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Like any language, Russian has plenty of words of foreign origin. Specifically: • there are lots of words from Latin (most likely, because Latin was wide-spread from old time), e.g. вакуум, диссертация and many other (see this wiki article) • there are many words of French origin (because Russians have been fascinated with French culture, etc., especially in 18-19 centuries), for example шансон, авангард and many other. • German words are aplenty (most likely, because historically Russians have been in - often unpleasant - communication with Germans), e.g. шлагбаум, гастарбайтер and so on. • Quite a few English-origin words are present (probably, because English is so wide spread), for example, джинсы, компьютер, etc. Possibly including these, what are the top 5 sources of loan words in Russian? If you can explain why many words from those languages came into Russian, that could be worth extra points. • 5 oh, I believe this question is too open-ended. – shabunc Nov 14 '12 at 11:05 • @shabunc Having re-read the question, I agree wit your comment. I edited the question now to make it less so. – Aleks G Nov 14 '12 at 11:19 • Is this question arising for any reason besides curiosity, and why pick "top 5" as the cutoff? – KCd Nov 14 '12 at 15:13 • 2 Other answers did not mention Old Church Slavonic. Such words are difficult to distinguish because the languages are closely related, but one fueature is the absence of the vowel between two first consonants. Such words usually have high-style coloring: пламя, бремя, время, знамя. – Anixx Nov 13 '13 at 10:18 • 1 @Quassnoi other examples: глава, клятва. – Anixx Oct 18 '19 at 10:41 In my opinion, the best way to think about the borrowed words in Russian is from a historical prospective. The influx of foreign words came in waves depending on what country or culture had influence in Russia: • Byzantine influence and conversion to Christianity: influx of Greek words • Mongol conquest: influx of Turkic words • The reign of Peter the Great: influx of German and Dutch words • Middle of the 18-th century though the 19th century: nobility speaks French, influx of French words • End of 20-th century, perestroyka and post-soviet Russia, globalization: influx of English words • 2 That's exactly what I was going to write, so I'll just add a comment with some additions. I think, one more period is missing between the Mongol conquest and Peter the Great, let's call it 'Muscovy' or 'The Grand Duchy of Moscow', lots of borrowings from Polish and from European languages via Polish came to Russian during this period. And, naturally, the 20th century per se with its burst of technology brought tons of borrowings to name those technological achievements - mechanisms, chemical, biological, medical and physical terminology, which came from Latin, English, French, etc. – Yellow Sky Nov 17 '12 at 8:06 • 2 And during the reign of Peter the Great words were borrowed not only from German, but also from Dutch, heavily. – Yellow Sky Nov 17 '12 at 8:07 • 4 Great answer. I would also mention huge stratae of Church Slavonic (враг, плен, клад, страж etc., about 10% of core vocabulary by some accounts); and Proto-Germanic (хлеб, хлев, полк, виноград, серьга, стекло etc.) loanwords. – Quassnoi Nov 19 '12 at 10:29 • Nice! I would also say that many technological loan words are from German from the 40s-60s, before English became a the predominant source. – Curiosity Oct 8 '19 at 16:20 • 2 Before Byzantine influence there was Varangian influence which brought Germanic words such as витязь, князь, ... – Anixx Oct 18 '19 at 10:43 There are a few of Japanese words in Russian, such as самурай, банзай, хокку, каратэ, цунами etc. Some Chinese words - женьшень, тайфун, чай, шарпей, хунвэйбин, фэншуй etc. А lot of Turkic words - башка, сундук, казна, утюг, чугун, шашлык, алыча, амбар, сарай, халат etc. Some Greek words - анафема, ангел, демон, известь, сахар, скамья, фонарь, фасоль etc. Some Spanish words - армада, марихуана, хунта, фламенко, мачо, коррида etc. • 1 The Japanese words are merely terms for Japan-specific things. – Anixx Oct 18 '19 at 10:47 The words are often borrowed from another language if 1. there is a strong influence of one culture on another for historic reasons, e.g. the Dutch in Russia during Peter I, the Germans in Russia in the times of Catherine the Great etc. 2. some field of knowledge is being created primarily in one country and does not yet exist in other languages (e.g. quantum physics in Germany in 1930s or computer science in England and then the US in the second half of 20th century etc). 3. An item or category is closely associated with another language culture, such as chanson, junta, samurai etc. Interestingly, sometimes the very process of such borrowing is influenced by the current relations between the countries/cultures. For example, in the 18th century the Germans were considered much better educated than the Russians, and such influence was welcome. In the first half of the 20th century the relations were spoiled, and the influence on the language went as far as renaming Petersbourg (which in fact had little to do with the German language) to Petrograd. There was a long period in history when the territory of modern Russia was dependent on Golden Horde, then Russia fought many wars against the Ottoman Empire and Crimean Khanate, so this yielded in a large number of Turkic words. See this article. I was surprised to find so many words that do not seem to have Turkic origin, but still they do, e.g. "хозяин", "жесть", "серьга", "стакан", "очаг". • 3 The Turkish words have been Russified over time. They exist in Armenian as well, but with more Armenified color, i.e. խազեին(хазеин), ժեշտ (жешт), oջախ (оджах). This phenomenon is common to many languages, if not all. One notable example is English loanwords in Japanese, which have been so Japanized that you wouldn't think they used to be English. For example, the Japanese for knife is naifu. The Japanese for spoon is supunu. Nov 14 '12 at 19:41 • 1 серьга is considered a Proto-Germanism whose modern Russian form is influenced by an Oghur Turkic language (Bulgar or Chuvash). – Quassnoi Nov 19 '12 at 10:48 As mentioned above, main sources of borrowing words are cultural, military, technical and other contacts. But, these words oftenly got special, particular meaning, slightly different from its original sense. Sometimes they could be completely distorted. Russian phrase "рынду бей" borrowed from English navy command "ring the bell" (issue general alarm on a ship), but verb and noun were mutually changed - 'ring' became "рында", i.e ship bell and 'bell' came to 'бей'. Russian word 'фюрер' was borrowed from Deutsch 'führer' and strongly related with Hitler, but in sense 'leader' it is still used in German language like 'Geschäftsführer'(CEO). Hebrew served as a major source of Russian names. For example, the erstwhile most popular name 'Иван' stems from the Hebrew יוֹחָנָן‎ (jōħānān, “God is gracious”). Likewise, 'Михаил' comes from the Hebrew מִיכָאֵל‎ (mikha'él, literally “Who is like God?”). Also Гавриил, Даниил, Нафанаил, Еремей, Иона, Матвей, Аввакум. Funny enough, some words from the Russian prison slang 'феня' аlso arrived from the same source, though much later: шмон, халява, шабаш. • 1 The word суббота is from Hebrew either, and not via fenea. – Anixx Oct 18 '19 at 10:51
Webb will issue a final course correction burn to insert it into the orbit around L2. It arrives from earth so the approach velocity should be higher than the desired orbit velocity and the vector should point away from earth and sun. It needs negative delta-v. How can JWST brake without turning around? Turning around is not an option, because the telescope's dark side may not be exposed to solar radiation. The engine is located on the hot side, pointing to where Webb came from. So how can it decrease velocity? • 1 $\begingroup$ it's actually confusing to refer to an L2 "orbit", however widely the terms are used together. it's more like stationkeeping. $\endgroup$ – Fattie Jan 13 at 0:34 • 2 $\begingroup$ @Fattie According to Wikipedia's article about Lagrange points an orbit is very well possible. The limitation is that L1, 2 and 3 are pulling in objects only in tangential directions, not in radial direction. So Webb in L2 has to stabilize itself radially (in the sun / earth / Webb axis) using its own thruster but can orbit naturally in the plane perpendicular to that axis. L4 and 5 are in fact stabilizing in all directions. They allow for full natural orbits and can hold trojan bodies. $\endgroup$ – Jpsy Jan 13 at 6:56 How can JWST brake without turning around? Answer: JWST does not. From More Than You Wanted to Know About Webb’s Mid-Course Corrections!: One interesting aspect of the Webb launch and the Mid-Course Corrections is that we always “aim a little bit low.” The L2 point and Webb’s loose orbit around it are only semi-stable. In the radial direction (along the Sun-Earth line), there is an equilibrium point where in principle it would take no thrust to remain in position; however, that point is not stable. If Webb drifted a little bit toward Earth, it would continue (in the absence of corrective thrust) to drift ever closer; if it drifted a little bit away from Earth, it would continue to drift farther away. Webb has thrusters only on the warm, Sun-facing side of the observatory. We would not want the hot thrusters to contaminate the cold side of the observatory with unwanted heat or with rocket exhaust that could condense on the cold optics. This means the thrusters can only push Webb away from the Sun, not back toward the Sun (and Earth). We thus design the launch insertion and the MCCs to always keep us on the uphill side of the gravitational potential, we never want to go over the crest – and drift away downhill on the other side, with no ability to come back. Therefore, the Ariane 5 launch insertion was intentionally designed to leave some velocity in the anti-Sun direction to be provided by the payload. MCC-1a similarly was executed to take out most, but not all, of the total required correction (to be sure that this burn also would not overshoot). In the same way, MCC-1b, scheduled for 2.5 days after launch, and MCC-2, scheduled for about 29 days after launch (but neither time-critical), and the station-keeping burns throughout the mission lifetime will always thrust just enough to leave us a little bit shy of the crest. We want Sisyphus to keep rolling this rock up the gentle slope near the top of the hill – we never want it to roll over the crest and get away from him. • 13 $\begingroup$ This is the reason why the ESA spokesperson lauded the Vulcain engine they used for its precision, see this article on ARS Technica. I wondered why it was the precision that was lauded, and not performance. Your answer, however, makes it perfectly clear. If you aim to give the payload just that tiny bit too little a push, then you need a precise engine. $\endgroup$ – Dohn Joe Jan 12 at 8:54 • 2 $\begingroup$ Very enlightening answer! Does that mean that JWST will actually need much longer than 30 days to reach its "final" orbit? If you try to roll to a stop on a flipped parabola as close as possible to the top the last "meters" can take very long. My intuition says that it can take extremely long if you try to get to zero relative velocity very close to the top. $\endgroup$ – Jpsy Jan 12 at 10:10 • 1 $\begingroup$ Yes, I believe they said that the first burn, MCC-1a, was time critical, MCC-2 was seen as 'flexible'. $\endgroup$ Jan 12 at 10:43 • 2 $\begingroup$ @DohnJoe You need precise GN&C (guidance, navigation, and control) more than precise engines. I've yet to work on flight software development of / work on simulation development of a vehicle for which engine performance (thrust, specific impulse) was expected to be within 1% of predicted values. Precise engines help, but it's the Ariane 5 GN&C software and sensors that made the performance as good as it was. $\endgroup$ Jan 12 at 12:48 • 1 $\begingroup$ @blobbymcblobby I've also read that (about MCC-2 being flexible), but I've also read that MCC-2 is the orbit insertion burn. That would make MCC-2 time critical, but the exact timing would have been something they couldn't predict prior to launch. $\endgroup$ Jan 12 at 12:56 Your Answer
The student news site of Colonia High School Photo Credit: Photo Credit via Flickr The mysterious history behind this village is strange. From never being able to stay fully occupied, to spirits haunting the area, Feltville is truly a New Jersey fascination. The chilling tales of Feltville and its enchanted forest Broken, empty, and abandoned. That’s what someone sees when walking through the Deserted Village and Enchanted Forest of the Watchung Reservation. The haunted, eerie stories about this village date back centuries. The History of the Village In 1736, Peter Willcocks was the first settler to inhabit the area. While he was there, he owned and worked at a sawmill. Over one hundred years later after Willcocks’ death, his descendants sold the land to David Felt, a businessman who just moved to New York City in 1825. He bought Willcocks’ land in 1844 and constructed a mill with a couple of homes for millworkers. He named his little town Feltville. After fifteen years, Felt sold the land. In the years that followed, the businesses created by Felt were not enough to keep the community together. This is when Feltville officially became known as “The Deserted Village.” 13 years later, Warren Ackerman bought the deserted village in an attempt to create a summer resort he named Glenside Park. It was no surprise this business attempt failed as well, leaving the village once again abandoned. Eventually, the Union Park Commission bought the village and made it a part of the Watchung Reservation. Today, there are only three families permanently living in the village. The other empty buildings are open to visitors. Throughout the decades, many spooky stories have been told about Feltville and its surrounding forest. The most popular one originated in 1912 with the disappearance of three sisters. One day, they decided to go camping in the woods, however they never returned. When locals went on a search to find the girls, all they were able to find were their bonnets. Due to this, almost half of the residents moved away out of fear, and those that stayed never went into the woods ever again. These three sisters are known to haunt the particular home where they used to reside. There are also accounts that there is the spirit of a young girl who wanders the village, going from home to home, however it is unknown where this originates from. In the forest, it is said that witch covens and occults perform rituals and activities there, and have been doing so for centuries. This is how the surrounding forest got the title “Enchanted Forest.” Final Thoughts Visiting Feltville and its surrounding forest is not for one with a weak heart. It is open to the public every day from dawn to dusk for those who are intrigued by this village and all its spooky legends. Do you have the courage to venture out and encounter the unknown in the Deserted Village? The Declaration • Copyright 2022 • FLEX WordPress Theme by SNOLog in
Is medical tourism good for the economy? How does medical tourism help the economy? Medical tourism can boost tourism receipts and employment in both medical centres as well as in other sectors. of 5 percent. Medical tourism employment in India is estimated to be about 167000. The growth of medical tourism in India is accelerating and expected to reach USD 8 billion by 2020. Why is medical tourism beneficial? What are the impacts of medical tourism? These benefits included improved quality control, training opportunities, and health worker retention; and 3) Anticipated negative impacts of medical tourism on health human resources and access to care in the public system. IT IS SURPRISING: Can I travel to the US with 1 month left on my passport? How does the medical and wellness tourism help the tourism economic development? Wellness activities, including wellness tourism, help create a healthier population, which in turn becomes an economically more productive population, one with more spending power, disposable income, and desire to travel. Why is medical tourism bad? Substandard surgical care, poor infection control, inadequate screening of blood products, and falsified or outdated medications in lower income settings of care can pose greater risks than patients would face at home. Medical tourists also face heightened travel-related risks. How much does medical tourism contribute to India’s GDP? The medical tourism industry in India has a potential to contribute around 25 per cent in the country’s GDP (gross domestic product) over the next five years if the potential will be fully-tapped, according to Varsha Lafargue, founder and chairperson of Indian Medical Tourism Conference and Alliance (IMTCA). What are the positive economic impacts of tourism? What is meant by medical tourism? What are the types of medical tourism? There are multiple types of medical tourism, however, given below are the top 10 types of medical tourism treatment patients visit Worldwide. • Dental or Dentistry: … • Orthopedics: … • Cosmetic/Plastic surgery: … • Cardiology: … • Bariatric surgery: … • Fertility treatment: … • Eye surgery: … • Ears, nose, and throat: IT IS SURPRISING: Can you apply for a visa from another country? How wellness tourism is different from medical tourism? Medical world uses the terms doctors, patients, and authoritative structure, wellness tourism is more location based and generic. It has been found that people, who travel to a country for wellness experience, tend to select the same country for medical procedures as well. What is the difference between medical tourism and wellness tourism? Wellness tourists aim to prevent diseases rather than treat existing conditions. For example, medical tourism involves people who travel for surgeries and dental care, while wellness tourism involves travellers seeking to try out SPA treatments and rituals, balanced diet seminars and fitness events. How wellness is related with health tourism? Wellness tourism includes consumers who travel to maintain their well-being and life satisfaction through the experiences of healthy treatments. Wellness has to do with quality of life.
ArrowrIcon Home icon Death early 20th Century and before The postillion (postilion) rider of a horse-drawn vehicle By the webmaster’s mother, 1906-2002 Definition of a postillion According to The Free online Dictionary: A postilion (or postillion) is someone who rides the nearside horse of a pair in order to guide the horses pulling a carriage (especially a carriage without a coachman). For some time I was puzzled at my mother's description of the postilion in a funeral procession, because she said that they looked like jockeys. Postillion or coachman Many photos of Victorian and Edwardian funeral processions show coach or carriage drivers wearing top hats. However my mother was correct - see the pictures below. The wearers of the top hats, the coachmen, guided the horses from seats high up at the front of the carriage whereas the postillions who look like jockeys guided from a seat actually on the horses. In a showcase event there may be a coachmen and a postillion, but a postillian can guide where there is no coachman. Pictures of postillions postillion (postilion) driver, driving a coach while sitting on the nearside leading horse Toy model showing a coach with a postillion driver. Note that he is dressed like a jockey and guides the coach (or hearse) while sitting on one of the horses that is pulling the coach (or hearse). Photographed in Brighton Toy and Model Museum. Postillion, drawing in old newspaper: he is dressed like a jockey and guides the coach while sitting on a leading horse Old newspaper drawing showing a postillion. He is dressed like a jockey and guides the coach while sitting on a one of the horses that is pulling the coach. This drawing shows a procession which is clearly for show purposes, and it suggests that there are more horses out of the picture, to the right. If so, there would have to be at least one more postillion, as they always guided the front horse. Postillions in funeral processions An old book confirms that postillions were in funeral processions: The coffin, half hidden among flowers, was in a hearse drawn by six black horses richly caparisoned* in purple and gold. On one of the front horses rode a postillion .... * 'caparisoned' refers to a horse without a rider. from Gypsies of Britain: an introduction to their history (1944) Postillions' clothes and boots Postillians all wore the same type of clothes rather like the uniform of the job. The same book continues: ... a postillion wearing a tight fitting black tunic and purple knee-breeches and a black jockey cap. As previously stated, the clothes were like those of a jockey. However his boots were different and unique to his type of work. Because it could be dangerous if one or both his legs got caught between the two horses, the boots were reinforced inside with iron. They were made of black leather like most boots of the time, but the foot part was larger with a loose iron lining. There was an internal iron ring a short way down from the top of the boots to add further protection. Reinforced boots of a postillion Postillion's reinforced boots facebook icon twitter icon
From Dhamma Wiki Jump to navigation Jump to search In Theravada Buddhist context, a samaneri (Pali: male: sāmaṇera) can be translated as novice nun. It literally means 'small samana', or small renunciate, where 'small' has the meaning of boy or girl. In the Vinaya (monastic discipline), a woman under the age of 20 cannot ordain as a bhikkhuni, but can ordain as a samaneri. The male counterpart of the samaneri is the samanera. Samaneris and samaneras keep the 10 precepts as their code of behavior, and are devoted to the Buddhist religious life. After a year or at the age of 20, a samaneri will be considered for the higher Bhikkhu or Bhikkhuni ordination (Pali: upasampada). Some monasteries will require people who want to ordain as a nun or monk to be a novice for a set period of time, as a period of preparation and familiarization.
Jenny Morris 06 January 2021 by Jenny Morris Padlock Cyber Security Smaller The surge of cyberattacks in 2020 has highlighted what many already know — that keeping networks secure is tough at the best of times, but near impossible during a pandemic. Many are now implementing a zero-trust security model, which is thought to overcome many of the issues with traditional approaches. In fact, 34% of IT security teams report that they are in the process of implementing a zero-trust model. So, what is zero-trust, and why do so many think it’s the way forward to keep information and networks safe? What exactly is the zero-trust approach? It’s commonly said that human beings are the weak link in any cybersecurity system. Typically, up to 40% of people fall victim to a cyberattack, but only an estimated 3-5% of people report real cyberattacks. Traditionally, cybersecurity training has been emphasised as the answer. However, most training focuses on increasing awareness of potential threats, which is both cognitively draining and requires frequent retraining as hackers adapt their strategies. At worst, it causes a constant state of anxiety about being blamed for a breach. More recently, it’s been rightly pointed out that any system that can be taken over by one person clicking a dodging phishing email, probably isn’t a very good system. Traditional cybersecurity is based on the castle-and-moat system, whereby it’s tough to breach the castle, but everyone inside is trusted by default. As a consequence, once a breach occurs, the attacker is free to do as they wish. In contrast, a zero-trust approach means that verification is required whenever any user or machine — even those already inside the network perimeter — tries to access information and services. What are the core elements of zero trust? Implementing least privilege: this element of zero trust means only giving users the minimum necessary access to perform essential tasks. This limits the number of users that can grant/configure new permissions, making it more difficult for attacks to reach more sensitive parts of the network. Amazon Web Services, Azure and Google Cloud all recognise least privileges as a core element of cybersecurity best practice. Microsegmentation: breaking up a system into smaller, self-contained segments prevents lateral movement across the whole network. Each segment should have its own security perimeter and list of permissions, so that a user cannot access it without separate verification. Industry professionals often refer to this as controlling the ‘blast radius’ of an attack, so that the damage is limited to the breached segment. Multi-factor authentication: an authentication method that requires more than one piece of evidence across multiple categories. For example, a multi-factor authentication might require something you know (such as a password) plus something you have (like a smartcard) or something you are (biometric information such as a fingerprint). Withdrawing money from a cash point is an everyday example of this, as it requires a debit card (something you have) and a PIN (something you know). The advantages of zero trust The most obvious advantage of zero-trust is in reducing your vulnerability to a large scale cyberattack. Attacks are inevitable but having measures in place that don’t rely on constant employee vigilance helps to manage this risk. Zero-trust also provides information about what constitutes normal daily traffic on any given device, meaning that breaches can be quickly detected and contained. In addition, while zero-trust might take effort and investment in the short term, it reduces long-term costs as fewer professionals are needed to monitor, manage and update security controls. Finally, zer- trust enables a positive user experience. Rather than trying to remember a long list of complicated passwords, employees are given secure access to what they need, letting them get on with their own work. Zero-trust is quickly becoming the go-to approach to improve cybersecurity. 2020 has highlighted significant problems with the traditional network perimeter approach and given the alarming costs of a cyberattack to an organisation, the short-term investment in establishing zero-trust looks to be worthwhile.
Resident Weekly A Exclusive Current Affairs Platform Keyvan Ansari about the effects of singing as a kind of exercise for the body (Is singing a sport?) Singing does not help you lose weight, but it does give your lungs and body a good workout. It is thought that you can sing up to 136 calories per hour. If you’re interested in how multi-calorie singing can burn, try reading this article and doing the calorie counting equation. Singing is not considered an aerobic exercise. But it also increases lung capacity, builds chest wall muscles and strengthens your respiratory system. It is important to include a variety of exercises in your diet, from strength training to cardio activities, so singing can definitely add something to your workout plan. Consider singing as an exercise in endurance. If you learn a proper breathing technique, it is an activity that will increase your endurance and endurance. To get a full body workout, try to include other parts of the body, such as the heart, work on raising the heart rate through, singing and dancing on stage to burn more calories! (The relationship between lame diaphragm and singing according to Keyvan Ansari) Pelvic diaphragm and singing When it comes to exercise, your pelvic floor may be the first muscle group you think of. But the pelvic floor plays an important role in strengthening your breath and can be strengthened and trained just like any other muscle group. The pelvic floor or pelvic diaphragm is part of your lower torso. Between your abdomen and your legs, when you try to urinate, your pelvic floor muscles feel contracted. These muscles also support your abdominal muscles while singing. The pelvic floor helps keep your body upright without the need to pinch or squeeze the diaphragm into place, and you do not want to lean or sit down. Just like other parts of the body, you can train your pelvic floor or pelvic diaphragm to improve your singing technique. Squats are great for all areas of the body, including the pelvic floor. Its movements also help to warm the pelvic floor muscles error: Content is protected !!
What Are Different Types of Police Misconduct? Over the past few years, police misconduct has been at the forefront of the cultural zeitgeist. There have been a series of high-profile incidents in which police officers used deadly force against perceived threats. While these incidents represent the worst possible outcome of police misconduct, there are several different ways in which the police abuse their power. If you have experienced police misconduct, you should consult with a skilled attorney who can help you pursue justice. An experienced attorney will be able to evaluate the facts of your case and explain your legal options. What Is Police Misconduct? Police misconduct involves a law enforcement officer, or officers, engaging in violent or other illegal behavior under the color of law. Such conduct by an officer, or officers, usually results in one or more civil rights violations. Common examples of police misconduct include, but are not limited to, the following: • Excessive or unnecessary force • Forced or coerced confessions • False arrest • Inappropriate use of tasers, nightsticks, and pepper spray • Illegal search and seizure • Falsified evidence • Verbal abuse • Sexual abuse • Rape • Wrongful shootings • Racial profiling • Assault • Intimidation • Threats of violence • Inmate abuse • Wrongful death If you have experienced any form of police misconduct, you should consult with an experienced attorney to discuss your legal options. Police Misconduct and the Law Police misconduct can involve federal and state laws, but most cases often become a matter of constitutional rights. If a victim’s constitutional rights have been violated, the victim may file a claim against the federal government. There are several laws that govern police conduct, but some of the most commonly cited laws include: The Fourth Amendment: Use of Excessive Force The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the use of excessive force in the course of an arrest, investigatory stop, or other seizure. Excessive force by a law enforcement officer is force that is objectively unreasonable under the circumstances. The Fourth Amendment: Denial of Medical Care Denying an injured person (even a person under arrest) medical care can be a violation of that person’s Fourth Amendment rights. These claims usually arise during a police encounter involving one of the following circumstances: • Injuries to an arrested person are caused by the officer’s actions. • The police encounter involves someone under the influence of drugs. • Someone experiencing a mental health breakdown requires prompt medical or mental health assistance. A person who has been denied medical care may be able to seek justice against the responsible party. If you have been denied medical care during a police encounter, contact a skilled attorney who may be able to help you with your claim. Section 1983 of U.S. Code 42 The other statute that informs police misconduct cases is Section 1983 of U.S. Code 42. This statute states that no peace officer can deny any resident or citizen his or her constitutional or federal rights. Compensation for Police Misconduct Recovering damages in a police misconduct case will depend on the severity of the misconduct and the nature of the injuries suffered by the victim as a result of the misconduct. The types of damages that one can recover in a police misconduct lawsuit include the following: • Compensatory damages: These include property damage, costs of medical care, loss of earnings if the person has missed work, and potential future loss of financial earnings. • Aggravated damages: These damages are awarded in the exceptional case where the police conduct was especially egregious and where the officer’s conduct subjected a person to distress, embarrassment, and humiliation. • Exemplary damages: These are awarded when police misconduct amounted to an oppressive, arbitrary, or unconstitutional action. Exemplary damages are intended to serve as a deterrent to future wrongdoing. Contact the Skilled Attorneys at Rubin, Glickman, Steinberg & Gifford, P.C. At Rubin, Glickman, Steinberg & Gifford, P.C., our attorneys will work hard to hold police officers and officials accountable for their misconduct. If you have been the victim of police misconduct, do not hesitate to reach out to us today. We offer free consultations, and we look forward to serving you. You can contact us by calling (215) 822-7575 or visiting our website.
Publications and Research Document Type Publication Date The purpose of this project was to find out the impact of the French jargon used in the culinary and pastry industry and its origin. I investigated this topic through reading online articles that were based on the research of others. I found out that after the French Revolution, the French language as well as its culture was influenced many parts of Europe. Prior to that, other cultures influenced Europe, but regarding cooking, French was the one that stuck around to this day. It was shocking to hear those other cultures like Italian and German had a large impact on Europe when today their culture is not as popular in the kitchen like French cooking. French words are used in the kitchen globally and not translated because usually is one word or less words than other languages to describe a certain technique. French words are also used for recipe names which are also typically not translated into other languages for simplicity. It may seem the influence the French had should have been greater as if they are the world leaders of cooking since that’s the way the world seems so see it. However, it is less complicated than expected. The French chefs were the only ones that recorded these techniques and recipes in a way that they could be shared with other parts of Europe. From these records, other countries became exposed to the jargon the French used. They followed it since it seemed easier with fewer words to describe a technique or recipe. This poster, first place winner for non-STEM individual projects, was presented at the 35th Semi-Annual Dr. Janet Liou-Mark Honors & Undergraduate Research Poster Presentation, Dec. 2, 2021. Mentor: Prof. Khalid Lachheb (Humanities). you may Download the file to your hard drive.
The Origins and History of Gift Giving The Origins and History of Gift Giving Gift-giving has been around for thousands of years. The entire basis of human civilization depends on social relations, and there's no surprise that man is a social creature. Our dependence on one another is more than a means of safety and security; it ensures that our bonds transcend the realm of time, and stay everlasting. We thrive in each other's company and use gift-giving as a means to express our feelings, emotions, and thoughts. Whether we give gifts as a token of love, for appreciation, to show gratitude, or to make someone feel better, the art of giving gifts is engrained in our DNA. To understand where this gift-giving tradition comes from, we must go back in time to look at its origin and understand how it has become so integral to us as a species. From the Cavemen We are the descendants of cavemen, and whether we like it or not, their values and traditions have been passed on to us through time. Gift-giving is one such tradition. It's a human activity that dates back to our species way before the advent of civilizations. Cavemen would give gifts to one another to express their appreciation and affection. These cavemen would give presents to show their dominance, where the gift symbolized a caveman's ability to provide for and support his family, gain respect, power, and the attraction of females. However, their gifts were naturally different and primitive; they would gift things like tree barks, animal teeth, or stones that could be used as ornaments in necklaces. Ancient Egyptians and the Tradition of Gift Giving The ancient Egyptians were one of the first civilizations to make a tradition out of gift-giving. They would routinely gift presents to their pharaohs on their coronation, which was considered to be their birthday. This stemmed from the belief was they were transformed into Gods as they descended upon the throne, making this occasion an important point in their lives. The pharaohs were also given gifts every time they built pyramids for their afterlife. Some of the gifts given to royalty included crops, grains, flowers, jewelry, clothing, furniture, and even money. Ancient Egyptians also had a tradition of burying gifts with the deceased as they believed that these gifts would help the dead transition into their afterlife with ease and comfort. Wealthy members of the society were buried with expensive, more elaborate gifts, while ordinary citizens were given everyday items like food and cutlery. Ancient Greeks: The Trendsetters Influenced from the Egyptian cultures, the Greeks soon followed the tradition of celebrating the birthday of a God. Birthdays are a universal celebration throughout the world; they are seen in every culture, and they always revolve around gifts. This expression of gifts on birthdays is believed to have originated from ancient Greece, where people held the religious belief that evil spirits haunted the birthday person. So, people would visit that person and bring along gifts and good wishes to protect them from evil spirits. Candles were also lit for the same reason: blowing candles and making a wish was a way of sending one's message to the Greek Gods. Ancient Greece also had a tradition to welcome travelers into one's home with gifts, just in case they were Gods in disguise (The Greeks were very religious!). They also used gifts to show emotions, strengthen relationships, and offer help. Ancient Rome and the Gift Giving Tradition The Roman culture revolved around reciprocity. Although the traditions of Rome were influenced by Greek society, they were more thoroughly practiced here than in Greece. Romans, for example, had annual birthday celebrations while Greeks celebrated birthdays of Gods yearly. In Rome, the gift-giving culture was so deeply rooted that they had a legally recognized institution of patronage where a patron, the protector, benefactor and sponsor, would have a client of an inferior social class. The former would help and favor the client, building a strong bond between both (or a group). These patrons would exchange gifts for their clients, assist them in legal matters, help them financially, provide food and clothing for them. Romans did, however, give gifts and favors for motives. There was no notion of selflessness and charity back then (which later appeared with the emergence of Christianity). They frequently used gift exchanges to form strong bonds, including those of love, trust, and affection (for example, Cicero's friendship with Hortensius). The Middle Ages and the Evolution of Gifts From a way to appease gods and to appreciate one another, gifting tradition changed toward a more political nature. In the middle ages, gifts were used to strengthen and foster religious beliefs, celebrate family milestones, political favors to those in charge, and forging alliances. The tradition of gift exchanges on New Year's also originated around this era, where foods were gifted to symbolize generosity and power. They also gifted books and manuscripts to one another as they were expensive back then. It was common to see rulers giving gifts to other rulers, for family members to exchange gifts with one another, and for people to give freely to those less fortunate. The Middle Ages also saw a sharp rise in romantic endeavors. Romantic gifts were often given from men to women, with men presenting women with personalized garments or performing love songs to win over women. They also had a tradition of sewing one's hair into the clothes of their loved ones! Dowry arose out of the middle ages as well. Dowry was a gift of property, livestock, money, and other valuables that a man would give the father of the woman he wanted to marry. This way, he could win the approval of his potential spouse's father. The Native American Culture and Gifting For thousands of years, "Potlatch" was practiced in the native American culture that lasted several days. It was a gift-giving feast that was a part of many different occasions, including weddings, deaths, births, and more. The ceremony focused greatly on the gift giver and not the receiver; it was to reaffirm and establish the status of the gift giver, with the attention on how expensive the gift was. The more expensive the gift, the higher the status of the gift giving individual. This made gift giving an important tradition in native America. Canvas for Mom Gifting in the Modern Day Although over the years traditions have changed, gift-giving remains integral even today. Each culture in our world has its unique celebrations and gifting traditions that are all about goodwill, appreciation, and love. The Chinese celebrate Chinese New Year for two weeks. The beginning of the year is all about giving gifts wrapped in red wrapping paper, and money is put in red envelopes because red is the color of wealth and prosperity for the Chinese. Colors like black, white, and blue are avoided as they're associated with death. Wedding gifts are a common tradition, but Italy has taken it up a notch. The groom's tie is cut into many pieces, and the guests buy them. The money collected goes to the couple as a symbol of starting their new life together, a little financial help! A popular celebration in Japan is a festive called 'seven five three' where the Japanese children aged 3, 5, and 7 are taken to a shrine and given sweets. This is because years ago, many Japanese children would simple pass away before reaching these ages. Diwali is the biggest gift-giving event in India, where good is celebrated over evil. The gifts are exchanged on the 4th day of the event and symbolize joy. Russia has a pretty cool birthday tradition for children where every child gets to feel special. Children get to play a game where gifts are hung from a clothesline, and every child gets to decide which present to take home. Middle East The Arab world is promotes a gift-giving culture. Arabs have celebrations all year round, and gifting is a common occurrence. Because hospitality and friendliness are a given for them, they make gift-giving an act to bring each other together and reflect their graciousness. So, birthdays, births, marriages, including religious festivities like Ramadan, and eid are celebrated every year. Neighbors also get gifts, even if you don't know them! Their generosity knows no end. Even when you visit someone's home, you may end up getting a gift. Moreover, because Arabs have extended families and strong ties, celebrations often include everyone and lots of gifts! So, Should We Give Gits? Over the years, considerable research has been done on the feeling of well-being that occurs during gift-giving. A study conducted at the National Institute of Health measured brain activity among those that received and gave gifts. It turns out, in both cases the reward centers of the brain were lit up! This suggests that our brains love giving and receiving gifts. Giving gifts makes us like each other more, and so, it's ideal to engage in this activity more often! Gifts Make Us Happy According to a study conducted by Michael Norton and colleagues at Harvard Business School, giving money to someone else lifted the spirits of participants more than spending the money on themselves, even though the participants expected higher happiness levels for spending on themselves. Gifting is Good for Our Health Gifts can impact our physical health too. Much research conducted that links gifting and generosity to better physical health, even among the old and sick. Stephen Post, in his book Why Good Things Happen to Good People,has shown that gifting or giving increases the health of those battling with chronic illness. Researchers suggest that giving can improve physical health because it reduces stress, which is linked to being the cause of a variety of health problems. It Promotes Social Connection And what are humans, if not social animals? When we give gifts, we're very likely to be rewarded back, sometimes by the receiver and sometimes by someone else. This exchange of gifts promotes feelings of appreciation, trust, and cooperation and makes our bonds with one another strong. This, in turn, has a positive effect on our mental well-being and physical health. An Increased Sense of Gratitude Whether you give a gift or receive it, the whole process of gift-giving can bring forth feelings of gratitude. Gratitude is a crucial aspect of happiness, good health, and strong social connections. Expressing gratitude to one another helps us be more optimistic, feel better about our lives, and strengthen the connection both parties have. It's Contagious Giving causes a ripple effect; when one person is generous to another, it often inspires others to be generous to them. Altruism is contagious and has been linked to higher levels of oxytocin that bring forth feelings of happiness, warmth, and connection. Why Choose Amour Prints? Gift giving is more than a tradition; it's about the gesture, warmth, and affection one holds for another. At Amour Prints, we understand the language of love and know it demands to be felt and shown. What other way is there to let your loved one know how important they are to you, that they're constantly being thought of, than with a customized gift? At Amour Prints, we take love as seriously, and so, we have an extensive variety of custom canvas prints that you can choose to gift your loved one. Our canvases are made with high-quality ink and come with a strong wooden back frame. With their UV-resistant coating, you can be sure of them lasting years on end without any defects. Our range of personalized canvas prints includes romantic couple canvas art, custom Spotify music art canvas, custom baby Spotify music canvas, couple canvas prints, wedding song lyric canvas art, love custom music art canvas, and more. If you don't know which canvas print is for you, then take a canvas quiz with us today and find out! To give your gift-gifting a personal touch, contact us today.
Skip to content An apophysis is a growth plate where a tendon attaches to bone. If the tendon pulls too hard, the bone of the growth plate might be injured (apophysitis), although rarely is it pulled right off. The knee is the most common location for trouble, but we see a reasonable number around the pelvis. The location that the hamstrings come off the back of the pelvis is called the ischium, and is a boney prominence that we sit on. If injured, this causes a problem both with pain running, and tenderness to sit on. There may be rare instances that surgery can be considered, for example young athletes. Before embarking on surgery though, parents and the young athlete need to understand we are trying to achieve what nature is saying is too hard for their body! If a fragment is substantially displaced, intervention makes sense but the majority of traction apophysitis cases settle with reduction of the activity causing the problem. This MRI is looking from the side in a standing position. This is minor damage to the growth plate and may settle with prolonged rest. Drilling and fixing it with screws involves some risk and the tenderness won’t improved quickly, it may take many months. However the surgery allows moderate training at eight weeks. Chronic ischial apophysitis in a gymnast treated with transapophyseal drilling to effect “apophysiodesis”. A case report. Am J Sports Med 2003 Mar-Apr;31(2):294-6 (ISSN: 0363-5465) Holmstrom MC; Greis PE; Horwitz DS Avulsion fractures of the pelvis in children: a report of 32 fractures and their outcome. Skeletal Radiol 1994 Feb;23(2):85-90 (ISSN: 0364-2348) Sundar M; Carty H Mr David Mitchell
Skip to content The security of states - and of the communities and individuals within them - has long raised profound challenges for the Rule of Law.Protecting against threats of terrorism and other serious crimes can require state agencies to act in ways that infringe liberties, often covertly. At the same time, living securely demands that the scope and limits of state powers are appropriate and respect rights, that institutions and agencies of the state are accountable and transparent. The Rule of Law requires the Government to hold to certain minimum standards, even when it is upholding national security by countering attacks on democracy. Compliance with the Rule of Law is a prerequisite to maintaining international peace and security. In this programme of work, we investigate how to ensure that states perform their duty to ensure security in a way which respects the Rule of Law, including international law, and how to ensure that international legal frameworks keep up with technological developments in the means available to States to protect security. Keep In Touch
Python Method Resolution Order and C3 linearization algorithm Method Resolution Order (MRO) is a order in which methods should be inherited in the case of multiple iheritance. C3 linearization algorithm is how MRO works under the hood since version 2.3. Wikipedia does a great job explaining the algorithm. It can be reduced to the following steps: 1. Linearization (i.e. resolution order) is a class itself and a merge of the linearizations of its parents and a list of the parents itself 2. Linearization of the class with no parents equals to the class itself. 3. Merge process is done by selecting the first head of the lists which does not appear in the tail of any of the lists. Where head is the first element of the list, and tail is all but first elements of the list. The heads are repeatedly selected and added to the resulting MRO until all the lists are exhausted. 4. If a head cannot be selected while not all the lists are exhausted merge is impossible to compute due to inconsistent orderings of dependencies in the inheritance hierarchy and no linearization of the original class exists. Multiple Inheritance Example Complex multiple inheritance example, courtesy H2power Consider linearization process for a class K1: // first, find the linearizations of K1's parents, L(A), L(B), and L(C), // and merge them with the parent list [A, B, C] L(K1) := [K1] + merge(L(A), L(B), L(C), [A, B, C]) // class A is a good candidate for the first merge step, because it only // appears as the head of the first and last lists = [K1] + merge([A, O], [B, O], [C, O], [A, B, C]) // class O is not a good candidate for the next merge step, because it also // appears in the tails of list 2 and 3; but class B is a good candidate = [K1, A] + merge([O], [B, O], [C, O], [B, C]) // class C is a good candidate; class O still appears in the tail of list 3 = [K1, A, B] + merge([O], [O], [C, O], [C]) // finally, class O is a valid candidate, which also exhausts all remaining lists = [K1, A, B, C] + merge([O], [O], [O]) = [K1, A, B, C, O] So at the higher level a naive implementation of the C3 linearization algorith can be expressed as a simple recursion: def mro(cls: type) -> List[type]: Return a list of classes in order corresponding to Python's MRO. result = [cls] if not cls.__bases__: return result return result + _merge([mro(kls) for kls in cls.__bases__], cls.__bases__) Then _merge repeatedly checks if its lists are exhausted and append appropriate heads to the resulting MRO: def _merge(lists) -> list: result: List[Optional[type]] = [] linearizations = DependencyList(lists) while True: if linearizations.exhausted: return result for head in linearizations.heads: if head and (head not in linearizations.tails): # type: ignore # Once candidate is found, continue iteration # from the first element of the list # Loop never broke, no linearization could possibly be found raise ValueError('Cannot compute linearization, a cycle found') In order to hide some lists internals Dependency and DependencyList abstractions are used: from collections import deque from itertools import islice from typing import List, Tuple, Optional class Dependency(deque): def head(self) -> Optional[type]: return self[0] except IndexError: return None def tail(self) -> islice: # type: ignore Return islice object, which is suffice for iteration or calling `in` return islice(self, 1, self.__len__()) except (ValueError, IndexError): return islice([], 0, 0) class DependencyList: A class represents list of linearizations (dependencies) The last element of DependencyList is a list of parents. It's needed to the merge process preserves the local precedence order of direct parent classes. def __init__(self, lists: Tuple[List[type]]) -> None: self._lists = [Dependency(i) for i in lists] def __contains__(self, item: type) -> bool: Return True if any linearization's tail contains an item return any([item in l.tail for l in self._lists]) # type: ignore def __len__(self): size = len(self._lists) return (size - 1) if size else 0 def __repr__(self): return self._lists.__repr__() def heads(self) -> List[Optional[type]]: return [h.head for h in self._lists] def tails(self) -> 'DependencyList': # type: ignore Return self so that __contains__ could be called Used for readability reasons only return self def exhausted(self) -> bool: Return True if all elements of the lists are exhausted return all(map(lambda x: len(x) == 0, self._lists)) def remove(self, item: Optional[type]) -> None: Remove an item from the lists Once an item removed from heads, the leftmost elements of the tails get promoted to become the new heads. for i in self._lists: if i and i.head == item: The whole codebase can be found in my c3linear repository. You can install it from the source code or via PyPI: python install # from the source code pip install c3linear # from the Cheese Shop Then just import it and check against Python’s object’s mro method: from c3linear.mro import mro class A: pass class B(A): pass mro(B) == B.mro() Take a look at the tests to dive into more complex multiple inheritance examples.
About Social Media Catalytic converters are items of a car’s engine system which helps in reducing the emission of toxins. They are extremely essential since they have avoided much of the smoke as well as pollution that would certainly be covering the biggest cities in the world if they had not been put on cars. They do not, nevertheless, always function correctly and also much frequently individuals drive about in a car which is releasing even more pollutants than is necessary. Catalytic converters are engine add-ons which substantially lower exhaust levels to virtually absolutely nothing by filtering system exhaust as it files through the engine system. It accomplishes this by advertising and developing a chain reaction when the exhaust hits the converter which will change the damaging chemical exhausts into benign substances as well as water. The parts of exhaust which are normally the most unsafe to the setting, hydrocarbon as well as carbon monoxide, can be decreased to virtually none existent levels. This procedure only works, nevertheless, if the catalytic converter is functioning as it should. There are several converters in automobiles out when driving today which are not filtering system the exhaust all right and are for that reason launching the unsafe toxins into the air. The most effective way to tell if your car’s catalytic converter is or is not functioning is to obtain an exhausts examination. If the discharges examination is fallen short, your converter requires to be repaired or replaced. The issues that usually result in the failing of an exhausts examination are an boost in back stress, a low air supply, or a malfunctioning converter. An rise in back pressure will certainly cause lower speed power, reduced fuel economic situation, or delaying. A low air supply or a malfunctioning converter will result in greater hydrocarbon as well as carbon monoxide discharges and can cause increased back stress. There is likewise converter poisoning, which is a accumulation important which layer the converter as well as make the get in touch with in between the toxins and also the converter impossible and also hence the chemical reaction used to filter the exhaust is incapable to happen. Many of these problems can cause a catalytic converters temperature to increase and also result, possibly, in a meltdown. A lot of these problems will at some point bring about the car itself breaking down as well as damage to various other parts of the engine. In order to prevent this, cars and truck owners need to pay special focus to their exhausts as well as have their catalytic converter inspected when receiving typical upkeep on their car. The majority of these concerns call for the replacement of the entire converter yet some of them can be stopped or fixed without replacement. know more about scrap catalytic converter price guide here.
: We use modals to express possibility, certainty, necessity, and conditionality; to give advice and permission; and to request and warn. Modals: can, could, would, should, might, may, must, will, shall, have to, needs to, had better, and ought to. Functions Modals Examples possibility must, will/would, should, may, can/could, might I might try riding a unicycle. ability can, could I can ride a unicycle. necessity must, have to, should I must try riding a unicycle while I'm here. permission may, could, can Can I try your unicycle? You should make more of an effort in your studies. (advice) You should have made more of an effort in your studies. (past) He said that he might come if he can get out of work early. (possibility) He said that he might have come if he could have gotten out of work early. (past) Jerry would go to Hawaii if he had some vacation time. (conditional) Jerry would have gone to Hawaii if he had had some vacation time. (past) Susan had better start arriving on time if she wants to keep her job. (warn) Susan needs to work harder if she wants to pass the course. (necessity) If he missed the meeting, he must have been very sick. (certainty; past) Modals: must, have to Rule 1: We use MUST to express personal feelings about having to do something. Example 1: I must call Uncle John this weekend to see how he's doing. Example 2: Republicans must give up something if there is ever going to be an agreement on debt reduction. Rule 2: We use HAVE TO to express facts. Example 1: Unfortunately, I'm going to miss the party. I have to finish this report before tomorrow. Example 2: He has to wear safety glasses while welding. Rule 3: We use MUST to talk about present and future actions. Example: They must get organized if they want this business to succeed. Negative Forms Rule 4: MUST NOT and DO NOT HAVE TO have different meanings. Example 1: He must not take this medication before driving. = For his safety, he cannot take this medication before driving. Example 2: He doesn't have to take the early train. Let's make it for eleven in the morning. = It is not necessary to leave that early because the meeting will be later in the morning.
1. Forum 2. > 3. Topic: Scottish Gaelic 4. > 5. "Tha an fhearg ort." "Tha an fhearg ort." Translation:You are angry. July 15, 2020 The suspense this language inherently has; to not know who is angry until the very end of the sentence. I am so hung up on remembering these two words that I actually answered, "you have a squirrel on you." Wont get it wrong again. why not thusa, is anger not emphatic? I'm sorry if I'm looking for logic as per English here but this is confusing as far as where i am in the lessons, the emphatic thusa is used in a comparison, in the same way english would emphasize like "not me, YOU" if that makes sense. i dont think we would always put that same emphasis on a normal sentence simply stating "you are angry" unless we were comparing to someone else who is not angry ("he's not angry, YOU are angry" for example) im sure there are other reasons to use emphatics in Gaelic but i'm also still a beginner, hope this helped but if i'm wrong correct me lol In Gaelic fearg/acras(hunger) etc is 'on you' (air+thu'). It is a Gaelic idiom. Learn Scottish Gaelic in just 5 minutes a day. For free.
(Upload on October 2 2020) [ 日本語 \| English ] Health (健康) Mount Usu / Sarobetsu post-mined peatland From left: Crater basin in 1986 and 2006. Cottongrass / Daylily [mental health, health control, safety manual] Environmental medicine (環境医学) Criteria of causal relation (cause-and-effect relationship) in observation researches (different from correlation on statistics) Genealogy of causal calculus Koch's four postulates (Koch Robert 1843-1910) 1. the microorganism or other pathogen must be present in all cases of the disease 2. the pathogen can be isolated from the diseased host and grown in pure culture 3. the pathogen from the pure culture must cause the disease when inoculated into a healthy, susceptible laboratory animal 4. the pathogen must be reisolated from the new host and shown to be the same as the originally inoculated pathogen Ex. Minamata disease follows Koch's postulates → source of the disease Ex. Itai-itai disease does not follow the postulates → laboratory animal did not remain free from the disease after Cd inoculation Evans's eight conditions (Evans RS) Nine criteria proposed by Hill → perspectives = five criteria of Surgeon General (米国公衆衛生局長諮問委員会) 1. consistency (関連の一致性) 2. temporality (関連の時間性) 3. biological plausibility (生物学的説得性) 4. strength (関連の強固性) 5. coherence (関連の整合性) 6. experimental evidence (実験的証明性) 7. specificity (関連の特異性) 8. biological gradient (生物学的勾配) 9. analogy (類似性) Component cause Web of causation Popperian and probability theorists (蓋然性論者) Epidemiology (疫学) The characteristics of medicine Hippocrates (BC 460-BC375): patriarc of epidemiology Claudius Galenus (130-200) Bernardino Ramazzini 1633-1714 "De Morbis artificum diatriba (働く人々の病気)" (1700) discussiong about labor and the envrironments → cosistent with the insight of the present industrial hygiene Johann Peter Frank (1754-1821) "System einer vollständigen medizinischen Polizei" Edwin Chadwick "Report on an inquiry into the sanitary condition of the laboring population of Great Britain" (1842) Reincke JJ Edward Jenner (1749-1823) John Snow (1813-1858) anesthesist of Queen Victoria The third outbreak of cholera → miasma theory (Broad Street affair) Distribution of cholera Determining the source of the cholera outbreaks = St. James District = 220 per 10000 people vs the other districts = 22/10000人 → mostly in and around Broad Street → spotlight to well = people who drank water at a specific well got cholera frequently "On the mode of communication of cholera"(1855): cholera is transmitted by water Robert Koch (1843-1910) 1883: discovered cholera bacillus → no cholera emergence at the time → effectiveness and win of epidemiology Claude Bernard (1813-1878) "Introduction á l'étude de la médicine expérimentale" Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902) Max von Pettenkofer (1818-1895) Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) Takagi K (高木兼寛) beriberi occurrence is related to food quality Eijkman M30 beriberi occurrence owing to white rice ↔ heal by bran (VB1 was not discovered) Suzuki U (鈴木梅太郎, 1910/M43): discovered VB1 from rice bran Pandemic (パンデミック, 世界流行, 汎発流行) occurring on a scale which crosses international boundaries 430BC-426 Plague of Athens 165-180___Antonine Plague 541-750___Plague of Justinian 1331-1353_Black Death 1918-1920_Spanish flu > Epidemic (エピデミック, 流行) within community > Endemic (エンデミック, 地域流行) Pollution disease (公害病) ≈ disease caused by environmental contamination, disease caused by environmental pollution, disease caused by pollution, environmental disease, pollution-caused diseases, pollution-related disease, pollution-triggered disease The four major pollution-related disease (日本四大公害病) Minamata disease Second Minamata disease (mercury poisoning in Niigata Prefecture) Yokkaichi asthma Itai-itai disease Eenvironmental hormone (環境ホルモン) ≈ (environmental) endocrine disrupter, endocrine disturbing chemicals, endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDC), environmental hormone, hormone-disrupting chemicals, hormone-disrupting substances [Note on a lecture in WA] Mental health (メンタルヘルス・精神保健) Anxious (不安) Stressed people often decide two things: 1. The situation is dangerous, difficult or painful. 2. They do not have the resources/do not know how to cope. → To effectively deal with stress you must: 1. appraise the situation realistically 2. know that you have the resources to cope How to get the most out of the relaxation techniques 1. Practice the exercises regularly. Every day is the best. If you can not manage time every day, set aside at least three times per week. In the long run, the more relaxed you are, the more you will be able to accomplish. 1. Choose a quite, comfortable place to do your exercises. Make sure you will not be interrupted. Let your family and friends know that you need this time to look after your mental and physical health. The healthier you are, the more you will be able to give to others. 2. Understand your personal reactions to stress, then choose the techniques best suited to your needs. 3. Body awareness is the first step to recognizing and reducing stress. 4. Practice prevention ? educate yourself on the subject, do relaxation exercises. Being relaxed when you start and end your day will prevent stress-related symptoms. Knowing how to cope will prevent stress. 5. Ask yourself if you are interpreting situations realistically. 6. Tell yourself you will be able to cope and that you will find the necessary resources either within yourself or from others. My stress management program I. Basic requirements for stress management I am aware of my stress level. Its source. My response. I am accepting of myself. I know and accept that managing unrelieved stress requires effort from me. I have assessed my coping skills. I am developing more effective skills as needed. II. Stress Management strategies A. Changing your life situation I eat a balanced diet. I limit my intake of fat, salt and sugar. I do not smoke. I do not abuse alcohol or drugs. I am neither overweight or underweight. I drink less than four caffeinated beverages daily. I exercise for 30 minutes at least three time weekly. I get enough sleep every night. I am happy in my work. I am financially comfortable. I reach out and receive support from friends and/or family. I plan major changes in my life. B. Relaxation I am able to relax on cue by using my relaxation skills. I participate in relaxing/leisure. C. Changing your mind My goals are realistic. I am able to accept criticism. For the most part, I believe I am in control of what happens to me. Generally, I am a confident person. III. Interpretation: What strategies are you currently utilizing to manage stress? If your stress management is weak in any of the three sections (A, B, C), you should focus development of more effective stress management in these areas: A. Changing your life situation B. Relaxation C. Changing your mind (thoughts, perceptions, attitudes) Noise stress (騒音ストレス) Effects of noise on human physiological effect ↖_____↗ psychological effect activity interference ↙____ ↘ social impact Fig. The effects of noise on various human activities Physiological and psychological effects Physiological effects: auditory disorder (hypacusis), nterference with sleep Psychological effects: noisiness, conversation interference, lowering operating efficiency Health control (健康管理) Chemical sensitivity, CS (化学物質過敏症) 1) Sick building syndrome, SBS (シックハウス症候群) [ pollen ] 2) Pollen allergy (花粉症) = hay fever The mojor plants that induce pollen allergy are white birch (Betula platyphylla var. japonica), pastures, such as orchard grass (Dactylis glomerata), narrowleaf plantain (Plantago lanceolata) and mugworts (Artemisia spp.) in Hokkaido. • Pollen dispersal periods in Hokkaido Alnus japonica: late March - middle April Betula platyphylla: late April - middle June Pastures, represented by Dactylis glomerata: late May - early July Alnus japonica: late March - middle April Betula platyphylla: late April - middle June Pastures, represented by Dactylis glomerata: late May - early July Plantago lanceolata: middle May - early August Artemisia spp.: middle August - late September Watery eyes Nasal congestion Runny nose Itchy throat Smoking (喫煙) Quitting smoking is easy. I have done it a thousand times. I am seventy years old, and I must be careful about my health. So I smoke only one cigar at a time. - Mark Twain [microbiology, mycology] Gut bacteria (腸内細菌) microorganisms living in the digestive tracts of animals Gut microbiota (腸内微生物叢) = human gastrointestinal microbiota, gut flora and gut microbiota The four dominant bacterial phyla in the human gut Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Actinobacteria, and Proteobacteria ⇒ The composition changes with age Ex. The composition of gut microbiota in general adult Bacteroides (50%) Bifidobacteria (bifidus) (15%) anaerobic coccus (15%) Eubacterium (10%) Clostridium (10%) Fig. The biosynthesis of bioactive compounds (indole and certain other derivatives) from tryptophan by bacteria in the gut. Indole is produced from tryptophan by bacteria expressing tryptophanase. Clostridium sporogenes metabolizes tryptophan into indole and subsequently 3-indolepropionic acid (IPA), a highly potent neuroprotective antioxidant that scavenges hydroxyl radicals. IPA binds to the pregnane X receptor (PXR) in intestinal cells, thereby facilitating mucosal homeostasis and barrier function. Following absorption from the intestine and distribution to the brain, IPA confers a neuroprotective effect against cerebral ischemia and Alzheimer's disease. Lactobacillus species metabolize tryptophan into indole-3-aldehyde (I3A) which acts on the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) in intestinal immune cells, in turn increasing interleukin-22 (IL-22) production. Indole itself triggers the secretion of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) in intestinal L cells and acts as a ligand for AhR. Indole can also be metabolized by the liver into indoxyl sulfate, a compound that is toxic in high concentrations and associated with vascular disease and renal dysfunction. AST-120 (activated charcoal), an intestinal sorbent that is taken by mouth, adsorbs indole, in turn decreasing the concentration of indoxyl sulfate in blood plasma. Candida, Saccharomyces, Aspergillus, Penicillium, Rhodotorula, Trametes, Pleospora, Sclerotinia, Bullera, Galactomyces, etc. Methanobrevibacter smithii is the most abundant methane-producing archaeal species in the human gastrointestinal microbiota • Ewald PW. 2000. Plague time: The new germ theory of disease. Anchor Books, New York. • Rothman KJ. 2002. Epidemiology – An introduction -. Oxford University Press
Disclosure: This article may contain affiliate links. When you purchase, we may earn a small commission. Top 10 UNIX and Linux System Programming Books- Best of Lot, Must Read I have been sharing programming books in this blog for a long time, starting with core Java; I moved to other related technology, like Spring, Design patterns, Data Structure and Algorithms, etc. Today, I am going to share some of the best UNIX and Linux programming books. The list contains some of the must-read UNIX books from great writers like Sir Richard. Stevens, Sir Brain Kernighan, who has contributed so much to the development of the UNIX operating system. Most of the books on this list are timeless, classic, and don't age with time, much like UNIX, which is around for the last 40 years, and I am sure it will be around for the next 40 years, or maybe forever. How to send HTTP request using curl and wget command from Linux and UNIX? Example Tutorial You can use either curl or wget command to send HTTP requests from UNIX or Linux operating system. Both commands allow you to send GET and POST requests, which means you can also call REST web services. I have a Java web application, which runs on Linux and exposes WebServices. I was writing a UNIX script to download In some data from that web service when I hit by the question, how do I make an HTTP call from UNIX? What is the UNIX command should I use? If you are also facing the same problem, then you have come to the right ht place. Basically, you can use two UNIX commands to make the HTTP request, wget, and curl. Top 5 Books to Learn Scala and Functional Programming - Best of Lot Scala is one of the relatively new programming languages which encompasses best practices of many programming languages. The biggest strength of Scala is that it provides a beautiful blend of object-oriented programming and Functional programming. So, you can not only construct elegant class hierarchies for maximum code reuse and extensibility, but you can also implement their behavior using higher-order functions. It has a concise syntax with less ceremony, which also makes it ideal for scripting but doesn't underestimate its power. Like Java, Scala has also used for mission-critical applications by technical giants like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Intel. 10 Example of lsof commands in Linux and UNIX It's been a long time since I have written anything on UNIX or Linux commands. Still, today, I'll talk about the lsof command, a utility command every system admin and developers love. The lsof command stands for list open file descriptors, and as the name suggests, it is used to find open files by the process. Since almost everything in UNIX are file, you can use lsof command to find an open regular file, a directory, a symbolic link, a special block file, an NFS mounted file, a socket stream, a shared library, a special character file, a regular pipe, a named pipe, an internet socket, a UNIX domain socket, and many others. I have mostly used it to find all the files opened by a particular process, which I will show you in the next section. How to Enroll on Spring Professional Certification (VMware EDU-1202) and Schedule Exam So, you have been preparing for Spring certification for quite a sometime, and now you feel you are ready to take the exam, and it's time to buy the Spring certification voucher and schedule your exam. In this article, I'll show you how to buy the Spring certification voucher online. But, before purchasing a voucher, I would like to remind you that the Spring certification (VMware EDU-1202) voucher is only valid for 90 days, after that it will expire. So, it's best to buy the voucher only if you are ready for the exam i.e. you have gone through several Spring Mock tests and practice tests given in Spring study guides and you are consistently scoring over 80% on them. Do you Need to Pass OCAJP before taking OCPJP - Core Java Certification from Oracle Even though we now have Java 11 certification, I know many Java developers who are going for Java certification like Java SE 8 Programmer 1 and 2, also known as OCAJP 8 and OCPJP 8 with exam code 1Z0-808 and 1Z0-809. Even though Oracle split Java certification into 2 after acquiring Sun Microsystem in 2010, there is still confusion among Java developers whether they need to pass just one OCAJP exam or both OCAJP and OCPJP exam to become a certified Java developer. Well, The short answer is Yes, if you want to become a Java certified engineer then you need to pass both OCAJP and OCPJP, but the long answer depends upon your situation, e.g. whether you hold any previous Java certification or not, which we'll discuss in the second section. How do you find length of a Singly Linked list using Loop and Recursion Hello guys, here is one of the classical programming questions how do you find the length of a linked list using recursion and without recursion. This is not about the LinkedList class of Java API but the linked list data structure, which is made of nodes that contain both data and address of the next node. In order to calculate the length, you need to count all nodes in the linked list. Since it's a singly linked list you can only move in one direction from the head to tail. This coding problem was asked to me on my first interview with a multinational Investment bankAfter that, this question has been asked to me on several occasions in other Programming Job Interviews as well.
does ivermectin kill scabies larvae ivermectina dosis nios plm how to make ivermectin lotion what drugs have ivermectin in them ivexterm monterrey History of Bavaria / Bayern Map of Bavaria Bavaria (German Bayern), a state in southeastern Germany, is bounded on the north by the states of Thuringia and Saxony, on the northeast by the Czech Republic, on the southeast and south by Austria, and on the west by the states of Baden-Württemberg and Hesse. Munich is the capital and largest city. Other important cities are Nuremberg, Augsburg, and Regensburg. Bavaria is the largest state of Germany. It is drained by the Main River in the northwest and by the Danube River and two of its tributaries, the Inn and Isar rivers, in the southern and central regions. North of the Danube the land is a rolling upland. Along the border with the Czech Republic is the Bavarian Forest, which reaches an elevation of 1457 m (4780 ft). South of the Danube the land is a rising upland cut by numerous river valleys. In the extreme southern part of the state are the Bavarian Alps, the highest mountains in Germany. Area, 70,546 sq km (27,238 sq mi); population (1990 estimate) 11,448,800. Bavaria was conquered by the Romans in the 1st century BC and resettled by Germanic tribes in the 5th and 6th centuries. It became a possession of Charlemagne in 787 and was ruled by the Carolingian dynasty until the 10th century. In 1180 it passed to the Bavarian family of Wittelsbach. During the Reformation Bavaria remained staunchly Roman Catholic and was consequently ravaged by Protestant forces during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648). The fertile soil and strategic position of the region made it a highly prized possession, and it was frequently invaded by foreign armies in the 17th and 18th centuries. Coat of Arms of Bavaria The War of the Bavarian Succession, (1778-79), conflict was caused by the opposing claims that arose to various parts of the kingdom of Bavaria on the death of Maximilian Joseph, elector of Bavaria (1727-77). With his death the electoral house became extinct, and the legal heir to Bavaria became Charles Theodore, head of the elder branch of the house of Wittelsbach. Austria, then ruled jointly by Maria Theresa and her son, Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, had an old claim to Lower Bavaria and part of the Upper Palatinate, together constituting about one-third of the electorate. Charles Theodore wished his illegitimate issue accepted as princes of the Holy Roman Empire; to induce Joseph II to do so, he recognized the Austrian territorial claims. In 1778 Austrian troops occupied the territories. Flag of Bavaria Frederick the Great of Prussia, however, would not accept any move that would strengthen Austria’s power and influence in southern Germany; particularly, he feared that a strong Austria would interfere with his intention of uniting with Prussia the margravates of Ansbach and Bayreuth. Accordingly, he induced the next in line for the Bavarian succession, Duke Charles of Zweibrücken, to protest the elimination from his future kingdom of one-third of its territory; and, likewise at Frederick’s request, the elector of Saxony Frederick Augustus III (later king of Saxony as Frederick Augustus I), who had another claim to part of Bavaria, also protested the partition arranged by Charles Theodore. Austria refused to withdraw from Bavaria despite these protests, and in July 1778, Frederick the Great and Henry, prince of Saxony, invaded the Habsburg kingdom of Bohemia; the Austrian forces under Joseph II held strong positions along the boundary between Silesia and Austrian lands. The war was of short duration; as neither side wished to risk a battle, it consisted largely of brief skirmishes. It was settled by personal correspondence between Frederick and Maria Theresa and mediation by Russia and France. Because of the hostile attitude of Russia toward Austria during the negotiations, the latter country made most of the concessions in the Treaty of Teschen (1779) that ended the war. The treaty provided that Austria return to Bavaria all the territory it had acquired in the previous year except a small district on the east side of the Inn River; that Austria agree to the future union of Prussia with Ansbach and Bayreuth; and that the elector of Saxony was to receive a money indemnity in lieu of his claims to Bavarian territory. Because the opposing forces had concentrated on trying to cut off each other’s supplies, the conflict was humorously called the Kartoffelkrieg (“Potato War”). During the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815), Bavaria was made a kingdom by Napoleon. In the 19th century, Bavaria tended to support Austria against Prussia. After being defeated with Austria in the Seven Weeks’ War (1866), however, Bavaria sided with Prussia and in 1871 joined the new German Empire. After World War I (1914-1918) a Communist-led group belonging to the Independent Socialist party seized power, but troops of the central government assisted by Bavarian volunteers crushed the rebellion. In the 1920s Bavaria was able to retain a large degree of autonomy, which it lost in the 1930s with the rise of Adolf Hitler. Munich became the headquarters of the National Socialist (Nazi) party during the Hitler regime. After World War II (1939-1945) Bavaria was included in the United States Zone of Occupation. A new constitution was drawn up in 1946, and in 1949 Bavaria became a constituent state of West Germany. In 1990, West and East Germany united and became the Federal Republic of Germany. “Bavaria,” Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) 97 Encyclopedia. (c) 1993-1996 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Leave a comment
What is the Difference Between Kinesiology and Exercise Science? For people who love exercise and movement, the possibility of turning your passion into a career is an exciting one. However, it can be confusing to understand which academic path to take. Kinesiology and exercise science are two related but different areas of study, each with their own focus areas and professional possibilities. What is Kinesiology? Kinesiology is the study of physical activity and human movement. This may include a multitude of individual career paths and specialties. Kinesiology may include training individuals to improve their fitness, managing a sports team, helping patients recover from injury or running a gym. Some individuals with this background spend their time in laboratories learning how joints move differently in microgravity or how repetitive injuries happen and can be prevented. Subfields of kinesiology can include: • Biomechanics: The study of how mechanical principles are applied to human movement. • Sports medicine: A field that specializes in helping individuals who have movement-related injuries. • Massage therapy: The practice of physically manipulating soft tissue in the human body for the purpose of relaxation, pain relief and recovery. • Occupational therapy: The practice of helping patients improve their quality of life through the enhancement of bodily movement in daily life. • Physical therapy: The practice of helping individuals optimize the use of their bodies. • Sports management: A field that focuses on the business aspects of sports and recreation. • Sports psychology: The study of understanding and improving the mental performance of athletes and others who participate in sports settings. • Coaching: The practice of helping sports teams train and play successfully. • Aquatics: The practice of helping others use and improve their performance in water sports. • Adapted physical activity: The practice of helping with the motor and physical fitness needs of people with disabilities. People who choose to make a career in kinesiology can do so in nearly every sector of the economy. Kinesiology professionals may work in government agencies, private companies or nonprofit organizations. They can make their careers within the world of professional athletics or in hospitals and outpatient centers. One of the major benefits of this field is its flexibility and potential to have a positive impact on a range of individuals. What is Exercise Science? While kinesiology is the general study of how we move, exercise science is a subfield that focuses on how to improve health and wellness through that movement. Also called “exercise physiology,” exercise science might include topics such as strength training, sports nutrition and physical education. Professionals in this field might help individuals improve their physical fitness levels, study the biology of motor skills or help elite athletes improve their performance. They might help hospital patients better their health through physical activity or work with corporations to develop wellness programs for their employees. Professionals in exercise science might work in any of the following areas: • Motor behavior: How people learn, develop and control motor skills • Sport pedagogy: The study of the intersection between education and sports • Nutrition: The study of food, nutrients and how humans should eat for optimal physical performance • Athletics: The study and practice of sports and physically-oriented games • Geriatric wellness and exercise: The study of how to optimize physical wellness for senior adults • Commercial fitness: A field concerned with the mass marketing and delivery of fitness programs, equipment and spaces • Conditioning: The practice of improving fitness through exercise, including strength, agility, coordination, endurance and speed • Fitness within hospital settings: The practice of helping people who are hospitalized with sickness or injury ease discomfort, improve their motor functions and better their health • Corporate wellness: A sector that focuses on providing incentives and wellness programs for corporations and their employees • Cardiac rehabilitation: A specialization that helps patients improve their heart health after a cardiac event, such as a heart attack, heart surgery or angioplasty • Pediatric wellness and exercise: The study of how to optimize physical wellness for children and teenagers Those who study exercise science have a more specialized understanding of the human body. This means they can build careers in spaces that truly value their expertise. They often work in gyms, rehabilitation centers and hospitals. Exercise science allows practitioners to truly make a one-on impact on their clients and patients, allowing them to build a career out of providing individualized support. Start moving on your career At East Central University Online, the online Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology helps you move ahead in your career so you can help others improve their health. With a comprehensive curriculum and 80 hours of required hands-on training, you’ll get the opportunity to build real-world experience and gain a broad understanding of the field, giving you a leg up in the job market. With classes offered 100% online, you’ll have the ability to attend class when and where you want, without sacrificing work and life commitments.
