as expected. Corrections can be made as for an ordinary computer text: set the caret to a certain place of the text and then delete wrong characters and/or type missed ones.
There is a number of differences between CCCalc and text editors though. They all arise from the idea that the “text” in CCCalc shall always represent a valid mathematical expression which can be calculated. To achieve this, CCCalc sometimes ignores some keystrokes or sometimes performs more actions then it can be expected. Such derivations are described in subsequent pages.
- Operations: plus, minus, multiply, divide, square root
- Memory operations: set, recall, plus, minus, multiply, divide.
- Percent operations: plus, minus, multiply, divide
- Number of memory slots: unlimited
- Precision: practically unlimited
Data exchange with Windows applications: via clipboard and mouse drag-drop
Additional features: text side-notes, automatic save
System requirements: Any Windows computer, where CCCalc takes about 2Mb of hard drive space and uses about 6Mb RAM when works.
Download CCCalc 2.4 Free for personal or business needs.
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- As a German and Jewish surname, from the noun Herr (“gentleman, sir”). Also found in Hungary and France.
- As a Hmong surname, variant of Her, named after the Her clan, written in Chinese as 侯 (compare Hou).
Herr (plural Herrs)
- A surname.
From Middle High German herre, from Old High German hēriro, hērro (“grey, grey-haired”), the comparative form of hēr (“noble, venerable”) (by analogy with Latin senior (“elder”)), from Proto-Germanic *hairaz (“grey”).
- IPA(key): /hɛr/, [hɛʁ], [hɛr], [hɛɐ̯]
IPA(key): [dɜɾ‿hɛr] (der Herr)
- Homophones: Heer, hehr, her (common merger)
- man, gentleman (polite term)
- gentlemen's wear
- gentlemen's toilet
- Ein älterer Herr
- An old gentleman
- sir (title of respect)
- Wie kann ich Euch zu Diensten sein, Herr?
- How can I serve you, sir?
- Gnädiger Herr!
- (Can be translated as my lord in English, but there is no direct equivalent)
- Mr., mister, sir
- Sehr geehrter Herr Schmidt
- (Dear) Mr. Schmidt
- Die Herren Schmidt und Müller
- Messrs. Schmidt and Müller
- Herr Doktor von Braun ― Dr. von Braun
- Herr Professor ― Dr. (Ph.D.) / Professor
- Herr Bundeskanzler ― Mr. Chancellor or Sir
- Jawohl, Herr Oberst! ― Yes, sir! (Because Herr already is a respectful form of address, adding a term like sir is unnecessary) (literally, “Yes, Mr. Colonel.”)
- Entschuldigung, der Herr? Sie haben Ihre Uhr verloren. ― Excuse me, sir? You've lost your watch. (standard usage between strangers)
- Was kann ich Ihnen bringen, meine Herren? ― What can I bring you, sirs?
- Sehr verehrte Damen und Herren ― Dear Sir or Madam (address in formal letters and e-mails)
- Meine Damen und Herren...
- Ladies and gentlemen...
- master, lord (generally denotes that somebody has control over something, either in a generic or in a regal sense)
- Herr der Lage sein
- to be master of the situation
- Weil die Tiere auf seinen Wink reagieren, nennt man ihn den Herren der Wölfe.
- Because the animals are at his beck and call, he is called Lord of the Wolves.
- (Can we date this quote?) Der gestiefelte Kater:
- Wer ist Herr dieser Landen? Der Graf von Karabas.
- Who is the ruler/owner of these lands? The Count of Karabas.
- Der Schirmherr
- the patron
- (historical) the lowest title of German nobility
- Gans Edle Herren zu Putlitz
- Gans (noble) lords of Putlitz
- Lord, God
- Das Haus des Herrn
- The House of God
- Gott der Herr
- The Lord
- Omitting Herr (or the female form Frau) when addressing a person with their last name is usually perceived as disrespectful, but it is more common when speaking about somebody who is not present, except in formal contexts. However, there may be contextual pitfalls and regional differences, which makes it advisable for learners not to leave out Herr (and Frau).
- When people address each other with their last name, but say du to each other, the words Herr and Frau are always left out in most regions. In parts of western Germany, however, there is (or was) a system of saying du and Herr (Frau) among coworkers.
- The forms Herrn and Herren were originally simple phonetic/graphic variants. Both were used for the singular and plural inflections. In contemporary standard German they are—usually—distinguished functionally, Herrn being the inflected singular, Herren the plural.
- “Herr” in Duden online
- “Herr” in Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache
- Friedrich Kluge (1883), “Herr”, in John Francis Davis, transl., Etymological Dictionary of the German Language, published 1891
- hër (Portuguese based orthography)
Herr m (plural Herre)
- Mr., mister, sir
- master, lord, generally denotes that somebody has control over something, either in a generic or in a regal sense
- Lord, God
- Used as a title of respect that is not translated into English or replaced with Sir
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Individual Differences in Responses to Provocation and Frequent Victimization by Peers
- First Online:
- Cite this article as:
- Champion, K.M. & Clay, D.L. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev (2007) 37: 205. doi:10.1007/s10578-006-0030-9
- 128 Downloads
This study examined associations between victimization by peers and intention to respond to provocative events as a function of anger arousal and motivation to improve the situation in a cross-sectional sample of school-age children (N = 506, 260 males, 246 females). Results demonstrated that more intense anger and more retaliatory motivation were positively associated with intentions to aggress and with frequency of victimization. The association between aggressive intentions to respond to anger provocation and victimization could be accounted for by subjective feelings of anger and motivation to retaliate. The contribution of emotion processes was stronger for boys than for girls. A post hoc examination of non-bullying participants revealed that motivation accounted for aggressive intentions among the non-bullies. Results support including anger management programs in prevention efforts that target the school climate andvictims’ risk for psychopathology.
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| 0.913858 | 240 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Dog and cat nutrition and obesity
Why is nutrition important?
Nutrition is complex and is fundamental to the healthy running of our pet's bodies. Incorrect nutrition can contribute to many health problems, e.g.: gastrointestinal disorders, skin diseases, heart disease, and dental disease.
