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Three programmes investigating ancient traditions and ways of life - two of which have sparked struggles for survival; the third, a campaign for eradication.
Part Three: Temple Prostitutes
A group of former devadasis - or Temple Prostitutes - are fighting to eradicate a centuries-old Hindu tradition which turns them into prostitutes.
Originally, devadasi were celibate dancing girls used in temple ceremonies and they entertained members of the ruling class.
But sometime around the 6th Century, the practice of "dedicating" girls to Hindu gods became prevalent in a practise that developed into ritualised prostitution.
The girls are mainly of the lowest class, 'untouchables,' and their fight is the ultimate clash of ancient and modern culture in India.
The prevalence of the devadasi tradition in parts of Southern India, in particular, means that social acceptance of sex work in Karnataka State is common with devastating consequences for the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Hear the heart-wrenching story of Joythi, a young ‘devadasi' or temple prostitute. Joythi, her two small children, and her entire family depend on the income she receives from bestowing her divine gift on her clients.
But the truth is that she is no more than a common prostitute, and as such is in a very dangerous profession.
Award-winning documentary-maker Kati Whitaker travels to the south of India to meet Joythi - and the small group of former devadasis who are trying to persuade her to leave the profession. | <urn:uuid:8509f995-a09d-43aa-9e8c-0c948e00b8d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/documentaries/2008/02/080129_fading_traditions_three.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953355 | 321 | 2.5625 | 3 |
chalkArticle Free Pass
chalk, soft, fine-grained, easily pulverized, white-to-grayish variety of limestone. Chalk is composed of the shells of such minute marine organisms as foraminifera, coccoliths, and rhabdoliths. The purest varieties contain up to 99 percent calcium carbonate in the form of the mineral calcite. The sponge spicules, diatom and radiolarian tests (shells), detrital grains of quartz, and chert nodules (flint) found in chalk contribute small amounts of silica to its composition. Small proportions of clay minerals, glauconite, and calcium phosphate also are present.
Extensive chalk deposits date from the Cretaceous Period (145.5 million to 65.5 million years ago), the name of which is derived from the Latin word (creta) for chalk. Such deposits occur in western Europe south of Sweden and in England, notably in the chalk cliffs of Dover along the English Channel. Other extensive deposits occur in the United States from South Dakota south to Texas and eastward to Alabama.
Like any other high-purity limestone, chalk is used for making lime and portland cement and as a fertilizer. Finely ground and purified chalk is known as whiting and is used as a filler, extender, or pigment in a wide variety of materials, including ceramics, putty, cosmetics, crayons, plastics, rubber, paper, paints, and linoleum. The chief use for chalk whiting, however, is in making putty, for which its plasticity, oil absorption, and aging qualities are well suited. The chalk commonly used in classrooms is a manufactured substance rather than natural chalk.
What made you want to look up "chalk"? Please share what surprised you most... | <urn:uuid:3c014246-d956-4281-995c-bc16e3f67296> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/104709/chalk | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949037 | 381 | 3.46875 | 3 |
DTU Space conducts research into the use of GPS and similar global satellite systems for positioning and navigation.
It is important to know the strengths and weaknesses of the different systems so they can be used correctly. Among other things, the Institute develops new methods to improve the accuracy of measurements. Researchers at DTU Space examine the effects of variations in atmospheric conditions, for example the effects of variations in solar activity on the ionosphere. The Institute also carries out research into the use of GPS together with different forms of wireless communication, among other things for use in the transport sector.
DTU Space also conducts studies into the use of GPS in climate research. As ice melts, parts of the continental bedrock begin to rise, and this can be measured using GPS. By carrying out exact measurements of the degree to which the bedrock has risen, it is possible to calculate how much ice has melted.
Finally, DTU Space collects data from permanent GPS stations in Greenland, thus contributing towards international projects seeking to improve the quality of GPS measurements. | <urn:uuid:f426e822-c0bd-463a-bf08-4f5f739b06cb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.space.dtu.dk/English/Research/Earths_physics_and_geodesy/Satellitnavigation.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924655 | 206 | 3.21875 | 3 |
K–12 Education Degree and Certificate Programs
Most of those who enter the education field become kindergarten through twelfth grade (K-12) teachers. This includes elementary school teachers (typically first through fifth grades), junior high school teachers (usually sixth through eighth grades) and high school teachers (commonly ninth through twelfth grades). Elementary school is often referred to as primary education, while junior high and high school are typically called secondary education.
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Improve Your Job Prospects With an Education Degree or Certificate
Associate of Arts (AA) degrees in Education can qualify you for assistant teaching positions and don’t usually have a particular area of concentration, but pursuing your Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Education will probably require you to pick a specialty. Nowadays, K-12 teachers are often strongly encouraged to earn their Master’s Degree in Education within a few years of entering the field.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates about 12% job growth for K-12 teachers through 2016 – a pace that is as fast as average compared to all professions. Education professionals with internships, related work experience, advanced degrees and the ability to relocate should have the best employment opportunities. | <urn:uuid:2916f313-2608-4e0b-9161-2abe58df4b29> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.usnewsuniversitydirectory.com/education-teaching/k-12-education.aspx?page=5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963192 | 246 | 3.09375 | 3 |
The change in population of a geographic area broken down by racial and ethnic groups since 2000.
Population measures provide insight on the changing size and face of communities. Changes in the racial and ethnic composition of a community can indicate growing diversity, which can bring with it challenges and opportunities.
Dutchess County has become increasingly diverse since 2000. Between 2000 and 2010, all racial and ethnic groups experienced growth while the white population declined slightly, reflecting regional trends. The greatest growth occurred in the Hispanic population, which increased 73%, a greater increase than the state (excluding NYC) and the nation. The Asian population had the second greatest growth in the county, increasing 45%. The African American population increased by 8%. The Hispanic population overtook the black or African American population to become Dutchess County’s largest minority group, with Hispanics accounting for 11% of the total population and African Americans accounting for 10%. Despite the increasing diversity, Dutchess County remains about 80% white.
The Census Bureau considers race and ethnicity to be separate identities, and asks respondents to identify whether they are of Hispanic or Latino origin separately from their race. Thus, in addition to their race or races, all respondents are categorized as Hispanic or not Hispanic. | <urn:uuid:6956055b-06fe-4f5a-a45e-a3daecb5ee78> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mhvcommunityprofiles.org/indicator_analysis.php?subregion=1&data=3.1.3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942835 | 251 | 3.5625 | 4 |
More than half of species in Cabrera National Park are not sufficiently protectedAll Press Releases…
The lack of surveillance leaves one of the richest locations in the Spanish Mediterranean, where many fish species reproduce, in the hand of poachers
June 29, 2012
Contact: Marta Madina ( [email protected] )
Oceana has warned that many species in the National Park are also present in neighbouring areas, where they are not protected, so it believes that its enlargement is necessary, as approved by the National Park Board of Trustees one year ago
Oceana has warned that more than half of the species in the Cabrera Archipelago National Park (Balearic Islands, Spain) are not sufficiently protected, as their distribution extends beyond the boundaries of the current Park. In addition, lack of surveillance over the protected area makes conservation of these species even more difficult. For this reason, the international organisation for marine conservation has requested that its management be reviewed and the procedure for Park enlargement, which the Board of Trustees voted for in 2011, be taken up again.
“Firstly, we find a serious problem with poachers in the park itself, as well as recent cutbacks in management resources. In addition, the protected marine surface is not enough to cover the main habitats and species”, points out Xavier Pastor, Executive Director of Oceana in Europe. “For this reason, Oceana requests that current Park management be thoroughly reviewed, and that the agreed works necessary for its enlargement be launched”.
The seabed in the Cabrera National Park has very rich ecosystems, with many algae, invertebrate, and fish species among others, many of which are protected by various national and international regulations.
A large part of these species are also present in the seabed neighbouring the park, in unprotected areas, for which reason such significant species as lobster, sea urchin, grouper, and sea bream lack the necessary management measures for their maintenance and recovery. Moreover, it has been proved that the surroundings of Cabrera shelter habitats of high environmental value, such as large kelp forests, coralligenous seabeds, and black coral communities, whose protection would enrich the protected space.
“The National Park of Cabrera was created to protect one of the most diverse and rich marine areas in the Mediterranean, but its current status does not provide effective coverage for some of its main species, or for areas with essential habitats for the reproduction of fish species, such as picarel nests, squid spawning areas, and red mullet nursery areas”, says Ricardo Aguilar, Director of Projects and Research of Oceana in Europe. “Given the diversity of its surroundings, these are perfect for inclusion in the Spanish National Park network, given that the law requires the habitats present here to be protected, and these are hardly represented in the current network, or not at all”.
The Cabrera Board of Trustees, in its meeting of June 2011, unanimously decided to support this initiative, agreeing to request the Government of the Balearics and the Spanish Government to start the enlargement process. Oceana requests that this initiative be taken up once again to increase the natural value of the park and meet the aims of European legislation and international conventions.
Learn more: Cabrera | <urn:uuid:b7f8b980-1207-4feb-9829-dbfef04338d1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://oceana.org/en/eu/media-reports/press-releases/more-than-half-of-species-in-cabrera-national-park-are-not-sufficiently-protected | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950178 | 679 | 2.75 | 3 |
Historian Thomas Carlyle described economics as the dismal science, a pessimistic tag he came up with as he contemplated the predictions of 18th century economist Robert Thomas Malthus that population would always outstrip the food supply, leaving millions to starve. More recent research suggests that economics might better be called the cheery science. A new study finds that trade-induced economic growth leads to lower fertility and rising incomes—derailing Malthus' gloomy prognostications.
The global average number of children that women had over the course of their lifetimes was about five in the early 1950s. Since then the average has dropped by half to 2.5 children per woman. As global fertility declined, the value of world merchandise exports [PDF] during the same period has soared by nearly 90 times. Coincidence? Bucknell University political scientist John Doces doesn’t think so. in a new study, “Globalization and Population: International Trade and the Demographic Transition” published in the journal International Interactions, he argues that increasing international trade contributed to lowering fertility rates.
Doces' findings differs from that of other scholars, notably the analysis by Brown University economist Oded Galor and colleagues. Galor argues that the demographic transition, the shift from high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates chiefly occurred in the rich countries that comprise the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and not in poor countries.
In his notorious "An Essay on the Principle of Population," Malthus suggested that people on average would produce as many children as they could feed, if not more. In modern econspeak, children are a normal good, i.e., as income increased demand for kids would also increase. But that isn’t happening now.
Instead, researchers have noted that as incomes increased, the number of children per woman has decreased. One possible explanation for this phenomenon is that the opportunity cost of raising children has risen over time. Opportunity cost is a benefit that must be given up to acquire or achieve something else; in this case, a parent would be foregoing the extra income he or she would earn working and instead spend the time rearing a child. In this analysis the price of children measured in foregone income rises over time lowering demand for them.
However, Galor points out [PDF] that in the initial stages of the industrial revolution as incomes were increasing in Western Europe, average fertility was increasing, just as Malthus predicted. (In contrast, U.S. fertility rates appear to have been falling throughout the 19th century from 7 children per white woman in 1800 to 3.5 in 1900.) Galor suggests that the opportunity cost argument for fertility decline is too simple. If income were the key determinant, one would find that fertility should fall as any country reaches a specific level of average per capita income. Instead, Galor notes that at the end of the 19th century, fertility rates begin to plummet simultaneously for a number of Western European countries at very different per capita income levels.
Galor argues that fertility began to fall as Western European economies developed increased demand for human capital during what he calls the second phase of the industrial revolution. In this analysis, initial increases to average incomes produced by technological progress resulted in parents increasing both the quantity and quality of their children. However, toward the end of the 19th century, Galor asserts, “further increases in the rate of technological progress induced a reduction in fertility, generating a decline in population growth and an increase in the average level of education.” Parents began to invest in quality over quantity.
As economic growth was increasingly fueled by the development of ever more complicated technologies and management services, the premium to education began to increase. The result is that parents switched from having more children to investing in higher quality (more educated) children.
OECD economist Fabrice Murtin, using data from 71 countries from 1870 to 2000, recently estimated in his study, “On the Demographic Transition,” [downloadable here] that “education, rather than income or health-related variables, is the most robust determinant of the birth rate, potentially explaining about 50 to 80 percent of its decrease when average schooling grows from 0 to 10 years.” Galor cites data showing that the percent of British children ages 6-14 who were in school rose from about 10 percent in 1860 to more than 80 percent by 1895.
So far, so good. But Galor argues that at the turn of 20th century international trade encouraged fertility rates to fall further as rich countries began to specialize in the production of the sorts of goods that required a lot of human capital to make. On the other hand, poor countries increasingly specialized in goods that required a lot of manual labor to produce. The result was rising incomes for both rich and poor countries, but a fateful divergence in fertility trends.
During the 20th century, fertility rates basically continued to fall in rich countries as they invested in more human capital, especially in higher levels of education. In addition, as demand for human capital grew in rich countries, schooling expanded to include women who then entered the paid workforce. This further raised the opportunity costs of having children and encouraged further fertility reductions.
Meanwhile poor countries channeled a larger share of their gains from increased international trade into producing more children. As a consequence, “the demographic transition in these non-industrial economies has been significantly delayed,” asserts Galor, “Increasing further their relative abundance of unskilled labor, enhancing their comparative disadvantage in the production of skill-intensive goods, and delaying their process of development.”
In the second half of the 20th century many poor countries began to see rapid declines in their fertility rates. Doces looks at recent data from a large number of countries and finds that those that are most open to international trade are the ones experiencing the fastest decline in their fertility rates. Doces argues that the primary cost of having children is the time and money it takes to raise them which leaves parents less time to consume other goods. International trade expands the types and lowers the costs of the goods people can enjoy. The cost of rearing children does not decline substantially so they become more expensive relative to the new opportunities and goods afforded by increased international trade.
In addition, Doces cites research [PDF] that shows “increasing international exchange and communication create new opportunities for income-generating work and expose countries to norms that, in recent decades, have promoted equality for women.” As a result, trade-induced demand for human capital expands to include women, further cutting fertility rates even in poor countries.
Recent research by University of Helsinki economists Ulla Lehmijoki and Tapio Palokangas bolsters the finding that in the short run trade liberalization boosts birth rates, but in the long run it cuts fertility. Again, largely because it encourages the development of women’s human capital (education), which makes child-bearing relatively more costly.
In the mid-20th century, some economists promoted the autarkic import-substitution development fad that involved imposing high tariffs on imports and the creation of state-owned manufacturing enterprises. The Helsinki researchers suggest that import substitution may have “slowed down capital accumulation and thereby prolonged the period of high population growth” in countries that adopted such policies.
History shows that a world without trade is impoverished, ignorant, misogynistic, and overpopulated relative to available resources. That’s the world that our ancestors lived in [PDF]. In the modern era, trade liberalization promotes a virtuous cycle that boosts incomes, raising the value of education, resulting in the protection of women’s rights, and eventually inducing a fall in fertility rates. That’s really good news from the science formerly known as "dismal."
Ronald Bailey is Reason magazine's science correspondent. His book Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution is now available from Prometheus Books. This column first appeared at Reason.com. | <urn:uuid:3cc87827-7bdb-45e3-ac5b-3da73452b6e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://reason.org/news/printer/trading-fertility-for-prosperity | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958085 | 1,647 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Scanned text contains errors.