On allyship as decolonial practice: Andrea Sullivan-Clarke, ‘Empowering Relations: An Indigenous Understanding of Allyship in North America’, Journal of World Philosophies, 5, 1, 2020, pp. 30-42 Abstract: Colonization is still present in the lives of Indigenous people in North America, and the threats it underwrites—the possibility of losing federal recognition, the failure to investigate the cases of murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls, and the constant challenges to the Indian Child Welfare Act —comprise the day-to-day demands in Indian Country. While allies in the fight against modern-day colonialism would be welcome, the previous failings and insincerities of putative allies and the existence of an ally industrial complex make it difficult to be a contemporary ally to Indigneous people. In this paper, I address the difficulties associated with allyship and discuss why being an active bystander is not sufficient for the needs of Indigenous people in North America. Taking the lessons learned from the actions of Veterans Stand for Standing Rock and Black Lives Matter during #NODAPL, I present some features of a decolonial ally. A decolonial ally is willing to stand in a relationship with Indigenous people, will seek out this relation while recognizing their privilege and affirming the sovereignty of those they seek to serve, and above all, will learn about the people independently, without imposing a burden on marginalized communities. Given that Indigenous people worldwide face similar colonial threats, I conclude by offering some points for future research regarding global Indigenous allyship. %d bloggers like this:
La Niña Conditions for Fall & Winter A couple of weeks ago the NOAA Climate Prediction Center issued a La Niña advisory, which indicates that La Niña conditions were observed during the month of August and have a 75% chance to continue through climatological winter (December – February). Information on the advisory and a more diagnostic discussion can be found here: La Niña refers to one phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation or ENSO, the interaction between the ocean and atmosphere in the tropical Pacific that results in variations in sea surface temperatures, air temperatures, and precipitation. Because of the importance of the Pacific Ocean in the global climate, ENSO not only affects tropical climates but also climates of regions outside of the tropics, including here in the Midwest. The following websites contain more deailed information on La Niña and ENSO more generally. Columbia University: North Carolina Climate Office: Typical La Niña Winter Ocean-atmosphere interactions modulated by ENSO can modify atmospheric circulation and affect remote climates, including the Midwest. These impacts are typically largest in climatological winter. The graphic below shows the typical La Niña impacts to winter climate across North America. La Niña winters tend to be wetter than average in the eastern Midwest, particularly in the Ohio Valley, whereas they tend to be colder than average in the northwest Midwest. Typical La Niña impacts on winter weather in North America. Taken from NOAA The maps below show a different perspective on the impacts of La Niña on Midwest Winter climate. Specifically, the maps show the correlation between temperature/precipitation and the Southern Oscillation Index, a common indicator of ENSO conditions that is based on the observed sea level pressure differences between Tahiti and Darwin, Australia. Positive SOI values typically coincide with La Niña conditions. The top map shows correlations between SOI and winter air temperature across the U.S. The areas shaded in green exhibit a negative correlation between SOI and temperature, meaning that La Niña winters in these areas tend to be colder than average. The bottom map shows correlations between SOI and winter precipitation across the U.S. In this case, the eastern half of Illinois is shaded yellow, indicating a positive correlation. This suggests that La Niña winters tend to be wetter than average in northern and eastern Illinois. The previous maps imply La Niña winters in Illinois tend to be colder and wetter. However, ENSO is only one of many features that influence winter weather in Illinois. Other impactful features include sea surface temperature and sea level pressure in the north Pacific, temperatures and sea ice extent in the Arctic, and long-term trends in both winter temperature and precipitation. The maps below are taken from NOAA’s website and show winter temperature and precipitation anomalies across the U.S. during every La Niña since 1950. Although most La Niña winters tend to be wetter than average in Illinois, we have also experienced drier than average La Niña winters as well. Fall to Winter Outlooks ENSO is an important part of seasonal climate forecasting, and the latest outlooks from the Climate Prediction Center are influenced by ongoing La Niña, while also showing influence from long-term trends and current soil moisture conditions. One-month outlooks show elevated odds of both warmer than drier than normal conditions in October. The three-month outlooks show continued elevated chances of warmer than normal conditions, but equal chance of above, below, and normal precipitation for the period October through December.
Moldavite. Tiny Glass Domed Tektite, Czech Republic $ 59.00 Moldavite Tektite, Tiny Glass Dome. Don't have a room-size cabinet of curiosities? Or a whole wing on your home? Maybe just a single little shelf? Now you can have a mini natural history museum! • Tiny glass dome, cork and label • Impactite origin: Chlum, Czech Republic • Lechatelierite mineraloid • Each specimen weighs ~.35g • Small 1" dome - see US penny for scale • Assembled and labeled in Detroit • Each is unique and will vary slightly from the photos Moldavite is thought to have formed about 15 million years ago in the impact event that produced the Ries and Steinheim craters in southeastern Germany. An incoming asteroid is thought to have broken into two pieces that produced this pair of craters. The impacting bodies approached from the southwest. They hit with a high enough velocity to melt and splatter the target rock across a strewn field that includes portions of what is now the Czech Republic, Austria, and Germany. Most of the splatter solidified in the air and fell to Earth in the Czech Republic. Meteorite experts have named these materials "impactites." Moldavite is also considered to be a mineraloid because it is a naturally occurring, inorganic solid that does not have a crystalline structure. It solidified so quickly that atoms did not have enough time to organize themselves into minerals.
What is the difference between R410a and R32 refrigerant gas? At present, pool heat pumps use either R410a or R32 refrigerant gas to operate. The refrigerant gas is contained inside the heat pump in a pressurised and sealed circuit. The compressor pumps the refrigerant gas around the refrigerant circuit in the heat pump so that the refrigerant gas can absorb heat from the air and transfer this heat to the heat exchanger in the heat pump to heat your pool water. Both R410a and R32 gases are environmentally friendly They are also very efficient and there is virtually no difference in the operating efficiency of the two gases. R32 is slightly more environmentally friendly than R410a gas and has a lower GWP rating (global warming potential). This is only relevant if the refrigerant gas were to leak into the atmosphere. Under normal operation, the refigerant gas remains in the sealed refrigerant circuit – like your fridge and should never leak. The disadvantage of R32 gas is that is is highly flammable and also runs at a higher pressure than R410a. Many airlines therefore will not carry heat pumps that contain R32 gas whereas they will carry those with R410a gas. Both gases are well serviced and maintained by engineers. As there is no operating difference between the two gases and they are both well supported, we believe that it should not be a major factor in selecting a pool heat pump.
Chameleon Discovered in Madagascar May Be World’s Smallest Reptile The male of the newly described species measured just half an inch long from his nose to the base of his tail Brookesia nana The male of a newly discovered species named Brookesia nana may be the smallest adult reptile ever found. Frank Glaw (SNSB / ZSM) Researchers discovered what may be the smallest reptile on the planet in the rainforests of northern Madagascar, reports Jason Bittel for National Geographic. The new miniscule lizard is a species of chameleon named Brookesia nana, and is so small its entire body can fit on a fingertip, according to a new paper published last week in the journal Scientific Reports. A lizard called the Caribbean gecko (Sphaerodactylus ariasae) is the former record holder for smallest reptile on Earth, but the changing of the guard is made somewhat murky by the fact that only the male B. nana specimen found by scientists is smaller than the Caribbean gecko. The minute male B. nana measures just half an inch from nose to the base of the tail, reports Brandon Specktor for Live Science. The female, on the other hand, comes in at three-quarters of an inch in length. According to National Geographic, the former title holder for the smallest chameleon is a member of B. nana’s own genus, Brookesia micra. “It feels a little silly to be like, ‘Oh, it’s a few millimeters smaller than this other thing,’” Mark Scherz, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Potsdam and study co-author, tells National Geographic. “But when millimeters are two or three percent of your body size, then that’s a lot of change. Most of science happens in these small, incremental steps.” Brookesia nana With a body size of just 0.53 inches, this adult male, the so-called nano-chameleon (Brookesia nana), is the smallest known adult animal among all the world's 11,500 known reptile species. Frank Glaw (SNSB / ZSM) The paper also notes that besides the miniscule total length of the male, he distinguished himself by possessing unusually large genitals for his size—almost 20 percent of his body length. Researchers hypothesize that males of the species may sport their oversized sex organs, a two-pronged affair called hemipenes in lizards and snakes, to more effectively copulate with the significantly larger B. nana females. And, if you’re wondering why these researchers were so concerned with this tiny lizard’s undercarriage, it’s because the shape of reptile genitals are often species specific. So, it was one of the first things they examined while sussing out whether they had found a new species, Sherz explained in a series of tweets about the research. So far only two members of the new species have been recorded by scientists, so it is possible their kind’s true average length is longer or shorter than the measurements reported in the study. Other members of the Brookesia genus are tiny as well, and despite being chameleons they don’t have much capacity for color changing, Scherz tells Isaac Shultz of Gizmodo. By virtue of residing in the rainforests of Madagascar, which are being cut down to make room for agriculture and livestock, B. nana is almost certainly threatened with extinction despite a lack of knowledge of its true conservation status, according to Live Science. Fortunately, B. nana’s habitat in an area known as the Sorata massif was recently enshrined in a new protected area, but the reality in Madagascar is that many of its people have little economic recourse but to cut into its remaining forests to grow crops or raise animals, Scherz tells National Geographic. “It’s all good and well to say, ‘Oh, I really hope that people stop deforesting this forest,’” says Scherz. “But until the economic future of Madagascar changes, there’s no hope for any of its wildlife because the people have to eat.”
Click here to join the effort! Bible Commentaries Bell's Commentary on the Bible Jeremiah 18 Verses 1-23 1. Intro: 1. Each one of these pottery pieces tell a story. 1. Qumron – A scribe for a day. 2. Shiloh – Set apart for the Lord. 3. Tel Marisha – Historical Accuracy of the Bible. 4. Lamp – Not to place it under a bushel. 2. The Lord loves using this picture of himself as a Potter! 1. As far back as Gen.2:7 “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground,” – (yatsar - to mould into a form; espec. as a potter;) (Strongs) 3. Here in ch.18 we have a vessel in the making. 4. 2 Parables: Pottery Watching! & Pottery Smashing! 3. Watching the Potter! (1-4) 1. 30 Hebrew words are used for pottery. It was a major industry in the Near East. 2. Note: He received this message not in prayer, not in church(Temple), not from his Pastor, but while watching a man throw a pot in his daily work. 1. “God reveals Himself in strange places & at unexpected seasons. For instance He once revealed Himself in a stable!” (Charles E. Jefferson) 3. See if you can find God in the natural! 4. That’s what devotion books are all about: “Finding spiritual application, from day to day observation!” (me) 5. The potter worked a wheel that was made of 2 parallel stone wheels attached by a shaft. He turned the bottom wheel w/his feet. 1. It is a comfort to know God is the Potter who spins the wheel of “life”. He alone controls its speed.{book-stop the world I want to get off!} (Erma Bombeck) 6. Vs.4 – Here the emphasis is on the “remaking”! 1. We see great examples of the Lord remaking many individuals: Peter, Saul of Taursus; Matthew, me! 2. Q: Is there anyone we’ve given up on? - God is soooo Patient! 3. The Scottish preacher Alexander Whyte used to say, “that the victorious Christian life was a “series of new beginning’s.” 4. God gave new beginning’s to Abraham after lying; Moses after misrepresenting him; David after his adultery; Jonah after his running; Peter after his denying; & he can do the same for us today! 7. Jeremiah watched & saw the clay resisting the potters hand so that the vessel was ruined. 1. But the Potter patiently kneaded the clay into another vessel. 2. This was written in the early years, when they could still repent. 3. I remember 3 ways to start over on a vessel. Collapse it; Cut it down; or squeeze it. 1. Collapse – Someone’s world wcanill collapse in on them, maybe a tragedy happens in there life that reshapes them. 2. Cut it down – Sometimes our pride needs to be cut down. 3. Squeeze it – Other times the Lord puts a squeeze on our finances or something to get our attention. 4. I heard sometimes a potter has to beat on the clay w/a wooden mallet to get all the bubbles out of the clay…Apply that! 4. God Fashions Clay! (5-10) 1. Vs.6 - We are not in the hands of an invisible force but in the hands of a person, Almighty God! {Clay cannot mold itself} 1. Rom.9:19-21 “You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?" But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, "Why have you made me like this?" Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? 2. What other hands has God used to mold your life? 1. Parents; siblings; teachers; coaches; ministries; pastors;… 2. By resisting these, we are resisting the hand of God! 3. Rom.13:1,2 “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. Forthere is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves.” 2. Vs.7-10 - As the Potter had power over the clay, so God has Sov. Authority over the nations. 1. “God is not irresponsible nor arbitrary in what He does. He is free to act as he pleases. His actions are always consistent w/his nature, which is Holy, just, wise, & loving.” 2. Remember He doesn’t need our advice, nor do we have the right to criticize what he does. 1. Rom.11:34 “"For who has known the mind of the LORD? Or who has become His counselor?" 2. Rom.9:20 “O man, who are you to reply against God?” 3. Vs.10God doesn’t change in character nor needs to Repent of his actions, but He has the Sov. Freedom to alter His actions depending upon the responses of the people. 5. God Fashions a Plan! (11-17) 1. Vs.11 - “fashioning” – another Hebrew word related to the word potter. 2. Vs.13 “a very horrible thing” – a strong term for idolatry. 3. Vs.14 Imagine leaving a delicious pure spring, to drink from the gutter(idolatry). 4. Vs.15 – They weren’t on God’s safe highway, but on a detour down a dangerous & painful pathway! 1. A pathway was narrow, insufficient, & dangerous. 5. Vs.17 – God was turning His back on them. 6. “East wind” – Ps.48:7 “As when You break the ships of Tarshish With an east wind.” 1. Now the Lord will be like a wind, not to save but to scatter them. 6. The Conspiracy! (18) 1. Proud sinners do not like hearing about Gods sovereignty, nor about God’s judgment. 1. They think that if they silence the messenger they will silence the Lord. Ps.2:4 “He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; The LORD shall hold them in derision(mockery/ridicule).” 2. Their argument: We have plenty of priests, prophets, & elders. We can do w/o Jeremiah. 3. “w/the tongue” – His enemies plotted a “smear campaign” consisting of lies about him.” 1. The plot probably included quotes from his messages that suggested he was a traitor to Judah. How? (a traitor because he was speaking against Judah) 2. Q: “If a doctor detects cancer is he nicer to not burden you with such bad news?” 4. Faithful servants don’t enjoy opposition but they do learn to expect it! 1. Jn.16:33 “In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." 7. Jeremiah’s Agony! (19-23) 1. This is Jeremiah’s 5th lament concerning his situation. 2. His words seem pretty harsh – but remember he is a divinely sent prophet speaking for God. 1. At least he is honest before God! 3. God will remake you & remake you,…till you get too hard, then one day…His only option is to shatter you! Copyright Statement These files are the property of Brian Bell. Text Courtesy of Calvary Chapel of Murrieta. Used by Permission. Bibliographical Information Bell, Brian. "Commentary on Jeremiah 18". "Bell's Commentary". 2017.
Identify winter birds at the backyard feeder Although it is unnecessary to feed birds in the winter, we enjoy watching them and noticing how different species have developed different habits. The most numerous is the 6-inch house sparrow (Passer domesticus) dominating the tube feeder. The only invasive species at the feeder, it is aggressive during nesting and will kill fledglings. Similar in size are the house finches (Carpodacus mexicanus), native songbirds that remain in our area year-round. Males sport a rosy pink on their head, throat and abdomen with females a dull brown, but often showing limited rose coloration. The 4-to-5-inch black capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) have a solid black “cap” and “bib”‘ with white cheeks. They fly to the feeder, choose a seed and fly to the nearest tree branch to enjoy their meal. Because of this unique behavior, they expend more energy (calories) than birds who sit on the perch to feed. The 5- to 6-inch Dark-Eyed Juncos (Junco hyemalis) are primarily ground feeders. With slate-gray backs and white abdomens, this snowbird thrives on cold weather and is the only bird to visit the feeder in the winter and return north in spring. Occasionally a 6-inch tufted titmouse (Parus bicolor) will visit. Easily identified by the pointed crest on their head, both species have grey backs, rust colored sides and white abdomens. Another native species, the 11- to 12-inch blue jay is noisy and aggressive and will cause other birds to leave. Hard to miss is the bright red 7- to 9-inch northern cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) searching in the grass for uneaten seeds. Some birds hop, but the 12-inch mourning dove (Zenaida macroura) walks under the feeders searching for seeds. The 5- to 6-inch white-breasted nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis) climbs up and down trees headfirst. This species has a black cap, a slate grey back and white abdomen. This unique habit of the nuthatch is easily identifiable if watching just beyond the feeders to a close tree. The suet cage often finds a 6-inch downy woodpecker (Picoides pubescens) hanging by his toes, enjoying a rich supply of seed and fat to sustain him. The male has a streak of red behind his head, unlike the female, yet both are black and white, with black spotted wings. Other visitors who come without an invitation are rabbits, chipmunks and the neighborhood squirrel. Often perched in a nearby tree is the hawk looking for a quick meal. It is essential for feeders to be cleaned to eliminate any viruses or bacteria from uneaten seed. Details on proper cleaning are at http://go.osu.edu/cleanfeeders. From spring to fall, I enjoy the hummingbirds in my pollinator garden. What a wonderful way to enjoy a very busy backyard. To view bird species specific to Ohio, go to http://go.osu.edu/ourohiobirds. Kane Shipka is an Ohio Certified Volunteer Naturalist with the Ohio State University Mahoning County Extension Office. Today's breaking news and more in your inbox I'm interested in (please check all that apply) Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? * Starting at $4.39/week. Subscribe Today
The first is called Collective Impact: if you want to effect social change, the most effective and sustainable way to do so is through an aggregation and [alignment] of all social entities in a given area. For example, if you have a lower than average high school graduation rate, you should engage not only the school, but athletics, arts, churches, youth groups, parents, [and] PTAs to align them on overarching goals, share data, convene and foster collaboration, and collect those resources to push in the desired direction. We see two possibilities: one, develop the city so that people would be more attracted to live there, or two, train local residents and young people in the necessary trades to obviate the need to import labor. In this way, we look at the social issue first, and then try to figure out how to solve it through economic incentive. It’s instances like this where we get to think at a more macro-scale, asking: what role does an affordable housing project play in revitalization, and what role should planning play alongside the development? A 100% low-income housing project is not likely to have an effect on its own, in the absence of new parks, jobs, transportation, et cetera. If I see optimism, it is in these budding YIMBY movements, and a generation of people [who] are willing to talk about race. I find more and more people [who] are willing to say, "diversity isn't just something that I'd like my kids to have in college." I don't know why magically, when they turn 18, diversity becomes important. I think the affordable housing fight is really important. But, I do think there is a cultural shift that is going to happen in addition to these policy decisions that may be more important. You have to ask yourself: what resources can we bring to bear, without exceeding our true capacity, what are the things that we routinely do and know we can do well? That is a big struggle and certainly a limitation. I do think it is so important to be willing to strip down to how things should be, and try to learn something about the world we live in from a better understanding of the world that we should live in. It's been spoken about for decades that the internet would have a decentralizing effect on labor, and we are now seeing that with new kinds of businesses like Uber or task aggregation services. Are there opportunities in those things, for design and the way that cities are structured? It's about starting with real challenges and opportunities and asking what are the spatial possibilities here in order to address them. “What are the key things for livable cities?” I gave them the Copenhagen-style, good urban practice checklist: density, bike lanes, walk-ability, etc. After I started doing the work and putting the talk together, I realized, all these things are predicated on commuting! On the fact that your workplace is going to be distinct from your home, and that the city is divided up along these lines of commercial center and suburban perimeter. Still, the mainstream thinking around architecture and planning is that sprawl is bad and it is going to drag us all under, and that density is good, and all the rest. But, actually, paradoxically, are the suburbs the future? Is the future really about density, or is that just what architects want? How do we respect what the public wants—their own free-standing home, their own land—and reconcile that with issues of sustainability and public service? If we can decouple where we work from where are, do we end up with a whole new typology where actually suburbia becomes the model? It's a place with a bit more room for experimentation, with ambiguous, baggy space in-between buildings for testing new ideas; the future might lie in retrofitting suburbia to have some more of the characteristics that allow us to live, work, learn, look after each other, and develop new businesses. To learn from other models, it might be that the architect that can work in that context is more like a general practitioner—like a local doctor. Instead of seeing ten clients a year, you might see ten clients a day. You might be dishing out very small spatial prescriptions to adapt that context into being more efficient economically or socially. So, inside of a shared work-space at the scale of these neighborhoods, I imagine a “general practitioner architect” who is charging one hour at a time, sitting down with a thick black pen and providing advice to ten people a day. What they are absolutely not asking us to do is design anything. It is exciting and refreshing for a change to be called upon as a researcher, as someone who has a civic responsibility to the city as a whole, not just as somebody who is an author or a shape-maker. Instead of having a huge staff of professional architects, which is a really deep and narrow set of expertise, you might create a lightweight organization. It might be two, three, four, five people, but it will gear up for particular projects to answer particular questions through collaborating with people on a temporary basis. Tools like Task Rabbit and the gig economy more broadly have only been used at the bottom end of the spectrum to squeeze the most value out of people's precarity, but what happens when you apply it to the upper-end? They work in a legal architecture, not just a physical architecture. There is a legal world that they operate in, and it's not just zoning. It's the organization of governance, the organization of cities, the way cities relate to each other and to the state, where policies come from, etc. Thinking about the design of not just a city, but a group of cities, any metropolitan area, one has to think about who is deciding what about the future of the city. A lot of that decision making is done by the legal system. What is public now? And how can architecture, law, and governance revive an idea of a public? Many people have a strong idea about what private is, but a vague idea of what public is. But much of government is thought about in private terms. Take the fee-for-service notion that you pay taxes to go to good schools—it's just like a market transaction. If we believe education is good for the country, then one should pay for it whether they have kids that go to school or not. Everyone should support education for the country. This leads to questions about school financing, government structure, and so on. Once you have this ideas—to create a sense of the public in the built environment, the question becomes: who can do that? How can you organize it? Much of it can be done by the city, but the rest of it can be done by the state government. The state government is much more important to the organization of American cities than people realize. They set the powers: they establish what they can and cannot do. Opening this up was an opportunity to imagine the legislative authority necessary to create that kind of environment. It seems as though our public infrastructure is built out of ideas that are defined by states, which then give possibilities to cities, which then in turn give possibilities to individual buildings. The focus has to be on the organization of the state legislature and the governor, because they set the stage for what the city can do, which sets the stage for what types of buildings can be made, and the types of transportation systems we can have. But that's just some legal rule that could be changed tomorrow! It's not built in the world, right? Someone came up with that idea and put it in the local ordinance, and it's a local ordinance only because the state allows it, and the state could change the authorization of local zoning tonight! There's no reason to accept the current legal structure as being normal life, any more than the current architectural structures. We're at the end of history and that's what they're all going to look like. Everyone thinks they're in a box, and therefore they draw within that box. I'm interested in the box, where the box comes from, and why we're in that box, and what's a better box, and who could change it. That's where we come to government: government has the power to change it. They did it in the first place, and they can change it. That's why I don't like the idea of abandoning government in the name of something else vague, warming and reassuring as it may seem. A lot of architects say to me, "you know, architecture can't do everything." No one ever said it could! I mean, everything? You gotta be kidding. What they can do is a lot. But it can't be just that. It can't be just lawyers, or just sociologists, or just political scientists. You need to have all these people. This is the ultimate interdisciplinary topic. We became more aware of our position, and asked: what do we want to to do? What is the reason for all architecture firms going bankrupt? What kind of architecture firm do we want to be? When you look for a house, you start thinking, “I need 80 m2, I need a roof garden,” instead of thinking “I would like to live with a group of people that would have a roof terrace where we can share cars and grow our own vegetables.” We wanted to make people aware that collective thinking is more valuable than just adding individuals in a building. As apartment prices go up and sizes go down, the need for collectivity and sharing increases. We asked, what if we designed the collective desire in addition to the individual desire, and used an online platform to identify the scope of these group intentions? Who wants to invest in a collective energy system to make ourselves energy independent? Have a shared music studio? Have shared guest rooms for when friends and family visit? The Crowd Building platform allows people to ask these questions of their city. We are aware, though, that it would be more interesting to look for uncommon and logical relationships…. What if the elderly, families, and students lived together? The student could hang a painting on the wall for the old guy. The old guy could take care of the children on a Sunday afternoon so that the parents can enjoy the theater. And, once again, the difference of people starts to make a small community. It is this diversity that allows the community to perform well and remain open to others. There's a bit of programming that the architect can assist with so that the developer can afford to build the project. But as far as designing a financing structure—that is pretty far away from the architect's responsibility. But, being more cognizant of how these things are put together financially means that the architect has more credibility. If we know these things, we have a stronger voice at the table. Building costs in the city are incredibly restrictive, which results in two things (and it's way more complicated than I'm describing). If buildings are more expensive, they need to be built in probably the most common or cheapest way possible. This is particularly true for affordable housing, which prioritizes getting as many units possible in a unit mix stipulated by the city. In the city, it's "block and plank": a concrete and steel base with concrete block and precast concrete planks above. This type of construction has its own limitations for formal expression—that's why you see all these brick boxes around the city, and why two of the three projects we're doing right now are brick boxes. So then the question is, “Where is the formal opportunity within the technical system?” It becomes about the clothing on that body: how do you wrap it, how do you compose a facade, how do you find something interesting in that relatively bracketed set of opportunities? And then architects, who tend to like to conduct processes, try to take on the role of not just designing the building, but [designing] a policy or a process that not only empowers us but makes things better for others. Do we become the politicians? The policy makers? We're professionally trained to design and make buildings. It's a question of "scope-creep." Is the architect the best person to do that? If we can build out of more systems, then we have more possibilities for formal expression, still at the right budget. If you told a really talented architect to do a building out of block and plank for this price per square foot, I don't know that they would come up with something that is fundamentally different. It might be better composed or nicer looking, because they're better designers, but it's not going to be a fundamental change in the way that we use that material to make the building. But if there were three or four systems by which you could build it, and they would all be on budget, you would get a much more diverse formal language of housing, even knowing that the units are relatively prescriptive (largely because of stringent accessibility code). I think the structural problem here is that architects tend to accept the formulation of a project as presented by a client whether or not it’s complete or even understandable. A lot of times, some of the fundamentals at the very beginning of the process are either skipped by the client, or not articulated, or improperly translated into parameters which then become the architect’s problem to reconcile. Because if the alternative generation or the design approach isn’t applied from the inception of the project (and not only is there an issue of lost design value), it often means that the architect is given a project that hasn’t been set up correctly, and then asked to resolve it under a fixed fee and a fixed schedule. All because somebody is going to give them a pile of money that’s also in a clearly defined box. Fees and scope are strongly correlated to one another. A lot of value is lost, in my opinion, when you don’t bring a design sensibility to the earliest part of the process. At some fundamental level, what you guys are talking about here is extending the realm of design to the left of the project’s schedule that we’re initially interacting with. Form and shape and texture and building expression are hyper-privileged, but it’s a very stunted definition of what the design problem is. Unless you want to be a sculptor. But building code can start becoming performative instead. The reason we don't want tall buildings made out of wood is because we think they're going to burn. What we actually figured out is they don't burn, because their burning performance is x, which, properly constructed, is better than steel. So if the building code said, "Don't let the building burn, so people die, and the way you have to prove that is x, y and z," that's a lot more interesting, and provides a lot more opportunities for innovation than forcing everyone to build with steel. The whole attitude that you must make a building out of steel comes out of 1) it's a lot more difficult to write a performative specification that everybody can agree to, and 2) the building industry is known for relentlessly cutting corners. The building industry largely doesn't make changes unless those changes occur from the greatest sources of influence, and clients are the greatest sources of influence in the building industry supply chain. They are the ones who makes the changes. Someone has to be willing to stick their neck out and say I'm willing to take a chance on this thing. The government invests almost nothing in building-related research funding. Billions and billions of dollars are spent on tech, health, military stuff, but the government spends 1/10 of 1% of its entire research budget on things related to the built environment. So there's no money there. And as we talked about, the building industry itself is completely calibrated around lowest first cost. There are zero incentives. I'm going to spend extra money, on a project that's highly speculative, for which at least for a lot of things like safety or building systems, there's a higher likelihood of failure – so why am I doing this? If we're still moving to the left of the continuum here, as far left of the continuum has to do with policy, it's social policy. Whether you're a politician or whatever, these are the priorities that our society has established for whatever reason around issues related to the built environment. There's no NIH of the built environment. And the definition of interested in it is "I need a house, I need a performing arts center, etc." I mean it's definitely a question of the neoliberal economy. But, at some level, the case has to be made – and it will not be made by architects alone, because we are a relatively small part of the overall system of the making of the built environment – that the built environment is of sufficient importance that society needs to invest in improvement and change. That's where we are at the far left of the problem, and all these ideas kind of branch off that fundamental proposition. Nobody really espouses that. I hang out a lot with contractors, I'm a member of the AGC, I go to a lot of contractor meetings, and you've never seen a bunch of Republicans – and they're all Republicans – turn into socialists faster than when they hear about the Brits and their Secretary of Construction. Now we're at the edge of the flat earth, guys. Forget about the architect's role in all this, if we really want to create these opportunities for the systemic improvement of the built environment, then the problem needs to rise to the level of social policy. Maybe there should be a Secretary of the Built Environment. There's a secretary of transportation because people decided that moving around was important. There's a secretary of the Interior because people decided that natural resources were important. Everybody in the whole goddamned country lives in a building. It's very rare as a designer that you get invited into a position of power, or into the orbit of power, and that was an opportunity that was too big to pass up. Not from a craven power-hungry perspective, but from the position of, optimistically or maybe even naively, being able to have some impact on the way that government works. If we had an interested collaborator inside government, we could say more than just "hey, let's try something new," we could say "let's try something new, and by the way, we're going to also contribute some funds, to de-risk it." I think that's the fundamental issue. If you're in the business of helping people to do things they're not used to doing, they get really concerned about risk, and it's your job to think about how to eliminate or mitigate the risks they perceive. I think what this gets at is that in 2018, the relationship of client to designer to ultimate recipient of the work is more plural than it has been in the past. That's the case for traditional architecture as much as for the strategy work. If you're an architect, some of the people who will encounter or use your work haven't even been born yet. So we have to develop a different way to produce the same kind of basis of evidence or source of competence to make design decisions, and I think there's a lot of room for architects to evolve some of the methodologies that have come out of the human-centered design world to be more appropriate towards urban scale questions. That’s the theoretical territory we're trying to operate in with our strategy work. The Branch Libraries work and some subsequent work we've done for Civic Commons is really intended to create space for considering unknown alternatives. Those projects are meant to be delivered in a way that is just a little bit beyond the status quo, and it's a tricky balance to strike where we want stuff to feel different enough that the viewer or the reader perks up and says "Hey, I don't recognize this," but not so distant so that they can discount it and say that it's science fiction. So that's why with the library project and the civic commons film, you see a concern with more than just, "Hey it would be great if libraries could hover off the ground and create space for a market below and have an interesting green roof!" It's also about the way that collaborations between institutions snowball up to allowing those kinds of new things to happen. It’s not just the what, it's also the how. So the way that I think about the work is that we're trying to create a media experience, some artifacts, some tools in the most basic sense, to give people the confidence to do something different tomorrow than what they did yesterday. And from that perspective, I don't think you have to build any of the buildings that we have in the proposal or even make the t-shirts that are in there. I think those are more indications of a direction, closer to a master plan than an architectural plan. In a normal project, this would be a stopping point. However, because HDL occupied the fulcrum point between strategy and the delivery, my colleagues were able to say, “Great, let's find a way to change the laws,” and then spun up a parallel initiative to work with the Ministry of the Environment to rewrite some of the fire codes that were inhibiting the possibility of using large scale timber. In the end, they were successful in that, so today, you can build a tall building out of timber in Finland. Our bent at Dash Marshall has been that we don't publish renderings or conceptual products, and we don't care if we make a great Powerpoint deck if it doesn't actually change anything. We are invested, optimistically and perhaps naively, in trying to improve the world in the way that we know how, and the modus operandi is to make the least bad, most flexible choices that we can make.
Health news What to do to reduce the risk of cancer … To reduce the risk of cancer, whole grains and vegetables should be on your menu, and you should remove processed meats and red meats, according to updated guidelines. The association also stated that it is best not to drink alcohol, and individuals should exercise more than previously recommended. A good diet and regular exercise are important things that allow one to maintain a healthy weight, as scientists see more links between cancer and weight. The most recent report issued by the Global Fund for Cancer Research mentioned the presence of 12 types of cancer diseases that are linked to obesity or overweight, and this exceeds the cancer diseases mentioned in the last report issued by the association a decade ago by 5 diseases. Diets that reduce the risk of cancer include: • Eat large amounts of green, red, and orange vegetables. • It is preferable to eat whole fruit instead of eating canned fruit or drink juices that contain preservatives • Eat whole grains better than refined flour. • You should avoid or limit processed meat in addition to avoiding sugary soft drinks and juices that contain added sugar and try to avoid all fast food. The guidelines also state that the individual will need to exercise more. • Instructions increased the recommended amount of exercise per week, from 150 minutes to moderate to intense exercise, between 150 and 300 minutes. • If you like running, you should increase your exercises, and instead of 75 minutes of high-intensity physical exercises, the guidelines encourage those exercises between 75 minutes and 150 minutes. • The guidelines encourage local communities to make these healthy life goals possible and have suggested creating spaces where people can go out of their homes and exercise, and make nutritious foods readily available, affordable. Increase whole foods in your diet These updated guidelines reinforce what scientific research has revealed: providing a nutrient-rich diet, physical activity, and reducing alcohol are associated with lowering overall cancer risks, including reducing the risk of breast, prostate, and colon cancer. It has also been shown that the various contributions we get from a healthy and balanced diet are more important than reducing cancer risk through a single dietary recommendation, which is “something that nutritionists have mentioned for years”. For example, eating a lot of fruits and vegetables provides a healthy dose of antioxidants that can help prevent oxidative damage to DNA, which is caused by red meat, processed meats, as well as smoking, pollution, and ultraviolet radiation. Foods rich in fiber can help protect against colorectal cancer. For your health, regular noodles, or white rice can be replaced with brown rice, lentil noodles, or chickpeas noodles.
Skip to main content Chi-sun-tzŭ had people put to death on a large scale In his administration of Lu, Chi-sun-tzŭ had people put to death on a large scale, as their crimes strictly merited, and frequently inflicted punishments on people, as their faults strictly deserved. Tzŭ-kung said, "A cruel government!" When he heard of this remark, Chi-sun said, "I put the people to death when their crimes strictly merit it, and I punish them when their faults strictly deserve it. How is it that you, sir, find it cruel?" Tzŭ-kung said, "How unlike Tzŭ-ch’an's administration of Chêng! In one year the number of faults requiring punishment diminished; in two years crimes requiring capital punishment disappeared. In three years the prisons had no prisoners. As a result the people turned to him as water flows downhill, and loved him as a filial son respects his father and mother. When Tzŭ-ch’an was sick and on the point of death, the citizens all lamented, saying, ‘Is there not someone else who could die in the place of Tzŭ-ch’an?' When he finally did die, the nobles and great officers wept for him in the court, the merchants wept for him in the market, and the farmers wept for him in the fields. For all of them weeping for Tzŭ-ch’an was like mourning for father and mother. Now I heard that when you were sick, our citizens were happy, and when you recovered they all were frightened. When they take your death as reason for congratulation and your living as reason for fear, if this is not the fruit of cruelty, what is it? I have heard that to govern by relying on laws is called cruel; that to insist on a definite period for the completion of a task without having given warning is called tyranny; that to punish people without having instructed them is called oppression; that to impose oneself on others is called exaction. He who makes exactions will lose his life; the oppressor will lose his subjects; the tyrant will lose the government; the cruel ruler will lose the people. Furthermore I have heard that there has never been one who occupied the highest place and practiced these four who did not perish." Whereupon Chi-sun bowed his head gratefully and said, "I listen with respect to your command." The Ode says, Blandly he looks and smiles; Without any impatience he delivers his instruction. Popular posts from this blog The wonderful pear-tree The Fox and The Tiger The Legend of The Three-Life Stone
ISSN 1000-0526 CN 11-2282/P Volume 41,Issue 7,2015 Table of Contents • Display Type: • Text List • Abstract List • 1 Characteristics of SpatialTemporal Distribution of Tornadoes in China FAN Wenjie YU Xiaoding 2015, 41(7):793-805. DOI: 10.7519/j.issn.1000-0526.2015.07.001 [Abstract](2284) [HTML](268) [PDF 1.62 M](2419) Based on “the Handbook of China Meteorological Disasters” published in 2008 and other relevant documents for period 1961-2010, spatialtemporal distribution characteristics of significant tornadoes (EF2 or greater) are analyzed according to the “Enhanced Fujita Scale”. And based on “the Annual Report of China Meteorological Disasters” which began to be published from the year 2005, spatialtemporal distribution characteristics of EF1 or greater tornadoes are investigated. The main results show there are total 165 significant tornadoes recorded in China during the 50 year period from 1961 to 2010, including 145 EF2, 16 EF3 and 4 EF4 tornadoes, with average 3.3 significant tornadoes each year. Most of the tornadoes occur in plain area, with higher frequency in Jianghuai Plain, South China, Northeast China Plain and the North China Plain. The highest frequency of tornadoes is during the period 1986-1990. Then, it starts to decline. Most of significant tornadoes occur in spring and summer (from April to August) which account for 87% of the total. The peak frequency of tornado genesis in the diurnal variation is from 12:00 to 20:00 local time. The 165 significant tornadoes killed at least 1772 people and wounded more than 31700.During the 10 year period from 2004-2013, according to “the Annual Report of China Meteorological Disasters” from 2005 to 2014, there are 121 EF1, 19 EF2 and 3 EF3 tornadoes recorded and their spatial distribution is similar to those of the significant tornadoes from 1961 to 2010. Furthermore, at least there are 570 EF0 tornadoes during the same period. With the data, we can infer roughly there is about at least 85 tornadoes and 21 EF1 or greater tornadoes seen in China on average each year, less than the tenth of the tornado occurring frequency in the United States. 2 Intensity Evolution of Typhoon Megi (2010) Revealed from AnomalyBased Atmospheric Variables QIAN Weihong ZHANG Guangwen HUANG Jing 2015, 41(7):806-815. DOI: 10.7519/j.issn.1000-0526.2015.07.002 [Abstract](1555) [HTML](71) [PDF 3.61 M](1131) Analysis and reanalysis datasets derived from numerical models are commonly applied in diagnosing and forecasting weather extremes by using traditional synoptic charts. Recent studies have showed that any atmospheric variable from these datasets can be naturally decomposed into climatic and anomalybased components while the latter can be used to locate regional heavy rains, heat waves and low temperature, and also to indicate the intensity of these extreme weather events. This paper focuses on the analysis of anomalybased variables using different datasets during the lifetime of super Typhoon Megi (2010) because it has been studied recently by several researchers. The inconsistency of typhoon intensity estimated from four meteorological centers in China, Japan and the United States is first analyzed. A hydrostatic balance relationship from both height and temperature anomalies is described from the European Centre for MediumRange Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) reanalysis interim reanalysis. The results show that the anomalybased variables can be used in indicating the evolution of typhoon anomalous intensity. This work can provide an useful reference for applying the output products of mediumrange weather forecast models to the prediction and diagnosis of typhoon intensity. 3 Analysis of Continuous Rainstorm Circulation Background and the Dynamic Process of SynopticScale in West of Southern Xinjiang ZHANG Yunhui LI Haiyan LIN Xilu Abulimiti YU Bixin 2015, 41(7):816-824. DOI: 10.7519/j.issn.1000-0526.2015.07.003 [Abstract](1506) [HTML](68) [PDF 2.96 M](4676) The continuous rainstorm appeared in West of Southern Xinjiang from 14 to 19 June 2013. The convention observation, T639, NCEP reanalysis data are used in the analysis in order to know why the rainfall could be so much. Based on the relation between environmental air humidity conditions and the rainstorm, this paper analyzed the weather scale dynamic process and its forming reasons why the water vapor was transmitted over a long distance to Xinjiang, getting accumulated over the West of Southern Xinjiang. The results showed that rainstorm develops in an abnormal environment. During heavy rainfalls the top value of specific humidity reaches to 16-18 g·kg-1 in the lower troposphere. The extreme humid situation maintains even though the heavy rain appears, which is favorable for the longlasting severe rainstorm. The abundant water vapor is transported from Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal to West of Southern Xinjiang by a southern flow. The southern wind increased the water vapor transfer. At the same time, with the southern airflow’s approaching Xinjiang, strong water vapor flux convergence is generated by lowlevel troposphere eastern jet stream in West of Southern Xinjiang, making the strong couple between upperlevel divergence and lowlevel convergence of vapor lower, and also strengthening the ascending velocity and inducing more wet air to higher altitude and then thickening the moisture layer further. The diurnal variation of the heavy rain is related to the vertical discontinuity of mesoscale circulation circle in Aksu southern and the lowlevel easterly jet enhancements at night. 4 Diagnostic Analysis of One Heavy Rainfall Process Induced by Southwest Vortex in the MiddleLower Reaches of the Yangtze River LIU Xiaobo CHU Hai 2015, 41(7):825-832. DOI: 10.7519/j.issn.1000-0526.2015.07.004 [Abstract](1367) [HTML](54) [PDF 4.60 M](1299) A heavy rainfall event induced by the moving and developing southwest vortex occurred in the middlelower reaches of the Yangtze River from 6 to 7 June 2013. Using conventional observation and NCEP reanalysis data, diagnostic analysis was done on this event, especially on the physical mechanism of the vortex moving and developing and on the variability of the rainfall climax. The results show that the southwest vortex moving easterly along the 700 hPa shear line is the direct impact system to the heavy rainfall. Southwest vortex moves eastward and develops, and when reaching its deep phase, positive vorticity column stretches up to 400 hPa height with a nearly vertical structure in the relative vorticity chart. Largescale condition of lowerlevel convergence and upperlevel divergence in the vicinity of southwest vortex, dynamic structure of the coupling of southwest vortex and southwest lowlevel jet, positive vorticity advection in front of the highlevel trough and other favorable weather conditions are the main causes for the vortex reinforcement when it gets to the middlelower reaches of the Yangtze River. Heavy rainfall area that accompanies the southwest vortex is mainly located within 3 latitudes to the south and east side of the vortex. Convergence of two water vapor advection provides abundant humidity and latent unstable energy for the rainfall. One is the southwest monsoon flow, and the other is the southeast flow from the southwest side of the tropical high. Besides, cold air from the middlelower level of troposphere coming down to the rear side of the vortex reinforces the development of vortex, promoting an unstable stratification, which provides convective triggering mechanism to the heavy precipitation. 5 Diagnostic Analysis of One Widespread Thunderstorm Coexisting with Snowstorm in North China in March 2013 KONG Fanchao LI Jiangbo ZHANG Yingxin MAI Wenming 2015, 41(7):833-841. DOI: 10.7519/j.issn.1000-0526.2015.07.005 [Abstract](1463) [HTML](71) [PDF 5.41 M](949) A relatively rare process of widespread thunderstorm coexisting with snowstorm was analyzed by adopting conventional meteorological data, CINRAD radar data, and NCEP analysis data. The results are as follows. The widespread thunderstorm was an elevated thunderstorm over the lowlevel cold air mass. Although lowlevel convergence of moisture flux was weak over the thunderstorm area, the deep warm advection formed over Hebei, and decreased with height in the middleupper troposphere, leading to conditional instability. The 850 hPa shear line and convergence zone in the southwest airflow caused convective instability energy to release. Strong moisture flux convergence was suddenly thickened around the middle troposphere in the north of Hebei, and the strong convergence of southwest airflow and west airflow in the front of the 700 hPa trough formed, which led to heavy snowfall in central Hebei. In addition, at the middlelower level, positive differential vorticity advection was more distinct than divergence in expressing dynamic action. 6 Mesoscale Analysis on a ShortTime Severe Rainstorm in the North of Hangzhou Bay on 21 July 2013 HE Bin FAN Xiaohong SHENG Wenbin PAN Shixiong FAN Yufen 2015, 41(7):842-851. DOI: 10.7519/j.issn.1000-0526.2015.07.006 [Abstract](1169) [HTML](64) [PDF 12.14 M](1030) By using TBB data retrieved from FY2E satellite, Doppler radar data, mesoscale automatic observation data and fully assimilated model data with 5 km resolution from WRF model, a shorttime severe rainstorm in the north of Hangzhou Bay on 21 July 2013 is analyzed. The results indicate that the occurrence of the convective storm is related to the convergence of westsouthwest and eastsoutheast flows near the surface. The westerly outflow caused by local thermal convection in the east of Huzhou enchances the original intensity of the westerly flow in the west of Jiaxing, which is a very important factor to trigger the convection. When the convection develops to some extent, the downward current emerges in the lower troposphere. Part of it flows into east current near the surface and induces enchanced convergence in the lower troposphere and new updraft in the midtroposphere. Because of the weak vertical shear of horizontal wind from surface to 3 km above ground surface prior to the convection, the lifetime of cell thunderstorm in this event is short. In the vicinity of rainstorm the state of atmosphere near surface is neural or stable and the equivalent potential temperature is decreasing significantly above the lower atmosphere. 7 Analysis on Formation Mechanism of the Backflow Rainstorm Occurring in First Rainy Season of Guangxi Based on Numerical Simulation LIN Quelue SHOU Shaowen YANG Hua 2015, 41(7):852-862. DOI: 10.7519/j.issn.1000-0526.2015.07.007 [Abstract](1425) [HTML](60) [PDF 4.00 M](989) By using the model WRF, the Backflow rainstorm process that occurred in Guangxi during 28-29 April 2010 was simulated. The formation mechanism of the backflow rainstorm was studied by diagnostic analysis. The results showed that, blocked by Wuyi Mountain and Nanling Mountains, the cold air can not directly affect the west of South China. When the cold air moves eastward into East China Sea, the west of South China is at the rear of high pressure. The isobaric line shows the trend of “southeastnorthwest” and the wind direction in lower layers turns clockwisely to southeast. The southeast air of back flow, flowing through South China Sea, is dry and cold in comparison with the southwest airflow from Bengal Bay and the crossequatorial airflow, so the airflows of different nature converge, forming the frontal surface and convergence line and providing lifting condition. This is the formation process of backflow situation. By diagnosing θe and moist potential vorticity (MPV), we find that conditional symmetric instability (CSI) in boundary layers and convective instability in lowmiddle layers are the instability mechanisms of occurrence and development of this rainstorm MCS. Wind convergence and frontogenesis of energy front in boundary layers are the main triggering conditions of the convection. Before the increase of the torrential rain, there is a process of accumulation of convective instability energy. The frontogenesis of energy front and convergence lifting in boundary layers trigger the release of instability energy, leading to the increase of the rainstorm. The negative anomaly of MPV has indication for rainstorm forecasting, and the positive center of helicity has good relationships with the increase of the rainstorm. The rainstorm happens in both sides of the boundarylayer front. The existence of boundarylayer front means this backflow rainstorm belongs to frontal precipitation in nature. 8 Application of Online Bias Correction of Polar Orbit Satellite Observations in GRAPES3Dvar WANG Xueman LI Gang ZHANG Hua 2015, 41(7):863-871. DOI: 10.7519/j.issn.1000-0526.2015.07.008 [Abstract](1081) [HTML](76) [PDF 8.82 M](768) Bias correction is the key technology of data assimilation for satellite radiance data. Currently, global GRAPES variational assimilation system adopts scan bias correction and airmass bias correction based on the consideration of Harris and Kelly (2001). But it did not cover the changes of deviation property (such as instruments or pollution problems). This paper proposed a scheme called online bias correction based on Harris and Kelly’s TOVS radiation error correction scheme and the concept of online bias correction which was put forward for NWP system to solve the problem of data drifting. The scheme considers the characteristics of GRAPES system and the statellite pretreatment system of National Satellite Meteorological Centre of CMA. The online bias correction is an adaptive bias correction system. It uses variational method to adjust the coefficients of predictors. To test the effect of the new scheme, twomonthlong assimilation experiments were carried out. The results show that the online bias correction scheme can optimize the degenerate bias equation automatically and quickly, and keep the effect of bias correction stable. 9 Causes of Temperature Anomaly and Analysis on Low Temperature Process in Qinghai Plateau in Spring SHEN Hongyan LI Lin LI Hongmei ZHANG Tiaofeng LI Wanzhi 2015, 41(7):872-880. DOI: 10.7519/j.issn.1000-0526.2015.07.009 [Abstract](2128) [HTML](61) [PDF 4.48 M](1256) Using the temperature observation data in Qinghai, NCEP monthly mean reanalysis data, 74 pieces of circulation characteristics materials provided by National Climate Centre of China Meteorological Administration (CMA) and 52 pieces of climate indices from U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) from 1961 to 2012, temperature anomaly characteristic and its impact factor in spring Qinghai Plateau were studied. The results show that the spring temperature in Qinghai Plateau presents a remarkable increasing trend, having obvious interdecadal variation features. The winter Eurasian pattern (EU) teleconnection pattern in Northern Hemisphere has very good indicative meanings to the temperature amomaly in the next spring. When it is in the EU pattern, the sping temperature is prone to be lower. The Ural pressure ridge, East Asian trough, subtropical high and polar vortex indices in Northern Hemisphere and Plateau height field, all affect the spring temperature. At the same time, the spring temperature has good response to the SST in SomaliaArabian SeaBay of Bengal of North Indian Ocean, Northwest Pacific and Equatorial Pacific. When the SST is colder (warmer), spring is colder (warmer). The continuous low temperature process is the direct cause for low temperatures in Qinghai in spring. The main impact system of frequent low temperature process is the low pressure in area south to Lake Baikal. As it develops significantly, Qinghai Plateau lies in the northwest airflow in front of ridge and behind trough then the plateau height field is lower. Thus, frequent cold airs tend to cause the persistent low temperature process. Otherwise, the situation is opposite. 10 Multivariable Lagged Regressive Model of Low Frequency Rains over the Lower Reaches of Yangtze River Valley for Extended Range Forecast in the Early Summer of 2013 YANG Qiuming 2015, 41(7):881-889. DOI: 10.7519/j.issn.1000-0526.2015.07.010 [Abstract](1392) [HTML](64) [PDF 4.94 M](869) Lowfrequency rainfall over the lower reaches of Yangtze River Valley (LYRV) and the principal component of 850 hPa meridional wind anomalies over the extratropics of the Southern Hemisphere are employed to construct a multivariable lagged regressive (MLR) model, which is applied to the daily forecasting of low frequency rainfall over LYRV in June-July of 2013 for the extended range forecast. The result indicates that this method for the 20-30 d lowfrequency rainfalls over LYRV has good predictive skill up to 25-30 d. By many hindcast experiments during the period of 2001-2012, this MLR model for the 20-30 d rainfalls over LYRV has good predictive skill up to about 30 days for the years with the stronger or normal 20-30 d oscillations. Based on the development and evolution of the southern circumglobal teleconnection (SCGT) wave train, it will help us to forecast the process of lasting heavy rainfall in early July of 2013 over LYRV over 20 days in advance. Hence, the low frequency variability of extratropics over the Southern Hemisphere is one of the main factor of the changes of the heavy rainfall over LYRV in early summer for the extended range. 11 Comparative Analysis of Pollution Diffusion Conditions Under the Control of Sustained Easterly System in Shanghai MAO Zhuocheng MA Jinghui XU Jianming GENG Fuhai ANG Dandan 2015, 41(7):890-898. DOI: 10.7519/j.issn.1000-0526.2015.07.011 [Abstract](1044) [HTML](62) [PDF 1.83 M](986) Based on the conventional meteorological data, physical quantity data, hourly PM2.5 concentration data and laser radar data, two distinct temporal and spatial distribution characteristics and diffusion condition of pollution under the control of sustained easterly system in Shanghai are comparatively analyzed. The results show that landsea temperature difference obviously affects the vertical transportation of pollutants. In the 26 January process, the sea surface temperature is higher and easterly flow is warm advection relative to the interior. Landsea thermal contrast makes the vertical temperature stratification in the surface layer tend to 〖JP2〗be unstable and speed up the vertical diffusion of pollutants in the boundary layer. On the contrary, In the 10 March process, the sea temperature is lower and easterly flow is cold advection relative to the interior. Landsea thermal contrast makes the vertical temperature stratification in the surface layer tend to be stable and inhibit the vertical diffusion of pollutants in the boundary layer. In addition, the laser radar data can intuitively reflect the vertical distribution of pollutants and have a certain guiding significance for our understanding of transmission characteristics and formation of pollution process. 12 Water Budget Characteristics of Winter Wheat and Its Impact on the Yield in Anhui Province ZHANG Hao MA Xiaoqun WANG Xiaodong 2015, 41(7):899-906. DOI: 10.7519/j.issn.1000-0526.2015.07.012 [Abstract](1227) [HTML](75) [PDF 2.32 M](843) Based on the meteorological data and the winter wheat yield data of 78 weather stations in Anhui Province from 1971 to 2010, the spatiotemporal variation of the water budget during the whole growth period and critical period of winter wheat (from booting to milk ripening stages) in Anhui Province was analyzed using the water budget index. The occurrence of droughts and floods and its impact on the winter wheat yield was also analyzed using the water budget index as the droughtflood indicator. The results showed that the water budget index during the whole growth period and critical period of the winter wheat presents zonal distribution and decreases from south to north. The water deficit occurs significantly in the area north to Hefei and the water supply is adequate in the southern part of the YangtzeHuaihe Area and the region south to this area, with large water surplus in south and small in north. On the whole, the water shortage degree is greater in the critical period than in the whole growth period. The change trend of the water budget index is not significant during the past 40 years. However, the interannual variation of the water budget index is obvious due to the large variation coefficient of the precipitation, increasing the risk of droughts and floods. The drought occurs mainly in the area along Huaihe River and the part north to the river. The frequency of waterlogging is higher in the YangtzeHuaihe Area and the region south. The average yield reduction rates of the winter wheat due to the drought and the flood are 4.2% and 12.4%, respectively. There is a significantly positive (negative) correlation between water budget index and relative meteorological yield in typical drought (flood) year of winter wheat. The medium drought risk of winter wheat is greater in north area than in south area, and the medium waterlogging risk is greater in south area. It is necessary to minimize the planting of the winter wheat in the south area where water is more because the yield loss caused by the waterlogging is greater than the drought. 13 Features and Possible Causes for East Asian Winter Monsoon in 2014/2015 WANG Dongqian CUI Tong SI Dong SHAO Xie LI Qingquan SUN Chenghu 2015, 41(7):907-914. DOI: 10.7519/j.issn.1000-0526.2015.07.013 [Abstract](1391) [HTML](91) [PDF 3.73 M](1023) The East Asian Winter Monsoon (EAWM) was weaker than normal during the 2014/2015 winter with a phase transition from strong to weak at the end of December 2014. A warmer winter was experienced in most areas of China due to the effect of weaker EAWM. In association with the phase transition of EAWM, a reverse of temperature anomalies over China occurred simultaneously with negative temperature anomalies in December 2014 and positive temperature anomalies in January and February 2015. Further study indicates that the weakening of EAWM is related to the extension of Arctic sea ice cover (without linear trend) in September 2014. The expanded sea ice coverage before winter restrains the development of Siberian high, leading to a weaker EAWM and a warmer winter over China. Besides, the combination of central Pacific El Ni〖AKn~D〗o and positive phase of PDO is also important in reducing the intensity of EAWM. The phase of PDO has an influence on the effect of El Ni〖AKn~D〗o on EAWM. Positive anomalies of SST over central Pacific is favorable for the negative anomalies of meridional wind over the east and eastern coast of China and a weak EAWM. El Ni〖AKn~D〗o event tends to exert stronger influence on the circulation over East Asia when the event is accompanied with a positive phase of PDO. The intraseasonal variation of EAWM is related to the response of atmosphere to El Ni〖AKn~D〗o event. 14 Analysis of the April 2015 Atmosphere Circulation and Weather ZHOU Kanghui FANG Chong 2015, 41(7):915-920. DOI: 10.7519/j.issn.1000-0526.2015.07.014 [Abstract](1462) [HTML](130) [PDF 4.03 M](1226) The main characteristics of the general atmospheric circulation in April 2015 were as follows. The circulation of polar vortex in the Northern Hemisphere was in a dipole type, with one center located between the west of Greenland and Canada, and the other in the northeast of Asian. The strength of both centers was 4-8 dagpm lower than normal years, but the Ural Mountain ridge was 8-12 dagpm higher than normal. The Northwest Pacific subtropical high extended to west more than usual with larger area. The location and strength of south branch trough was close to normal annual means. The monthly mean temperature was 11.6℃, being 0.6℃ higher than normal. The monthly mean precipitation was 43 mm, which is close to the annual average (44.7 mm). While the precipitation in the region to the north of Yangtze River was more than average, the situation in South China was opposite. Severe convective weather events occurred frequently in April, with large scope of hail, thunderstorm and gust seen in 1-4, 19-20, and 28-29. Two sandstorms happened in the northern part of China. 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Can the Federal Government stop the internet censoring? The Federal Government has taken the unprecedented step of restricting the access of websites to users who have previously been blocked. It has also introduced a data snooper law to force ISPs to keep data on what websites users have visited. But it is unlikely the Government will be able to get all the data it wants in order to find a way around the legislation. It’s unclear what exactly will be included in the new laws, but a leaked document suggests the government will try to limit the number of websites it can block. This includes websites that it believes might be “critical infrastructure”. The document says the new measures are necessary “to protect against a significant risk of cyber-attacks, such as a ransomware attack”. The Government has already announced the new rules for its new data snoops legislation will be introduced into the budget on Wednesday, which is likely to include an amendment to limit access to blocked sites. However, the government has yet to announce how much of the new data will be kept, and whether the data will include user data such as passwords. What will be censored? The Government is already censoring certain websites on its own websites, and the latest rules also restrict access to certain websites that are currently blocked. The changes to the bill mean the Government is no longer able to block websites on the grounds that they have “contributed to terrorism or a significant threat to national security”. However, it is still possible for a website to remain blocked if it has previously been censored. A new version of the bill includes an amendment that allows the Government to censor “non-government websites”. It is unclear whether the Government plans to use this power in the future, as it has not made any public commitments about its plans. However the Government’s actions have prompted widespread criticism, with many claiming the government is being too intrusive. The Australian Communications and Media Authority, the body that regulates online speech, has said the bill will make it harder for websites to comply with the new regulations. What websites will be blocked? The new data law also blocks sites that are owned by foreign governments, companies, or individuals. This could mean that some foreign governments will be banned from accessing some of the websites in the legislation, while other foreign entities will have to abide by the restrictions. Other sites may also be blocked in a different way, or will be restricted to certain content, such in terms of the number or type of users that can access them. This will likely include websites that do not comply with government requests for user data, such like social media services, or that do no have specific information about a user. What happens next? The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has not yet commented on the Government changes, but it is expected to release a report on the legislation next week. The Government also has the power to block specific websites in an emergency. In the past, the Federal Opposition has argued that blocking websites in emergencies is an infringement of freedom of expression. However this is not an option in the current legislation, as the Government does not have the power of arrest. The legislation was introduced to allow for the new law to be passed into law on July 3. In response to the Government proposal, Australian Privacy Foundation national director of policy, Matthew Prince, said the legislation would “further entrench the Government in an Orwellian surveillance state” and would undermine the very freedoms it claims to defend. “The Government has decided that we need to censor content and prevent access to information that will make Australians less safe,” he said. “We have been asking them for a year and a half to stop this. It is time to give them a break.” Mr Prince also said the Government was being “irresponsible” by continuing to impose a “blacklist” of websites, while not making any clear commitments about what content would be censored. “If this legislation becomes law, the Government has promised that we will not be able for a long time to be able, with a court order, to access websites that have been blocked,” he told ABC News. What are the consequences for people? The Communications Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has also said he was not going to comment on the government’s new data privacy legislation. “I’m not going anywhere,” he wrote in an article for The Age. “It’s the Parliament that decides whether the laws are being obeyed.” The Government’s decision to restrict the content of websites that previously were blocked is not new. The Communications Communications Minister is the one responsible for the laws, and his actions have sparked criticism in recent months. “He [Mr Turnbull] has now come out and said the government wants to make sure we don’t get this bill passed into legislation,” Senator Brandis said. The Federal Opposition is calling for the Government and the Government-appointed review body, the Communications Monitoring Board, to publicly release their report. “What we need is for this body to have the full public comment on it and then it can be publicly
Get help from the best in academic writing. Does the Universe Have A Direction? Essay Does the Universe Have A Direction? In questioning the universe, we essentially question the purpose of our existence. This essay explains that the universe has a direction and goal only when we view it as the same entity in the past, now and in our future imagination. To answer the question of whether the universe has a direction, we shall rely on the metaphysics field of ontology (Solomon and Kathleen p.7). There are two sides of explaining the nature of reality, that of realist and anti-realists. The former claim that reality is independent of us and the later disclaims this fact. Realists say that there is a planetary system and a force of gravity among other features that make up the universe. Furthermore, they state that the existence of these systems and gravity does not cease after we stop noticing. Much of realists’ theories do not factor in our epistemology of the things and events they examine. Anti-realists on the other hand must attach meaning that can be confirmed to statements of reality. Objects in reality possess attributes that we can use in define and describe them. For instance, if we propose that someone is ignorant, then we are using the attribute of ignorance to describe the person. However, when describe someone else as ignorant, then we are faced with the dilemma explaining how the two persons, which in our case are real objects, though having the same attribute of ignorance, are different people. To solve this dilemma and effectively discern single objects we have to see further than their attributes. In doing so, we have to rely on Aristotelians who have demarcated kinds from properties. The Aristotelians hold it as a fact that kinds are what the particulars or attributes belong to. So in our example above, the individuals belong to the human family and ignorance is one of their properties. We are therefore able to understand that the individuals are two members of the human family who share the same property (Newall para14-30). The universe is our reality and suggestions of a universal direction bring us to the question of time. The presentism theory holds the view that only the present exists. Get your 100% original paper on any topic done in as little as 3 hours Learn More The externalism theory on the contrary denies the presence of now, and further explains that now is a mere reference point to differentiate events as they happen, such that Plato and other people in our past exist, but their existence is within a separate context (Newall para. 30-35). The above theories of time do not offer us much explanation that we can use in our example of the individual being ignorant. We shall therefore use the time theories of endurantism and perdurantism. Endurantists view that the individual in our above example is the same in the past as well as now. Since the same individual belonged to the humans family and continues to do so. This depicts a characteristic of endurance. In the perdurantist view, the individual is different and changes or moves to another stage depending on the perspective of the viewer. Furthermore, endurantists believe that only the now exists and the past and future are only possibilities, while the perdurantists see no particular significance in time implying that the past, now and the future and our imaginations are all equally real (Newall para.37-42). In the realists and perdurantists’ view and also as observed by Voltaire, the universe and its attributes are meaningless and only assume the meaning we give (Solomon Death of a Salesman Relationships Analysis Essay Nursing Assignment Help Table of Contents Willy’s Conflict Biff’s Conflict Works Cited Death of a Salesman is a figurative play that uses death not only symbolically represent physical/mortal death but also to allude to the end of personal dreams, wishes, and aspirations. It is a satirical play that highlights the life of Willy Loman, the main character, a traveling salesman who has worked for Wagner Company for thirty-four years and ends up a failure because it is not his trade to be a salesman. Willy is a gifted carpenter. In this paper, Death of a Salesman relationships shall be analyzed. Willy’s Conflict This play is a case of reality versus illusion. Willy is a delusional character whose search for higher ideals, far higher than he can attain, leads to his disillusionment. Willy spends his entire life trying to be a successful salesman, like his mentor Mr. Dave Singleman who was a successful and famous businessman. Thus Willy forms the opinion that to be successful, one has to be physically attractive and liked by many. He tries to impose these ideals to his sons Willy and Happy to no avail. The result is that he ends up a failure and decides to kill himself, hoping the insurance premium will benefit his family. This play is, to some extent, a reflection of Arthur Miller’s life. Biff reflects Miller the real character: Miller was not much an academician and surprised his teachers when he wrote this play. The author was attracted to sports and physical activities rather than books. It was, therefore, a surprise that he would end up an author of a playwright. Three characters in this play highlight Willy’s unique relationships with people. Biff, Willy’s eldest son, and the two enjoy love-hate. During his childhood, Biff adores his father but later comes to loathe him upon discovering that his father had led him to live a lie. It is through Biff that the reader sees Willy’s disillusionment. Willy’s mistress is a secretary of one of his clients and represents Willy’s craving for love and affection rather than for pleasure. She makes Willy feel loved. Lastly, Willy’s brother, Ben, a successful businessman, is an illustration of Willy’s unwillingness to come to embrace reality; Ben only appears to Willy in daydreams. Even though these three characters, as well as the other characters in the play, highlight Willy’s delusional self, it is Biff, the eldest son who illuminates Willy’s disconnect with reality. This paper endeavors to explain Willy Loman and Biff Loman’s relationships and how each is affected by this relationship. Although Biff Loman is Willy’s and Linda’s eldest son and the personification of Willy’s wildest dreams and desires, father and son enjoy an emotional love-hate relationship throughout their lives. Biff represents everything Willy wanted in life: success. Get your 100% original paper on any topic done in as little as 3 hours Learn More Biff is the illumination of Willy’s notions of popularity and physical attractiveness rather than hard work honesty and integrity as the way to success. However, being popular does not help Biff to succeed. Willy had created a false impression (in Biff, as well as other family members) about his popularity and how it brought him much success (Miller 100). Biffs’ search for success through popularity ends up in failure and he later notes that “(he has) always made a point of not wasting (his) life, and every time (he) comes back (he knew) that all (he will have) done is to waste (his) life” (11). Thus Willy’s delusional theory on happiness and success ends up having a very negative impact on the very son that he loved and wished to nurture to success. Initially, there is so much love between father and son. Willy loves his son so much that during one of the football games that Biff is playing, Willy tells Linda that Biff is “(a) star… magnificent, (and) can never really fade away!” (51). This love is informed by the unrealistic need to make him attractive and thus liked by many, which is to eventually lead Biff to succeed in life and also as a salesman. Willy encourages Biff to a positive image of himself through dress and not to talk too much less Biff makes a false impression, as the right personality would win him success (21, 48). Biff’s Conflict Willy goes to great length to prove that popularity is the key to success and encourages Biff to fight with his uncle Ben, something that has an important meaning and infuriates Lindah so much. However, Biff falls to his uncle Ben who advises Biff, “Never (to) fight fair with a stranger, boy. (or) You’ll never get out of the jungle that way” ( 34). Biff believed in his father so much that he did not put any diligent hard work in whatever he did. His adoration for his father stated to take a toll on his life because, as Willy commented that “his (Biff’s) life ended after that Ebbets Field game because from the age of seventeen, nothing good ever happened to him” (71). Biff’s belief in the essence of popularity take s him to seek his father in Boston as he thought that Willy’s popularity would make Biff’s math teacher change his grade and allow Biff to graduate. However, their relationship takes a sudden change for the worst when Biff realizes that his father has been unfaithful to his mother, by keeping a mistress in his hotel room in Boston. We will write a custom Essay on Death of a Salesman Relationships Analysis Essay specifically for you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More The changing nature of their relationships in Death of a Salesman is reflected through their dialogues and conversations, which expresses anguish, pain, and betrayal. Biff no longer trusts his father and realizes that Willy had led them all in living a lie and a pretentious life (104). Willy retaliates by telling Biff that he has been nothing but a failure (103). As such, Bill comments that: “(he had been) trying to become what (he didn’t) want to be… (And asks Himself) What (he was) doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of (himself), when all (he) wanted (was) out there, waiting for the minute (he) say (that he) knew who (he) wanted to be! (105). This is an emotional realization of the betrayal that Willy led him to believe was the truth. Their relationship was never the same again. Willy’s greatest need was emotional and psychological. Willy needed to feel liked and loved not only by his family but also by his clients and friends. From his mentor Dave Singleman, Willy thought that success was brought by popularity and attractiveness, and these two ideals subordinated virtuous ideals such as honesty, integrity, and hard work. Conclusion As the analysis essay on Death of a Salesman shows, this is delusional and far from reality. Willy strived to make his son Biff like him so much and instead of rewarded his mistakes instead of reprimanding. This ended up destroying not only Biff but also the relationship the two had, which displays the main theme and tragedy of the play. The play is also a reflection of how self-denial can lead to failure. Arthur miller encourages people to discover who they really are and not to be influenced by the successes of others as this is just an illusion. Works Cited Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. New York: Penguin Books, 1986. Print.