It is important to have a healthy balance of vitamins and minerals, protein, carbohydrate, and fat. For this reason, we advise feeding good quality, complete pet diets which have undergone years of research to formulate ingredients that support your pet’s needs. Care should be given when feeding homemade diets, as these often will lack essential vitamins and minerals or have an imbalance of vitamins and minerals.
At different life stages, animals have different nutritional requirements, for example, puppies and kittens are growing; they, therefore, have a higher metabolic rate than older animals and require a higher amount of protein, digestible energy, and calcium than older animals.
Feeding a puppy food to an older dog or cat could cause the animal to become overweight and cause an imbalance in calcium/ phosphorus levels.
In dogs, it is important to choose an age-appropriate feed and a breed-appropriate feed, as there are different requirements for larger breed dogs compared to smaller breeds.
Are dog and cat foods the same?
Dogs and cats are not the same and have different dietary needs. Dogs are omnivores and, therefore, can consume a more varied diet, including both plant and animal-based ingredients. On the other hand, cats are true carnivores, meaning that they eat only animal proteins and have higher protein and fat requirements than dogs.
Cats require 11 essential amino acids to be provided by their diet, whereas dogs require ten amino acids. The other essential amino acid that cats need is taurine, which is only found in animal protein. Without sufficient insulin levels in their diet, they can develop impaired vision due to retinal degeneration and heart disease due to the heart muscles' weakening.
If cats were to eat dog food or human food for a prolonged period, they would, therefore, potentially become very sick. If dogs were to eat cat food for a prolonged period, the greater protein and fat contents of the cat food would likely exceed their nutritional requirements, making them likely to gain weight. It may also cause GI issues if a dog with GI sensitivity or prone to pancreatitis were to eat it.
It is therefore advisable that dogs and cats consume breed-specific diets.
General life stages and their requirements
Puppies and kittens
In both puppies and kittens, you are hoping to promote:healthy growth, joint and bone development.
For this you want a food that has:
- High digestible energy- allowing energy requirements to be met without requiring large meals.
- High levels of good quality protein to support growth and strong muscle development.
- High but controlled calcium level support the development of strong bones and teeth. Too high a calcium level, especially in large breed dogs, can cause too-rapid growth and can be detrimental to their health, predisposing them to lameness issues in the future.
- Healthy brain and eye development
- Feeds must include a high amount of omega-three fatty acids to support eye and brain development.
- Healthy skin and coat
- Omega 6 fatty acids help to develop the skin's natural defences and natural oils and promote healthy skin and coat development.
- Healthy digestion.
- Fibre within the diet helps to maintain a healthy gut pH and digestive motility. This, as well as highly digestible energy and balanced protein levels, encourage healthy digestion.
Puppies are more vulnerable to diseases as they haven't yet developed natural immunity. Vitamins C and E can help to support immunity development.
Healthy urinary system
This is especially important in kittens as cats are prone to developing feline lower urinary tract disease. Diets should aim to maintain urinary pH between 6.2 and 6.4, and there should be a controlled level of magnesium and phosphorus to prevent crystal formation.
The aim of adult food is maintaining rather than building. Except for large breed dogs, other dogs and cats would have reached approximate adult weight and size, and their growth rate will have slowed. Continuing to feed puppy food to an adult dog could lead to obesity.
Adult feeds are slightly lower in digestible energy, calcium, and fat content than puppy foods. You want a feed that will promote a healthy coat and skin, healthy digestion, and support vital organs.
You, therefore, want a feed that includes:
- A high level of good quality protein to support muscle health.
- A balance of essential vitamins and minerals to support healthy organs, including a balance of calcium, magnesium and phosphorus to maintain a healthy urinary tract.
- Omega 3 and 6, and essential fatty acids to maintain a healthy coat and skin.
- Adequate fibre to provide dietary bulk, helping to maintain satiety and support healthy digestion. Sufficient fibre within the diet can also decrease diarrhoea incidence, and in cats can aid hair passage through the gut, reducing hairball formation. 'Light' or 'neutered' versions of diets often contain higher fibre and lower fat content than normal diets. This can make an animal feel fuller for longer and hence aids in preventing obesity/ aiding weight loss.
- Antioxidants, including vitamin E, that helps to support a healthy immune system.
Mature and senior diets
These diets are aimed to help keep pets healthy for as long as possible in their later years of life.
The main difference in mature or senior diets is that they tend to be less calorific and have slightly lower protein levels to match the body's changing demands. As ageing animals (like humans), have a slower metabolic rate than younger animals, there is an increased risk of obesity if fed a normal diet. As our animal's age, it may also be that a vet recommends a prescription diet to help support specific organs and body systems.
When would I need a prescription diet?
Under certain circumstances, a specific diet might be advised. These diets should only be used after the recommendation of a vet.
Some of the most common reasons why a specific diet may be advised in adult animals may be:
- Allergic skin disease thought to be due to food allergens- a specific flavour or hydrolysed diet may be advised.
- IBD/ chronic gastroenteritis or colitis- a hypoallergenic/ hydrolysed diet may be suggested.
- Pancreatitis- a low-fat diet may be advised.
- Dental disease- an oral prescription diet may be advised, which has a larger kibble size to remove Plaque from the teeth on crunching.
- Urinary diet- in dogs or cats prone to cystitis and or crystal formation, which maintains urinary pH and controls magnesium, phosphorus and calcium levels.
- Metabolic or weight loss diet if struggling with an animal’s weight.
In senior/ older animals, some of the diets include:
- Diabetic diets- which are lower in fat and calories, and higher in fibre, to slow food absorption and prevent spikes in blood sugar levels.
- Heart diets- low in fat, calories and sodium.
- Kidney diets- lower levels of phosphorus and lower levels of high- quality protein to help maintain the health of the kidneys.
- Joint diets- contain glucosamine and chondroitin sulphate. Supplements can also help with joint disease.
Animals and obesity- why is it important, and what can you do to help prevent it?
In a pet obesity study in the UK in 2019, it was found that 51% of dogs and 44% of cats are clinically obese. This can have a hugely detrimental effect on pet health. It can:
- Cause reduced mobility, leading to decreased activity levels and reducing the quality of life.
- It can hasten the progression of osteoarthritis (OA) and worsen the clinical signs associated with OA due to carrying extra weight.