828 GREEK LITERATURE.
He lost his father before he had attained his seventeenth year, and he was intrusted to the guardianship of one Proxenus, of Atarneus, in Mys-ia, who was settled in Stagira. In B.C. 367, when seventeen years of age, he went to Athens to pursue his studies, and there became a pupil of Plato, upon the'return of the latter from Sicily, about B.C. 365. Plato soon distinguished him above all his other disciples. He named him "the intellect of his school" (vovsrrjs Siarp^s),1 and his house the house of the " reader" (wa.yv&ffr'ris). Aristotle lived at Athens for twenty years, till B.C. 347. During the whole of this period the good understanding which subsisted between teacher and scholar continued, with some trifling exceptions, undisturbed, for the stories of the disrespect and ingratitude of the latter toward the former are nothing but calumnies invented by his enemies. During the last ten years of his first residence at Athens, Aristotle gave instruction in rhetoric, and distinguished himself by his opposition to Isocrates, at that time the most distinguished teacher of rhetoric. Indeed, he appears to have opposed most decidedly all the earlier arid contemporary theories of rhetoric.2 His opposition to Isocrates, however, led to most important consequences, as it accounts for the bitter hatred which was afterward manifested toward Aristotle and his school by all the followers of Isocrates. It was the conflict of profound philosophical investigation with the superficiality of stylistic and rhetorical accomplishment, of which Isocrates might be looked upon as the principal representative, since he not only despised poetry, but held physics and mathematics to be illiberal studies, cared not to know any thing about philosophy, and looked upon the accomplished man of the world and the clever rhetorician as the true philosophers. On this occasion Aristotle published his first rhetorical writings. That during this time he continued to maintain his connection with the Macedonian court is intimated by his going on an embassy to Philip of Macedonia on some business of the Athenians.3- Moreover, we have still the letter in which his royal friend announces to him the birth of his son Alexander.4
After the death of Plato, which occurred during the above-mentioned embassy of Aristotle, the latter left Athens, though we do not exactly know for what reason. Perhaps he was offended by Plato's having appointed Speusippus as his successor in the Academy.5 At the same time, it is more probable that, after the notions of the ancient philosophers, he esteemed travels in foreign parts as a necessary completion of his education. He first repaired to his friend Hermias, at Atarneus. A few years, however, after the arrival of Aristotle, Hermias, through the treachery of Mentor, a Grecian general in the Persian service, fell into the hands of the Persians, of whom he had made himself independent, and was put to death. Aristotle, who had married Pythias, the adopted daughter of Hermias, fled with his wife to Mytilene. A poem on his unfortunate friend, which is still preserved, testifies the warm affection which he had felt for him. He afterward caused a statue to be erected to his memory at Delphi.6
1 Philopon., De Mternit. Mund., vi., 27. 2 Aristot., Rhet., i., 1,2. 3 Diog. Laert., v., 2. 4 Aul. Gell,, ix,, 3. 5 Diog. Laert., I. c.; iv., 1. 6 Id. ib., v., 6, seq. | <urn:uuid:bd010da2-0f9f-4c3b-b0b2-762c71d378b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ancientlibrary.com/greek-lit/0341.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983546 | 784 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Fatigue, fever, depression, confusion, and memory loss are general symptoms that can all indicate inflammation, which itself can often be caused by physical or psychological stress or a common infection such as influenza. Specifically, inflammation is characterized by redness, joint swelling, warmth, pain, stiffness, and loss of function. Inflammation has been linked to most acute and chronic diseases, including neurological, pulmonary, cardiovascular, metabolic, and autoimmune diseases, and—above all—to cancer, the focus of this review.[2-4]
Inflammation's Link to Chronic Disease
Inflammation has been referred to as “the secret killer” and “the fires within us.”[5, 6] But how does one define inflammation? One of the first documented descriptions of inflammation was recorded by the first-century Roman physician Aulus Cornelius Celsus, who defined inflammation as the presence of heat (calor), pain (dolor), redness (rubor), and swelling (tumor). However, it was the nineteenth-century German physician Rudolf Virchow who first linked inflammation to diseases such as atherosclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, asthma, Alzheimer disease, and cancer. Currently, terminology to describe inflammation of any organ is denoted by adding the suffix “-itis” to the word stem describing the organ. For instance, “bronchitis” means an inflammation of the bronchus, while “colitis” means an inflammation of the colon. As of this writing, over 200 terms containing the suffix “-itis” have been documented.
Patients with conditions such as colitis, gastritis, hepatitis, etc have an increased risk of developing cancer. However, not all types of inflammation result in cancer, as exemplified by arthritis. The exact reason why some inflammatory conditions are linked to cancer while others are not is unclear at present.
The Discovery of a Molecular Link Between Infection and Tumor Regression
Attempts to determine the molecular basis of inflammation date back as far as 1868, when the German physician P. Bruns reported a dramatic regression of tumors in humans who had bacterial infections (for reference, see ). In 1891, an American oncologist, William Coley, made use of Bruns’ observations and used extracts from gram-negative bacteria to induce tumor regression; these extracts were later referred to as “Coley’s toxins.” In 1944, M. Shear, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health, was the first to isolate lipopolysaccharide (LPS) as the active component of the gram-negative bacteria used by Coley, and the first to demonstrate LPS’s ability to reduce tumors in animals. He named this LPS-induced soluble factor “tumor necrosis serum” (TNS).
The Many Roles of TNF-α
Eventually, TNS was renamed as “tumor necrosis factor” (TNF). In 1984, our group was the first to purify, sequence, and clone the cDNA for this factor, which we named TNF-α.[13,14]
Subsequently, we showed that while TNF-α induced apoptosis in some cells, it induced proliferation in other cell types. Thus, although TNF-α was discovered as an antitumor agent, TNF-α was also the first known apoptosis-inducing cytokine, and was shown to have the ability to induce tumor regression in both preclinical and clinical models of human cancers. Within 2 years of its discovery, TNF-α was identified as the primary mediator of inflammation. By 1987, it had become clear that TNF-α was a growth factor in breast and ovarian cancers and certain types of leukemia and lymphoma.[17-19] In fact, TNF-α that has been targeted to certain types of tumors is being studied in clinical trials in Europe as of this writing.
Today TNF-α is known to be an integral component of the immune system, and while produced primarily by macrophages, it is required for the development and proliferation of both B cells and T cells. Thus, TNF-α has been found to be critical for protection against different types of infection, as indicated by the susceptibility to infection of patients who undergo anti-TNF therapy.[21-23] Similarly, animals with genetic deletion of TNF-α or its receptor are vulnerable to infections.[24-27]
A Double-Edged Sword
When confined to the immune system, TNF-α is therapeutic. However, when expressed in organs outside the immune system, this cytokine causes serious inflammation with pathologic consequences. Thus, TNF-α is a double-edged sword.
Like TNF-α, inflammation, too, is a double-edged sword. TNF-mediated inflammation in the immune system has therapeutic effects, but this type of inflammation is acute or “short-term” and is less likely to do any permanent harm. It is chronic or “long-term” inflammation, which is usually low-level and can persist for as long as 20 to 30 years, that is more likely to damage the affected organ and that is more likely to lead to a chronic disease such as cancer.
The Role of NFκB in Immunity, Inflammation, and Cancer
The way in which TNF-α mediates inflammation has become highly evident in the last quarter of a century. Soon after TNF-α was discovered, Sen and Baltimore described the discovery of a transcription factor that was present in the nucleus of B cells and that was binding to the promoter of the immunoglobulin kappa chain; they named this transcription factor NFκB. In 1989, TNF-α was found to be the most potent activator of NFκB. Today, NFκB is acknowledged to be universally present in every cell type in the body; it is usually found in the cytoplasm in its inactive state and has been conserved in all species all the way from Drosophila to man. When activated, NFκB controls the expression of over 500 different gene products, most of which have been linked to inflammation, cellular transformation, tumor cell survival, proliferation, invasion, angiogenesis, and metastasis.
NFκB is activated not only by TNF-α but also by most factors that have been linked to tumorigenesis, including reactive oxygen species (ROS), hydrogen peroxide(Drug information on hydrogen peroxide), stress (psychological, physical, chemical, or mechanical), dietary agents implicated in cancer, cigarette smoke, tobacco, environmental pollutants, asbestos, alcohol(Drug information on alcohol), radiation, and various cancer-causing viruses and bacteria, such as Helicobacter pylori. Thus, NFκB is one of the major sensors of carcinogenic agents. Furthermore, NFκB controls the expression of another transcription factor, STAT3, through the expression of interleukin (IL)-6.
Constitutively activated NFκB has not been encountered in cells other than those from the immune system, but it has been observed in almost all tumor cell types. In most cases, tumor cells are addicted to NFκB, and these cells’ survival is dependent on activated NFκB.[2,31,32] Most chemotherapeutic agents and gamma radiation, both of which are commonly used for cancer treatment, invariably activate NFκB and mediate chemoresistance and radioresistance. Thus, downmodulation of NFκB can be justified as a suitable target for chemosensitization and radiosensitization.
The presence of activated NFκB has been shown to be a predictor of response to chemotherapy in patients with breast cancer [33,34] and in patients with esophageal cancer.[35,36] In addition, both NFκB and NFκB-regulated inflammatory gene products have been associated with overall survival in patients with virtually all types of cancer. Thus, therapeutic agents that can downmodulate NFκB can also downmodulate inflammation and thereby downmodulate the overall process of tumorigenesis. NFκB inhibitors thus have potential for both prevention and treatment of cancer.[38-40]
However, like TNF-α, NFκB is a double-edged sword. Although NFκB is critical for proper function of the immune system, its dysregulation in various organs leads to a pathologic response. The role of NFκB in inflammation is further evident from well-known anti-inflammatory agents, including corticosteroids and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agents such as aspirin and celecoxib(Drug information on celecoxib), all of which downregulate NFκB activation.[41,42] In addition, our laboratory and other researchers have described numerous novel inhibitors of NFκB—from dietary agents to traditional medicines—that can suppress NFκB activation safely and thus have potential for both prevention and treatment of cancer.[43-48] This evidence clearly shows that inflammation is closely linked to cancer.
Inflammation and Mutated Genes:Pouring Fuel on the Fire
Although cancer is a disease caused by mutations in various genes, the component that seems to be required for the mutated cells to survive, proliferate, and migrate to other organs is chronic inflammation. Thus, the relationship between mutated genes and inflammation is analogous to the relationship between “fire and fuel,” with mutated genes the “fire” and inflammation the “fuel” needed to induce tumorigenesis/carcinogenesis.
Mitochondria and Tumorigenesis
The current article by Kamp et al further explores the link between chronic inflammation and cancer, specifically focusing on the role of mitochondria, the “power house” of the cell. Perhaps one of the first pieces of evidence that mitochondria have any role in cancer comes from Otto Warburg, a researcher who studied glucose metabolism in cancer cells and who showed that respiration was impaired in tumor cells. Mitochondria’s involvement in cancer is hardly surprising, since more than 80% of the ROS produced by the cell are from mitochondria, and since ROS play a critical role in the activation of NFκB and the expression of inflammatory cytokines and enzymes. Furthermore, NFκB has been localized in mitochondria and plays an important role in the synthesis of proteins involved in tumorigenesis.[50,51] The authors also discuss the roles of K-Ras and c-Myc, both of which are closely linked to NFκB activation.[52-54] Kamp et al also note that 43% of patients with ulcerative colitis will develop colon cancer within 25 to 35 years.
Countering Chronic Inflammation to Prevent and Treat Cancer: The Importance of Agents With Long-Term Safety
The studies discussed in this review suggest that chronic diseases such as cancer are caused by chronic inflammation and require chronic treatment. No agent currently is approved by the FDA that can be safely administered long-term. However, many natural agents derived from spices, vegetables, fruits, legumes, and cereals, as previously described by us and others, can suppress NFκB–regulated inflammation and likely can be administered safely long-term, by virtue of their history of routine consumption. Thus, these agents should have the potential to both prevent and treat cancer.[40,45-47]
For instance, curcumin, derived from the yellow spice turmeric (Curcuma longa), which has been used for centuries, has been found to suppress inflammation through inhibition of NFκB and STAT3 and has been associated with both cancer prevention and treatment.[55,56] Curcumin can be consumed long-term with minimal side effects and no known toxicity. A recent placebo-controlled study in which curcumin was compared with the cholesterol-lowering drug atorvastatin(Drug information on atorvastatin) revealed that curcumin at 150 mg/twice a day for 6 weeks downregulated endothelin-1, TNF-α, IL-1, IL-6, and malondialdehyde, a lipid peroxidation product. Another recent study of 123 patients with colorectal cancer showed that curcumin downmodulated TNF expression, prevented cancer-associated weight loss, and induced apoptosis in tumors through the upregulation of p53 and bax; it also induced downregulation of bcl-2 in the tumor tissue. Although bioavailability of curcumin is perceived to be a problem, as little as 300 mg taken twice a day for 15 days was found to be effective in these studies, whereas no such change in inflammatory biomarkers was observed in patients in the placebo arm. Another recent study, a phase IIa clinical trial, examined the ability of curcumin to prevent colorectal neoplasia. A significant 40% reduction in aberrant crypt foci number was observed with the 4-g dose (P < .005). Besides curcumin, literally hundreds of other such dietary agents have been identified that can control inflammation; however, clinical experience with these agents is limited. All this proves the wisdom of Hippocrates, the Greek physician who proclaimed 25 centuries ago, “Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.”
Thus it is clear that inflammation plays a major role in cancer growth—but also in cancer prevention and treatment. The regulation of dysregulated inflammation has huge potential. The source of this regulation lies not in the “Pharma” market but in the “Farmers market.
Financial Disclosure: The authors have no significant financial interest or other relationship with the manufacturers of any products or providers of any service mentioned in this article. | <urn:uuid:77fd93ab-db86-43be-a99b-094e0cd7a820> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cancernetwork.com/display/article/10165/1842758 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950062 | 2,854 | 3.421875 | 3 |
You May Be Surprised to Know
Linux has within it several solutions for making documents, even large documents like books.
Linux tools generally have a philosophy of re-usability. While some of the
newer products, like Open Office, are made to deliver the complete environments
that computer users are used to, most Linux tools follow a more modular
For example, in word processing the most common fundamental unit is the
Postscript files are read and written by most of the word and
image processing utilities. Postscript is a handy medium because it is so
Postscript -- The Underlying Standard
Postscript files are ASCII files, an you can load them into a text processor
and actually read and even manipulate some of the control statements (if you
know what you are doing). Postscript can also embody bit maps, but even these
appear as a sequence of seemingly meaningless characters.
Products that directly output postscript files often use a vector type
notation for characters, allowing the fonts to be re-written by a display or
print utility to any size without distortion. Graphical information is usually
Open Office, Koffice, and even Abiword, the WYSIWYG word processors in Linux
can all produce postscript output. Tex and LaTex produce an intermediate file
type called a dvi file, but the dvips utility converts these files into
postscript. And Lout, another text markup language, outputs postscript
Use this custom search engine to find document software for you system:
Even Graphics Utilities Can Use Postscript
Most graphics plotting packages in Linux, like Gri, pgplot, xmgrace, and
gnuplot to name but a few, can all output postscript files. Xpaint, a Linux
drawing program, and GIMP, an image rendering program can both import and
export postscript files. The postscript utilities packages provides many
programs for working directly with postscript files.
Many printers have a mode specifically for handling postscript files
efficiently. And the gv utility is a handy postscript rendering and printing
program for use with files produced by any of the numerous postscript file
Linux is Rich, Not Poor, In Document Processing Capability
So if you thought a move to Linux would lead to a more limited capability
for creating documents, you can rest at ease. Linux has at its disposal
virtually all of the accumulated document handling products from the Unix
world, as well as the newer WYSIWYG products more familiar to many users. Linux
doesn't offer a reduced set of document tools, but a vastly expanded set.
You just have to be willing to learn about them.
Get A Witty Astronomy, Physics, Math, Or Linux T-Shirt, Mug, or Poster At Keen Designs | <urn:uuid:73746fa9-beab-45ad-a656-42eb47fed734> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.linuxgoodies.com/linux_wordprocessing.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.885727 | 588 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Domestic Energy: Getting It Right This TimeYou’ve probably heard the horror stories from Pennsylvania, Wyoming, and Texas about poisoned wells, sickened communities, and flammable tap water caused by horizontal hydraulic fracturing. This type of natural gas extraction, commonly known as fracking, involves pumping millions of gallons of water mixed with chemicals underground at high pressure to fracture shale formations.
|Other Hydrofracking Grants|
grants are made possible by the Henry Phillip Kraft Family Memorial
Fund, set up in The Trust to protect and conserve the environment.
- Earthworks, $150,000
(two years) to advocate the passage of the federal Fracturing
Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act (FRAC Act), which would
require drilling companies to fully disclose the chemicals used in
fracking. The group is also working to end fracking’s exemptions from
the Safe Drinking Water and Clean Water acts.
- Health and Environmental Funders Network, $5,000 to create a funders’ working group to study and respond to fracking nationally.
- New York State Gas Drilling Protection Project, $400,000
(three years) for an effort of the Natural Resources Defense Council,
Earthjustice, Riverkeeper, and Catskill Mountainkeeper to monitor the
State’s environmental impact process, collect public comments, and
organize public support for stronger regulation of the industry.
It’s a controversial issue. We are, after all, watching the price of oil rise as turmoil in the Middle East underscores the dangers of relying on foreign oil. Natural gas is a potentially enormous source of domestic energy. And one of the largest reserves in the country is the Marcellus shale formation that underlies half of New York State.
Energy companies and their lobbyists are working hard to fast-track approval of fracking permits that would allow them to tap the Marcellus. But are we ready?
Tireless advocates and concerned citizens have organized a formidable opposition that has convinced Governor Cuomo, legislators, and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to slow the rush to drill and consider the science and risks before allowing any widespread hydrofracking in New York soil. Since 2007, The Trust has stood behind these efforts (see sidebar)
and recently made two grants addressing the issue from inside and outside the corporate boardroom.