What does smelling sulfur mean spiritually? What does it mean if I smell sulfur? Hydrogen sulfide has a characteristic rotten egg smell which can be detected at very low levels, well below those that are known to cause health effects. Smelling hydrogen sulfide does not mean that it will harm your health. The smell can cause worry, anxiety and resentment. What does it mean when you smell brimstone? Brimstone, an archaic term synonymous with sulfur, evokes the acrid odor of sulfur dioxide given off by lightning strikes. Lightning was understood as divine punishment by many ancient religions; the association of sulfur with divine retribution is common in the Bible. What does sulfur smell like? If you haven’t smelled sulfur, it’s hard to describe how awful it is. Most who have, describe it as smelling like rotten eggs. Can a person smell like sulfur? Trimethylaminuria is a rare genetic condition. People who have it are unable to break down a chemical compound called trimethylamine. The compound leaves the body in the sweat, urine, and breath, giving off a smell resembling that of rotten egg, fish, or garbage. THIS IS INTERESTING: What is the opposite of a talisman? What do you smell before a stroke? Although lots of people think smelling something burning is a sign of a stroke, there’s no solid evidence this is true. The idea of smelling phantom burning toast may be kind of amusing — but strokes are serious. They affect approximately 795,000 Americans each year — and around 137,000 of those people die as a result. Does Covid make you smell things that aren’t there? COVID-19 and Phantosmia Many people infected by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, lose their sense of smell and sense of taste. Reports also link COVID-19 infections to phantom smells like “burned toast” or unique scents that are hard to describe. What is burning sulfur in the Bible? In fact, a few books of the Bible use it to describe hell. You may be familiar with “fire and brimstone” — brimstone being burning sulfur. Not only are you subject to eternal damnation in inextinguishable flames, but it also smells like rotten eggs. The smoke produced by this fire is very dangerous. Why does my house smell like eggs? The two most common sources of a rotten egg smell are a natural gas leak, and escaping sewer gas. … That’s why utility companies inject a substance called mercaptan, which emits an odor that smells like sulfur or rotten eggs. If there’s a very strong smell, you could have a substantial natural gas leak. What was sulfur used for in biblical times? Sulphur was used by pagan priests 2,000 years before the birth of Christ. Pre-Roman civilizations used burned brimstone as a medicine and used “bricks” of sulphur as fumigants, bleaching agents, and incense in religious rites. THIS IS INTERESTING: How do I know my mantra? What is the smell of Sulphur dioxide? Sulfur dioxide has a pungent, irritating odour, familiar as the smell of a just-struck match. What does ozone smell like? Like chlorine. A “clean” smell. Sweet and pungent. Like an electrical spark. What causes a person to smell like rotten eggs? What Your body odor Reveals About Your Health? Why does it smell when I open my legs? What are the signs and symptoms of Trimethylaminuria? Trimethylaminuria causes people to have a rotten fish smell. This odor can be different from person to person. The odor may get worse with activities that increase sweating, such as exercise and emotional stress.
What is a Tort? Law Definition & Liability Examples Since most television shows and movies have to make the legal system look exciting, the shows we see depict the law as mysterious because the hero of the story is always investigating some heinous crime and looking for a killer of that crime. Most people probably never heard of the word Tort, and if they do hear it, they probably think its some kind of pastry. Tort law is a branch of civil law that is concerned with civil wrongs, but not contract actions. Contracts are when both parties agree on the same thing. Tort law imposes the duty to act with caution when it is possible to injure another or cause injury to another’s property. This law requires all people to act reasonably when conducting our lives. Torts are intentional, negligent, or strict liability. The most common tort done today is accidental, usually caused by the negligent use of an automobile. When a person drives, he or she is responsible to operate the vehicle in a safe manor. Failure to use proper or reasonable care in the operation of that vehicle is a breach of duty, and if it causes injury to another person, it is a tort. Intentional torts are crimes because of the harm done by one person to another. Assault and battery or medical wrongs are included in tort laws. The injured party may file suit for the injury suffered and then becomes a plaintiff against the defendant who has injured him/her. Two types of damages may be recovered in a civil tort suit: compensatory damages and punitive damages, however, some states do not allow punitive damages in tort actions. Compensatory damages are awarded to cover the actual monetary loss suffered by the plaintiff. Usually paying to repair or restore property damages. If the damages occurred were personal, then compensatory damages would also cover medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering and cover an estimated loss of future earnings. A strict liability tort exists even though the person acted with extreme caution and did not intend to cause harm. For example, say a demolition company is taking down a building with dynamite strategically placed as not to damage the property around the building. Even though they were very careful, when the building came down it damaged the one beside it. Differences between criminal law and civil law are many. In civil law the person who brings the lawsuit (plaintiff), is the person who was injured. For example, say you go to a store and seek the help of a clerk. The clerk has just had a fight with her boyfriend and seeing you reminds her of him. She gets angry all over again and takes it out on you by throwing the object you asked for at you and it hits you in the head causing a cut requiring stitches. That clerk has just committed an assault on you and you take her to court to pay for medical bills, loss of wages, and pain and suffering. This is a tort civil law case, the only punishment the clerk receives has to pay you for hitting you, but she will not go to jail. Criminal law would occur if you called the police on the clerk and she was arrested. Then it would be brought to the attention of a prosecuting attorney and s/he decides whether to press charges or not. If charges are filed, then it becomes the state charging her, as in state v. clerk. These are just a few small examples of tort laws. Categories Law & Legal Leave a Reply
Edible electronics could be providing medical treatments in five years Safe, consumable electronics, such as those powered by the charged ions within our digestive tracts, could be used in “smart pills” that can sense problems in your intestines and actively release the appropriate drugs. That is the vision of Christopher Bettinger of Carnegie Mellon University, who writes of the challenges and potential of edible electronics in the latest issue of Trends in Biotechnology on September 21, presents a vision for creating “The primary risk is the intrinsic toxicity of these materials, for example, if the battery gets mechanically lodged in the gastrointestinal tract – but that’s a known risk,” he writes. “In fact, there is very little unknown risk in these kinds of devices,” the materials science and engineering professor says. “The breakfast you ate this morning is only in your GI tract for about 20 hours – all you need is a battery that can do its job for 20 hours and then, if anything happens, it can just degrade away.” Edible electronic medical devices are not a new idea. Since the 1970s, researchers have been asking people to swallow prototypes that measure temperature and other biomarkers. Currently, there are ingestible cameras for gastrointestinal surgeries as well as sensors attached to medications used to study how drugs are broken down in the body. Bettinger is exploring how minerals in a healthy diet, or even pigments from the skin or eye, could be used in bioelectronics. “There are many rapid advances in materials, inventions, and discoveries that can be brought to bear on medical problems,” Bettinger says. “If we can engineer devices that get the most mileage out of existing drugs, then that is a very attractive value proposition. I believe these devices can be tested in patients within the next five-10 years.” Bill Condie Bill Condie Bill Condie is a science journalist based in Adelaide, Australia. Read science facts, not fiction...
According to many politicians we only need to raise the minimum wage! If the task is as easy as passing merely one bill, if this will make all workers earn more, then why not just raise the minimum wage to $10,000 or even $20,000? Precisely because it’s not that easy, and because the consequences of such a law would be grave indeed. There is a minimum wage in place already. But some people still earn more than this amount. Why would employers pay workers more than they lawfully need to? Are they mad? The answer is simple: they have no other choice. The employee sells his work to the highest bidder. The employer acts in an opposite manner: he wants to hire the best possible worker for as low a price as possible. If you have a unique set of skills, one that will earn big profits to the company that will hire you, then potential employers will want to offer you more money or other benefits to get you to work for them instead of their competitors. However, if the job does not require high qualifications, then there will be more such workers available on the market; thus, if these workers want the job, they will be forced to agree to a lower wage. The labor market is guided by the law of supply and demand. The more expensive something gets, the lower the demand for it will be. By raising labor costs, and making employment more expensive, the government lowers the demand for labor. But at first this won’t impact those who already earn more than the minimum wage. Because the work of the least qualified employees is worth less than the minimum wage, they will suffer the most, even though they were supposed to be protected by government from destitution. Who are these employees? They are mainly young people fresh out of school, and they don’t yet have any practical skills nor professional experience. These people would be often willing to work for less money, because they need it for a date or for an evening meeting with friends, while having no family nor house to maintain. This first and simplest step in their future careers is best suited for them at the time. They badly need to get first experience, credibility, and self-discipline, as these things are key conditions needed for their careers. If these conditions are met, then the next employer will feel secured that as employees these young people can endure a year or two of work, and that they are probably punctual, because nobody fired them before. If such young prospective employees can show positive references from their previous jobs, then it means that they were able to handle their responsibilities well, and they probably are prepared to handle more demanding tasks. This entry-level job is not their last, and it doesn’t need to sustain their families; it’s only a means to an end. The time spent at the entry-level job should be used to acquire the skills necessary to go up on the career ladder. All the government does by setting the minimum wage is to destroy the lowest rung on this ladder. This means that it will be harder for people starting their careers to “put foot in the door”, trying to make their entrance to the job market. If someone’s work is worth $5 for an hour, then despite the minimum wage law nobody will pay him $6 per hour (nor more). In effect such a person will become unemployable. Which one is better? No income at all, or lower income awarded with job experience? In such a situation an unemployed person has to gain additional education, or get unpaid on-the-job training. The consequence is over-abundance of university graduates in regard to market needs. But what happens when an employer has no other choice but to raise wage to an enforced minimum, for example because he needs employees for a production department in his company? He will either fire some of them while dumping additional tasks on the remainder of his staff, or he will shift the additional costs to the customer to be able to satisfy his company’s goals, such as its business objectives and expected rate of return on investment. And since he still has to pay more, then he will choose to fire a least qualified person, and employ someone who has better qualifications. This new employee will be then required to perform tasks below his competence level. After all, the employer wants to have the most qualified people he can get. The effects of minimum wage are all around us. Many products or services are getting more expensive, the requirements for entry-level jobs are getting higher and higher, and unemployment among young people is high. Why is the government making it so? Usually such changes are prompted by labor unions. It seems that their goal is not for the workers to earn more, but to protect union members who are stuck on the second rung of the career-ladder from a new generation that could do the same job cheaper. The government is satisfied with this arrangement, as it now collects more taxes from the higher wages it just enforced. What else should be done to solve the problem of low wages? The answer is simple: let the free market operate. Remove the burden of taxes and other levies on work, do not interfere with the freedom of contract, stop impeding formation of new companies to allow more competition between employers for the employees, and — last, but not least — let interest rates freely adjust to market conditions, so that people would again save and invest. One should also convince other people that the amount of their earnings depends on their own actions, and that the government won’t do their work instead of them. A higher value for the employer = higher earnings; there is no getting around the fact.
I often have problems to choose the right determiner when a sentence should start with That or This. I know the rules when we are talking about physical things but as a non-native, I have a hard time to understand which determiner to use in case of abstract (I don't even know if it is the right term) things. I mean the things by which is hard to say how far are from us. For example, when I'm talking about some phone that is far from me. I would say: That is the phone with a color display. It is ok and completely understandable. But I have a problem in following cases: The more things you will have, the more will suffer your back. That or This is particularly relevant for small man who doesn't have so much strength in their muscles. Mobile phones allow you to make a call when you need to. That or This is feature gives you the opportunity to accomplish more things at the same time. Which determiner is better to use and why? Also, some resources on this topic would be very helpful. • 1 In your final case, that and this are interchangeable, so don't worry about it. In your second example, the prose of the first clause is unidiomatic, but the same inerchangeability of the determine would still operate. – Robusto Feb 6 '18 at 15:13 A good rule of thumb is that things that are "near" should be this, and things that are "far" should be that. It doesn't have to be near or far in distance: it can be near or far in time, or in relation to what we're talking about. For example, if you're talking about something that happened last year, you might say "I went to Majorca last year. That was when my shoes were eaten by a goat." But if you're talking about something very recent, you might say, "This Monday, I bought a new pair of goat-kicking shoes." In your examples, you would probably use this, because the facts you mention are immediately relevant to what you're talking about, so the facts are "near" to you. You must log in to answer this question. Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .
Take personal protective equipment, documents, food and water. Civil defense. Emergencies of man-caused, ecological, natural and military nature. Notification of the population in emergencies in peacetime and wartime Civil defense "Civil Defense of Ukraine is a state system of government, forces and means created to organize and ensure the protection of the population from the consequences of emergencies of man-made, environmental, natural and military nature" (law "About civil defense of Ukraine" Art. one). Citizens of Ukraine have the right to protect their lives and health from the consequences of accidents, catastrophes, significant fires, natural disasters. The Government of Ukraine, other executive bodies, administrations of enterprises, institutions and organizations, regardless of ownership and management, must ensure the implementation of this right. The state, as the guarantor of this right, creates a system of civil defense. Its purpose is to protect the population from the dangerous consequences of accidents and catastrophes, from natural disasters, highly toxic substances, and weapons. Civil defense measures apply to the entire territory of Ukraine, to all segments of the population. The distribution of these measures in terms of scope and responsibility for their implementation is carried out on a territorial and production basis. The tasks of the Civil Defense of Ukraine are: prevention of emergencies of man-made origin and implementation of measures aimed at reducing losses and losses in case of accidents, catastrophes, explosions, large fires and natural disasters; informing the population about the threat and occurrence of emergencies in peacetime and wartime and constant informing about the current situation; protection of compare and contrast essay buy the population from the consequences of accidents, catastrophes, natural disasters and from danger in wartime; organization and carrying out of rescue and other urgent works in disaster areas and centers of defeat; creation of systems of analysis and forecasting, management, notification and communication, monitoring and control of radioactive, chemical and bacteriological contamination, keeping them ready for operation in peacetime and wartime emergencies; training and retraining of management, governing bodies and CO forces; teaching the population the rules of use of personal protective equipment and handling in emergencies. Emergencies of man-caused, ecological, natural and military nature Accidents (catastrophes) An accident is a violation of the normal operation of a certain mechanism, which leads to significant damage, destruction of property, damage and death. A catastrophe is a major accident with tragic consequences. Dangerous consequences of major accidents are fires and explosions. Boilers, cylinders, pipelines at industrial enterprises, coal dust and gas in mines, steam of paints and varnishes at furniture and woodworking enterprises explode under high pressure. At the facilities of the oil, chemical and gas industries, the accident is caused by gassiness of the atmosphere, spillage of oil products, aggressive liquids and highly toxic substances (SDOR). The most dangerous accidents can occur at enterprises that produce, use or store highly toxic, explosive and flammable substances and materials. These are enterprises of chemical, oil refining, petrochemical and other related industries; enterprises that have refrigeration plants that use ammonia; these are also railway stations where there are sludge tracks with SDOR; these are warehouses and bases with stocks of pesticides. Most accidents occur due to: violation of production technologies, rules of operation of equipment, machines and mechanisms; low labor and technological discipline; non-compliance with security measures; unsatisfactory implementation of advanced fire extinguishing systems: lack of proper monitoring of equipment, as well as due to natural disasters. Potent toxic substances (SDOR) Today there are up to 6 million chemicals in the world; 90% of them are organic compounds, most of which are toxic. The concept of toxic chemicals is used in industrial technology "harmful substance"; in contact with the human body, it can cause injuries, poisoning, disease and other abnormalities in health. Civil defense does not include all harmful substances, but only those that contaminate the air in dangerous concentrations that can cause mass damage to humans, animals and plants. Natural disasters A natural disaster is an extraordinary natural phenomenon that acts with great destructive force, causes significant damage to the area in which it occurs, disrupts the normal functioning of the population, destroys material values. Consider the main types of natural disasters. Fires are the spontaneous spread of fire that has gotten out of human control. Fires occur in forests and peatlands, in residential and industrial premises, in energy networks and in transport. Fires cause enormous material damage and often lead to death. Floods are significant inland floods when water in rivers rises above normal levels due to heavy rainfall, rapid snowmelt, ice congestion, or when the wind blows water from the sea into the mouths of rivers. Earthquakes – phenomena that occur in certain parts of the earth’s crust. This is one of the terrible natural disasters. It comes suddenly. And although the duration of the main shock does not exceed a few seconds, its reach enormous proportions. It is impossible to prevent, stop or avoid an earthquake. People do not know how to accurately predict its beginning. More than 100,000 earthquakes occur on the globe every year; most of them lead to the death of thousands of people and to various destructions. Mud flows are a rapid movement from the mountains of the village – a mixture of water, stones, gravel, sand and clay; they flood, destroy everything in their path. Landslides occur more often on the banks of rivers and reservoirs. The main reason for their occurrence is the saturation of groundwater of clayey rocks to a fluid state, as a result of which huge masses of soil are shifted down the slopes, and with it – all the structures. Snow drifts are formed in winter during snowfalls and can be so large that they become a natural disaster. A hurricane is an increase in wind to 35 m / s and more (12 points on the Beaufort scale). Gust – a sharp short-term increase in wind (from a few minutes to several tens of minutes), sometimes up to 30-70 m / s with a change in its direction, more often during a thunderstorm. The width of the squall is 2-3 km. Notification of the population in emergencies in peacetime and wartime Among the set of measures to protect the population during emergencies, an important place belongs to the organization of timely notification. This is the task of civil defense bodies. The sound of sirens, intermittent beeps of enterprises and signals of vehicles mean a warning signal "Attention everyone!"… At this signal you need to turn on the radio, broadcast and. television receivers for listening to urgent messages. In peacetime, information is transmitted about accidents at a nuclear power plant or at a chemically hazardous site, reports of a possible earthquake or flood, storm warning. The texts of the information can be as follows: Warning! Says the Civil Defense Headquarters. Citizens! There was an accident at the plant "Obolon" with pouring SDOR – ammonia. A cloud of poisoned air spreads in the direction of the Obolon housing estate. The population living or working on Marshala Malynovsky Street, Pivnichna Street, Oboronsky Avenue, stay in their premises and carry out additional sealing. The population living or working on Priozernaya, Mate Zalky and Druzhby Narodiv streets should immediately leave residential buildings, premises of enterprises, organizations, institutions and go to the Petrivka station area. Inform the neighbors about the heard information. Continue to act on the instructions of the Civil Defense Headquarters. Warning! Says the Civil Defense Headquarters. Citizens! Due to the rising water level in the Dnieper River, houses near the streets are expected to be flooded … The population living on these streets will be able to collect the necessary things, food, water, turn off the gas, electricity and leave … neighbors, help out elderly and sick people. In the event of a sudden rise in water level, take a seat on a hill (upper floors of houses, roofs, trees) and wait for help. Pay attention to the messages of the Civil Defense Headquarters. When there is a threat of an enemy attack, local authorities and the headquarters of the Central Committee transmit resolutions and orders on the order of actions of the population through the mass media. From now on radio stations, TVs must be constantly turned on to receive new messages. If there is an imminent danger of enemy strikes from the air or a threat of chemical or radioactive contamination, a signal is given first "Attention everyone!" and then a short message about the procedure and rules of conduct is broadcast on radio and television. Example: Warning! Says the Civil Defense Headquarters. Citizens! Air alarm! Turn off the lights, gas, water, put out the fire in the furnaces. Take personal protective equipment, documents, food and water. Warn your neighbors, help the sick and the elderly. Go to the protective structure as soon as possible or hide behind the bumps in the area, keep calm and order. Pay attention to the messages of the Civil Defense Headquarters. Toxic substances as chemical weapons. Abstract Infection of terrain and objects of PR. Sampling rules for analysis. Indication of PR and poisons Infection of terrain and objects of PR When the enemy uses chemical weapons, the terrain and the objects located on it can be infected with PR. Contaminated objects are those whose surface contains or contains toxic substances. The degree and duration of PR infection of objects and objects of the environment are determined by the type of PR, their physical state, the density of infection, meteorological conditions and time of year. The degree of infection also depends on the application of protection measures, the terrain, nature and properties of the object.
Energy of the future These companies may use information you have shared e. Building a brighter energy future for the UK There, the mist would mix with dry, desert air that had been heated by the sun. Enough energy falls on the earth's surface in the form of sunlight in a single hour to power all of modern civilization for a year. Honda Fuel Cells At first glance, hydrogen fuel cells might seem like the perfect alternative to fossil fuels. While nuclear fission produces a great deal of energy without relying on fossil fuels, it also produces nuclear waste. Like coal and natural gas, petroleum is relatively cheap compared to other fuel alternatives, but its use comes at the larger cost of environmental damage. But the true energy bounty lies offshore, where winds are stronger and there are fewer restrictions on development. Secondly, burning fossil fuels emits both particulate air pollution and greenhouse gases. But now, we may see these solar panels all over the place. Here's What The Future Of Energy Might Look Like. And It's Pretty Amazing (VIDEO) Explore the links below to learn even more about energy. We only use the information we collect for purposes consistent with this policy. OTEC plants generally fall into three categories: Solar is by far the most promising; it's the sector that everyone is desperately hoping, crossing their fingers, praying that technology continues to improve the most dramatically. It could produce energy around year at the earliest, but scientists are trying to think of a faster way to develop fusion energy as a viable source. Therefore, you should not expect that all of your personal information will be completely removed from our databases in response to your requests. Nearly all sources of energy are linked back to the sun. People in Iceland are already doing this with red-hot magma after accidentally striking a pocket of it during a drilling project. If we propose to use your personal information for purposes beyond that explained in this policy, we will provide appropriate notice before doing so and we will provide you with the means to opt out of those uses. And when can we have them. At that point, the hydrogen is contained in a high-powered magnetic confinement systemwhere positively charged hydrogen atoms, stripped of their electrons, fuse to form helium. We may also ask for other information about you, such as your credit card information when you are making a purchaseinterests, income, or education level. By virtue of their sponsorship, these third parties may obtain personally-identifying information that visitors voluntarily submit to them in order to participate in the contest, sweepstakes, or promotion. Researchers and companies are trying to tap into these leftovers for a viable and economic energy solution. 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If you provide us someone else's personally-identifying information for referral purposes, we may use that information to invite them to visit our websites or to provide them information about our products or services. What is the energy source of the future? In no event will this aggregated data contain any information that could be used to identify individual users of our products or services. The warm seawater is converted into low-pressure vapor that is used to generate electricity. In Korea, for instance, engineers have lined up solar panels that cover a bike pathproviding a tunnel to travel through. People in Iceland are already doing this with red-hot magma after accidentally striking a pocket of it during a drilling project. As such, solar is springing up around the world, both in large, centralized arrays, and in smaller, distributed projects like rooftop panels and solar water heaters. We do not transfer personal information internationally. Jul 30, · Today, we consume a truly vast amount of energy - with demand continuing to skyrocket at an alarming rate. We know that producing this energy has significant environmental impacts and emitting so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere could cause catastrophic climate change. Jul 07, · But when it comes to the future of energy, those renewable power sources soon could be old news. Scientists and engineers are now building mashup versions of the renewable sources we're using today with the goal of generating power with even greater efficiency and sustainability. May 22, · Shaping the Future of Energy How can an effective transition to a more sustainable, affordable, secure and inclusive energy system be enabled? What is the biggest energy source of the future? Energy consumption and production represents around two-thirds of the global GHG emissions and 81% of the global energy mix is still based on fossil fuels, the same percentage as 30 years ago. World Economic Forum's 5th Annual Energy Architecture Performance Index Report The Energy Architecture Performance Index Report (EAPI), developed by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with Accenture Strategy, looks at trends and the real performance of countries' energy systems. Shaping the planet's future by tapping its potential. Future Technology. In the future, civilization will be forced to research and develop alternative energy sources. What is the biggest energy source of the future? Our current rate of fossil fuel usage will lead to an energy crisis this century. In order to survive the energy crisis many companies in the energy industry are inventing new ways to extract energy from renewable sources. Energy of the future Rated 5/5 based on 26 review The future of energy \| EDF Energy
What is a Lego Construction Set? With the release of the latest Lego model set, we have the opportunity to get into the inner workings of the building system. There are two kinds of Lego construction sets. One is the regular Lego construction set and the other is a limited edition Lego construction. What’s a Lego construction? A regular Lego production set has the basic construction set for the set, including the basic Lego bricks, a set of building blocks, and a few other things. These sets include the basic set of construction blocks, including building blocks and the basic building blocks for building blocks. If you want a more detailed look at how to build a building, we highly recommend the book, How to Build a House with LEGO. The second type of construction is the limited edition LEGO construction. This type of set is available exclusively at select retailers and has more intricate pieces. A limited edition construction set is sold in one or two versions. One version is sold as a set with a set or two of building sets, while the other version is a single set with the same building sets as the regular LEGO construction set. How do I build a house? A house is a structure with several parts, including a roof, walls, windows, and roof deck. There are different ways to build houses, and the different types of building kits are used to create different styles of houses. Some houses can be constructed from materials that are already in your house, while others are more complex. This is why it’s important to make sure you’re building a good house before you start, so you can start thinking about how you’ll use your new house to build more structures. To build a better house, you’ll need to understand how a house is built. Here are some key concepts to know: The building block that makes up the house. A house has three building blocks: a roof (the building block), the wall, and doors (the foundation). A roof is made up of two pieces of building material, and it can be made from a single brick or a bunch of different pieces. The roof is also made up from different parts that can be used to make different parts of the house, such as windows and doors. The different parts can be put together to make a roof deck or a roof for the house itself. The structure of a house can include the roof, the wall and the roof deck, as well as the various parts that make up the structure itself. A building block is used to connect the different parts together. Buildings that have different parts inside of them, such a roof or a door, are called “in-building” parts. How a house will be built depends on how the house is constructed. In-building parts of a building are: the wall and door, the roof, and the foundation. Each part of a roof can be connected to the other in a way that allows the whole roof to be attached to the house and not the other parts. When building a house, each part of the roof can also be attached separately. Building a house has a number of different parts: the roof and the foundation, a wall and a window, as well as the building blocks (the basic building set). Building the house from different building blocks requires the use of a construction kit. You can use any construction kit to build the house or build a single house. You can use one of the different kits to build an entire house, or you can use different kits that can only be used for building a specific part of an entire building. There are different types that are used for each part. Different kits can be bought in a range of different shapes and sizes. It’s important that you know the parts that you need to use to build your house and then pick the right kit to get the job done. To build the building set for your house or to build it from the inside out, you need a building block. Every building set has a building piece that is the basic piece of the set. For example, a building set that comes with the basic kit for a house contains the building block, wall, roof, and foundation. Buildings can be built from different types, shapes, and sizes of building pieces. As you get more into building, you can add additional building pieces to your house. Buildings can also attach to other parts of your house to make it more modular. Some parts of building a building can be attached by means of a hook, such that the building pieces can be added to other building sets that come with the building kit.
Second baseman File:Baseball 2B.svg The position of the second baseman Second base, or 2B, is the second of four places on a baseball field which must be touched in order by a base runner before he can score a run for that player's team.[1] A second baseman is the baseball player who guards second base.[1] Also called second bagger,[1] the second baseman often has quick hands and feet. He needs the ability to get rid of the ball quickly. He must be able to make the turn on a double play. Also, shortstops and second basemen are usually right-handed.[2] This makes it easier to turn a double play. In the numbering system used to record defensive plays, the second baseman is assigned the number 4. Current second basemen include Chase Utley, Robinson Cano, Dustin Pedroia, Orlando Hudson, Aaron Hill and Ben Zobrist. Cover of a 1905 how-to booklet National Baseball Hall of Fame second basemen * Later played at first base 1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1. REDIRECT Template:Cite book 2. "From 1957 to 2007, Throws LH, Played: 2B, sorted by greatest PA in a single game". Baseball-Reference. Retrieved 2010-06-03. 3. "Baseball Hall of Fame Second Basemen". Baseball-Almanac.
The house where Hitler was born The house where Hitler was born Braunau am In, a town close to the German border is where the Hitler home was born - the work is part of the demolition plan. You may also like: Not far from the main square is the Salzburger Vorstadt street of Braunau am Inn, on the south bank of the Inn River. On this street is a faint three-story beige brick building, where Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889. The house where Hitler was born This is the 15th building on the street. Photo: Amusing Planet. Hitler stayed only a few weeks before the family moved to another house in Braunau. When he was 3 years old, the Hitler family left this town forever. Later, Hitler only returned to Braunau and lived briefly in 1938. The 17th-century building was later an inn and changed owners. After Hitler became the head of Nazi Germany, its value quadrupled. After that, the house was acquired by the Nazis, renovated and turned into a cultural center with a gallery, a public library. World War II ended, the house was returned to its former owner and by 1965 it was used as a public library. Throughout the years, the place attracts many visitors. The Austrian Interior Ministry is concerned about the possibility of a new fascist uprising. Therefore, in 1972, they rented the building to prevent Hitler's supporters from visiting or acquiring. The contract ended in 2011 because the Pommer descendants refused to renovate something by agreement. From there, the house was abandoned. The house where Hitler was born Braunau am Inn town. Photo: Tourismus-braunau. The house does not have a number plate, but there is a large granite boulder located near the sidewalk. On the stone were engraved: "For peace, freedom and democracy, there is never a fascist regime anymore. Millions of people have died." This stone replaced the monument, and was brought from a famous quarry at the Mauthausen concentration camp (called the death camp, built by the Nazis). Currently, the owner of the house Gerlinde Pommer sues the Austrian government for appropriating property and demanding compensation. Earlier this year, the local court ruled that the government must pay Pommer 1.5 million euros, instead of 310,000 euros as originally suggested. In recent years, many people know of the plan to demolish the building. However, at present, the house still remains, as reminding people about a dark period. "Everyone is fed up," Braunaun's second deputy mayor, Christian Schilcher told the BBC. According to him, this house is a problem for Braunau's image. People wanted this small town to be visited by tourists, and no one expected them to be Hitler's descendants. Brief information: Braunau am Inn is a town in the Innviertel Oberösterreich (Oberösterreich), northwestern Austria. This place has many bridges spanning the Inn River. From Vienna, you can catch the Wels-Neumarkt Kallham-Braunau train. If you depart from Salzburg, you can catch the train of Attnang Puchheim-Ried / Innkreis-Braunau; Steindorf near Straßwalchen-Braunau ... Standard fare is 12.9 euros per person per way. The house where Hitler was born The house where Hitler was born Reviewed by Duy Khiêm on October 02, 2019 Rating: 5 No comments:
In nature and in a wastewater treatment plant, microorganisms are the key players in keeping our water clean. The following information provides a general sampling of the microorganisms involved in the cleansing process. Under a microscope, a variety of microorganisms can be observed having different sizes, shapes, life cycles, mobility, and roles. Bacterial Filaments Using a phase contrast microscope, living bacteria can be visualized quite well. Some are motile and may swim across the field of view, while others may appear to vibrate or drift. Rod-shaped Filamentous Bacteria have been referred to as “sewage fungi”. Protozoa - Ameoba Several groups of protozoa are represented in wastewater treatment plants. These include amoeba, stalked ciliates, crawler ciliates, free swimmers and flagellates. The primary role of protozoa is to clarify the wastewater through predation of the bacteria. Ameoba come in two forms, shelled and without a shell. A common shelled one is the Arcella. The shell is composed of tiny sand grains. There are examples of Amoeba without shells. The body shape changes with movement. The don’t have cilia. There are also common Amoeba without a shell that are very tiny in comparison to other Amoeba types. Protozoa – Stalked Ciliates Single Stale Ciliate consume food via voticellids, oral cilia that wind completely around the top of the cell. The stalk constians a contractile, slightly sinuous filament that can rapidly coil up like a spring, pulling the cell body down. Sheathed Stalked Ciliate secrete a loric which is a an outer membrane that protects the ciliate. Several types of Colonial Stalked Ciliate commonly occur in wastewater treatment. Protozoa – Crawler Ciliates There are two different Crawler Ciliates. These are called crawlers because they “crawl” over surfaces such as the activated sludge floc so they can find bacteria to eat. They don’t free-swim very well. The side view of Euplotes shows the “setae” which act as their legs. Both Euploates and Aspidisca are common in activated sludge and their presence is desired as they indicate that the plant is operating as it should. Protozoa – Free Swimmers Two examples of common free swimmers in activated sludge. They have cilia all over the body which allows them to swim freely through the water. They feed on bacteria. Protozoa – Flagellates These are one of the largest Flagellates found in activated sludge... so you have imagine the difficulty of photographing the smaller ones! This one has a long extended flagella and another that lays along the body. The flagella enables movement as well as the ability to catch food by pulling bacteria down to its “mouth” where the flagella attaches to the body. There are two primary groups of Flagellates. The Peranema belongs to the group which ingests its food. The other group of Flagellates is more like bacteria. They don’t ingest whole food. They take in flood that is already partially “digested”. These images are of the same genus of Rotifer and are the most common in activated sludge. Rotifers are multi-celled animals which draw in chunks of bacterial floc to feed on. This type of Rotifer is also fairly common and has a shell around it. Some have shells, others do not. The presence of Rotifers in activated sludge generally means a good, stable sludge wiht plenty of oxygen. Worms –Aquatic Earthworms Aquatic Earthworms are very much like the earthworms in our yards, bu these live in an aquatic environment. The earthworms in a yard can’t lime in that type of environment... as is obvious every time the ground becomes saturated from rain. Worms come out en masse...much to the delight of robins. Aquatic Earthworms have setae along the body which allows them to tunnel through the floc particles ingesting chunks of bacterial floc. They are quite common in old activated sludge. Worms - Nematodes Roundworms (Nematodes) are also common in activated sludge. Unlike aquatic, they are not segmented and their intestines are straight (earthworms have convoluted intestines, like us). Roundworms also feed on chunks of bacterial floc. Roundworms seen in wastewater treatment plants are “free living”, that is, they are not parasites. Most people are familiar with the intestinal roundworms people and pets get, as well as those that are plant parasites. Roundworms do not have the setae like earthworms and move through the substrate by whipping their body back and forth.
We bring together nature and science to take care of you Hair Loss and Our Diet Hair Loss and Our Diet Publicado: 15 June, 2015 - Actualizado: 30 July, 2020 \| 2' In summer, salt, chlorine and excessive sunlight have done their damaging work: Our hair balance has been altered. Stress, unbalanced diets that do not provide the necessary nutrients and other external factors have influence on our hair. As a result, hair falls more easily, apart from being drier and more fragile. If you want to slow down hair loss, do not forget that care from inside is as much or even more important than the outside care. Nutritional deficiencies can contribute to hair loss, weakening its structure, causing hair breakage and slow regeneration. These problems may be corrected with a proper and balanced diet. Main nutrients involved are vitamin A, vitamin B, biotin, vitamin C, copper, iron, zinc, proteins and water. Hair, the same as skin and nails, is being permanently renewed and its metabolism and regeneration get very easily affected by nutritional deficiencies. In fact, any vitamin, mineral, or protein deficiency may debilitate hair, make it more fragile or cause it to fall. Iron deficiency or iron-deficiency anemia can result in hair loss. Iron deficiency, even without suffering from anemia, can damage hair and make it fall off. Hair contains other minerals like magnesium, silicium, selenium, copper ... In order to keep it healthy, we must make sure that we take these nutrients with our diet. It is also essential to provide our body sufficiently with high-quality proteins: eggs, milk, cheese, fish,..., without forgetting plant-derived fats (nuts and olive oil) which prevent hair from becoming dry and fragile. Linoleic acid (found in sunflower seed oil and soya oil) is fundamental for getting shiny and healthy hair. Nevertheless, there are other causes not related to nutrition that can lead to hair loss: nervousness, stress, environmental factors, skin problems, certain medicine treatments, seasonal changes (In autumn, for example, a lot of people lose more hair than normal), use of certain hair care products (shampoos, lotions), etc. The importance of biotin and folic acid in our diet. The combination of biotin and folic acid promotes metabolism in tissues with quick reproducing cells like hair, skin and nails. Biotin is very important for skin, hair and nail health. Biotin deficiency is very seldom in people who eat healthy. Apart from being taken from food, biotin is produced by bacteria in our intestine. In some cases, biotin deficiency can cause hair loss. Biotin is found in a lot of different foods like eggs, liver, bread and cereals. Folic acid, also known as folacin, is a key nutrient that takes part in DNA synthesis. It also takes part in the metabolism of important amino acids and together with vitamin B12 and nicotinic acid in different functions. Folic acid is involved in cell multiplication and in the formation of red and white blood cells and in the synthesis of different neurotransmitters. The recommended daily intake for folic acid is 400 micrograms for an average adult and it can be found in vegetables, orange juice, avocado, beetroot, broccoli, brewer's yeast, liver, wheat germ and some enriched cereals.
Mexico Economy Policy ECONOMIC POLICY – According to various economic and social indicators, Mexico falls within the developed countries (the average per capita income is $ 12,700, over 90% of the population is literate, life expectancy is around 76 years); but the fact that about 40% of the population is below the poverty line testifies to the serious imbalances in income distribution and social conditions, at the origin of internal problems, with territorial implications, as in the case of the State of Chiapas. Intense and sudden changes have had repercussions on the country’s macroeconomic situation, also as a result of joining NAFTA, and then APEC and OECD (to which a free trade treaty with the European Union was added). According to Indexdotcom, after the revolution of 1910-20, the depression of the 1930s, the agrarian reforms and nationalizations carried out by President L. Cárdenas, the economic revival of Mexico began around 1940. A mixed system was formed, with a public sector planned and a private one in which the foreign presence prevailed, in particular the United States, which until the 1970s aimed at industrialization, the creation of communication infrastructures and the extension of the benefits of growth to wider sections of the population. Large plumbing works increased the production of electricity and irrigated surfaces. The exploitation of the Caribbean oil fields allowed Mexico, between 1979 and 1982, an average annual growth rate of 8-9%. Later, the need to reduce the debt, through financial restrictions, which had an impact on the middle class and on the poorest, it led the GDP to grow by 0.7% per year in the period 1980-90, while the real average income decreased by 1.6% per year. Foreign debt renegotiated (1990) and inflation and public spending controlled, a so-called system of social liberalism was promoted: the most important companies in the sector of telephones, air transport, steel mills and copper mines were privatized, and in part the banking system; the arrival of foreign investments was favored and the laws protecting the oil, pharmaceutical and electronic industries were eliminated; both the minimum wage and the price of fuel and indirect taxes increased. Liberalization also affected landed property. In the early 1990s privatization was intensified, exchange controls abolished, value added tax reduced, the devaluation rate halved against the dollar, and the minimum wage increased by 12%. The following decade saw GDP growth settle at 3.5% per annum. But a serious financial crisis, which exploded at the end of 1994 following international monetary speculations, produced an unprecedented economic crisis in the two-year period 1995-96: global GDP fell by 6.2% and that per capita even by 7.8% in just one year. Restrictive fiscal, monetary and wage policy measures, the restructuring of foreign debt and international loans made it possible to reduce the sharply increased rate of inflation and the state deficit, but at the cost of a severe restriction of economic activity and a contraction in employment and real wages. The recession was quickly overcome, especially as the devaluation increased the competitiveness of exports. The normalization of the financial markets and the restructuring of the debt produced a new inflow of foreign capital. The free trade treaty with the United States and Canada, which entered into force in 1994 (NAFTA), has produced a positive integration process. In the early 20th century. GDP growth was slightly higher than previously, with low inflation and unemployment; but, as before, it is mainly the maquiladoras companiesto support growth (approx. half of exports), however at the expense of workers’ conditions. The trade balance, traditionally passive despite a few more favorable years, knows a substantial balance: oil and derivatives, coffee, fruit and vegetables, metals, engines and spare parts for motor vehicles, textile fibers constitute the main exports; the import mainly concerns foodstuffs, mechanical, electromechanical and chemical industry products. The closest relations are with the US, which supplies well over half of the imports and absorbs almost all of the exports. MINERAL RESOURCES. – The mining industry has traditions that date back to the colonial era. The area that stretches from the North-West to the State of Chiapas is the largest supplier of copper; the eastern one, on the Gulf of Mexico, essentially produces oil, natural gas and sulfur; the central area gives silver, lead and zinc. With 3000 tons extracted (2006), Mexico is the second largest producer of silver in the world (main mines in Pachuca, in the Hidalgo, and in Parral, in Chihuahua) and among the first of lead. Gold, iron, manganese, tungsten, antimony, salt, natural phosphates and others are also extracted. Poorly endowed with coal, Mexico has rich oil fields: to the N, with the wells of Reynosa and Tampico; in the Center, in Ebano-Pánuco, Tuxpan and Poza Rica; in the S to Angostura, Puerto México and Minatitlán. New deposits have been discovered in the states of Veracruz, Baja California, Tabasco and Chiapas. Oil production rose to 163 million t of crude oil in 2006, to which must be added approximately 43 million m 3 of natural gas. Over 15,000 km of pipelines transfer oil and derivatives to refineries (Minatitlán, Poza Rica, Atzacapotzalco, Salina Cruz, Tula, Monterrey, etc.) and to ports, while gas is distributed through 22,700 km of pipelines to metropolitan centers. The richness of hydrocarbons is the basis of the thermoelectric potential (which in humid regions is flanked by hydroelectricity, which is slightly less important). Mexico Economy Policy
Anyone with stomach problems, such as bloating and IBS-type symptoms, is likely to be aware of the importance of gut bacteria. And improving the diversity of the trillions of bacteria that live in our gut (38 trillion is a commonly quoted figure) is increasingly being seen as a way to achieve good health in general. Around 1,000 to 1,500 species of bacteria have been identified in the gut microbiota (the mixture of bacteria, yeasts and fungi found in the digestive tract), and study after study is showing the potential importance that diversity has for maintaining good health. This is more helpful than talking about good and bad bacteria, which gives the impression that taking a probiotic can cancel out eating a bad diet, when the truth is it can’t. Eating yoghurt might help your gut but it isn't the only way to do so ( Getty Images) Research suggests the state of our microbiota may affect a multitude of health issues, from general immunity, IBS , bloating, Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, to the stiffness of the arteries present in heart disease, kidney disease, skin conditions and even mental health problems. “We now believe the gut microbiota can affect just about every organ in the body and is very important in the body’s immune system,” says dietitian Dr Megan Rossi, research fellow at King’s College London, who also runs The Gut Health Clinic in London’s Harley Street. “It’s early days, in that we’ve yet to determine whether intervening on the gut microbes can improve the health of our other organs, with diets targeting gut microbes, but that’s where science is heading. It’s looking promising in many areas, including mental health,” she says. Here, Megan explains how to achieve a healthy gut based on the latest science and research... 1. Think diversity “You need to eat as wide a range of plant-based foods as possible,” advises Megan. “I tell people to aim for 30 different plant-based foods a week – that’s nuts, seeds, wholegrains, legumes and fruit and vegetables. “Research has suggested that if you’re having fewer than 10 of these plant-based foods a week, your microbial diversity isn’t very strong. “Vary the foods you eat from week to week and always be open to trying new things.” 2. Fill up on fibre The fibre found in foods such as beans, pulses, artichokes, legumes and brussels sprouts contains prebiotics that ‘feed’ the beneficial bacteria that live in your gut. If you can increase the amount of fibre you eat, it will benefit pretty much every organ in your body, including your heart. “Current Department of Health guidelines recommend we should be eating 30g of fibre a day, but most of us are only eating 19g,” says Megan. “I believe we should be aiming even higher. “Increase the amount you eat gradually to give your body time to adjust to it.” 3. Ferment your foods Include healthy fermented foods in your diet every day. Fermentation involves bacteria or yeast to make foods such as yogurt, kefir (a traditional homemade fermented drink made from milk that contains live bacteria) and kombucha (made from fermented tea, sugar, bacteria and yeast). They generally contain a wide range of different types of bacteria so are believed to be beneficial for the gut microbiome. “Kefir is the one with the most scientific evidence behind it,” says Megan. “It has around 20 different types of bacteria and yeast in it, and the diversity is much greater than in yogurt. I drink 100ml kefir a day. “You can now buy kits to make kefir – you add milk and leave it on your worktop to ferment for a few hours, then it’s ready to drink.” Other popular healthy fermented foods include kimchi, a type of spicy Korean pickled cabbage, and sauerkraut, a fermented cabbage. 4. Say no to sweetener Although artificial sweeteners can reduce your calorie intake, they may also destroy the diversity of your gut microbiome. Clearly, this needs to be weighed up against the need to cut down on sugar. “Evidence coming from animal studies suggests artificial sweeteners are probably not a great thing to include in your diet in large amounts,” says Megan. “Whether it’s better to have sugar instead of sweeteners depends on a number of things, including your weight and medical history.” Choosing sweeteners over sugar is not necessarily healthy ( Getty Images/Tetra images RF) 5. Buy live yogurt Although there are lots of different types of yogurt on the market, not all of them contain beneficial gut bacteria. “Look out for cartons with labels that say they contain live cultures,” says Megan. “It doesn’t really matter if they’re full fat or made from skimmed milk. “Although full-fat yogurts are shown to protect the bacteria from stomach acid and may have the edge in that way, that’s a mechanistic benefit rather than any superiority of the bacteria in the yogurt.” 6. Probiotic power Take a probiotic only if you’re on antibiotics or have IBS. There isn’t any evidence that taking a probiotic supplement offers health benefits to healthy people, but there are studies that show specific strains of bacteria can help treat certain conditions. “If you’re taking antibiotics, one strain of yeast, called saccharomyces boulardii, taken at a dose of 10 billion colony-forming-units (CFUs) twice daily, can reduce by 50% the incidence of diarrhoea, which affects around 30% of people taking antibiotics,” says Megan. “When it comes to IBS, there are four probiotic supplement products on the market that have been shown in a study to be effective in treating symptoms: Symprove, Alflorex, Bio-Kult and VSL#3. “I wouldn’t go as far as to say that these would work for everybody, but the pooled results of all studies found that probiotics reduce IBS symptoms by 20%.” 7. Swap your staples When it comes to a good gut diet, variety is key. “If you eat rice a lot, try wild rice, quinoa or buckwheat,” says Megan. “Even eating yellow and green peppers as well as red will help. If you’re buying chickpeas, why not try butter beans, red kidney beans and black beans, too?” 8. Go mad for Mediterranean Eat like people from the Mediterranean to boost your mood. “This is an emerging area,” says Megan, “but we’ve seen in some studies that eating a high-fibre Mediterranean-style diet of fruit, vegetables, legumes, extra-virgin olive oil and wholegrains can improve depression scores in some people.” 9. Consult a dietician If you suffer from IBS symptoms such as bloating, wind and diarrhoea, you may be tempted to try the low-FODMAP diet. It involves avoiding a type of poorly absorbed carbohydrate found in foods such as onions, garlic, lentils, brassicas such as cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli, and wheat. However, it shouldn’t be undertaken without the supervision of a registered dietitian, warns Megan. “Many FODMAPs are essentially prebiotics, so by cutting them out you could be starving your gut bacteria of food. “Also, the diet is very complex and should only be followed for four to six weeks. After that, FODMAPs should be systematically reintroduced with the help of a dietitian so you can identify what your tolerance is.” 10. Avoid the low-carb fad “The ramifications of the trend for eating a low-carb diet without a medical recommendation are worrying because fibre is a type of carbohydrate,” says Megan. “In the short term you can lose weight. However, you can also damage your gut bacteria, which may in the long run have consequences such as an increased risk of colon cancer.” • The Gut Health Doctor (Penguin Life, £16.99) is out in September. You can pre-order from Amazon. Follow Megan on Instagram @theguthealthdoctor, or go to This feature is taken from February’s issue of Healthy Food Guide (stocked in supermarkets and WHSmith). Go to for subscriptions
snow days A weather cancellation or delay is closure, cancellation, or delay of an institution, operation, or event as a result of inclement weather. Certain institutions, such as schools, are likely to close when bad weather, such as snow, flooding, tropical cyclones, or extreme heat or cold impairs travel, causes power outages, or otherwise impedes public safety or makes opening the facility impossible or more difficult. Depending upon the local climate, the chances of a school or school system closing may vary. While some regions may close or delay schools when there is any question of safety, others located in areas where bad weather is a regular occurrence may remain open, as local people may be accustomed to travelling under such conditions. Many countries and sub-national jurisdictions have mandates for a minimum number of school days in a year. To meet these requirements, many schools that face a likelihood of closure build a few extra school days into their calendar. If, by the end of the year, these days are unused, some schools give students days off. If all snow days are exhausted, and inclement weather requires more closures, schools usually make the days up later in the year. US State education departments have, for example by administrative decision late in the 2015 Texas school year, occasionally issued waivers to schools, so that they do not need make up days for weather-related cancellations. View More On 1. CountryGent Winter Weather Advisories There are a number of alerts all over the state of Oregon today. Just passing along the link. Just passing it along. Stay safe. P.S. @TeacherSmurf is excited about a potential snow day. :s0112: Back Top
Denver II Developmental Screening Paper She was born full term through vaginal childbirth and was breastfed for only the first month before she was discontinued and started taking formula feedings. The girl is not taking any medications. and she is currently enrolled in a day-care program where she gets to play with other children of her age. The girl is to undergo a Denver II Developmental Screening test to check if she is growing properly for her age. The ages between toddler and preschool is a sensitive time to assess the child for developmental problems such as mental retardation, which is detected at 2 years old if the child is not able to achieve any language milestones (Hazen, Abrams, Muriel, amp. Danforth, 2008). Developmental Milestones The Denver II Developmental Screening test was developed as a tool to detect developmental disorders in children early on. It tests the child in various areas with developmental milestones. The developmental milestones from the Denver II Developmental Screening Test include cognitive and language/communication skills, fine and gross motor skills and social/emotional skills. Every year of a child’s life from birth to the age of five has a set of expectations for each category (Shahshahani, Vameghi, Azari, Sajedi, amp. Kazemnejad, 2010). In the cognitive and language area, a normal child is expected to be able to name and recognize at least one up to six colors. The child should be able to match objects by function. She should be able to stack at least 5 blocks. The child might be easily distracted, but she can understand the difference between pretend and reality, can state her full name and age and can match family by group or function. The child would be talking constantly in complete sentences, can use proper pronouns, plurals, past tense verbs and can ask questions. She is now able to repeat songs or rhymes and can understand the concept of size. The child’s vocabulary would be at 2000 to 4000 words (Children’s Development, 2007. American Academy of Pediatrics, 2011). At this age, language development is closely related to the child’s cognitive ability (Burns, Dunn, Brady, Star, amp. Blosser, 2012). Since language development at this stage is highly variable, being influenced by the environment and interactions from people around her, a wide range is still considered normal (Hazen, Abrams, Muriel, amp. Danforth, 2008). In fine motor skills, the child would be able to use a book, can use her fingers for painting and drawing and using crayon. She can string beads, can stack objects nine high, can use play dough and can use scissors with limited mastery. She can draw simple shapes such as a circle and can even draw houses, figures and objects with some relation to each other. The child can now undress by herself, but needs assistance dressing, especially with buttons (Children’s Development, 2007. American Academy of Pediatrics, 2011). In gross motor skills, the child would be able to run around obstacles, can throw overhand, catch and kick a ball, can hop on one foot, can play on the slide, can walk straight without looking at his feet, can climb the stairs and can use the tricycle. The child would be very active at play but still fatigues easily, getting irritated when this happens (Children’s Development, 2007. American Academy of Pediatrics, 2011). In Social skills and emotional development, the child would either be in her parallel or associative play stage, allowing her to play with other children whether interactively or separately without much trouble. She can participate in group activities such as circle time, dramatic play and games involving other children, but may experience difficulty in sharing or problem
Tiruvoodal Utsavam • Tiruvoodal is the divine quarrel between Shiva and Parvathi and it is celebrated in Tiruvannamalai during the month of January, the second day after Pongal. In fact there is a whole street close to the temple called ‘Tiruvoodal street’ where the main part of the festival, the divine quarrel or the Tiruvoodal itself, is enacted. The Divine quarrel revolves around the time when one day Parvathi playfully closes the eyes of her august husband, Lord Shiva, with her hands. Utter chaos ensued. The whole universe was plunged in darkness and what was just a moment of play to Parvathi causes countless years of darkness and misery on the universe. Lord Shiva, enraged by this act of folly, punishes Parvathi which sends Her to Kanchipuram to do Tapas where She receives the assurance that after she kills the buffalo-demon Mahishasura on the slopes of Arunachala, She would subsequently regain the favour of her Lord and be united with Him in the left half of His body (Ardhanaariswara) and this is what is realised on the day of Karthigai Deepam. It would seem that the Tiruvoodal festival is celebrated in Tiruvannamalai in order to commemorate the time when Shiva and Parvathi were in discordance. Nevertheless, it finishes with the divine union and brings them both back together in harmony. On the first day, there are three processions of the deities starting from the big temple and going on the four streets around the temple. The Utsava Murthis are Sri Mula Nayakar (Shiva in the form of Somaskanda), Tani Ambal (the independent goddess) and Sundaramurthi Nayanar (one of the main tamil saivaite saints). The most interesting part of the festival takes place in the evening on Tiruvoodal street. During this part, the quarrel between Shiva and His consort, Parvathi, is enacted in public on the streets and witnessed by a large gathering of devotees who are assembled there eagerly to watch the divine drama. The God and the Goddess are brought on palanquins from opposite ends of the street and then borne down to face each other. The narrative of the quarrel is chanted by an Oduvar (temple singer) in tamil lyrics. After this ensues a dramatic dancing procession. Six times the God and the Goddess are borne down at a great speed and then meet in the centre and have their quarrel. This is played out by the palanquin bearrers jumping and shaking the palanquin up and down, which makes it appear as if the deity inside is jumping up and down in a fit of rage. The temple musicians play their drums in fitting accompaniment, adding to the frenzied rantings of the gods as they are shouting at each other. After each quarrel-dance, the deities change sides and each goes off in the opposite direction from which he or she came initially. The crowds of devotees are hysterical with excitement and after each dance-quarrel, the tension mounts and so do the loud cries of fervor and devotion which increase in volume and fury. The next day, Shiva is up at dawn and leaves on Giripradakshina during which he makes a halt at the Vedarpari mandapam where his jewels are supposedly stolen and later on he also grants salvation to his ardent devotee Kannappa. This is the reason for the Kannappa temple on that location. Shiva also grants darshan to another of his devotees the great rishi ‘Bhringi’ during this trip. Shiva eventually completes his giri pradakshina and returns to the temple in the afternoon where he enters, dancing the dance of the Swan (Hamsa Natanam). The bearers of the palanquins have a special technique to execute this dance and it causes a type of swaying, continuous oscillation of the deity without losing balance, quite a fascinating sight! Now a ritual takes place in the southern area of the temple which covers directly the sanctum sanctorum. Sundaramurthi Nayanar first goes to warn the Goddess about the return of Shiva. Of course, She, being curious, leaves Her door open so that She can have a glimpse of the dancing arrival of Her Lord. On seeing this spectacle, however, She is so dazzled by her Lord’s beauty and splendour as He arrives majestically doing His swan-dance, that She submits to Him and wishes to be re-united. Thus the reconciliation and reunion of the gods take place and to celebrate this, both the deities are brought together and placed on the same pedestal and the priests perform an Arathi puja waving and encircling one single flame around both of the deities to signify the restoration of harmony.
Show Menu Lab Chemistry & Electrical Safety Rules Cheat Sheet (DRAFT) by [deleted] Electrical Rules Electrical safety rules Electrical safety rules help prevent the misuse of electronic instruments, electric shocks and other injuries, and ensure that any damaged equipment, cords, or plugs are reported to the appropriate authorities so they can be repaired or replaced. 1. Before using any high voltage equipment (voltages above 50Vrms ac and 50V dc), make sure you get permission from your lab supervisor. 2. High voltage equipment should never be changed or modified in any way. 3. Always turn off a high voltage power supply when you are attaching it. 5. Make sure all electrical panels are unobstructed and easily accessible. 6. Whenever you can, avoid using extension cords. Chemical Lab Safety Laboratory: Chemistry Safety Rules These basic chemistry lab safety rules deal with the safe performance of common activities and tasks in the average chemistry lab: 1. Before you start an experiment, make sure you are fully aware of the hazards of the materials you'll be using. 2. When refluxing, distilling, or transferring volatile liquids, always exercise extreme caution. 3.Always pour chemicals from large containers to smaller ones. 4. Never pour chemicals that have been used back into the stock container. 5. Never tap flasks that are under vacuum. 6. Chemicals should never be mixed, measured, or heated in front of your face. 7. Water should not be poured into concentrated acid. Instead, pour acid slowly into water while stirring constantly. In many cases, mixing acid with water is exothermic. Laboratory: Chemical Safety Rules Following these policies helps employees avoid spills, other accidents, and environment damage outside of the lab. These rules set a clear procedure for employees to follow in the event that a spill does occur:. 1. Every chemical should be treated as though it were dangerous. 2. Do not allow any solvent to come into contact with your skin. 3. All chemicals should always be clearly labeled with the name of the substance, its concentration, the date it was received, and the name of the person responsible for it. 4. Before removing any of the contents from a chemical bottle, read the label twice. 5. Never take more chemicals from a bottle than you need for your work. 6. Do not put unused chemicals back into their original container. 7. Chemicals or other materials should never be taken out of the laboratory. 8. Chemicals should never be mixed in sink drains. 9. Flammable and volatile chemicals should only be used in a fume hood. 10. If a chemical spill occurs, clean it up right away. 11. Ensure that all chemical waste is disposed of properly.