- It can cause diabetes to develop (especially in cats)
- It can cause or worsen heart disease.
- It can cause or worsen respiratory issues and even lead to respiratory distress
- It can cause high blood pressure.
- It can encourage the development of some tumours, e.g. Lipomas.
- Exercise and dietary management are fundamental to preventing obesity and keeping our pets healthy.
We tend to assess animals via body condition scoring. This looks at the animal’s fat distribution over all its body. The ideal body condition score is 2.5/5 or 5/9 (dependent on which scale/ system is used). At this body condition, the animal is well proportioned with ribs palpable with a slight fat covering, they have a visible waist behind the ribs when viewed from above and have a minimal abdominal fat pad.
Ways that you could reduce your animals’ weight if overweight:
- Increase daily exercise.
- Decrease dietary intake by 25%- be strict and consistent on what you feed, weighing out kibble daily.
- Switch to a 'light' version of your animal’s usual diet
- Restrain from giving fatty treats, instead give no treats, use a portion of their weighed out, daily allocated kibble to use as treats throughout the day or give low calorie treats such as carrot sticks or commercially available weight management treats.
- Avoid feeding human food- dogs and cats have a lot lower daily calorie requirement than humans, and what may seem like a small treat to us, can equate to a large meal to our pets.
- Trial weight management diets that help to increase your pet's metabolic rate.
- Make use of and attend regular nurse weight clinics to allow us to help you and your pet on their weight loss journey and help tailor a plan that will suit both you and your animal.
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The Web as a Graph
The goal of this post is to assign an “importance score” to each of a set of web pages indexed in a way that consistently captures our idea of which websites are likely to be important.
But before we can extract information from the structure of the internet, we need to have a mathematical description of that structure. Enter graph theory.
Definition: A web is a directed graph with web pages , hyperlinks , and providing incidence structure.
For the remainder of this post, a web will have pages, indexing from 1. Incoming links are commonly called backlinks, and we define the number of incoming directed edges as the in-degree of a vertex, here denoted . Similarly, the out-degree is the number of outgoing edges, denoted .
This is a very natural representation of the internet. Pages link to each other in a one-directional way. Our analysis of importance within a web will rely on a particular axiom (which we will later find dubious), that content creators usually link to websites they find important. With that in mind, the importance score of a web page should have something to do with the density of incoming links.
Of course, for simple webs this characterization is obvious. We give two examples of webs, the first of which has an obvious ranking, while the second is more ambiguous.
In the first web, page 1 obviously is the most important, with pages 2,4, and 5 about the same, and poor page 3 bringing up the rear. In the second, it is conceivable that there is a sensible ranking, but it is much harder to see visually.
Crawl, then Walk
As per our above discussion, our first and most naive ranking would be to just count up the in-degree of each vertex, giving the following equation to compute a page’s importance score:
Unfortunately, this is not descriptive enough, and has at least one major pitfall: every link has equal value. The whole point of our ranking algorithm is to determine which websites we can trust for good content. Since “content” includes links to other content, a backlink from CNN World News should increase a page’s importance score more than a backlink from UselessJunk.com. Presently, our naive equation doesn’t capture this, but we can modify the algorithm above to reflect it. Letting be the set of indices of pages with links to , we have
Momentarily accepting its self-referential nature (we can’t know without already knowing ), we can compute the importance score of any page as just the sum of the scores of pages which link to it. This still needs some tweaking, because here a page with a high importance score can gain too much influence simply by having a lot of links. Thus, we weight each term of the sum by the out-degree of the corresponding vertex, arriving at:
So here we have a voting system where votes correspond to links within a web, and if we can find a solution to this system of equations, we will have a sound set of rankings.
Let us do an extended example, using the second example web above (the trickier one), which we will call . If we write out the equation for each page , we get
This is a system of four equations with four unknowns, and so we may either solve it or prove its inconsistency. Enter linear algebra. Rewriting the system in matrix form, we wish to find a solution to the equation , where , which we call the link matrix for , is as below.
Look at that! Our problem of ranking pages in this web has reduced to finding an eigenvector for corresponding to the eigenvalue 1. This particular matrix just so happens to have 1 as an eigenvalue, and the corresponding eigenvector is . This solution is unique up to scaling, because the eigenspace for 1, which we denote is one-dimensional.
Before we continue, note that this solution is counter-intuitive: page 1 had the most incoming links, but is second in the ranking! Upon closer examination, we see that page 1 votes only for page 4, transferring its entire importance score to page 4. So along with page 3’s vote, page 4 is rightfully supreme.
The astute reader might question whether every link matrix has 1 as an eigenvalue. Furthermore, the eigenspace corresponding to 1 might have large dimension, and hence admit many different and irreconcilable rankings. For now we will sidestep both of these frightening problems with sufficiently strong hypotheses, deferring a courageous and useful solution to next time.
Assume the Scary Thoughts Away
We begin by noticing that the link matrix in the example above has non-negative entries and columns which sum to 1. Such a matrix is called column-stochastic, and it has fascinating properties. It is easy to see that if every page in a web has an outgoing link (there are no dangling nodes in the web), then the link matrix for that web is column-stochastic. We make use of this observation in the following theorem:
Theorem: The link matrix for a web with no dangling nodes has 1 as an eigenvalue.
Proof. Recall that and have identical eigenvalues (there are many ways to prove this, try it as an exercise!). Let , and we see that has as its entries the sums of the rows of , which are in turn the sums of the columns of . Since is column-stochastic, each entry of is 1, and the theorem is proved.
So we have proven that excluding dangling nodes, the link matrix or any web has a useful ranking. Unfortunately, it is not the case that these rankings are unique up to scaling. In other words, it is not the case that every column-stochastic matrix has . Consider the following link matrix:
We have two linearly independent eigenvectors both in , and so any linear combination of them is also a vector in . It’s not clear which, if any, we should use. Fortunately, this ambiguity exists for a good reason: the web corresponding to this link matrix has two disconnected subwebs. In real-world terms, there is no common reference frame in which to judge page 1 against page 3, so our solution space allows us to pick any frame (linear combination) we wish. In fact, it is not difficult to prove that any web which has disconnected subwebs will admit (try it as an exercise!). In other words, we can’t prove our way to a unique ranking without some additional tweaking of the link matrix construction. Next time we will do just that.