Stronger safeguards for New York
Three grants of $190,000
have helped Environmental Advocates of New York
slow the rush to drill in New York State through advocacy, organizing, and education of policymakers, the media, and the public.
New York Water Rangers, a campaign of Environmental Advocates and 11 other groups, collected thousands of the 73,000 public comments submitted to DEC on preliminary drafts of its environmental impact statement. Many of the comments pointed out the inadequacies of current laws and regulatory infrastructure to safeguard public health and the environment; the review of these comments alone will take DEC several months.
A recent $75,000
grant to Environmental Advocates is supporting its campaign, which includes educating State legislators about the need for two bills it helped develop. The first bill would include fracking waste in the State’s hazardous waste laws and the second, the Home Rule Bill, would clarify the role of local government in regulating fracking. Because of this leadership, the group’s executive director Robert Moore was appointed to the State’s hydrofracking advisory panel.
|Environmental Advocates of New York and other groups have mobilized thousands of|
concerned New Yorkers. You can get involved with the New York Water Rangers Campaign at
Closing the loopholes
The millions of gallons of water needed by each frack job are hauled to the well pad with hundreds of air-polluting and road-damaging tanker trucks. The water is then mixed with chemicals and other materials and pumped deep underground. Chemicals such as benzene, toluene, and formaldehyde have contaminated aquifers. In other states, unknowing families drank and showered in this water and suffered a range of ailments, including permanent brain damage. Under current law, the oil and gas industry enjoys a blanket loophole that allows drillers to avoid hazardous waste laws, even when their wastes are hazardous. In practice, this means these wastes could be disposed of at municipal sewage plants ill-prepared to remove drilling-related toxins, be spread on roadways as de-icer, and even dumped in local landfills.
“Requiring drillers to test, track, treat, and properly dispose of hazardous waste would finally bring the gas industry in line with every other industry in New York,” says Erica Ringewald, communications director for Environmental Advocates.
“Whether you’re an upstate resident concerned about truck traffic and the loss of community character, or a Manhattanite worried about the safety of the City’s drinking water, now is the time to act,” says Robert Moore. “At this moment, Governor Cuomo and other leaders are deciding how, where, when—and most importantly if—fracking will be permitted.”
Reducing risk—and liability
When you’re dealing with flammables, toxic chemicals, and drinking water for millions, the potential for disaster is great. The Trust recently made a grant of $50,000
to the Investor Environmental Health Network
to educate investors about risks associated with fracking and mobilize them to push energy companies to use safer and less toxic methods of drilling.
“We are sending the message to energy companies that they must rein in risk to continue to attract investment. We have issued guidelines for more responsible fracking that prescribe steps to increase water recycling, improve wastewater disposal, and reduce the use of toxic chemicals,” says Richard Liroff, executive director of the Network. “Companies can also save money recycling the massive amounts of water it takes to frack a well, while using less fresh water and diesel fuel to truck it in. Fewer and less toxic chemicals can be used, but companies need to demand these changes from their subcontractors and chemical suppliers.” These improvements reduce risk of liability for clean-up, personal injury, and damage to the company’s reputation, while making them more attractive to investors.
“There are many risks associated with fracking and any one of them could put the drinking water for millions, local food supply, and the health of families in jeopardy,” says Pat Jenny, program director at The Trust. “The Trust will continue to push for stronger regulation, adequate oversight, and adoption of cleaner, safer drilling practices that greatly reduce or eliminate these risks before more fracking permits are granted in our state.” | <urn:uuid:d531c7ad-45f7-4b5b-92a3-9c932a1c045b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nycommunitytrust.org/GrantSeekers/GrantsatWork/CommunityDevelopmentandtheEnvironment/DomesticEnergyGettingitrightthistime/tabid/672/Default.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938103 | 1,378 | 2.8125 | 3 |
The Virtual Classroom Tour (or VCT, as the alternative is a bit of a mouthful!) was a complete mystery to me when I first encountered the concept.
I had visions of it being some sort of high tech Virtual Reality Environment of my classroom (will I need to admit it was my first thought?). But no, fortunately a VCT is a simple Powerpoint Presentation template. It’s a way of not just presenting your work, but packaging together all the resources and information you would need as a Teacher to recreate that activity in classroom.
As an ICT Advisor, I found it very difficult to share resources with the schools I was working with – and then as a Teacher I realised why? It’s because when I saw some resources on a site, I would download the spreadsheet, PowerPoint or whiteboard file, and not bother with the guidance notes (I didn’t think I’d have time to read those). The result? I simply didn’t get the full benefit of those resources.
Does that seem familiar to you?
The VCT has all the documents you need to re-create and adapt the activity for your classroom and have been created by teachers who are part of the Innovative Teachers Network*. At the Innovative Teachers Network site, you can access over 200 VCTs created by Teachers from across the UK and the rest of the world. This collection will continue to grow as more and more Teachers join the network. What will you find and could you contribute?
Take a look – see what you can find. Next week, I’ll tell you about my favourite VCTs in ‘Who are these Innovative Teachers?’
*If you are accessing the Innovative Teachers Network for the first time you will need to register, this is completely free and will you give access to huge variety of resources and information.
I and my colleague Dan have demonstrated VCTs to a whole staff meeting and have been pleased with the positive response. Teachers do appreciate the ease with which various different files can be integrated into the one format and some of our staff have been working on their own templates ! | <urn:uuid:bc2a85f5-2923-4140-8592-8b2585cf1934> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.msdn.com/b/teachers/archive/2008/09/17/the-virtual-classroom-tour-what-on-earth-is-it.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971906 | 443 | 2.640625 | 3 |
1. Mankind collectively, humanity
2. A part of humanity with certain common inherited characteristics
A human race is defined as a group of people with certain common inherited features that distinguish them from other groups of people. (Creation Ex Nihilo, 1980)
Pure races in the sense of genetically homogeneous populations do not exist in the human species, nor is there evidence that they have ever existed in the past history of the human family. (UNESCO)
It all started with Linnaeus, the scientist who sought to record and classify all species. Or perhaps with Darwin, who wanted to find out why there was such a variation in the world. Maybe it was Buffon... Or maybe the origin of the concept of human race is more than a little hazy. But then, so is the concept itself. What is race? Is it important? Should it be spoken of, researched on, or denied? Is humanity one race under God, as the athletes might say, or several small groups making up a greater whole? And if there is a subdivision, is it hierarchial or equal; is it relevant, or better ignored?
Because of the many historical wrongdoings related to race among humans, anyone wishing to deal with it must tread carefully. This node steps with the softness of elephant feet.
All humans belong to the species homo sapiens, with an extra sapiens sometimes added to single us out from our now dead primitive relatives. The question about human race is whether we can be divided into distinct subspecies after that. Humans obviously look different, depending on where their ancestors came from. But they don't look very different, and any attempt to define discrete classifications will conclude that there are no strict borders.
Skin colour, the most common characteristic of race, follows a spectrum rather than a checkerboard pattern: people are not ebony or ivory, but a whole range, including the white of a fish underbelly, the pink of a rose, the tan of deerskin, the brown of dark chocolate. Humans cannot be purebred for a certain trait like dogs, and so there is no human equivalent of the Alsatian or the Pomeranian - anyone who has met people from Alsatia or Pomerania will assert that they look and behave no different from other people.
Despite the inherent problem in definition, a lot of serious research has taken place trying to define the races scientifically. Craniums, hair, noses and arms have all been examined and categorised. Simple and complex systems have been proposed and worked their way into our thinking, before being debunked. One old, wellknown system was the one of the four colours: white, black, red and yellow, which were based as much on the imagined qualities of the people it described as on their skin colour. The version many current terms are based on sorts humanity into six races: Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Australoid, American Indian, and Polynesian. When race thinking was at its highest, names were also made for the most common mixtures of these races (such as Mulatto, Métiz, Quadroon), and efforts were made to erase or assimilate the lesser-valued races into the better.
In earlier times, many people read the Bible to indicate that God separated humanity into races - slavery in America was justified by saying that he had punished Noah's son Ham by making his skin dark and condemning him to always work for others. Today, even creationists will agree that the looks of humanity have changed over time. There never has been an 'ideal shape' for man, and any classification of races will be based on the current appearances of different people, not on some divine separation.
The Haitian scholar Anténor Firmin was among the first who discussed the equality of the human races, an equality most of us accept as a given today. In the latter half of the 20th century this came to be the dominant view, but because of a long history of atrocities based on racial thinking, all races are not quite equal yet.
In the United States of America, the country with the most diverse population in the world, race is still very much an issue. On several official forms, one is asked to tick the box of one's race. The boxes in the forms seem to reflect an American society still somewhat divided into races. African-American groups believe in speaking loudly about their cultural (and, implicitly, racial) heritage, Aryanism-inspired groups speak more quietly about their purity and greatness. People tend to date or at least marry people within their box - although "interracial marriages" are not illegal anymore, they are far from being the norm.
In South Africa, the keeping apart of races became an ideology for the ruling class. There, whites were believed to be the superior ones, blacks the lowest, and an intermediate group of Indians and mulattoes - Coloured - somewhere in between. The three groups were formally divided and treated according to their estimated worth. With the fall of this inhuman race system, one big problem was how to spread the land and riches equally among all the people again. In both the United States and South Africa, people of previously disadvantaged races are sometimes offered special treatment in an attempt to correct the balance. This admirable thought is criticised, however, both because it seems to maintain the old discrimination lines, and because it is only to the advantage of a few of the previously downtrodden ones - and genereally doesn't seem to help those who really need it.
The crowning glory of race thinking came with the Aryan dream of Adolf Hitler, which soon turned into a nightmare for all the world. He firmly believed that his select group of Germanic people were superhuman; that various people groups who mainly distinguished themselves with their differentness were subhuman scum, and that the rest were ordinary mortals. When the world realised just what he had done, it started thinking, and so we can thank Hitler for pushing the serious discussions about human race to the outermost confines of darkness. In the following decennia, the world battled and threw off most of the old ideas about race hygiene.
That's when all the trouble around ethnicity began...
I'd argue that the very process of dividing humans into races is tantamount to racism. The best option seems to be to boycott the concept of race entirely. If a form demands I declare a "race," I either write "human" or check all of them (can you disprove that, after all?) (Anark) | <urn:uuid:3260eb24-0d1b-46f6-b567-9f2030c5b03f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://everything2.com/user/agazade/writeups/Human+race | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977947 | 1,338 | 3.59375 | 4 |
Kate Hagan September 12, 2012
Participants of a recent study conducted by the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Zane Slater, 4, and his sister Jaya, 7, both suffer from food allergies. Photo: Joe Armao
HAVING siblings and a pet dog that comes inside the home can protect infants from developing egg allergies by age one, new research has shown.
In a study of 5000 Victorian infants, researchers from the Murdoch Children's Research Institute found that 10.2 per cent of those without a pet dog had egg allergies, compared with only 5.9 per cent of those who did.
Siblings also had a significant effect, with the incidence of egg allergies in infants decreasing with the number of brothers and sisters they had.
A total of 10.8 per cent of infants with no siblings had egg allergies, which affected just 3.7 per cent of infants with three or more siblings.
Egg allergy was the most common food allergy, affecting one in 10 children in the study. Children with an egg allergy usually outgrow it but are at increased risk of other allergic diseases including asthma.
Lead researcher Jennifer Koplin said young siblings and dogs might have a protective effect by exposing infants to infections and germs, which were thought to be important in training their immune systems to respond appropriately to threats.
''If the immune system doesn't get this exposure, we think it responds inappropriately to things that are completely harmless, in this case foods,'' she said.
Dr Koplin said the study, published in journal Allergy, provided support for the theory that food allergies were more prevalent than in the past due to increasing hygiene, in combination with genetic factors.
Among the participants in the study was Zane Slater, 4, who is allergic to egg white, sesame and peanuts. His sister Jaya, 7, also has allergies to egg, sesame and nuts.
Mum Suba Slater said Zane attended a ''nut-free'' kindergarten and understood that he could not eat certain foods - including birthday cake. | <urn:uuid:dfb7ec44-eaaf-4a83-8a3c-0c6574a7a7d5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://m.canberratimes.com.au/national/dogs-siblings-can-ward-off-allergies-20120911-25qo4.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971631 | 420 | 2.828125 | 3 |
In general, outbreaks of psoriasis are difficult to prevent. However, avoiding or minimizing well-known triggers can help reduce the risk of an outbreak. These triggers include:
Stress: Maintaining emotional balance and avoiding stress are strongly recommended, as stress may be a trigger of psoriasis outbreaks. If you need support or assistance in reducing stress, you may want to try some of the following techniques:
- Psoriasis support groups
- Stress management classes
- Relaxation techniques
Weather exposure: If you have had psoriasis, try to protect your skin at all times from cold, dry weather conditions, and minimize outdoor exposure during cold weather. Conversely, although, in mild to moderate doses UV light improves psoriasis, do not overexpose your skin to sunlight or develop a sunburn. Wear clothing that covers and protects your skin as much as possible, and hydrate the skin with baths and moisturizers after exposure. In addition to avoiding cold weather exposure, you can improve (or prevent) psoriasis symptoms by spending time in climates that are warm, humid, and sunny.
Skin injuries or trauma: Psoriasis outbreaks often occur in areas of the body that were previously injured. Prevention of cuts, burns, and other skin irritations may also help to prevent psoriasis flare-ups.
Infections: Although respiratory infections are often hard to avoid, doing so may help minimize your risk of a psoriasis flare-up. Your ability to fight off potential infection depends on maintaining of good immune system function, which you can enhance by getting plenty of rest and eating a healthful diet.
Medications: Certain medications like beta-blocker antihypertensives, antimalarials, lithium, and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) may trigger a psoriasis flare-up. Be sure to tell your doctor that you have psoriasis when receiving a new medication.
- Reviewer: Purvee S. Shah, MD
- Review Date: 09/2012 -
- Update Date: 00/91/2012 - | <urn:uuid:b09f8e39-e167-4ff5-8a72-5443dd55badd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wesleymc.com/hl/?/20060/Reducing-Your-Risk | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930388 | 431 | 2.578125 | 3 |
In this lecture, we continue to learn about competition, and its implications for the supply curve for different goods. We can use this to construct the market supply curve from firms' supply curves. Now we have all the ingredients for fully understanding the basic supply and demand diagrams that launched our study of economics.
Prof. Jonathan Gruber
14.01 Principles of Microeconomics
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare)
Date accessed: 2012-03-01
License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA
To view the lecture material accompanying this lecture in a new window, please click the button below. If necessary, use the vertical or horizontal scrollbar in the new window to view more of the material or you can resize the window.
To download the above lecture material use this link. (Right-click and select Save Target As or Save Link As.) | <urn:uuid:18e556ea-ada8-4c2a-9803-e0dcc097221a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.edforall.net/index.php/home/3737-competition-ii | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.815409 | 179 | 3.765625 | 4 |
Node:Number Syntax, Next:Integer Operations, Previous:Exactness, Up:Numbers
The read syntax for integers is a string of digits, optionally preceded by a minus or plus character, a code indicating the base in which the integer is encoded, and a code indicating whether the number is exact or inexact. The supported base codes are:
#B-- the integer is written in binary (base 2)
#O-- the integer is written in octal (base 8)
#D-- the integer is written in decimal (base 10)
#X-- the integer is written in hexadecimal (base 16).
If the base code is omitted, the integer is assumed to be decimal. The
following examples show how these base codes are used.
-13 => -13 #d-13 => -13 #x-13 => -19 #b+1101 => 13 #o377 => 255
The codes for indicating exactness (which can, incidentally, be applied to all numerical values) are:
#E-- the number is exact
#I-- the number is inexact.
If the exactness indicator is omitted, the integer is assumed to be exact,
since Guile's internal representation for integers is always exact.
Real numbers have limited precision similar to the precision of the
double type in C. A consequence of the limited precision is that
all real numbers in Guile are also rational, since any number R with a
limited number of decimal places, say N, can be made into an integer by
multiplying by 10^N. | <urn:uuid:a0c910df-47e7-4179-812f-02170b62b340> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/docs/docs-1.6/guile-ref/Number-Syntax.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.82837 | 332 | 3.875 | 4 |
Will the Supreme Court strike down what President Lyndon Johnson called “one of the most monumental laws in the entire history of American freedom”? That is the question before the justices on Wednesday, when they will hear a challenge to the constitutionality of a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. Enacted in 1965, it was designed to end, once and for all, the long, ugly history of racial discrimination in voting in America. The law, widely recognized as a remarkable success, was reauthorized in 2006 in a near-unanimous vote in Congress.
As Americans have come to recognize, however, the only votes that really matter are those of the justices of the Supreme Court. And there’s every reason to suspect that five justices will vote to strike down one of the law’s most important provisions.