Power Failures in an Energy Powerhouse Tuesday, March 09, 2021 Texas produces far more energy than any other U.S. state, so the idea that millions of its residents could be shivering in the cold and dark for days on end may once have seemed unimaginable. But that’s what happened, of course, when a deep freeze in mid-February set off a cascading energy crisis that led to widespread suffering and significant economic pain. What factors were behind the system’s failures? Was it just plain too cold, or did deregulation or an independent grid contribute to the problems? What lessons can be learned from the Texas experience? How can power grids be made more resilient, and who’s going to pay for that? Those are just a few of the questions that government officials, lawmakers, policy analysts, energy experts, and citizens will be grappling with in the coming weeks and months as they seek to fully understand and recover from the events that began to unfold on February 14. At the end of that disastrous week, Texas Monthly magazine summed it up this way: “Essentially everything about Texas’s energy system over the past several days failed miserably.” This in a state whose total energy production surpasses that of the second and third producers combined (Pennsylvania and Wyoming), according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Texas leads the nation not only in oil and gas production but in electricity generation too, and it is the country’s largest producer of wind power. According to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT)—the grid operator that manages the flow of electricity to more than 26 million people in the state (90% of the electric load)—natural gas accounted for nearly half the electricity produced in 2020. Wind was the second fuel source used for power generation, followed by coal and nuclear, with solar in a distant fifth place. Although Texas Governor Greg Abbott was quick to blame wind power for the crisis, many energy experts pointed to problems across the board. “Every one of our sources of power supply underperformed,” Daniel Cohan of Rice University tweeted. “Every one of them is vulnerable to extreme weather and climate events in different ways.” In separate interviews with the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas (ECPA), two experts noted that the grid operator would not have been counting on wind as the go-to fuel source under the weather conditions that hit Texas last month. “We expected the gas was going to be there and it wasn’t. With the wind, we didn’t expect it to be there and it wasn’t,” explained Emily Grubert, Assistant Professor at the Georgia Tech School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Because extreme temperatures can produce “wind drought,” energy planning does not assume that large amounts of wind power will be available in these types of events, said Joshua Rhodes, Research Associate with the Webber Energy Group at the University of Texas at Austin. As he put it, “I don’t rely on my sandals to keep my feet warm in the winter. That’s why I have boots.” Still, even when measured against the lower expectations, wind did not perform as well as it should have, Rhodes said—in part because some of the turbines iced up. Texas usually worries more about summer heat than winter cold, he said, so wind turbines there tend to be outfitted with equipment to cool down the gearboxes and generators when necessary, not warm them up. Clearly, other regions with much colder conditions than Texas have wind turbines that operate just fine, and the same holds true for natural gas, coal, and nuclear plants, according to Rhodes. That’s because in those areas, he said, the units are equipped for extreme cold and in Texas they are not. In the Dark Side Story Takeaways from Texas Some of the lessons from last month’s energy crisis in Texas can resonate well beyond the Lone Star State. First and foremost, everybody needs to get much better at planning for and reacting to these types of emergencies, because they’re “absolutely” going to keep happening, said Emily Grubert, who teaches at the Georgia Tech School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. view more When the polar vortex event sent temperatures plummeting, many of the state’s power plants started to go offline, due to either equipment failure or lack of fuel. Complicating the situation for electric utilities, natural gas production ran into problems due to freezing at the wellhead. As Rhodes explained, the “wet gas” produced in the Permian Basin contains water and other liquids that must be separated out before the gas goes into a pipeline. The liquids and the gathering lines that take the gas to separators froze over. “At the same time that we have the biggest demand on the natural gas system that we’ve ever had, supply was also cut, so it led to cascading issues across both infrastructures,” Rhodes said. The natural gas problems even spilled over into Mexico, which depends heavily on imported gas from Texas to generate electricity. With the cutoff of the gas supply, many plants in northern Mexico were left without fuel, and millions of customers around the country experienced rolling blackouts. In Texas, meanwhile, the grid operator was working to avoid catastrophe. In an electric power system, supply and demand must be kept in tight balance to maintain the right frequency. Because supply could not keep up with demand in this case, ERCOT started ordering the utilities in the system to shed load—in other words, to switch off the power to whole groups of their customers. Although the plan was to rotate these outages, Rhodes said, the supply was so low that by the time the most critical circuits were covered (areas that included hospitals, fire and police stations, and other essential services) there was no more power to allocate. That left more than 4 million utility customers—some 12 million people, according to Rhodes—without electricity for as long as four days, in the bitter cold. “I would hope that every energy source would be better at this going forward, because we can’t have that happen again,” he said. As bad as the situation was, it could have been even worse. ERCOT President and CEO Bill Magness told reporters that at one point, the grid was “seconds and minutes” away from total collapse, and that if that had happened, it could have taken weeks or even months to restore power to everyone. (ERCOT’s board voted in early March to dismiss Magness.) Texas may have escaped the worst-case scenario, but it did not escape real pain. Press reports have blamed the storm or the blackouts for as many as 50 deaths, and countless people endured hardship. Some burned wooden furniture to try to get warm. The public water supply was compromised in some cities. Families without heat saw their water pipes freeze and burst, causing extensive damage. “Literally, for many people, their ceilings have fallen down. Homes have been destroyed,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner told National Public Radio. “A lot of people don’t have insurance. They don’t have the financial means.” Past as Prologue Texas is no stranger to cold weather; in fact, an arctic cold front that hit the state almost exactly a decade ago—in early February 2011—produced similar problems, though that event was less severe. Temperatures last month not only were considerably colder than they had been a decade earlier, but they also lasted longer and covered the entire state. In testimony before a legislative committee on March 1, the head of ERCOT said the maximum generation that needed to be shed this time around was more than 3.5 times as in 2011. A 350-page report on the earlier event analyzed the causes and proposed a range of recommendations, including winterization measures. The report, prepared by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, noted that previous cold-weather events had happened in the Southwest in six previous years since 1983, with varying degrees of severity. It’s unclear how many of the report’s recommendations were ultimately followed in Texas. In the state’s largely deregulated electricity market, Rhodes said, it would have been up to each company to determine whether it might be cost-effective to implement recommended changes. “There’s no capital recovery method built into our system that would allow them to recover those costs,” he said. In this case, companies that had invested in winterization and were able to keep producing power throughout the crisis would have made a lot of money, because energy prices soared to astronomical levels; however, they would not have been penalized if they had not made the investments. “It’s all carrots and no sticks,” Rhodes said. The state’s deregulated environment has come under fire from many quarters in the wake of the Texas outages. “Deregulation was something akin to abolishing the speed limit on an interstate highway,” Ed Hirs of the University of Houston told the New York Times. “That opens up shortcuts that cause disasters.” On the flip side, deregulation has helped drive the rapid development of renewable energy in Texas, because it’s much easier and faster to build power plants and connect them to the grid than in many other places, according to Rhodes. He’s not convinced that Texas would have fared much better in this particular situation with a more regulated system. ERCOT calculated how much capacity the grid would need during the storm and thought that plenty of power plants were available to supply it. “It hasn’t been proven to me that a regulated entity would have forecasted an event like this better,” he said. “It’s really easy to say they should have planned for events like these,” Rhodes continued. “I wonder if they would have been laughed out of the room if they had planned for everything going wrong at the same time.” One vulnerability highlighted by the storm, Rhodes said, is how “coupled” the electricity and natural gas sectors are in Texas. Not only do half the state’s power plants burn natural gas, but about 40% of homes and business depend on gas for heating. The two sectors are overseen by different state commissions and there is no oversight agency compelling them to work together. Going It Alone Another aspect of the power system in Texas that has garnered a lot of attention since the storm is the state’s independent electric grid. In most of the United States, electric utilities are connected to one of two large regional transmission grids covering East and West; these interconnections allow them to purchase power from far away if they need to. Texas, however, operates its own grid, for reasons related to history, geography, technology, and politics, as Rhodes explained. Initially, he said, the state’s grid evolved somewhat naturally, with connections between major population areas and not a lot of infrastructure around the far-flung edges, which tend to be more rural. Then, as federal laws started to regulate electric grids, Texas “figured that if we kept it within our borders we wouldn’t be under federal jurisdiction,” Rhodes said. He believes that connections to other grids would have helped Texas get through the latest crisis “a bit easier” though probably not escape it altogether. After all, some neighboring states had their own problems with outages during the storm. Texas is so big and geographically diverse that in most cases, one part of the state could pull resources from another to deal with unusual circumstances, said Emily Grubert. This time, though, the entire state was in trouble. “When people talk about connectivity, it’s less about whether you’re connected to other states and more about whether you have access to enough geographic variability that you can overcome big weather events like this,” she said. The long process of sorting out what happened and why and what should be done about it is now well underway in Texas. Lawsuits have been filed, hearings held, bankruptcies declared, resignations accepted. One major outstanding issue is what to do about huge unpaid electric bills. As the system’s financial clearinghouse, ERCOT bills energy retailers for the power they use and then passes the money on to the generation companies that produced it. However, retail electricity providers now owe generators large amounts of money, and consumers may have to cover that over the long term, Rhodes said. Some consumers have already experienced sticker shock. People who had opted for variable-rate power contracts tied to wholesale electricity prices were billed thousands of dollars for the small amounts of electricity they were able to use when prices were at their highest. Whether policy makers in Texas will decide that something should be done to prepare for this sort of event in the future will depend in part on how often they think such a situation might arise, Rhodes said. “Making an argument based on climate change for this would be harder, I think, than making an argument based on what we just saw,” he said. “It’s going to come down to, do you believe it’s going to happen again in the near term, or long term, and how much are you willing to pay to deal with it?” Takeaways from Texas “We are going to see more extreme events that are outside of design parameters across the country and across the world,” she said. Whether or not the polar vortex that brought below-freezing temperatures to Texas was a direct result of climate change—the science is still out on that, Grubert said—there’s no question that a changing climate will introduce more unpredictability and more risk into energy systems. “How you manage that risk and how you design your system to fail safely is a huge part of the process of engineering,” she said. Underinvestment in energy infrastructure has been a chronic problem everywhere, Grubert said. “A lot of time we design infrastructure to last for 30 years and then run it for 100,” she said. Add in a lack of maintenance and the challenges of a changing climate, and “you have a pretty serious recipe for disaster.” But, she said, this is an exciting time in the energy sector, with the move toward different types of fuel and the chance to rethink whole systems and figure out better ways to operate. “It’s much, much easier to design around resilience and to think about what you actually want your system to be able to do at the beginning,” she said. “With the decarbonization process, we have the opportunity to design a grid that does what we need it to do.” Beyond the energy system itself, though, Grubert would like to see more efforts to prepare for emergencies like the one in Texas. If buildings were better insulated, for example, people would be better able to weather extreme temperatures, both hot and cold. And having sufficient shelter available for an event like this is also important. The focus should be not only on technical matters like grid frequency, she said, but on whether people are warm. “It’s not just about the grid. It’s really making sure that everybody has access to safe and reliable services.”
Skip to main content Comparative morphology and evolution of the cnidosac in Cladobranchia (Gastropoda: Heterobranchia: Nudibranchia) A number of shelled and shell-less gastropods are known to use multiple defensive mechanisms, including internally generated or externally obtained biochemically active compounds and structures. Within Nudipleura, nudibranchs within Cladobranchia possess such a special defense: the ability to sequester cnidarian nematocysts – small capsules that can inject venom into the tissues of other organisms. This ability is distributed across roughly 600 species within Cladobranchia, and many questions still remain in regard to the comparative morphology and evolution of the cnidosac – the structure that houses sequestered nematocysts (called kleptocnides). In this paper, we describe cnidosac morphology across the main groups of Cladobranchia in which it occurs, and place variation in its structure in a phylogenetic context to better understand the evolution of nematocyst sequestration. Overall, we find that the length, size and structure of the entrance to the cnidosac varies more than expected based on previous work, as does the structure of the exit, the musculature surrounding the cnidosac, and the position and orientation of the kleptocnides. The sequestration of nematocysts has originated at least twice within Cladobranchia based on the phylogeny presented here using 94 taxa and 409 genes. The cnidosac is not homologous to cnidosac-like structures found in Hancockiidae. Additionally, the presence of a sac at the distal end of the digestive gland may have originated prior to the sequestration of nematocysts. This study provides a more complete picture of variation in, and evolution of, morphological characters associated with nematocyst sequestration in Cladobranchia. A number of shelled and shell-less mollusks are known to use internally generated (endogenous) or externally obtained (exogenous) biochemically active compounds [1, 2] and nematocysts [3, 4], as well as crypsis and aposematism in a defensive capacity [5]. Lineages that are known to possess some of these defenses include the heterobranch groups Sacoglossa (both chemical defenses and crypsis [6]), Anaspidea (chemical and behavioral defenses, e.g., inking [7, 8]), and Nudipleura (aposematism, crypsis and chemical defenses [5, 9, 10]), among others [11,12,13,14]. Within Nudipleura, members of a group of nudibranchs called Cladobranchia possess such alternative defenses [4, 15], which have been hypothesized to have contributed to the large-scale diversification of Cladobranchia [4]. In particular, some taxa within Cladobranchia possess the ability to sequester nematocysts from their cnidarian prey. Termed kleptocnides once sequestered, these small venom-filled capsules contain an eversible tubule, often with spines or barbs, that can be discharged into the tissues of other organisms [16, 17] and are used by members of Cnidaria to sting predators and capture food [18]. The sequestration of cnidarian nematocysts occurs primarily in one group of cladobranchs, Aeolidida (commonly referred to as aeolids), which appears to be monophyletic [19]. Additional species within the cladobranch families Hancockiidae and Embletoniidae are also known to sequester nematocysts, but the relationships of these two families to nematocyst sequestering taxa in Aeolidida, and to each other, has long been uncertain [20,21,22]. A recent phylogenenomic study suggests Hancockia to be affiliated with non-aeolid cladobranchs [19]. These results support the hypothesis that nematocyst sequestration has originated at least twice within Cladobranchia [23, 24]. However, representatives of Embletoniidae have not been included in any recent phylogenomic analyses, so its position among cladobranch taxa remains unclear. The process of nematocyst sequestration has been described previously [3, 23], so we will summarize it only briefly here. Nematocysts are a particular type of cnidae, and are complex intracellular organelles housed within cells called cnidocytes. During ingestion of cnidarian tissues, the cnidocyte (the cell) is separated from its nematocyst (the organelle). Nematocysts are then passed through the digestive gland and incorporated into epithelial cells lining a structure called the cnidosac [3, 23], found in aeolids. The cnidosac is a distal extension of the digestive gland within dorsal body outgrowths termed cerata [25] (Fig. 1). The structure is often surrounded by musculature, which contracts to forcibly discharge the sequestered nematocysts through an opening in the tip of each ceras [3, 23]. Structures similar to the cnidosac are present within some members of Hancockiidae, and possibly Embletoniidae [26, 27]. Nematocysts are not functional when taken up by the cnidophages but mature via proton transport within the cnidosac [28]. Fig. 1 figure 1 Morphology of the cerata. a) Dorsal view of Orienthella trilineata (USNM 1408860). Inset: detail of the cerata, and b) generalized cnidosac schematic highlighting the main morphological features of the cnidosac. Abbreviations: c, ceras; cn, cnidosac; cp, cnidophage, dg, digestive gland; e, entrance (or ciliated channel in some cases); ex, exit (or pore in some cases); k, kleptocnides; m, musculature; pz, proliferation zone In many aeolid taxa, descriptions of cnidosac morphology are rare, and when present tend to be vague and unhelpful for detailed analyses. This, coupled with difficulty reconstructing the phylogeny of Aeolidida, and Cladobranchia as a whole, has led to many unanswered questions regarding the comparative morphology and evolution of the cnidosac. For one, it is still unknown whether the cnidosac and similar structures within nematocyst sequestering species from Hancockiidae and Embletoniidae are homologous [26, 27, 29,30,31,32]. Based on recent phylogenomic work, we hypothesize that the similar structure present in Hancockiidae is not homologous to the cnidosac, but the homology of the structure in Embletoniidae remains uncertain. Further, the incorporation of an organelle that can be subsequently used by the sequestering animal allows for the hypothesis that the structures associated with this ability may be specific to particular types of organelles. Since there is diversity in nematocyst morphology among the cnidarian prey of sequestering taxa [33,34,35,36,37], we hypothesize that cladobranchs may have evolved specialized cnidosac structures to maneuver and arrange a variety of nematocyst types for storage. The transition to non-cnidarian prey types may have also led to the loss of functional cnidosac features in some taxa. In this paper, we describe cnidosac morphology across the main groups of Cladobranchia in which it occurs and discuss possible functions for the variation in structural characters in a phylogenetic context. We then combine these morphological data with a phylogeny for Cladobranchia inferred using molecular data (integrating RNA-Seq and PCR-based sequencing data), which allows for a more complete picture of the evolution of nematocyst sequestration within this group. Morphological data collection Individuals were relaxed in 10% magnesium chloride when possible, followed by fixation in 10% Bouin’s solution or ~ 4–6% saltwater formalin. For plastic sectioning, whole animals were dehydrated in ethanol and embedded in Hydroxypropyl methacrylate [38]. Serial sections (2.5 μm) were stained with Toluidine blue for 15–20 s (for the majority of specimens), which stains neutral mucopolysaccharides, nucleic acids and proteins shades of blue, and acidic mucopolysaccharides red to violet. For paraffin sectioning, individual cerata were dehydrated in ethanol and embedded in paraffin. Serial sections of 6 μm were made and stained with a modified Masson’s trichrome stain [39]. Information on the histological slides used in our analyses is provided in Additional file 1. For many species, only one individual was available for histological analysis, but at least two, and up to ten, cerata were observed to account for variation in structure and contents across the body axes of individual animals (anterior-posterior and medial-lateral). Additional data were collected from the literature [15, 26, 27, 40,41,42,43,44,45]. Taxon sampling Molecular data were collected for a total of 90 cladobranchs and four outgroup taxa (Additional file 2). The majority of these taxa are from Aeolidida, with some taxa from the other major clades of Cladobranchia to assess nematocyst sequestration evolution across this group. These molecular data include RNA-Seq data for 40 taxa taken from the NCBI Sequence Read Archive [46], along with additional PCR-based Sanger sequencing data from GenBank [47] (11 taxa) and 43 newly sequenced individuals. Molecular data collection – PCR-based Specimens were fixed in 96% ethyl alcohol and stored partly at room temperature or in a refrigerator at ~ 7 °C. DNA isolation was carried out by means of DNeasy Blood and Tissue-Kit (QIAgen®), DNeasy Plant Mini Kit (QIAgen®), or E.Z.N.A. Invertebrate DNA Kit (Peqlab), following the manufacturer protocols. Under sterile conditions slices of the foot or preferably dorsal tissue of approximately 5 mm2 were taken and ground with a pestle. Proteinase K was added to assist with lysis. To ensure efficient lysis, the samples were placed in a 56 °C shaking bath and lysed over night. The contents of the reaction tube were then transferred to a silica-membrane mini spin-column with collection tube and centrifuged. Two washing steps were performed to eliminate the remaining contaminants and enzyme inhibitors. The purified DNA was then eluted in two successive steps using 50 μL of low-salt buffer each. The extracted DNA was then stored at − 20 °C. For some PCR reactions the QIAGEN® Multiplex PCR Kit was used according to manufacturer instructions. Each PCR reaction used 2.3 μL RNAse-free H2O, 2.0 μL 5x Q-Solution, 10.0 μL 1x QIAGEN® Multiplex PCR Master Mix, and 1.6 μL of each primer at a concentration of 10 pmol/μL. The primers used for each gene fragment are listed in Additional file 3. The thermocycler parameters for the PCR reactions for each gene are presented in Additional file 4. In some cases, as indicated in Additional file 4, a touchdown PCR protocol was used to ensure enrichment of the correct product and minimize non-specific binding. The QIAquick™ PCR Purification Kit, ExoSAP-IT™, or E.Z.N.A. Cycle-Pure Kit (Omega) were then used for PCR product purification. Bi-directional sequencing was completed by IIT Biotech/Bioservice, Bielefeld or Eurofins MWG Operon. Extraction of sequences from transcriptome data To extract sequences for the mitochondrial genes Cytochrome Oxidase I (COI) and 16S rRNA, and the nuclear gene 18S rRNA sequences from each transcriptome, the datasets were first used to create BLAST databases using makeblastdb from the BLAST [48] command line application. Sequences from the most closely related organisms in GenBank [47] were then aligned to the transcriptome databases using tblastn (COI) or blastn (16S and 18S). The top hit with the lowest e-value and the longest sequences were then selected from the hits. These were then manually trimmed to match the most common sequence lengths for each gene. Alignments and construction of sequence matrix Sequences from each gene (COI, 16S, and 18S) were aligned using MAFFT version 7.187 [49] using the --auto option. The individual gene alignments were then concatenated with the nt123 matrix from Goodheart et al. [19]. Sites not represented by sequence data in at least four taxa were removed from the matrix. The final alignment contained 94 taxa, 409 genes, and 610,169 sites. Phylogenetic analysis Phylogenetic analysis included the following partitioning scheme: 1) protein coding genes were partitioned by codon position, and 2) the two rRNA genes (16S and 18S) were partitioned by gene. To conduct the phylogenetic analysis we used RAxML (v.8.2.9; [50]) using both the CIPRES Science Gateway [51] and Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) [52]. We used the default settings in RAxML, with a general time reversible substitution model (GTR; [53]) with a rate heterogeneity model with a gamma distribution (+G; [54]) for each partition. Five best tree searches were conducted and the tree with the highest likelihood was considered the most optimal, and 500 bootstrap replicates were completed. Gene tree analyses for each of the three added genes and a concatenated 3 genes analysis were completed in a modified version of MrBayes (v3.2.6; [55]), with a prerelease version of BEAGLE library [56] to make use of highly-parallel processors to speed up the core calculations for the phylogenetic analysis. The version of the BEAGLE library supports heterogeneous hardware [57], used for analyses here on both CPUs and GPUs, and algorithms to improve performance for partitioned analyses and independent subtrees [58]. We used a general time reversible substitution model (GTR; [53]) with a rate heterogeneity model with a proportion of invariant sites estimated (+I; [59]) and the remainder with a gamma distribution (+G; [54]). The analysis was run for 10 million generations and sampled every 1000 generations, and the first 25% of trees were discarded as burn-in. MrBayes default settings were retained for the rest of the analysis parameters, including construction of the consensus tree. Convergence was assessed in R [60] using the RWTY package [61] (Additional files 5, 6, 7, 8). We attempted to run the full analysis on the same platform as the gene trees, but none would converge. Ancestral state reconstruction Ancestral states were reconstructed for two characters: (i) the presence or absence of a sac (that we define as a bag-like structure composed of several cells) at the distal edge of the digestive gland (i.e., a distal sac), and (ii) the presence or absence of kleptocnides. Using these character states, we compared the fit of three discrete trait models using the corrected AIC (AICc; corrected for small sample sizes) from the AICcmodavg 2.0–4 package [62] in R 3.3.1 [60]. We assessed fit for two models, where: (i) all transition rates were equal (ER; same as the symmetrical model in this case); (ii) forward and reverse transitions were different between states (all rates different, ARD). The ARD model (kleptocnides AICc = 67.62823; sac AICc = 47.02553) was a slightly better fit to the data than the ER model (kleptocnides AICc = 67.63039; sac AICc = 49.98232) for each character. The final ancestral state reconstruction analysis was completed using the ace function, in the APE package [63], under the ARD model using default parameters. The ace function uses a Markov model employing a maximum likelihood approach. In this analysis, the marginal ancestral states are returned, which are given as the proportion of the total likelihood calculated for each state at each node. Cnidosac terminology In this paper, we clarify the terminology and define how we use each term in order to prevent ambiguity and to encourage consistency in descriptions of the cnidosac in the future. A summary of the terminology as used here and how it relates to that in previous publications is provided in Table 1. The term cnidosac (to describe the structure that houses kleptocnides in the tip of the ceras) has been in use for over 100 years, but terminology to describe many aspects of the cnidosac and related structures has been inconsistent [3, 31, 64,65,66,67,68,69]. Our use of the terms nematocyst and kleptocnide is particularly deliberate. No study exists that clearly identifies the types of cnidocysts that may be incorporated into the cnidosac, and it is impossible to say with absolute certainty whether only nematocysts, or other types of cnidocysts, such as spirocysts or ptychocysts, may also be sequestered. This is largely due to the fact that researchers have previously identified kleptocnides based on the definition that nematocysts have a tubule wrapped around a shaft, which may also be used to describe spirocysts [70]. As such, use of the term “nematocyst” is more precise, but might be incorrect. However, both additional types of cnidae are present only in Hexacorallia (Anthozoa), and so would not be found in any nudibranch that feeds on other types of cnidarian prey (the majority of the taxa within sequestering groups). Further, neither spirocysts nor ptychocysts are known to contain venom and both are presumed to have an adhesive function [37], which would make them non-functional in a defensive capacity. With these factors in mind, we choose to use the term nematocyst to refer to the structures stolen from cnidarians. For clarity, the term kleptocnide refers to these structures after they have been sequestered within the cnidosac (or similar structure) of the nudibranchs. For example, not all nematocysts found within the cnidarian prey species, or within the digestive tract of the nudibranchs, will necessarily become kleptocnides. Table 1 Equivalency table for terminology related to the cnidosac from published research [3, 30, 31, 64,65,66,67,68,69, 74] The term cnidosac-like refers only to structures similar to the cnidosac found within taxa that are not aeolids. It is a broad term only intended to indicate the lack of homology with the cnidosac itself. General structure of cnidosacs The cnidosac is a muscular prolongation of the digestive gland located in the apex of each ceras within members of the nudibranch group Aeolidida (Tables 2 and 3). Similar structures found within the family Hancockiidae are here considered cnidosac-like structures, due primarily to an independent origin of nematocyst sequestration (see ancestral state reconstruction results). The cnidosac connects to the digestive gland via a single entrance, which in many cases is directly adjacent to a zone of epithelial cell proliferation that moves cells distally to line the inside of the cnidosac. A constriction of the musculature is present near the tip of the cnidosac in some taxa, just before an exit from the cnidosac to the external environment. There is a single cnidosac per ceras in the case of aeolids, and multiple cnidosac-like structures per ceras in species of Hancockia (Fig. 2b). The cnidosac, as defined here, is exclusively found within members of Aeolidida, but not all species that possess cnidosacs sequester nematocysts. For example, kleptocnides are not present in members of the genus Favorinus and most species within Phyllodesmium (Fig. 2c, d). Table 2 Morphological data on distal sacs and the presence of kleptocnides for all species evaluated in this study Table 3 Morphological data on the cnidosac and cnidosac-like structures of nematocyst sequestering species evaluated in this study Fig. 2 figure 2 Variation in number of cnidosacs and presence/absence of kleptocnides: a) longitudinal section of a single cnidosac in one ceras from Caloria elegans (scale bar = 50 μm); b) longitudinal section of multiple cnidosacs in the dendronotid Hancockia californica (scale bar = 100 μm); and c-d) longitudinal sections of cnidosacs lacking kleptocnides: c) Favorinus auritulus (USNM1276034), and d) Phyllodesmium colemani. Scale bars = 50 μm The cnidosac may contain musculature in some taxa, which can vary in the number of layers (Fig. 3b-c). Other taxa do not possess musculature around the cnidosac (Fig. 3a, d). The epithelium of the cnidosac appears to consist exclusively of cells called cnidophages, which may be differentiated according to their position within the cnidosac, from proximal (close to the entrance from the digestive gland) to distal. Close to the entrance of the cnidosac these cells usually still show distinct nuclei, but the appearance of the cells becomes more atypical in the distal part of the cnidosac (Fig. 4b). In particular, cnidophages appear to have no discernable cytoplasm and a pyknotic nucleus towards the distal end of the cnidosac, likely owing to the incorporation of kleptocnides. It is unclear whether the nuclei are simply obscured by the kleptocnide contents or lost through the process of incorporating the kleptocnides. We did not observe an intact epithelial lining within the cnidosac in all species investigated, and this may be due in part to artifacts in the preservation process that caused destruction of the cell membranes, possibly related to the large size of some individuals. In these cases, the surrounding musculature or connective tissue was observed with few or no epithelial cells found. Kleptocnides are usually located within vacuoles inside the cnidophages, and the number of kleptocnides may vary within a vacuole. Fig. 3 figure 3 Variation in cnidosac musculature: a) longitudinal section showing absence of cnidosac musculature in Bulbaeolidia alba; b) longitudinal section showing a single muscle layer in Microchlamylla gracilis; c) longitudinal section showing multi-layered musculature in Flabellinia affinis; and d) longitudinal section showing the cnidosac in Embletonia gracilis. Abbreviations: cs, cnidosac; cp, cnidophage; k, kleptocnides; m, musculature. Scale bars = 50 μm Fig. 4 figure 4 Variation in cnidosac entrance and exit morphology: a) longitudinal section showing a ciliated channel in Pteraeolidia ianthina (scale bar = 50 μm); b) longitudinal section showing a simple entrance from Dondice occidentalis (USNM1276036; scale bar = 50 μm); c) longitudinal section showing a discrete cnidopore in Cerberilla amboinensis (scale bar = 100 μm); and d) longitudinal section showing a simple exit in Cratena peregrina (scale bar = 50 μm). Abbreviations: cc, ciliated channel; cp, cnidophage; en, entrance; ex, exit; ffk, free-floating kleptocnide; p, cnidopore; pz, proliferation zone The entrance to the cnidosac from the digestive gland may be a broad, open, and simple entrance, such as that found in Dondice occidentalis (Fig. 4b), or form a channel of varying length lined by ciliated or cuboidal (i.e., non-digestive) cells (e.g., Pteraeolidia ianthina; Fig. 4a). The entrance may be too small to be captured in an individual section in some taxa, and must be inferred based on changes in orientation of cells in the vicinity of the transition between the digestive gland and the cnidosac, as indicated in Table 2. It is also possible that the entrance may be temporary in some taxa. Adjacent to the entrance at the base of the cnidosac is a proliferation zone, where small cells from the proximal cnidosac epithelium seem to form and grow larger as they migrate toward the distal end, likely to accommodate maturing kleptocnides (Fig. 4a). In some cases the contents of the cnidosac may obscure the proliferation zone in sections, making it unclear whether the zone is not present or is simply unobservable. This is true for species within Aeolidida as well as those distantly related to Aeolidida with cnidosac-like structures (e.g., Hancockia spp.; Fig. 2b). In other cases, cnidophages, and sometimes the cnidosac as a whole, appear partly, or completely, empty (e.g., Phyllodesmium colemani Fig. 2d and Cratena peregrina, Fig. 4d). A simple exit from the cnidosac was found in many individuals, covered in some cases with a thin epithelial lining that appears to be associated with the outer epidermis. We refer to a distinct, lasting exit from the cnidosac, in the sense that the epithelium of the cnidosac connects to that of the epidermis, as a cnidopore (Fig. 4c). If this structure is not distinguishable (e.g., the epidermis of the ceras shows only small cuboidal cells at the tip and the epithelium does not connect to the epidermis), we refer to this simply as an exit (Fig. 4d). However, a few taxa that we present possess variations on the general scheme outlined above, including Embletonia spp. (Embletoniidae), Bulbaeolidia alba (Aeolidiidae), Favorinus auritulus (Facelinidae 1), and Phyllodesmium spp. (Facelinidae 2). In B. alba, F. auritulus, and the majority of Phyllodesmium species (except P. jakobsenae), a cnidosac was found to be present but no kleptocnides were observed (e.g., Fig. 2d). The structure of the cnidosac in several of these taxa was further observed to present several unique differences compared to those species that harbor kleptocnides. For example, in Phyllodesmium, the cnidosac closely resembles those of other aeolids, but typically has only a single layer of musculature, no obvious proliferation zone, and in most cases no exit was observed. Favorinus auritulus on the other hand has a multi-layered musculature, an exit, and appears to possess a proliferation zone similar to species that have kleptocnides. Instead of a muscular cnidosac, Bulbaeolidia alba possesses a membrane-bound sac at the tip of the ceras which lacks an exit or cnidopore (Fig. 3a). This sac attaches to the digestive gland and contains only zooxanthellae. In Embletonia gracilis, the cnidosac lacks musculature and possesses no apparent connections with the digestive gland or external environment (Fig. 3d). In some observed taxa from Fionidae (F. pinnata, Tergipes tergipes and T. antarcticus), a cnidosac was not present. Phylogenetic results The maximum likelihood phylogeny inferred in this study has varied bootstrap support (BS) among its branches (Fig. 5). Support for Cladobranchia (BS =100), Tritoniidae + Arminidae (BS = 100), Dironidae + Charcotiidae + Proctonotidae (BS = 100), and Aeolidida (BS = 96) is high, but support for Dendronotida (BS = 79) is lower. Bootstrap support values throughout the rest of the tree range from 21 to 100. Fig. 5 figure 5 Maximum likelihood phylogeny of Cladobranchia using the taxa and genes presented in Additional file 1. Bootstrap support values are presented adjacent to the corresponding branch Convergence statistics for each gene tree inference (and that of the three genes combined) supported convergence of each analysis by multiple measures (Additional files 5, 6, 7, 8). The average approximate topology effective sample size (ESS) were COI: 1139 and 975, (chain 1 and chain 2 respectively); 16S: 598 and 546; 18S: 6707 and 11,039; and for 3 genes: 8358 and 8597. The tree topology trace shows well-mixed chains, fairly stable cumulative split frequencies, and sliding window split frequencies with large jumps with an apparent extensive exploration of the tree space. The average standard deviation of split frequencies (ASDSF) is below 0.01 and shows a consistent decrease for each analysis, as expected with convergence. The topology of these trees is often consistent with the full phylogeny at the genus (and sometimes family) level, but largely inconsistent at deeper nodes. Ancestral state reconstruction Ancestral state reconstruction supports the hypothesis that the sequestration of nematocysts has originated twice within Cladobranchia, once at the base of Aeolidida and once in Hancockia (Fig. 6, red boxes). The presence of a sac at the distal edge of the digestive gland also seems to have originated at least twice (but up to four times). The most likely scenario based on the ancestral state reconstruction is one origin in Hancockia, two origins within the Charcotiidae + Dironidae + Proctonotidae clade, and one at the base of Aeolidida. The results also indicate that loss of nematocyst sequestration has occurred four times (in Phyllodesmium, Fionidae, Favorinus, and Bulbaeolidia) and a distal sac has been lost at least once within Aeolidida (in a group of taxa in Fionidae). Fig. 6 figure 6 Ancestral state reconstruction analysis for the presence of kleptocnides and a distal sac branching off of the digestive gland. Pie charts on the nodes are scaled marginal likelihoods calculated using the ace function in APE. The red boxes indicate: the node at the base of Aeolidida and the genus Hancockia, the two groups in which nematocyst sequestration evolved. The grey box indicates the base of the clade containing Aeolidida and Charcotia, Dirona, and Janolus, which may be where distal sacs originated. Also highlighted with blue background boxes are additional genera within Aeolidida where losses and/or re-gains may have occurred The cnidosac in Cladobranchia Comparative anatomy of the cnidosac Prior to the present study, numerous assumptions have been made about the uniformity of cnidosac morphology among cladobranchs that harbor kleptocnides [3, 23, 31]. Edmunds [31] in particular provides drawings that are remarkably consistent across species of Fionidae, Favorinidae, Facelinidae and Aeolidiidae, although cnidosac descriptions were not the primary purpose of that publication. All of the species illustrated in that work possess a clear entrance connecting the digestive gland with the cnidosac (though in some cases a slight elongation of the entrance is depicted, similar to a channel) and a distinct exit at the tip of the ceras connecting the cnidosac to the exterior. Additionally, all cnidosacs are depicted to possess kleptocnides, and the way the musculature is presented is also very uniform. The most detailed study on aeolid cnidosacs, until now, was written by Kälker and Schmekel [69], but it did not sufficiently describe the variation that can be found in this structure across the roughly 600 species of aeolids [4]. In addition, work on the cnidosac-like structures in Hancockia spp. began only recently [26, 27]. In this study, we find that the length, size and structure of the entrance to the cnidosac varies more than expected based on previous work, as does the structure of the exit, or cnidopore, the musculature surrounding the cnidosac, and the position and orientation of the kleptocnides [3, 29,30,31, 64, 66, 69, 71]. It is important to note that although we provide broad taxon sampling of cnidosac morphological characters, for many species only one specimen was available for analysis. As such, the observations of absence in certain cases should be taken with caution. We discuss those taxa in particular below. Previous work presents only a short and simple entrance to the cnidosac (i.e., a direct opening) [30, 31, 66], likely due to the selection of taxa that possess this condition simply by chance. Our work suggests that this is the most common transition between the digestive gland and the cnidosac. However, Hancock and Embleton [64] mention the presence of a ciliated channel in Aeolidia (= Eolis) papillosa and Herdman and Clubb [66] note the presence of a “long, curved connecting duct” in what is now Facelina bostoniensis (= Facelina drummondi). A few taxa possess a ciliated channel, including Aeolidia papillosa, Cerberilla amboinensis, Cratena peregrina, Pteraeolidia ianthina, and Paraflabellina ischitana [formerly Flabellina]. These taxa are not closely related, and therefore the channel is not homologous among the taxa that possess it, suggesting a functional explanation for its presence. We initially suspected that the presence of this elongate channel was related to the size of the kleptocnides, as A. papillosa, C. amboinensis, and P. ianthina all sequester larger kleptocnides (> 20 μm in length). However, this is not supported by C. peregrina and P. ischitana, as these species sequester smaller nematocysts. In these cases, the ciliated channel may be a relict of an ancestral shift in diet, but the possible functional significance of the ciliated channel remains speculative. Similarly, there is no consistent pattern amongst the taxa that possess a proliferation zone versus those that do not. The one exception is the absence of a proliferation zone in taxa that do not sequester nematocysts from the genus Phyllodesmium. The only species within Phyllodesmium in which we identified a proliferation zone is P. jakobsenae, which is the only species of Phyllodesmium known to harbor kleptocnides. It is still unclear why some taxa seem to have a proliferation zone while others do not, but we suspect that in a small number of cases artifacts of the sectioning of some samples have led to the destruction of this region (likely due to difficulties in preservation), which leads to membrane fragments and free-floating kleptocnides within the cnidosacs of some species a (e.g., Cratena peregrina; Fig. 4d). To address this point, more individuals from these species should be investigated. The apparent absence of a proliferation zone may also be due to differences in the growth stage of the individuals investigated, or of the cerata if any were in the process of regeneration, but we found no evidence that explicitly supports either of these hypotheses. Further, at least one previous study mentioned the presence of this region [29], but it was not discussed in detail. This region is where nematocysts are taken up by the cnidophages before they migrate towards the distal end of the cnidosac. However, the precise extent of the proliferation zone remains unclear. In some species, it appears to be restricted to the cnidosac (e.g., Pteraeolidia ianthina; Fig. 4a), but in others this zone seems to extend into the adjacent parts of the digestive gland (e.g., Dondice occidentalis; Fig. 4b). In the majority of taxa that sequester nematocysts, we found only very simple exits from the cnidosac, which in some cases is covered by a thin epithelium. This covering contains cells similar to that of the epidermis of the cerata, which is composed of elongated columnar cells with what appear to be many specialized vacuoles. Simple exits are the most common, both in our study and seemingly in others [31, 66]. However, in a few select taxa within Aeolidiidae, including Aeolidia papillosa, Anteaeolidiella chromosoma, and Cerberilla amboinensis, a complex cnidopore is present (Fig. 4c). It bears an epithelial lining that appears continuous with that of the epidermis. This structure has been identified before [69], but was simply considered a zone of undifferentiated cells that was believed to serve as a reserve for lost cnidophages. However, due to the location at the distal end of the cnidosac, and as part of the cnidopore, we suspect that this is not the case. Instead, we hypothesize that this cell layer is a special adaptation for releasing the exceptionally long and narrow nematocysts sequestered from anemones (up to 50—60 μm in length, but < 5 μm in width). The term cnidopore has previously been used uncritically to refer to all exits from the cnidosac [30, 31], but we now redefine the term cnidopore here to refer to the structure thus far only found in Aeolidiidae. Although the musculature surrounding the cnidosac also varies across Aeolidida, the significance of this variation is unclear. Musculature around the cnidosac is very thin or lacking entirely in only a few species, including Embletonia gracilis, Embletonia pulchra and Bulbaeolidia alba. When present, muscle thickness varies across species, ranging from what appear to be one to multiple layers. This variation in the thickness of the musculature is illustrated in one previous study [31], though not as precisely as we indicate here (Table 3). There is no obvious evolutionary explanation for the variation in muscle thickness or number of muscle layers across taxa [72, 73], but a thicker muscle layer would likely result in more forceful expulsion of the kleptocnides. Increased musculature might be associated with predation pressure, size of incorporated kleptocnides, or developmental stage. Incorporating additional individuals from each species, and at different stages of development, as well as measurements of kleptocnide size and muscle thickness would be beneficial for assessing these hypotheses. The differentiation of cnidophages from a functional, active cell into a “container or larder” of kleptocnides at the tip of the cnidosac reflects the maturation of the kleptocnides via proton transport, which are immature and non-functional when first sequestered [28]. After maturation, the cells appear to have no further functioning due to the reduction of cell complexity. Previous workers have attempted to address the origin of the membrane of the cnidophage [3, 74], and recently have concluded that it is a phagosome, a specialized vesicle formed by the cell membrane [3]. Within cnidophages, the number of kleptocnides may vary both within and among taxa. This appears to be associated with the size of the kleptocnides; there tend to be fewer large kleptocnides (> 20 μm in length) within a given cnidophage compared to those with smaller kleptocnides (usually 10 μm or less). An example can be found in Pteraeolidia ianthina (Fig. 4a), which sequesters nematocysts of multiple size classes. Divergences from the general theme The morphological characters assessed in this study appear to be quite variable within families, but most cnidosacs generally vary on a theme that is conserved across Aeolidida. However, there are still others that have lost particular cnidosac structures or have lost the cnidosac altogether. One might hypothesize that the cnidosacs lose the connection to the digestive gland or the musculature surrounding the cnidosac when no nematocysts are sequestered. For example, species from the genus Phyllodesmium (except for P. jakobsenae) possess muscle bound cnidosacs that appear to be devoid of kleptocnides, but there are no obvious entrances to the digestive diverticulum or exits to the external environment. Rather, these species sequester chemicals for defense [75], and thus do not necessarily require a structured entrance. In this way, the cnidosacs in Phyllodesmium may be similar to the mantle dermal formations in Charcotiidae, which lack an exit but release contents when compressed [41, 76]. However, in species from the genus Favorinus, the overall structure of the cnidosac (including the opening from the digestive gland and muscles around the cnidosac) remains the same, but no kleptocnides are present due to the penchant of these species for feeding on the eggs of other gastropods [33]. Although it is possible that the lack of kleptocnides may stem from a hypothetical proclivity in Phyllodesmium and Favorinus to discharging nematocysts during the fixation process, we suggest this is unlikely. For one, members of Phyllodesmium appear to have an intact epithelium where one might have expected the kleptocnides to be ejected. Were kleptocnides ejected during fixation, the ceras would be fixed with an opening in the tip. In addition, the absence of kleptocnides in Phyllodesmium in particular is also well documented (with the exception of P. jakobsenae) [10, 75, 77,78,79]. In Favorinus, it is possible that this is the case, given the open epithelium at the tip of the cerata (e.g., Fig. 2c), but the absence of kleptocnides is consistent with the habit of members of this genus eating gastropod eggs. Even more variations on this theme are found in Bulbaeolidia alba, Embletonia spp., and species within the genus Fiona. Bulbaeolidia alba has a sac at the distal end of the digestive gland that contains only occasional zooxanthellae (Symbiodinium). In addition, we could find no obvious entrance or exit to or from the sac, and the structure appears to be surrounded by a few thin muscle fibers. We hypothesized that the lack of kleptocnides may be due to the very small size of B. alba, which might therefore possess a lower defense requirement, but even smaller taxa within the genera Embletonia [26] and Pseudovermis [80] possess kleptocnides. Alternatively, we hypothesize that a lack of sequestration may be related to the size or utility of the nematocysts found within the anemones on which this species feeds [33]. A third alternative is that B. alba instead houses other natural compounds within this sac, either from its prey as in Phyllodesmium [79] or produced de novo. Again, it is possible that the lack of kleptocnides in B. alba is an artifact of a small sample size, but like Phyllodesmium, no evidence of extrusion could be found. Members of Embletoniidae appear to have evolutionarily lost the musculature surrounding the cnidosac entirely or represent an intermediate step in the evolution of the cnidosac, as discussed in the cnidosac evolution section below. There is also no obvious entrance or exit to and from the cnidosac in these taxa. Finally, some species of Fionidae within the genus Fiona (this study) have lost the cnidosacs entirely, ostensibly because species in this genus prefer non-cnidarian prey [33]. Sequestered nematocysts have also been found in one other family within Cladobranchia, Hancockiidae. We see structures in Hancockia californica that are very similar to cnidosacs (which we call cnidosac-like), with kleptocnides housed in cnidophage-like cells in multiple muscular sacs at the tip of each ceras. These structures have also been found in Hancockia uncinata and H. schoeferti [27], and in some cases cnidosac-like structures were found in both the cerata and the rhinophoral sheaths. Homology inferences regarding the structures found in Hancockiidae and those in Aeolidida are discussed in the next section. Phylogeny of Cladobranchia and evolution of the cnidosac Phylogenetic inferences Given that much of the molecular data included here are derived from previously published studies, the topology inferred in our phylogenetic analysis (Figure 5) is consistent with that found in both recent phylogenomic studies [19, 81]. However, this work extends previous findings by including taxa not analyzed in recent phylogenomic studies, namely taxa from the genera Phyllodesmium, Caloria, Pruvotfolia, Pteraeolidia, Cratena, Facelina, Glaucus, Calmella, Piseinotecus, Tergipes, Notaeolidia, Embletonia, and Charcotia. The majority of these fall within the clades we would expect based on prior molecular work: Phyllodesmium is closely related to Dondice within the facelinid clade that is sister to Aeolidiidae [82, 83]; Caloria is supported within the second facelinid clade and is closely related to species of Pruvotfolia [84]; Facelina, Glaucus and Cratena are closely related within the second facelinid clade [83]; Calmella is closely related to Flabellina and Paraflabellina [85, 86]; and Tergipes falls within what is now Fionidae [87]. However, the placement of Pteraeolidia as closely related to Palisa and Austraeolis within the second facelinid clade is novel to this study, and the molecular data presented here support the position of Charcotia within the sister group to Aeolidida, as suggested previously by morphological work [15]. Despite the addition of all of the new data presented here, the positions of Notaeolidia and Embletonia remain unclear [26]. Support for the exact positions of these two genera is poor, and these taxa appear to contribute to the low bootstrap values at the base of Aeolidida. This may be due to long-branch attraction between Notaeolidia and Flabellinopsis iodinea [formerly Flabellina], and between Embletonia and Unidentia. However, morphological analyses also support at least the earlier divergence of Notaeolidia within Aeolidida [15, 88]. The uncertainty surrounding the affinities of these four taxa has implications for our understanding of the evolution of the cnidosac. We also find that individual gene tree analyses (and the three genes analysis) are consistent with previous large-scale PCR-based sequence analyses [21]. These topologies and posterior probabilities support the idea that PCR-based sequencing data for the genes used (COI, 16S, and 18S) provide some utility for inferring recent divergences, but that high-throughput sequencing data are necessary for inferring deeper divergences. Cnidosac evolution The sequestration of cnidarian nematocysts has originated at least twice within Cladobranchia based on the phylogeny presented here (Fig. 6). This result also indicates that species within Aeolidida that do not sequester nematocysts have lost this ability, which seems to have occurred at least three times. In addition, the early divergence of Embletoniidae within the aeolid phylogeny is suggestive; it indicates that the structure within Embletoniidae is a cnidosac, and that the lack of musculature around the cnidosac may represent an intermediate step in the evolution of kleptocnide sequestration. However, stronger support for relationships at the base of Aeolidida are necessary before further inferences can be made. Our results also support several independent losses of the cnidosac, including in members of Fiona and Tergipes. This appears to be due to a switch to preying mostly on Crustacea in Fiona [33]. A prey preference transition from hydroids to other types of organisms may also have led to the loss of cnidosacs in some species of Tergipes [33, 89]. The presence of a sac at the distal end of the digestive gland is hypothesized to have originated prior to the ability to sequester nematocysts (Figure 6; grey box), although this result relies on the hypothesis that the terminal sacs found in Charcotiidae and Proctonotidae [41, 43, 76, 90] are homologous to those in Aeolidida. Support for this hypothesis is very low, and thus appears unlikely based on our reconstruction. However, the terminal sacs of Charcotiidae and Proctonotidae are considered to function as excretory structures, and some have hypothesized that the aeolid cnidosac is an adaptation of this sac for defense [76]. Although the homology remains uncertain, our ancestral state reconstruction does not completely reject this modification hypothesis, wherein the distal sac was exapted to sequester nematocysts. More morphological and molecular data from additional species in the Charcotiidae + Proctonotidae + Dironidae clade is necessary to further test this hypothesis, as this clade is not well represented in our analysis, which can hinder evolutionary inferences. The cnidosac-like structures in Hancockiidae [26, 27] appear to have evolved independently from the distal sac in both Aeolidida and its sister clade. This is supported by the phylogenetic analyses presented here as well as differences in the sequestration process between Hancockia and species of aeolids. For example, it appears that Hancockia species encapsulate nematocysts in the lumen of the digestive tract before transport [27], unlike aeolids. Here, we describe the morphology of the cnidosac and cnidosac-like structures across all major clades of Cladobranchia in which it has been identified, and discuss possible functions for variation in structural characters. Overall, we find that cnidosac morphological characters are variable across Cladobranchia, and we provide evolutionary hypotheses in many cases that might explain the evolutionary patterns found. We also conclude that the sequestration of nematocysts has originated at least twice within Cladobranchia and that the sac at the distal end of the digestive gland may have originated prior to that of the sequestration of nematocysts. Finally, support for the origin of a distal sac prior to that of nematocyst sequestration suggests that the terminal sacs found in Charcotiidae and Proctonotidae may be homologous to the cnidosacs found in Aeolidida. Taken together, this research provides a more thorough understanding of the evolution of morphological characters relating to nematocyst sequestration in Cladobranchia. 1. 1. Putz A, Kehraus S, Díaz-Agras G, Wägele H, König GM. Dotofide, a guanidine-interrupted terpenoid from the marine slug Doto pinnatifida (Gastropoda, Nudibranchia). European. 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We are grateful to four high school students that assisted with the histology in this manuscript: Emma Rebour, Maiss Mohamed, Jolanthe Stürmer, and Birthe Priesmann. We would also like to thank the staff of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and the Richard B. Gump South Pacific Research Station in French Polynesia for use of their facilities and their help in acquiring the proper permits. This work used the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) Comet at the San Diego Supercomputer Center through allocation TG-BIO180017, which is supported by National Science Foundation grant number ACI-1548562. Lastly, we would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their thorough and constructive comments. This research was supported by a Smithsonian Graduate Student Fellowship and Pre-doctoral Fellowship, a University of Maryland International Graduate Research Fellowship and a University of Maryland Department of Biology Eugenie Clark Award granted to JAG and funds from the Alexander Koenig Society (AKG) to HW. Availability of data and materials Aligned data matrices and tree files are available in the Dryad Digital Repository ( Transcriptomes and sequence data for COI, 16S, and 18S are available in the Sequence Read Archive and GenBank, respectively (Additional file 2). Images for morphological data and morphological data matrices are available in Morphobank ( and histological slide information can be found in Additional file 1. Scripts and data for the ancestral state reconstruction and convergence analyses are provided on Github via Zenodo ( Author information JAG, AGC, MPC, and HW conceived of the study; JAG, AGC, MPC, ES and HW participated in study design; JAG, SB, DS, AP and HW collected samples and morphological data; JAG and DLA performed the data analysis; all authors helped draft the manuscript and gave final approval for publication. Corresponding author Correspondence to Jessica A. Goodheart. Ethics declarations Ethics approval and consent to participate Not applicable. Consent for publication Not applicable. Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Publisher’s Note Additional files Additional file 1: Specimen information for the morphological data used in this study. (XLSX 10 kb) Additional file 2: Specimen information for the molecular data analyzed in this study. (XLSX 20 kb) Additional file 3: Primers used for fragments of CO1, 16S and 18S. (XLSX 37 kb) Additional file 4: Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) cycling protocols for each of the three genes. (XLSX 40 kb) Additional file 5: Convergence statistics and plots for the COI Bayesian analysis. (PDF 1966 kb) Additional file 6: Convergence statistics and plots for the 16S Bayesian analysis. (PDF 2004 kb) Additional file 7: Convergence statistics and plots for the 18S Bayesian analysis. (PDF 1646 kb) Additional file 8: Convergence statistics and plots for the 3 genes Bayesian analysis. (PDF 1564 kb) Rights and permissions Reprints and Permissions About this article Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark Cite this article Goodheart, J.A., Bleidißel, S., Schillo, D. et al. Comparative morphology and evolution of the cnidosac in Cladobranchia (Gastropoda: Heterobranchia: Nudibranchia). Front Zool 15, 43 (2018). Download citation • Received: • Accepted: • Published: • DOI: • Nudipleura • Morphological evolution • Nematocyst sequestration • Aeolid • Defense
Boron is the fifth element of the periodic table of elements and heads group 13. It is a metalloid with metal properties and non-metal and is symbolized by the letter “B”. Also, it has atomic number 5 and its mass is 10.811. If you want to know the characteristics and other details of the Boro, continue reading until the end… Characteristics of Boron Boron (B) can be found as orthoboric acid, sodium borate or borax, which is the most common way to get it. Colemanite or calcium borate and ulexite, also known as sodium calcium borate, up to now they have not been found in pure form in nature. Elementary boron is capable of forming bonds with metallic and non-metallic elements to form other compounds. In addition, it has semiconductive and semimetallic properties, and is located in group 3A in the periodic table. When it reacts with other compounds, Boron can be very versatile and capable of giving up its electrons if the other compound needs it, but also accepting them if the other element wants to grant them. Elementary boron generally occurs as an amorphous brown powder and its ability to conduct electricity at room temperature is almost nil. But, at very high temperatures, Boron becomes an excellent current conductor! Also, despite its opacity, it is capable of transmitting light infrared. When boron crystallizes, it takes on an appearance and hardness very similar to diamond. Additionally, among the chemical elements known to date, it is the one that offers the highest tensile strength (between 1600 and 2400 MPa). Story of Boro The discovery of Boron is attributed to English and French chemical scientists, although it was not until 1909 that a pure sample of this element could be obtained. However, it is known that sodium borate was used by the Chinese in the 3rd century. In the year 300, glazed ceramics and glassware were made in China using a substance they called tincal,, which was actually borax. Also, in ancient Egypt, for the mummification of their deceased, a mineral composed of borates and salts called natron was used. And, in ancient Rome, boron compounds were used to make glass. Another interesting piece of information is that the Persian alchemist Rhazes classified minerals into 6 types, which were made up of borates. Then, starting in the 8th century, the Arabs used sodium borate to purify and refine gold and silver, something that undoubtedly gave them good results.< /p> In the year 1808, the scientist Humphry Davy applied electrolysis to a borax solution and was able to observe that a black precipitate accumulated on one of the electrodes. Then he heated boron oxide with potassium and obtained a brown almost black powder, which was how Boron was known until then. On the other hand, Gay-Lussac and Thénard subjected boric acid in the presence of iron to high temperatures to obtain Boron.Subsequently, they carried out the experiment in reverse and from the oxidation of boron, they obtained boric acid Despite these results, none of these scientists could realize that they had got a new element. It was not until 1827 that Jöns Jakob Berzelius managed to identify this substance as elemental. Then, in 1892, a French chemist named Henri Moissan managed to produce boron with a purity of 98%. However, it was in the year 1909, that the American chemist Ezekiel Weintraub managed to obtain boron in its pure form. Obtaining Boron As we have commented, it is not possible to obtain Boron in its elemental form in nature, so the source of this substance is the borates found in evaporific deposits, such as borax and to a lesser degree, colemanite. In some volcanic sources and fumes, sasolites are found and can also be precipitated as orthoboric acid. During the solidification process of silicate magma, natural boron minerals are formed, located in pegmatite deposits. Something to add is that the methods previously used to obtain pure Boron required a reduction of the oxide using metals such as aluminum or magnesium, but the resulting substance was always contaminated. It is estimated that Boron forms 0.001% of the earth's crust and the number of locations of this element with high concentrations is quite limited, being the deposits of California, United States, where the largest amount of borax is found. In Argentina (specifically in Tincalayu) and in Turkey, there are important borax deposits, although the latter was discovered recently. In the region of Lardarello, Italy, you can get Sasolite and in Death Valley in the US and also in Turkey you can get colemanite. Properties of Boron Boron is considered to be a polymorphous solid that can be found as a powder, ranging in color from brown to black. Furthermore, Boron in the form of crystals can have a very hard, bright reddish hue, or a hue ranging from jet black to metallic silver. On the other hand, Boron has an atomic mass of 10.811 g/mol and its melting point is 2076 C. As for , the density in the liquid state of Boron, this is 2.08 g/cm³ and in the crystalline and amorphous solid state it is 20 ⁰C: 2, 34g/cm³ Additionally, the boiling point of Boron is 3927 ⁰C, its melting point is 50.2 kJ /mol and has a hardness of ~ 9.5 on the Mohs scale. Also, Boron has an electric resistivity of ~ 106 Ω.m at 20 ⁰C, its atomic volume is 4.16 cm³/mol, electronegativity is 2.04 on the Pauling scale, and molar heat capacity is 11,087 J/(mol K). As for the ionization energy of boron, the first level is 800.6 kJ/mol, the second level is 2,427 kJ/mol, and the third level is 3,659.7 kJ/mol. Its atomic radius is 90 empirical mp, thermal conductivity is equal to 27.4 W/mK, and is not soluble in water, alcohol or in ether, but in nitric and sulfuric acids. One of the most significant properties of Boron is that it has many physical forms, this is known as allotropy. Furthermore, it has a high capacity to absorb neutrons and can react with all halogens, obtaining trihalides. Another important fact is that Boron is not affected by nitric acid unless it is subjected to high temperatures and in that case it could react producing borates. Finally, when reacting with hydrogen, boranes are produced, which are very unstable, explosive and highly toxic compounds. Boron Applications Of the compounds obtained from Boron, one of the most used is borax, due to its density and the fact that it is capable of dissolving in water. Its physicochemical characteristics also stand out and for this reason it is widely used in various areas. Uses in industry borax is used as one of the main ingredients in the manufacture of detergents, softeners, soaps, disinfectants, multipurpose cleaners, steel and porcelain cleaners, as well as stain removers, among others. Combined with water, borax is used to solder gold and silver in the manufacture of high-quality jewelry. In addition, borax is an essential ingredient in the production of ceramics, tableware, porcelain for floors, fiberglass, glass, alloys, and more. In the metallurgical industry, the use of Boron is of vital importance when it comes to producing refined metals used by construction companies and in the electrical industry. In addition, it is used to coat electrolytes in electrochemistry. Uses in agriculture Boron is an element that plants require for the fixation of phosphorus, potassium, nitrogen and calcium. These nutrients allow healthy plant growth and development. On the other hand, Boron is necessary for the transport of sugars and energy during plant growth. Essential care must be taken when administering very high doses of fertilizers, since these reduce the assimilation of Boron, especially when the concentration levels of this element are very low. Boron in medicine This compound helps improve brain function, which is why Boron is considered “food for the brain”. In that case, it improves short-term memory, attention and motor control. Therefore, the deficiency of this compound can affect brain function. Studies have shown that Boron acts as a metabolic regulator, serving as an inhibitor of oxidoreductase enzymes and serine proteases that regulate the normal inflammatory process. It has also been proven that it can alter the blood coagulation process. In the case of patients with brain tumors, chromotherapy can be applied with Boron 10 isotopes, which has the purpose the progressive elimination of these tumor formations. Currently, its effectiveness is being tested in breast, prostate and liver cancer. Boron also improves bone density and prevents the onset of bone diseases, such as osteoporosis It has been proven that this mineral is capable of increasing the thickness, volume and mass of bones and helps with the absorption of vitamin D. Experiment or play with Boro One of them is to make a slime with borax for 1 person or for a group for fun, for a birthday or school events. Prepare a mixture of 15 grams of borax in 1.5L of water, and 15 grams of borax (3 small teaspoons). This amount of water will give you about 10 slimes. Once the borax solution is ready, put the plastic on the ground and look for plastic cups, plate, spoons and glue. Pour the content of the glue into the plastic cup. Fill the empty glue bottle with tap water and pour it into the cup as well. Stir well, until a remains homogeneous mixture. You can use food coloring and also water soluble paints for children. In this step, you can add colored glitter or any other accessories to the slime. Pour the colorant into the mixture of glue and water, and stir well to obtain a homogeneous color. As you stir the glue in the glass, add the water with borax. Stir well with the spoon… It is time to remove the sticky mass from the glass and knead it so that it dries and makes the slime. Leave a comment Please note that comments must be approved before being published.
Why MenaCal.7TM? K Vitamins K Vitamins are essential to the utilisation of calcium in the body, and are therefore essential to the maintenance of optimal bone health. There are two primary forms of vitamin K, each with different contributions to our health. The two primary forms are Vitamin K1 (phylloquinone) and Vitamin K2 (menaquinone). Vitamin K1 (Phylloquinone): This is considered the major dietary source of vitamin K comprising approximately 90% of total vitamin K intake. The bioavailability of Vitamin K1 is low, and less than 20% is absorbed. Vitamin K2 (Menaquinones): The most important K2 forms are menaquinone-4 (MK-4) and menaquinone-7 (MK-7). These forms of Vitamin K2 are the most powerful and most important for health. Vitamin K2 – the key ingredient Vitamin K2 is required by the body for the optimal utilisation of calcium, the building block for strong bones. Vitamin K2 puts calcium into where it is needed – into the bones and not the arteries. Excess calcium deposited into arteries can lead to the stiffening of the arteries, increasing the risk for heart disease. Inadequate Vitamin K, especially K2, results in this “calcium paradox”, whereby too little calcium results in weak bones, while excess calcium accumulates in the arteries. A Vitamin K2 deficiency therefore leads to decreased bone formation, resulting in impaired bone strength and mineral density. Vitamin K2 is required for optimal bone strength during each stage of your life. Children have a higher bone metabolism than adults, and therefore require more vitamin K2 to build healthy bone tissue. Strong, healthy bones formed early in life set a higher baseline for when the natural decline of bone mass begins. Adults require Vitamin K2 in order to preserve their bone mass and ensure healthy bones for future years, and seniors require Vitamin K2 in order to prevent further bone loss and fractures. Are you getting enough Vitamin K2? Although Vitamin K2 is available from dietary sources such as meat, eggs and cheese, the majority of healthy people are vitamin K2 deficient! This is due to an increase in industrialisation leaving Western diets deficient in this important vitamin. In order to achieve your daily recommended dose of 45 µg Vitamin K (As K2VITAL). you would have to consume either 4kgs of meat, 5l of milk, 5l whole yoghurt, 80 g soft cheese, 59 g hard cheese or 8 egg yolks! The best source of dietary vitamin K2 is the traditional Japanese dish natto made from fermented soybeans, which is rich in vitamin K2 as MK-7. This dish, however, is not popular in the western world, and supplementation of Vitamin K2 is required to overcome K2 deficiencies. with K2VITAL® Vitamin K2 deficiencies can be overcome by supplementing with K2VITAL®. Supplementing with vitamin K2 is associated with improved bone mass and bone quality, and significantly reduces the incidence of fractures. In addition, supplementing with synthesised vitamin K2 (K2VITAL®) is biologically equivalent to the natural-fermented vitamin K2.
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Julia Taraba Cite as Honorable Chairs, Distinguished Delegates, The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)- a virus which attacks the body’s immune system and destroys T-helper cells and creates CD4 cells by copying itself inside of them. This invisible to the human eye particle is responsible for the global HIV epidemic which has struck our planet in 1920. Since 1959- the first two know deaths resulting from HIV- the number of people infected has drastically risen. Currently, there are almost 37 million people suffering and just in 2017 940 000 people died from AIDS. Despite many treatments being available (such as Antiretroviral Therapy- ART), not all countries provide its citizens with free/refunded access to such medication. It is not the first time the United Nations have tackled the complex problem of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Formed in 1994, United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS (abbreviation- UNAIDS) has been working ever since as the main advocate for accelerated, comprehensive and coordinated global action on the HIV...
Freud s future of an illusion essay Such prohibitions are only obeyed when the theat of external coercion is believed and feared. Contrary to Freud, Jung views religion more in a more indulgent manner. Sigmund Freud’s -The Future of an Illusion Paper The second argument is that early man did not personify nature in order to influence it, but rather to understand the world in the context of his existence. CHAPTER 6 Strong feelings of helplessness in childhood cause a need for protection, initially for the mother, then later for the stronger but more dangerous father. What does a person do if he has not had this vaulted truth experience. Freud's Future of An Illusion He seems to contradict himself because it was mentioned in the book that without these religious beliefs, which he calls illusions, the world would be a chaotic place. They are often fixated upon in part because they fulfill a wish, but also because of they cannot be verified or rejected. Freud feels that in the long-run religious concepts will be disregarded, even if the initial attempts fail. Theology/Sigmund Freud: The Future of an Illusion term paper 1974 Freud believes that regarding the psychical origin of religious ideas, humanity has adopted them and they have become our strongest and oldest desires. Freud claims that, in actuality, the harm done by criticizing religion will likely to be either to him, since he will have to discuss these writing with various close-minded persons, to this book itself, since it may turn out to be banned, and to psychoanalysis, since people who are in opposition to psychoanalysis will surely use this book as an excuse to denounce it. But generally he does this: Freud feels that intellectual weakness may often be due to religious education vol. Jung thinks that a person fights with opposing feelings and assumptions. They miss having a figure that is both a disciplinarian and a loving compassionate being. Without it, they would be distraught and lost. One answer is that they represent an embracement of ignorance, and from a state of ignorance one cannot make clear, informed judgements. The Future of an Illusion by Sigmund Freud Essay Sample People themselves have value, either by the work they perform or by their personal characteristics, such as sexuality, persona, etc. The position of the individual toward it should be to help it rid itself of religion and thus gain health and maturity. Thus, religions of the world — Judaism, Christianity or Islam — are grounded on similar historical truth, but the divergence between them occurs as the stage of symptom formations. Since God is the central figure in the majority of world religions, Freud offers another perspective one the relationship between belief and early childhood experience. Psychology and Religion’ and Freud’s ‘The Future of an Illusion If nature takes on the characteristics of humanity, then it will be capable of taking pity on a person and helping them. He admits that perhaps he too is chasing an illusion here, that perhaps human nature is such that religious indoctrination, harmful though it may be, is not the primary cause of the perceived lessening of intellectual ability that occurs between childhood and adulthood. The ideal reminds them that they belong and that they are better than the peoples of the other cultural units. If the civilization is viewed as a child, during the early stages of history the humankind suffered similar repression to tame its obsessions. His explanation of religion ties in with his theory of the unconscious. Then on his recent works, Freud alters his beliefs and states that religion and the idea of God is one of the strangest thoughts that mankind could conceive. The Future of an Illusion by Sigmund Freud Essay Sample. My first reaction to this book would seem odd to Freud’s supporters but I truly find the book absolutely confusing. Essay Sigmund Freud 's Theory Of Civilization. Sigmund Freud approached his theory of civilisation and its discontents through a rather direct and pessimistic tone throughout the book; to attempt to rather hastily explain how civilisation is the main reason of individuals’ unhappiness in society due to the restrictions society places on civilisations. This is my summary of the excellent book, The Future of an Illusion by Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. Note, my notes are in {braces}, and XX means that I need to verify that Freud actually expressed this idea (in this way). The Future of an Illusion by Freud Essay Words \| 4 Pages. The Future of an Illusion by Freud In his book The Future of An Illusion, Freud () struggled to create a theory that would distinguish morality from religion so that people would still be able to know right. More Essay Examples on Religion Rubric. Freud believes that religion has played a great part in the making of societies - Freud and Religion Essay introduction. In his earlier writing, “The future of an illusion,” he regards religion as an illusion, which is equivalent to atheism. The Future of an Illusion Sigmund Freud's The Future of An Illusion proposes an idealistic form of human culture, one in which human relations are reorganized so . Freud s future of an illusion essay Rated 0/5 based on 40 review Psychology and Religion’ and Freud’s ‘The Future of an Illusion Free Short \| Essays & Assignments
Why do we study neutrinos? Neutrinos are the most abundant massive particle in the universe, but we still know very little about them. Even though they are one of the fundamental building blocks of the universe, we don’t know how much they weigh—or why they have mass at all. Our models predicted they wouldn’t. Neutrinos are a clue to new physics: ways of describing the world that we don’t know yet. They also might have unique properties that would help explain why the universe is made of matter instead of antimatter. Until we know more about these mysterious particles, we won’t know some of the secrets of our universe—or the ways we can harness them for more practical purposes. For more on this, see the FAQ: “What are the benefits of neutrino research?”