So at this point we have solved a very restricted version of the ranking problem: we can provide sensible rankings for webs which have no dangling nodes and for which the eigenspace corresponding to the eigenvalue 1 happens to have dimension 1. Of course, in the real world, the internet has very many dangling nodes, and many disconnected subwebs. The algorithm is a home without a roof as it is (no better than a cave, really). As interesting as it is, our work so far has just been the scaffolding for the real problem.
So next time, we’ll end with a finished PageRank algorithm, code and all. Until then!
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Rachel Wilson is senior director for policy and advocacy at PATH.
When I pick up my newspaper these days, I see a familiar headline: economic disaster awaits the citizens of the United States unless urgent action is taken to get our fiscal house in order.
Like most people, my first instinct is to wonder what it might mean for me and my family. Will my taxes rise? Will my parents lose much-needed support and benefits? Will Congress and the Obama Administration ever come to agreement?
Because I work in global health, my next thoughts are about what enacting billions of dollars in automatic spending cuts could mean for people living in poverty around the world.
Foreign assistance is a very small part of the US budget—less than 1 percent of the total. But in times of economic hardship, that 1 percent can attract lots of attention due to the perception that aiding people abroad comes at the expense of helping Americans. So, as Congress negotiates a budget deal, there is concern among those of us in global health that foreign assistance may be cut disproportionately.
Consequences of cuts
According to a report from the Office of Management and Budget reported on the Kaiser Family Foundation website, if the automatic cuts take effect, global health funding through the US Agency for International Development and the State Department would decrease by $670 million, or 8.2 percent from 2012 levels.
These kinds of cuts would have very real consequences. According to the Foundation for AIDS Research and the Guttmacher Institute (which focuses on reproductive health), the result could be:
- 276,500 fewer people receiving treatment for HIV/AIDS, potentially leading to 63,000 more AIDS-related deaths. And the important research to develop a vaccine for HIV/AIDS could be threatened, ultimately slowing our progress toward finding a cure.
- 112,500 fewer HIV-positive pregnant women treated, resulting in 21,000 more infants potentially infected with HIV as they are born.
- 2.2 million fewer insecticide-treated nets procured, leading to nearly 6,000 deaths due to malaria.
- 1.3 million fewer vaccines delivered to children, resulting in 14,000 more deaths from diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, Haemophilus influenzae type b, and hepatitis B.
- 2.6 million fewer women and couples getting contraceptive services and supplies.
Don’t just sit there
Seeing these numbers scares me—but they also make me want to take action. The United States has contributed to incredible gains in global health. Any retreat from our leadership would set us back in ways that are unimaginable.
What impact can one person have in a seemingly intractable political environment? Plenty. We elected our officials, and they know that we can replace them if we don’t like their leadership. Just as importantly, we can support those who are taking the steps we think are important. So, I am going to call the people who represent me and tell them what I think. Will you?
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Memoirs as sources fill an important gap in the historical record. They tell us how an individual lived, what he did, and what he thought about how he lived and what he did. Such are the memoirs of H. K. Hewitt, admiral in the United States Navy, whose active duty career spanned the first fifty years of the twentieth century, including World War I and World War II, when he played a leadership role in the Allied invasions of North Africa and Southern Europe.
Hewitt, H. Kent and Cherpak, Evelyn M., "HM 15: The Memoirs of Admiral H. Kent Hewitt" (2004). Historical Monographs. 15.
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S. of Eochaid Mugmedon and Cairenna; Irish high-king c.445–53; d. c.453.
Prominent in Irish tradition, but lacking supporting documentary evidence, the semi-legendary Niall became high-king of Ireland and established a dynasty of rulers whose fame has made him one of the best-known Irish kings. He and his sons finally broke up the Fifth (Province) of Ulster, and he has been credited with raids on Britain and possibly Gaul. The most plausible explanation of Niall's epithet ‘Noígiallach’ is derived from the hostages sent by the nine tuatha which originally made up the Airgiallan confederation (vassal tribes of the Uí Néill), a recognized form of submission. The sagas ascribe his slaying to Eochu, a Leinster prince, and scholars have argued persuasively that this was mid-century. The O'Neills take their name from him.
Subjects: British History.
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Bowman Family Papers,1774-1836
- Bowman Family Papers,1774-1836
- Bowman Family
- 0.33 cubic ft.
- Clark's Expedition to the Illinois-- 1778-1779-- Sources.
- Soldiers-- Kentucky-- Archives.
- Bowman, John, 1738-1784.
- Bowman, John, 1771-1824.
- Finding Aid Author
- Processed by: Processed by; machine-readable finding aid created by:Encoded by
- The Filson Historical Society
- Scope and Content
- Kentucky pioneers and soldiers. The papers include John Bowman's account book, 1776, kept while serving as quartermaster on Colonel William Christian's expedition against the Cherokee, and his land papers, 1774-1782; payroll, 24 January 1778, for Captain Joseph Bowman's company of George Rogers Clark's Illinois Regiment; his commission as major in the Virginia militia signed by Patrick Henry, and his certificate of death in 1779 signed by George Rogers Clark in 1782; and papers of John Bowman, 1771-1824, of Mercer County and other family members, consisting of correspondence, receipts, and accounts
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| 0.895744 | 245 | 2.703125 | 3 |
The Complete History of Ayurveda
Though we are trained to think of the past as static, history is a dynamic living entity that evolves concurrently with present-day perspectives. The facts of distant history can change in an instant of realization or discovery.
Old bones, pottery shards and intelligent speculation compose a grey-scale, connect-the-dots sketch of Earth’s history. The myths and legends of our collective cultural memory add vital depth and color to the picture, and we shall search in vain for the truth of our origins if we ignore the stories that have survived the test of time.
Among our most distant cultural artifacts is the mystical poetry of the Vedas — “the oldest literary record of human civilization on Earth.” It was only 326 BC (just yesterday, in geological time) when Alexander the Great invaded the northwestern provinces of the Indian subcontinent and the world began to learn the history of that land.