That provision is known as “Section 5,” and it requires jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination in voting to obtain the approval of the Department of Justice or a special court in Washington, D.C., before adopting any change in their voting rules. If one of these covered jurisdictions wants to move away from single-member districts to an at-large election, as several tried to do to reduce the voting strength of racial minorities, or change the voting hours, that change has to be “precleared” before going into effect.
This provision has been upheld in eight—yes, eight—previous Supreme Court decisions. Yet Shelby County, Ala., joined by conservative legal organizations, argues that preclearance is now unconstitutional because there’s no longer any significant efforts to discriminate in voting. As a result, the burden the law imposes is no longer justified, the county’s lawyers argue.
Preclearance isn’t the only way to combat discrimination, of course. Another provision of the law, which isn’t being challenged by Shelby County, outlaws any election procedures or rules that discriminate on the basis of race. The provision is valuable but suffers from the same problem that most civil rights laws suffer from: it’s costly and difficult to prove racial discrimination after the fact, and so much discrimination is never remedied.
While it won’t surprise anyone if Roberts votes to strike down Section 5, the real irony will be if he is joined, as most court watchers expect he will be, by Scalia and Thomas.
Section 5’s innovation was to stop the discrimination before it occurs. By forcing jurisdictions—mostly, though not exclusively, in the South—to gain preclearance, the Voting Rights Act stops potentially discriminatory laws from being put into place to begin with. Shelby County is right that there’s much less evidence of racially discriminatory voting rules today. That may be because racism doesn’t exist in America anymore. Or it could be, as the Obama administration argues, because the prophylactic rule of Section 5 has prevented the racism that remains from taking the force of law.
A majority of justices is likely to disagree with the administration. In 2009, the court was presented with this same question. The justices ultimately ducked it, but Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. suggested in his opinion in that case that the time had come to reconsider preclearance. “Things have changed in the South,” he wrote.
Given the recent spate of restrictive voter ID laws enacted over the last few years, which disproportionately affect racial minority voters without the proper form of ID, one might wonder whether things have really changed so much. What else, though, would you expect from Roberts, whose view of race was clearly articulated in an affirmative action case: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Pithy, yes; nuanced, not so much.
While it won’t surprise anyone if Roberts votes to strike down Section 5, the real irony will be if he is joined, as most court watchers expect he will be, by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Those two justices never stop extolling the virtues of originalism, the idea that the Constitution should be interpreted exclusively by the original intentions and public meaning of a provision when it was adopted. Yet there is wide agreement among legal historians that the men who wrote the Fifteenth Amendment after the Civil War to guarantee African-Americans the right to vote intended that provision to grant Congress broad authority to enact laws, like the Voting Rights Act, to protect the vote. They didn’t trust the courts to do that, given the Supreme Court’s decision a decade earlier in the already-notorious case of Dred Scott, which said blacks “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” They trusted Congress—and amended the Constitution to give Congress that power. (Along with other legal scholars, I filed a brief with the Supreme Court to that effect in the Shelby County case.)
Will the originalist justices follow the original meaning of the Fifteenth Amendment in Wednesday’s case? Don’t bet on it. If there’s one silver lining to seeing the preclearance provision invalidated, it is the revelation that for all to see that the purported originalists on the court are nothing of the sort.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the
Supreme Court was faced with the preclearance question in 2006. It was in
Eric Nordstrom, who worked at the Benghazi consulate on the day it was attacked, choked up during Wednesday's hearings. 'It matters,' he said, that the committee investigate what happened before, during, and after the siege.
Corry Booker’s the hero mayor of Newark, and, yes, he’s running for Senate. By Lloyd Grove
The president’s push for $9 an hour has the GOP on the defensive. Eleanor Clift on the strategy behind the move. But this push could take the politics out of the perennial argument.
Meet the new Treasury secretary, same as the old Treasury secretary. Lloyd Green on nominee Jack Lew.
For John Kael Weston and other men on the frontlines of Iraq and Afghanistan drone strikes raise many uncomfortable questions. He writes on why we need clearer policy and guidelines for these silent killers. | <urn:uuid:c9c68944-0630-467f-89b0-3aeefbc1b07f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/27/supreme-court-likely-to-strike-down-the-voting-rights-act-s-section-5.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955483 | 1,295 | 2.671875 | 3 |
This may or may not be too low-tech for you, but should be okay whatever your age group, provided you're a month or so from your science fair. As I recall, most science fairs are in February or March, but that's been awhile ago; my youngest kid is 21.
How about planting two identical seeds in two identical pots. Put one in a sunny place and the other in the closet, cabinet, or other dark place. Otherwise, treat them the same (same amounts of water, fertilizer or plant food.) Notate the difference and explain why there were different results with the two plants.
I am not sure what age group you are taliking about. I saw a fun one at my daughter's school. This girl had used coffee filters and a vaccum hose to prove there is little difference between high and low nicotine cigarettes. The girl wanted to get her dad to quit smoking. Just an idea. :)
When I was in high school, these were my science fair projects.
One year, I showed how different chemical solutions would burn different colors in a flame. For example, a copper solution makes the flame green whereas another one (which I have long forgotten now) would turn it red or purple.
The next year, I created a hologram, using a laser and a sandbox on innertubes. That was pretty neat! I'm sure I got the plans and the supplies from my teacher in both instances.
If you are stuck, I would talk to your science teacher and see what he/she suggests. It would also be helpful to know what sort of science you are interested in: physics, biology, chemistry, etc.
Ooo. I just had a fun idea. If you are into military tactics you could build an example of the Roman Phalanx and write up how affective it was in combat situations for the Roman empire. Not purely science but there is science in it. If you want to see how effective it was watch the movie 300.
Not knowing your age or your mechanical ability this could be challenging. You can go chemical and build a volcano and use chemicals to make it explode. You can go electronic and make a crystal radio.
If your a programmer you can write a program that takes a set of numbers and gives you the character set equivalent I.E. here is a random phone number 626-8147 it could spell.
m a m t 1 g p
n b n u 1 h r
o c b v 1 i s
hmmm... doesn't spell anything, bad example but still a good idea.
You could make and explain a water clock.
You could make and explain a fulcrum and give examples of how fulcrums are used today.
Give me more details about you and the science fair and I can probably come up with a lot more ideas. I time period would help too.
Add your voice to the conversation. Click here to answer this question. | <urn:uuid:d0159e3c-c7a0-43c6-b643-687b2139179c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thriftyfun.com/tf48115069.tip.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962742 | 609 | 3.375 | 3 |
Definitions for appose
The verb appose has 1 senses? (no senses from tagged texts)
(place side by side or in close proximity)
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Synonym.com © 2001-2013, Demand Media, all rights reserved. The database is based on Word Net a lexical database for the English language. see | <urn:uuid:1a096f40-495a-42cd-b892-edb06fd08e80> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.synonym.com/definitions/appose/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.729395 | 131 | 2.6875 | 3 |
State of Education: Nanotechnology studies
At the UAlbany College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, students and residents from across the state spent their summer doing nanotechnology research. Vince Gallagher has a look at what went on.
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At a program poster presentation, students showcased their findings in nanotechnology studies. And these days, the ‘nano’ prefix is being applied more and more. For example, nano-medicine was studied for a noble effort: finding a cure for cancer, using DNA that's folded into what's called a quadroplex.
"That shape allows it to combine to certain proteins on the cancer cell surface and then we can use that to deliver drugs directly to those cancer cells," explained Brad Sutliff, a student from Syracuse.
Another worthy project is brain tumor research
"I found there's a barrier that surrounds the brain, it's actually a fluid that filters out the toxins in the blood, and certain toxins are thought as drugs so the brain rejects them," said Patricia Massa, a Clifton Park student.
So a solution is in the works. There's also a common theme between three students: nano-economics.
"The first student has focused on the aspects of entrepreneurial technology development, looking at incubation, funding, and other aspects of it. The second student looked at how does that compare to other universities, and what are the factors as to why certain universities succeed and others don't do quite as well," said Michael Fancher, nano-economics associate professor.
The third student applied that knowledge to smart cities technology. But regardless of the project, whether it's nano-engineering, nano-science, or nano-bioscience, this field of study is practically a necessity for the 21st century student.
“It's something that puts a point on it to basically to help the economy by using all these researchers and basically help us come up with new products,” said Sina Shahrezai, a student.
"You can definitely see the differences in all the posters around here, everybody is very specific about what they're doing, but without and understanding of the broad topic, it becomes very difficult to actually narrow it down," said Massa.
“It's definitely something that's going to be vaguely literate in, because you're going to see it anywhere from you suntan lotion to your doctor's office,” said Sutliff. | <urn:uuid:cc29b20b-f91f-4458-803b-d1b6c42d62f3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://binghamton.ynn.com/content/features/594682/state-of-education--nanotechnology-studies/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964349 | 536 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Definitions for bibaɪ
Random House Webster's College Dictionary
bis, bi's.Slang. bisexual.
Category: Common Vocabulary, Status (usage)
Origin of bi:
1955–60; by shortening
* Chem. Symbol..
a combining form meaning “twice,”“two”bicarbonate.
* Usage: Most words referring to periods of time and prefixed by bi- are potentially ambiguous. Since bi - can be taken to mean either “twice each” or “every two,” a word like biweekly can be understood as “twice each week” or “every two weeks.” Confusion is often avoided by using the prefix semi- meaning “twice each” (semiweekly; semimonthly; semiannual) or by using the appropriate phrases: twice a week; twice each month; every two months; every two years.
Origin of bi-:
< L; cf. twi -
bismuth, Bi, atomic number 83(noun)
a heavy brittle diamagnetic trivalent metallic element (resembles arsenic and antimony chemically); usually recovered as a by-product from ores of other metals
The New Hacker's Dictionary
Common written abbreviation for Breidbart Index.
Translations for bi
Kernerman English Multilingual Dictionary
a four-winged insect that makes honey.
- نَحْلَـه، نَحْـلArabic
- abelhaPortuguese (BR)
- die BieneGerman
- 蜜蜂Chinese (Trad.)
- شہد کی مکھی ، مگسUrdu
- con ongVietnamese
- 蜜蜂Chinese (Simp.)
Get even more translations for bi » | <urn:uuid:ef12c7fa-e0ca-4ca6-bad9-083a94b39af9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.definitions.net/definition/bi | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.68397 | 422 | 2.703125 | 3 |
One Tree Planted for Every 10 Taiwanese
The island of Taiwan boasts 23 million residents, and thanks to the Taiwan Environmental Information Association (TEIA), a tree has been planted for one out of every ten of them.
TEIA, a local environmental group, has partnered with Earth Day Network for A Billion Acts of Green®, spreading awareness of global warming and showing their commitment to environmental protection and reforestation. TEIA Vice Secretary-General Sharlin Hsia hopes to contribute as many Acts of Green as possible through new initiatives in water issues, recycling, conservation, consumption and traffic. “It doesn’t matter whether you’ve started doing it or are about to start…as long as you make a pledge,” says Hsia.
At over 80 million Acts of Green to date, A Billion Acts of Green® – the largest environmental service campaign in the world – aims to collect one billion Acts of Green before the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro in 2012. A Billion Acts of Green® inspires and rewards both simple individual acts and larger organizational initiatives that further the goal of measurably reducing carbon emissions and supporting sustainability. To summarize less eloquently what Vice Secretary-General Hsia said, every little bit counts! Register to pledge an Act of Green or find organizations holding Earth Day events in your area. | <urn:uuid:e6eff0c9-9e36-4633-88f5-af99bc475ae9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.earthday.org/blog/international/2011/04/14/one-tree-planted-every-10-taiwanese | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931818 | 274 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Globe and Mail
A recent decision by the Supreme Court of Canada was very, well, Canadian.
A young Muslim woman wanted to testify in court while wearing her niqab, saying her religious beliefs required it – and that she had the right to do so. The accused objected, claiming their right to a fair trial would be affected if they could not see the face of the witness. Which right trumps the other?
The Court was split. One judge suggested barring niqabs would effectively bar some women from the justice system. Two other judges felt niqabs should simply be banned in court.
But the majority said, in the best Canadian tradition, find a balance: “..clashes between rights should be approached by reconciling the rights through accommodation if possible, and in the end, if a conflict cannot be avoided, by case-by-case balancing.”
Finding the balance between competing rights is not the easy way. People tend to like clear-cut answers, especially when that answer is “I’m right and you’re wrong.”
At the Ontario Human Rights Commission we’ve seen more and more cases where rights protected by the Human Rights Code or the Charter of Rights conflict. It’s hardly surprising. As our society changes, tensions can appear. Old ways brush up against new ones. Thankfully, more people are aware of their rights and are willing to protect and exercise those rights. But how to do the balancing act?
We developed a way to help balance conflicting rights. The starting point was the understanding, reinforced by courts and tribunals, that no right automatically trumps another.
Context is (almost) everything. Are these real rights? What are the limits? Will adjusting the limits end the conflict? Is the impact substantial or trivial? Lots of questions, but the answers guide the process.
At the heart of all of this analysis is something just as important as the legal language – respect. Recognizing and celebrating differences and finding common ground are the best routes to resolution.
Last week we heard that the “barbershop case” in Toronto settled. A woman asked for a “businessman’s” haircut and was told the barbers could not serve her because of their religion. The case went to the Human Rights Tribunal where the parties agreed to a settlement after, as the owner of the shop said, “we got together and we had a good talk.”
Not every case is resolved by a good talk, but a process for addressing conflicting rights can work in the courts too. This week saw the resolution of the long-running Whatcott case at the Supreme Court. Although the case began in Saskatchewan, the Ontario Human Rights Commission intervened. Our hope was that, as in the niqab case, the Court would see value in a process for balancing rights.
It’s another good decision, a clear example of how to find that sometimes elusive balance of rights. The Court said the section of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Code banning language that “ridicules, belittles or otherwise affronts the dignity of any person or class of persons” is too broad. The message was – you don’t have the right to be protected from offensive language. But, said the Court, prohibiting “hate speech” is still legitimate. (The rules are different across Canada; in Ontario hate speech is only covered under criminal law).
In human rights cases, there isn’t a “one size fits all” solution. When rights conflict resolution will come more easily though cooperation and a process of respectful and open-minded dialogue.
Barbara Hall, Chief Commissioner
Ontario Human Rights Commission | <urn:uuid:dae74c6f-eaab-4efb-9211-e27dab2bc056> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/news_centre/right-balanced-rights | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958145 | 769 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Search for native plants by scientific name, common name or family. If you are not sure what you are looking for, try the Combination Search or our Recommended Species lists.
Search native plant database:
Bransford, W.D. and Dolphia
Lilium canadense L.
Canada lily, Canadian lily, Wild yellow lily
USDA Symbol: LICA3
USDA Native Status: Native to U.S.
This is a large, showy lily, 3-8 ft. tall, which bears flat, mostly whorled, lance-shaped leaves and is crowned with up to 20 pendulous, flowers. From 1 to several nodding flowers, each on a long stalk and ranging in color from yellow to orange-red with dark spots, are at the top of a stem that also bears whorled leaves. The slightly recurved lilies are yellow on the outside, reddish orange with dark spots on the inside.
As many as 16-20 of these beautiful, stalked, nodding flowers may be borne on one plant, either rising from the axils of leafy bracts or in a group at the end of the flowering stalk. The flower buds and roots were gathered and eaten by Indians. A similar Midwestern species, Michigan Lily (L. michiganense), has sepals and petals which curve backward until they touch the flower tube.
Plant CharacteristicsDuration: Perennial Habit: Herb Leaf Complexity: Simple Flower:
Fruit: Size Class:
Bloom InformationBloom Color: Red , Orange , Yellow
Bloom Time: Jun , Jul
AL , AR , CT , DC , DE , GA , IN , KS , KY , MA , MD , ME , NC , NE , NH , NJ , NY , OH , PA , RI , SC , TN , VA , VT , WV Canada: NB
, QC Native Distribution:
N.S. to OH, s. to MD, SC & AL Native Habitat:
Meadows; low thickets; wet woods USDA Native Status: L48(N), CAN(N)
Growing ConditionsLight Requirement: Sun
Soil Moisture: Moist , Wet
Soil Description: Cool, moist, organic soil.
Conditions Comments: Not Available
BenefitConspicuous Flowers: yes
Propagation is easiest from division of the scaly bulb,
which can be dug as soon as the plant goes dormant and the seed is ripe in late summer. Seeds planted just after collection with usually germinate in the fall and overwinter as tiny bulbs, resuming Seed Collection:
Collect 6-8 weeks after bloom period when the capsule
have turned brown and begun to split. Store seeds moist in sealed, refrigerated containers. Seed Treatment:
Not Available Commercially Avail:
From the National Suppliers Directory
According to the inventory provided by Associate Suppliers, this plant is available at the following locations:
- Hinton, WV
From the National Organizations Directory
According to the species list provided by Affiliate Organizations, this plant is either on display or available from the following:
Delaware Nature Society
- Hockessin, DE
Recommended Species Lists
Find native plant species by state. Each list contains commercially available species suitable for gardens and planned landscapes. Once you have selected a collection, you can browse the collection or search within it using the combination search.