Inexplicable Moon Anomalies Reveal Deception About Outer Space Moon-1By Makia Freeman, Waking Times, October 19, 2015 Moon anomalies are nothing new, there are many people, including mainstream Western scientists, who have pointed out numerous highly strange and irregular things about the moon. A few years ago David Icke brought the book Who Built The Moon? by Chris Knight and Alan Butler to attention, and concluded that the moon is an unnatural object that has been placed there for some reason – possibly as a broadcasting station. Icke further linked the moon to Saturn, and theorized that the “Matrix” in which we live is actually a program originally broadcast by Saturn and amplified by the moon. He called it the Saturn-Moon-Matrix. The Lunar Wave, as Caught on Film by Crrow777 A man going by the name of Crrow777 has filmed some astonishing footage of the moon. He caught something which he dubbed the “lunar wave” going across the surface of the moon, from bottom to top as it appeared on his camera. This lunar wave has the appearance of a line that moves across a computer screen during a reset. It looks digital, electronic or holographic. Yet, how could that possibly be true if the moon were just a natural satellite of Earth, made from rock? Of course, many skeptics and naysayers have criticized his findings and claimed the lunar wave must be a result of his recording equipment, and not local to the moon itself. However, as Crrow shows in the video, by adjusting various layers, colors and lighting, you can see that the wave actually occurred on or above the moon’s surface, and has nothing to do with his camera. The implications are staggering. I conclude from this that the lunar wave is showing us at least 2 possibilities (and maybe more): – the moon’s true surface is being cloaked by some kind of advanced holographic technology, to hide things below, possibly bases or other structures on the lunar surface; or – the moon itself is holographic. It has no solid physical existence, but is rather a projection of light, a hologram made to look 3-dimensional. Moon anomalies: what are the chances the Moon would just happen to be smaller than the Sun in the exact inverse ratio that it is closer to the Earth, allowing a perfect solar eclipse? Lunar Wave Follows Many Other Observed and Proven Moon Anomalies The exciting discovery of the lunar wave comes on the heels of many other bizarre moon anomalies. Here is a brief list of some of the more prominent moon anomalies which have been discovered: – Astronomer Carl Sagan wrote in his 1966 book Intelligent Life in the Universe that “a natural satellite cannot be hollow”, yet evidence indicates the moon is hollow. There are reports that it rung like a bell when hit with objects. In the Zulu tradition, shaman Credo Mutwa said that his people thought of the Moon as an egg without its yolk (i.e. hollow). The website BibliotecaPleyades states: – In his book Alien Agenda, Jim Marrs quotes this interesting idea from science writer William Roy Sheldon: Is the Moon An Illusion? If you accept the idea of a holographic Moon or that the Moon is an illusion, it leads, as always, to further questions. We know that as the Moon gets closer, it affects spin of Earth and gives us seasons. Is it the reason for the great cataclysms and catastrophes many different cultures and traditions recorded in our past? Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard said that there are 2 ways to be fooled – both by believing something that isn’t, and not believing something that is. Is the Moon transmitting false information to manipulate our perception, as well as blocking information we would normally decode? What about the Sun? What about the other planets in the Solar System? The Sun is Not What It Seems, Either The Sun is not what it seems, either. Have you seen this video with Nassim Haramein where some kind of gargantuan UFOs or unknown space crafts fly straight into the Sun? Listen to what Eric Dollard says about how the Sun is a very different entity to what we imagine. It is transmitting energy and information, rather than heat and light – we just decode that information as heat and light: NASA’s Solar System of Planets Look Like Fake CGI Matthew Boylan, realistic photo painter, who is a former NASA operational graphics manager. He worked for years creating photo-realistic computer graphics for NASA. Nazi-and-Freemason-controlled NASA has clearly shot its credibility, so why would it be a good idea to blindly swallow its images of “outer space”? Eric Dubay, who has come out with a lot of information recently on the flat Earth theory, asserts that the so-called images we have of Venus, Jupiter and just about everything else from space are actually fake CGI (Computer Generated Images). At this stage, all this information on moon anomalies and more doesn’t lead to answers, but rather more questions. If the Moon, Sun and Solar System planets are hollow, artificial or holographic, what does that say about the Earth? Where are we? Is there even such a thing as “outer space”? What exactly are we looking at when we sees dots of light in the firmament? About the Author This article was originally featured at The Freedom Articles. One comment Share your thoughts You are commenting using your account. Log Out / Change ) Google photo Twitter picture Facebook photo Connecting to %s
Home Bed Bugs Can Bed Bugs make you Sick? How are they Dangerous? Can Bed Bugs make you Sick? How are they Dangerous? Different people have different reaction to bites from bed bugs. The effect of their bite can spread easily to the blood within a very short time. In this article, find out whether bed bugs have a potential to make you sick. Further, the article tries to explain the dangers that can come from bed bugs and the bites. Can they make you sick? There are a number of studies which try to explain whether or not bed bugs have an impact on the health of an individual. Here are some of them: how can bed bugs make you sick According to the study by Center for Disease Control and Prevention, bed bugs are not known to cause any disease. They are just a source of annoyance because their bites cause a lot of itchiness and irritation. Other times, the itchiness and irritation could prompt you to continuously scratch and this could predispose you to secondary infection. There can also be allergic reactions from the bites that need medication.[1] According to the Orkin website, bed bugs are known carriers of disease organisms but are not actively involved in causing diseases. There are studies that suggest that bed bugs can be at the focal point in the spread of leprosy, brucellosis and oriental sores. However, this information is scanty and not conclusive. The lead cause of the disease spread is the onset of secondary infections. Further, a depressed immune system could make you more susceptible to other infections after the bed bug bite.[2] New developments from the study from the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics show that bed bugs could carry the parasite Trypanosome cruzi, a vector that is known to cause Chagas disease; which is one of the deadliest and most prevalent diseases among the Americans. There was a similar study in support of this by Michael Levy, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of Biostatics and Epidemiology at University Pennsylvania in the school of Medicine. They investigated and found out that bed bugs carry and transmit T. cruzi.[3] How are bed bugs dangerous? There are a number of responses that your body can show when you are bitten by bed bugs. It could either be sensitivity or allergic reactions. There are other cases when other complications set in. Allergies from bites This is a reaction that is likely to occur shortly after the bite. You can show sensitivity in different ways when compared to other people. This is because of the chemical that the bugs introduce into your body when they bite. The sensitivity can make you scratch your body and this results in a lot of itchiness on your skin. Bed bug Bites dangers & allergies Bites on body This in the course of time could expose you to other potential infections that eventually would lead to scar formation. You should see you doctor as soon as you realize the situation is becoming unbearable. They present in the form of a rash that may not be contagious. The allergic reactions in real sense are unique from one individual to the other. There are people who notice these while others might just not notice the bites. It is so easy for you to confuse these bites with mosquito bites and you should therefore be careful to distinguish. The allergic reactions could be just mild or even severe. When it occurs, there is an occurrence of rashes on your skin, itching and a lot of inflammation. The case can be so severe to an extent that you will be forced to treat using antihistamines, corticosteroids and anti-itch ointments. This is according to the Michigan Department of Community Health. There are some cases where there is a possibility of anemia setting in as a result of heavy infestation and dangerous bites from the bed bugs. According to the Canadian Medical Association Journal in 2009, there was a case where there was a likely link between bed bug infestation and anemia. There was a case that revealed there was an individual who was a man who suffered iron deficiency and upon investigation, it was discovered that there was a lot of infestation of bed bugs in the house of the man. The conclusion from the investigation was that the case is only in extreme infestation.[4] Bed bugs can worsen respiratory conditions When you have a respiratory problem, the bites by bed bugs can make this more dangerous. As the bugs grow, they shed their outer layers of their skins and casings. When all these dry, they can after sometime become airborne. When you breathe in the chaff, you are most likely to get a respiratory block and in the event of asthma, then the condition can only get worse. Secondary infections When you scratch the bitten spots, you open up the pores on your skin. After a while, the bacteria and other microorganisms get an opportunity to penetrate and terrorize the cells. The microbes multiply and then cause a lot of harm to your body. Your doctor will always give you the medication to use to remedy this. They may lead to a disturbed life Apart from the above effects the bugs have on your body, they generally would be a nuisance and interference to the flow of your life. They can make you lack sleep and with this, your health status is likely to deteriorate to a great extent. Further, the menace can cost you a lot of money trying to treat the irritations and the itchiness that come by. Inasmuch as this could look like an issue of convenience, it could be dangerous if after a while, the bites affect the way you discharge your duties at the place of work. Bed bugs could even terrorize you to even as far as your car and as a result, this could cause a lot of discomfort and even accidents in the long run. Be sure to ensure that they do not take away your attention as it would be detrimental. Always ensure you keep watch to detect them as soon as they appear. Further Reading [1] https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/bedbugs/faqs.html [2] https://www.orkin.com/other/bed-bugs/bedbugs-and-disease/ [3] https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-releases/2014/november/penn-study-shows-bed-bugs-can [4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2734207/
Manila, Philippines – Kartilya Ng Katipunan Shrine HD (2015) Manila is the capital city of the Philippines. It is one of the sixteen cities which, along with the municipality of Pateros, make up Metro Manila, the National Capital Region, that has an overall population of around 12 million. In addition, its total urban area, referring to its continuous urban expansion into the provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, Rizal, and Batangas, has a population of 24,123,000. Manila (and more broadly speaking, Metro Manila) is the economic and political capital of the Philippines, home to extensive commerce and some of the most historically and culturally significant landmarks in the country, as well as the seat of the executive and judicial branches of the government. Manila was listed as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network in 2012. The Manila Galleon trade-route (c. 1565 to 1815), being the first instance in human-history wherein world-trade truly became global (previous world-trade routes had not yet crossed the Pacific and had not reached a global nature), made Manila a primordial foundation-stone of true globalization. Manila is the host to the Embassy of the United States in the Philippines and the Apostolic Nunciature to the Philippines. Manila has many scientific and educational institutions, numerous sport facilities, and other culturally and historically significant venues. The city is politically divided into six legislative districts and geographically into: Binondo, Ermita, Intramuros, Malate, Paco, Pandacan, Port Area, Quiapo, Sampaloc, San Andres, San Miguel, San Nicolas, Santa Ana, Santa Cruz, Santa Mesa and Tondo. These districts were towns and parishes absorbed by Manila during the 19th Century. The earliest written account of the city is the 10th-century Laguna Copperplate Inscription which describes a Malay kingdom in what is now Manila maintaining diplomatic relations with the Indianized Kingdom of Medang in modern-day Java. The city had preferential trade with Ming Dynasty China, which registered the place as “東都” (Dongdu). It then became a province of the Maharajanate of Majapahit and was called by its Sanskrit title, “षेलुरोन्ग्” (Selurong) before it was invaded by Brunei’s Sultan Bolkiah and renamed “كوتا سلودونڠ” (Kota Saludong) or simply Maynilà, from the word “Maynilad”, a native Tagalog term indicating the presence of Nila, a flowering mangrove plant once abundant in the area. Please enter your comment! Please enter your name here
On April 23, 1975, North Vietnamese refugees who had left the region of Phan Rang were carried on board the Durham cargo ship on the China Sea to the merchant navy ship Transcolorado to reach the south. Gamma-Keystone / Getty Images September 15, 2015 5:15 PM EDT As refugees and migrants from Syria and elsewhere continue to flood intro Europe, much of the conversation about their eventual destinations has focused on which European nations are welcoming them and which are not. The global problem however, is not limited to resettlement in Europe. Some American states are already taking a significant number of refugees, and President Obama said last week that he hopes to allow 10,000 more in the coming year. Though Obama’s announcement has been criticized as “reckless” by some who see it as a security risk, the 10,000 Syrians who might be resettled on American shores is actually an extremely small number in historical perspective. Take, for example, the Vietnamese people who came to the U.S. after the 1975 conclusion of the Vietnam War—a number estimated at 120,000 that year. A Gallup poll at the time showed that only 36% of respondents thought they should be brought to the United States. The refugees came along with fear that they would “steal” jobs or, conversely, be a burden on the system if they were unable to find jobs. In addition, the Cold War was still raging, and many feared the future political leanings of the country’s newest residents. Some also posited that Americans, desperate to forget the war, simply dreaded seeing Vietnamese faces on their streets. Still, there was a widespread feeling that the country owed something to the people whose lives had been endangered by the American military’s actions in their country—and the refugees were already on their way. They were processed in Guam before being brought to military bases in California, Arkansas and Florida. They were seen by doctors, fingerprinted by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, tested on their English and provided with a Social Security card. Then, if they could find a sponsor—an American, often a complete stranger, who would help them find a home and a job—they were able to begin civilian life. The first wave of refugees were mostly professionals and elites who could get out right when the Americans did, and who many times were highly sought after by sponsors. (TIME profiled one Vietnamese couple, both doctors, who were supported by a Nebraska town desperately in need of a local physician.) Those who came in the later wave—precursors to the so-calledboat people” who would flee the region in the years to come—were more likely to be laborers, farmers and fishermen. Just as is the case today, many worried that the new influx of people would pose a security threat to the nation. Each person was—per standard immigration procedure—supposed to get a security check. But, as TIME reported in May of 1975, “since the refugees left their pasts and their records in a country now occupied by the Communists, the check may simply slow down the flow of refugees all along the line, from Guam to the U.S., and force them to spend weeks in the camps.” The backlog in Guam quickly reached 50,000 people. Conditions were worsening as more and more refugees crammed into a tent city meant to house them for short stays only. As a result, it wasn’t long before INS reversed the decision to require the background checks for everyone, waiving the requirement for anyone who had worked for the U.S. government, was married to a citizen or was closely related to someone who was. By the end of the month, Congress had approved $450 million to help the refugees get settled. And, by and large, it worked. By 1979, TIME observed that, though the transition hadn’t necessarily been a smooth one, most of the Vietnamese immigrants who had come to the U.S. in 1975 had adjusted well. Employment was actually higher among that group than among the entirety of the American population, and the number who depended on the government for help was sinking. Nearly three-quarters of those 1975 families earned $800 a month or more, which is about $2,775 in today’s dollars. The Vietnamese immigrant population in the United States remains relatively well-off. Despite the fears felt in 1975, the U.S. had easily absorbed those 120,000 refugees—twelve times the number of people currently being discussed. But, had they looked back a few decades, the Americans of the 1970s shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, 120,000 is a relatively small number too: as TIME explained in 1975, about 400,000 Eastern Europeans came to the U.S. after World War II and 650,000 Cubans were resettled, mostly in Florida, when Castro came to power. Read more from 1975, here in the TIME Vault: A Cool and Wary Reception More Must-Read Stories From TIME Write to Lily Rothman at [email protected]. Read More From TIME You May Also Like
SDG 7: Power for the people? The chimera of pro-poor energy solutions By Arthur Muliro Wapakala, Society for International Development (SID) Recent discoveries of hydrocarbons in various African countries and the massive investments in energy generation capacity have created expectations that the blackouts and brownouts that several African countries have endured for the past decades will soon be a thing of the past. In East Africa, national economies have in recent years also been recording stellar growth rates which promise new opportunities and discontinuity with the past. Despite this record, in its Africa Energy Outlook 2014, the International Energy Agency remarked: “More than 200 million people in East Africa are without electricity, around 80% of its population. Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda are among the most populous countries in East Africa and have the largest populations both with and without access to electricity.” 1 So, the irony is that as the region records world-beating economic growth rates, the majority of our co-citizens remain in conditions of energy poverty, forced to rely on alternative energy sources (notably biomass) to meet their energy needs. The knock-on effects of this energy poverty are myriad and contribute significantly to the persistence of inequalities and marginalization. The prevalence of energy poverty is literally a killer – from respiratory diseases and related ailments that are the result of prolonged inhalation of firewood smoke and other fumes from cooking fuels, to ruined drugs and vaccines that are not kept at prescribed temperatures due to the inability to guarantee constant refrigeration, not to mention other life-saving equipment in hospitals and clinics that is rendered useless by either frequent black/brownouts or absence of electricity. For many of the region’s farmers, post-harvest losses increase food insecurity. Whilst not directly related to energy, they are heavily influenced by absence of appropriate infrastructure in the rural areas, including energy. Energy poverty also has a very female face to it: it is most often women who have to suffer the indignity and physical pain of gathering firewood, often walking long distances to find it and to bring it back home, and then to suffer the debilitating effects of cooking in a cloud of noxious fumes of firewood combustion. Beyond this, millions of school hours are lost due to lack of lighting in schools and the economy suffers when jobs are either lost or not created due to lack of energy – not to mention the damage done to sensitive machinery by power fluctuations. Catch-up without change To date, many of the conversations and policy inputs around energy poverty have tended to be incremental in nature. They favour a ‘catch-up’ mentality but rarely question how the poor could access modern (reliable) energy services. They assume that providing these services to the majority of the population which is currently off the grid need not involve any structural change or call for the transformation of the national energy plans. Fundamentally, adding one person to the grid or several millions is treated with the same indifference. Perhaps those who speak of their plans in these terms are aware that they contain much more propaganda than any serious transformational strategy. In 2016, an ‘Energy Futures’ initiative that sought to look at possible future scenarios for energy and how these would affect energy poverty was launched in four selected countries of Eastern Africa. 2 The results of this initiative will challenge the conventional wisdom that positive social and economic development can be expected soon after the grid is expanded. Yes, the national grids are expanding in a bit of a helter-skelter fashion, but the quality of power that is on offer still leaves much to be desired. Furthermore, the cost of energy from the grid is still out of reach for many East Africans. This makes a mockery of the fanfare that has accompanied the electrification programmes and ignores an emerging reality of smaller micro- and mini-grids that are providing affordable power to local communities. Relying mostly on renewable sources for energy generation, they offer an alternative paradigm to the large power-generation projects that are being pushed by the governments. Alternative pathways So what energy futures can we anticipate for the majority of East Africans in the next two to three decades? In all of the scenarios we considered, there will be qualitative and quantitative improvements, but the goal of eliminating energy poverty will remain largely unmet. The critical message is that it is less a question of technologies making the difference than an issue of governance and how we choose to align resources to meet with the myriad challenges affecting the provision of energy. This resonates with the earlier assertion that what is needed to provide reliable, affordable energy to the majority of East Africans is a genuine transformational model. Such a model would engage with our proposed production models and respects the limits that climate change and other resources will impose. Our technological solutions would favour an energy mix that is appropriate to the circumstances and needs of the region and be one that emphasizes renewables over fossil fuels. The scenarios we have prepared may never come to pass. However, they are tools to explore alternative possible futures in order to ensure our strategic choices are both more resilient and more inclusive than current policies. So, what are the possible pathways that policy-makers need to consider? Obviously, each country will present different specificities. However, three broad elements need to be considered: • First, energy policies should put the needs of the population front and centre. Many policies today favour industrialization in one flavour or another, but what kind of industrialization it will be still seems to be unclear. It appears to be driven more by an article of faith: ‘if you build it, they will come’ than by concrete industrial agendas. Perhaps investing in ensuring that the grid reaches as many people as possible will offer a better return to our countries. • Second, energy policies need to pay greater attention to climate change and its potential effects on the investments and plans being made. At this point, the impact of climate change is not a variable that can be treated lightly – it requires that countries begin to make preparations now to future-proof their grids for whatever climate change might throw at us. • Finally, there needs to be a consideration of how to make energy affordable over the longer term. This is not only a question of which subsidies need to be considered, but also a function of ensuring that we design and implement efficient energy generation and distribution systems. Arthur Muliro Wapakala is Deputy Managing Director of the Society for International Development (SID), based in Nairobi, Kenya. • 1 International Energy Agency (2014), p. 32. • 2 The Energy Futures initiative is led by the Society for International Development and focuses on energy developments in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The scenarios developed as part of this initiative are slated to be launched in the second half of 2018. International Energy Agency (2014): Africa Energy Outlook. Paris.
alive logo A treasure trove of health An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Now there's a new one. Go for the gold - bananas, that is. This common fruit is chock full of health benefits. We’ve all heard the saying, an apple a day keeps the doctor away. But now there’s a new one. Go for the gold—golden bananas, that is. This common fruit is packed with goodness. Each bite offers you vitamins B and C, potassium, dietary fibre, and magnesium. Bananas do everything from protecting the heart to soothing stomach ulcers, from improving elimination to building bones. And they do it with a smooth, sweet taste. What’s not to love? No prescription needed A study in the International Journal of Cancer showed that eating more than 2.5 servings of fruits and vegetables per day, especially bananas, reduces your risk of kidney cancer by 40 percent. Why? Researchers believe the high amounts of antioxidant phenolic compounds in bananas detoxify potential cancer-causing agents. Experiencing stress or taking diuretics for your heart can cause your body’s potassium level to plummet. Bananas, which are high in potassium, help to normalize your heartbeat and regulate your body’s water balance, reducing the strain on your heart and kidneys. In addition, the soluble fibre in bananas binds to dietary cholesterol, which is then eliminated from the digestive system. This means less buildup in your arteries, decreasing your chances of a heart attack. Bananas also benefit your brain. According to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, eating potassium-rich foods such as bananas can reduce your risk of dying from a stroke by as much as 40 percent. Another study, the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (also known as DASH) found that eating healthy foods, including bananas, could lower blood pressure as effectively as certain prescription medicines. Bones and bananas You won’t find bananas on a list of foods high in calcium. However, if your body can’t absorb the calcium, your bones won’t get the benefit. Bananas aid calcium absorption in two ways. First, ripe bananas are a powerhouse of fructooligosaccharide (FOS), a type of fibre known as a prebiotic. When FOS interacts with the microflora in your colon, it increases your gut’s acidity, allowing your body to absorb more calcium from food. Second, FOS also acts as a nutrition source for probiotic (friendly) bacteria in your colon. These beneficial bacteria increase your digestive ability, allowing you to absorb more nutrients, including calcium, from your food. In addition, they may contribute to a stronger immune system. Unripe green bananas, though not often eaten by North Americans, contain indigestible short-chain fatty acids which can act on the stomach’s lining, enhancing its ability to absorb calcium. Speaking of your gut While constipation and diarrhea may not be polite topics of conversation, the truth is that many of us suffer from one or both conditions. Once more, it’s bananas to the rescue. Bananas contain pectin, a soluble fibre. If you’re constipated, the fibre can help restore normal movement through the digestive tract. If you suffer from diarrhea, the fibre can absorb some of the excess fluid. Also, the potassium in bananas helps replenish lost electrolytes. In fact, since they are so easily digested, they are one of the foods recommended for those with gastroenteritis. More banana benefits Bananas are the one raw fruit that won’t cause more distress during an ulcer flare-up. They reduce stomach acidity and irritation by stimulating cells that line the stomach to produce thicker mucus. If you don’t want an ulcer, the protease inhibitors in bananas will help you eliminate bacteria in the stomach that are a primary cause of ulcers. If you’re trying to quit smoking, snack on a banana. Its vitamin B6, and B12, along with potassium and magnesium, can ease the effects of nicotine withdrawal. Bananas make you happy. The tryptophan they contain stimulates your brain to produce serotonin, a chemical that relaxes you while improving your mood. If you’re suffering from morning sickness, snacking on a banana will keep your blood sugar levels up and reduce your nausea. Adding bananas to your diet Bananas are perfect for lunch boxes and snacks. Add them to fruit salads, put them in peanut butter sandwiches, or blend them into smoothies. For nutritious frozen fruit pops, combine bananas with juice and yogourt, freeze for several hours, and enjoy. Mash or cut them up for muffins, pancakes, crepes, cookies, or banana bread. Be adventurous and use them in soups, curries, salsas, and stir-fries. No matter how you eat them, bananas are one of nature’s best health boosters. Start peeling. Storage dos and don’ts All bananas need to ripen are time and room temperature. If you’re short on time, place unripe bananas in a paper bag with an apple. The apple gives off a natural gas that ripens bananas quickly. Unripe bananas and a refrigerator, however, are a bad combination, as the cold permanently stops the ripening process. That’s good news for ripe bananas you’re not ready to use. Storing them in the fridge stops them from further ripening, although their peels will turn dark. Let the bananas come to room temperature before you eat them to restore full flavour. You can even freeze ripe bananas for up to two months. Peel them, sprinkle the pulp with lemon juice to prevent browning, and wrap them in plastic. Buying by the colour To allow for transport time, bananas are generally harvested while still green. As they ripen, their peels turn yellow. Further ripening results in brown spots, and an overripe banana will become increasingly brown. When you buy bananas, choose the colour that fits your needs. Yellow and brown-spotted bananas are ready to be eaten soon; green ones take a few more days to ripen. For baking, choose those with brown spots because of their extra sweetness and softness. No matter what colour their skin, look for firm bananas with unbroken skin, stems, and tips. Note: If you have diabetes or kidney disease, check with your health practitioner before including bananas in your diet. Against the Grain Against the Grain Grappling with 3 types of gluten intolerance Dr. Cassie Irwin Dr. Cassie Irwin Strengthening Natural Immunity Strengthening Natural Immunity Simple lifestyle choices to keep you feeling good this year Erin Jackson Erin Jackson Join the global journey Leah Payne Leah Payne
Sustainable Energy Aboard How to harness the elements to keep your boat’s systems running smoothly and your life aboard more pleasant (published November 2014) From the climates of tropical beaches to high latitudes fjords, cruisers crave the sun, wind and water. And with that, we delight in our ability to live a simple, self-sufficient life aboard that allows us to get out and enjoy the places we have taken so much time and effort to sail to. Part of that self-supporting satisfaction comes from not being fully dependent on outside sources for power. By running a generator or engine to charge our systems, we use fuel and oil, which require replenishment. Plus, we put wear and tear on both pieces of equipment that causes us to carry a bevy of spare parts for the moment when the attrition turns into failure. By installing solar, wind and water systems to generate power for us, we are decreasing our reliance on our engine systems for power generation and, in turn, are living a cleaner, less noisy and happier life aboard. On the cruising boats that we have in the BWS family, we have seen how this works in real life and are pleased to bring you this guide to your own energy independence. Portable panels make solar simple Portable panels make solar simple Most cruisers have at least a vague notion of what a solar panel will do; the sun shines, the panel absorbs it and turns into power, which is then stored in your batteries for use aboard. This seems fairly basic, so going out and adding solar panels to your boat should be too, right? Unfortunately, simply buying a new solar panel or two and mounting them on your boat isn’t as easy as it sounds. As many sailors have found out, the process of adding a solar array to your boat can be an intimidating process full of questions and decisions that need to be made before plunking down a bunch of hard-earned cash. For starters, there are two main variables that need to be considered when adding a solar array to your cruising boat: How much power do you need to generate, and how much space do you have available for the actual panels? From there you can select the panels that are right for you and the necessary components to make them operational and efficient. Mounting panels on a cat's davits is a good solution Mounting panels on a cat’s davits is a good solution When deciding to go solar, the first thing you need to do is to figure out how much power you are using during an average day of cruising. This can be done by making a quick graph including each appliance and how many amps they use per hour, how many hours you plan to use them per day and then how many watts that turns into on a 12-volt system. Example: If an anchor light draws one amp per hour and is run for eight hours it will use 96 watts (8 amps x 12 volts = 96 watts). Solar panels are rated in watts so once you have determined how many watts you use, you can figure out how big your solar array needs to be. It is recommended that you exceed those requirements by 20 percent for a fully self-reliant solar system. You also need to think about what type of cruising you are going to be doing with your new panels. Are you mostly going out for weekends and a few weeks a year and just want to reduce your engine hours? Or are you a full-time cruiser who is planning to spend most of your non-passagemaking time at anchor? Plus, how big is your current house battery bank? We spoke with Bob Everhard from eMarine Systems ( in Fort Lauderdale, Florida to get the scoop on how cruisers are outfitting with solar and he explained that choosing a solar array is as much about the size of your battery bank as it is with how much you are taking out each day. “Five hundred Amperes is what a typical cruising boat carries these days, but up to 700 is better, and not uncommon,” he explained. “And if you are running a refrigerator compressor or two, those will be the largest energy consumers aboard, so you need to plan accordingly.” A recent survey of Cruising Compass readers who own solar panels revealed that the majority of respondents use solar power to cover 100 percent of their onboard energy needs. This suggests that cruisers heavily value solar power to keep their batteries topped up and systems running. And it makes sense, because if you are going to spend the money and put the effort into installing solar panels, you might as well cover most or all of your energy requirements. Marlec gantry mount Marlec gantry mount One of the hardest choices to make when purchasing new solar panels is where to house them, which was one of the first hurdles Bob pointed to for perspective solar seekers. “The most popular place to mount panels is on top of the Bimini, davits or arch, and on top of a hard dodger,” Bob explained, “but there really is no one perfect solution for everyone.” Boats are as different as their owners and where one cruiser may like to mount a solar panel could be completely different from another. Deciding on a place to put your panels is all about getting maximum sun exposure and can determine whether you choose to go with rigid or semi-flexible panels. Rigid panels are durable and can be mounted in a number of places, but if you want to remove them for storm preparation or to drop your Bimini back while sailing, then you’re going to have to take that into consideration. Oftentimes mounting panels above davits or on a stern arch can be the best place, as it will get them farther aft away from the main part of the cockpit and out from under the boom and mainsail. Another option is to mount them as foldable wings off either side of the cockpit, though this can clutter up your pushpit or require you to install a rigid rail from the pushpit forward. Round the world racers need all the Round the world racers need all the The other thing to keep in mind when mounting your panels is the wiring. Make sure to use marine grade wire and a quality charge controller with settings for your specific type of batteries so you don’t end up frying what you have. Also, install a fuse from the positive lead to your panels and get a voltmeter so you can keep an eye on how much your solar panels are putting into your battery bank. Marlec solar on boat Marlec solar on boat Choosing the type of solar panel that is right for your boat will involve decisions made above about how much power you require and where you are able to put your panels, plus, how much you want to spend and what type of longevity and warranty you are looking to get. Fortunately, the price of solar panels and their components has dropped in recent years, while the quality has gone up, so obtaining a good setup isn’t the steep financial hit that it once was. There are three main types of solar panels on the market to today: monocrystalline, multicrystalline (polycrystalline) cells and amorphous silicon. What we gleaned from our conversation with Bob is that consumers are really going to be thinking about the panels in two forms: rigid or flexible. Rigid panels fall in the first two categories on the market and are popular because they are durable, can last as long as 25 years and come with a warranty of 10 years. Flexible panels aren’t necessarily any less durable, but they typically don’t last as long and because of that, come with a shorter warranty. Price is also a factor in purchasing solar panels and it seems that online prices are relatively cheaper than walking into any marine store to buy the same setup. Like any major purchase you make for your boat, it is best to shop around and do some quality homework before making a large commitment. duogen blade Wind mills have been a part of the human energy equation since around the first century AD and have played a vital role in agriculture and energy generation ever since. Lately, the move to sustainable energy systems has advanced windmill design and created along the way a new generation of wind generators that can be adapted for use on a cruising boat. While wind generators can be effective tools for keeping our batteries topped up, particularly if you are living and cruising in areas where there are consistant fresh winds, such as in the trade winds in the tropics or the high latitudes, but they do come with the associated noise they make when spinning. So when you are thinking about adding a wind generator to your boat, you have to factor in more than just the amount of energy it will create. You have to consider the annoyance factor of living with a contraption that whirrs. And you will want to consider how it affects you neighbors in an anchorage, too. There are three basic types of wind generators: large two-blade units, smaller three blade designs and the even smaller five and six blade devices. Each has its place aboard a cruising boat. Two bladed units are not as common today as they were a generation ago since more modern designs and innovations have created smaller and lighter options. The standard two-bladed unit will have a blade span or diameter of 60 inches or more. This size means the unit has to be mounted at least 12 feet above the deck. One popular option is to not mount the unit on a pole but suspend it in the fore triangle when you want to generate electricity and stow it away when you are underway. Some two blade units can double as water generators so having the unit be demountable and portable increases your charging options. Large diameter wind generators will start to generate in as little as 5 knots of breeze and will be almost silent until the wind gets above 15 knots. Above 15, you will hear a steady whoosh from the blades but not anything too annoying, particularly since you will be creating a huge charge for the battery bank. In 15 knots of breeze, these units can generate 250 watts or more. Rutland 913 Rutland 913 The three bladed wind generators that came into vogue about 20 years ago were designed to be pole mounted and to operate in a wide range of wind speeds. The development of highly aerodynamic blades that could be injection molded and the light weight, streamlined aluminum housings, reduced weight and cost and made permanently mounted generators more accessible to the cruising fleet. It is common in the cruising hot spots such as Georgetown, Exuma, Bahamas, to see several hundred boats riding at anchor with their wind generators spinning away. In a fresh breeze, the sound becomes ambient. All thee-bladed wind generators are not equal. The less expensive models which have become so popular have their regulators or charge controllers built into the unit’s housing where it “self regulates” the charge that is fed to the battery banks. While this sounds like a good idea, history has proven that an external charge controller is a better solution. Blades are also an area where you will find that you get what you pay for. The inexpensive roto molded blades tend to fray at the tips over time and as they do the whir tends to increase. There are models out there that have high density blades and external charge controllers that are very worth looking at. limen The three blade units can be amazingly productive but do not really start generating anything significant until the breeze gets over 10 knots. Some brands are better at low speeds than others but the sweet spot for most of the three-bladed units is between 10 and 30 knots. The units are rated in watts and the most popular models generate between 150 and 600 watts. One model claims to have a maximum output of 1000 watts. These sound like very high numbers but you have to remember that the charge controller will match the generator’s output to the state of charge of your battery bank. The smaller diameter units with five or six blades have two immediate advantages over the two-blade and three-blade designs: they are smaller and much quieter. There are several brands of these multi-blade units that have been out in the cruising fleets for many years. Because most of these units are smaller, they do not present such a large profile on a aft pole or on your cockpit arch. It is common on larger boats to see two of these units spinning away silently day and night. The downside of most of the smaller units is the poorer light wind performance and the smaller overall output in all conditions. Although there are exceptions, you will find that in 10 knots of breeze the six blade units will generate about 25 watts while one of the better and larger five bladed units will provide 10 times that much at about 250 watts. The trade off when choosing a five or six blade generator is size and silence versus performance and slightly more whirring. Many cruisers have chosen the latter because the whir of a five blade unit is significantly less than the sound of a three bladed generator. Generating power for the house battery bank directly from the speed of the boat moving through the water is a novel and ingenious solution to self-sufficiency and sustainability. The technology works by towing a propeller behind the boat. As the water passes the propeller, it turns and drives the generator that is mounted on the stern. It is a simple system that can generate enough power to run the boat while at sea. Two of the units that are on the market can be used as either a wind generator or a water generator. That way, while you are at sea you tow the propeller to charge the batteries and while anchored, you convert the unit into a windmill to generate power with the breeze. Recently, a new type of hydrogenertor was introduced that fits onto the transom of cruising boats almost like an outboard motor. The shaft has a prop at its end that drives a generator at the top of the unit. The shaft can be lowered and raised easily with a block and tackle. An elegant and purpose built solution to water generation, the new hydrogenerators can really keep your batteries topped up at sea. Water generators will kick off between 100 and 400 watts at normal sailing speeds. Boats that can sail at 10 knots or more will find that their generators are producing upward of 600 watts. But, of course, depending on the size of the battery bank and the daily draw, a lot of this generating power is wasted. What is the right solution for maintaining sustainable alternate energy sources on your boat that keep the batteries topped up and reduce your boat’s energy footprint? Solar panels are the best place to start. If you have a catamaran then you can lay out a large array of panels that will spend six to eight hours a day generating juice. That might be all you need to be self-sufficient. On monohulls, space is more of a premium so a large array of panels may not be possible. But if you can get 150 watts or so on the Bimini or davits, you will have a great head start on the problem. Then, you will want to look at adding a wind generator. Depending on your boat and the amount you draw against your batteries, the size and sound of the wind generator can be established. Your preference may be for the largest unit available to be a complete replacement for the solar panels when the sun is hidden by clouds. Or, you may choose a five or six blade model that is quiet, small and can provide a regular charge as long as the wind blows. Your neighbors in the anchorage will be happy with this decision. Lastly, for cruisers who will be making long passages at sea, a water generator makes a lot of sense and among the brands out there the new hydrochargers look like the best bet. Solar, Wind & Water Useful Websites Company Product(s) Website DuoGen Wind & Water/D400 e Marine Retail all gen products Hamilton Ferris Retail all gen products Hot Wire Retail all gen products Marlec Wind generators Silent Wind Wind generators/blades Watt & Sea Water generators West Marine Solar panels/controls Author: Blue Water Sailing
Skip to main content Luminosity Masking in Photoshop Lesson 2 of 9 Making Luminosity Masks Blake Rudis Luminosity Masking in Photoshop Blake Rudis Starting under • 24/7 access via desktop, mobile, or TV • New classes added every month • Download lessons for offline viewing • Exclusive content for subscribers Lesson Info 2. Making Luminosity Masks Lesson Info Making Luminosity Masks So, before we even begin doing this on any of our photographs, I have to explain the stuff that I just explained, okay? In a way that we can all understand it, which is sometimes the most difficult part. (laughing) So, here we have the luminous value of pixels. So, zero being black, 255 being white, and 128 in the middle being your mid tones, okay. These numbers, 287, they're just arbitrary numbers to show you that somewhere in between zero and 128 lives another value of a pixel. Now, these pixel values from zero to 255, that's a concept that we think about in terms of a pixel, a pixel can only be anywhere from zero to 255. If it's below zero, it's basically non-existent data. If it's above 255, it's basically non-existent data. That's where you get the clipping warnings and the highlight blow out warnings, where it's like (beeping) you're going above 255, stop. Zero to 255, it also exists in colors. Your red color, your green, blue. So, to make any color, you need some combination of ... RGB or C and Y that involve zero to 255, okay? So, every pixel, essentially, has that zero to 255 value to it and that's essentially how we create these luminosity masks, is from the existence of luminosity. So, by default... The traditional luminosity mask is going to select anything that has a luminance value. So, if it's at zero, is it gonna be selected? No because there's nothing there but what gets selected and how that gets selected transitions from zero to 255. So, areas of your image that are actually in this portion of the graph, so to speak, will be a more robust version of the mask. So, typically when we paint a mask on our image, we paint with black and we paint with white, correct? Well, when you're painting with that white, it doesn't do what things like Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom do, where if it senses a pixel that's a value that you didn't start with, that it's gonna go, you know, the auto mask feature? We don't have that in Photoshop. This is essentially taking that concept of the auto mask and bringing it into Photoshop. Taking the concept of the auto mask that's in the brushes and the local adjustments right into Photoshop. So, to do this we have to step into the world of channels, okay. How many people play in channels? Okay, we've got a couple here that are not afraid to go into the depths of channels. I'll be honest with you, I don't play too much in channels. It's just not really where I do things. But that's okay. So, if you look at channels, if we had any colors in here, it would show you what the red channel would look like, the green channel would look like, and the blue channel would look like within what actually looks like what? A mask, right? So, this RGB channel, this RGB channel is actually, we can just rename it, right off the bat, luminance because that is where we get our luminance values for the image to build our initial mask. You can see over here it says control two. We press control, alt, two. Just a clever way of making that selection. If we wanna make a selection for that luminance value, we can just press control and click on that RGB, and that's gonna make a selection for all of the luminance value in the image. We can also do this. So, if we press control, alt, and two. That is a way that we can hop into there without having to control click on this RGB channel. So, if you're working on it, you're gonna see me do this. And I'm getting glossy eyes already and I love it because this is a topic that's just like, (clapping) it's kind of like, oh, man, how do you teach this one? You know, it's like, I wanna rip my eyeballs out for you. (laughing) But you'll see my method here in a second, okay? So, by pressing control, alt, two, at any time, you can grab the luminance value as you edit, which is a really important thing to understand. If you're writing notes down about how to make a luminosity mask and you don't want to then turn to channels, just kind of forget that for a couple minutes, okay? Because I'm gonna show you the Blake way and it doesn't involve channels. Again, it might not be the traditional thing and I'm ready to go to social media for you on that but if we press control and click on that RGB, we get a traditional luminosity mask. If we were to come down here and click on this mask icon at the bottom, that mask icon is going to create an alpha channel at the bottom that is, essentially, the luminance value. So we can actually call this highlights because it's gonna be the highlights. Okay? On the flip side, if we wanted the shadows, how do we get the shadows? Well, now we've got the highlight channel, we need to just know the hotkey to invert a selection, which is control, shift, and I. That will invert the selection. So, now if we make a mask for that, we now have shadows. And we can see that by the mask. It's kind of hard because I'm using a gradient at this point, so you're looking at a gradient and you're looking at a gradient mask on top of a gradient mask. When we start getting into image editing, you'll understand but what I wanted to show you, here, is just the pixel values that are being selected, especially now when we look at shadows. It looks like things are inverted. That's because this mask that we've created, this is the portion that's gonna affecting because that's the white part, okay? It's white transitioning into that black. Now, the traditional method to doing traditional luminosity masking is essentially to make six of these masks for each one. So, six for your highlights, six for your mid tones, six for your shadows, and if you wanna get even crazier, you can do eight to 10. You can do 15 if you want, as long as that data is available in there but in order to make those masks, if we were to go and control click on that RGB channel, now how do we make a lesser selection for our highlights? Well, we do that by making that selection and intersecting with the actual highlights. Have I lost you yet? Please say yes, okay, because I want you to realize how convoluted this is. We press control, shift, alt, and then click on the highlights, and then make another mask. This is essentially highlights. If I could spell, my cursor's getting in the way. Highlights two, okay? So, this highlight two selection is actually a smaller selection of highlights. We're getting closer, and closer, and closer to your lightest light areas in the image and you keep doing this. So now, again, we'd intersect this selection. We press control, shift, alt, click on highlights two, notice how this selection gets smaller, and smaller, and smaller. We could change this, we could make a mask, here. Call this highlights three, okay? I really butchered that one but we're just gonna keep going. Press control, shift, alt, and then click on that one, and we're, again, lessening the selection that we're creating from these highlights. It's that control, shift, alt, and E or command, shift, option, E thing. Or, not, that's to make a stamp but command, shift, option, click. You know, it's like, I say this in I think all of my Creative Live classes but if you're ever curious about if Photoshop can do something and you're working in a certain area, and you're not sure if it can do something else in that area, press control and do it. Press alt and do it. Press shift and do it. Press control, shift and do it. Press alt, shift and do it. Press control, shift, alt, and do it. And then it'll do something different at every given time but try to find that actual hotkey for that. You're never gonna do it. So you just do it by like trial and error. Like oh, I can make a selection, well, how can I intersect that selection with a selection of the selection, well let me select control, shift, yeah, okay, got it. So, what I'm trying to get at here is just to show you the traditional way of building these luminosity masks so that you can continue to do this. If you press control, shift, alt, command, shift, option, and then clicked, it would continue to make smaller and smaller highlight selections by what you're intersecting it with those highlight selections. There's a couple reasons why I don't like this way. Number one, we're playing in channels, okay? Now, channels are great because if you go over to layers, those channels don't exist there but any time you wanna get one of those masks, you gotta go over to your channels, you gotta control, click on that channel, you gotta pull up that mask, make another mask, and it's just, it becomes like this, like you spend more time trying to find a luminosity mask that you need than actually doing anything with your photograph. So, there is an easier way to do it. So, I'm gonna go ahead, and just go ahead and delete these because what happens with, what happens when you have all these channels in here, as well, is those channels actually take up a lot of space within your image. So, if you save this as a PSD document with all those channels that you built just for making these masks that you may or may not ever use, now you've got this big ol' file for what? You put two layers in there, it's two gigs, and Photoshop's screaming at you not to save me ever again. So, I don't typically like the channels method. I like the rudimentary, kind of Blake method and I don't know if that can be coined or anything like that, maybe? I don't know. (laughing) So, typically what I'll do with that is I can still make that luminosity mask selection because what's that hotkey that we talked about in the very beginning of this? Control, alt, two, or command, option, two on a Mac. Control, alt, two. I'm not even in channels and it's already making a luminosity mask for that RGB value or that RGB channel. And that's not even getting into the mid tones. To make your mid tones mask, you have to intersect, you have to subtract your highlights mask from your shadows mask, and it's just, yeah. Let's just leave that one for the pros, so they say. So, what we're gonna do with this is now that I've got that selected, I need something that's going to create a mask. Well, you see my little quote over there? Curves adjustment? It's my favorite tool? I always make a curves adjustment layer. It's just my go to. It's like that's, that's my jam, you know? So, I'm gonna click on the adjustments and just make a curves adjustment layer. Because I already had a selection, it's going to make a mask for that curve within that luminosity value, cool? I'm gonna teach you a couple cool things about masks at this point, is that, we've got that luminosity masks selection. We can make a modification to this mask just like we would make a modification to anything else in Photoshop. So, we can modify that mask with using blurs, we can modify that mask with curves, we can modify that mask with levels. So, how you're gonna see that this is so much easier is that if we click on that mask, we go to image, we go to adjustments, we go to levels. I now have a levels adjustment that is gonna make this mask look different. Let me do something a little bit easier for you to see, first. I'm gonna double-click on this curves adjustment layer and, in this curves adjustment layer, I'm gonna click the color overlay. The reason why I do this is that I'm gonna make this magenta, and that's not because I wanna blow your eyeballs out with the color magenta but it's because the color magenta doesn't typically exist, even in the real world, unless maybe you're in like the 1970s with clothing or something like that but even looking around this room, there's nothing in this room right now that is actually that color magenta, right? So, if I were to take a picture of this room knowing that there's nothing in this room that's that color magenta, if I wanna see what my masks look like, magenta's gonna be the best color for that. Now, I'm in something called layer styles. Well, the layer styles, that is the, what tells me what's happening in this layer. If we come up here to the blending options, that's telling me the things of like what blend mode I'm in, what opacity I'm in. What's happening with this layer. So we can actually make this layer have that magenta color overlay on it. It's not making our image magenta, don't be afraid, okay? It's just showing us what our mask looks like at this point. You ever wonder if you could just see a really good copy of that mask? Sometimes we go into something called quick mask mode but then, have you ever edit in quick mask mode and then you try to do something else, and Photoshop's like you're in quick mask mode, you're in quick mask mode. (beeping) It's like okay, well, let me just see what this looks like without having to go into quick mask mode. Again, one of my kind of trademarks. So, press okay. So, now if I click on this mask, this actual mask that's on this curves adjustment layer, I can minimize what this is actually affecting and I can do that by going up to image, going to adjustments, and going to levels. So. Quick little tid bit on levels. Levels are controlled by your shadow areas of what you're telling it to work with, your highlight areas of what you're telling it to work with, and the mid tone areas of that object, right? So, if a mask is essentially made up of contrast, we're talking about luminosity values, here. It's made up of white values, it's made up of black values, and mid tone values in between. We can use levels to dictate how big our mask is. What you'll see is I can drag this over from the left and start introducing more black into that mask, which means that, because I'm introducing more black into this mask, it's restricting how much that mask can actually affect. Which is a little bit different than going into the background of channels, making six different selections, because now I get the pure power to adjust this mask however I want. Especially because I can then, also, go into the mid tones of that, and push the mid tone value of that more towards the shadows or more towards the highlights to get even more out of that mask. Now, you can do the same thing with the traditional luminosity mask selection but what this allows you to do is it says, okay. You want a luminosity mask, Blake? Go ahead, make it. Control, alt, two. You got it. Now, you wanna refine it? Pop a levels adjustment on there. What do you want? Doing it on this gradient is kind of like okay, awesome, you're not really showing me anything, Blake. It's just, you know, data. But what I suggest is, when I stay up late at night, which happens a lot, that's my experimentation time, that's the time that I set aside for me to play around with and I've got tons of graphics that look like this. I mean, I'm a dork when it comes to Photoshop. My wife goes to bed, I'm like, yes, let's go, game on, it's time to go play. And I'll pull up these graphs, and I'll pull up a tool I've never used before, and I'll see how that tool works on that graph because this is, essentially, everything that would be in an image. You can try to pull up a test image and say, well, this image of, let's say, your dog, is always the perfect image to run a test on but not necessarily because do you know what the highlight value actually is in that picture of your dog? Or do you know what the shadow actually is in that picture of your dog? Not necessarily but when I use this, there are no variables. The only variable is how far I push that tool because I have a constant, and that constant is zero to 255. So, now we're gonna break away from that a little bit and we're gonna actually start working on images, so you can see exactly how this works. Class Description Luminosity Masking has been the talk of the town for a while in the photo industry—and for good reason. It’s one of the easiest, most effective ways to create striking images that cover a wide range of levels of light. The idea is to separate the luminance data from your image, make a mask and edit the data independently. Blake Rudis will begin by walking you through the basics of Luminosity Masking, and then will address some of the more advanced uses. Once you master this awesome tool, you won’t know how you ever got by without it. Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 Great great great. What? You can do that? And easy Wow. Wait, you can do that too and so easy too? Wow! (ratta tat tat useful stuff) Bhaven Jani Amazing class, so top notch, to the point, and made easy to understand. Yes, luminosity masking is not an easy topic, it is complex, I have been using PS for several years and it still took me a while to get my head around it. But Blake Rudis makes it so engaging and intuitive to understand. And guess what, once you understand LM, you won't be able to edit images without using it. its so powerful. Thanks a ton for this class. user e5ab02 I've been using PS for quite some time and have avoided this technique BECAUSE it's a bit tedious getting to the meat of what this tool can do. It is however well worth it. Blake has done a great job in presenting this and showing how it can best be used. He DOES NOT in ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM seem overbearing or egotistical. On the contrary, he seems very approachable and is well aware that what he's teaching is a very dry subject and is trying to make it fun and graspable. Do NOT pay any attention to the reviewer above who says he is...that says so much about the reviewer's insecurities.
Instigator / Pro Humans should invest in technology to explore and colonize other planets. Voting points After not so many votes... It's a tie! More details Publication date Last update date Time for argument Two hours Voting system Open voting Voting period One week Point system Winner selection Rating mode Characters per argument Contender / Con ~ 1,204 / 5,000 Rules for the debate: The order of speakers must not be changed. Interrupting a speaker is forbidden. The audience must not participate in the debate. After the debate, the chairs and audience have five minutes to share their impressions and opinions. Then the audience vote yes and no for each team on Slid-O. The team with the majority votes wins. Round 1 Opening statement: You will present your arguments during the lesson. Your dress code, language and content are all academically appropriate. You have ± 1 minute to present the arguments you have prepared. Listen to the opposition and make notes of their arguments on your shared team doc. Also suggest how your team can respond. Round 2 Rebuttals: Each team member will present only ONE counterargument, along with valid reasoning. You may pose any reasonable question to the opposition that you felt was not addressed. Add this to your argument on the debate website, so that your teacher and classmates can review your counter claims. Round 3 closing statement: Add any final points or rhetorical questions that you want the audience to consider further. DO NOT introduce any new ideas at this point. Round 1 Fellow colleagues, ms. renu; this team as today’s affirmative side have structured our case as follows: My team and I will be talking about the limitless reasons why we should colonize other planets. Space colonization has captured the public imagination. Ever since the 1800s science fiction writers have been speculating about what it would take to reach other worlds. But so far poor mankind has only managed to send a few representatives to the moon, our nearest neighbor in the Solar System. But is all this effort worthwhile? Should we really try to colonize other worlds? Reminding everyone that human culture is closely associated with the demise of many large species of animals. By transporting our ecosystem to other worlds we’ll increase the changes of survivability for many other species among plants and animals. We can recreate ancient environments where huge herds of now extinct or near extinct animals can thrive. Another advantage is ensuring our own survival against stupidity and cosmic accidents. We don’t know when another massive asteroid will hit the Earth and we still don’t have the means of defending the Earth from such a threat. And many people also fear the prospect of nuclear global warfare. It’s unlikely anyone would survive such a war. So what seems more practical today is the idea of creating space habitats that people, plants, and animals can share. These habitats will orbit the Earth, the Moon, Mars, Venus, and probably other planets. To build such habitats will require only minor advances in technology from where we are today. And although we have many good reasons to spread out from the Earth, we still don’t yet have the technology to do this. And there are some problems we may never be able to solve if we don’t indulge in improving technology so let's not forget that it is an essential tool that we cannot avoid or live without. Thank you! To start off on why Humans should not invest in technology to explore and colonize other planets: (Tasnim) • Famine is a world wide crisis, with 690 million people starving and 9 million people dying each year. And yet NASA spends 199 million dollars on the space shuttle program and 20 billion dollars on cancelled projects. World hunger takes a minimum of 7 billion dollars and a maximum of 265 to end. • Scientific benefits of Space programs are exaggerated. NASA spends over one third of its budgets keeping the ISS and Space Shuttle working. Neither Russia nor China have made any claims that there is a scientific benefit to their missions. • It takes a great deal of time to build technology to send to space. The Hubble telescope took about 50 years to be researched,built ,and launched. The amount of time it took to finish this one project to be completed could have been utilized to end world hunger, global warming and many other catastrophes that exist in the world. Team, G. (2020, October 19). How Much Would It Cost To End World Hunger? Get The Facts. Learn - GlobalGiving. The World Counts. (2021, February 6). The World Counts. Billings, Linda. (2017). Should Humans Colonize Other Planets? No. Theology and Science. 15. 1-12. 10.1080/14746700.2017.1335065. Adhamy, A. (2018, August 13). Top 10: Wt are the top 10 most expensive space missions? BBC Science Focus Magazine. NASA. (2020, April 24). About - Hubble History Timeline. Humans should not invest in technology to explore and colonize other planets for many reasons including: (Layan) • Earth is the most hospitable planet. Whether it’s nuclear war or massive global warming, post disaster earth would be way more habitable than Mars. For example, we worry that the oceans on earth will get too polluted or rise up too high, but on Mars the only surface water is frozen in the polar ice caps. • We would be hard pressed to ruin the water on earth so badly that it’s worse than what’s available on Mars, another reason is space funding would be better spent helping people on earth rather than wasted on other planets. • Rather than probing Mars for life, and with individuals constantly in the news for attempts to traverse the globe in rowing boats, hot air balloons and tied to gliders, there are clearly enough ‘boundaries’ on this planet to keep even our keenest explorers happy. Ozimek, A. (2017, May 6). Sorry Nerds, But Colonizing Other Planets Is Not A Good Plan. Forbes. Kennedy, F. (2019, December 19). To Colonize Space Or Not To Colonize: That Is The Question (For All Of Us). Forbes. Humans should not invest in technology to explore and colonize other planets for many reasons including: (Nardenia) • Space launches can have a hefty carbon footprint due to the burning of solid rocket fuels. Rocket engines release trace gases into the upper atmosphere that contribute to ozone depletion, as well as particles of soot. • Global warming is likely to be the greatest threat of the 21st century. The increase of temperatures and the climate disrupts the ecosystems, the melting of ice increasing sea level at a huge rate, and the scarcity of resources and climate change that are changing life habits and migratory cycles of animals. Are few of the many negative effects of Global warming. • A microbiologist at The University of Tokyo conducted a study that suggested that microbial life could travel between planets unprotected by rock. Which means if any harmful bacteria were to come back with a rover then we may unleash the next deadly plague. Conclusion on why humans should not invest in technology to explore and colonize other planets for many reasons including: (Malak) - Humans destroy earth to have a good reason to leave it and move to another planet. Humans have destroyed a tenth of Earth’s remaining wilderness in the last 25 years - There is sufficient room for exploration here on earth. Almost 95% of the oceans on our planet are not yet discovered. Some research showed that certain types of bacteria use volcanic vents on the ocean floor as sources of energy, a discovery that made many scientists looking for life on Mars reconsider. - One of the biggest issues surrounding space exploration is ethical. Some of these issues show that by exploring and trying to colonize other planets, we are messing with yet undiscovered life. Another major ethical issue is how wealthy people can easily buy a ticket and leave our troubled planet behind, and how people who get put out of work here on earth will be left behind. Round 2 welcome again, the other team has skillfully explained their points but a certain one struck me, they talked about global warming and how it is likely to be the greatest threat of the 21st century. but that just supports my teams argument. global warning is killing our earth slowly and has reached a point were we cant entirely fix it we should invest in technology and explore other planets for the betterment of human beings. thank you Since the 16th century, humans have driven at least 680 vertebrate species to extinction. Human activities that influence the extinction and endangerment of wild species fall into a number of categories, unsustainable hunting and harvesting that cause mortality at rates that exceed recruitment of new individuals, land use practices like deforestation, urban and suburban development, agricultural cultivation, and water management projects that encroach upon and/or destroy natural habitat, intentional or unintentional introduction of destructive diseases, parasites, and predators, ecological damage caused by water, air, and soil pollution. Those are many of the few reasons why animals and plants are going extinct. So why not restrict these activities to stop the extensions of animals. If we keep walking this very dangerous there may not be any plants or animals to move to mars. We should invest in technology to protect our planet from the disastrous actions caused by us humans and other disasters that threaten our home planet. Spending billion on technology to colonize other planets while NASA has found a radiation belt around our planet which prevents us from leaving to other planets is illogical and a waste of money. I want to oppose what the other team has said about over population . It's true that earth is over populated but this is because earth contains everything we need in order to survive and this makes earth the most habitable planet in the solar system. I would like to rebuttal a point a fellow speaker from the opposing team stated. We can not pollute the Earth, moving to other planets has proven difficult and technology to achieve this goal has not been yet developed. We should protect our home planet and try to save it. Instead of throwing all the trash on it based on hopes and dreams that have proven impossible to yet achieve . Round 3 Closing speech: I want to thank everyone who participated in today's fruitful debate and re stress on the importance of improving our technology and colonizing other planets for the betterment of the human race. So today I will not address you as friends or opponents, today I will speak to you from one human living on this earth to another. I want you all to think about all the damage humans have done to this world, do you think it has the ability to survive more? The answer should be obvious, and for that i continue to emphasize on the importance of colonizing other planets, thank you! So esteemed chair, fellow speakers, and honored audience, what have I told you today? Firstly the large spread of famine around the world that could be ended if the money needed is not spent on projects to explore and colonize space. Secondly the limited scientific benefits of space exploration, and lastly the immense amount of time it takes to build the technology can be utilized to fix many of the greatest struggles faced today. Time is something that we can not take back. So are we willing to spend it paying for rockets instead of saving our people and planet? So this motion must fall.