This page is dedicated to the History of Ayurveda, the traditional medicine of India. The history of this healing tradition is inseparable from the land of which it is borne. As such, we are offering essays on a wide range of topics (social, economic, medical, mythological, etc) discussing people and events from the most ancient through modern times.
We hope you will enjoy our work, and we welcome your comments as we share this endless journey towards complete knowledge.
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Corned beef being sourced from company linked to Amazon destruction
In the age of international trade and complex supply chains, it’s not always easy to trace the origins of your food. But Friends of the Earth did and the results were not pretty.
We found that Co-Op, Morrisons, Waitrose, Iceland and Lidl all sell corned beef from JBS – a Brazilian company that has been repeatedly linked to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.
The world's largest meatpacker has a history of buying cattle from farms that were illegally deforested. In 2017, JBS was fined nearly US$8 million for doing just that.
Laundering cows from illegal farms
As well as buying from illegally deforested farms, JBS has also been unable to tackle the problem of ‘cattle laundering’.
This is a tactic by which farms with illegal deforestation move cows to legal farms that then sell them on to JBS.
The fact that British supermarkets are selling imported beef from companies complicit in these forest crimes is deeply worrying.Danny Gross, Friends of the Earth campaigner
Deforestation and global heating
The beef industry is destroying the Amazon rainforest, flattening millions of acres to graze cattle – much of it illegally. In August 2019 the Brazilian space research centre INPE recorded a record number of fires in areas of deforestation. The process of felling and burning land is a known method used by soy and cattle farmers to clear land for increased production.
Deforestation displaces indigenous communities that have lived in the Amazon for generations.
Rainforests are also habitats to countless wild species, many of which we haven’t even discovered yet. Some plant species could hold the key to curing life-threatening conditions.
Cutting down the rainforests releases CO2 into the air, ramping up the climate crisis – and erasing wildlife from the planet.
The cattle industry is responsible for 80% of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. It could get worse too. Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, has promised to weaken environmental regulations.
We’re already seeing the impacts of climate chaos around the world, with the planet’s poorest communities suffering the most. This is the cruellest injustice.Danny Gross, Friends of the Earth campaigner
Vote with your wallet
JBS has denied acquiring animals from farms involved with deforestation. But this contradicts an Amazon Watch report which alleges that JBS has bought cattle from 2 farms that have been fined repeatedly for illegal deforestation.
Iceland, which sells corned beef by Princes, says: "Princes is confident that it does not source any product from sites that have been called into question by the investigation."
Meanwhile, the British Retail Consortium (representing supermarkets including Co-Op, Morrisons and Lidl) released a statement condemning illegal deforestation and urging the Brazilian government to crack down on it.
But is that enough? UK supermarkets must be able to prove they are not involved in destroying nature around the world. Here are 3 things you can do:
1. Avoid products that are linked to rainforest destruction.
2. Become a member of Friends of the Earth to help us double tree cover in the UK.
3. Sign our petition to increase tree cover (thank you).
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Source: Flickr/Khirol Amir
The argument that residential solar is a boon for those well-heeled enough to afford it, and a burden for those that cannot as they subsidise the grid use of solar users, is one perpetuated oftentimes by electric utilities during rate structure debates.
Whilst this claim has previously never been supported by any data-based analysis, a new report by GTM Research and PowerScout could suggest that there may be some truth in this.
Entitled ‘How Wealthy are Residential Solar Customers?’ the study takes a deeper and more granular look into the income distribution of solar users. Previous analyses have used both solar panel data and income data based off of ZIP codes, but the challenge with this is that it often fails to account for the high variance in income within a certain ZIP code.
PowerScout addresses this issue with its patented technology, the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) machine-learning algorithm. This uses the same algorithms that Tesla is employing for its self-driving cars, and also the same technology that Facebook uses for facial recognition auto-tagging.
“We use it to first determine what is a roof, just like Facebook uses it to determine what is a face, and once we identify the roof in the image, we identify whether the roof has a solar panel or a sunroof or it has a pool heater,” PowerScout CEO Atilla Toth explained to PV Tech. “It is trained, machine-learning, artificial intelligence technology we used in order to get to this level of granular analysis.”
The technology was therefore able to distinguish between images of homes with and without solar panels in California, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York – the four top states for installed residential solar, accounting for 65% of all residential installations in the nation.
GTM and PowerScout then matched the 521,449 identified solar homes to their income band, and compared the distribution of solar installations to the distribution of the general state population, and the results were in.
Middle-income homeowners make up 70% of solar customers
The findings revealed that 70% of solar households have an income between US$45,000 and US$150,000, which the study classed as middle income. This statistic represents a higher proportion than the overall population of those states, where 65% of all households are deemed middle income.
Solar households by household income: CA, MA, NJ and NY vs. All households by household income: CA, MA, NJ and NY. Source: GTM Research and PowerScout
“The wider conclusions were directionally the same as our conclusions were,” said Toth, in reference to the general notion that people who install solar systems are wealthier than non-solar customers.
Further, the study found that 61% of solar households had an annual income of at least US$75,000, contrasted to 44% of the overall population of California, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. In addition, households with an income of between US$100,000 and US$150,000 are the biggest solar demographic.
Overall distribution of solar households vs. general population in CA, MA, NJ and NY. Source: GTM Research and PowerScout
Based on the study’s data, where does this leave the hypothesis that solar users are wealthier than their non-solar counterparts?
“We and GTM wanted put the data out there as it is, black and white, and let people draw their own conclusions,” said Toth. “One conclusion is what you said; 70% of solar households are middle-income and that is nuanced in some states, like in New Jersey, for example. New Jersey is more in line with income distribution.”
Whilst one conclusion is that residential solar belongs to the rich, based on the data samples of those four states, Toth explained that there are many other conclusions to be drawn from the study. For example, it also reveals that lower-income families – those making less than US$45,000 – are also getting access to solar.
In 2016, the Obama administration launched its Clean Energy Savings for All Americans Initiative, which aimed to expand access to solar for the lower-income demographic with the ultimate goal of bringing 1GW of solar to this demographic by 2020; a 10-fold increase of the initial 100MW target.
According to the study, around 500MW of has potentially been deployed by low-income families in those four states alone.