View Recommended Species page
Record Modified: 2012-12-07
Research By: TWC Staff | <urn:uuid:550b90e4-ee00-4daa-b294-b0fdc4e7dcb6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=LICA3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.867714 | 739 | 3.25 | 3 |
Oceanic Heat Budget
- Three sources of heat have influence on the ocean. Only one is important.
- Solar energy--it is about 300 w/m2
- Geologic sources:
- Heat generated by the radioactive decay of elements
within Earth--it is about 1 micro watt/m2,
- Heat left over from Earth's formation, and
- Human-induced through the burning of fossil fuels--it is about 3 milliwatt/m2.
- Solar energy is by far the most important because it
is responsible for 100,000 times the contribution of the remaining two.
- The evaporation/precipitation cycle is an important part of the heat energy released
into the atmosphere. About 2/3 is evaporated and 1/3 is radiated heat. | <urn:uuid:222e0e8a-c192-4ab9-ae86-d95b19cd5ff6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/print/educators/heat_budget/background/energy/HB_energy_concepts.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.884332 | 167 | 3.890625 | 4 |
Yellow starthistle (Centaurea solstitialis) originated from Northern Spain. It is a winter annual that is blue-green in color, has a vigorous taproot, and produces bright yellow flowers with sharp, stiff spines surrounding the base of the flower that extend up to ¾ of an inch long. Yellow starthistle grows from 1 inch tall to 4 feet tall. Basal leaves are 1-3 inches long and deeply lobed while upper leaves are smaller and narrower. Stems appear winged and both stem and leaves have a slight whitish nap covering them. Yellow starthistle spreads by seed with a single large
plant producing up to 100,000 seeds. Plumed and plumeless seeds disperse at different times.
Yellow starthistle Fact Sheet | <urn:uuid:ceccb3c1-e94c-44a0-95f4-b4298018c4c9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.colorado.gov/cs/Satellite?c=Page&childpagename=ag_Conservation%2FCBONLayout&cid=1251621067191&pagename=CBONWrapper | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938344 | 158 | 3.515625 | 4 |
A newly-published review of research in the journal Science this week looks at the effects of climate change on Arctic species. Rapid, widespread changes in the Arctic regions, the authors say, have been especially significant to species that depend on the ice for foraging, reproduction, and predator avoidance, such as the hooded seal, ringed seal, Pacific walrus, narwhal, and polar bear. In addition, species once confined to more southerly ranges now are moving northward, invading the upper Arctic zones.
"The Arctic as we know it may soon be a thing of the past," said Eric Post, one of the authors of the report. We'll talk to him about the findings.
Produced by Annette Heist, Senior Producer | <urn:uuid:8a05a851-a5d4-4503-9623-bbcb1329729b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sciencefriday.com/segment/09/11/2009/warming-in-the-arctic.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954789 | 153 | 3.234375 | 3 |
Mo Yan, a novelist who brought to life the turbulence of the 20th century China in vivid and often graphic works set against the tumult of the Japanese invasion and a struggling countryside, on Thursday became the first writer in China to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Peter Englund, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, praised Mr. Mo as an author “who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary” in the announcement, which was hailed in China as a long-awaited landmark heralding the arrival of the country's literature on the world stage.
Born Guan Moye, Mr. Mo adopted the pen name of Mo Yan — meaning “don’t speak” in Chinese. Mr. Mo revealed in a speech in Hong Kong that he chose the name to remind himself of the lines he could not cross as a writer in a country where the government routinely censors the works of authors and artists.
The turbulence Mr. Mo experienced in his early life in the rural north-eastern province of Shandong was reflected in his writing. Forced to leave school when he was only 12, when Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution (1966-76) began, Mr. Mo spent his childhood herding cattle and surviving on weeds and tree bark as he was too poor to eat rice.
The hardships of life in rural China were captured in his breakthrough work Red Sorghum, which brought him nationwide acclaim when made into an award-winning film by renowned director Zhang Yimou in 1987.
His sweeping novels often reflected the turmoil of 20th century China, from the Cultural Revolution to the horrors of family planning campaigns, depicted powerfully in his 2009 work Frog, which tells the story of a midwife haunted by the forced abortions she witnesses.
Mr. Mo has, however, received criticism from some Chinese dissidents and authors for not being critical enough of the Communist Party’s censorship regime and not speaking up for other silenced writers.
Nobel renews debate
Novelist Mo Yan said on Thursday he was “very surprised” on becoming the first writer in China to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, an award that has been hailed here as a watershed moment for Chinese literature’s long march overseas.
“I felt I was not very senior in terms of qualification [among Chinese writers]. There are many good writers and my ranking was not so high,” Mr. Mo told reporters in his hometown of Gaomi, a rural county in northeastern Shandong where he has set most of his novels. “My works... show the life of Chinese people as well as the country’s unique culture and folk customs,” the official Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying. “I was influenced by the cultural elements I witnessed through my childhood. When I picked up the pen for literature creation, the folk cultural elements inevitably entered my novels.”
Mr. Mo rose to national acclaim following his 1987 work Red Sorghum, the story of a young girl in rural China set on the eve of the Japanese occupation. He has since been much celebrated for his dramatic novels usually framed against turbulent events in recent Chinese history.
Among his more popular works here is the 1992 Republic of Wine, which lifts the veil on the drinking culture — and the accompanying corruption — that permeates all levels of government. His 2004 work Big Breasts and Wide Hips, the story of a mother and her seven daughters set against the backdrop of the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the Japanese invasion and the Cultural Revolution, was also critically acclaimed.
While Mr. Mo’s Nobel Prize for his “hallucinatory realism” was widely welcomed by the Chinese media and bloggers as a long-awaited recognition of this country’s writers, the award has also renewed questions about the relationship between politics and literature in a country where a vast censorship mechanism still operates.
Cui Weiping, a professor at the Beijing Film Academy, expressed her displeasure at the decision on the Chinese Twitter equivalent, Sina Weibo, suggesting it would strengthen the hands of the authorities.
The last Chinese Nobel laureate was the jailed political activist and writer Liu Xiaobo, who was awarded the Peace Prize in 2010. As the Vice Chairman of the government-supported China Writers Association, Mr. Mo has faced criticism from some quarters for not speaking out against censorship forcefully enough. Beijing writer Liu Di, on Twitter, questioned his silence on Mr. Liu’s case.
Earlier this year, Mr. Mo was at the centre of a controversy that divided China’s literary world, when a major publishing house arranged for 100 top writers, including him, to commemorate a controversial 1942 speech by Mao Zedong. The Mao speech, from his landmark Yan’an Talks on Literature and Art, laid out the role writers needed to play in the Communist revolution — a speech seen by many as a precursor to the Communist Party’s subsequent censorship of intellectuals in a “rectification” campaign that persecuted thousands. While today’s China is far more open than the days of Mao, the willing participation of 100 writers in the project angered many of their colleagues.
Other Chinese writers have questioned the emphasis placed by dissidents and activists on a writer’s politics rather than on literature. Those familiar with Mr. Mo’s work point out he has not shied away from sensitive issues. His 2009 work Frog tells the story of a midwife haunted by the many forced abortions she witnessed on account of family planning rules.
“The question is, why do we expect writers, particularly Chinese writers, to be the political conscience of the nation to get [a] Nobel [prize]?,” asked Charles Laughlin, professor of modern Chinese literature in the University of Virginia, on Twitter. “I think most people don’t realise how epoch-making this is, as this is the first non-dissident in a Socialist country to win.” | <urn:uuid:21eb846e-6d2e-4424-b790-7a06704d2cf2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thehindu.com/books/literature-nobel-for-chinese/article3988032.ece | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973583 | 1,229 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Affected System: Multi system
|Synonyms and Related Keywords|
Cadmium Toxicity, Cadmium Intoxication
Cadmium has no constructive purpose in the human body. It and its compounds are extremely toxic even in low concentrations, and will bioaccumulate in organisms and ecosystems.
The itai-itai disease ("ouch-ouch disease") was caused by cadmium poisoning.
Cadmium poisoning is usually diagnosed by its symptoms, particularly if there is reason to believe that the patient has been exposed to cadmium. Because patients may not request treatment for up to a day following cadmium exposure, diagnosticians should carefully question any patient who shows symptoms consistent with this condition.
Signs and Symptoms:
Acute exposure to cadmium fumes may cause flu like symptoms including chills, fever, and muscle ache. Symptoms may resolve after a week if there is no respiratory damage. More severe exposures can cause tracheo-bronchitis, pneumonitis, and pulmonary edema. Symptoms of inflammation may start hours after the exposure and include cough, dryness and irritation of the nose and throat, headache, dizziness, weakness, fever, chills, and chest pain.
Inhaling cadmium-laden dust quickly leads to respiratory tract and kidney problems which can be fatal (often from renal failure). Ingestion of any significant amount of cadmium causes immediate poisoning and damage to the liver and the kidneys. Compounds containing cadmium are also carcinogenic.
The bones become soft (osteomalacia), lose bone mass and become weaker (osteoporosis). This causes the pain in the joints and the back, and also increases the risk of fractures. In extreme cases of cadmium poisoning, the mere body weight causes a fracture.
The kidneys lose their function to remove acids from the blood in proximal renal tubular dysfunction. The kidney damage inflicted by cadmium poisoning is irreversible and does not heal over time. The proximal renal tubular dysfunction creates low phosphate levels in the blood (hypophosphatemia), causing muscle weakness and sometimes coma. The dysfunction also causes gout, a form of arthritis due to the accumulation of uric acid crystals in the joints because of high acidity of the blood (hyperuricemia). Another side effect is increased levels of chloride in the blood (hyperchloremia). The kidneys can also shrink up to 30%.
Other patients lose their sense of smell (anosmia).
In the 1950s and 1960s industrial exposure to cadmium was high. But as the toxic effects of cadmium became apparent, industrial limits on cadmium exposure have been reduced in most industrialized nations and many policy makers agree on the need to reduce exposure further. While working with cadmium it is important to do so under a fume hood to protect against dangerous fumes. Silver solder, for example, which contains cadmium, should be handled with care. Serious toxicity problems have resulted from long-term exposure to cadmium plating baths.
Buildup of cadmium levels in the water, air, and soil has been occurring particularly in industrial areas. Environmental exposure to cadmium has been particularly problematic in Japan where many people have consumed rice that was grown in cadmium contaminated irrigation water.
Food is another source of cadmium. Plants may only contain small or moderate amounts in non-industrial areas, but high levels may be found in the liver and kidneys of adult animals.
Cigarettes are also a significant source of cadmium exposure. Although there is generally less cadmium in tobacco than in food, the lungs absorb cadmium more efficiently than the gut. This goes for marijuana as well as tobacco.
Aside from tobacco smokers, people who live near hazardous waste sites or factories that release cadmium into the air have the potential for exposure to cadmium in air. However, numerous state and federal regulations in the United States control the amount of cadmium that can be released to the air from waste sites and incinerators so that properly regulated sites are not hazardous. The general population and people living near hazardous waste sites may be exposed to cadmium in contaminated food, dust, or water from unregulated releases or accidental releases. Numerous regulations and use of pollution controls are enforced to prevent such releases.
Workers can be exposed to cadmium in air from the smelting and refining of metals, or from the air in plants that make cadmium products such as batteries, coatings, or plastics. Workers can also be exposed when soldering or welding metal that contains cadmium. Approximately 512,000 workers in the United States are in environments each year where a cadmium exposure may occur. Regulations that set permissible levels of exposure, however, are enforced to protect workers and to make sure that levels of cadmium in the air are considerably below levels thought to result in harmful effects.
Some sources of phosphate in fertilizers contain Cadmium in amounts of up to 100 mg/kg, which can lead to an increase in the concentration of Cadmium in soil. (for example in New Zealand) Nickel-cadmium batteries are one of the most popular and most common cadmium-based products.
The pathophysiology of the heavy metal toxidromes remains relatively constant. For the most part, heavy metals bind to oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfhydryl groups in proteins, resulting in alterations of enzymatic activity. This affinity of metal species for sulfhydryl groups serves a protective role in heavy metal homeostasis as well. Increased synthesis of metal binding proteins in response to elevated levels of a number of metals is the body´s primary defense against poisoning. For example, the metalloproteins are induced by many metals. These molecules are rich in thiol ligands, which allow high-affinity binding with cadmium, copper, silver, and zinc among other elements. Other proteins involved in both heavy metal transport and excretion through the formation of ligands are ferritin, transferrin, albumin, and hemoglobin.
Although ligand formation is the basis for much of the transport of heavy metals throughout the body, some metals may compete with ionized species such as calcium and zinc to move through membrane channels in the free ionic form.
The study of health effects of cadmium with respect to the cardiovascular system and calcium metabolism disproved the hypothesis that exposure to cadmium would lead to an increase in blood pressure and in the prevalence of hypertension and other cardiovascular diseases. On the other hand, there was a positive relationship between urinary cadmium (Cd-U) and both serum alkaline phosphatase activity and urinary excretion of calcium. The regression coefficients obtained after adjustment for significant co-variates indicated that, when Cd-U increased two-fold, serum alkaline phosphatase and urinary calcium rose by 4% and 0.25 mmol/24 h, respectively. These findings suggest that calcium metabolism is gradually affected as cadmium accumulates in the body. The morbidity associated with the latter phenomenon is still unknown, and requires further investigation, preferably in a longitudinal prospective population study, in which the incidence of morbid events would be monitored in relation to the cadmium body burden.
Cadmium derives its toxicological properties from its chemical similarity to zinc an essential micronutrient for plants, animals and humans. Cadmium is biopersistent and, once absorbed by an organism, remains resident for many years (over decades for humans) although it is eventually excreted.
In humans, long-term exposure is associated with renal disfunction. High exposure can lead to obstructive lung disease and has been linked to lung cancer, although data concerning the latter are difficult to interpret due to compounding factors. Cadmium may also produce bone defects (osteomalacia, osteoporosis) in humans and animals. In addition, the metal can be linked to increased blood pressure and effects on the myocardium in animals, although most human data do not support these findings.
The average daily intake for humans is estimated as 0.15µg from air and 1µg from water. Smoking a packet of 20 cigarettes can lead to the inhalation of around 2-4µg of cadmium, but levels may vary widely.
The organ systems affected and the severity of the toxicity vary with the particular heavy metal involved, the age of the individual, and the level of toxicity.
Also see Signs and Symptoms.
Approximately 2-7% of ingested cadmium is absorbed through the gastrointestinal tract, and its absorption is enhanced when the diet is deficient in calcium, iron, or protein (Lauwerys 1994). Absorption through the respiratory tract is more efficient, ranging from 15% to as much as 50% of an inhaled dose (Lauwerys 1994, Goyer 1996). Both these routes are potential sources of exposure in children.
Cadmium binds to red blood cells, plasma albumin, and metallothionein, which is synthesized in the liver and also by the placenta. Methallothionein may serve as a barrier to protect the fetus (Goyer 1996); however, in cases of excessive maternal exposure, it appears that some cadmium will cross the placenta (Frery 1993).
Cadmium is initially detoxified in the liver through the formation of a metallothionein-cadmium complex, which is slowly released from that organ. Although initially non-toxic, the cadmium-metallothionein complex can be nephrotoxic as it accumulates in the kidneys (Goyer 1996, Dorian 1995).
The average blood level of cadmium in adults without excessive or occupational exposure is about 1 mg/dL or less, as is the amount excreted in the urine in the adult population. Blood and/or urinary cadmium excretions exceeding 5 mg/dL generally indicate excessive exposure (Barnhart 1984). Human breast milk concentrations of cadmium are usually very low.
Cases of severe acute cadmium poisoning are rare.
Heavy metal toxicities are relatively uncommon. However, failure to recognize and treat heavy metal toxicities can result in significant morbidity and mortality.
It affects all races.
Several points are of concern in heavy metal toxicity with respect to age. Generally, children are more susceptible to the toxic effects of the heavy metals and are more prone to accidental exposures. However, company workers, comprising of adults, are no exception.
* Little or no difference in prevalence exists.
* Occupations with heavy metal exposure that predominantly involve a particular sex are associated with higher rates of exposure in that sex.
* A history of ingestion or exposure is the most critical aspect of diagnosing heavy metal toxicity. A complete history, including occupational, hobby, recreational, and environmental exposure is crucial in diagnosing heavy metal toxicity.
* Most acute presentations involve industrial exposure.