20+ Editable Receipt Templates (Word \| Excel) A Receipt is a written document that affirms that a valuable item/ service has been transferred from one party to another. It achieves this by highlighting all the elements of the transaction made, including the date of transaction, the amount transacted, the details of the parties involved, etc. A receipt template is a form used as a reference for creating different receipts for different requirements. This may include receipts for rent payments, sale receipts, rent receipts, and general receipts for any kind of transaction for goods or services. Usage of a Receipt A receipt is used to record full details of the transaction made. The transaction date, the amount paid, the purpose for the payment, and the name of the person who makes the payment is documented in the receipt. Purchase and sales receipts can be used as a model of record-keeping for businesses. Other receipts, such as rent receipts, can be used as evidence of the landlord’s income during the tax payment period. For example, a landlord uses a receipt to document rent transactions between them and their tenants and uses the receipts to keep track of their income to pay taxes. In some states, tenants can use rent receipts to obtain government assistance or financial help. It is therefore vital that the landlord issues the tenants with rent receipts upon every rent payment to avoid legal complexities. Due to the stated reasons, business owners should always issue receipts after every transaction is done. Tip: International Revenue Service (IRS) advocates that a receipt should be kept for not less than three years. In cases where a business incurs a loss for any tax year, all the receipts for that year should be kept for seven years. Types of Receipts There are varying types of receipts, depending on the purpose served by each. Below are the types of receipts that are commonly used: Business receipts A business receipt confirms payment for a product or service delivered by an enterprise, often issued after an exchange is completed. For example, companies usually need a receipt to return or reimburse a transaction. In addition, a receipt may be required for tax purposes to establish purchasing legality. Download: Microsoft Word (.docx) Car (vehicle) receipt Car receipts are of different types, depending on the transaction done or service offered involving a vehicle. For example, a car receipt is proof of payment for a car's sale, car hire, parking fee, towing, car wash, etc. A car sales receipt records a complete description of the vehicle, including its model, year of manufacture, color, and odometer reading. The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) requires these details to facilitate vehicle registration. Download: Microsoft Word (.docx) Cash payment receipt This receipt shows that a purchase transaction was paid for with physical currency due to the absence of electronic evidence of a cash payment. Therefore, the seller should retain a copy of the receipt for record-keeping. A cash payment receipt can be used when documenting deductions on income tax if the payment made qualifies as a tax-deductible purchase. Download: Microsoft Word (.docx) Cleaning receipt The cleaning receipt demonstrates that a company or an individual has received their payments after offering cleaning services successfully. In addition, it specifies the date on which cleaning was performed and indicates all the details regarding the payment, including the tax rate, method of payment, the total sum due, etc. The client may benefit from maintaining the cleaning receipt in cases where they wish to claim a refund. Download: Microsoft Word (.docx) Credit card receipt A credit card receipt is an affirmation given by a seller or a bank to a credit card holder in exchange for a payment or a purchase made with a credit card, either for a single or for recurrent transactions (Weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually, etc.). Usually, a credit card receipt is a little piece of paper recording the transaction amount, the day on which it happened, and a merchant or bank name or shop number that took payment for it. Credit card receipts typically contain a list of products purchased, although certain sellers offer receipts showing the total fee alone. Download: Microsoft Word (.docx) Delivery receipt A delivery receipt is a document indicating the type and volume of items that have arrived at a given destination—the purchaser signs on the delivery receipt to confirm that the items have been received. Download: Microsoft Word (.docx) Deposit Receipt Template A deposit receipt, also known as a down-payment receipt, is issued to a person after making partial payments, after receiving funds, expecting the payment of the remaining balance amount to be made later. The information recorded on a deposit receipt includes the date and time of payment, the amount paid, and the account into which the funds were disbursed. Download: Microsoft Word (.docx) Earnest Money Deposit Receipt Template Earnest Money Deposit Receipt Template The earnest money deposit receipt is issued to a real estate property buyer after the property seller receives the earnest deposit, and it binds the parties involved (buyer and seller) into an agreement. The terms of the agreement are that if the buyer fails to complete the transaction, the property will be returned to the seller. 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The receipt should include the guest room charges and any additional charges such as minibar services, meals, parking fees, and any other costs imposed by the hotel. This type of receipt can be used by any private hotel, inn, motel, etc. Download: Microsoft Word (.docx) Itemized receipt An itemized receipt serves as proof of purchase for a range of items, and it is usually given to the customer after a successful payment transaction. Each person engaged in the transaction is identified on the receipt, including an itemized list of each item sold. The list should also include the price per unit, the details of each item, and the quantity sold, as well as a complete tax or discount summary. Download: Microsoft Word (.docx) Medical bill receipt It is a bill issued in a medical institution following the payment of medical and treatment fees. The receipt indicates the cost of each service offered, the drugs administered, and other items used on the patient to give the patient a complete breakdown of what they have paid for. The patient can maintain the medical bill receipt to claim compensation from a health insurance firm or apply for tax exemption during the tax payment period. Download: Microsoft Word (.docx) Paid (in-full) receipt After completing a financial transaction, a paid (in-full) receipt is issued to satisfy the total balance payable. The receipt serves as proof of payment for the total amount owed. The recipient should sign the receipt upon the payment of the total amount owed. Download: Microsoft Word (.docx) Receipt book A receipt book is a stack of three receipts that are spread out horizontally to form a receipt booklet. Punch holes should be made on the receipt book for easier binding when necessary. A copy of the receipt should be retained for record-keeping purposes if the receipt is issued to a client after payment. Making a note of the receipt in a transaction booklet or using carbon copy receipts will help with this. Download: Microsoft Word (.docx) Rent Receipt A rent receipt is a remittance slip given to a tenant by the landlord of a rental property whenever the tenant pays rent. A rent receipt assists both the landlord and the tenant keep track of all rent payments made by the tenant. Download: Microsoft Word (.docx) Sales receipt A sales receipt provides the buyer with documentation that they made a purchase, what they bought, and how much money they paid. A sales tax may be imposed depending on the goods being purchased and the location where the transaction took place. Download: Microsoft Word (.docx) Security deposit receipt A security deposit receipt records the amount paid, payment date, the person who made the payment, the method of payment, as well as providing evidence that the security deposit was paid and received by the landlord. The security deposit should be refunded to the tenant at the end of the tenancy, as required by state legislation. Therefore, the tenant should maintain the security deposit receipt and use it to claim a security deposit refund at the end of the tenancy. Download: Microsoft Word (.docx) Packing slip A packing slip is a document that lists all of the items included in a package. Packing slips indicate the Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) numbers, weights, measurements, the number of units packed, the price for each item, and the total price for the packed products. Shipping departments utilize packing slips to determine what inventory has to be shipped out in order to complete an order accurately. Download: Microsoft Word (.docx) Blank receipt A blank receipt is a receipt template that any organization can use to develop its payment receipt. It has the same essential components of identifying the parties involved, the amount of money paid, the payment method, and the reason for payment. A blank receipt template can be modified to incorporate any additional information that the parties deem necessary. Download: Microsoft Word (.docx) Donation receipt A donation receipt serves as official proof that a donation has been made. The receipt may be used to claim the donation as tax-deductible by someone who has donated money or personal property. A receipt detailing all donations made throughout the year can be produced to provide the total annual contribution of one donor, whose total value can then be deducted from their gross income. It is necessary for a charity to complete the 501(c)(3) donation receipt whenever they receive donations valued at $250 or more. Download: Microsoft Word (.docx) Key Elements of a Receipt Template A receipt serves as documentation to confirm that a valuable item/ service has been transferred from one party to another. For a receipt template to meet the need of documenting a transaction in its entirety, it should bear the following vital elements: • Name and address of the payment recipient • Name and address of the person making the payment • The transaction date • A receipt number • The amount paid: It is the total amount paid in a given transaction. The amount should be broken down to show the amount for each item included in the receipt. Where applicable, VAT imposed and any discounts offered should be indicated. • The justification for payment: This refers to the reason for payment. Usually, a breakdown of all the items covered in the transaction is highlighted in this section, showing a brief description of the product and quantity sold. • The mode of payment used: This refers to how payments were made. It can be by cash, credit card, electronic means such as PayPal, etc. • Signature or initials of the payment recipient: The signature or initials serve as proof that the parties involved completed the transaction as expected. How to Fill a Receipt Template Receipt templates are easy to fill out. Begin by writing the name and the contact information, including its address and the phone number. This should be followed by adding the transaction date on the receipt, details of the person making the payment, and the unique receipt number. The details should cover their address and contact information as well. The total amount of money paid should be then be written, and how the mode by which the payment was made. This is followed by a brief description of the reason for payment, and it should indicate the items sold/ services offered. Finally, the party issuing the receipt should sign it or write the initials of their name. How to Make a Receipt Template It is straightforward to create receipt templates with MS Word without having to download any specific software. After you’ve opened MS Word, follow the steps below to create a receipt template: • Click the File button in the top left corner of your screen, and select New from the drill-down menu. This will bring up a selection of several categories, each with its own set of templates. • Find the receipts category in the search box and choose the type you desire. • Select the template that best meets your requirements. • Edit the contents of the chosen template and adjust it to meet your requirements. • When you’re done, proofread the result and save the file on your PC. Free Templates Following are some free downloadable receipt templates for you: Frequently Asked Questions How to scan a receipt? There are two ways by which you can scan a receipt: a. Using a mobile App. It is the most convenient approach to scan a receipt and store it on a mobile phone device. b. Using a physical scanner. The receipt should be placed flat on the scanner. After scanning the receipt, the soft copy can be saved to a storage device such as a memory card or a flash drive. What is the difference between an Invoice and a Receipt? An invoice is a demand for payment provided by the seller after the sale of goods or services has been completed but before payment has been made. Essentially, invoices are utilized to make sure that the seller receives the payment. On the other hand, a receipt is a document providing written proof, either in paper or electronic form, confirming that a valuable item/ service has been transferred from one party to another. Receipts often include information about the goods/services sold, such as quantity, pricing, discounts, and information about the method of payment used in the transaction. Difference between an Online receipt and a paper receipt? An online receipt is a digital/ electronic version of a receipt, while a paper receipt refers to the hardcopy version of a receipt. Scroll to Top
What is "life expectancy" and why should you care? Put simply, life expectancy is the average number of years a person of any given age will live. Usually, people talk about life expectancy at birth – how many years can a person born in a specific time and place expect to live? For the U.S. overall, life expectancy at birth has increased DRAMATICALLY in the last 110 years, from 1900 when it was 47 up to 78 in 2010. You can also calculate life expectancy at different ages: IF a person born in a given year lives to be 70, THEN how many more years will they, on average, live? We’ll come back to this later (HINT: longer!) First, who cares about life expectancy? People do! Though we rarely think about it in exactly these math-y ways. We think about whether we’ll live to see our grandchildren grown or whether we’ll be able to complete big projects or realize dreams. Often, as individuals, we think about our own life expectancy in relationship to our loved ones and friends. Will I outlive my spouse? Everyone I know on my block? The colleagues I’ve always known? Because average life expectancy has increased so quickly, the people “exceeding expectations” in this project, have an average life expectancy nearly 25 years longer than their parents’ generation. Governments look at life of expectancy to measure the health of populations in different times, places, and groups. It is one of those key measures we use to compare countries. Average life expectancy increases as counties become richer. However, countries have different patterns of life expectancy WITHIN them (as we do in NYC). Those differences are important indicators of differences in health and life opportunities between groups of people and different neighborhoods and environments. International organizations look for changes in life expectancy and its patterns as indicators of progress. In New York City, in 2010, life expectancy at birth was 80.9. It rose 3 years from 2000. In NYC, life expectancy is higher than the U.S. overall and higher than other urban areas. Life expectancy is even different from one neighborhood to another. In NYC, life expectancy is HIGHER the less poverty in your neighborhood. A person born in a poor neighborhood in NYC can expect to live a little more than 79 years, but a person born in a neighborhood with little poverty can expect to live until over 83 years (on average). There are also differences in average life expectancy for different racial/ethnic groups in NYC. It is HIGHEST for Hispanics; then non-Hispanic whites, and lowest for non-Hispanic African Americans. The difference is big: Hispanics have an average life expectancy at birth almost 5 years longer than African Americans. This is true despite more Hispanics living in poor neighborhoods so it’s a big effect. WHY? People don’t know – one part of the answer is that people who immigrate to a new country tend to be healthier (on average) than the overall population. But so many NYC Hispanics are not immigrants themselves, so that isn’t the whole answer. There were not enough Asians across a range of ages to do the calculations for NYC. As for the other groups, these are complicated generalizations to make because people from so many very different places get lumped together as one racial/ethnic group. Let's be clear, people do NOT think these different racial/ethnic groups are born with biological differences in life expectancy. These differences come from different individual and neighborhood life patterns – different levels of violence and accidents, exposure to infections (especially HIV), and diseases partly linked to behaviors – smoking, exercise, healthy eating, and misuse of drugs or alcohol. And it’s important to remember that all of these are PATTERNS of association—not 1:1 relationships at the level of the individual. So, on average, people who smoke are more likely to have cancers, heart disease, and lung disease and to die younger than people who do not smoke. This does not mean that any one specific, non- smoker will outlive any one specific smoker. As hinted earlier, life expectancy can also be calculated at any given age. So people who are 40 in 2010 in NYC will, on average, live another 43.2 years if Hispanic, another 42.3 years if white/non-Hispanic, and another 39.6 years if African American/non Hispanic. Most interesting for living while old is life expectancy at age 70. A person who was 70 in NYC in 2010 would, on average, live another 17 years! Some people think life expectancy at age 70 (or at age 65) is a better way to show healthy aging in a group or community than life expectancy at birth. Life expectancy at birth is strongly influenced by injuries and diseases that kill people early in life. But life expectancy at age 65 or 70 is influenced by how healthy people are in older age (produced by a combination of their life long resources, education, behaviors, environments, access to and quality of health care, and chance). All numbers is this post came from a 2013 report by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which you can find here. Featured Posts Recent Posts
Forgotten hero: Football’s first black international • Andrew Watson (back row, centre) was the first black international footballer • He captained Scotland to a 6-1 victory over England 140 years ago today • Biographer Llew Walker tells us about one of football’s lost legends Tucked away on Glasgow’s south side, just a couple of miles from Hampden Park, lies a graffiti-daubed alley bearing murals of two black footballers. One of them, Pele, is the most famous player in history. The other is a largely unknown and forgotten figure, even in his native Scotland. Yet in terms of historical significance, Andrew Watson stands comparison with football’s giants – even its Brazilian king. Mural of Andrew Watson. His place in the sport’s annals was assured 140 years ago today, when he became the first person of colour to compete at international level. And Watson didn’t just play; he was named captain and led Scotland to a 6-1 victory in London that, to this day, ranks as England’s heaviest home defeat. But that landmark feat, while remarkable in itself, merely scratches the surface of his many achievements. “He should be so much better known than he is,” said historian Llew Walker, who has written a new biography of Watson and is raising funds to erect a memorial. “Of all the early black players who’ve been ‘rediscovered’ and rightly celebrated over recent years – the Arthur Whartons, the Walter Tulls – Watson is the most influential and important. “It’s not just that he was the first black international and the first black player to captain his country, although those facts are of huge historical importance in themselves. He was also the first black man to win a major cup competition and the first black man to both play and officiate in England’s FA Cup (twice serving as a linesman in the competition). He was also the first black man to serve as a football administrator, and earned huge respect in all of those roles. “Beyond that, those Scotland teams he was a part of helped change football forever. That’s because the 6-1 defeat, and another 5-1 thrashing the Scots gave them the following year, forced England to sit up, take notice and make really important changes.” So impressed were the English by Watson that he was lured south in the months that followed the second of those crushing reverses. The full-back, born in Guyana to a Scottish sugar planter father and a Guyanese mother, duly led a group of ‘Scotch professors’ who taught their southern neighbours a new concept of the beautiful game. As Walker explained: “Those ‘professors’ introduced combination play – passing, positions, tactics and teamwork – that Scotland had been much quicker to adopt. It totally changed English football, which had stayed much closer to its rugby roots until then. And because of the influence of Brits in spreading the game globally, it changed football around the world too.” Walker is himself English, and stumbled upon Watson's story through his involvement with Corinthians-Casuals – the famous amateur team that numbered among the Scot's clubs. What shocked him, beyond the scale of this pioneering player's achievements and the lack of recognition they had received, was the extent to which he had survived, thrived and become a beloved figure in the late 19th century. For while the taking of a knee at football matches is a painful reminder that racism has still to be stamped out, Watson lived through an era in which it was endemic. BOURNEMOUTH, ENGLAND - JUNE 20: Cheikhou Kouyate of Crystal Palace takes a knee in support of the Black Lives Matter movement prior to the Premier League match between AFC Bournemouth and Crystal Palace at Vitality Stadium on June 20, 2020 in Bournemouth, England. Football Stadiums around Europe remain empty due to the Coronavirus Pandemic as Government social distancing laws prohibit fans inside venues resulting in all fixtures being played behind closed doors. (Photo by Michael Steele/Getty Images) “Racism and racist views were hugely common in Britain at that time,” Walker explained. “But Watson seems to have almost transcended race, and he managed that by being very, very good at what he did. “He was the first proper example of diversity in sport; the principle of it not mattering what colour you are, but how you good you are. What comes across in everything I read is just how hugely popular he was, and that was the case everywhere he went. It was astonishing. “There’s a wonderful story when he came down to England and played so well in one game, at Charterhouse School, that he was carried from the pitch by the pupils. Now, Charterhouse is a bastion of white Englishness, producing prime ministers and so on, so for this black man to have been lauded in such a way - especially in that era - is just astonishing. It shows how good he must have been that he earned that kind of respect and adulation.” The pity, of course, is that the passing decades allowed that acclaim to fade, and led to Watson’s story being forgotten. But with Walker and others returning it to prominence, the tale of football’s first black international seems sure to emerge from the dark alley of history.
Skip to main content Why Female Chimps Shout or Shut Up During Sex A female chimp named Maani, a member of the Sonso community in the Budongo Forest in Uganda. (Image credit: Florian Moellers) Female chimps often cry out during sex to attract nearby males, but they keep quiet when other females are around so they don't alert their competition, a new study finds. The function of copulation calls made by female primates (a group that includes lemurs, monkeys, and apes, such as humans and chimpanzees, our closest relatives) has been debated for years. One hypothesis: the calls let females advertise their sexually receptive state to potential mates, which would create competition among males in the group. By pitting the males against each other, the successful female would end up with the strongest partner and have the highest quality offspring, the thinking went. But psychologists Simon Townsend and Klaus Zuberbuhler, both of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, didn't find any evidence for this kind of male-to-male competition, or any link between calling activity and a female's hormonal state when they observed the behavior of chimps in the Budongo Forest in Uganda. Instead, female chimpanzees seem to use the copulation calls strategically to enlist the future protective support of males against aggressive group members, especially other females. The females produced more calls when high-ranking males were around, but kept mum on their sexual activity when high-ranking females were nearby. "The female chimps we observed in the wild seemed to be much more concerned with having sex with many different males, without other females finding out about it, than causing male chimps to fight over them," Townsend said. This strategy could be used to minimize the risks of competition, Townsend explained. "Competition between females can be dangerously high in wild chimpanzees," he said. Because females make the calls not only during their fertile period, when they are most likely to conceive, they are acting something like the chimp equivalent of gold diggers. "Copulation calling therefore may be one potential strategy employed by female chimpanzees to advertise their receptivity to high-ranked males, confuse paternity, and secure future support from these socially important individuals," Townsend said. The findings were published on June 18 in the online journal PLoS ONE. The study was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council of the United Kingdom, an EU Pathfinder grant and the German Max Planck Society. Andrea Thompson
New language area It's a composite ensemble of cultural and educational learning-oriented activities endorsing innovative narration schemes. They originate from the desire to join art and science in a new, appealing form of communication. These proposals maintain quality and scientific accuracy and are founded on the principles of theatrical language. They include fun, exciting and intriguing interactions with the audience. Within this macro-category, the following 7 main types of activity stand out: Scientific play This mode of scientific popularization offers a theatrical representation realized by scientists-actors, with a clear screenplay and a well-defined direction. Science theatre This mode of popularization introduces a scientific topic through a first theatrical moment favoring emotional immersion and listening, thus preparing the audience to an active participation and an ensuing in-depth analysis. Scientific animation This edutainment-based form is aimed at both teaching and entertaining, and offers the opportunity to approach science informally. Science show It's a dynamic interaction between students and a scientific performer, leading the pupils to observe experiments, demonstrations and scientific games, in a fun, curiosity-driven fashion, with amazing special effect and stimulating questions and apparent nonsense. This scientific activity aims at arousing the audience's curiosity in a short time, making use of materials and tools in the exhibit. Scientific game This individual or team game has a well-defined set of regulations, where the winning individual or team must answer questions, riddles or face challenges about a scientific topic. Science of senses This mode of scientific popularization offers a non-conventional sensory experience. Science and society This popularization program promotes active participation to scientific research providing citizens with tools for data collection and processing. • A few examples of activities
Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date [Phys-L] sound Does anyone know how a bugle produces different notes (as it has no keys, valves, slides, etc.)? I know the instrument when played is physically closed, but it behaves like an open pipe due to the bell's conical shape. So the harmonic series is fn = nv/2L The length of the instrument is constant, so does the player just blow/buzz his/her lips faster? or with a higher frequency? That changes the harmonics/frequencies, but does that change v in the equation? I thought v was the speed of sound in air (343 m/s) for brass instruments. I'm a bit confused with some of the finer details of this "simple" instrument.
Pre-action & Deluge Systems What is a Deluge Fire Sprinkler System Deluge Fire Sprinkler SystemA deluge fire sprinkler system uses unpressurized dry piping and open sprinkler heads. It is typically connected to a water supply. Upon detection of flames, heat or smoke, a valve is triggered, which allows all the open sprinkler heads to let out a “deluge” of water at once. This kind of system is especially popular for businesses with potentially hazardous materials and equipment in its rooms or large areas. Besides water, a deluge fire sprinkler system may be designed to relea6se other materials, such as foam, dry chemicals or inert gases, depending on what hazards could be below and what is being protected. Chemical processing plants, for example, benefit from deluge fire sprinkler systems. They’re also found in airport hangars, power plants, and data storage units. Another word for deluge is flood; these systems totally flood a fire quickly so it won’t spread. Because deluge systems are dry systems, they’re not at risk for having frozen pipes. Traditional sprinklers, when exposed to cold temperatures, might have their water freeze inside. Deluge systems don’t have that problem. The Differences Between Deluge and Pre-Action Fire Systems Deluge systems are typically dry. When not called upon to release water (or other materials) if there’s a fire or heat or smoke, their pipes sit empty and at atmospheric pressure. All their sprinkler heads are open. When the system becomes activated, the system is immediately flooded and all the water (or other materials) are released from all the sprinkler heads simultaneously. A pre-action fire system, on the other hand, is always filled with compressed air and its sprinkler heads are closed until activated, and then the system goes from dry to wet. Upon activation, because the system has detected heat or fire, sprinkler heads open and the system is flooded with water and/or foam, dry chemicals or inert gases– these are let out onto the problem area to quell the problem. With pre-action fire systems, a specific sprinkler head that detects heat or fire is opened. If needed, other sprinkler heads will open and be put into use. The system coverage can expand as needed. This type of system is commonly used in places where owners wouldn’t want to ruin all of something below if not necessary– for example, museums, art galleries or libraries. In places where water (or other materials) must be applied to an entire area for quick protection, deluge systems work best. In places where certain areas ideally should be protected from water damage, pre-action systems are ideal. The Advantages of Deluge Fire Sprinkler Systems Deluge Fire Sprinkler Systems What are some advantages of deluge and pre-action fire systems? They both can slow or stop a fire once activated. Deluge systems can cover big areas with lots of water (or other materials) very quickly. Oftentimes, deluge systems are used in conjunction with foam concentrate which further controls certain types of fire. If you’ve got a building that’s at risk for a rapidly spreading fire, the deluge fire sprinkler system is ideal. It’s automatic but can also be set off manually if needed. This is a good benefit “just in case.” Pre-action systems are good for places where you wouldn’t want the whole building flooded at once– but, rather, the area or areas that “truly need it” at the appropriate time. How R.G. Fire Protection Can Help R.G. Fire Protection offers a wide range of fire suppression services. We handle the installation, repair, maintenance and inspection of pre-action and deluge sprinkler systems. Our company helps protect your business, your assets and your people from the danger of fire. With over 75 years of experience, R.G. Fire Protection has served the Canton and Columbus areas for decades with professional and expert services. Indeed, from big cities to smaller towns in Ohio, R.G. Fire Protection has played an important role in the protection of generations of businesses and their people. Please call us at 330-456-8848 so we can discuss your needs… and meet them!
Maggie O'Cala's image for: Image by: Those who suffer from bipolar disorder also known as manic depression are faced with extreme emotional highs and lows. The "highs" are called the manic stage, while the "lows" are aptly referred to as depression. During a manic episode you may notice a lack of sleepiness, you might catch yourself speaking more quickly and find you are prone to agitation. Those caught in a manic phase have more energy, stronger sexual desires and may find themselves spending too much money. The most extreme cases may result in psychosis. This is when the individual has a break from reality. Delusions and hallucinations may occur. Bizarre anti-social behavior becomes not only noticeable but makes it impossible and even dangerous for them to function in social settings. If you are on medication make sure that you are getting the doctor ordered amount. The beginning stages of mania usually result in the person feeling really good. Happy, healthy and not suffering from an illness. This can lead to the individual forgetting to take or feeling they do not need to take the medication that has been prescribed. Reduce stress. This is not always possible but should be attempted to relieve yourself from as much pressure as you can. Avoid people who cause you stress or make you feel anxious. Do only what you must and do not overextend yourself. Rely on others for help if needed. Avoid sensory stimulating surroundings. Public places, events and activities are the hot spot for stimulation. The noise level and the amount of movement can be an overload for the manic. You need to avoid these while fighting off a manic episode because they contribute to making the mania worse. Eat healthy. Do not imbibe in alcohol, caffeinated drinks or products with high sugar content. These have stimulating affects and contribute to the increase of the level of mania. Do not take any mood altering drugs except those prescribed to you by your health care provider. Avoid going shopping. Often people who are suffering a manic episode will overspend. Do not make major decisions during this time. And resist the urge to take on more responsibilities. An individual who is going through a manic episode can not think rationally. Their judgment is compromised by the mania. Cease stimulating activities. Dancing, participation in competitive sports and online gaming come to mind. Any activity that gets your blood pumping and increases adrenalin is going to magnify the manic episode. During this time period you want to avoid all sensory stimulation as much as possible. Insomnia often accompanies manic episodes. If you are having trouble sleeping consult your doctor. A bipolar disorder. Proper rest is always important but it is even more so now. More about this author: Maggie O'Cala From Around the Web
Maritime Maquette Design Kracht door detail / Power through detail Wasa history A thre-masted royal ship launched in 1627. Length 70.00 m, breadth 11,50 m, draught 4,80 m, displacement 1.400 tons, sail area 1,150 m2, with a crew of 133 sailors and 300 soldiers. On its maiden voyage in 1628, the Wasa sank in the Stockholm harbour. Using a primitive diving bell, 53 of the ship,s 64 cannons were salvaged in 1664. The ship itself was lifted from the sea on 24th April 1962, and the Wasa Museum was opened the following year.
Republic of Malta Malta, officially the Republic of Malta, is a small and densely-populated island nation comprising an archipelago of seven islands, three of which are inhabited. It is located in the Mediterranean Sea within Southern Europe just 93 km (58 miles) south of Sicily; 288 km (179 miles) to its south is North Africa, giving the country a warm climate. Throughout much of its history, Malta has been considered a crucial strategic location due in large part to its location in the Mediterranean Sea. It was held by several ancient cultures including Sicilians, Romans, Phoenicians, Byzantines and others. The island is commonly associated with the Knights of St. John who ruled it, this along with the historic Biblical shipwrecking of St. Paul on the island, ingrained the strong Roman Catholic legacy which is still the official and most practiced religion in Malta today. The country's official languages are Maltese and English, the latter of which is a legacy from Malta's period as a British colony – the United Kingdom is the most recent outside ruling power. Malta gained independence in 1964 and is currently a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, as well as the European Union which it joined in 2004. [more]
Webster`s Definition Of Disagreement Napoleon still kept his troops at Gaeta, but was eventually brought to the conclusion that the conflict could only end in one way. This does not necessarily indicate that Russia is considering expanding or accelerating the attacks, but it could indicate that the Kremlin is seeing the current intense confrontation. as a prelude to an inevitable conflict. The judiciary has repeatedly said that his role as governor is not a conflict and that he does not want anything from the state for his businesses or his family. The conflict between Russia and England, which the prince wanted, had thus been largely relegated to the future. Until then, Californians had only been spectators of the conflict. The Second World War is still a long way off, but the seeds of conflict are already being sown on the continent. Tad, after putting on his clothes, returned to the scene of the conflict. When the Janissaries advanced to attack, they broke through the mass of Turks, who were still continuing the conflict, and stormed the rift. Also expect external actors to take action related to the conflict. Speaking to the immigration court, she said she was afraid to return to Cameroon, a place she has never called home and where conflicts are ongoing between the state and Anglophone separatists. But, Liebman said, the logic that supported document retention does not apply to the current struggle because it focuses on allegations of conflicts of interest. Here we are, because Abbas is the only one of the three parties to the conflict still fighting for a two-state solution. The two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is dead. The current conflict it fuels will continue into the new year. A conflict over voter counting would only exacerbate these concerns. .
Best answer: What energy does a car engine use? A combustion engine is a complex machine that burns fuel to produce thermal energy and then uses the energy to do work. In a car, the engine does the work of providing kinetic energy that turns the wheels. The combustion engine in a car is a type of engine called an internal combustion engine. What energy does a car use? You can see that a car engine transfers chemical energy , which is stored in the fuel, into kinetic energy in the engine and wheels. Do Car Engines create energy? What types of energy is needed to run vehicles? Single fuel source • Engine air compressor. • Electric, fed by external source. • Battery-electric. • Electric, stored-otherway. • Solar. • Dimethyl ether fuel. • Ammonia fuelled vehicles. • Biofuels. Where does a car get its energy from? How do we get power from petroleum? Cars, trucks, trains, ships, and planes—all these things are powered by fuels made from petroleum. Also known as “crude oil”, petroleum is the thick, black, energy-rich liquid buried deep underground that became the world’s most important source of energy during the 20th century. IT IS INTERESTING: What is the usual firing order for a standard 4 cylinder engine? How is energy used when driving a car? The internal combustion engine, which is utilized in most automobiles, has allowed for the transfer of chemical energy into mechanical energy. This provides locomotion for the vehicle as it is driving. How do cars get their energy to move? A little background: cars can move because they convert energy from fuel (diesel, gasoline, or electricity) into kinetic energy, or the energy of motion. … Due to the physical limitations of cars, energy will be lost to wind resistance and rolling resistance from tires. How does a car engine start? Where is energy lost in a car? In gasoline-powered vehicles, most of the fuel’s energy is lost in the engine, primarily as heat. Smaller amounts of energy are lost through engine friction, pumping air into and out of the engine, and combustion inefficiency. What’s the toughest part of building an electric car? What’s the toughest part of building an electric car? • the body. the wheels. • the battery. What type of energy is a battery? A battery is a device that stores chemical energy and converts it to electrical energy. The chemical reactions in a battery involve the flow of electrons from one material (electrode) to another, through an external circuit. What are forms of energy? Energy exists in many different forms. Examples of these are: light energy, heat energy, mechanical energy, gravitational energy, electrical energy, sound energy, chemical energy, nuclear or atomic energy and so on. Each form can be converted or changed into the other forms. IT IS INTERESTING: Should my engine be hot to the touch? Does driving fast clean your engine? An engine needs to be driven hard occasionally, meaning at freeway speeds and accelerated with a wide open throttle. Under such circumstances, engine combustion temperatures reach a peak and keep the engine clean by burning off deposits. How does fuel get into engine? From the pump to the tanks the gas travels through the fuel pump. The pump sends fuel from the gas tank to the engine. Some vehicles are equipped with multiple gas tanks and even multiple fuel pumps. … The pump forces fuel through the fuel lines that deliver fuel from the tank to the engine for combustion. Do cars respond to the environment? No such function is seen in the case of a car. A car does not give birth to a smaller car. A living thing can sense changes in the environment and adapt to such changes. Cars have limited functionality in this way (for example, a self-driving car can sense if the next car is too close and modifies its speed, etc.). Service station
How do you know if your child is anemic? What are the symptoms of anemia in a child? What are the symptoms of anemia in a child? • Increased heart rate. • Breathlessness, or trouble catching a breath. • Lack of energy, or tiring easily. • Dizziness, or vertigo, especially when standing. • Headache. • Irritability. • Irregular menstrual cycles. • Absent or delayed menstruation. How do you test for anemia in children? Most types of anemia in children can be diagnosed with these blood tests: 1. Hemoglobin and hematocrit. This is often the first screening test for anemia in children. … 2. Complete blood count (CBC). If hemoglobin or hematocrit is abnormal, a complete blood count may be done. … 3. Peripheral smear. … 4. Reticulocyte count. How can I raise my child’s iron level? Include lean red meat three to four times a week. Offer meat alternatives such as dried beans, lentils, chickpeas, canned beans, poultry, fish, eggs and small amounts of nuts and nut pastes. These are important sources of iron in your child’s daily diet. What are 5 symptoms of anemia? • Fatigue. • Weakness. • Pale or yellowish skin. • Irregular heartbeats. • Shortness of breath. • Dizziness or lightheadedness. • Chest pain. • Cold hands and feet. IT IS SURPRISING: Is dark Pee a sign of early pregnancy? How can you test for anemia at home? Tests for anemia at home are: 1. HemaApp smartphone app estimates hemoglobin concentrations. 2. Masimo Pronto uses a sensor clipped to the finger. 3. Biosafe Anemia Meter and the HemoCue use a finger prick to test blood. What do eyes look like when anemic? Paleness is more commonly seen in moderate or severe cases of anemia (7). If you pull your lower eyelid down, the inside layer should be a vibrant red color. If it is a very pale pink or yellow color, this may indicate that you have iron deficiency. What foods get rid of anemia? No single food will cure anemia. But eating an overall healthy diet rich in dark, leafy greens, nuts and seeds, seafood, meat, beans, and vitamin C-rich fruits and vegetables can help you get the iron you need to manage anemia. What foods to avoid if you are anemic? Foods to avoid • tea and coffee. • milk and some dairy products. • foods that contain tannins, such as grapes, corn, and sorghum. • foods that contain phytates or phytic acid, such as brown rice and whole-grain wheat products. • foods that contain oxalic acid, such as peanuts, parsley, and chocolate. Does my child need iron? What snacks are high in iron? IT IS SURPRISING: How do you serve bell peppers for babies? Are Bananas high in iron? What fruit has the highest iron? What drinks are high in iron? 7 Scrumptious Drinks That Are High in Iron • Floradix. Although not technically a beverage, Floradix is a liquid iron supplement that’s a good choice for people with low iron stores. … • Prune juice. … • Aviva Romm’s iron tonic. … • Green juice. … • Pea protein shakes. … • Cocoa and beef liver smoothie. … • Spinach, cashew, and raspberry smoothie. How do you diagnose anemia? 2. A test to determine the size and shape of your red blood cells. Does anemia go away? Anemia in general causes 1.7 deaths per 100,000 people in the United States annually. It is usually treatable if caught quickly, although some types are chronic, which means they need continual treatment. The outlook for people with serious anemia will depend on the cause: Aplastic anemia.
Can diabetes cause paralysis? Also called focal neuropathies, these are more common in people with diabetes and involve damage to a single nerve. It may affect the shoulder, hand, leg, feet or face and may be caused by pressure on a nerve. This can cause weakness, pain, numbness or even paralysis. Can diabetes affect your ability to walk? (Reuters Health) – Diabetics with nerve damage are more likely to have an uneven stride and struggle to maintain their balance even when walking on flat ground, a small study finds. So-called peripheral neuropathy, or diabetic nerve damage, can lead to numbness and pain in the feet, legs and hands. Can diabetic neuropathy cause paralysis? The most common type of peripheral neuropathy is diabetic neuropathy, caused by a high sugar level and resulting in nerve fiber damage in your legs and feet. Symptoms can range from tingling or numbness in a certain body part to more serious effects, such as burning pain or paralysis. What are the 5 main symptoms of diabetic neuropathy? What are the symptoms of diabetic neuropathy? • sensitivity to touch. • loss of sense of touch. • difficulty with coordination when walking. • numbness or pain in your hands or feet. • burning sensation in feet, especially at night. • muscle weakness or wasting. • bloating or fullness. • nausea, indigestion, or vomiting. IT IS IMPORTANT: Can my diabetic cat eat Fancy Feast? How long before diabetes causes nerve damage? If you have diabetes, you can develop nerve problems at any time. Sometimes, neuropathy can be the first sign of diabetes. Significant nerve problems (clinical neuropathy) can develop within the first 10 years after a diabetes diagnosis. Can diabetes cause heavy legs? Diabetic amyotrophy is a nerve disorder which is a complication of diabetes mellitus. It affects the thighs, hips, buttocks and legs, causing pain and muscle wasting. It is also called by several other names, including proximal diabetic neuropathy, lumbosacral radiculoplexus neurophagy and femoral neurophagy. Does diabetes cause immobility? Type 2 diabetes, a common metabolic disease in older people, is a major risk factor for functional limitation, impaired mobility, and loss of independence. What is end stage neuropathy? Stage 5: Complete Loss of Feeling This is the final stage of neuropathy, and it is where you’ve lost any and all feeling in your lower legs and feet. You do not feel any pain, just intense numbness. This is because there are no nerves that are able to send signals to your brain. Does diabetic neuropathy go away? Diabetic neuropathy has no known cure. The goals of treatment are to: Slow progression of the disease. Relieve pain. Can you recover from diabetic neuropathy? Managing diabetic neuropathy. Nerve damage from diabetes can’t be reversed. This is because the body can’t naturally repair nerve tissues that have been damaged. Why is diabetic neuropathy worse at night? IT IS IMPORTANT: Can high sugar levels affect your breathing? Where does diabetic neuropathy usually start? Diabetic peripheral neuropathy usually first appears in the feet and legs, and may occur in the hands and arms later. What are the warning signs of neuropathy? Warning signs of neuropathy • Numbness or tingling in your hands or feet. • Weakness in your arms or legs. • Sharp, burning, or throbbing pain. • Heightened sensitivity to touch or temperature. What are signs of diabetic feet? Signs of Diabetic Foot Problems • Changes in skin color. • Changes in skin temperature. • Swelling in the foot or ankle. • Pain in the legs. • Open sores on the feet that are slow to heal or are draining. • Ingrown toenails or toenails infected with fungus. • Corns or calluses. • Dry cracks in the skin, especially around the heel. Can diabetes cause neurological problems? What organs does diabetic neuropathy affect?
How can diabetics reduce high blood pressure? Making changes to your lifestyle may not be enough and many people with diabetes also need to take medication. The most common types of blood pressure medicines are diuretics, ACE inhibitors, beta-blockers, antiotensin-2 receptor blockers and, calcium channel blockers. How can I lower my blood pressure with diabetes? Many of the things you do for your diabetes will also help with high blood pressure: 1. Control your blood sugar. 2. Stop smoking. 3. Eat healthy. 4. Exercise most days. 5. Keep your weight in a healthy range. 6. Don’t drink a lot of alcohol. 7. Limit how much salt you eat. 8. Visit your doctor regularly. What should a diabetic with high blood pressure eat? The DASH diet is rich in vegetables, fruits and whole grains. It includes fat-free or low-fat dairy products, fish, poultry, beans and nuts. It limits foods that are high in saturated fat, such as fatty meats and full-fat dairy products. What happens when you have diabetes and high blood pressure? “Over time, diabetes damages the small blood vessels in your body, causing the walls of the blood vessels to stiffen. This increases pressure, which leads to high blood pressure.” The combination of high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes can greatly increase your risk of having a heart attack or stroke. IT IS IMPORTANT: Why is it important that the level of glucose in the body is carefully controlled? What is normal BP for diabetics? On the basis of recent studies, it would appear that a BP below 140/90 mm Hg should be recommended for all diabetic individuals, and around 135/85 mm Hg for most. BP should be closer to, but not below, 130/80 mm Hg for those subjects at the highest cardiovascular risk. Can drinking lots of water lower blood pressure? Does metformin reduce BP? Abstract—Metformin, an antihyperglycemic agent used for treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus, lowers blood pressure in humans and experimental animals. We recently demonstrated that short-term administration of metformin may lower blood pressure by reducing sympathetic neural outflow. How can I bring my blood pressure down immediately? Here are some simple recommendations: 4. Make stress reduction a priority. What is a good breakfast for a diabetic with high blood pressure? Hypertension: Breakfast options for high blood pressure • Egg. … • Nuts, seeds and low-fat dairy. … • Banana and berries. IT IS IMPORTANT: Frequent question: What takeaways is good for diabetics? What is the best breakfast for a diabetic to eat? 10 Best Breakfast Foods for People with Diabetes 2. Greek yogurt with berries. … 3. Overnight chia seed pudding. … 4. Oatmeal. … 5. Multigrain avocado toast. … 6. Low carb smoothies. … 7. Wheat bran cereal. … 8. Cottage cheese, fruit, and nut bowl. Can diabetes cause high BP? It concluded that people with high blood pressure have a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes. This link may be due to processes in the body that affect both conditions, for example, inflammation. Why do diabetics have hypertension? Patients exhibit hyperinsulinemia with insulin resistance due to impaired glucose tolerance and early-stage diabetes. Hypertension occurs because of increased body fluid volume. After reaching mid-stage diabetes the vascular remodeling has progressed and peripheral vascular resistance also contributes to hypertension.
Camila Navarro What is web accessibility? April 30, 2021, Web Accessibility is just the ease a person has to navigate, understand, and access anything on the internet, this includes any website, any app, any type of education, basically anything you can connect to with the internet. People with disabilities have problems navigating and locating objects on the screen, reading content in order, finding data or instructions that only are inferred visually, understanding tables and images, text structure and format, lack of associated information, etc. When a website is properly designed and coded from the beginning it will be accessible to everyone, one of the first things you have to learn about web accessibility is that it is always better to design with accessibility in mind.
Gain Staging: What It Is, and Why You Need to Do it Gain staging today means adjusting the gain for each input to make sure you have an optimal level where signals are not being clipped on playback. Gain Staging is a widely debated topic throughout the online world of music production. Most of the reason behind the debate is that this is a process that was super important in the analogue days because it dealt mostly with noise from analogue tape machines, and since we are in the digital age and noise is less of a problem, is it really critical to gain stage? Gain staging today means adjusting the gain for each input to make sure you have an optimal level where signals are not being clipped on playback. Clipping will lead to distortion in the sound, and it’s important to avoid this at all costs if you want high-quality audio output from your mixing session. Therefore, gain staging should be done before starting any mixing session because it ensures that everything sounds right from the start. So What Is Gain Staging? Gain staging levels enable you to easily control the overall quality and consistency throughout all parts of your sound by managing the input at every stage in the signal chain. Historically, it was about controlling the signal-to-noise ratio. Analogue gear produces noise inherently, so gain staging was an effort to try to get the signal coming in to basically drown out the noise, without clipping the signal. Today in the digital world, noise is not an issue so gain staging is used to ensure optimal playback. Use gain staging to get all the tracks coming into their channels at a good level so that the plugins will work well and you don’t have any clipping. use a VU meter for gain staging If you want to get technical about it, use a VU meter to make sure all the tracks are averaging at 0db. A VU meter is a tool that is used to determine the audio level of a recording. It measures the sound pressure in decibels. You can use a VU meter plugin to make sure the average input level is around 0db. This will make sure that there is no clipping in a track and you have optimum levels for plugins. There are plenty of free VU meter plugins online, but here is one from PreSonus that is really great. The goal of gain staging in the digital world is to keep your master bus free of clipping while giving yourself enough headroom for working with processing and ultimately leaving enough room for mastering. Why Do You Need to Gain Stage? There are 2 main reasons why you would want to gain stage. You want to manage your analogue inputs and gain stage for your plugin performance. Manage your Analogue Inputs It is crucial that you manage your analogue inputs, like vocals or instruments recorded in. You need to manage them from the source and all the way along the signal chain. The signal chain is each stage that the source travels through during processing, for example, a vocal will travel from the singer to the microphone to the audio interface, then to the hard drive and to the DAW. Do this by keeping your fader on your track at 0db when recording the signal. Make sure your audio coming into the interface is not clipping. Nothing sounds worse than digital distortion from clipping. Give yourself a lot of headroom so that the sounds that you record and process don’t clip your master bus. If your master bus is already clipping, then grab all the faders and just bring them down until the master is not clipping and you have some headroom. Gain Stage for Plugins Gain staging is a process that helps us use our favourite plugins so their performance isn’t limited by the input level. Many of the plugins in your DAW or third-party plugins are modelled after analogue plugins. They are coded to respond like analogue effects and therefore they have a sweet spot where the plugin functions best. This process allows for maximum efficiency in your plugin, making it sound perfect on your recording! A standard practice among audio engineers is to set peak input levels at 0db or -18dbfs. This is a ballpark figure to aim for but if you want to be specific then use a VU meter like said earlier. One thing to note is the volume coming out of your plugin. You don’t want to have all the effects adding to the volume of the track. If so, in a short time you will be clipping the master bus. To remedy this, just bypass the effect and check if the volume changes if it does then bring down the output level until you don’t hear a change in the volume when bypassed. Final Thoughts If you gain staged properly you will be on the right track for having a great mix. Set the right foundation for the mix by setting your levels for input properly. The sound quality is going to be better because you are not clipping any of it out, and so all that hard work goes into a great track with no having to go back and re-record parts. Not only that, getting good gain staging will help you take full advantage of your DAW’s and third-party plugins. Check out these two guides if you want to know more about Audio Mixing or Audio Mastering and enjoy the journey of music production. Related Articles Add Your Heading Text Here Leave a Comment
Sadhguru explains why in India, rivers were not seen as geographical entities but as life-giving gods and goddesses, and how this was an important part of human wellbeing. Sadhguru: If you look at the people we worship in this culture, whether Shiva, Rama or Krishna, they were people who walked this geography at one time. They went through many more trials and tribulations than most human beings do, but the reason we worship them is because, no matter what situations happened around them, no matter what challenges life threw at them, they did not deviate from their inner nature. We worship them because they remained untouched. In many ways, a river represents that: it doesn’t matter what kind of people touch it, it remains pure because its nature is to flow. In this culture, we did not see rivers as just water bodies. We see them as life-giving gods or goddesses. In this culture, we did not see rivers as just water bodies. We see them as life-giving gods or goddesses. To a thinking mind, which is confined to the limitations of its logic, this may sound foolish or very rudimentary. “A river is a river. How is it a goddess?” If you lock up such a person in a room without giving him water for three days, and then show him a glass of water, he will bow down to it – not to a river, just a glass of water! What we call water, air, food and the earth that we walk upon, are not commodities. We never saw rivers as just geographical happenings. We always saw them as life-making material because over 70% of our body itself is water. Whenever we look for life, we look for a drop of water first! No Spam. Cancel Anytime. Today, in the world, we are building medical infrastructure in such a way that we seem to expect that everyone will be seriously ill someday. There was a time when there used to be one doctor for the whole town and it was enough. Today, every street has five doctors and it’s not enough. This shows how we are living. When we forget how to live, when we do not respect what makes our life – the earth that we walk upon, the air we breathe, the water we drink and the very space that holds us in place – when we have no respect and reverence for that, how they behave within us will be very different. You are a water body. And on this planet, rivers are the water bodies with which we have the closest relationship. But our rivers have depleted dramatically in a matter of a few decades. In two generations, our perennial rivers – which have been flowing for millions of years – are turning seasonal. We are turning this land into a desert. For thousands of years, these rivers have embraced and nourished us. A time has come when we have to embrace and nourish our rivers. People think because of water there are trees; no, because of trees there is water. If there is no forest, there will be no river after some time. But a large part of India now is farmed land, which we cannot convert to forest. The solution is that, for a minimum of one kilometer on either side of the river and half kilometer for tributaries, wherever it is government land, we plant forest trees. Wherever it is private land, the government needs to subsidize farmer to move to tree-based horticulture. This will also be of economic benefit to the farmer because his income will more than double in five years. We urgently need to shift from thinking of how to exploit our rivers to how to revitalize them. We have to make everyone in the country aware that there is an express need for action to save the rivers. If we spread this awareness to everyone in the country, arrive at a common policy, and start the implementation, it will be a huge and successful step for the future of our nation and for the wellbeing of generations to come. Editor’s Note: Visit for more information on how you can participate and get involved in Rally For Rivers – a nationwide campaign to revive our rivers.
You asked: What age do babies make eye contact? Is it normal for babies avoid eye contact? The first thing to say is that if babies are overstimulated they will often avoid eye contact as a signal that they are a bit overwhelmed. On these occasions, you should respect your baby’s signals and let them calm down either by having a nap or by gently holding them without talking or intensely making eye contact. Should a 2 month old make eye contact? Should 2 year olds make eye contact? Nerissa Bauer, developmental pediatrician with You Doctors Online, says that eye contact is important for social–emotional and language development. In fact, studies have shown that eye contact leads to greater language skills by age 2. IT IS SURPRISING: Do babies sound like they are congested? Should my 1 month old be making eye contact? Making eye contact is among the important milestones for a baby. They make their first direct eye contact during the first six to eight weeks of age. Eye contact is not just about your baby recognising you. Can you tell if a newborn has autism? Some signs of autism can appear during infancy, such as: limited eye contact. lack of gesturing or pointing. absence of joint attention. Why does my baby always look away from me? When they feel that they need a break from too many sights and sounds, they may look away. As they get older, their whole head may turn from you. Do not feel rejected when your baby looks away; this is a normal part of your baby’s development and one way for them to control how aroused or excited they become. Why do babies look up at the ceiling and smile? Babies’ eyes are drawn to movement. That’s why they might be staring at your spinning ceiling fan or that toy you animatedly play with to make your baby smile. In contrast, if your baby turns away from moving objects, it’s probably because s/he is processing a lot at the moment and needs to regroup. What can a 6 week old baby see? IT IS SURPRISING: How often should a newborn have a poopy diaper? Why does my 1 year old not make eye contact? There are many reasons why any child might not make eye contact; by no means do all of those reasons relate to autism. For example, they may: Be fearful of or dislike the person who is attempting to make eye contact. Have a hearing problem and be unaware that they should look at someone. Why does my toddler not give me eye contact? Lack of eye contact in toddlers and children A child may not make eye contact because they may: dislike the person who is attempting to make an eye contact, have an unnoticed hearing problem, feel social anxiety or shyness. What causes poor eye contact?
19: Sleep and Dreams Flash and JavaScript are required for this feature. Download the track from iTunes U or the Internet Archive. Related Resources Handout (PDF) PROFESSOR: This is the lecture on sleep and dreams, and you want to know about this because it's -- well, at MIT, sleep and dreams is a topic that falls under the heading of abnormal psychology. All right, let us ask to begin, how many people here got some sleep last night? OK. Of those people, how many people went to sleep, even though they knew they still had stuff they wanted to get done? All right. So, what's your problem? Well, the typical MIT answer to that is sort of a moral argument. I'm weak. I'm a miserable human being. If I was a good, strong human being, I would not have gotten sleep, I would have done that problem set and so on. If you were not at MIT -- MIT is merely at one extreme here. Western civilization in general increasingly, since the invention of the lightbulb, has been an increasingly sleep-abusing, mechanism-abusing culture. But if you were left to your own devices or to what nature had intended, you'd be sleeping about eight hours a night, and you would be doing this across your life span with the result that you would spend about a third of your life asleep in this altered state of consciousness or unconsciousness. That, if you're teaching a course on human behavior and human mental life, that requires some explanation. Why do people sleep? What is the nature of that behavior left to its normal state? What happens when you abuse it? Why do people dream, which is psychologically, perhaps, the most interesting piece of sleep. Is it possible to get any -- do those dreams, do those weird stories have any meaning? Those are the questions that I'll talk about. I don't know if I'll get to end of it today, otherwise I'll pick up after Thanksgiving. Let's talk initially about why and how you sleep. Well, look, I mean one level of answer would be you sleep because every so often nuclei, collections of nerve cells deep down in your brain stem send volleys of signals up to the rest of your brain that basically make like a hammer and knock you out. But that's not a deeply satisfying answer. It does point to the fact that it's a very basic drive, and it's a very powerful drive. Look, if you wanted to you could, for example, as a statement of extreme political conviction, sit right here and starve yourself to death. Hunger is an important drive. There are several people illustrating that at this very moment. If you wanted, you could override that and not eat, even to the point of killing yourself. That's not true, for example, about your breathing. If you wanted to sit here and hold your breath until you died, it wouldn't work. You may have tried this when you were little. One of my two sisters used to be a fan of this. If we were teasing her and chasing her she would just hold her breath until she keeled over, which was very dramatic, but not, in fact, life threatening, except in indirect sense that my mother was not thrilled with us making my little sister pass out. You could ask her, she'll be here tomorrow, but you'll all be leaving. Anyway, this drive to sleep is more like the need to breath than the need to eat in that sense. If you were to sit here and by an act of will declare I will not fall asleep -- and look, as you well know, there's a substantial number of you who can't manage to do that for an hour and a half. That has to do with how you're abusing the normal mechanism on -- when I first was teaching, I used to look out at 10250 full of intro psych students in they're ahh. I'm thinking I'm not being lively enough here. I realize at this point, I could be setting off large explosions on a regular basis and it wouldn't matter for some people. We'll get to that in a minute. But even those of you who are well-rested, you could not sit here and not sleep. Probably you couldn't make it for twenty-four hours. Absolutely you could not make it for forty-eight hours without external help, either from drugs, like caffeine, or more particularly from somebody smacking you around to keep you awake. If you're in a sleep lab and you want to keep somebody awake for thirty-six hours or something to see what happens, you sure don't say, I'll give you ten bucks if you can stay awake all night. You need somebody there to slap them around and keep them moving or they'll be out. There's just no way to suppress that. It's a very, very powerful drive. So, how come? What's doing this? Your need to sleep is driven by two primary factors. One of them is a so-called circadian rhythm. The term comes from -- circadian is about a day, because it's a rhythm with a periodicity of about twenty-four hours. If you manage to measure it in isolation, and you were to measure something like alertness, it would have a roughly sinusoidal shape to it, this particular drive. When you wake up, it's actually at a relative low point. Yeah, right. At six a.m. on this chart, is it a relative low point? It rises your alertness driven by the circadian clock, rises systematically during the course of the day till early evening, and then declines to a nadir around four or five in the morning. When you're trying to stay up all night, that time in the wee hours of the morning when it's just really, really tough and you're getting the shakes and all, is when this circadian clock is crashing, is hitting its minimum. How do we measure this? How do we measure circadian cycles? Well, if you're a mouse it's actually relatively easy. Stick a mouse in a cage with one of those little running wheels and put a sensor on the running wheel, and you'll get out a graph that looks like the graph that I put on the handout. Each of the lines on that graph is one day, so you've got a day here, and the mouse is doing nothing much. Then at a certain point, the mouse jumps on the wheel and does stuff. Now, the convention of the circadian trade is to double-plot their data. So the line is the same data plotted twice. It's just makes it easier to see trends over the day. So this is inactivity, activity, same day. This is twenty-four hours. You can see that the mouse does this every day, for day after day, like clockwork, as it were, because the mouse has this little clock that's telling it. Now, the point at which the mouse is firing things up, right about here, is the mouse was on a twelve hour light/dark schedule, and when the lights go out, the mouse turns on. It's a nocturnal beastie. When the lights go out he jumps on the wheel and goes berserk. Now, what happens halfway down that graph where there's an arrow pointing at the side of the data, at that point you leave the lights on continuously. What you discover is the mouse still behaves in a very systematic fashion. I'm not going to bother double-plotting my data anymore here. But now the period is starting to drift. The mouse is now doing what's known as free-running, and this is a way that you can take a look at the circadian cycle in this beastie because he's now no longer got the light signal telling him what time it is. What you discover is that it's advancing by about thirty minutes a day, because the mouse clock has a period, a circadian period of about twenty-three and a half hours -- not quite twenty-four hours. If you were in the same experiment and you were inclined to run around in a wheel, the day would actually go this way a little bit, because the human clock has a period of about twenty-four and a quarter to twenty-four and a half hours, some variation. It's again, around a day. It gets synchronized to the real day by light most strongly. So you know when it's morning because that's when the sun comes up. If you never get outside and you live in constant light, your clock may be drifting too in something fashion. But given a normal exposure to light/dark cycles, that sets the clock. How many people are flying across time zones to the next few days? So you guys are all going to be jet lagged in some fashion, because your clock is set for East coast, U.S., you'll go someplace else. Get outside because it's exposure to the sun that will reset you. Exposure to these sort of lights will reset you too, but the sun is sufficiently brighter that it makes a bigger difference. This clock, by the way, has a home. It's located in the suprachiasmatic nucleus. Looks more complicated than it is. Supra for above. Chiasmatic for the optic chiasm, that x where the optic nerves cross on the way from the eyes to the brain. This sits right on top of that and gets direct input from the retina. It's got its own visual system in a sense. How do we know that this is where the clock lives? There are a number of ways. But the coolest way that we know that this is where the clock lives is that there are clock mutants out there, probably some human, but certainly mouse mutants. Suppose you got a mouse mutant who, let's say, has a clock running at, say, twenty-two hours or something like that. You can go in, take out the suprachiasmatic nucleus from that mouse, put it into another mouse -- and this is a case where a brain transplant will actually work. The recipient mouse will now start running with the clock timing of the donor mouse. If you want a new clock, you can actually go and get -- I don't know if you go and get one from a mouse, and probably your neighbor doesn't want to donate. There are also other clocks, by the way, that live in places like your liver, but the main clock running your behavior is sitting up there in your brain and reset by light, and in fact, can be transplanted, apparently. Now, humans don't tend to run in little mouse wheels very much. If you want to measure this in a human, if you stick a human in continuous light, and cut them off from the external world, which you can get yourself paid to do if you want. One of the leading sleep labs in the world, actually, is across the river at Brigham and Women's. My lab actually does some collaborating with them. So if you're interested talk to me. People do this as a summer job. You get locked in the lab for the summer. People think oh, I'm going to write the great American novel or something like that while I stay up all night or something. But you get paid a decent rate for this. Now we're going to want to keep track of what your circadian clock is doing. The sorts of things that vary with your clock are, for example, body temperature. Your body temperature has about a one degree plus and minus swing with the circadian clock. So, if you've got a fever, for example, you'd probably remember from when you were a little kid that your fever would peak in the early evening. If you stay up all night it's four in the morning where you suddenly feel chilled. That's because your body temperature is actually varying as a function of the circadian cycle. There are lots of circulating hormones, like melatonin and others, in the blood that also track the circadian clock. So, if you're in the lab, somebody is going to be monitoring these various aspects of your physiology in an effort to take a look at where your circadian clock is. This is one of the things that sort of discourages people from immediately signing up, because well, for instance, if you're going to be taking continuous measures of body temperature, the thermometer is not under your tongue. It's a slow group. Anyway, so you got the circadian clock that's driving your alertness. The other piece that's driving you're alertness, or inversely this powerful drive to sleep, is sometimes called the sleep homeostatic. It's simply a homeostatic mechanism that says the longer you're awake, the more tired you get. This is not a huge surprise. So we can graph that here. So this again, alertness. Let's say this is 6:00 a.m. again, now let's say that you wake up at something like 8:00, and basically it's a roughly linear function of during the day you get sleepier and sleepier and sleepier and sleepier, and sleepier, and sleepier. This thing builds up pressure to sleep. If you now go to sleep at let's say 11:00, that recovers. It recovers at least initially rather steeply, and then probably has a sort of an exponential tail. It's not absolutely clear. But if you combine these two, well, if you were to combine these two in the way that nature intended, what you get is a sustained period of -- let's look at the course of the day. Suppose you wake up in the relatively early morning, your circadian clock is relatively depressed, so it's still feeling kind of sleepy. But you're homeostat is fully refreshed, so you're up here, let's say, in alertness land. Now as the homeostat is going down, the circadian chunk is going up. So for a sustained period of the day, say till early evening, you have roughly level alertness. Believe it or not, that's what really happens to people who are well-rested. They are awake during the day. Some time in early evening when the circadian clock turns downward, things start going downhill for you and your alertness starts steadily dropping. At some point it drops enough that you -- well, that people who are not abusing the system -- go to sleep. So now, you're asleep so you're not terribly alert. So what's happening now is, so you're down here in asleep land somewhere, now your homeostat is recovering, right? But in the early portions of your sleep, or during the course of the night, this circadian thing is still crashing down. So even though you may have climbed up here already on the homeostat, you're crashing down to here and the circadian thing is saying stay asleep, stay asleep, it's good for you. You should be asleep for this sustained eight hours. Then it turns around in the early morning hours and 4:00, 5:00, 6:00 a.m. you wake with the chickens and you're bright and perky and alert, like you are every morning. You're back. So what you get out of this system, if it's being allowed to work properly, is a sustained period of alertness during the day, and the sustained bout of sleep during the night. If you crash the circadian system, for instance, you end up with broken sleep. So, you blow up a mouse's circadian clock, and what you get is a mouse who runs and naps, and runs and naps, and runs and naps -- doesn't have this organized pattern to it. Now, the great tragedy, of course, is that you guys who are in the peak of your ability to do this aren't doing it. You're abusing the pants off it. The structure of sleep changes over the course of the lifespan. Babies sleep for a lot longer than adults do. After early childhood, people have a fairly constant requirement for about eight hours. The range is really about seven to nine hours. People who say they require only four hours of sleep or something like that are basically lying to you. Thomas Edison, right, he's always trotted out as the example here. I don't remember what he needed, two hours a night, four hours a night. Well, there was a reason the man had a cot in is office. The people who don't sleep eight hours at night are catching naps when they can and they're building up a sleep debt the rest of the time. The sleep debt is -- if you are Dement, William Dement, Stanford sleep researcher coined the term sleep debt, I think, argues that it may be the biggest health problem in the U.S. Why is that? Well because all sorts of stuff from traffic accidents to industrial accidents and so on, occur basically in the wee hours of the morning when the circadian clock is busy crashing, because sleepiness is not good for behavior, as you may have noticed in various and sundry ways. When you get older, it turns out to get harder -- for reasons we don't really understand -- to maintain this consolidated period of sleep. So, it is a sad fact that I, for instance, do not typically manage to sleep eight hours solidly, anything like eight hours solidly, at a stretch anymore, even though I have long ago abandoned my various efforts to abuse the system. I'd love to sleep a solid twelve, seven would be happy enough. But as you get older it's harder to maintain it. You can do it now and you're not doing it. It's so sad. So, what are you doing and why are you so deluded? Well, in part you're being deluded by this circadian clock, because what happens? You stay up all night, right. So, where should we plot this? What we don't have any colors. Let's assume that you were once well-rested like before you arrived at MIT or something, and you stay up all night. So you were doing fine till here and now you're going to stay up. I'm getting sleepier here. Well, there's the coffee and the Jolt cola. Who knows what else smacking you around. Stuff happens. But you know, you're fighting a losing battle here. At 4:00 in the morning and you're barely holding on, and let me tell you that psych paper that you're writing at that point is not your best work. So there goes 4:00 in the morning. But 6:00, 7:00 in the morning, you've been up all night. What happens? The circadian clock turns around. I did it, I did it, I don't need your sleep, I'm so good. I'm a real MIT student! This is great, but it's all fake. You think you're getting back up here, forget it. You're in here somewhere. Klunk, like that. So you're ambling around in this business. If you think that this is great evidence that I'm superman and I don't need to sleep, try it the second night. I don't know how many of you have ever tried staying awake two nights. The way to stay awake two nights in a row is to have somebody shooting at you. Leading funders of sleep research are Army and Airforce, and they have a very particular interest. Their interest is -- well, they have sort of two interests. One of the army interests is we're going to take over this country in a hundred hours straight and our boys ain't going to sleep until it's done, and we don't want any ill effects of this. Got some good drugs for us, we need drugs, we want good drugs. That's for the Army research program. The Airforce says, we can fly at night, this is cool, we've got really cool toys, we can fly at night. It's really bad when the helicopter guy falls asleep, so we need him to stay awake at bad times. So they're big time funders of this kind of stuff. It is the fact that the sort of thing -- your general level of arousal will keep you up, and so the panicked sense that you're going to flunk psych if you don't finish the paper will do some good. The panicked sense that if you fall asleep somebody's going to shoot you does a lot of good. You can stay awake for a long time under that basis. But it's not that you miraculously if you just can make it past here you get back up here. This thing, if you don't keep recovering, it just keeps going. Eventually you're going to fall asleep. It's just going to happen to you. So that's the broad sort of twenty-four hour scale of sleep. Within that, there's a structure on top of that. This is sort of a ninety minute ripple sitting on top of this circadian clock that runs all day and while you're asleep. You know this during the day by the variations -- what would you may have noticed were reliable fluctuations in your own alertness during the day. In fact, you can probably do this -- I should collect data on this some year. I'll have to make up a little questionnaire. The clock is about ninety minutes, this lecture's about ninety minutes. So sometime during this lecture, you'll hit the nadir of that ninety minute cycle. Actually, I can at least ask a general question. How many people think they could identify within plus or minus fifteen minutes the point during an average intro psych lecture where they're going, if they're going to lose is, where are they going to lose it? Many of us know that there are just chunks of time that are bad. You might notice, if you check out, if you were to systematically survey those during the course of the day, of course, it interacts with things like when you eat your meals, when you get up, whether you ever got to sleep last night and things like that, but you may be able to peg a series of these spaced out at ninety minutes or maybe 180 minutes during the course of the day. You see these at night, too. To talk about that let's fill out this cute little chart on the handout. If I just stick a bunch of electrodes on your head and record the electroencephalogram the mass potentials off of billions of neurons in your brain, what I will see grossly is high frequency, low amplitude stuff while you are awake. So this is EEG. Depending on where I put my electrode in the brain -- on the scalp, rather, I can get a lot of other interesting information out of it. But for present purposes the important thing is that the mass activity of the brain is relatively high frequency, low amplitude stuff. If I now take a look at you when you are deeply asleep, what I will find is low frequency, high amplitude waves, roughly corresponding to -- what's going on is in deep sleep, large bodies of neurons are firing together -- everybody's on then everybody's off. If you're woken up out of that state, that's the I don't know where I am kind of state. You're deeply asleep here. The interesting thing, discovered now about fifty years ago, is that every ninety minutes or so you'll go into what we will call Rapid Eye Movement sleep for reasons that will be apparently in the next line of this table, where all of a sudden the brain goes back to this high frequency, low amplitude kind of signal. Now, research over the course of the fifty years makes it clear this is not exactly the same as this, but it certainly looks awake-like. So the person is still clearly asleep. The interesting thing is if you wake somebody up out of this state, they will reliably report that they are dreaming. Not all the time. If you wake people up out of this state, they will reliably report that they are not dreaming. Again, not all the time. It's not a perfect divide. But lots of narrative dreaming here. Here you tend to get if you wake people up and say what was going on, you might get an isolated thought or some idea that was rattling around, but you won't get that I was flying naked through the infinite corridor with a panda on my back or something. We'll talk about that later. This is the nighttime manifestation of that ninety minute cycle that you also see running during the course of the day. You can pick that up in the movements of the eyes, too. That's the electro-oculogram. While you are awake, your eyes move ballistically to the left and to the right. Your eyes are sitting in one place then jumping someplace else and moving around like so. The two eyes are moving together, so-called consensual eye movement. In deep sleep, those ballistic movements, called saccades, disappear and the consensual movements are damped down to so the eyes are kind of rolling around in your head and they're not necessarily rolling in that same place. When you go into Rapid Eye Movement sleep, the reason it was called Rapid Eye Movement sleep, it's the eyes look like they're awake again. So again, ballistically jumping around and jumping together. Is the pattern of eye movements related to what's going on in your dream? Well, there's anecdotal evidence for it, but if you think about it it's very difficult to do the experiment in any terribly meaningful -- actually there's some interesting data in animals at this point. In any case, the eyes look like they're awake here. The eyes, they're doing the same thing that they were doing when they were awake. You can see this in your roommate, particularly if your roommate has relatively thin lids. You can often see the eyes moving around under the lids, and if you watch your sleeping roommate, your sleeping roommate may think you're a weirdo when he or she wakes up. But you can actually see the eyes jerking around under the lids. If you have an unusual roommate who sleeps with the eyes open -- this actually happens. The reason for sleeping with your eyes closed has less to do with -- it presumably has something to do with cutting the light out, but it had mostly to do with keeping the cornea hydrated, keeping it moist while you're asleep. If you sleep with your eyes open, you wake up with nasty, scratchy, itchy eyeballs. Because if you think about it, you don't sleep with your ears closed. It's perfectly possible to use your brain in some fashion to shut off enough of the ambient outside stimulus to go to sleep to get rid of the auditory stimulus. So, in principle, you can do that with your eyes too. But you close your eyes to keep them nice and moist. So some people that doesn't work terribly -- I traveled across France in a train with a guy who fell asleep but his eyes were open, and it's like traveling across France with the undead. Because at some point he went into REM sleep and his eyes were going all over the place, but he ain't looking at nothing that's there. It was a little strange. So, so far, awake and dreaming sleep look the same. If you think you're having trouble telling whether your roommate's actually asleep, here's how you can tell. You measure muscle tone, electromyogram. When you are awake, your muscles are on, right. You have good muscle tone. That's why your head doesn't fall off of your shoulders and I can stand upright and stuff like that. When you are in deep sleep, actually your muscles remain on. The muscle tone remains high. It's when you go into REM sleep that you lose muscle tone. You can see this in your friendly neighborhood cat, because all this stuff shows up widely in mammalian species. So, your cat who's sleeping like this, that's a deeply sleeping cat whose muscle tone is doing just fine, thank you. Your cat who's sleeping like that is a cat who is in REM sleep and has lost muscle tone. Now, why would you turn the muscles off in REM sleep? PROFESSOR: Yeah. If you're busy being Superman and leaping tall buildings in a single bound in your dreams, it's a really good idea if you don't actually try that out. Not only are you protecting yourself, you're protecting anybody else you happen to be sleeping with. A known sleep disorder in older men is that this blockade of voluntary muscles fades off, and the result -- and this is a known disorder because older women bring the older men to the doctor, because their husband is thrashing around in the middle of the night and whacking her. This is a real problem, people get hurt. So, you want the muscles to go off. There are a number of corollaries here. It turns out that sleep walking -- Shakespeare has it wrong. Lady Macbeth is clearly dreaming about having murdered Duncan and all that when she's sleep walking. Typically, sleep walking is not acting out your dreams. It is a version of non-REM sleep, and it's much more typical in children than in adults. How many of you know that used to walk around at night when you were--? Little kids wandering around, their eyes are open, but nobody's home here. I don't actually know that much about it. My theory is that part of what's doing this is it's your bladder telling you to get up and the rest of your brain's saying we want to stay asleep here. My theory is based on one of the great moments of child-rearing in my household, which was one of my children. We were awakened in the middle of the night, my wife and I, by one of my son's yelling "No, not here!" to the other son who was about to use a trash can for the wrong purpose. Anyway, it all worked out in the end. But this is a deep sleep phenomenon. Talking in your sleep is often, apparently, talking out of -- you're not going to hurt yourself too much if you don't blockade your jaw, right? It's the main body muscles that are the real threat. So sometimes people will end up talking in their sleep, often to the amusement of other people in the room, or to the inconvenience of other people, or of your own relationships, if what you're talking about is somebody else other than the person who's currently present with you. Anyway, it's not clear -- when we get to meaning of dreams we can talk about this. Anyway, so this is the sort of within the circadian cycle, this is the sort of structure you get in sleep. Oh, now there's much more to this than what I'm telling you. Deep sleep can be subdivided into multiple stages that differ in the activity of different parts of your brain and so on. So now between that twenty-four hour cycle and this ninety minute cycle, there is yet another level of structure to a night's sleep where there's more non-REM, slow wave, deep sleep early in the night. If you have a consolidated bout of eight hours of sleep, a normal night's sleep, what you will see is more of this stuff early in the night and more of this stuff later in the night. This is accompanied by systematic changes in the neurochemistry of the sleeping brain and so on. There's an intermediate level of structure to sleep also. The impression one gets is of a beautifully structured system that is designed to do something. So, I mean apart from the obvious, it's designed to keep you from feeling sleepy. One wants to know, well, what is sleep for? You'd be surprised if a third of your life is spent in this state for no good reason. Oh, look at that, it says Part Two: Why do we sleep? It suggests that there are several possible reasons here. Anybody care to offer any possible series of why we sleep? Nobody's got a clue. Yes? PROFESSOR: So there's a sort of a basic rest and regeneration notion. That you use your muscles all day, it builds up all those metabolic byproducts in muscles that you learned about once upon a time. Sleep/rest will give you a chance to clear that out. So certainly, one possibility is it's an enforced rest period. You could enforce rest some other way, presumably. Well, it could be good for you to rest, period -- just lie around and do nothing. But sleep kind of enforces that. Yes, there was a hand over there somewhere. PROFESSOR: So, there's a whole class of theories, and these are actually the ones where there's, I suppose, the most current interest that has to do with learning and memory. That somehow what sleep is about is tuning up your memories and you're consolidating memories, improving learning or something like that. Let's talk more about that in a minute. But if you're sitting there saying, I'm a real MIT student, I don't need to sleep. You might worry about theories that say sleep is vital to the consolidation of memory. Yeah? AUDIENCE: It's a lot easier to rest during the day so we don't need to waste all the energy [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. PROFESSOR: So another possibility is energy conservation. You could be awake all of the time, but if you can't hunt when it's dark, you might as well go and power down the disk drive or something like that and not use as much energy. Your brain's pretty active while you're asleep, as you may gather from this, but the rest of you, of course, is getting some rest. Anything else? Any other good possibilities? Along with that energy saving one -- we can motivate this one related to energy saving by asking where do you sleep when it gets dark? PROFESSOR: In bed. That's seems like a good place. Where did you put your bed? PROFESSOR: Anybody big on sleeping on, like putting their bed out on the sidewalk? Those of you who are hunter/gatherers, when you're tired you just lie down in the middle of the field? No. Because it's not really very safe. So another possibility is that you want to sleep for purposes of protecting yourself at times that are-- as a corollary of this you can't hunt all day thing. There are other things out there that have adapted themselves to the niche that you are not in. Like take hunt at night, so if you're not going to hunt at night, not only do you want to be calm and quiet, you want to be out of the way, because otherwise oh, look, he's asleep, let's eat him. So there's a sort of a safety aspect to it. The other part of the safety aspect is that not only don't you want to hunt at night, if you just go down wandering around aimlessly at night, you're going to falli in a hole and hurt yourself. So, you've got to get in the hole first and go to sleep. Do I have any other brilliant theories here that I wanted to mention? That's pretty good. You guys managed to do a quick survey of the leading theories. As I say, a lot of the cool, current data centers around this idea of sleep having a role in learning. Let me tell you a little bit about that. The picture that's on the handout is an illustration of what looks like a really trivial task. The question is, is there a little vertical region in that display somewhere? The answer is well, yeah. Now I can make that task arbitrarily difficult by flashing the stimulus very briefly and following it with a mask of some sort. So I can make it hard. I can make it as hard as I like. If I do that, what I can do is measure, let's call it a threshold time. So maybe in order for you to get this task correct 70% of the time, I initially need to have the stimulus on for 200 milliseconds. If you practice it for a while, you'll get better and that'll level off at some point. What a number of people have -- well, is it Carney and Sagi I think? Doug Sagi is the guy I know. What a number of people found, starting I think with Carney and Sagi, is that if you let people sleep, in particular if they are allowed to have REM sleep, that performance gets -- well, here's let's have him sleep for eight hours here. That performance gets better, as if something happened while they were asleep. If they don't sleep during this period they don't get better. So it's a sleep dependent improvement in behavior. This is a very specific little bit of learning. This isn't just a general overall improvement in behavior. If you trained people with that little vertical task, that you're doing a task, is that region vertical or horizontal, right. That the three thing is vertical or the three thing is horizontal right It's always I'm looking here and it's always down and to my left. I learn to be faster here. I don't learn to be faster here. The improvement in learning is specific to the little piece of retina that I have trained. So it's very specific sort of learning that seems to be dependent on getting a decent night's sleep. Now, interestingly, there is evidence -- how many people here are nappers? How many people are nappers just because it happens? We can do it this way. How many people here think that if they take a nap in the middle of the day, they wake up feeling better for the experience? How many people think if they have a nap they wake up feeling cruddy for the rest of the day? There are people who find naps to be refreshing and useful, and there are people who find it being disruptive. It was certainly a big improvement in my professional life when I reached the level where I had an office of my own. The biggest part of that was it made napping a great deal more graceful. After lunch I could take the latest issue of Vision Research and prop it up and stare at the same two sentences for like fifteen minutes and I feel much better thereafter. There is evidence that a properly timed nap is just about as good as a night's sleep for this sort of perceptual learning. This is work done by Sara Mednick originally, up at Harvard. This is new stuff. We don't really quite understand fully how far we can take this. It's the sort of thing that your average MIT student is tempted to take and run with, right. Oh man, I can get the whole benefit of eight hours of sleep if I just go for -- I think it's ninety minutes between like 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon. That works. Great. Now I can stay up all night. Anyway, we don't know that yet. But Mednick's study is an interesting suggestion that sleep during-- napping sleep can serve as a same sort of perceptual learning kind of role. But look, one might actually wonder whether anybody other than vision researchers cares about whether or not you can find little briefly flashed lines in one corner of your visual field. That's not what you want to know about learning and memory. What you want to know is is anything really useful happening while you're asleep. In particular, one of the things that people want to know is, can you do serious thinking in your sleep? One thing you can't do is study in your sleep. There have been endless efforts because people smelled money at the far end of this to produce like tapes that you could stick under the pillow. Record Gleitman and why waste precious waking hours reading Gleitman? I'll just have somebody else read it to me while I'm asleep. Sorry, the overwhelming evidence is that nothing happens. The mild effects that are sporadically shown here come from periodic awakenings during the night. That also goes for sleeping through the lecture. If you're sound asleep during the lecture it's lovely that you were here, but you'll have to ask somebody else what actually happened. So that doesn't work. But can you have insights, or can you do your problem sets during your sleep in some sense? How many people have had the experience of being sort of dead-ended on a problem, it's time to just give it up, you go to sleep and you wake up and somehow the answer kind of seems to be there? It's a not uncommon experienc and there are lots of anecdotes in the literature about this. One of the famous ones is the guy who first described the ring structure of benzene, claims that he had a dream of a snake biting his tail and he woke up knowing that benzene was a ring or something. It doesn't always work, by the way. My father spent his career as a physicist and had the same experience. He's working on a problem, not getting anywhere. Goes to sleep, wakes up in the middle of the night, he knows the answer, and he knows you don't remember stuff from the middle of the night, so he writes it down fast and goes back to sleep. Gets up the next morning as predicted, has no recollection of what the great answer was, but he doesn't remember writing it down, which is good. So he looks at it and he sees that the answer is, "All the world is fused with the smell of cinnamon," which I'm sure was an answer, but was it necessarily the answer he was looking for. So this notion that you could actually be doing something productive in that sense during sleep was really in the realm of anecdote until this year. I put the reference on the paper by this group in Germany led by -- I suppose since he's in Germany, he must be Wagner et al. Beautiful experiment. You know these number games where you get a string of numbers and you have to predict the next number in the series? Well, I can't remember the particular one here, which is just as well because at MIT all that would happen is if I presented it, you'd be sitting there for the rest of the lecture trying to work out what's the rule here. Anyway, it's a clever -- go look at the paper. It's a beautiful paper. But they picked one of these things where there were two ways to solve it. There is a sort of a laborious multi-step thing. You add the last two numbers and then divide by the third fac number. It's some weird thing. You can do it, but it takes a long time. So, if you measure the amount of time for -- so this is going to be time again. Measure the amount of time to get the answer. People are initially very long and then they get better and to get to some sort of stable. But there's a trick. If you have this flash of insight, you realize I don't remember what, but there's some trivial way of knowing what the number is, and if you get it, it's trivial to see in the data because your time drops like a rock and it stays there. So now what you do is you take people, you train them on this. They're at this the high asymptote here, and you send them away. You either send them away for eight hours of daytime stuff -- come back tonight we'll test you again. You send them away -- I don't remember, do they actually keep them in the lab? You can keep them in the lab and keep them awake. Anyway, you send them away at night because you want to make sure that it's not a day/night thing, but don't let them sleep. Or you have people who go to sleep and have eight hours worth of sleep. The finding is that the next day -- eight hours later rather -- some people are here, some people are here or rapidly get here, and 50% more of the people who had a night's sleep got here. It's not that everybody went to sleep and had this kaboom of insight. But seemingly something about that night sleep produced this rapid burst of insight in many more people in the sleep group than in the two other groups. It's I think the first really good evidence, experimental evidence, for an ability to get something more like higher level cognitive thought happening while you're asleep, Not just these relatively low level perceptual learning kinds of things. So, the general evidence suggests that sleep has an important role to play in managing your cognitive light in some fashion. It probably serves a role in consolidating memory. It probably serves a role in problem solving. It certainly is the sort of thing that one might think about as one is saying I'm going to stay up all night reading Gleitman because tomorrow's the final exam. Well, if you haven't read Gleitman before the final exam it's probably true that reading Gleitman all night is better than hoping that eight hours of sleep will produce a flash of insight about the imagined contents of Gleitman. All right, let us discuss -- I'm supposed to tell you what's going to happen when you're sleep deprived I see, but let's do that in a minute after you wake up the person next to you who's dozed off. Because they want to hear this piece. All right. So what happens to you, you were clearly built to sleep. What happens if you abuse the privilege and you're running a sleep debt? And the answer is most people here, in fact, most people in America are running some sort of a sleep debt. What is the cost? Well, you can measure cost in a variety of different ways. You can certainly measure cost in terms of things like industrial accidents, car crashes and stuff like that. The classic sleep deprivation car crash is a crash on a clear straight road on a moonlit night -- you're a nice long distance trucker who's abusing the rules about how long you're supposed to be able to drive at once. You're out, there's no car in the vicinity, the road is straight, it's not bright light, but you can see everything. The road turns a few degrees and you go straight out into the cactus or something like that. Because when you get really sleepy, if you take a look at people's brain waves, you can watch them flipping into these little micro sleeps that don't necessarily last very long, but at sixty miles an hour, eighty miles an hour, ninety miles an hour, they don't need to last very long for you to end up in sage brush. There are plenty of ways to measure it in the lab too. If you sit somebody in the lab and tell them all I want you to do is push a button when I turn on this little light. The only thing you need to do. What you discover is that people are about 200 milliseconds slower at adverse circadian phase, at the bottom of that circadian trough than they are at the top of it. And on top that just general slowing. There are also a whole bunch of times when they'll just miss the light altogether. The light will come on and the subject will be just ah and not do anything about it. Now, 200 milliseconds, what's the big deal there? It's only a fifth of a second. Well, again, at ninety miles an hour it makes a difference and if you're flying your supersonic jet around the skies of Iraq or something it makes even more of a difference. So there's a generalized slowing. There is a tendency to trade-off speed and accuracy more than usual in favor of speed. So people tend, when they're sleepy -- we've actually done this in our lab. So if you're doing one of these visual search kinds of things where you're looking for something exciting like where's the red vertical line, people, if you go too fast you make mistakes. People when they're sleepy tend to be willing to tolerate higher error rates. Again, that's the sort of thing that is brought out into the real world if your error rate goes up by two or three times, that could be a real problem in doing real world tasks. It is harder to prove but pretty clear, perhaps introspectively, that being sleepy makes you stupid. You just don't think as well. For a long time it was kind of hard to show any effects of sleep deprivation because people tended to do things like ask you to add up columns of numbers, and as long as I smack you around enough to keep you awake during the task, you can do that. But if I ask you to do, I don't know, your problem set when you're really sleepy, it turns out that the throughput on more complicated cognitive tasks goes downhill. You're just not as good at it. Will it kill you? How bad can it be? The answer is probably yes. Not obviously at the level that people inflict on themselves, but prolonged sleep deprivation will kill you if you are a rat, at least. What kills you is not that you just get so sleepy that you fall over dead, but that staying awake, or more to the point being kept awake, which is what's required if you're going to go any extended period of sleep deprivation, is highly stressful, and stress will kill you. The rats who die in sleep deprivation studies die of things like bleeding ulcers and stuff like that. Symptoms that look for all the world like the effects of severe stress. You can also ask whether or not deprivation of particular kinds of sleep is particularly damaging. So, for example, it's relatively easy to deprive somebody of REM sleep. You can just monitor their eye movements or their brain waves and wake them up every time they go into REM sleep. They will sleep for most of the night that way, but they'll have little or no REM. You do get effects of that on these perceptual learning tasks -- REM seems to be important in that. But you can be REM deprived for an extended period of time without collapsing in a heap. There are two reasons we know that. One of them is that people have done experimental studies of this. The other is that one class of antidepressants known as Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors, MAOIs, systematically suppress REM sleep, and these patients report that they don't dream. But they don't have obvious evil side effects. We don't quite understand how that relates to these theories. People on these things don't say oh my goodness, I can't learn anymore. So there's something we don't understand about the relationship between REM and learning there, because otherwise these antidepressants would have a powerful side effect, cognitive side effect that we don't see. The other way to do this in animal studies is to keep an animal REM deprived for a month at a time and see if the animal show these sort of stress symptoms, and the answer seems to be, well, no, not really. If you get sleep, even without REM sleep, the stress part can not be there. Oh, my favorite technique for REM depriving a cat in this case, this is a low REM -- if you want to REM deprive your cat, here's how you do it. You put the cat -- take a flower pot, turn the flower pot upside-down, put the cat on the flower pot in the middle of a little artificial lake. Eventually the cat goes to sleep, right. Then the cat falls into REM sleep. Falls off into the water. Cat doesn't like to fall into the water. Cat wakes up. And the cats learns the not go into REM sleep. In some sense, trains itself not to fall into REM sleep, with the result that you can REM deprive the cat for an extended period of time. This is a very weird study. I don't where they got their measures. The only thing I can remember that the only thing they found that was unusual about this cat is that a normal cat, you got the cat food, if you put a July the 4th kind of sparkler in the cat food, a normal cat will not eat the the cat food, but a REM deprived cat will. Why? I don't know. I don't know nothing about this. I only know what I read in the literature. Which reminds me, however -- actually, this should have reminded me. That the most practical piece of advice, apart from the fact you should get eight hours of sleep at night. Since you won't get eight hours of sleep a night, I notice, I've been lecturing to this course for twenty plus years, and in spite of my exortations that your physical and cognitive well-being really relies on you going to sleep at night, none of you are going to pay the slightest bit of attention to that. So the more practical piece of advice I can give you is how to sleep in class. The trick is -- I mean obviously what you want to do is you want to sleep in a way that kind of masks that fact. The difficulty is this REM sleep business. The problem is the muscle tone thing and it's the head bob portion of the-- So I can look out there and watch the whiplash and that's not going to work. So, what people figure out on their own is that what you want to do is you want to give the illusion that what I or somebody else is saying is so deep that you had to close your eyes to think about it. Now, there are a couple of important principles here. One of them is that it's less convincing that you're thinking deeply about this if your mouth falls open. If you're drooling it's really bad. This is good. Support for the chin is good. The other thing that you learned in like 801 was that three-legged stools stand better than two-legged ones, right? So, I favor these. I'm really thinking very hard about what you're saying. That can actually be quite -- in fact, you're not fooling anybody. You know perfectly well you're sound asleep. What? PROFESSOR: Oh, keeping the airway open is good. That was the winner of the most embarrassing moment in Intro Psych Student Experience. This was actually the first year I was teaching the course. I was co-teaching it with another guy in course nine at the time and he was lecturing. I've long ago stopped figuring that this was an editorial comment when people fall asleep. But anyway, somebody sitting right about over there fell sound asleep. But nobody was sitting next to them. They fell sound asleep and they started to snore. Eventually this got like loud enough that my colleague had to say somebody's going. If you want the definition of embarrassed -- the definition of embarrassed is you're sitting in lecture, everybody's looking at you and you have no idea why. So, sitting next to somebody's another good strategy if you're actually trying to stay more or less alert. My old doctoral advisor and I had this as a pact when I was in graduate school during the Friday afternoon, terrible time, departmental colloquia. We would sit next to each other and if it was actually talk that we cared about, we had an agreement, if I go out, poke me, because I kind of want to know what this guy is talking about. He was department chair. Turns out to be very important, because one of the rules of you're department chair is you have to be able to ask an intelligent question at the end of the talk. Really good department chairs can do that after sleeping through the talk. My advisor, who was otherwise an exemplary department chair, was caught up short on this at one talk where he asked a very good question, but one that he wouldn't have asked had he been awake for those twenty minutes of the talk. Because the guy had discussed this matter extensively. So if we would poke each other to stay awake. The guy joined our lab and he sat two seats away from me. He went out cold. That's OK. But he started shouting. In Japanese. Actually, it was probably a bonus that it was in Japanese because whatever he was shouting was incomprehensible to anybody else. I made this sort of dramatic lunge to get to him before he could manage to get out too much. So now if you're worried about that, you kind of want to be sitting with your friends here so that when you start talking in your sleep, somebody can get to you before it becomes really desperately obvious. All right. I suppose the bottom line is that sleep deprivation will not kill you, but it won't do anything good for you, except perhaps getting you through the your work. Now, let's see do I want to -- you know this looks like a pretty good place to entertain questions and we'll go on to dreaming after Thanksgiving. Any sleep questions while we're here? We got a question, then you can run for it. PROFESSOR: Well, the piece of that is right -- so the question is do you want to sleeps in cycles of ninety minutes? Ideally, you want to wake up on your own. Typically out of the end of a REM stage is what would normally happen. Yes, you will tend to feel more refreshed there than if you wake up out of this. But most of us wake up when the alarm clock goes off and sorry. But if you can manage to adjust that to wake you up -- even if you have to move it a little earlier, you may feel better if you're waking yourself up out of a REM state. PROFESSOR: Oh, that's the neck floppy thing. When your muscles are going, when you're losing muscle tone and drifting off into a REM state, bits of you are kind of going where gravity wants to go and that can feel like a falling sensation, which inconveniently can sometimes lurch you back awake, or conveniently if you happen to be going out during class. But I think that's typically an effect of the losing muscle tone part. Last chance, here we go. PROFESSOR: Oh, if you really live in really, really northern -- sleep disorders go up as latitude goes up or way down. But as long as you're living someplace where the sun comes up every day, that's not an issue. But yes, absolutely, if you go and live someplace where it's dark for six months of the year, people have disruptions of their circadian clock and they start free-running. All right. Drive carefully. Have a good vacation.