“You can make many arguments based on this data. It's true that in most of these states, solar is skewed towards higher income, but there are good reasons for that; they could have been early-adopters when it was more expensive; neighbourhood effects; there are all those reasons,” said Toth.
Percentage of solar households under state median income. Source: GTM Research and PowerScout
Whilst in three of the four sampled states solar was generally found with higher income families, in New Jersey, solar was more skewed towards the general population; with more lower-income people adopting solar than wealthier people. According to Toth, this could be because of the state’s solar incentive structure with Solar Renewable Energy Credits (SRECs); contrasted with New York for example, where there is a solar tax credit in place that would require income taxes in order to offset that.
“You could argue that utility rate structures play a role as well,” said Toth. “For example in California, you have tiered rate structure; if you have a bigger house and are consuming more energy, you are probably in a higher income bracket. The marginal value of solar is higher to you because you are offsetting higher marginal rate electricity, as opposed to owning a smaller house and using less energy and being potentially in a lower income bracket.”
Despite the various conclusions that can be drawn, GTM and PowerScout state that the analysis was limited by the stagnant nature of its snapshot; given solar demographics are dynamic and fluid and change over time. Secondly, the limited sample size does not reflect the entire market.
However, the message was an important one the two parties wanted to convey:
“From a policy perspective, we at PowerScout and GTM wanted to release this data because we wanted to inform policy makers, solar installers and investors about the true demographics of solar in the US,” Toth explained. “The reason being, we want to make solar and renewable energy generation mainstream and want to support all those constituents to help solar penetration.”
Following the successful launch of Energy Storage Summit USA, we are pleased to announce its return for a 2nd year. Renowned for its quality, breadth and expertise, this event features an all-encompassing range of strategic and technical sessions on the adoption and deployment of storage. Key market drivers such as the falling price of lithium-ion batteries, investment in electric vehicle infrastructure, FERC Order 841, government incentives, grid modernization, transition from dependency on the networks to a desire for autonomy and intermittent renewable sources, all add to an exciting time for the Energy Storage value chain.
Intersolar North America is the first major solar + energy storage event of the year that connects innovators and decision makers. With a dynamic exhibition floor and robust conference program, #isna2020 provides business-to-business professionals a platform to advance business, expand education, and drive networking. Immerse yourself in three days of best-in-class conference programming and special exhibits and pavilions that showcase the industry trends, innovative solutions, and emerging talent transforming the solar, energy storage, and e-mobility markets: Join us February 4-6, 2020 at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California.
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Every businessman is aware of risk management, but how many fully understand how important or all-encompassing it is? In this basic guide/tutorial, we’ll explain the term and go a little further into its deeper meaning. Following that, we go over several types of risk management that organizations in today’s world should be aware of, as well as examples of each that is used in quantitative risk assessment services.
The Association for Project Management defines risk management as a process that allows individual risk events and overall risk to be identified and proactively managed, resulting in success by reducing threats while enhancing opportunities and rewards.
Risks are factors that can jeopardize a company’s, individual’s, or government’s capacity to achieve certain goals. Risk management addresses all of these threats to a company’s capital, profitability, and even life expectancy.
Risk can be assessed using one of two methods:
Risks can devise from an array of sources, including
IT security risks and data-related concerns have come to the top of the priority list in today’s digital world. Risks to digital assets such as protected corporate data, personally identifiable information (PII), and intellectual property have progressed from a side note to a key focus during the previous two decades.
Predicting what could go wrong and making efforts to reduce or eliminate risk improves the chances of success. While no company (or individual) can totally eliminate risks, risk management seeks to minimize them to the greatest extent possible.
There are several types of risk management within each organization or industry. There are different sorts of financial risk management, such as liquidity and inflation, for example. We will, however, take a broader perspective and focus on:
Let’s dig into each type of risk management:
The definition of enterprise risk management (ERM) is similar to that of risk management in general. It refers to a company’s risk management and opportunity-seizing procedures and processes that are linked to the company’s overall goals.
Enterprise risk management is to identify events and situations, including threats and opportunities, as well as their chance of occurrence and effect. To protect or generate value for an organization’s stakeholders, each enterprise risk management plan includes a monitoring mechanism and a reaction strategy, including
Because of the stakeholder component, enterprise risk management varies from generic risk management. ERM meets the needs of stakeholders by supporting them in grasping and managing the wide range of risks that a company faces.
There are various subcategories of risk management under corporate risk management, such as environmental, financial, and technology risk management. On the other hand, human risk is a commonly overlooked subcategory.
Risk management in project management relies on the project manager’s ability to analyze, assess, and limit the risks involved with a project.
When examining each type of risk management, there will be a lot of overlap with the broader notion. The words “opportunity” and “threats” keep coming up in conversation.
Every project has risks that might have positive or negative effects on one or more of the project’s objectives. The goal of the project manager is to maximize opportunities while minimizing the risk of hazards.
The practice of using a range of financial instruments to safeguard an organization’s economic worth is known as financial risk management. These techniques, which are considered a subcategory of financial risk management, include:
The goal, like in other areas of risk management, is to identify the causes of financial risk, quantify them, and develop plans to manage and reduce those risks. Knowing when and how to employ the numerous instruments to defend oneself is the problem.
Financial risks are both qualitative and quantitative. And a range of factors, including debt and underlying business operations, affect how much an organization is exposed to financial risk.
Credit risk refers to the risk of losing a debt if a borrower fails to repay the principal and/or interest on a loan by the due date.
The practice of lowering losses by getting a better understanding of the borrower’s ability to repay the loan is known as credit risk management. The borrower might be a single individual, a company, or the government.
To minimize credit losses, a thorough credit risk assessment and actions to control such risks are essential. A few instances of potential countermeasures are as follows:
There might be hundreds more cases of credit risk. We will, however, use two that are linked to one another.
Mr. Pink is the CEO of a colossal B2B firm in San Francisco. His business involves invoicing consumers rather than receiving payment upfront. Mr. Pink is worried since he hasn’t vetted his customers for credit risks.
Months later, he discovers that some of them have a bad track record when it comes to meeting commitments such as bills, and by the end of the year, his company is losing a large amount of money. Mr. Pink might have avoided these problems if he had identified the risks to himself and his company with better credit risk management.