* A history of ingestion often leads to the diagnosis in children.
- Metallic taste and increased salivation
- Irritation of respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts.
- Inhalation can cause respiratory toxicity after a latency period of several hours, including a mild, self-limited illness of fever, cough, malaise, headaches and abdominal pain, similar to metal fume fever.
- At higher doses, chemical pneumonitis may occur, with labored breathing, chest pain, and a sometimes fatal hemorrhagic pulmonary edema.
- Ingested cadmium causes nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain and tenesmus.
Chronic symptoms may include:
- Kidney damage (proteinuria and azotemia) anemia, liver injury (jaundice) and defective bond structure. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease for those chronically exposed by inhalation.
Bioaccumulation of Cadmium in the system.
Three main tests are used for measuring cadmium exposures: cadmium in whole blood, cadmium in urine, and measurement of plasma proteins in urine. A number of other tests may be employed in investigating cadmium-related health effects.
A. Cadmium in Blood
Mainly because of ease of analysis, cadmium in whole blood has been used as a biological indicator of occupational exposures. Cadmium concentrations in blood are mainly a reflection of recent exposure. The ACGIH suggests that monitoring in blood is preferred during the initial year of exposure and whenever changes in the degree of exposure are suspected. In workers not currently exposed, cadmium in blood decreases substantially. When declining blood cadmium levels reach a steady state, they are considered to reflect body burden from previous exposures.
Normal values of cadmium in blood of non-smokers are generally less than 1 ug/l. Higher average values of 1.4 to 4.2 ug/l are found in smokers, though individual blood cadmium levels in smokers may exceed these values.
In 1991, the Ontario Ministry of Labour suggested medical assessment for exposed workers whose blood cadmium level reaches 11 ug/l. However, OSHA recently chose 5 ug Cd/l of whole blood as a level at which further medical surveillance is required of American workers. If this level of cadmium in blood is accompanied by protein in the urine, then OSHA requires workers to be medically removed. A level of 15 ug Cd/l is cause for removal without proteinuria. The ACGIH has also recently proposed a Biological Exposure Index of 5 ug/l of cadmium in blood. The BEI "is intended to prevent the potential for increased urinary excretion of markers of renal dysfunction in almost all workers".
B. Cadmium in Urine
Cadmium concentration in urine is considered to be more reflective of body burden in currently-exposed workers than cadmium in blood, and is the most widely used biological measure of chronic exposure to cadmium. Cadmium in urine increases with age, cigarette smoking, and exposures in the general and occupational environments.
The normal concentration of cadmium in urine is from 0.1 to 1 ug/g creatinine. Until recently, a measure of 10 ug Cd/g creatinine has been regarded as a threshold for kidney effects. However, a number of recent studies have cast doubt on this figure. Evidence of subtle kidney effects are demonstrated at levels a low as 2 ug Cd/g creatinine. Levels of 5 to 1ug Cd/g creatinine are associated with a 10% risk of increased excretion of enzymes and proteins. OSHA recently chose a level of 3 ug Cd/g creatinine as a trigger for enhancing medical surveillance of cadmium. If this level of cadmium in urine is accompanied by proteinuria, then OSHA requires medical removal of the affected worker. A level of 15 ug/g creatinine is cause for removal without proteinuria. The ACGIH has recommended a new Biological Exposure Index (BEI) of 5 ug/g creatinine for cadmium in urine.
C. Markers of early Renal Effects from Cadmium Exposure
While not a measure of cadmium exposure per se, the increase of proteins in urine is a marker of damage to the kidneys which precedes or accompanies most health effects associated with cadmium exposure. One particular protein -- beta2-microglobulin (BMG) -- has been extensively used as an indicator of cadmium-related damage to the proximal tubules of the kidney. BMG excretion may be elevated due to other causes: anti-cancer drugs, antibacterial antibiotics such as streptomycin, anti-inflammatory compounds, myeloma, flu and upper respiratory tract infections. These factors can be readily identified, and need not confound the diagnosis of cadmium-related proteinuria.
Levels of BMG are considered elevated by most investigators at 300 ug/g creatinine, although levels as low as 200 or as high as 500 ug/g creatinine have been suggested as abnormal. OSHA mandates a removal level of 1500 ug BMG/g creatinine, if cadmium levels in blood or urine are elevated.
Exposures to cadmium for 20 years at a level 50 ug/m3 (0.05 mg/m3), the current Ontario limit, give rise to a greatly increased incidence of tubular proteinuria as indicated by output of BMG.
In recent years, a number of other markers for cadmium effects have been recommended. Several of these markers appear to be more sensitive to the early effects of cadmium on the kidney, and/or more stable than BMG in urine. The following markers have been assessed and shown to have significant association with cadmium exposure:
- retinol-binding protein (RBP) in urine;
- albumin in urine;
- N-acetyl-D-glucosaminidase (NAG) in urine;
- metallothionein (MT) in urine;
- urinary transferrin;
- most tubular antigens.
Conventional indicators of renal function such as total urinary protein, serum urea, and serum creatinine are considered insensitive indicators of early renal dysfunction, but may indicate the progression of cadmium-related damage.
Direct Measurement of Cadmium Concentration in Liver and Kidney
Neutron activation analysis is a new method which allows for the direct measurement of the cadmium burden in the liver and kidney. The technique involves use of an ultrasonic scan to precisely locate the target organs, followed by irradiation with a neutron beam which allows assessment of organ burden by measurement of cadmium-specific gamma rays. The radiation dosage is less than most conventional x-rays.
For workers who have been out of exposure for some time or who have suffered kidney damage, this technique can provide a more accurate measure of body burden and may help in determining if non-specific diseases such as emphysema are cadmium-related. This equipment has been employed in England to resolve compensation disputes. Only one Canadian facility is currently equipped to carry out this kind of analysis -- at McMaster University in Hamilton.
Estimation of liver burden is considered more appropriate because once renal damage occurs, cadmium excretion increases and the kidneys lose their cadmium burden. Liver and kidney burdens increase until a 40 ppm concentration is reached in the liver, after which kidney levels decrease while liver burden continues to rise. One study measured a mean liver cadmium burden of 0.6 ppm in non-exposed controls.
X-ray fluorescence, another technique for in vivo measurement of cadmium body burden, has also been developed recently, but is not generally available at this time.
Cadmium Exposure Limits:
Exposure limits for cadmium and its compounds have declined steadily over time, as the knowledge about cadmium-related diseases has grown. The current Ontario time-weighted average limit of 0.05 mg/m3 is considered too high by many scientists. Ontario is currently considering a new limit of 0.02 mg/m3, to match the lower Dutch limit. The Dutch Working Group of Experts which reviewed cadmium's toxicity in 1980, actually proposed a health-based limit of 0.01 mg/m3. However, this limit was not considered feasible at the time. The cadmium limit is again under review in the Netherlands.
In Sweden, a limit of 0.01 mg/m3 is in effect for all new industries employing cadmium or its compounds.
In 1990, the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH), an influential body which produces a list of Threshold Limit Values adopted by many governments as enforceable occupational exposure limits, proposed a new total dust limit of 0.01 mg/m3 for cadmium, and a 0.002 mg/m3 respirable dust limit.
In 1992, after an exhaustive review of occupational exposures, toxicity and feasibility issues, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration adopted a new cadmium limit of 0.005 mg/m3, one-tenth of the current Ontario limit, in order to prevent kidney effects and cancer in exposed workers.
In 1991 and 1992, a lively debate occurred in the scientific literature on the question of a protective occupational exposure limit. Proposed protective limits varied from a low of 0.001 mg/m3 through 0.01 mg/m3. One author suggested a limit in the range of 0.01 - 0.1 mg/m3 might be protective, but put some emphasis on 0.02 mg/m3. Although there is no consensus on the level of a protective limit, there is considerable agreement in the scientific community that a limit of 0.05 mg/m3 does not provide sufficient protection, and that kidney effects occur at this level of exposure.
Independent Interventions/First Aid:
NOTE! PREVENT DISPERSION OF DUST! STRICT HYGIENE!
|General First Aid: IN ALL CASES CONSULT A DOCTOR!|
Route of Exposure
|Inhalation||Cough. Headache. Symptoms may be delayed (see Notes).||Fresh air rest. Half-upright position. Artificial respiration if indicated. Refer for medical attention.|
|Skin||Remove contaminated clothes. Rinse and then wash skin with water and soap.|
|Eyes||Redness. Pain.||First rinse with plenty of water for several minutes (remove contact lenses if easily possible) then take to a doctor.|
|Ingestion||Abdominal pain. Diarrhoea. Headache. Nausea. Vomiting.||Rest. Refer for medical attention.|
|Notes for ICSC Information|
|Reacts violently with fire extinguishing agents such as water foam carbon dioxide and halons. Depending on the degree of exposure periodic medical examination is indicated. The symptoms of lung edema often do not become manifest until a few hours have passed and they are aggravated by physical effort. Rest and medical observation are therefore essential. Do NOT take working clothes home.|
If intentional ingestion or overdose is suspected, place patient in closely a monitored unit and consult a medical toxicologist and psychiatrist.
* Contact a certified poison control center or medical toxicologist.
* Consult a gastroenterologist if the possibility of corrosive GI effects is present.
Eat a balanced diet that provides enough calcium, iron, protein, and zinc.
No treatment has been proven effective for cadmium poisoning.
|Follow Up Treatment/Management|
Further inpatient care:
Encourage patient to eat foods rich in calcium, iron, protein, and zinc.
Further outpatient care:
* Care must be taken to remove the source of heavy metal contamination.
* Report industrial-related toxicities to OSHA or; report childhood cases to the local health department.
· Avoid Smoking.
· Avoid hazardous areas or hazardous work such as welding.
Complications include pneumonitis and pulmonary edema. Chronic exposure may cause anemia, emphysema or renal failure, and cadmium may be a risk factor in the development of prostate or lung cancer.
The prognosis depends on the nature and severity of the cadmium load. Most cases of mild exposure resolve spontaneously after a few days. In other cases, cadmium can lead to permanent damage with shortened lifespan, or even death.
Cadmium may be carcinogenic.
Long-term exposure may also result in bone defects including osteoporosis.
Teach the patient on how to prevent cadmium poisoning.
· Failure to report such toxicity to the local health authorities.
Return to List of Diseases and Disorders | <urn:uuid:3d90ceed-ed17-4e0a-b437-6b9345fed550> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://medicaljournal.blogspot.com/2007/05/cadmium-poisoning.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924654 | 4,976 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Carmen and Don José
One of opera's most beloved love stories
by David Johnson
Carmen was a fiery gypsy girl who worked in a cigar factory. An army officer, Don José, was called to the factory because a fight broke out. He arrested Carmen because she hit another woman. He became enchanted with the exotic Carmen, and let her escape.
Don José deserted the army and followed Carmen into the mountains. But the beautiful gypsy soon tired of the steadfast Don José, and she fell in love with Escamillo, a dashing bullfighter. Devastated, Don José confronted Carmen outside the bullring. As the crowd cheered Escamillo in the background, Don José stabbed Carmen to death.
Fact Monster™ Database, © 2007 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:7d8edd5b-3a60-4da9-9f79-9159d90fc9b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.factmonster.com/spot/love16.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948104 | 166 | 2.53125 | 3 |
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Since classroom management is one of the toughest aspects of first-year teaching, this installment of "Been There, Done That" asks seasoned pros to think back on the challenges they encountered early on and how they handled them. You can use their insights and ideas to help you resolve behavior issues that pop up in your own classroom from time to time. When you think back to your first year of teaching, what was one of your most difficult challenges and how did you handle it?
By Emily Jackman Age Range: 5 to 11
A training program titled during the month of April. THe training was organized by the SEC and provided by trainers from the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development. The program focused on a set of highly effective practical strategies for female teachers to use in managing a boys only environmnet of learning and teaching.
Here are eleven techniques that you can use in your classroom that will help you achieve effective group management and control.
Strategies for Good Classroom Management My biceps don’t bulge and my hair is blond. Intimidation is not my weapon. | <urn:uuid:6706c2a6-73d7-424b-ad7e-416573609433> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pearltrees.com/bhestep/student-teachers-pearl/id2567480 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94221 | 271 | 2.734375 | 3 |
The House at Sugar Beach
Helene Cooper talks about her memoir that tells the story of her family in Liberia -- and by extension chronicles Liberia's history.
The history of the West African nation of Liberia is closely linked to the history of the United States. Modern Liberia was a U.S. creation -- a colony for the resettlement of freed American slaves.
Journalist Helene Cooper's great, great, great, great grandfather was one of the freed slaves who first colonized Liberia -- he was on board Liberia's own version of the Mayflower -- the ship was called the Elizabeth, and set sail from New York harbor in 1820.
Cooper's family not only helped found Liberia, it was also part of the elite that governed the country for more than a century.
But things changed drastically in 1980, when the Liberian government was overthrown.
Marco Werman speaks with Helene Cooper about her memoir, "The House at Sugar Beach - In Search of a Lost African Childhood." It tells the story of Cooper's family in Liberia -- and by extension chronicles Liberia's history -- from its founding by freed American slaves to its modern civil war.
PRI's "The World" is a one-hour, weekday radio news magazine offering a mix of news, features, interviews, and music from around the globe. "The World" is a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. More "The World." | <urn:uuid:f33c74b4-52fe-4536-a1c0-7a1e74ee3c05> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pri.org/stories/arts-entertainment/books/house-at-sugar-beach.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959969 | 300 | 2.875 | 3 |
Article IV, §4, U.S. Constitution, requires The United States to protect each of the States against Invasion. It says:
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion... [emphasis added]
In Federalist No. 43 (3rd para under 6.), James Madison says of this provision:
A protection against invasion is due from every society to the parts composing it...
Article I, §8, clause 15 grants to Congress the power to provide for calling forth the Militia to [among other things] "repel Invasions".
But the federal government has persistently refused to call forth the Militia to protect the States on our Southern Border from Invasion!
So! What are States to do when their Lands are invaded, their citizens murdered and kidnapped, and our young corrupted by drug-trafficking invaders? And State budgets implode from unconstitutional federal mandates that we subsidize the invaders! Are the States to sit with folded hands and be destroyed because the federal government refuses to perform its constitutional duty? No! We are Americans! If the federal government refuses to perform its constitutional duty to call out the Militia to protect the States against Invasion, then the States must perform that Duty.
Article 1, §8, clause 16 grants to Congress the power to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States. This clause reserves to the States the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.
What is the "Militia"? Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) tells us:
The body of soldiers in a state enrolled for discipline, but not engaged in actual service except in emergencies; as distinguished from regular troops, whose sole occupation is war or military service. The militia of a country are the able bodied men organized into companies, regiments and brigades, with officers of all grades, and required by law to attend military exercises on certain days only, but at other times left to pursue their usual occupations.
So! One of the functions of the Militia - that body of weekend warriors trained by the States and whose officers are chosen by the States, is to defend the States against Invasions. As we have seen, Congress is authorized to provide for calling the Militia into service to repel invasions. But what if the federal government refuses to act?
Alexander Hamilton provides the answer in Federalist No. 29. Hamilton shows that one of the purposes of the Militia is to protect the citizens of the States from threats to their liberties posed by the federal government (7th & 12th paras); and that the States' reservation of power to appoint the Officers secures to them an influence over the Militia greater than that of the federal government (9th para). On the use of the Militia to repel Invasions, Hamilton says (13th para):
...it would be natural and proper that the militia of a neighboring State should be marched into another, to resist a common enemy...
True, it was contemplated that the "United States" would be the entity which protects the States against Invasion (Art. IV, §4). But when the federal government has demonstrated its determination that the States ARE TO BE OVERRUN BY INVADERS, then the States are within their Sovereign Rights to employ the Militia to defend The People from those into whose hands the federal government has demonstrated its determination to deliver them.
In Federalist No. 46 (7th & 8th paras), James Madison speaks of conflicts between the federal government and the States, caused by encroachments of the former. He does not counsel subservience by the States. He does not counsel submitting the issue to a federal judge! Instead, Madison describes various forms of non-violent Resistance properly employed by the States, alone or in unison with other States:
...and where the sentiments of several adjoining States happened to be in unison, would present obstructions which the federal government would hardly be willing to encounter.
In Madison's magnificent 9th para, he speaks of a federal government so consumed with madness that it sends its regular army against the States:
...Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate [State] governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition [of the federal government], more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of... [italics added]
Madison would be disappointed that we permitted this current state of affairs to arise:
...Let us rather no longer insult them [the American People] with the supposition that they can ever reduce themselves to the necessity of making the experiment, by a blind and tame submission to the long train of insidious measures which must precede and produce it.