What Does vape Mean? Many people use vaporizers for inhaling THC, which is the psychoactive ingredient found in marijuana. There are some concerns about this chemical, since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believes that it could be causing serious damage to the lungs. The chemicals in vaporizer pens are made from hemp oil. This is heated to make the vapor. THC is not recommended for anyone under the age of 18. The nicotine in vape and cigarettes can be harmful to the developing brain. People who smoke vape are more likely to be addicted to nicotine. This can make other substances more addictive. Young people are more vulnerable to nicotine addiction than those who are older, which can lead them to depression and other mental health issues. Other chemicals in vaporizers like acetone, could also cause cancer. Ultra-fine particles in vaporizers can cause cancer and pose a danger for children. Although the effects of vaping remain unclear but early evidence suggests teens may be using it to stop smoking. Vaping may lead to the consumption of nicotine-rich products like cigarettes. Research has shown that students who used e-cigarettes during the ninth grade were four times more likely than those who didn’t have them again to start smoking cigarettes. This suggests that vaporizers could be a narcotic for some. Some chemicals in vaporizers can be harmful to the lungs. The flavorings in e-cigarettes can cause asthma, chronic obstructive lung disease, and popcorn lung disease. Children who inhaled liquid nicotine or eliquid from vaporizers might also be exposed to nicotine. There aren’t any clinical studies that support the safety of vaping devices. While it is hard to determine if vaporizers are harmful to the lungs, researchers have discovered evidence that shows it can be. E-cigarettes can lead to asthma, lung cancer and chronic obstructive/hyperpulmonary illness. Some studies also show that e-cigarettes are a potential danger to the health of fetuses. Despite these risks, vaping does not cause any harmful byproducts within your body. The people who are addicted to nicotine could develop other addictions. Another study on vapes has found that the flavorings used in electronic cigarettes are linked to various illnesses, including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, and lung cancer. Apart from the risk of getting cancer, vaporizers also have toxic flavors that can cause lung cancer. It is crucial to remember that e-cigarettes contain a variety of substances that can affect the body. Further, e-cigarettes are often made of acetone, an organic solvent. This substance irritates the eyes and skin. E-cigarettes don’t contain nicotine, unlike cigarettes. Instead, they are a source of chemicals that have been shown to cause health issues in smokers. While e-cigarettes are an excellent alternative to cigarettes however, they are not recommended for people who are addicted to nicotine. If you are looking to stop smoking cigarettes, there are a variety of ways to quit. These tools can help you quit vaping and maintain your healthy lifestyle. If you’re looking to quit, use an vaporizer and stay with it. A vaping device, or an electronic device that converts liquids to vapour and is an electronic device. They are usually flavored with nicotine or other chemical compounds. These chemicals can be harmful to pregnant women and infants. They could traverse the placenta and then become addicted. Therefore, it is not recommended to smoke if you’re pregnant. It’s best to consult your doctor about quitting smoking. If you are still addicted to cigarettes, an e-cigarette may not be the best solution. Although the effects of nicotine remain a mystery but it is clear that e-cigarettes can be harmful. They contain carcinogens and poisons. They impact the development of children in the early years. Furthermore, teenagers and children who use e-cigarettes are more likely to consume other tobacco products. These substances are hazardous and can be harmful to their health. Do not smoke if you vape. They can cause your body to become more harmful. It is not recommended to vape nicotine. You shouldn’t add nicotine into your e-cigarette, or use it for any other purpose. These substances could be hazardous to your health and should not be added to electronic cigarettes. You can replace nicotine with nicotine-free liquids. The e-cigarettes do not contain any harmful chemicals. The juice should not be sweetened with sugar. Know more about https://northwindvape.com/ here.
Complete Guide to Cupping and its Benefits Complete Guide to Cupping and its Benefits Cupping is an age-old remedy that’s been historically used to treat a variety of ailments. Recently, it’s come back into the limelight and if you’re like many people, you’re wondering what all the fuss is about. What is cupping? Is cupping effective? Is it backed by science? How many cups do you need for cupping? We answer all those questions and more in this up-close look at cupping. What is Cupping? Cupping is a type of alternative non-pharmaceutical therapy used as part of Traditional Chinese Medicine that involves placing cups on the skin to create suction. This suction promotes healing through increasing blood flow and the flow of “qi” in the body. FYI, ‘“qi” means “life force” in Chinese. Cupping increases blood circulation to the areas of the body where the cups are placed, which is purported to encourage cellular repair and relieve muscle tension. It may also help create/restore connective tissue and encourage blood vessel formation, further improving circulation. Cupping is most often used as an adjunct therapy for whatever current conditions or ailments they may be facing. Types of Cupping When it was originally developed many centuries ago (as far back as 1,550 B.C.!) cupping was performed using animal horns, and over the years, the horns have been replaced by bamboo, and later on, ceramic cups. Today, cupping is performed with rounded glass cups that look like a ball with one of the ends opened up. The “suction” effect that happens during cupping is a result of the heating process of the cups, which was originally accomplished using fire. As the heated cups cool, the skin is drawn in as the air is removed, creating the “suction” that is so well-known with the practice of cupping. Modern cupping is performed following either of two methods: • Dry cupping involves using only suction, whereas • Wet cupping involves suction as well as controlled medicinal bleeding Note: the cupping practitioner usually determines which method is appropriate for you given your age, medical condition, preferences, etc. Cupping Up-Close So, what happens during a cupping treatment? Well, regardless of wet or dry cupping, the practitioner will put a flammable substance (alcohol, paper, herbs, etc.) in a cup and set the it on fire. This heats the cup, and once the fire goes out, the cup is placed upside down on your skin. As the air inside the cup cools, a vacuum is created, causing suction and leads to your skin being drawn up and into the cup. Additionally, the skin also reddens due to the increased blood flow. Note: Certain modern practitioners have transitioned to machine pumps with silicone cups that can be moved from one spot to another on your skin, yielding a “massage-like” sensation. If it’s your first time being “cupped”, you may only receive 3-5 cups, though it may be as high as seven cups if you’re a cupping veteran. Now, here’s where we get into the differences of dry and wet cupping. In dry cupping, cups are set in place for usually between 5 and 10 minutes and then removed, whereas with wet cupping, the cups are usually only in place for approximately 3-5 minutes before the practitioner removes the cup and makes a small incision to draw blood. Following the “blood letting”, the practitioner will apply antibiotic ointment and a bandage to prevent any infection. While that might seem pretty scary having someone cut your skin and release blood, cupping enthusiasts believe it helps purify and detoxify the body from any hazardous toxins, which promotes healing, though this is not substantiated by any scientific evidence. Following your cupping treatment, the skin should begin to look normal in about 7-10 days. A third, and less common, form of cupping has been tried recently called “needle cupping” where the cupping practitioner first inserts acupuncture needles into the skin and then places cups over them. Before any cupping treatment, it is best recommended to fast or eat a light meal approximately 2-3 hours before your cupping session. Common Applications of Cupping Over the centuries, cupping has been used to treat a wide variety of conditions, including everything from minor aches and pains to skin issues, such as acne. Since the cups can be applied to acupressure points, cupping has been used to also treat digestive issues and other conditions commonly treated with acupressure. A comprehensive review of cupping conducted in 2012 noted that the practice may offer more than simply placebo, and stated that cupping could help with the several conditions, including<1>: • Acne • Coughing • Facial paralysis • Dyspnea • Herpes zoster • Cervical spondylosis • Lumbar disc herniation However, the review clearly states that most of the 135 studies included in the review are highly biased and additional studies are needed to determine whether or not cupping is truly effective for the conditions outlined in the review. Additionally another report in 2015 in the Journal of Traditional and Complementary Medicine stated that cupping may be beneficial for pain management, herpes zoster, and acne <2>, and even more recently, a 2017 review of the literature<3> concluded: Finally, a 2018 study suggests that a “clear relationship between Hijama and the reduction and control of SBP in patients with hypertension. Therefore, Hijama can be used as an adjunct to conventional therapy, which may allow down titration of given doses of antihypertensive drugs.” <4> That final study is interesting and somewhat obvious, anything that decreases the total volume of blood in the body is going to lead to a reduction in systemic blood pressure. Is bloodletting a long-term solution to high blood pressure (hypertension)? No. Potential Side Effects Provided your seeking treatment from a well-trained and qualified cupping practitioner, the side effects and risks of cupping are relatively minimal. Possible side effects that might occur as a result of your cupping treatment include: • Mild discomfort • Burns • Bruises • Skin infection • Scarring (if receiving wet cupping) Additionally, you may also feel slightly dizzy or lightheaded during your treatment, as well as potential sweating (from the heat) or nausea). Following your cupping session, the skin on the areas where the cups were placed will be reddened and possibly irritated. If you did wet cupping, you will also likely experience pain where the incisions occurred. Be aware that infection is always a possibility when undergoing wet cupping. The risk is low, and typically not a concern provided that the practitioner is using proper sanitation methods on the instruments involved as well as your skin. Some things to look for in your practitioner, especially if they’re performing wet cupping on you. They should wear: • Disposable gloves • Goggles (or some form of protective eyewear) • Apron Using properly sterilized instruments helps prevent infection and ensures you’re not at risk for contracting certain viruses such as hepatitis and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Tips on Cupping Before we finish this expose’ on cupping, we’ll leave you with a few parting pointers to be aware of should you be interested in giving this ancient healing art a go. Most degreed medical professionals (i.e. doctors) are not trained or have any background in adjunct (complementary) therapies typically used in alternative medicine. As such, your doctor will in all likelihood be very skeptical of your attempt to try cupping. Certain traditional medicine practitioners are such strong believers in their craft, that they may encourage you to forego standard Western medicine practices in favor of their methods, but again, this is not advised. Always consult with your physician before starting or stopping any treatments, no matter how old they may be. Additionally, if you do attempt cupping, make sure to keep up your regular doctor visits and keep them informed of your desire/progress with cupping. Finally, cupping isn’t for everyone. If you are pregnant, menstruating, elderly, or a child, cupping is NOT recommended. Also, if you have any form of organ disorder, it is strongly advised that you do not try cupping. Cupping Wrap Up Cupping is an ancient healing practice used to treat a wide range of ailments. Anecdotal evidence speaks highly of the practice, and there is some scientific research to support its effectiveness in reducing aches and pains. It is by no means a replacement for regular doctor visits or western medicine, and should you be interested in giving cupping a go, always make sure to check with your primary care physician before attempting it. 1. Cao H, Li X, Liu J. An Updated Review of the Efficacy of Cupping Therapy. Malaga G, ed. PLoS ONE. 2012;7(2):e31793. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0031793. 2. Mehta P, Dhapte V. Cupping therapy: A prudent remedy for a plethora of medical ailments. Journal of Traditional and Complementary Medicine. 2015;5(3):127-134. doi:10.1016/j.jtcme.2014.11.036. 3. Zhang Y-J, Cao H-J, Li X-L, et al. Cupping therapy versus acupuncture for pain-related conditions: a systematic review of randomized controlled trials and trial sequential analysis. Chinese Medicine. 2017;12:21. doi:10.1186/s13020-017-0142-0. 4. Al-Tabakha MM, Sameer FT, Saeed MH, Batran RM, Abouhegazy NT, Farajallah AA. Evaluation of Bloodletting Cupping Therapy in the Management of Hypertension. Journal of Pharmacy & Bioallied Sciences. 2018;10(1):1-6. doi:10.4103/jpbs.JPBS_242_17.
New International Version Genesis 25:1-34 The Death of Abraham Ishmael’s Sons Jacob and Esau Abraham became the father of Isaac, 20and Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah daughter of Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan Aram25:20 That is, Northwest Mesopotamia and sister of Laban the Aramean. 23The Lord said to her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.” 24When the time came for her to give birth, there were twin boys in her womb. 25The first to come out was red, and his whole body was like a hairy garment; so they named him Esau.25:25 Esau may mean hairy. 26After this, his brother came out, with his hand grasping Esau’s heel; so he was named Jacob.25:26 Jacob means he grasps the heel, a Hebrew idiom for he deceives. Isaac was sixty years old when Rebekah gave birth to them. 31Jacob replied, “First sell me your birthright.” So Esau despised his birthright. Kiswahili Contemporary Version (Neno: Bibilia Takatifu) Mwanzo 25:1-34 Kifo Cha Abrahamu 1Abrahamu alioa mke mwingine, ambaye jina lake aliitwa Ketura. 225:2 Yer 25:25; Mwa 36:35; 37:28, 36; Kut 2:15; Hes 22:4; 25:6; Amu 6:1-3; 8:22-24; 9:17; Za 83:9; Isa 9:4; 10:26; Hab 3:7; Ay 2:11Huyu alimzalia Zimrani, Yokshani, Medani, Midiani, Ishbaki na Shua. 3Yokshani alikuwa baba wa Sheba na Dedani, wazao wa Dedani walikuwa Waashuri, Waletushi na Waleumi. 425:4 Isa 60:6Wana wa Midiani walikuwa Efa, Eferi, Hanoki, Abida na Eldaa. Hawa wote walikuwa uzao wa Ketura. 525:5 Mwa 24:36Abrahamu akamwachia Isaki kila kitu alichokuwa nacho. 625:6 Mwa 22:24; 21:10; Amu 6:3, 33; 1Fal 4:30; Eze 25:4Lakini Abrahamu alipokuwa bado hai, akawapa watoto wa masuria wake zawadi, kisha akawaondoa waende kuishi pande za mashariki mbali na mwanawe Isaki. 725:7 Mwa 12:4; 35:28; 47:9, 28; 50:22; Ay 42:16Kwa jumla, Abrahamu aliishi miaka 175. 825:8 Mwa 35:29; 49:29; Hes 20:24; 31:2; Kum 31:14; 32:50; 34:5Ndipo Abrahamu akapumua pumzi ya mwisho na akafa akiwa mwenye umri mzuri, mzee aliyeshiba siku, naye akakusanywa pamoja na watu wake. 925:9 Mwa 35:29; 47:30; 49:31; 23:9; 13:18; 50:13Watoto wake Isaki na Ishmaeli wakamzika katika pango la Makpela karibu na Mamre, katika shamba lililokuwa la Efroni mwana wa Sohari Mhiti, 1025:10 Mwa 10:15Shamba ambalo Abrahamu alilinunua kwa Wahiti. Hapo ndipo Abrahamu alipozikwa pamoja na mkewe Sara. 1125:11 Mwa 12:2; 16:14Baada ya kifo cha Abrahamu, Mungu akambariki mwanawe Isaki, ambaye baadaye aliishi karibu na Beer-Lahai-Roi. Wana Wa Ishmaeli 1225:12 Mwa 2:4; 17:20; 21:18Hivi ndivyo vizazi vya Ishmaeli mtoto wa Abrahamu, ambaye mjakazi wake Sara, Hagari Mmisri, alimzalia Abrahamu. 1325:13 Mwa 28:9; 36:3; Za 120:5; Isa 21:16; 42:11; 60:7; Yer 2:10; 49:28; Eze 27:21Haya ndiyo majina ya wana wa Ishmaeli, yaliyoorodheshwa kulingana na jinsi walivyozaliwa: Mzaliwa wa kwanza wa Ishmaeli ni Nebayothi, akafuatia Kedari, Adbeeli, Mibsamu, 1425:14 Yos 15:25; Oba 1:1; Isa 21:11Mishma, Duma, Masa, 1525:15 Ay 6:19; Isa 21:14; Yer 25:23; 1Nya 5:19Hadadi, Tema, Yeturi, Nafishi na Kedema. 1625:16 Mwa 17:20; 13:16; Za 83:9Hawa walikuwa wana wa Ishmaeli na haya ni majina ya viongozi wa makabila kumi na mawili kulingana na makao yao na kambi zao. 17Kwa jumla Ishmaeli aliishi miaka 137. Akapumua pumzi ya mwisho, akafa, naye akakusanywa pamoja na watu wake. 1825:18 Mwa 17:20; 21:18; 16:7, 12Wazao wa Ishmaeli waliishi kuanzia nchi ya Havila hadi Shuri, karibu na mpaka wa Misri, unapoelekea Ashuru. Hao waliishi kwa uhasama na ndugu zao wote. Yakobo Na Esau 19Hivi ndivyo vizazi vya Isaki mwana wa Abrahamu. Abrahamu akamzaa Isaki, 2025:20 Mwa 26:34; 48:7; 35:28; 24:67; 22:22; 28:2-6; 30:20; 31:18; 33:18; 46:15; 24:29; Kum 26:5Isaki alikuwa na umri wa miaka arobaini alipomwoa Rebeka binti Bethueli Mwaramu kutoka Padan-Aramu, nduguye Labani Mwaramu. 2125:21 Mwa 30:17, 22; 11:30; Ezr 8:23; 1Sam 1:17, 23; 1Nya 5:20; 2Nya 33:13; Za 127:3Isaki akamwomba Bwana kwa ajili ya mke wake, kwa sababu alikuwa tasa. Bwana akajibu maombi yake na Rebeka mkewe akapata mimba. 2225:22 Kut 18:15; 28:30; 33:7; Law 24:12; Hes 9:6-8; 27:5; Kum 17:9; 2Fal 3:11; 22:13; Isa 30:2; Yer 21:2; 37:7; Eze 14:7; 2Watoto wakashindana tumboni mwake, akasema, “Kwa nini haya yanatokea kwangu?” Kwa hiyo akaenda kumuuliza Bwana. 23Bwana akamjibu, “Mataifa mawili yamo tumboni mwako, na mataifa hayo mawili kutoka ndani yako watatenganishwa. Mmoja atakuwa na nguvu zaidi kuliko mwingine, na yule mkubwa atamtumikia yule mdogo.” 24Wakati wake wa kujifungua ulipotimia, walikuwepo mapacha wa kiume tumboni mwake. 25Wa kwanza kuzaliwa alikuwa mwekundu, mwili wake wote ulikuwa kama mtu aliyevaa vazi lenye nywele; wakamwita jina lake Esau.25:25 Esau maana yake Mwenye nywele nyingi. 26Baadaye, ndugu yake akatoka, mkono wake ukiwa umemshika Esau kisigino; akaitwa jina lake Yakobo.25:26 Yakobo maana yake Ashikaye kisigino, au Atwaaye mahali pa mwingine, au Mdanganyaji, au Mwenye hila, au Mlaghai, au Mjanja. Isaki alikuwa mwenye miaka sitini Rebeka alipowazaa. 27Watoto wakakua, naye Esau akakuwa mwindaji hodari, mtu wa mbugani, wakati Yakobo alikuwa mtu mtulivu, mwenye kukaa nyumbani. 28Isaki, ambaye alikuwa anapendelea zaidi nyama za porini, alimpenda Esau, bali Rebeka alimpenda Yakobo. 29Siku moja Yakobo alipika mchuzi wa dengu, Esau akarudi kutoka porini akiwa na njaa kali. 30Esau akamwambia Yakobo, “Haraka, nipe huo mchuzi mwekundu! Nina njaa kali sana!” (Hii ndiyo sababu pia aliitwa Edomu.)25:30 Edomu maana yake Mwekundu. 31Yakobo akamjibu, “Niuzie kwanza haki yako ya mzaliwa wa kwanza.” 32Esau akasema, “Tazama, mimi niko karibu ya kufa, itanifaa nini haki ya mzaliwa wa kwanza?” 33Yakobo akamwambia, “Niapie kwanza.” Hivyo Esau akamwapia, akamuuzia Yakobo haki yake ya kuzaliwa. 34Ndipo Yakobo akampa Esau mkate na ule mchuzi wa dengu. Akala na kunywa, kisha akainuka akaenda zake. Kwa hiyo Esau alidharau haki yake ya mzaliwa wa kwanza.
9 Ways To Add Leading Zeros In Excel You’ll probably quickly notice Excel will automatically remove the leading zeros from any numbers. This can be really annoying if you want those leading zeros in your data and you don’t know how to make Excel keep them. In this post, I’ll show you 9 ways to add or keep those leading zeros to your numbers. Video Tutorial Format as Text There is an option to change the format of a range to text. Doing this will treat any data you enter as text values, even if they are numbers. This will cause Excel to keep any leading zeros in your numbers. Change the format from General to Text. 2. Go to the Home tab. 4. Choose Text from the format options. Custom Format You can add a custom formatting to format numbers with leading zeros. Add a custom format to show leading zeros. • Right click and choose Format Cells. • Use the Ctrl + 1 keyboard shortcut. 2. Go to the Number tab. 3. Select Custom from the category options. 5. Press the OK button. After applying the custom format you will notice the data has not actually been changed. Selecting a cell with formatting will still show the original number in the formula bar. They only appear in the worksheet with the leading zero format. This also means if you copy and paste the data as values, you will lose the leading zeros. Leading Apostrophe TEXT Function = TEXT ( Value, Format) • Format – This is the formatting to apply. = TEXT ( B3, "000000" ) RIGHT Function The RIGHT function will extract the right most N characters from a text value. = RIGHT ( Text, [Number]) = RIGHT ( "000000" & B3, 6 ) The above formula will concatenate several zeros to the start of a number in cell B3, then it will return the right most 6 characters resulting in some leading zeros. BASE Function The BASE functions allows you to converts a number into a text representation with a given base. = BASE ( Number, Base, [MinLength]) = BASE ( B3, 10, 6) Power Query and Text.PadStart Function Power query is all about data transformation, so it’s no surprise you can transform your numbers to add leading zeros in power query. Unfortunately, it’s not a command that’s in the ribbon and it will require using a power query function in a custom column. = Text.PadStart([Number],6,"0") After importing your data into power query, you can add a new column with the above formula to create leading zeros. 1. Go to the Add Column tab. 2. Select Custom Column from the ribbon. 3. Create a new name for the custom column and add the above formula in the Custom column formula box. 4. Press the OK button. This will create a new column where each row has at least 6 characters padded by zeros if needed. Pivot Table and DAX Measure If you want to add leading zeros to the numbers in your pivot table, you can do so by using the data model and some DAX measures. = CONCATENATEX ( Numbers, FORMAT ( Numbers[Number], "000000" ), ", " ) You can add the above measure formula to display your numbers in a pivot table with leading zeros. Notice the FORMAT DAX function is exactly like Excel’s TEXT function, but DAX measures need to aggregate to a single value so you need to wrap it inside a CONCATENATEX function. When you add the new measure into the Values area of a pivot table it will result in a comma separated list of all the numbers with the leading zeros added. Power Pivot Calculated Column There is another option to add zeros into you pivot table. You can add them into a calculated column in Power Pivot. = FORMAT ( Numbers[Number], "000000" ) A calculated column calculates a value for each row, so there is no need to wrap the function inside a CONCATENATEX function like in the DAX measure. It can be frustrating to see all your zeros disappear when you don’t know why it’s happening or how to prevent it. Do you have a favourite way that I missed? About the Author John MacDougall John MacDougall John is a Microsoft MVP and freelance consultant and trainer specializing in Excel, Power BI, Power Automate, Power Apps and SharePoint. You can find other interesting articles from John on his blog or YouTube channel. Related Posts 1. Darin johnson Hey boss, I want and need the leading zeros in my data as I am doing an import into another sucky microsoft product (powerapps) and the zeros must be there. my data column is formatted General and contains CS000000035678. (the last 5 digits varies) i do a replace all to remove CS0000 from all values in the column. of course the leading zeros are removed and I end up with 35678. thats a given. using a custom format 00000000 does not work for my import because the zeros are not actually part of the data. I format the column to text and do the replace all, again 35678 is the result. I edit a cell in the column and delete the CS0000 and the zeros remained and I get 00035678. (looks like I am going to have some tired fingers after manually updating 4000 cells) Thanks so much sucky microsft product. ( i am in my 50s and I have seen this so many times with M$ products. why couldnt I get an apple-centric job! LOL) M$ does many great things but then they fail fail fail at tiny things that should work. The replace has something in it that even in a text formatted column it removes zeros. I am going to try the apostrophe, doubt my import process will accept it though. hit me back if you have a clue/solution for me. Thanks DJ • John You could import to power apps as is, then take the last 8 characters with RIGHT function in power apps. • DArin Johnson Thank you for the reply. Your method of using the BASE formula worked. it even allowed me to add an apostrophe in front of the zeros. The apostrophe does not show in the cell, but does show in the formula bar when you click on the cell. Great fix for me and others. 2. Keith There are so many methods. You could also you the REPT & LEN Function. Example you need at least 14 characters. The cell you are reading may have any length. You could write the following formula. Get the Latest Microsoft Excel Tips Follow Us Follow us on social media to stay up to date with the latest in Microsoft Excel!
Racism In Matthew Hughey's White Bound 805 Words4 Pages Racism continues to be an issue that causes a great deal of tension in the United States. While some believe that we are living in a post-racial society, others are aware that racism can take different forms in this day and age. In White Bound: Nationalists, Antiracists, and the Shared Meanings of Race, author Matthew Hughey tackles the topic of racism in a unique way. Hughey focuses on how the members of the two groups that he conducted the study on conceptualize their whiteness and how that relates to racism. Hughey spend a little over one year conducting his research for this project. He attended meetings that these two organizations held and interview individual members in order to gauge how they think about their whiteness in relation to other races. White Bound focuses less on how white people think of other races and more on how they think of themselves. Most studies that has been conducted on white people about race has found that white people tend to be less self aware about their own racial identity than those that fall under other racial categories (Hughey 9). This book argues that the lack of self awareness that white people tend to have is where the idea of superiority comes from. White people view themselves as the …show more content… This was a move that made his study unique. Instead of focusing on the racist and why they think the way they did he focuses more on the anti-racist group. Hughey constantly reminded the readers of his thesis and how the ethnography was not about bashing the white nationalist group. The “Whites For Racial Justice” (WRJ) antiracist group had a goal “ to stop racism in [their] own lives ( Hughey 2).” Throughout the book I fely as though Hughey paid very close attention to the actions and motives of the WRJ in order to prove that his thesis is correct. However, in doing that he neglected to analyze the actions of the White nationalist Open Document
Ancient Sorcerer's "Wake" Was First Feast for the Dead? Leftovers, skeletons hint that world's first villagers fostered peace via partying. Now called Hilazon Tachtit, the small cave chosen as this woman's resting place is the subject of an intense investigation led by Leore Grosman, an archaeologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. Already her research has revealed that the mystery woman—a member of the Natufian culture, which flourished between 15,000 and 11,600 years ago in what is now Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and possibly Syria—was the world's earliest known shaman. Considered a skilled sorcerer and healer, she was likely seen as a conduit to the spirit world, communicating with supernatural powers on behalf of her community, Grosman said. (See "Oldest Shaman Grave Found; Includes Foot, Animal Parts.") A study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Grosman and Natalie Munro, a zooarchaeologist at the University of Connecticut, reveals that the shaman's burial feast was just one chapter in the intense ritual life of the Natufians, the first known people on Earth to give up nomadic living and settle in villages. In the years that followed the burial, many people repeatedly climbed the steep, 492-foot-high (150-meter-high) escarpment to the cave, carrying up other members of the community for burial as well as hauling large amounts of food. Next to the graves, the living dined lavishly on the meat of aurochs, the wild ancestors of cattle, during feasts conducted perhaps to memorialize the dead. New evidence from Hilazon Tachtit, in northern Israel's Galilee region, suggests that mortuary feasting began at least 12,000 years ago, near the end of the Paleolithic era. These events set the stage for later and much more elaborate ceremonies to commemorate the dead among Neolithic farming communities. In Britain, for example, Neolithic farmers slaughtered succulent young pigs 5,100 years ago at the site of Durrington Walls, near Stonehenge, for an annual midwinter feast. As part of the celebrations, participants are thought to have cast the ashes of compatriots who had died during the previous year into the nearby River Avon. (See "Stonehenge Was Cemetery First and Foremost, Study Says.") The Natufian findings give us our first clear look at the shadowy beginnings of such feasts, said Ofer Bar-Yosef, an archaeologist at Harvard University. "The Natufians," Bar-Yosef said, "were like the founding fathers, and in this sense Hilazon Tachtit gives us some of the other roots of Neolithic society." Study co-author Grosman agrees. "The Natufians," she said, "had one leg in the Paleolithic and one leg in the Neolithic." Prehistoric Feast Focused on Disabled Shaman Perched high above the Hilazon River in western Galilee, Hilazon Tachtit cave was long known only to local goatherds and their families. But in the early 1990s Harvard's Bar-Yosef spotted several Natufian flint artifacts scattered along the arid, shrubby slope below the cave and climbed up to investigate. Impressed by the site's potential, the Harvard University archaeologist recruited Hebrew University's Grosman to take charge of the dig, and she and a small team began excavations there in 1995. First Grosman and her team had to peel back an upper layer of goat dung, ash, and pottery sherds that had accumulated over the past 1,700 years. Below this layer they found five ancient pits filled with bones, distinctive Natufian stone tools, and pieces of charcoal that dated the pits to between 12,400 and 12,000 years ago. At the bottom of one pit lay the 45-year-old shaman—quite elderly for Natufian times—buried with at least 70 tortoise shells [NM2] and parts of several rare animals. Analyses showed that this woman had suffered from a deformed pelvis. She would have had a strikingly asymmetrical appearance and likely limped, dragging her foot. Grosman examined historical accounts of shamans worldwide and found that in many cultures shamans often possessed physical handicaps or had suffered from some form of trauma. According to Brian Hayden, an archaeologist at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada, "It's not uncommon that people with disabilities, either mental or physical, are thought to have unusual supernatural powers." Natufians Opened Graves for Display? After burying their spiritual leader 12,000 years ago at Hilazon Tachtit, Natufians returned to the cave for other funerary rituals, eventually interring the bodies of at least 27 men, women, and children in three communal burial pits, researchers say. On some later visits, Natufians opened the communal graves and removed certain bones, including skulls, for possible display or burial elsewhere, according to Grosman. Until now, removing bones from burials for use in rituals was thought to have begun during the Neolithic era at sites such as the West Bank's Jericho, dating to about 11,000 years ago. A similar practice has been found at the later Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey. In both places mourners coated human heads with plaster and kept them for ceremonial purposes. (Related: "Ancient Human-Bone Sculptors Turned Relatives Into Tools.") Prehistoric Cattle Ritually Devoured at Feast "We think that there were scheduled visits to Hilazon Tachtit," said study co-author Grosman, who received partial funding from the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration for her work at the Natufian site. (The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News.) Natufians seem to have made the steep climb laden with joints of mountain gazelle and aurochs. In what might have been one sitting, the mourners devoured an estimated 661 pounds (300 kilograms)[NM3] of aurochs [NM4] meat, according to the study. But they did not bring all this food for a picnic. In their daily lives Natufian families seldom dined on aurochs, for the wild oxen were relatively scarce at this time. And given the species' power and speed, hunting an aurochs likely required a communal effort. The celebrants chose to feast on aurochs for reasons above and beyond their nutritional value. "In later times we know that the aurochs become ritually important in the area," zooarchaeologist Natalie Munro said. Indeed, some later cultures seem to have regarded aurochs as sacred animals, even symbols of fertility. For example, at the massive, 11,600-year-old Gobekli Tepe ritual site in Turkey—seen by some as the world's oldest temple—hunters and gatherers dined lavishly on aurochs. Good Feasts Make Good Neighbors Munro thinks that the grand ritual feasts at Hilazon Tachtit served an important purpose besides mourning lost loved ones. Living for the first time in settled communities, Natufian families had to find a way to ease all the friction that would build up from continually rubbing shoulders with their neighbors, she says. Unlike other Paleolithic hunters and gathers, the Natufians could no longer split up and move on easily when trouble arose. They had become so populous that they could no longer find unoccupied territory in their region. The Natufians devised another way of dealing with the strain—throwing big communal parties to celebrate important ritual events, the researchers say. "When people feel like they are part of the same group, they are more willing to share and to compromise to resolve conflict," Munro said. The new finds suggest that the deep roots of communal feasting and the curation of human remains for ritual—found later at sites like Gobekli Tepe, Jericho, and Stonehenge—originated centuries before the advent of agricultural societies. These rituals played an important role in smoothing the transition of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers to a farming life, researchers say. (Related: "Egypt's Earliest Farming Village Found.") "Hilazon Tachtit," archaeologist Ofer Bar-Yosef said, "gives us a good window into these kinds of special activities. And I think that's really important." 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Quantum chemistry for the energy transition Vera Krewald decodes chemical reaction mechanisms on the computer 2022/01/04 by TU Chemistry Professor Vera Krewald doesn’t need a laboratory but rather powerful computers. She uses the tools of quantum chemistry to describe chemical reactions – namely those that will play a key role in the transition to a sustainable economy. Professor Vera Krewald You have to walk past a number of laboratories to reach Vera Krewald’s office. As is the case in all chemical research institutes, you are greeted by a subtle smell – a mix of solvents and other chemicals. “I can offer you the aroma of chemicals”, says Krewald with a laugh. However, she doesn’t contribute to the aroma herself any more as she packed away her lab coat over ten years ago. She moved to TU Darmstadt as an assistant professor for theoretical chemistry at the end of 2018 and has since established her own research group here. Instead of carrying out research using chemicals, flasks and pipettes, Krewald and her team work with the tools of quantum chemistry to decode chemical reaction mechanisms on a computer. “ In a sense, our calculations enable us to look inside molecules and into their electronic structures”, explains Krewald. “We can switch certain effects on and off and then see the impact this has on the electronic structure and thus on chemical reactions.” New processes for the energy and raw materials transition Krewald carries out basic research but her findings are certainly relevant for the chemical industry. “I am particularly interested in processes related to the energy and raw materials transition”, emphasises Krewald. Her working group carries out research, for example, on the splitting of dinitrogen – chemical formula N2 – to make this element available for the production of fertilisers or basic chemicals. This reaction is currently carried out using the Haber-Bosch process, which was developed more than 100 years ago and requires temperatures of several hundred degrees Celsius, high pressure and a catalyst. The process is far from sustainable and in fact counts as one of the largest industrial consumers of energy. This is why Krewald is looking for an alternative solution. Recent research results show that the extremely stable nitrogen-nitrogen bond can also be split with light – in principle even with sunlight – if the dinitrogen is bound with certain chemical compounds. In simple terms, the two nitrogen atoms are given attachments that pull at the bond and weaken their cohesion. “We are currently aware of about ten compounds that facilitate the photolytic splitting of nitrogen”, explains Krewald but then also highlights a problem: all ten molecules contain relatively expensive metals such as rhenium, tungsten or osmium. “To develop a sustainable process suitable for industrial application, we need to transfer this principle to other compounds that contain, for example, iron instead of these expensive metals.”, says Krewald. Before it is possible to design these types of substances, a more detailed understanding of nitrogen splitting needs to be developed first. This is where the quantum chemical calculations come into play because, as with many chemical reactions, the light-induced processes happen so fast that it is not possible to observe the mechanism using experiments. However, quantum chemical methods can be used to calculate the molecules and intermediate stages that only exist for a very short period of time. In addition, the molecules can be changed virtually to observe the effects on the electronic structure. As Krewald explains: “This enables us to understand how bonds are formed or split.” To develop a sustainable process suitable for industrial application, we need to transfer the principle to other compounds that don’t contain any expensive metals. Good technical equipment as a basic requirement Quantum chemistry calculations are complex and require a lot of memory. Krewald’s team uses both the Lichtenberg high-performance computer at TU Darmstadt and also the group’s own computer cluster for the calculations. “In principle, we make use of the same quantum mechanical methods found in physics but adapt the approaches for our purposes”, emphasises Krewald. This is because things start to get complicated in quantum mechanics as soon as you want to include three or more particles in the calculations. As a quantum chemist, she investigates N particles, where N stands for the number of electrons in the molecules – and this number can be in the hundreds: “It is thus necessary for us to use a few approximations but they do work quite well.” She knows this because she has compared her calculations to results found in the laboratory. Krewald’s group works closely together with other experimental chemists in their research into the splitting of nitrogen and also in other projects: “As a theoretical chemist, I need to work together with people who can try out our suggestions in the laboratory and check our interpretations.” The process is usually based on the interplay of computer calculations and laboratory experiments until they identify the ideal molecule for a particular chemical process or the explanation for a reaction mechanism. Social relevance of quantum chemistry The splitting of nitrogen became her main field of research five years ago as Krewald was a postdoc at the University of Vienna. Her group also carries out research into the bonding and splitting reactions of other small, extremely stable molecules that will play a key role in the energy transition: hydrogen (H2), oxygen (O2) and water (H2O). For example, splitting water with the sun’s energy produces the regenerative energy source hydrogen, while the splitting of oxygen is a key reaction in fuel cells. Krewald decodes their catalytic processes together with her colleague Ulrike Kramm, who is also a professor in the Department of Chemistry. Krewald’s research is a good example for the social relevance of quantum chemistry. She received the Young Scientist Award from the Working Group of German University Professors for Chemistry (ADUC) at the beginning of the year for the establishment of her specialist field. In November, she was also awarded the Dr. Hans Messer Foundation Prize, which she shares with Meike Saul from the Department of Biology at TU Darmstadt. Krewald will invest her prize money of 25,000 euros in hardware to provide additional computing power and in organising an international meeting on the photolytic splitting of nitrogen. She knows that it will not only require experimental and theoretical chemists but also other researchers across the world to work hand in hand to achieve the energy transition and overcome other challenges of our time. Current publication Bastian Schluschaß, Jan-Henrik Borter et al.: Cyanate Formation via Photolytic Splitting of Dinitrogen, Journal of the American Chemical Society Au, May 2021, https://doi.org/10.1021/jacsau.1c00117 More articles in hoch³ FORSCHEN 4/2021
All You should Know About Water Jed Norwood provided this information on water storage and preparing containers to hold water and agreed to let me post it. -Water is the universal solvent -It is heavy at 8# per gallon -If you don’t have it you will have to leave that area and food to find it. In the 1960’s the Israeli Military tested how much water was needed each day to keep their troops in top condition. They found that 15 gallons per person per day. This includes all uses. During the heat of summer they found a person will need for drinking alone 5 gallons. In our climate, an individual needs to reserve a gallon a day just for drinking. With all other uses such as cooking, flushing, and hygiene, a person would need about 5 gallons a day. This would mean that a family of five would need 75 per day to maintain a comfortable standard of living. In the Utah region a 1000 square foot roof will receive 30 to 40 tons of water in an average year. Rain and snow are the softest water you can find and the easiest to treat. This equates to 7,500 to 10,000 gallons. Capturing this water source is crucial. Have a supply of water filter socks that will filter down to 1 micron. After socking the water to catch the large debris then run it through a ceramic filter. With this type of a set up you can filter 30,000 to 40,000 gallons of rain water. Or 10,000 gallons of pond , river or lake water. Store all water filtering socks and filters in ziplock mylar bags. After filtering the water treat it with a biocide. Here are some types of biocides you can use. Hydrogen Peroxide Vitamin C Activated Charcoal Here is the complete procedure for water management. Procure the water Filter the water with sock Filter water with ceramic filter or a towel filter Chlorinate water 1 of the following Hydrogen peroxide Vitamin C Activated Charcoal Treating the water storage containers Here are the cleaning instructions. with the barrel up right fill the barrel and let it sit for 24 hours. Then empty and place it up right again. Fill the barrel again and let the hose run for 15 minutes. Once it starts over flowing check for debris. If it is clear then pour 1/2 cup of chlorine into the water and cap the barrel. Let it sit out in the sun for two weeks. After this dump it out and fill with treated water. Store barrel on blocks of wood, or carpet or both to keep barrel from touching the ground or concrete directly. *To obtain the diagrams for making your own towel filter, instructions on making low cost activated charcoal, or obtaining (through a group purchase) filter socks, ceramic containers, or ziplock mylar bags, email Jed Norwood at Comments are closed.
Resistance Setting Aim - this section describes the settings that can be applied to Open Rails WAG and ENG files for "optimal" resistance settings. If you wish to provide any feedback or suggest corrections, please use the Contact page. Please provide appropriate references. To calculate some of the standard resistance settings it is recommended that FCalc is used. This will make the calculations easier. Introduction to Resistance General resistance (on straight and level track) Impact of Wheel Bearing Temperature Rise on Resistance Wind resistance Grade resistance Acceleration resistance Tunnel resistance Trailing Locomotive resistance Key Resistance Parameters for inclusion in Wagon files Sample Code for inclusion in Wagon files Useful References Introduction to Resistance In steam days train resistance was expressed in pounds per ton (be aware of whether it is US or UK tons). The train resistance then needed to be overcome by the tractive effort produced by the locomotive to move the train. It was made up of the following elements: • General resistance (typically on a straight level track) • Grade resisitance • Curve resistance • Acceleration resistance • Tunnel resistance General resistance (on straight and level track) General resistance is made up of the following elements: a). Bearing resistance - which in more modern stock, typically post 1970 was roller bearing, whereas older stock (varied from country to country) typically had journal bearings (named resistance bearings by the roller bearing companies). Typically roller bearings had a lot lower values of resistance then journal type bearings, but were more expensive. b). Air Resistance - was the resistance force that the train needed to exert to overcome the resistance of the air. c). Miscellaneous - resistance due to concussion, oscillation, flange resistance and the rolling of wheels on rails. W. J. Davis, Jr. became famous for correlating a large mass of data and deriving a series of formulas to model the effects of resistance. These formulas take the following form: Train resistance = A + B * V + C * V^2 Where the ABC values are known as the Davis co-efficients, and the V values are the speed of the train. For a more detailed description refer to this page. Application in OR The correct application of resistance in Open Rails (OR) is critical to ensure a high degree of accuracy in the performance of the train being modelled. If test values are available from the relevant railway company in regard to the stock being configured, then they should always be used in preference to the default values suggested below. When relevant values are not readily available, then the table below can be used to get a good approximation. It should be noted that the categorises identified in the table below are indicative only, and should only be used as a guide. Operating Speed Track Type (Condition) Vehicle Type Suggested Formula Freight Wagons 40mph to 50mph Track flexible (wooden sleepers), light weight track, numerous track joints Journal bearing, older style design Pre 1950 Original Davis Formula 40mph to 50mph Track semi-rigid, heavier weight track, longer rail sections Roller bearing, older design Post 1950 Davis Formula - 1970 > 75mph Track rigid (concrete sleepers), welded rail Roller bearing, modern design Post 1990 Davis Formula - 1992 Canadian National Passenger Stock < 60mph Journal bearing, older style design, light weight, minimal streamlining Pre 1960 Original Davis Formula 60mph to 125mph "Track rigid (concrete sleepers), welded rail" "Roller bearing, modern design, significant streamlining" Post 1960 Davis Formula - 1992 Canadian National > 125mph High Speed Design All eras As per manufacturers figures All speeds Standard Design - Steam Locomotive (journal bearing) All eras Original Davis Formula (plus mechanical resistance) 60mph to 125mph Track semi-rigid, heavier weight track, longer rail sections Standard design (early) Pre 1970 Original Davis Formula > 125mph Track rigid (concrete sleepers), welded rail Standard design (modern) Post 1970 Davis Formula - 1992 Canadian National For higher speed stock, ie over 50mph, you may want to read this section on air drag, but be wary adjusting these figures. By default Open Rails accepts Davis values in the metric units of Newtons, and is based upon speed values in metres/second. FCalc will produce values that conform with this standard, and can be entered directly into the WAG or ENG file. Therefore, unless you have access to a published ABC values, it is recommended that FCalc be used as the default calculation. Great care should be taken when studying resistance formula from different sources, as they may have different units of measure. Some formula might be based upon speeds in mph, kmh or m/s. Similarly the resistance value calculated can also be in lbs/ton, kg/tonne, or N/tonne. Therefore the ABC values may need to be converted to values that will be accepted by Open Rails (ie N, Nm/s, N(m/s)2). Note: For steam locomotives, it is suggested that the combined locomotive and tender resistance be calculated, as if one unit, and then proportion the Davis values across the two files. To customise Open Rails the following parameters may be entered in the Wagon section of the WAG or ENG file. ORTSBearingType ( x ) ORTSDavis_A ( y ) ORTSDavis_B ( y ) ORTSDavis_C ( y ) Where x is the relevant bearing type, and y is the value calculated by the FCalc tool or from published information, as described on the Resistance Calculation page. Starting Resistance Starting resistance is automatically calculated in OR, based upon the ORTSBearingType ( x ) specified by the user. As part of its calculations Open Rails determines the axle loading for each wagon, therefore it is important to ensure that the number of axles entered in the ORTSNumberDriveAxles and ORTSNumberAxles parameters are correct. For passenger and freight stock the correct value is entered in the wagon section of the WAG file. For locomotives the correct value is entered in the engine section of the ENG file, along with the correct ORTSDriveWheelWeight value. Similarly the respective WheelRadius parameters should be set correctly. OR uses information described in the Starting Resistance section to calculate the relevant values. Impact of Wheel Bearing Temperature Rise on Resistance The temperature of the wheel bearing is influenced by many factors, including the type of bearing, ambient temperature, type of lubrication, etc. To accurately model all the different factors involved is extremely complex, and therefore Open Rails (OR) has instead used a representative bearing heat model to simulate the typical outcomes for bearing temperature heating or cooling effects. Features provided by the OR wheel bearing heating model include: • Bearing heats up and cools down as the train moves and stops. • Bearing resistance in cold weather is significantly higher then when the bearing is at its 'normal' operating temperature. Typically railway companies elected to reduce loads for trains in cold conditions. The OR model will reduce the car resistance as the bearing heats up, and it will increase resistance as the bearing cools down. • OR has a built in temperature model to determine the ambient temperature. The ambient temperature is calculated based upon a world model of the average temperatures at various latitudes. OR will use the latitude of the route to calculate the ambient temperature. As ambient temperature also decreases with height above sea level, OR takes this into account as well, and varies the temperature accordingly. • Depending upon the ActivityRandomizationLevel setting in the Option menu, an overheating bearing (hotbox) may be randomly initialized on any trailing car in the train (locomotives and tenders are excepted from overheating bearings). The Hotbox will be activated randomly within the first 66% of the activity duration. So for example, in an activity with a 20 minute duration, a hotbox will only be activiated in the first 12 minutes of the activity, if it has been initialised. OR will provide a warning message if the bearing starts to overheat. A special smoke effect can be added to the adjacent to the wagon hot box. This will be triggered if the bearing overheats. See information on the BearingHotboxFX parameter as descibed on the Visual Effects page. For a more detailed description refer to this page. Wind resistance This is the additional resistance encountered by a train when a wind is blowing. Open Rails automatically calculates this resistance. Application in OR Open rails has a built in wind generation model which develops winds with different directions and wind speeds. The model is randomly initialised when OR first starts, and currently the wind speed and direction are limited to prevent excessive variation of the wind. The current wind conditions will be displayed on the FORCES HUD in OR. Calculation of the wind resistance is based upon the cross sectional area of the car found by calculation from the Size statement, and the standard default Drag constants used in the original Davis formula. OR Parameters ORTSWagonFrontalArea ( x ) ORTSDavisDragConstant ( x ) Where x is either an area parameter or constant respectively (Note: This constant needs to be the imperial constant, rather then the one used with a metric implementation). Ideally these should be the same values that were used in calculating the Drag value in the Davis formula from the previous section. For a more detailed description refer to this page. Grade resistance This was the additional resistance encountered by a train climbing a grade. It was typically related to the weight of the train. Open Rails automatically calculates this based upon the weight of the wagon. For a more detailed description refer to this page. Curve resistance Curve resistance was the additional resistance that a train experienced as it negotiated a curve. Curve resistance was impacted by a number of factors, including the sharpness of the curve, and the wheelbase of the wagon. The sharper the curve and the longer the rigid wheelbase of the rolling stock the higher the frictrional force. For a more detailed description refer to this page. Open Rails models curve resistance, and for maximum accuracy, wagon parameters need to be entered. Application in OR Open Rails models this function, and the user may elect to specify the known wheelbase parameters, or the above "standard" default values will be used. OR calculates the equilibrium speed in the speed curve module, however it is not necessary to select both of these functions in the simulator options Menu. Only select the function desired. By studying the "Forces Information" table in the HUD, you will be able to observe the change in curve resistance as the speed, curve radius, etc vary. OR Parameters ORTSRigidWheelBase ( x y ) ORTSTrackGauge ( x y) (also used in curve speed module) CentreOfGravity ( x y z ) (also used in curve speed module) Where x, y & z are distance parameters in valid OR distance values. Example use is as below. ORTSRigidWheelBase ( 0.0ft 3.0in ) ORTSTrackGauge ( 4.0ft 8.5in) CentreOfGravity ( 0m 2.28m 0m ) Open Rails uses 'standard' track superelevation design values as a basic standard default. It is possible to specify values of of SuperElevation for different track curve radii within the Route. For more detailed information on how to do this in OR refer to Track SuperElevation. To see how each of these parameters impacts upon the maximum allowable speed around a curve refer to the calculators shown on the Curve Speed Test page. OR Default The above values can be entered into the relevant files, or alternatively if they are not present, then OR will use default values as described below. Rigid Wheelbase - as a default OR uses the figures shown above in the "Typical Rigid Wheelbase Values" section. Starting curve resistance value has been assumed to be 200%, and has been built into the speed impact curves. OR calculates the curve resistance based upon actual wheelbases provided by the player or the appropriate defaults. It will use this as the value at "Equilibrium Speed", and then depending upon the actual calculated equilibrium speed (from the speed limit module) it will factor the resistance up as appropriate to the current train speed. Steam locomotive wheelbase approximation - the following approximation is used to determine the default value for the fixed wheelbase of a steam locomotive. WheelBase = 1.25 * (axles - 1) * DrvWheelDiameter Acceleration resistance Acceleration resistance is equal and opposite to the force necessary to produce acceleration from one speed to another over a known distance or time. Tunnel resistance When a train goes through a tunnel, it meets resistance as it "pushes" a column of air through the tunnel. This effect is more pronounced for high speed trains, and will be impacted by the size of the tunnel, and the aerodynamics of the train. For a more detailed description of tunnel resistance refer to this page. Application in OR To enable this capability it is necessary to select the "Tunnel Resistance" option on the Open Rails Menu. The implication of tunnel resistance is designed to model the relative impact, and does not take into account multiple trains in the tunnel at the same time. The default tunnel profile is determined by the route speed recorded in the TRK file. OR Route Parameters Open Rails has basic default tunnel design parameters included as standard. However if desired, the route modeller may override these by including specifc tunnel parameters for the route in question. To insert these values in the Route see the Tunnel Resistance settings for more details and the test route for an example implementation. OR Defaults OR uses the following standard defaults i) Tunnel Perimeter Route Speed Single Track Double Track < 160 km/h 21.3 m 31.0 m 160 < 200 km/h 25.0 m 34.5 m 200 < 250 km/h 28.0 m 35.0 m 250 < 350 km/h 32.0 m 37.5 m ii) Tunnel Cross Sectional Area Route Speed Single Track Double Track < 120 km/h 27.0 m2 45.0 m2 < 160 km/h 42.0 m2 76.0 m2 200 km/h 50.0 m2 80.0 m2 250 km/h 58.0 m2 90.0 m2 350 km/h 70.0 m2 100.0 m2 Trailing Locomotive resistance The Davis formulas for level track allocate the majority of drag resistance to the leading locomotive, as it is to be expected that this unit will present the greatest resistance to the movement through STILL air. Following cars or locomotives will not present as great a resistance, and hence it can be expected that the drag coefficient applied in the calculation of the R3 value will be less. As an ENG file typically only allows for the calculation of one set of resistance values, OR automatically reduces the R3 value of resistance for any locomotives that are located in the consist. The calculation is based upon the ratio of a trailing freight car to locomotive drag constant, and is typically 0.005 / 0.0024 = 0.2083. The user may specify an alternate value using the following parameter. ORTSTrailLocomotiveResistanceFactor ( x ) Where x is a constant value. Depending upon how the resistance has been calculated for a tender, it may be necessary to add this parameter to the tender WAG file as well. This will typically apply where the steam locomotive and tender resistance has been calculated as a combined value, and pro-rata across the two units (recommended). For more detailed information refer to the links below. Key Resistance Parameters for inclusion in Wagon files The key parameters that impact upon the resistance and resistance performance of a train are described on the following web page. Standard Resistance Parameters for WAG and ENG files (updated Sept 2018) Sample Code for inclusion in Wagon files Typically the lines shown in red text are the only ones that would need to be changed on individual wagons. There are some subtle differences between wagons and locomotives. Comment ( * Resistance * ) ORTSBearingType ( Roller ) Comment (Type: Steam - Standard, Speed: 100km/h, Axles: 6, Bearings; Roller, Area: 10m2, Weight: 65.0t tons metric, DrvWeight: 42.0 tons metric, Drag: 1 ) ORTSDavis_A ( 8084.8 ) ORTSDavis_B ( 23.0335 ) ORTSDavis_C ( 5.796 ) Comment ( * Wind Resistance * ) ORTSWagonFrontalArea ( 120.0ft^2 ) ORTSDavisDragConstant ( 0.0024 ) ORTSTrailLocomotiveResistanceFactor ( 0.20833 ) Comment ( * Curve Resistance and SuperElevation * ) CentreOfGravity ( 0m 2m 0m ) ORTSTrackGauge ( 4ft 8.5in ) ORTSRigidWheelbase ( 0.0ft 56in ) ORTSUnbalancedSuperelevation ( 6in ) ORTSWagonFrontalArea - When calculating the frontal area of a car a profile similiar to the diagram below should be used. Frontal Area ORTSDavisDragConstant - this value should be the same value that was used to calculate the C value in the Davis formula. Typically it is of the form K x A x V2, where K is the drag constant, and A is the frontal area. Normally when using the original Davis formula, this value will be as per the value in the D column of this table. Note this value should be the Imperial constant value. ORTSTrailLocomotiveResistanceFactor - OR always assumes that a locomotive has been set up as the leading locomotive, and thus the appropriate drag factor has been applied to it. For example, in the case of original Davis formulas a Drag constant of 0.0024 will be assumed. Typically a trailing locomotive will have a Drag constant of 0.0005 ( same Drag as a freight car). Thus by default, this parameter will be 0.0005 / 0.0024 = 0.2083. If different Drag constants are used, then the following method of calculation will apply: ORTSTrailLocomotiveResistanceFactor = (Drag Constant of Trailing Locomotive ) / ( Drag Constant of Leading Locomotive ) These parameters are optional, and not specifically required in the WAG file. If they are absent from the WAG file, then OR will calculate relevant values assuming the use of the original Davis equations. Useful References Locomotive Data - Baldwin Company - 1944 Locomotive handbook - American Locomotive Company (Alco) FCalc is available for download from TrainSim and then by typing in " " into the File Name field of the search page.