Mr. Pink’s revenue loss has sadly produced an issue in both his personal life and his bank.
Mr. Pink had taken out a $ 125,000 loan a year ago to buy a high-end car. The bank assessed his creditworthiness and classified him as a low-risk customer. Mr. Pink’s circumstances have changed, and he will no longer be able to make the monthly payments on his new car, prompting the bank to evaluate him as a credit risk and take appropriate action.
A 10-minute read hardly touches the surface of risk management, which is a large and ever-changing subject. Hopefully, it was sufficient to present an overview, highlight the various types and subspecies of risk management, and demonstrate how risk management impacts everyone today.
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It is 20 meters high and constructed from 7,506 barrels with colours blue, red, mauve, white. The mastaba is an archaeological term to describe something like an Egyptian tomb, flat roof sloping sides, rooms built above an underground burial chamber which housed offerings symbolic of eternal life. The colours contrast the green-blue surroundings of the Lake in the park.
What is the London Mastaba
The London Mastaba”. A Trapezoidal flat top pyramid-shaped structure that was designed to float on the Serpentine Lake in Hyde Park London. The exhibition piece floated, till around the 9th of September 2018.
32 anchors at 6 tonnes each weigh the structure down, and it’s thought to weigh 600 tonnes. The Serpentine Lake is 5.30 Meters deep.
Who is Christo Vladimirov Javacheff?
The Artists behind the Mastaba concept
Background to the Artists
Christo Vladimirov Javacheff born 13 June 1935 Gabrovo Bulgaria
Formed a union with a female artist Jeanne-Claude and one day married her she too was born on 13 June 1935 Casablanca Morocco, passed away in 2009
They met in Romantic artistic Paris in 1958.
They started working on things in 1961, creating environmental works of art that were temporary and could be dismantled. That was interesting in shape, and in some cases, things like the oil barrels were not expensive. Art that could be enjoyed by people for free
Wall of Oil Barrels – The Iron Curtain
Rue Visconti, Paris, 1961-62
89 Oil barrels were used to block off a narrow street in protest. That year saw protests, demonstrations, and barricades about the Algerian war and that summer the Berlin wall went up.
The barrels were of the 50-200 litre capacity, brands such as ESSO, BP, SHELL AZUR. Artefacts to do with the artist including Old Oil barrels are on display at the Serpentine Gallery to support the London Mastaba Art construction on Display in London.
The Serpentine gallery shows drawings models of another Mastaba and older photographs of it in a dessert like the location. One could be left wondering was there a flat pyramid somewhere before in the world? They conceived the idea in 1977 and became an ongoing project that hoped to be one of the biggest constructions in the world of its type. The backdrop being the desert surroundings in Abu Dhabi. The design planning stage envisaged the Mastaba being made from bright vivid coloured barrels in a mosaic, very much in line with artwork in that part of the world.
Other Works of art in no particular order
1970-72 Rifle, Colorado USA
A Huge length of fabric curtain was hung between to sloped mountains deep orange in colour, which could be seen by traffic on the winding roads approaching.
The Floating Piers
2014-16 lake Lseo in Italy
100,000 sq. meters of orange-yellow fabric, that covered a modular cube set of polyethene structures that were built to form a floating pier that people could walk on. Which also were lit at night. Stunning.
1972-76 Sonoma and Marin counties California USA
39.4km long and 5.5meters high a fabric fence that was constructed that looked like a white cliffs edge or pathway billowing in the wind.
1980-83 Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami Florida USA
603,870sq meters of floating pink polypropylene fabric that extended out from each island and floated on the water, making a larger shape around the islands that could be seen from above because of the colour and shape.
1979-2005 Central Park New York USA
7,503 archway gates, headed by fabric coloured in an orange saffron type colour, contrasting with the trees, the seasons, the water day time night time.
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Electronic nose vapor sensors are printed arrays of transistors that can detect ambient chemicals and odors and then alert a consumer if the internal contents of a medicine bottle or bottle of wine have changed. Thus, if acetic acid has begun to build, sensors will send a signal that the wine is going sour before you inadvertently give it the thumbs up at tasting.
One of the key features is that the sensors should be cheap to manufacture, allowing them to be inserted into wine bottles. An integrated nose--which would include a sensor array and a silicon chip--could cost a few dimes to manufacture now and drop to less than 5 cents over time. A nose based on all printed semiconductors would be even cheaper and could be feasible over time.
All-silicon noses exist now, but they cost hundreds of dollars.
"Our ultimate goal is to go to fully printed systems," Vivek Subramanian, a professor of electronic engineering at UC Berkeley, said during a presentation at thetaking place in San Francisco. "Wine spoilage is a pretty good application because there are few false positives."
The sensors work by interacting with the environment. When odors or chemicals come into contact with the surface of the sensors, transistors embedded in the sensors react with the stimuli and absorb electrical carriers. The reaction causes films inside the sensor to swell or change their state in other ways. This change is then amplified and propagated through a network.
Each sensor contains a wide variety of transistors. Structurally, the transistors are similar, but they are made up of different compounds and detect different environmental stimuli.
Unlike most semiconductors, which are made of silicon, these are organic semiconductors, which are made out of carbon. The switch to carbon brings a couple of distinct advantages. One, chemists can form a lot of compounds with carbon, which makes it possible to create the variety of sensing transistors needed to detect a large number of environmental agents.
Two, organic semiconductors can be printed directly onto thin polymer sheets, which is a lot less costly than making silicon transistors. With silicon, engineers blow hot metallic vapors onto wafers, scrape away excess materials, and then introduce more vapors.
"The key point is that it is entirely additive, which dramatically reduces the steps in processing, and that is where you get lower costs," Subramanian said. Inkjet printing also allows designers to place unique sensing transistors on the polymer sheet relatively easily. Thus, several thousand alcohol-detecting sensing elements can be sprayed onto a sheet at once and arranged next to transistors for detecting acids in the same way that a single printer can precisely spray different colored inks.
In silicon chips, creating multi-sensing arrays with differing transistors would take several steps.
Gold is used to construct the transistor gates. Gold in its bulk state melts at 1,000 degrees Celsius. Nanoparticles of gold, however, melt at 100 degrees Celsius. Thus, the gold can be melted without destroying the underlying polymer sheet. The reactive films in the transistor need to be around 20 nanometers thick. (Materials at the nanoscale--which is defined as particles measuring 100 nanometers or less--oftenthan their bulk counterparts.)