But we must start from where we are. We can restore our constitutional republic. We can rein in a lawless federal government which usurps powers even while refusing to perform its basic constitutional duty of protecting the States from Invasion.
The Federalist Papers were written to explain the proposed Constitution and to induce The People to ratify it. Madison is the "Father of The Constitution". These are the highest authority on the meaning of our Constitution. Clearly, the States may use their Militia to defend their borders, and States may assist one another in this endeavor. And We the People must throw out of office the federal representatives and officials who refuse to perform their constitutionally mandated Duty to defend our borders. Madison writes in Federalist No. 44 (17th para) respecting remedies against a lawless federal government:
...and in the last resort a remedy must be obtained from the people who can, by the election of more faithful representatives, annul the acts of the usurpers....
When the federal government refuses to obey the Constitution, the States must enforce it. And WE the People must throw the faithless ones out of office. THIS is how we restore our constitutional Republic. PH
J.W. Coleman, read this discussion.
The linked essays.
And post any remaining questions here.
See the 14th paragraph of Federalist No. 43. Here James Madison explains the reasoning for inclusion of this text in the Constitution. Among other reasons, he notes that a federation is not suited for different forms of governments of it's members. Thus, since the existing members (the 13 original states) are Republics with Republican Constitutions, those existing as well as any new state members shall all be Republican forms of government. As Madison points out; how could our federal Constitution operate if some of the member States were Monarchies, some Aristocracies, some Democracies, and the rest Republics? It couldn't. Take for example the appointment of Senators by the State Legislatures. How could that work if some States had no Legislatures commonly found in a Republic? The GUARANTEE is beheld when a State seeks to join the Union. When Hawaii and Alaska were granted Statehood and membership into the union, they had to draft a Constitution which showed that they planned a Republic through their respective Constitutions. Had they submitted a Constitution representing a monarchy, the existing members (through their representatives at the federal level) could have refused the membership.
From Publius Huldah's "Basic Concepts of 'Government'" Essay we see that she has referenced Webster's 1828 Dictionary in citing the definition of 'Republic' as "...a state in which the exercise of the sovereign power is lodged in representatives elected by the people.." Additionally a CONSTITUTIONAL Republic is a republic which is LIMITED by the Constitution which created it.
Our Federal Government was created by the Constitution as a Republic. This fact may be affirmed in nearly all of the Federalist Papers. Thus since the Federal government is one of representatives exercising the sovereign power of the people WITHIN THE CONFINES OF THE CONSTITUTION, there is no reason for the federal government to guarantee a republican form for itself since they cannot by legislation alter the republican form already built into the Constitution. The CONSTITUTION is the guarantee at the Federal level.
Does that help? Or is further clarification necessary?
The first phrase of Federalist No 43, Para 14 states:
"In a confederacy founded on republican principles, and composed of republican members, the superintending government ought clearly to possess authority to defend the system against aristocratic or monarchial innovations. The more intimate the nature of such a union may be, the greater interest have the members in the political institutions of each other; and the greater right to insist that the forms of government under which the compact was entered into should be SUBSTANTIALLY maintained." (Caps in original)
Here Madison is Stating that the confederacy (the United States government) is established by the political capacities of the several States. And that to preserve that confederacy, the States have a right to expect the FEDERAL government to maintain newly admitted States to the same measure of government (republican form). Madison recognizes that the States, as members of the proposed confederacy have a peculiar interest in the forms of government of the other members, and that in order that the confederacy "...be SUBSTANTIALLY maintained." , the republican form must be synonymous throughout.
I suspect that the 2nd part of your question; "does this apply to the Federal government?" is most properly your concern. The reason for the confusion does not originate from the Constitution, but rather the government's departure from it. That is; while the document establishes a Constitutional Republic, the officials (all three branches) erroneously behave as though it is not. It is the usurpation of power by the government which is outside the boundaries of the Constitution, rather than the founding document itself. In fact, the Executive (zero) behaves as though it is a monarchy or at least an Aristocracy. Congress behaves as if a democracy, and the courts find positions in both realms.
The whole purpose of this study group is to show, nay to PROVE, that the government has limits, that all Acts beyond those limits are mere usurpation and deserve to be treated as such, and that the People- not the government, determine the extents of federal authority. That the Constitution- Not the sniveling masses, nor the special interests is the manifestation of the will of the people; that the federal government was NOT a party to the convention which established it and had no say (and still doesn't) in the extent of it's power. Finally, that there are political remedies woven into the political fabric of the Constitution that we must exercise if we are to preserve the principles which the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence embody.
And this is why we must first equip ourselves with the truth, and in doing so, be able to distinguish true candidates; worthy of office, from those who only pay lip service to the Constitution or misconstrue it altogether. | <urn:uuid:ac903ee8-4163-499b-850d-fd45dd6ee775> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.teapartynation.com/forum/topics/the-invasion-of-arizona-the?groupUrl=constitutionstudygroup&groupId=3355873%3AGroup%3A98452&id=3355873%3ATopic%3A299476&page=4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958723 | 2,289 | 2.921875 | 3 |
New research details how a loss in biodiversity more often than not increases the transmission of disease. As humans have disrupted ecosystems around the world, we have aided the spread of new diseases and ones that already afflict us.
The unassuming opossum, a soft gray marsupial that slinks around at night, glimpsed by the occasional car headlight, is an unlikely mediator in the spread of Lyme disease. But scientists have found that the opossum, whose claws are well-suited to picking off the irksome ticks that try to bite them, can actually serve as a biological buffer between the Lyme bacterium and the humans it sickens.
But what happens when the opossum's habitat -- the Northeast forest -- is bulldozed? Lyme disease hops aboard the white-footed mouse, a species less adept at killing piggybacking ticks, and less reliant on the forest for survival.
The tale of the opossum is one of many in a review article published in Nature this week, which details how a loss in biodiversity more often than not increases the transmission of disease. As humans have disrupted ecosystems around the world, it seems we have helped to unlock some diseases we'd never encountered before, like HIV and SARS, and aided the spread of others that already afflict us.
In 2009, there were 30,000 new confirmed cases of Lyme disease in the United States, up from about 12,000 in 1995. Scientists have sought many explanations for this uptick. But one detailed in the paper is the explosion of mice, deer and other tick hosts with the demise of their predators and fellow forest dwellers.
West Nile encephalitis, a mosquito-borne disease, meanwhile, has raced through communities in the United States with the help of birds who act as hosts, similarly to mice and deer. Three recent studies found that there was increased risk and more cases of West Nile in humans in places with low bird diversity. That's partly because the "weedy" species like crows that stick around urban and suburban zones when other bird species have fled for better habitat tend to be excellent hosts for the disease.
Felicia Keesing, a biologist at Bard College and the lead author of the paper, has been studying the ecology of Lyme disease in Northeastern forests for several years. She says evidence is mounting of the link between biodiversity and disease.
"We knew of specific examples, of individual diseases," says Keesing. "But what's come to light is how general the pattern is for so many kinds of diseases."
Keeping diseases under control is one of many "ecosystem services" identified in recent years. Among ecosystems' other handy skills are sequestering carbon, and keeping drought at bay.
Biodiversity doesn't only seem to protect humans from disease; it can also help plants and animals. Coral and amphibians, for example, are better able to ward off disease when exposed to a greater variety of microbes.
Human disease, however, is typically viewed as medical or public health problem as opposed to an ecological problem. Only recently have policymakers begun to consider conservation in planning for public health.
The Environmental Protection Agency recently created an initiative for biodiversity and human health, and is looking at policies like habitat protection, zoning, biological control, and restricting human access to wildlife to prevent disease transmission. "Now there is the beginning of a movement to bring epidemiology and ecology together," says Montira Pongsiri, who leads the division for EPA.
And the World Health Organization is also increasingly interested in the role of conservation in stopping disease. "If we see biodiversity loss increasing infectious disease transmission as a general rule, that's an argument for conservation as well as being prepared to handle consequences," says Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, a senior expert on health and environment at WHO. But conservation is rarely a top priority in most countries where biodiversity is decreasing the fastest. And meanwhile, the health community tends to be more focused on saving lives in the short term than planning for the future.
But ecologists and health experts aren't the only ones worried about biodiversity loss, or motivated to do something about it. A report released in October by the U.N. Environment Program found that declines in biodiversity could cost the business sector between $10 billion and $50 billion, more even, than terrorism. | <urn:uuid:7103b0fe-d12d-4786-8f43-24a4286d1661> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wgbh.org/News/Articles/2010/12/2/Declining_Biodiversity_Speeds_Spreading_Of_Disease.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964757 | 885 | 3.578125 | 4 |
Solutions are good ideas turned into practice.
Finding science-based solutions to complex, real-world, environmental problems often requires:
- the engagement of many communities from the decision-making, scientific and stakeholder communities;
- decisionmaker needs identification and connection to scientific capabilities;
- effectively targeting limited dollars to producing science-based tools for real-world application;
- tapping the full range of scientific talent in terms of discipline, institutions, geography, and capability; often through grants and contracts;
- building trust through skilled facilitation and communication between different stakeholders; and,
- careful attention to putting science-based tools into the hands of end-users.
NCSE Science Solutions has experience, expertise and dedicated capacity to conduct programs that address these challenges for specific environmental challenges. Some ongoing NCSE Science Solutions programs are:
- The National Commission on Science for Sustainable Forestry provides practical information and approaches to serve the needs of forest managers, practitioners and policymakers to improve sustainable forestry.
- The Wildlife Habitat Policy Research Program produces information and tools that can accelerate the conservation of wildlife habitat in the United States.
- The Outlook Forest Research Dialog enhances research coordination, collaboration, and partnership within the forestry community.
Each NCSE Science Solutions program is designed to meet the specific needs of participants and end-users, constraints of resources and time, and the real-world details of the particular environmental issue addressed. Often NCSE brings to bear its capacity to:
- Convene a range of stakeholders from different communities in forums where they can work together. This can mean a variety of funders addressing a shared challenge, an agency reaching out to a variety of communities, or communities in conflict over a particular issue. Such challenges often require a neutral forum with expert facilitation and carefully constructed processes that lead to the development of consensus and certain outputs, such as a prioritized research agenda.
- Develop decision-making tools that require scientific and technical ability outside of their own organizations and that is often scattered across disciplines, institutions and locations. This often requires the management of a grants and contracts program.
- Dissemination of knowledge and tools to decision-makers from a variety of organizations and locations in a form which can readily be used.
If you have an environmental challenge that would benefit from the expertise of NCSE Science Solutions please contact Chris Bernabo, Program Director, [email protected], or Peter Saundry, Executive Director, NCSE, [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:ef21f720-9713-4353-81f1-31fbc69b3f17> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ncseonline.org/programs/science-solutions | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922394 | 513 | 2.84375 | 3 |
What Happened to Super 8 Film, and Why Was It So Great?
Siobhan Hagan | nyu.edu
Steven Spielberg has often attributed his career to his childhood use of Super 8 cameras and film, the innovative format that made it easier than ever to shoot home movies.
Before Kodak introduced Super 8 film, making home movies was a pain. People first had to thread old-fashioned 16 mm film into a camera by hand and, on its first pass through the camera, the film was exposed along only half of its width. The camera then had to be opened and the spools flipped so that the unexposed edge of the film could be recorded on during the film's second pass through the camera. After the film was processed, it was slit in half, lengthwise, in order to make two lengths of 8 mm film to fit into a projector.
Super 8 didn't have any of those hassles and provided great image quality, revolutionizing the amateur film genre in the process. Kodak launched Super 8 mm film in May 1965, along with two cameras, the M2 and M4. Super 8 was cheaper and more convenient than the previous, cumbersome Normal 8 format, since all you had to do was pop the film cassette into the camera, take it out after recording and turn it in for processing.
"The advent of the Super 8 cassetted film really helped spawn the home movie rage in the '60s and '70s," Chris Johnson, product manager of Kodak's entertainment imaging division, told Life's Little Mysteries. "It was an easy to use and affordable option for consumers."
To get an idea of what Super 8 movies looked like, recall the opening credits of the late-1980s and early '90s TV show , "The Wonder Years." Each Super 8 cassette packed only enough film to create three minutes of colorful, soft and somewhat grainy footage, but it was enough time for amateur filmmakers to pan around their living rooms or back yards while everyone waved at the camera.
Watch "The Wonder Years" Super 8 film-style opening:
The original Super 8 movies were silent until 1973, when Super 8 film began to be made with a magnetic strip on the side of the film that made it possible to record sound along with the image, according to DeWitt Davis, Kodak's film school liaison.
Despite its widespread popularity, however, Super 8 film was slowly edged out by newer, even more convenient home-recording technology. "The Super 8 then decreased in popularity during the '80s, when the VHS camcorder became the go-to method for making home videos," Davis told Life's Little Mysteries.
Kodak scaled down production and eventually stopped making Super 8 cameras altogether due to a lack of demand, but for those who faithfully continue to use these old cameras for their unique aesthetic quality, Super 8 film can still be found in some photography stores today.
A few Super 8 facts:
- Although Kodak no longer produces Super 8 cameras, the company still makes four different kinds of Super 8 film. (You can find used Super 8 cameras on eBay.)
- The last manufacturer to produce Super 8 cameras was the French company Beaulieu, which continued making the cameras well into the '90s.
- Super 8 continues to be used in the film community as an inexpensive alternative to high-definition video. "It tends to be more for small films, commercials and music videos rather than the big blockbuster movies found in theaters," Johnson said.
- Super 8 film was made using Kodachrome, a type of color reversal film that was manufactured by Kodak from 1935 to 2006. The color was used in motion picture cameras as well as still cameras, especially for images intended for publication in print media. Steve McCurry used Kodachrome for his well-known 1984 portrait of Sharbat Gula, the "Afghan Girl", for National Geographic magazine.
- The new "Super 8" app recreates the experience of having an old-school Super 8 camera by letting you adjust different lens and filter effects while recording a video on your iPhone, iPad or iTouch. The app also contains embedded information about Steven Spielberg's new "Super 8" movie as part of its marketing.
- What's the Longest Film Ever Made?
- What Was the First Movie Sequel?
- Whatâ??s the Most Profitable Film Ever Made?
Follow Remy Melina on Twitter @RemyMelina
MORE FROM LiveScience.com | <urn:uuid:448d3c58-06c1-46bb-a4ed-74d874112b7a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.livescience.com/33332-why-super-8-great.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968291 | 928 | 3.140625 | 3 |
|Name||Jane Means Appleton Pierce|
, New Hampshire , United States
|| March 12, 1806
|| December 02, 1863
|Last Modifed||Thomas Walker|
Feb 03, 2004 02:20pm
|Info||Born: March 12, 1806 – Hampton, New Hampshire |
Died: December 2, 1863 Andover, Massachusetts
Father: Reverend Jesse Appleton (Died 1819)
Mother: Elizabeth Means (Died 1844)
1 Mary Appleton Aiken
2. Frances Appleton Packard
3. Robert Appleton
4. Others (Names Unknown)
Physical Description: Very slender, weighing at most 100 lbs., about 5’4” or 5’5”, with chestnut hair parted severely in the middle and ringlets, “Sherry” (Brown) colored eyes, sharp nose and almost always a sad, distracted look. Dressed in dark colors, usually black, but on occasion would wear white with black lace.
Religion: Congregationalist (Father was a Congregationalist minister.)
Education: Taught at home, but early showed an aptitude for music (piano) making one teacher wish she would pursue a musical career. Music was something she did not pursue in later life. Her reading tended to religious works rarely does she mention current authors in her letters. Her handwriting was poor later in life, making her letters extremely hard to read and to transcribe.
Husband: Franklin Pierce (November 23, 1804 – October 8, 1869)
Marriage: November 19, 1834 in Amherst, Massachusetts, in her sister’s home. Married by brother-in-law John Aiken.
Age at Marriage: 28 years (Franklin was not yet 30)
Personality: Shy, reclusive, prone to deep depressions, Jane Pierce would never be able to accept her husband’s political career or to mingle easily in society. She hated Washington, but in reading her early letters to her in-laws and to her mother, she did at least attempt to join with her husband in the social duties of a Congressman’s wife. On occasion she would show great insight into motives and characters of fellow politicians. The birth and death of her children took a heavy toll on a character not resilient to life’s demands. Fortunately, she had a husband who not only loved her but also understood her and permitted her the freedom to visit her sister’s whenever she liked. The most important factor of Jane Piece’s character was her need to lean on others, hence the importance of her aunt through marriage, Abigail Kent Means and most importantly her oldest sister, Mary Appleton Aiken. They did what they could to keep Jane Pierce on as “even a keel” as much as was possible. The time of her tenure in the White House, her gloom and depressions were so acute, permanent and evident to all that Nathaniel Hawthorne, a famous author of that time, would refer to her as “that death’s head” in the White House. Her later years would see her somewhat improve. The return to her home however in New Hampshire, with its painful memories, saw a return of her depression.