What should I know about ovarian cancer? What should I know about ovarian cancer? September is Ovarian Cancer Awareness month. The American Cancer Society has estimated that in 2014, approximately 22,000 women will receive a new diagnosis of ovarian cancer and over 14,000 will die of this disease. By learning more about this type of cancer, it is hoped that more women will be directed toward appropriate screening to allow its detection as soon as possible. Women diagnosed in the earliest stages of ovarian cancer, which has been dubbed “the silent killer”, have a much higher chance of survival. 1. The incidence of ovarian cancer increases as women become older. While ovarian cancer can occur at any age, approximately half of the women who will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer are over the age of 60. After menopause, women should not “let their guard down” when it comes to being screened or reporting problems that could be caused by ovarian cancer. 2. The Pap smear is not a screen for ovarian cancer. It is effective in the early detection of cervical cancer, but having a normal pap smear does not exclude the possibility of having ovarian cancer. 3. Ovarian cancer symptoms may be vague or non-specific. The most common symptoms of ovarian cancer are abdominal swelling or bloating, pelvic pressure or abdominal pain, difficulty eating or feeling full quickly, and having to urinate urgently or frequently. While these symptoms are more commonly associated with conditions other than ovarian cancer, if one or more of these is present for more than a couple of weeks, you should seek attention from your health care provider. 4. Survival of ovarian cancer is improved with early detection. If treated before the cancer spreads beyond the ovary, the five-year survival rate is around 92%. Unfortunately, only 15 to 20% of ovarian cancer is found at this stage. As a result of this delay in diagnosis, ovarian cancer accounts for more deaths that any other cancer of the reproductive system, including cervical and uterine cancer. 5. Ovarian cancer risk is higher in women who are overweight. The American Cancer Society reports that obesity (a body mass index of 30 or more) is an important risk factor for developing ovarian cancer. This risk was increased by 50% in the heaviest women. 6. Screening tests to look for ovarian cancer include the transvaginal ultrasound (TVUS) and the CA-125 blood test. The TVUS is a special type of ultrasound done with a vaginal probe and CA-125 is a protein in the blood that has been noted to be elevated in many women with ovarian cancer. When applied to women at average risk, however, these tests have not been shown to reduce the number of deaths from ovarian cancer. For this reason, use of these tests to screen healthy women with no signs or symptoms of ovarian cancer is currently not recommended. They may be worthwhile, however, in asymptomatic women who are at high risk for the development of ovarian cancer, such as those with a strong family history of ovarian cancer, or to evaluate women with symptoms or physical findings suggestive of ovarian cancer. 7. Ovarian cancer can run in families. Women who have a mother, daughter, or sister with ovarian cancer have about a three times higher risk of developing the disease. Also, women with a family history of cancer of the breast, uterus, or colon may also have an increased risk of ovarian cancer. This is caused by a change (mutation) in certain genes leading to a Heredity Cancer Syndrome. 8. Women with breast cancer may also have an increased risk of developing ovarian cancer. This is particularly true in women with a strong family history of breast cancer. In this case, the breast cancer could have developed because of mutations in inherited genes BRCA1 or BRCA2. Inherited mutations of these genes increase the risk of developing breast cancer many times over the risk of women in the general population. 9. Confirmation of ovarian cancer requires a biopsy. Tests used to evaluate for the presence of ovarian cancer, such as ultrasound, MRI scan, or CT scan may demonstrate an ovarian mass, but the only way to determine for certain if a growth is cancer is to remove a sample of the growth from the suspicious area and examine it under a microscope. Tissue for examination can be obtained with a minimally invasive procedure called laparoscopy or during an open surgical procedure. 10. In some cases the risk for developing ovarian cancer can be reduced. The general recommendations for reducing the risk of most types of cancers include maintaining a healthy weight, eating a balanced diet, and staying physically active. Women with a family history suggestive of a syndrome linked with a high risk of developing ovarian cancer should consider undergoing genetic screening. Premenopausal women found to have BRCA gene mutations can reduce their risk of both ovarian and breast cancer following removal of the ovaries. In certain situations (e.g. women who are carriers of BRCA1- or BRCA2-mutations), taking oral contraceptives may also play a role in preventing ovarian cancer. Image: ©Shutterstock / Fancy Studio Share this:
Skip to main content Coping with Stress While Living Through a Pandemic By April 19, 2020March 29th, 2021Blog Stress and fears about the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) can take an emotional toll, especially if you are already living with an anxiety disorder. With multiple cities and even entire countries currently shut down, it can be difficult to stay calm and cope with the stress and fear. For many people, the uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus is the hardest thing to handle. No one knows just how badly they will be affected or how long this will last. All of this makes it easy to catastrophize and spiral out into overwhelming panic and dread. However, there are many things people can do during this global pandemic to manage their anxiety and fears. 1. Stay Informed It is vital to stay informed on the coronavirus and pay close attention to what is happening in your community, so that you can follow the advised safety precautions. Doing so will help slow the spread of the virus, meanwhile keeping you and your community safe. But be cautious, because there is a large amount of misinformation being communicated along with sensationalistic coverage that only feeds fear. To help combat misinformation, make sure to stick to trustworthy sources such as the Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO), as well as your local public health authorities. It is also recommended to limit the number of times you check the media for virus-related updates. Constantly monitoring the situation can fuel anxiety. If you are starting to feel overwhelmed, consider limiting your media consumption. It may be helpful to schedule a specific time frame for checking the media. It can also be helpful to avoid media entirely. Asking someone reliable to share important updates is an excellent way to still get information while avoiding media. • Focus on What You Can Control There are so many things outside of our control, including how long this pandemic will last, how other people behave, when a vaccination will be available, and what is going to happen to our communities and loved ones. While this can be difficult to accept, if people continuously focus on questions with unknown answers and circumstances outside of their control, they may end up feeling drained, anxious, and overwhelmed. If you feel like you are getting caught up in the panic and fear of these unknowns, try to instead focus on the things you can control. At the top of this list is the ability to reduce your own personal risk, and in turn, the risk of the people you come into contact with. You can reduce your own risk by: • Washing your hands frequently and using hand sanitizer • Avoiding touching your face • Staying home and away from groups or crowds, even if you do not feel sick • Avoiding non-essential shopping and travel • Following any and all recommendations from health authorities • Stay connected Even though most people are practicing social distancing, it is crucial for everyone to continue to connect with their family, friends, and communities. People who tend to withdraw when depressed, stressed, or anxious, should schedule regular phone calls or video chats. Maintaining contact with your loved ones and support system can reduce the risk of depression and help ease stress and anxiety. Social media can also be helpful in keeping people connected, but as mentioned previously, social media can also be detrimental to your emotional well-being. For this reason, it is important to make note of how you are feeling. If there is something that makes your anxiety, depression, and/or stress worsen, stop doing it. Social media is not the only way to stay connected. When connecting with people, do not let the pandemic dominate every conversation. Taking breaks from stressful thoughts about the coronavirus will give you something else to think about. • Take Care of Yourself Even though none of us have ever experienced anything like this in our lifetime, the same tried-and-true stress management strategies can still be effective. These include: • Maintain a routine as best you can. Even though you may be stuck at home, try to stick to your regular routine the best you can. This will help you maintain a sense of normalcy. • Take time out for activities you enjoy. Whether it be reading a book, making art, watching movies or TV, playing games, baking, or something else, doing something you enjoy can help take your mind off of your worries. • Be kind to yourself. Go easy on yourself if you are experiencing more anxiety, stress, and/or depression than usual. This situation is stressful for everyone; you are not alone. • Find ways to exercise. Staying active greatly reduces anxiety, stress, and helps manage your mood. Depending on your location, you may be able to go for a walk, run, hike, or bike ride. If you are unable to go outside, there are thousands of at home, equipment free workouts all over the internet to help keep you active. • Avoid self-medicating. Be careful that you are not using alcohol or other substances to deal with anxiety, stress, and/or depression. Importance of Early Intervention and Treatment While it may feel like the world has been turned upside down, remember to be patient. With time and a global effort, the COVID-19 pandemic will eventually pass. Moreover, while you may feel alone during these troubling times, you are not. Everyone is experiencing the same thing, and if you feel there is nothing that can help you, that is not true. Accelerated Resolution Therapy® (ART) has been successful in treating those suffering from a wide variety of mental health issues including anxiety and depression. Accelerated Resolution Therapy® (ART) is an innovative, evidence-based therapy for both PTS and PTSD, anxiety, depression, stress, and similar mental health diagnoses. Initially, the therapy was primarily used to help veterans suffering from PTSD. One of the major advantages is the speed at which ART is able to bring relief. Normally, only one to five sessions are needed, not months or years of expensive psychiatric treatment. Accelerated Resolution Therapy works by reprogramming the traumatic memories that are preventing a person from enjoying the full life they deserve. The techniques work equally well on bullying victims, combat vets, and others. If you feel you cannot get through this on your own, please contact ART International to learn more about the therapy or to find a therapist near you. ART International Training and Research Inc., is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing access to Accelerated Resolution Therapy® for individuals suffering from trauma and other mental health diagnoses through innovative research and clinician training and education.
Autism and the Upper Crust There are multiple folktales about the tender senses of royalty, aristocrats, and other elite. The most well known example is “The Princess and the Pea”. In the Aarne-Thompson-Uther system of folktale categorization, it gets listed as type 704 about the search for a sensitive wife. That isn’t to say that all the narrative variants of elite sensitivity involve potential wives. Anyway, the man who made this particular story famous is Hans Christian Andersen, having published his translation in 1835. He longed to be a part of the respectable class, but felt excluded. Some speculate that he projected his own class issues onto his slightly altered version of the folktale, something discussed in the Wikipedia article about the story: “Wullschlager observes that in “The Princess and the Pea” Andersen blended his childhood memories of a primitive world of violence, death and inexorable fate, with his social climber’s private romance about the serene, secure and cultivated Danish bourgeoisie, which did not quite accept him as one of their own. Researcher Jack Zipes said that Andersen, during his lifetime, “was obliged to act as a dominated subject within the dominant social circles despite his fame and recognition as a writer”; Andersen therefore developed a feared and loved view of the aristocracy. Others have said that Andersen constantly felt as though he did not belong, and longed to be a part of the upper class.[11] The nervousness and humiliations Andersen suffered in the presence of the bourgeoisie were mythologized by the storyteller in the tale of “The Princess and the Pea”, with Andersen himself the morbidly sensitive princess who can feel a pea through 20 mattresses.[12]Maria Tatar notes that, unlike the folk heroine of his source material for the story, Andersen’s princess has no need to resort to deceit to establish her identity; her sensitivity is enough to validate her nobility. For Andersen, she indicates, “true” nobility derived not from an individual’s birth but from their sensitivity. Andersen’s insistence upon sensitivity as the exclusive privilege of nobility challenges modern notions about character and social worth. The princess’s sensitivity, however, may be a metaphor for her depth of feeling and compassion.[1] […] Researcher Jack Zipes notes that the tale is told tongue-in-cheek, with Andersen poking fun at the “curious and ridiculous” measures taken by the nobility to establish the value of bloodlines. He also notes that the author makes a case for sensitivity being the decisive factor in determining royal authenticity and that Andersen “never tired of glorifying the sensitive nature of an elite class of people”.[15] Even if that is true, there is more going on here than some guy working out his personal issues through fiction. This princess’ sensory sensitivity sounds like autism spectrum disorder and I have a theory about that. Autism has been associated with certain foods like wheat, specifically refined flour in highly processed foods (The Agricultural Mind). And a high-carb diet in general causes numerous neurocognitive problems (Ketogenic Diet and Neurocognitive Health), along with other health conditions such as metabolic syndrome (Dietary Dogma: Tested and Failed) and insulin resistance (Coping Mechanisms of Health), atherosclerosis (Ancient Atherosclerosis?) and scurvy (Sailors’ Rations, a High-Carb Diet) — by the way, the rates of these diseases have been increasing over the generations and often first appearing among the affluent. Sure, grains have long been part of the diet, but the one grain that had most been associated with the wealthy going back millennia was wheat, as it was harder to grow which caused it to be in short supply and so expensive. Indeed, it is wheat, not the other grains, that gets brought up in relation to autism. This is largely because of gluten, though other things have been pointed to. It is relevant that the historical period in which these stories were written down was around when the first large grain surpluses were becoming common and so bread, white bread most of all, became a greater part of the diet. But as part of the diet, this was first seen among the upper classes. It’s too bad we don’t have cross-generational data on autism rates in terms of demographic and dietary breakdown, but it is interesting to note that the mental health condition neurasthenia, also involving sensitivity, from the 19th century was seen as a disease of the middle-to-upper class (The Crisis of Identity), and this notion of the elite as sensitive was a romanticized ideal going back to the 1700s with what Jane Austen referred to as ‘sensibility’ (see Bryan Kozlowski’s The Jane Austen Diet, as quoted in the link immediately above). In that same historical period, others noted that schizophrenia was spreading along with civilization (e.g., Samuel Gridley Howe and Henry Maudsley; see The Invisible Plague by Edwin Fuller Torrey & Judy Miller) and I’d add the point that there appear to be some overlapping factors between schizophrenia and autism — besides gluten, some of the implicated factors are glutamate, exorphins, inflammation, etc. “It is unlikely,” writes William Davis, “that wheat exposure was the initial cause of autism or ADHD but, as with schizophrenia, wheat appears to be associated with worsening characteristics of the conditions” (Wheat Belly, p. 48). For most of human history, crop failures and famine were a regular occurrence. And this most harshly affected the poor masses when grain and bread prices went up, leading to food riots and sometimes revolutions (e.g., French Revolution). Before the 1800s, grains were so expensive that, in order to make them affordable, breads were often adulterated with fillers or entirely replaced with grain substitutes, the latter referred to as “famine breads” and sometimes made with tree bark. Even when available, the average person might be spending most of their money on bread, as it was one of the most costly foods around and other foods weren’t always easily obtained. Even so, grain being highly sought after certainly doesn’t imply that the average person was eating a high-carb diet, quite the opposite (A Common Diet). Food in general was expensive and scarce and, among grains, wheat was the least common. At times, this would have forced feudal peasants and later landless peasants onto a diet limited in both carbohydrates and calories, which would have meant a typically ketogenic state (Fasting, Calorie Restriction, and Ketosis), albeit far from an optimal way of achieving it. The further back in time one looks the greater prevalence would have been ketosis (e.g., Spartan and Mongol diet), maybe with the exception of the ancient Egyptians (Ancient Atherosclerosis?). In places like Ireland, Russia, etc, the lower classes remained on this poverty diet that was often a starvation diet well into the mid-to-late 1800s, although in the case of the Irish it was an artificially constructed famine as the potato crop was essentially being stolen by the English and sold on the international market. Yet, in America, the poor were fortunate in being able to rely on a meat-based diet because wild game was widely available and easily obtained, even in cities. That may have been true for many European populations as well during earlier feudalism, specifically prior to the peasants being restricted in hunting and trapping on the commons. This is demonstrated by how health improved after the fall of the Roman Empire (Malnourished Americans). During this earlier period, only the wealthy could afford high-quality bread and large amounts of grain-based foods in general. That meant highly refined and fluffy white bread that couldn’t easily be adulterated. Likewise, for the early centuries of colonialism, sugar was only available to the wealthy — in fact, it was a controlled substance typically only found in pharmacies. But for the elite who had access, sugary pastries and other starchy dessert foods became popular. White bread and pastries were status symbols. Sugar was so scarce that wealthy households kept it locked away so the servants couldn’t steal it. Even fruit was disproportionately eaten by the wealthy. A fruit pie would truly have been a luxury with all three above ingredients combined in a single delicacy. Part of the context is that, although grain yields had been increasing during the early colonial era, there weren’t dependable surplus yields of grains before the 1800s. Until then, white bread, pastries, and such simply were not affordable to most people. Consumption of grains, along with other starchy carbs and sugar, rose with 19th century advancements in agriculture. Simultaneously, income was increasing and the middle class was growing. But even as yields increased, most of the created surplus grains went to feeding livestock, not to feeding the poor. Grains were perceived as cattle feed. Protein consumption increased more than did carbohydrate consumption, at least initially. The American population, in particular, didn’t see the development of a high-carb diet until much later, as related to US mass urbanization also happening later. Coming to the end of the 19th century, there was the emergence of the mass diet of starchy and sugary foods, especially the spread of wheat farming and white bread. And, in the US, only by the 20th century did grain consumption finally surpass meat consumption. Following that, there has been growing rates of autism. Along with sensory sensitivity, autistics are well known for their pickiness about foods and well known for cravings for particular foods such as those made from highly refined wheat flour, from white bread to crackers. Yet the folktales in question were speaking to a still living memory of an earlier time when these changes had yet to happen. Hans Christian Andersen first published “The Princess and the Pea” in 1835, but such stories had been orally told long before that, probably going back at least centuries, although we now know that some of these folktales have their origins millennia earlier, even into the Bronze Age. According to the Wikipedia article on “The Princess and the Pea”, “The theme of this fairy tale is a repeat of that of the medieval Perso-Arabic legend of al-Nadirah.[6] […] Tales of extreme sensitivity are infrequent in world culture but a few have been recorded. As early as the 1st century, Seneca the Younger had mentioned a legend about a Sybaris native who slept on a bed of roses and suffered due to one petal folding over.[23] The 11th-century Kathasaritsagara by Somadeva tells of a young man who claims to be especially fastidious about beds. After sleeping in a bed on top of seven mattresses and newly made with clean sheets, the young man rises in great pain. A crooked red mark is discovered on his body and upon investigation a hair is found on the bottom-most mattress of the bed.[5] An Italian tale called “The Most Sensitive Woman” tells of a woman whose foot is bandaged after a jasmine petal falls upon it.” I would take it as telling that, in the case of this particular folktale, it doesn’t appear to be as ancient as other examples. That would support my argument that the sensory sensitivity of autism might be caused by greater consumption of refined wheat, something that only began to appear late in the Axial Age and only became common much later. Even for the few wealthy that did have access in ancient times, they were eating rather limited amounts of white bread. It might have required hitting a certain level of intake, not seen until modernity or closer to it, before the extreme autistic symptoms became noticeable among a larger number of the aristocracy and monarchy. * * * Others have connected such folktales of sensitivity with autism: The high cost and elite status of grains, especially white bread, prior to 19th century high yields: The Life of a Whole Grain Junkie by Seema Chandra Did you know where the term refined comes from? Around 1826, whole grain bread used by the military was called superior for health versus the white refined bread used by the aristocracy. Before the industrial revolution, it was more labor consuming and more expensive to refine bread, so white bread was the main staple loaf for aristocracy. That’s why it was called “refined”. The War on White Bread by Livia Gershon Bread has always been political. For Romans, it helped define class; white bread was for aristocrats, while the darkest brown loaves were for the poor. Later, Jacobin radicals claimed white bread for the masses, while bread riots have been a perennial theme of populist uprisings. But the political meaning of the staff of life changed dramatically in the early twentieth-century United States, as Aaron Bobrow-Strain, who went on to write the book White Bread, explained in a 2007 paper. […] Even before this industrialization of baking, white flour had had its critics, like cracker inventor William Sylvester Graham. Now, dietary experts warned that white bread was, in the words of one doctor, “so clean a meal worm can’t live on it for want of nourishment.” Or, as doctor and radio host P.L. Clark told his audience, “the whiter your bread, the sooner you’re dead.” by John Komlos Furthermore, one should not disregard the cultural context of food consumption. Habits may develop that prevent the attainment of a level of nutritional status commensurate with actual real income. For instance, the consumption of white bread or of polished rice, instead of whole-wheat bread or unpolished rice, might increase with income, but might detract from the body’s well-being. Insofar as cultural habits change gradually over time, significant lags could develop between income and nutritional status. pp. 192-194 As consequence, per capita food consumption could have increased between 1660 and 1740 by as much as 50 percent. The fact that real wages were higher in the 1730s than at any time since 1537 indicates a high standard of living was reached. The increase in grain exports, from 2.8 million quintals in the first decade of the eighteenth century to 6 million by the 1740s, is also indicative of the availability of nutrients. The remarkably good harvests were brought about by the favorable weather conditions of the 1730s. In England the first four decades of the eighteenth century were much warmer than the last decades of the previous century (Table 5.1). Even small differences in temperature may have important consequences for production. […] As a consequence of high yields the price of consumables declined by 14 percent in the 1730s relative to the 1720s. Wheat cost 30 percent less in the 1730s than it did in the 1660s. […] The increase in wheat consumption was particularly important because wheat was less susceptible to mold than rye. […] There is direct evidence that the nutritional status of many populations was, indeed, improving in the early part of the eighteenth century, because human stature was generally increasing in Europe as well as in America (see Chapter 2). This is a strong indication that protein and caloric intake rose. In the British colonies of North America, an increase in food consumption—most importantly, of animal protein—in the beginning of the eighteenth century has been directly documented. Institutional menus also indicate that diets improved in terms of caloric content. Changes in British income distribution conform to the above pattern. Low food prices meant that the bottom 40 percent of the distribution was gaining between 1688 and 1759, but by 1800 had declined again to the level of 1688. This trend is another indication that a substantial portion of the population that was at a nutritional disadvantage was doing better during the first half of the eighteenth century than it did earlier, but that the gains were not maintained throughout the century. The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts, 1780-1860 By Christopher Clark p. 77 Livestock also served another role, as a kind of “regulator,” balancing the economy’s need for sufficiency and the problems of producing too much. In good years, when grain and hay were plentiful, surpluses could be directed to fattening cattle and hogs for slaughter, or for exports to Boston and other markets on the hoof. Butter and cheese production would also rise, for sale as well as for family consumption. In poorer crop years, however, with feedstuffs rarer, cattle and swine could be slaughtered in greater numbers for household and local consumption, or for export as dried meat. p. 82 Increased crop and livestock production were linked. As grain supplies began to overtake local population increases, more corn in particular became available for animal feed. Together with hay, this provided sufficient feedstuffs for farmers in the older Valley towns to undertake winter cattle fattening on a regular basis, without such concern as they had once had for fluctuations in output near the margins of subsistence. Winter fattening for market became an established practice on more farms. When Food Changed History: The French Revolution by Lisa Bramen But food played an even larger role in the French Revolution just a few years later. According to Cuisine and Culture: A History of Food and People, by Linda Civitello, two of the most essential elements of French cuisine, bread and salt, were at the heart of the conflict; bread, in particular, was tied up with the national identity. “Bread was considered a public service necessary to keep the people from rioting,” Civitello writes. “Bakers, therefore, were public servants, so the police controlled all aspects of bread production.” If bread seems a trifling reason to riot, consider that it was far more than something to sop up bouillabaisse for nearly everyone but the aristocracy—it was the main component of the working Frenchman’s diet. According to Sylvia Neely’s A Concise History of the French Revolution, the average 18th-century worker spent half his daily wage on bread. But when the grain crops failed two years in a row, in 1788 and 1789, the price of bread shot up to 88 percent of his wages. Many blamed the ruling class for the resulting famine and economic upheaval. Read more: Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter What Brought on the French Revolution? by H.A. Scott Trask Through 1788 and into 1789 the gods seemed to be conspiring to bring on a popular revolution. A spring drought was followed by a devastating hail storm in July. Crops were ruined. There followed one of the coldest winters in French history. Grain prices skyrocketed. Even in the best of times, an artisan or factor might spend 40 percent of his income on bread. By the end of the year, 80 percent was not unusual. “It was the connection of anger with hunger that made the Revolution possible,” observed Schama. It was also envy that drove the Revolution to its violent excesses and destructive reform. Take the Reveillon riots of April 1789. Reveillon was a successful Parisian wall-paper manufacturer. He was not a noble but a self-made man who had begun as an apprentice paper worker but now owned a factory that employed 400 well-paid operatives. He exported his finished products to England (no mean feat). The key to his success was technical innovation, machinery, the concentration of labor, and the integration of industrial processes, but for all these the artisans of his district saw him as a threat to their jobs. When he spoke out in favor of the deregulation of bread distribution at an electoral meeting, an angry crowded marched on his factory, wrecked it, and ransacked his home. Why did our ancestors prefer white bread to wholegrains? by Rachel Laudan Only in the late nineteenth and twentieth century did large numbers of “our ancestors”–and obviously this depends on which part of the world they lived in–begin eating white bread. […] Wheat bread was for the few. Wheat did not yield well (only seven or eight grains for one planted compared to corn that yielded dozens) and is fairly tricky to grow. White puffy wheat bread was for even fewer. Whiteness was achieved by sieving out the skin of the grain (bran) and the germ (the bit that feeds the new plant). In a world of scarcity, this made wheat bread pricey. And puffy, well, that takes fairly skilled baking plus either yeast from beer or the kind of climate that sourdough does well in. […] Between 1850 and 1950, the price of wheat bread, even white wheat bread, plummeted in price as a result of the opening up of new farms in the US and Canada, Argentina, Australia and other places, the mechanization of plowing and harvesting, the introduction of huge new flour mills, and the development of continuous flow bakeries. In 1800 only half the British population could afford wheat bread. In 1900 everybody could. History of bread – Industrial age The Industrial Age (1700 – 1887) from The Federation of Bakers In Georgian times the introduction of sieves made of Chinese silk helped to produce finer, whiter flour and white bread gradually became more widespread. […] A report accused bakers of adulterating bread by using alum lime, chalk and powdered bones to keep it very white. Parliament banned alum and all other additives in bread but some bakers ignored the ban. […] The Corn Laws were passed to protect British wheat growers. The duty on imported wheat was raised and price controls on bread lifted. Bread prices rose sharply. […] Wholemeal bread, eaten by the military, was recommended as being healthier than the white bread eaten by the aristocracy. Rollermills were invented in Switzerland. Whereas stonegrinding crushed the grain, distributing the vitamins and nutrients evenly, the rollermill broke open the wheat berry and allowed easy separation of the wheat germ and bran. This process greatly eased the production of white flour but it was not until the 1870s that it became economic. Steel rollermills gradually replaced the old windmills and watermills. With large groups of the population near to starvation the Corn Laws were repealed and the duty on imported grain was removed. Importing good quality North American wheat enabled white bread to be made at a reasonable cost. Together with the introduction of the rollermill this led to the increase in the general consumption of white bread – for so long the privilege of the upper classes. Of all foods bread is the most noble: Carl von Linné (Carl Linneaus) on bread by Leena Räsänen In many contexts Linné explained how people with different standing in society eat different types of bread. He wrote, “Wheat bread, the most excellent of all, is used only by high-class people”, whereas “barley bread is used by our peasants” and “oat bread is common among the poor”. He made a remark that “the upper classes use milk instead of water in the dough, as they wish to have a whiter and better bread, which thereby acquires a more pleasant taste”. He compared his own knowledge on the food habits of Swedish society with those mentioned in classical literature. Thus, according to Linné, Juvenal wrote that “a soft and snow-white bread of the finest wheat is given to the master”, while Galen condemned oat bread as suitable only for cattle, not for humans. Here Linné had to admit that it is, however, consumed in certain provinces in Sweden. Linné was aware of and discussed the consequences of consuming less tasty and less satisfying bread, but he seems to have accepted as a fact that people belonging to different social classes should use different foods to satisfy their hunger. For example, he commented that “bran is more difficult to digest than flour, except for hard-labouring peasants and the likes, who are scarcely troubled by it”. The necessity of having to eat filling but less palatable bread was inevitable, but could be even positive from the nutritional point of view. “In Östergötland they mix the grain with flour made from peas and in Scania with vetch, so that the bread may be more nutritious for the hard-working peasants, but at the same time it becomes less flavoursome, drier and less pleasing to the palate.” And, “Soft bread is used mainly by the aristocracy and the rich, but it weakens the gums and teeth, which get too little exercise in chewing. However, the peasant folk who eat hard bread cakes generally have stronger teeth and firmer gums”. It is intriguing that Linné did not find it necessary to discuss the consumption or effect on health of other bakery products, such as the sweet cakes, tarts, pies and biscuits served by the fashion-conscious upper class and the most prosperous bourgeois. Several cookery books with recipes for the fashionable pastry products were published in Sweden in the eighteenth century 14. The most famous of these, Hjelpreda i Hushållningen för Unga Fruentimmer by Kajsa Warg, published in 1755, included many recipes for sweet pastries 15. Linné mentioned only in passing that the addition of egg makes the bread moist and crumbly, and sugar and currants impart a good flavour. The sweet and decorated pastries were usually consumed with wine or with the new exotic beverages, tea and coffee. It is probable that Linné regarded pastries as unnecessary luxuries, since expensive imported ingredients, sugar and spices, were indispensable in their preparation. […] Linné emphasized that soft and fresh bread does not draw in as much saliva and thus remains undigested for a long time, “like a stone in the stomach”. He strongly warned against eating warm bread with butter. While it was “considered as a delicacy, there was scarcely another food that was more damaging for the stomach and teeth, for they were loosen’d by it and fell out”. By way of illustration he told an example reported by a doctor who lived in a town near Amsterdam. Most of the inhabitants of this town were bakers, who sold bread daily to the residents of Amsterdam and had the practice of attracting customers with oven-warm bread, sliced and spread with butter. According to Linné, this particular doctor was not surprised when most of the residents of this town “suffered from bad stomach, poor digestion, flatulence, hysterical afflictions and 600 other problems”. […] Linné was not the first in Sweden to write about famine bread. Among his remaining papers in London there are copies from two official documents from 1696 concerning the crop failure in the northern parts of Sweden and the possibility of preparing flour from different roots, and an anonymous small paper which contained descriptions of 21 plants, the roots or leaves of which could be used for flour 10. These texts had obviously been studied by Linné with interest. When writing about substitute breads, Linné formulated his aim as the following: “It will teach the poor peasant to bake bread with little or no grain in the circumstance of crop failure without destroying the body and health with unnatural foods, as often happens in the countryside in years of hardship” 10. Linné’s idea for a publication on bread substitutes probably originated during his early journeys to Lapland and Dalarna, where grain substitutes were a necessity even in good years. Actually, bark bread was eaten in northern Sweden until the late nineteenth century 4. In the poorest regions of eastern and north-eastern Finland it was still consumed in the 1920s 26. […] Bark bread has been used in the subarctic area since prehistoric times 4. According to Linné, no other bread was such a common famine bread. He described how in springtime the soft inner layer can be removed from debarked pine trees, cleaned of any remaining bark, roasted or soaked to remove the resin, and dried and ground into flour. Linné had obviously eaten bark bread, since he could say that “it tastes rather well, is however more bitter than other bread”. His view of bark bread was most positive but perhaps unrealistic: “People not only sustain themselves on this, but also often become corpulent of it, indeed long for it.” Linné’s high regard for bark bread was shared by many of his contemporaries, but not all. For example, Pehr Adrian Gadd, the first professor of chemistry in Turku (Åbo) Academy and one of the most prominent utilitarians in Finland, condemned bark bread as “useless, if not harmful to use” 28. In Sweden, Anders Johan Retzius, a professor in Lund and an expert on the economic and pharmacological potential of Swedish flora, called bark bread “a paltry food, with which they can hardly survive and of which they always after some time get a swollen body, pale and bluish skin, big and hard stomach, constipation and finally dropsy, which ends the misery” 4. […] Linné’s investigations of substitutes for grain became of practical service when a failed harvest of the previous summer was followed by famine in 1757 10. Linné sent a memorandum to King Adolf Fredrik in the spring of 1757 and pointed out the risk to the health of the hungry people when they ignorantly chose unsuitable plants as a substitute for grain. He included a short paper on the indigenous plants which in the shortage of grain could be used in bread-making and other cooking. His Majesty immediately permitted this leaflet to be printed at public expense and distributed throughout the country 10. Soon Linné’s recipes using wild flora were read out in churches across Sweden. In Berättelse om The inhemska wäxter, som i brist af Säd kunna anwändas til Bröd- och Matredning, Linné 32 described the habitats and the popular names of about 30 edible wild plants, eight of which were recommended for bread-making. * * * I’ll just drop a couple videos here for general info: Carcinogenic Grains In understanding human health, we have to look at all factors as a package deal. Our gut-brain is a system, as is our entire mind-body. Our relationships, lifestyle, the environment around us — all of it is inseparable. This is true even if we limit ourselves to diet alone. It’s not simply calories in/calories out, macronutrient ratios, or anything else along these lines. It is the specific foods eaten in combination with which other foods and in the context of stress, toxins, epigenetic inheritance, gut health, and so much else that determine what effects manifest in the individual. There are numerous examples of this. But I’ll stick to a simple one, which involves several factors and the relationship between them. First, red meat is associated with cancer and heart disease. Yet causation is hard to prove, as red meat consumption is associated with many other foods in the standard American diet, such as added sugars and vegetable oils in processed foods. The association might be based on confounding factors that are culture-specific, which can explain why we find societies with heavy meat consumption and little cancer. So, what else might be involved? We have to consider what red meat is being eaten with, at least in the standard American diet that is used as a control in most research. There is, of course, the added sugars and vegetable oils — they are seriously bad for health and may explain much of the confusion. Saturated fat intake has been dropping since the early 1900s and, in its place, there has been a steady rise in the use of vegetable oils; we now know that highly heated and hydrogenated vegetable oils do severe damage. Also, some of the original research that blamed saturated fat, when re-analyzed, found that sugar was the stronger correlation to heart disease. Saturated fat, as with cholesterol, had been wrongly accused. This misunderstanding has, over multiple generations at this point, led to the early death of at least hundreds of millions of people worldwide, as dozens of the wealthiest and most powerful countries enforced this in their official dietary recommendations which transformed the world’s food system. Similar to eggs, red meat became the fall guy. Such things as heart disease are related to obesity, and conventional wisdom tells us that fat makes us fat. Is that true? Not exactly or directly. I was amused to discover that a scientific report commissioned by the British government in 1846 (Experimental Researches on the Food of Animals, and the Fattening of Cattle: With Remarks on the Food of Man. Based Upon Experiments Undertaken by Order of the British Government by Robert Dundas Thomson) concluded that “The present experiments seem to demonstrate that the fat of animals cannot be produced from the oil of the food” — fat doesn’t make people fat, and that low-carb meat-eating populations tend to be slim has been observed for centuries. So, in most cases, what does cause fat accumulation? It is only fat combined with plenty of carbs and sugar that is guaranteed to make us fat, that is to say fat in the presence of glucose in that the two compete as a fuel source. Think about what an American meal with red meat looks like. A plate might have a steak with some rolls or slices of bread, combined with a potato and maybe some starchy ‘vegetables’ like corn, peas, or lima beans. Or there will be a hamburger with a bun, a side of fries, and a large sugary drink (‘diet’ drinks are no better, as we now know artificial sweeteners fool the body and so are just as likely to make you fat and diabetic). What is the common factor, red meat combined with wheat or some other grain, as part of a diet drenched in carbs and sugar (and all of it cooked or slathered in vegetable oils). Most Americans have a far greater total intake of carbs, sugar, and vegetable oils than red meat and saturated fat. The preferred meat of Americans these days is chicken with fish also being popular. Why does red meat and saturated fat continue to be blamed for the worsening rates of heart disease and metabolic disease? It’s simply not rational, based on the established facts in the field of diet and nutrition. That isn’t to claim that too much red meat couldn’t be problematic. It depends on the total diet. Also, Americans have the habit of grilling their red meat and grilling increases carcinogens, which could be avoided by not charring one’s meat, but that equally applies to not burning (or frying) anything one eats, including white meat and plant foods. In terms of this one factor, you’d be better off eating beef roasted with vegetables than to go with a plant-based meal that included foods like french fries, fried okra, grilled vegetable shish kabobs, etc. Considering all of that, what exactly is the cause of cancer that keeps showing up in epidemiological studies? Sarah Ballantyne has some good answers to that (see quoted passage below). It’s not so much about red meat itself as it is about what red meat is eaten with. The crux of the matter is that Americans eat more starchy carbs, mostly refined flour, than they do vegetables. What Ballantyne explains is that two of the potential causes of cancer associated with red meat only occur in a diet deficient in vegetables and abundant in grains. It is the total diet as seen in the American population that is the cause of high rates of cancer. As a heavy meat diet without grains is not problematic, a heavy carb diet without grains is also not necessarily problematic. Some of the healthiest populations eat lots of carbs like sweet potatoes, but you won’t find any healthy population that eats as many grains as do Americans. There are many issues with grains considered in isolation (read the work of David Perlmutter or any number of writers on the paleo diet), but grains combined with certain other foods in particular can contribute to health concerns. Then again, some of this is about proportion. For most of the time of agriculture, humans ate small amounts of grains as an occasional food. Grains tended to be stored for hard times or for trade or else turned into alcohol to be mixed with water from unclean sources. The shift to large amounts of grains made into refined flour is an evolutionarily unique dilemma our bodies aren’t designed to handle. The first accounts of white bread are found in texts from slightly over two millennia ago and most Westerners couldn’t afford white bread until the past few centuries when industrialized milling began. Before that, people tended to eat foods that were available and didn’t mix them as much (e.g., eat fruits and vegetables in season). Hamburgers were invented only about a century ago. The constant combining of red meat and grains is not something we are adapted for. That harm to our health results maybe shouldn’t surprise us. Red meat can be a net loss to health or a net gain. It depends not on the red meat, but what is and isn’t eaten with it. Other factors matter as well. Health can’t be limited to a list of dos and don’ts, even if such lists have their place in the context of more detailed knowledge and understanding. The simplest solution is to eat as most humans ate for hundreds of thousands of years, and more than anything else that means avoiding grains. Even without red meat, many people have difficulties with grains. Let’s return to the context of evolution. Hominids have been eating fatty red meat for millions of years (early humans having prized red meat from blubbery megafauna until their mass extinction), and yet meat-eating hunter-gatherers rarely get cancer, heart disease, or any of the other modern ailments. How long ago was it when the first humans ate grains? About 12 thousand years ago. Most humans on the planet never touched a grain until the past few millennia. And fewer still included grains with almost every snack and meal until the past few generations. So, what is this insanity of government dietary recommendations putting grains as the base of the food pyramid? Those grains are feeding the cancerous microbes, and doing much else that is harmful. In conclusion, is red meat bad for human health? It depends. Red meat that is charred or heavily processed combined with wheat and other carbs, lots of sugar and vegetable oils, and few nutritious vegetables, well, that would be a shitty diet that will inevitably lead to horrible health consequences. Then again, the exact same diet minus the red meat would still be a recipe for disease and early death. Yet under other conditions, red meat can be part of a healthy diet. Even a ton of pasture-raised red meat (with plenty of nutrient-dense organ meats) combined with an equal amount of organic vegetables (grown on healthy soil, bought locally, and eaten in season), in exclusion of grains especially refined flour and with limited intake of all the other crap, that would be one of the healthiest diets you could eat. On the other hand, if you are addicted to grains as many are and can’t imagine a world without them, you would be wise to avoid red meat entirely. Assuming you have any concerns about cancer, you should choose one or the other but not both. I would note, though, that there are many other reasons to avoid grains while there are no other known reasons to avoid red meat, at least for serious health concerns, although some people exclude red meat for other reasons such as digestion issues. The point is that whether or not you eat red meat is a personal choice (based on taste, ethics, etc), not so much a health choice, as long as we separate out grains. That is all we can say for certain based on present scientific knowledge. * * * We’ve known about this for years now. Isn’t it interesting that no major health organization, scientific institution, corporate news outlet, or government agency has ever warned the public about the risk factors of carcinogenic grains? Instead, we get major propaganda campaigns to eat more grains because that is where the profit is for big ag, big food, and big oil (that makes farm chemicals and transports the products of big ag and big food). How convenient! It’s nice to know that corporate profit is more important than public health. But keep listening to those who tell you that cows are destroying the world, even though there are fewer cows in North America than there once were buffalo. Yeah, monocultural GMO crops immersed in deadly chemicals that destroy soil and deplete nutrients are going to save us, not traditional grazing land that existed for hundreds of millions of years. So, sure, we could go on producing massive yields of grains in a utopian fantasy beloved by technocrats and plutocrats that further disconnects us from the natural world and our evolutionary origins, an industrial food system dependent on turning the whole world into endless monocrops denatured of all other life, making entire regions into ecological deserts that push us further into mass extinction. Or we could return to traditional ways of farming and living with a more traditional diet largely of animal foods (meat, fish, eggs, dairy, etc) balanced with an equal amount of vegetables, the original hunter-gatherer diet. Our personal health is important. And it is intimately tied to the health of the earth. Civilization as we know it was built on grains. That wasn’t necessarily a problem when grains were a small part of the diet and populations were small. But is it still a sustainable socioeconomic system as part of a healthy ecological system? No, it isn’t. So why do we continue to do more of the same that caused our problems in the hope that it will solve our problems? As we think about how different parts of our diet work together to create conditions of disease or health, we need to begin thinking this way about our entire world. * * * Paleo Principles by Sarah Ballantyne While this often gets framed as an argument for going vegetarian or vegan. It’s actually a reflection of the importance of eating plenty of plant foods along with meat. When we take a closer look at these studies, we see something extraordinarily interesting: the link between meat and cancer tends to disappear once the studies adjust for vegetable intake. Even more exciting, when we examine the mechanistic links between meat and cancer, it turns out that many of the harmful (yes, legitimately harmful!) compounds of meat are counteracted by protective compounds in plant foods. One major mechanism linking meat to cancer involves heme, the iron-containing compound that gives red meat its color (in contrast to the nonheme iron found in plant foods). Where heme becomes a problem is in the gut: the cells lining the digestive tract (enterocytes) metabolize it into cytotoxic compounds (meaning toxic to living cells), which can then damage the gut barrier (specifically the colonic mucosa; see page 67), cause cell proliferation, and increase fecal water toxicity—all of which raise cancer risk. Yikes! In fact, part of the reason red meat is linked with cancer far more often than with white meat could be due to their differences in heme content; white meat (poultry and fish) contains much, much less. Here’s where vegetables come to the rescue! Chlorophyll, the pigment in plants that makes them green, has a molecular structure that’s very similar to heme. As a result, chlorophyll can block the metabolism of heme in the intestinal tract and prevent those toxic metabolites from forming. Instead of turning into harmful by-products, heme ends up being metabolized into inert compounds that are no longer toxic or damaging to the colon. Animal studies have demonstrated this effect in action: one study on rats showed that supplementing a heme-rich diet with chlorophyll (in the form of spinach) completely suppressed the pro-cancer effects of heme. All the more reason to eat a salad with your steak. Another mechanism involves L-carnitine, an amino acid that’s particularly abundant in red meat (another candidate for why red meat seems to disproportionately increase cancer risk compared to other meats). When we consume L-carnitine, our intestinal bacteria metabolize it into a compound called trimethylamine (TMA). From there, the TMA enters the bloodstream and gets oxydized by the liver into yet another compound, trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO). This is the one we need to pay attention to! TMAO has been strongly linked to cancer and heart disease, possibly due to promoting inflammation and altering cholesterol transport. Having high levels of it in the bloodstream could be a major risk factor for some chronic diseases. So is this the nail in the coffin for meat eaters? Not so fast! An important study on this topic published in 2013 in Nature Medicine sheds light on what’s really going on. This paper had quite a few components, but one of the most interesting has to do with gut bacteria. Basically, it turns out that the bacteria group Prevotella is a key mediator between L-carnitine consumption and having high TMAO levels in our blood. In this study, the researchers found that participants with gut microbiomes dominated by Prevotella produced the most TMA (and therefore TMAO, after it reached the liver) from the L-carnitine they ate. Those with microbiomes high in Bacteroides rather than Prevotella saw dramatically less conversion to TMA and TMAO. Guess what Prevotella loves to snack on? Grains! It just so happens that people with high Prevotella levels, tend to be those who eat grain-based diets (especially whole grain), since this bacterial group specializes in fermenting the type of polysaccharides abundant in grain products. (For instance, we see extremely high levels of Prevotella in populations in rural Africa that rely on cereals like millet and sorghum.) At the same time, Prevotella doesn’t seem to be associated with a high intake of non-grain plant sources, such as fruit and vegetables. So is it really the red meat that’s a problem . . . or is it the meat in the context of a grain-rich diet? Based on the evidence we have so far, it seems that grains (and the bacteria that love to eat them) are a mandatory part of the L-carnitine-to-TMAO pathway. Ditch the grains, embrace veggies, and our gut will become a more hospitable place for red meat! * * * Georgia Ede has a detailed article about the claim of meat causing cancer. In it, she provides several useful summaries of and quotes from the scientific literature. WHO Says Meat Causes Cancer? How the WHO? Does it matter whether the WHO gets it right or wrong about meat and cancer? YES. “Strong media coverage and ambiguous research results could stimulate consumers to adapt a ‘safety first’ strategy that could result in abolishment of red meat from the diet completely. However, there are reasons to keep red meat in the diet. Red meat (beef in particular) is a nutrient dense food and typically has a better ratio of N6:N3-polyunsaturated fatty acids and significantly more vitamin A, B6 and B12, zinc and iron than white meat(compared values from the Dutch Food Composition Database 2013, raw meat). Iron deficiencies are still common in parts of the populations in both developing and industrialized countries, particularly pre-school children and women of childbearing age (WHO)… Red meat also contains high levels of carnitine, coenzyme Q10, and creatine, which are bioactive compounds that may have positive effects on health.” 2) The bottom line is that there is no good evidence that unprocessed red meat increases our risk for cancer. Fresh red meat is a highly nutritious food which has formed the foundation of human diets for nearly two million years. Red meat is a concentrated source of easily digestible, highly bioavailable protein, essential vitamins and minerals. These nutrients are more difficult to obtain from plant sources. It makes no sense to blame an ancient, natural, whole food for the skyrocketing rates of cancer in modern times. I’m not interested in defending the reputation of processed meat (or processed foods of any kind, for that matter), but even the science behind processed meat and cancer is unconvincing, as I think you’ll agree. […] Regardless, even if you believe in the (non-existent) power of epidemiological studies to provide meaningful information about nutrition, more than half of the 29 epidemiological studies did NOT support the WHO’s stance on unprocessed red meat and colorectal cancer. It is irresponsible and misleading to include this random collection of positive and negative epidemiological studies as evidence against meat. The following quote is taken from one of the experimental studies cited by the WHO. The authors of the study begin their paper with this striking statement: “In puzzling contrast with epidemiological studies, experimental studies do not support the hypothesis that red meat increases colorectal cancer risk. Among the 12 rodent studies reported in the literature, none demonstrated a specific promotional effect of red meat.” 3) [Oddly enough, none of these twelve “red meat is fine” studies, which the authors went on to list and describe within the text of the introduction to this article, were included in the WHO report]. I cannot emphasize enough how common it is to see statements like this in scientific papers about red meat. Over and over again, researchers see that epidemiology suggests a theoretical connection between some food and some health problem, so they conduct experiments to test the theory and find no connection. This is why our nutrition headlines are constantly changing. One day eggs are bad for you, the next day they’re fine. Epidemiologists are forever sending well-intentioned scientists on time-consuming, expensive wild goose chases, trying to prove that meat is dangerous, when all other sources–from anthropology to physiology to biochemistry to common sense—tell us that meat is nutritious and safe. * * * Below good discussion between Dr. Steven Gundry and Dr. Paul Saladino. It’s an uncommon dialogue. Even though Gundry is known for warning against the harmful substances in plant foods, he has shifted toward a plant-based diet in also warning against too much animal foods or at least too much protein, another issue about IGF1 not relevant to this post. As for Saladino, he is a carnivore and so takes Gundry’s argument against plants to a whole other level. Saladino sees no problem with meat, of course. And his view contradicts what Gundry writes about in his most recent book, The Longevity Paradox. Anyway, they got onto the topic of TMAO. Saladino points out that fish has more fully formed TMAO than red meat produces in combination with grain-loving Prevotella. Even vegetables produce TMAO. So, why is beef being scapegoated? It’s pure ignorant idiocy. To further this point, Saladino explained that he has tested the microbiome of patients of his on the carnivore diet and it comes up low on the Prevotella bacteria. He doesn’t think TMAO is the danger people claim it is. But even if it were, the single safest diet might be the carnivore diet. Gundry didn’t even disagree. He pointed out that he did testing on patients of his who are long-term vegans and now in their 70s. They had extremely high levels of TMAO. He sent their lab results to the Cleveland Clinic for an opinion. The experts there refused to believe that it was possible and so dismissed the evidence. That is the power of dietary ideology when it forms a self-enclosed reality tunnel. Red meat is bad and vegetables are good. The story changes over time. It’s the saturated fat. No, it’s the TMAO. Then it will be something else. Always looking for a rationalization to uphold the preferred dogma. * * * 7/25/19 – Additional thoughts: There is always new research coming out. And as is typical, it is often contradictory. It is hard to know what is being studied exactly.The most basic understanding in mainstream nutrition right now seems to be that red meat is associated with TMAO by way of carnitine and Prevotella (Studies reveal role of red meat in gut bacteria, heart disease development). But there are many assumptions being made. This research tends to be epidemiological/observational and so most factors aren’t being controlled. Worse still, they aren’t comparing the equivalent extremes, such as veganism vs carnivory but veganism and vegetarianism vs omnivory. That is to leave out the even greater complicating factor that, as the data shows, a significant number of vegans and vegetarians occasionally eat animal foods. There really aren’t that many long-term vegans and vegetarians to study because 80% of people who start the diet quit it, and of that 20% few are consistent. As for omnivores, they are a diverse group that could include hundreds of dietary variations. One variety of omnivory is the paleo diet, slightly restricted omnivory in that grains are excluded, often along with legumes, white potatoes, dairy, added sugar, etc. The paleo diet was studied and showed higher levels of TMAO and, rather than cancer, the focus was on cardiovascular disease (Heart disease biomarker linked to paleo diet). So, that must mean the paleo diet is bad, right? When people think of the paleo diet, they think of a caveman lugging a big hunk of meat. But the reality is that the standard paleo diet, although including red meat, emphasizes fish and heaping platefuls of vegetables. Why is red meat getting blamed? In a bizarre twist, the lead researcher of the paleo study, Dr. Angela Genoni, thought the problem was the lack of grains. But it precisely grains that the TMAO-producing Prevotella gut bacteria love so much. How could reducing grains increase TMAO? No explanation was offered. Before we praise grains, why not look at the sub-population of vegans, vegetarians, fruitivores, etc who also avoid grains? There is a more rational and probable factor. It turns out that fish and vegetables raise TMAO levels higher than red meat (Eat your vegetables (and fish): Another reason why they may promote heart health). This solves the mystery of why some Dr. Gundry’s vegan patients had high TMAO levels. Yet, in another bizarre leap of logic, the same TMAO that is used to castigate red meat suddenly is portrayed as healthy in reducing cardiovascular risk when it comes from sources other than red meat. It is the presence of red meat that somehow magically transforms TMAO into an evil substance that will kill you. Or maybe, just maybe it has nothing directly to do with TMAO alone. After a long and detailed analysis of the evidence, Dr. Georgia Ede concluded that, “As far as I can tell, the authors’ theory that red meat provides carnitine for bacteria to transform into TMA which our liver then converts to TMAO, which causes our macrophages to fill up with cholesterol, block our arteries, and cause heart attacks is just that–a theory–full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” (Does Carnitine from Red Meat Cause Heart Disease?). Malnourished Americans Prefatory Note Grain of Truth Against the Grain Historical Examples Not All Poverty is the Same Socialized Medicine & Externalized Costs An Invisible Debt Made Visible On Conflict and Stupidity Inequality in the Anthropocene Capitalism as Social Control The Abnormal Norms of WEIRD Modernity Lore of Nutrition by Tim Noakes pp. 373-375 The authors conclude: On Obesity and Malnourishment Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes pp. 17-19 pp. 33-34 How Americans Used to Eat “In her 1832 travel book, “Domestic Manners of the Americans,” the English writer Frances Trollope describes the breathtaking quantities of food on American dinner tables. Even tea, she reports, is a “massive meal,” a lavish spread of many cakes and breads and “ham, turkey, hung beef, apple sauce and pickled oysters.” “Equally impressive to this foreign observer were the carnivorous tendencies of her American hosts. “They consume an extraordinary amount of bacon,” she writes, while “ham and beefsteaks appear morning, noon and night.” “Americans were indiscriminate in their love for animal protein. Beef, pork, lamb and mutton were all consumed with relish. However, as pointed out by the food historian Harvey Levenstein, it was beef, the form of protein preferred by the upper class, “that reigned supreme in status.” With the opening of the Western frontier in the mid-19th century, increased grazing land for cattle lowered beef prices, making it affordable for the working class. “Dietary surveys conducted at the turn of the 20th century by Wilbur Atwater, father of American nutrition, revealed that even laborers were able to have beefsteak for breakfast. As Atwater was quick to point out, a high-protein diet set American workers apart from their European counterparts. On average, Americans ate a phenomenal 147 pounds of meat a year; Italians, by contrast, consumed 24. ““Doubtless,” Atwater wrote, “we live and work more intensely than people do in Europe.” The “vigor, ambition and hopes for higher things” that distinguished the American worker, he argued, was fed by repeated helpings of T-bone and sirloin steak.” That calculation might be way off, an underestimation if anything. The majority of Americans remained rural, largely working as farmers, into the early 20th century. All we have data for is the food that was shipped across state lines, as no one kept nation-wide records on food that was produced, bought, and consumed locally. Until quite recently, most of the food Americans ate either was grown at home or grown at a nearby farm, not to mention much food that was hunted, trapped, fished and gathered. So, that 147 pounds of meat probably was only the tip of the iceberg. The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz pp. 123-131 Plowing the Furrows of the Mind One of the best books I read this past year is The Invisible History of the Human Race by Christine Kenneally. The book covers the type of data HBDers (human biodiversity advocates) and other hereditarians tend to ignore. Kenneally shows how powerful is environment in shaping thought, perception, and behavior. What really intrigued me is how persistent patterns can be once set into place. Old patterns get disrupted by violence such as colonialism and mass trauma such as slavery. In the place of the old, something new takes form. But this process isn’t always violent. In some cases, technological innovation can change an entire society. This is true for as simple of a technology as a plow. Just imagine what impact a more complex technology like computers and the internet will have on society in the coming generations and centuries. Also, over this past century or so, we saw a greater change to agriculture than maybe has been seen in all of civilization. Agricultural is becoming industrialized and technologized. What new social system is being created? How long will it take to become established as a new stable order? We live in a time of change and we can’t see the end of it. We are like the people who lived during the time when the use of plows first began to spread. All that we know, as all that they knew, is that we are amidst change. This inevitably creates fear and anxiety. It is a crisis that has the potential of being more transformative than a world war. It is a force that will be both destructive and creative, but either way it is unpredictable. * * * * The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures by Christine Kenneally Kindle Locations 2445-2489 Catastrophic events like the plague or slavery are not the only ones that echo down the generations . Widespread and deeply held beliefs can be traced to apparently benign events too, like the invention of technology. In the 1970s the Danish economist Ester Boserup argued that the invention of the plow transformed the way men and women viewed themselves. Boserup’s idea was that because the device changed how farming communities labored, it also changed how people thought about labor itself and about who should be responsible for it. The main farming technology that existed when the plow was introduced was shifting cultivation. Using a plow takes a lot of upper-body strength and manual power, whereas shifting cultivation relies on handheld tools like hoes and does not require as much strength. As communities took up the plow, it was most effectively used by stronger individuals , and these were most often men. In societies that used shifting cultivation, both men and women used the technology . Of course, the plow was invented not to exclude women but to make cultivation faster and easier in areas where crops like wheat, barley, and teff were grown over large, flat tracts of land in deep soil. Communities living where sorghum and millet grew best— typically in rocky soil— continued to use the hoe. Boserup believed that after the plow forced specialization of labor, with men in the field and women remaining in the home, people formed the belief— after the fact— that this arrangement was how it should be and that women were best suited to home life. Boserup made a solid historical argument, but no one had tried to measure whether beliefs about innate differences between men and women across the world could really be mapped according to whether their ancestors had used the plow. Nathan Nunn read Boserup’s ideas in graduate school, and ten years later he and some colleagues decided to test them. Once again Nunn searched for ways to measure the Old World against the new. He and his colleagues divided societies up according to whether they used the plow or shifting cultivation . They gathered current data about male and female lives, including how much women in different societies worked in public versus how much they worked in the home, how often they owned companies, and the degree to which they participated in politics. They also measured public attitudes by comparing responses to statements in the World Value Survey like “When jobs are scarce, men should have more right to a job than a woman.” Nunn found that if you asked an individual whose ancestors grew wheat about his beliefs regarding women’s place, it was much more likely that his notion of gender equality would be weaker than that of someone whose ancestors had grown sorghum or millet. Where the plow was used there was greater gender inequality and women were less common in the workforce. This was true even in contemporary societies in which most of the subjects would never even have seen a plow, much less used one, and in societies where plows today are fully mechanized to the point that a child of either gender would be capable of operating one. Similar research in the cultural inheritance of psychology has explored the difference between cultures in the West and the East. Many studies have found evidence for more individualistic, analytic ways of thought in the West and more interdependent and holistic conceptions of the self and cooperation in the East. But in 2014 a team of psychologists investigated these differences in populations within China based on whether the culture in question traditionally grew wheat or rice. Comparing cultures within China rather than between the East and West enabled the researchers to remove many confounding factors, like religion and language. Participants underwent a series of tests in which they paired two of three pictures. In previous studies the way a dog, a rabbit, and a carrot were paired differed according to whether the subject was from the West or the East . The Eastern subjects tended to pair the rabbit with a carrot, which was thought to be the more holistic, relational solution. The Western subjects paired the dog and the rabbit, which is more analytic because the animals belong in the same category. In another test subjects drew pictures of themselves and their friends. Previous studies had shown that westerners drew themselves larger than their friends . Another test surveyed how likely people were to privilege friends over strangers; typically Eastern cultures score higher on this measure. In all the tests the researchers found that, independent of a community’s wealth or its exposure to pathogens or to other cultures, the people whose ancestors grew rice were much more relational in their thinking than the people whose ancestors were wheat growers. Other measures pointed at differences between the two groups. For example , people from a wheat-growing culture divorced significantly more often than people from a rice-growing culture, a pattern that echoes the difference in divorce rates between the West and the East. The findings were true for people who live in rice and wheat communities today regardless of their occupation; even when subjects had nothing to do with the production of crops, they still inherited the cultural predispositions of their farming forebears. The differences between the cultures are attributed to the different demands of the two kinds of agriculture. Rice farming depends on complicated irrigation and the cooperation of farmers around the use of water. It also requires twice the amount of labor that is necessary for wheat, so rice-growing communities often stagger the planting of crops in order that all their members can help with the harvest. Wheat farming, by contrast, doesn’t need complicated irrigation or systems of cooperation among growers. The implication of these studies is that the way we see the world and act in it—whether the end result is gender inequality or trusting strangers— is significantly shaped by internal beliefs and norms that have been passed down in families and small communities . It seems that these norms are even taken with an individual when he moves to another country. But how might history have such a powerful impact on families, even when they have moved away from the place where that history, whatever it was, took place?

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