If carbon is such a great material for making transistors, why don't more manufacturers use it today? Environmental stimuli and stress can wear them out. Electrons move slowly too.
"The performance is frankly lousy" compared with silicon transistors, Subramanian said. But for cheap sensors, organic transistors work fast enough.
Experiments conducted by Subramanian and his students showed that carbon-silicon integrated noses can detect turning in wine, but a substantial amount of work lies ahead for developing full carbon sensors.
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Beach advisories and beach closures occur when water testing reveals the presence of one or more contaminants that exceed healthy standards.
A beach advisory leaves it up to users as to whether they wish to risk going into the water. In the case of a beach closure, the state and/or local government decides that water conditions are unsafe for swimmers and other users.
How can beach-goers avoid the disappointment of arriving at their summer vacation destination only to find that authorities advise them not to swim there or that the beaches are closed altogether?
Unfortunately, there is no central database that provides information on beach closures and advisories in real time. The best way to find information on the current water quality of a particular beach is to plan ahead.
In some cases, warning signs will be posted to alert people of the potential risk of illness from contact with the water. Signs may be placed for short-term problems or more permanent ones, when, for example, repeated monitoring indicates ongoing contamination.
Common Culprits Leading to Beach Closures and Advisories
Common culprits leading to beach closures and advisories include excessive rainwater that carries pollution from storm drains (like motor oil, pet waste, pesticides, trash, and pathogens) to recreational waters; “red tides” and other harmful algal blooms; and sewage and chemical spills from known sources. It is generally wise to avoid swimming after heavy rains or if the water is an unusual color without first checking with local or state health authorities.
In the Gulf of Mexico, NOAA’s Harmful Algal Bloom Operational Forecast System identifies potentially harmful blooms of the toxic alga Karenia brevis, where the blooms are, how big they are, and where they are likely to go. The toxins produced by the algae become airborne when waves break along the beach during a bloom, causing eye, throat, and nose irritation in most beach-goers, but more severe reactions in people with asthma and other respiratory issues.
Forecasts are distributed through conditions reports and bulletins. Conditions reports, which include forecasts of potential levels of respiratory irritation associated with blooms of the alga K. brevis in the near-term, are posted twice a week after confirmation of a HAB, and once weekly during the inactive HAB season. Additional bloom analysis is included in harmful algal bloom bulletins that are emailed to a subscriber list of state and local coastal resource managers, public health officials, and researchers. In many cases, NOAA’s harmful algal bloom data contribute to authorities’ decision to post a beach closure or advisory.
NOTE: The Beaches Environmental Assessment and Coastal Health (BEACH) Act addresses contaminants in coastal recreational waters. The BEACH Act set national water quality monitoring and reporting standards, creating uniformity throughout the nation that did not exist prior to its passage. States, tribes, territories, and local governments decide whether to close or reopen a beach, and are required to report the information to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
#water #beaches #conservation #TSF
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The field of cyber security has become increasingly important as technology continues to advance and more aspects of our lives move online. With the rise of cyber threats and the need to protect sensitive information, there is a growing demand for professionals in the field. However, breaking into the cyber security industry can be challenging, especially for beginners. In this article, we will discuss some essential tips for those who are just starting their journey in the cyber security field. These tips will help beginners navigate the industry, gain relevant skills, and increase their chances of success in this rapidly evolving field.
Breaking Into the Cyber Security Field: Essential Tips for Beginners
With the rapid growth of technology, the demand for cybersecurity professionals has skyrocketed. As businesses and individuals become increasingly reliant on digital platforms, the need to protect sensitive data from cyber threats has become paramount. For those looking to break into the cyber security field, here are some essential tips to get started on this exciting and rewarding career path.
1. Obtain the Right Education and Certifications
While formal education is not always a requirement, obtaining a degree in computer science, information technology, or a related field can provide a solid foundation for a career in cyber security. Additionally, earning industry certifications such as Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), or Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) can significantly enhance your credibility and marketability.
2. Develop Technical Skills
To excel in the cyber security field, it is crucial to develop technical skills that are highly sought after by employers. Familiarize yourself with programming languages such as Python, Java, and C++, as well as operating systems like Linux and Windows. Understanding networking protocols, encryption techniques, and database management systems will also prove invaluable.
3. Stay Up-to-Date with the Latest Threats and Trends
Cybersecurity is an ever-evolving field, with new threats and trends emerging constantly. Stay informed by reading industry publications, subscribing to security blogs, and attending conferences or webinars. This will help you stay ahead of the curve and understand the latest techniques and tools used by cyber criminals, as well as the best practices to protect against them.
4. Gain Practical Experience
Hands-on experience is crucial in the cyber security field. Look for opportunities to gain practical experience through internships, volunteering, or even participating in capture-the-flag (CTF) competitions. These activities will allow you to apply your knowledge in real-world scenarios, develop problem-solving skills, and build a strong portfolio to showcase your abilities to potential employers.
5. Network and Join Cyber Security Communities
Networking is an essential aspect of any career, and cyber security is no exception. Engage with professionals in the field by attending industry events, joining online forums, and participating in local meetups. Building relationships with experienced cyber security professionals can provide invaluable insights, mentorship, and potential job opportunities.
6. Develop Soft Skills
While technical skills are essential, it is equally important to develop soft skills that are often overlooked in the cyber security field. Effective communication, teamwork, and problem-solving abilities are highly valued by employers. Cyber security professionals must be able to clearly articulate complex concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, as well as collaborate with colleagues from various backgrounds.
7. Be Ethical and Stay Curious
Ethics play a critical role in the cyber security field. It is essential to understand the importance of ethical hacking and responsible disclosure. Stay curious and continuously seek opportunities to learn and improve your skills. Cyber security is a field that requires a lifelong commitment to learning, as threats and technologies evolve rapidly.
Breaking into the cyber security field can be challenging, but with the right mindset, education, and skills, it is an incredibly rewarding career choice. By following these essential tips, beginners can lay a strong foundation and embark on a successful journey into the world of cyber security.
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