1. Franklin Pierce, Jr. (Born February 2, 1836 – Died February 5, 1836) 3 days old
2. Frank Robert Pierce (Born August 27, 1839 – Died November 14, 1843 in Concord, New Hampshire) 4 years of Age
3. Benjamin Pierce (Born April 13, 1841 in Concord, New Hampshire – Died in a train wreck on the way to Washington with his parents on January 6, 1853 near Andover, Massachusetts) 12 years of age
Jane Pierce survived all 3 of her sons – No descendents survive today.
First Lady: Because of the tragic death of Benjamin, she did not attend her husband’s inauguration. She did not enter the White House until later in March 1853.
She did not receive publicly at the White House until January 1855, asking her uncle Robert Mean’s widow, Abigail Kent Means, to perform the official duties of the First Lady. Since Mrs. Means had no children, she would find it easier to spend long periods of time with Jane, whom she loved like a daughter. When Mrs. Means was absent from the Capitol, Mrs. Jefferson Davis (Varina Howell, future First Lady of the Confederacy and wife of the Secretary of War) would officiate as did other cabinet wives, but not one of them was considered the official hostess.
Mrs. Pierce spent much of her time writing heart-breaking notes to her dead son, putting into them all the love that her repressive nature could not express in life. It would be nearly two years following his death (January 1855) before she would receive guests at her husband’s side.
She attended Congressional debates, which is surprising considering her dislike of politics.
Always kind to the White House staff, she usually had them attend church on Sundays. Both she and her husband were very strict about the Sabbath.
Having more of an abolitionist background than her husband, it was Jane Pierce who persuaded him to release Dr. Charles Robinson, an ardent abolitionist and republican, from a Kansas prison where he had been detained. Pierce, known for his kindness of heart, did so both for his wife and the distraught wife of Dr. Robinson. Late, during the Civil War, the Pierces were divided – she for the ending of slavery (if by war, then let it be so), he for the constitution first (the union first and slavery second).
The Pierces oversaw many decorative changes to the White House, including a furnace, a tile-covered bathroom with hot and cold running water, a new rug in the East room (where it looked like flowers were being thrown at your feet), new ornate mirrors (still being used) and a handsome china service which the President purchased at the New York World’s Fair.
Mrs. Pierce’s health became more fragile and the President would have a dozen or so of his wife’s nieces and nephews come to visit and care for her.
After the election of James Buchanan in 1856, the Pierces departed the White House early (and stayed with secretary of state William L. Marcy), so the staff could prepare the house for the incoming president and his niece, Harriet Lane. Franklin Pierce could not help but remember his first day (March 4, 1853) and how nothing had been ready for him – not a room, not a bed – and how he and his secretary, Sydney Webster, ended up sleeping on chairs.
Jane Pierce did not attend the swearing in of her husband’s successor.
Later Life: After leaving Washington, the Pierces spent a short period of time in New England – Franklin in New Hampshire to settle accounts, Jane in Andover, Massachusetts with her sister, Mary Aiken. The Pierces then sailed to the Caribbean on board the U.S.S. Powhatan, a government ship loaned to them by President Buchanan. From the Caribbean they sailed to Europe, where Franklin made a valiant attempt to help his wife recover, but by then, her depression had become chronic and she had contracted tuberculosis that made her querulous, irritable and often melancholic. The Pierces returned home in 1860, and Jane rarely left her sister’s home after that.
The Civil War saw the couple take opposite sides – Franklin for preserving the Constitution and the Union and Jane for ending slavery, even if it took a war and breaking up the union to do so.
Death: Jane Pierce died at her sister Mary Aiken’s home in Andover, Massachusetts on December 2, 1863. She was 57 years old. The ex-president took his wife home to Concord, New Hampshire to lie beside their sons, Frank Robert and Benjamin (Franklin, Jr. was buried in Hillsborough, NH). Franklin spoke often of going and watering the flowers “on the sacred spot”. He died on Friday, October 8, 1869 and was buried beside Jane at Old North Cemetery in Concord. | <urn:uuid:babe5778-1595-4a95-a521-d6c9c08a4156> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ourcampaigns.com/CandidateDetail.html?CandidateID=34110 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977319 | 1,711 | 2.640625 | 3 |
People with restless legs syndrome (RLS) experience an uncomfortable feeling in the legs, coupled with a strong compulsion to move the limbs so as to alleviate the symptoms. The feeling may be described as "creeping," "crawling," or "aching" and happens most often at night, during periods of rest or inactivity. So people with RLS have trouble falling asleep. They may also wake up frequently at night because of periodic limb movements, a condition that occurs frequently among people with RLS.
Periodic limb movement disorder is characterized by repeated body movements. Unlike RLS, which occurs when a person is resting or trying to fall asleep, the movements of period limb movement disorder occur during sleep, and the person may be unaware of them. These movements may occur in the toes, feet, ankles, and/or legs.
According to some estimates, as much as 15 percent of the population has RLS. Most have symptoms that are mild and can be managed with self-care and better sleep habits. For more severe cases, medications may help.
This section contains more information on:
Restless legs syndrome is a neurological disorder, thought to be related to the activity of dopamine, a chemical that carries messages in the central nervous system. RLS can also be caused by other conditions, such as peripheral neuropathy or diabetes. Iron deficiency can cause RLS or make it worse.
About half of patients with restless legs syndrome have relatives with the condition. Although symptoms can start at any age, older people may be more likely to have severe symptoms. RLS is more common during pregnancy. It may also appear in people who have another medical problem, such as anemia or kidney problems.
Last reviewed on 10/05/2006
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Contacts and sources:
Being a great science writer means not only being able to convey frequently complex ideas and theories: it also involves being able to write in a way that keeps readers, even those who aren't experts in the field, engaged and wanting to learn more about the subject. It's a delicate balance to attain, but there have been many throughout the years who've managed to do it, though some with more grace than others. We've compiled a list of some of these science writing greats that any student should check out.
Astronomy, Cosmology and Astrophysics
Through the work of these authors, readers can explore the farthest reaches of our universe, gain a better understanding of our own solar system and grasp the rules which govern it all.
- Carl Sagan: Perhaps best known for his Cosmos television series, Sagan was a prolific writer as well, publishing over 600 scientific papers and writing or editing over 20 different books. Sagan's work helped to showcase the wonders of the universe to millions of people around the world and his enthusiasm and intelligence make him an enduring figure in the field of astronomy today.
- Stephen Hawking: His book A Brief History of Time was a landmark in popular science texts, showcasing theories of cosmology in a way that even the everyday person could understand– and staying on the best seller list for almost a year. His genius, writings and persona have made him an academic celebrity, but one acclaimed with just cause.
- Philip Plait: Plait's books Bad Astronomy and Death from the Skies are popular and widely-read texts, but he is also noted for his role in blogging as well, producing the award-winning site Bad Astronomythough Discover magazine's main site.
- George Gamow: Russian theoretical physicist George Gamow spent a great deal of his career studying the Big Bang, the decay of atoms and star formation. He shared his passion for science through his writings and was highly successful, winning a Kalinga Prize for helping to popularize science. His text One, Two, Three…Infinity remains popular to this day, touching on mathematics, biology, physics and crystallography.
- Brian Greene: Physicist Brian Greene is best known for his popular science book The Elegant Universe in which he lays out the field of string theory in an accessible manner. His other popular books, Icarus at the Edge of Time, The Fabric of the Cosmos and The Hidden Reality are also well worth a read for those interested in studying physics.
- Roger Penrose: Mathematical physicist Penrose has no trouble shaking up the physics word with his ideas. He has won numerous awards for his research and continues to push forward new ideas like those in his latest work, Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe.
Physics and Mathematics
Check out these authors to teach yourself about the rules of matter, motion and the particles that make up the universe as we know it.
- Richard Feynman: Nobel Prize-winning Physicist Richard Feynman was one of the best-known scientists in the world during his time, and is still widely known today for his work in quantum mechanics, particle physics and superfluidity. Besides being a whiz in the lab, Feynman helped to popularize the subject through his books and lectures, most notably in The Feynman Lectures on Physics.
- Michio Kaku: Few have brought physics into popular culture like Michio Kaku. His books Physics of the Future and Parallel Worlds , among others, have helped to make him a well-known figure and cemented his role in the history of scientific writing.
- Steven Weinberg: This Nobel Laureate in physics has written a number of books that address everything from the fundamentals of cosmology to the discovery of subatomic particles. His research has helped the field make great strides, and his work is well worth a read.
- Albert Einstein: Famous the world over and possessing a name that's synonymous with genius, this physicist's theories helped to change the way scientists thought about time, space and bodies in motion. His publications on relativity are well worth a read for anyone, as he uses powerful examples to explain some of the more difficult concepts.
- Erwin Schrodinger: Best known for his work in physics, which won him a Nobel Prize, Schrodinger's work covers topics from that field to the biological sciences. His most popular works include What Is Life? and The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.
- Ian Stewart: A great promoter of mathematics, Ian Stewart has won awards for his books that bring math and science to a popular audience. Sci-fi fans will love his Science of Discworld series and math geeks will appreciate his texts like Nature's Numbers.
- Steven Strogatz: This mathematician's work has been applied to diverse fields like sociology, business and epidemioloy His writings help make even the most complex topics accessible, interesting and even emotionally compelling.
- Douglas R. Hoftstader: In 1980, Hoftstader's book Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid won him the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction. The son of a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Hoftstader grew up surrounded by science and has produced a number of groundbreaking and compelling books on the subject.
These authors will help students and science enthusiasts alike to learn more about how biological organisms form, grow and change over time.
- Edward O. Wilson: American biologist Edward Osborne Wilson, perhaps better known as E.O. Wilson, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1991 for his book On Human Nature, in which he argues that the human mind is shaped more by social and environmental factors than genetics. Wilson didn't just study the social lives of humans, however, and readers will find some great writings of his on ants and other social insects as well.
- Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson: This pioneer in the field of mathematical biology is best known for his 1917 book On Growth and Form, an account of how both living and non-living matter grows. It was called by Peter Medawan, "the finest work of literature in all the annals of science that have been recorded in the English tongue."
- David Quammen: With work in publications such as National Geographic, Harper's and The New York Times, Quammen is certainly a high-profile science and nature writer. Be sure to check out his booksMonster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind and The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution.
- Paul de Kruif: While it might be outdated today, de Kruif's work Microbe Hunters was a watershed publication back in 1926. Any student interested in better understanding the field of microbiology should add it to their reading list.
- Jonathan Weiner: This popular science writer has won everything from the Pulitzer Prize to the National Book Critics Circle Award to the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for his writing. Touching on topics like disease, evolution and aging, Weiner delves into biology in an incredibly moving way.
Evolution and Genetics
Here, you'll find some of the biggest and best minds in evolutionary science and genetics who shared their thoughts and research with a wider audience.
- Stephen Jay Gould: If you have any interest in evolutionary science at all, you've more than likely heard this man's name. A paleontologist and professor at Harvard, Gould was also a gifted writer, crafting books and essays on evolution and natural history that remain popular today.
- Richard Dawkins: While controversial for his unabashed attack on religion, Dawkins' writings on evolution and genetics are a must-read for any student hoping to pursue a career in these fields of science. His books The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype made big waves in the scientific community when they were released almost 30 years ago – and are still influencing thought in evolutionary biology today.
- Matt Ridley: Ridley is the author of several works in popular science, including Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters and The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, and takes a look at everything from our genetic code to how we reproduce.
- James D. Watson: Few discoveries have changed our world as much as the unraveling of the mysteries of our own DNA achieved at long last by scientist James D. Watson in conjunction with his partner Francis Crick. His most famous book, The Double Helix , showcases the race to discover the properties of DNA and is as close to a soap opera as readers are bound to find in scientific writing.
- Lewis Thomas: A physician and etymologist, Thomas' writings garnered him numerous awards throughout his career. His book The Lives of a Cell is a brilliantly written collection of essays on the interconnectedness of life on Earth.
- Roger Lewin: Anthropologist and scientist Roger Lewin has worked with some of the best, teaming up with Richard Leakey in the 1980's to put out three books. He has worked as a freelance writer for over three decades, producing works that are both informative and accessible.
- Richard Lewontin: A pioneer in the fields of molecular biology, evolutionary theory and population genetics, students working towards a degree in biology would be remiss not to read the books written by this influential scientist.
- Carl Zimmer: A prolific writer of articles and books on science, Zimmer is one of the most popular science writers out there today. He touches on a number of topics in his books, though all biology related, from the nature of viruses to evolutionary theory.
Zoology and Naturalism
Those who love to read about the natural world will appreciate these great science writers who focused their careers on promoting the understanding and preservation of it.
- David Attenborough: If you don't know this British broadcaster and naturalist's name, you'll surely know his voice, as he has narrated hundreds of nature programs over the course of his career. He is also a gifted writer, having penned numerous books and TV programs about birds, mammals and our planet.
- Frans De Waal: De Waal is famous for his studies of great apes, namely our closest genetic relative the bonobo ,though he has also studied the chimpanzee extensively. If you'd like to learn more about primate social life or bonobos, check out his books Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape or Primates and Philosophies: How Morality Evolved.
- Jane Goodall: Perhaps the world's best known primatologist, Goodall's devotion to helping humans better understand and preserve chimpanzees has made a big impact around the world. Throughout her career she has written numerous books, for both adults and children, sharing insights into chimpanzee communities and encouraging a more compassionate world.
- Dian Fossey: Dian Fossey's dedication to preserving African mountain gorillas eventually cost her life, but she didn't go without publishing a great book, Gorillas in the Mist that helps shed light on the behavior, culture and value to the natural world these great apes provide.
- Konrad Lorenz: Nobel Prize-winning zoologist Konrad Lorenz made great strides in his research and the foundation of the field of ethology. He was also a great author who wrote numerous books detailing his zoological studies in a way anyone could appreciate.
- Rachel Carson: Carson's book Silent Spring was perhaps one of the most important science books of the 20th century, changing the way we view our interactions with the environment and the harm even simple chemicals can have on complex ecosystems. Carson continued to write throughout her life, leaving behind a wealth of scientific essays and publications that are well worth a read for any student of the sciences.
Through the great works of these science writers, you'll explore the mysteries of the human body and mind.
- Peter Medawar: British biologist Peter Medawar had an illustrious career, winning a Nobel Prize in 1960 and helping make world-changing discoveries in medicine. He is also regarded as one of the most brilliant science writers of all time. Known for his wit and ability to write for both professionals and the general public, Medawar's books should have a place in any library of scientific classics.
- Steven Pinker: Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker has helped to redefine how we understand the human mind, from its evolution to language usage. His popular books, including Words and Rules and How the Mind Works, are great additions to any comprehensive science library.
- Oliver Sacks: Physician and best-selling author Oliver Sacks is one of the most popular science writers out there today– and for good reason. His books help explain many neurological issues in a creative and engaging way that even non-medical professionals find captivating.
- Alfred C. Kinsey: Kinsey's most famous writing, published in the two books called collectively the Kinsey Report, helped document what goes on behind closed doors with human sexual behavior. Considered racy at the time, and probably still so by many today, the books are a must-read for anyone entering a career in biology, psychology or reproductive sciences.
These gifted writers focus on different topics throughout their writing, touching on fields like evolution, technology and paleontology.
- Simon Singh: Author, journalist and TV producer Simon Singh focuses on bringing science and mathematics to the masses through his work. His popular science books present often complex subjects in a highly accessible manner, introducing many a layman to the fundamentals of Fermat's Theorem, cryptography and even the science (or lack thereof) behind alternative medicine.
- Bill Bryson: Selling over six million books in England alone, Bryson is a writer who has helped to bring a wide range of scientific subjects alive for the general public. Often funny and always witty, his book A Short History of Nearly Everything won him multiple prizes for science writing.
- James Lovelock: Lovelock's best known work Gaia garnered him some criticism in the scientific community for being too mystical. Yet, it poses an idea, that our planet is a single, self-regulating system, that is hard to ignore in an age where pollution and disease on one side of the world can quickly impact the other.
- Jared Diamond: Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steelwas a bestseller, detailing what factors came into play to let some societies dominate while others grew very little. His works draw on a variety of fields from geography to biology, making them interesting reads for those in any field of science.
- Roy Chapman Andrews: An explorer, adventurer and naturalist and a real-life Indiana Jones, Andrews led an amazingly interesting life. In the early 20th century he made some major paleontological finds in the Gobi desert, discovering the first fossilized dinosaur eggs. He details many of his adventures and his discoveries in his books, including Quest in the Desert and This Business of Exploring.
- James Gleick: Gleick's works have garnered him nominations for Pulitzer and Nation Book Award prizes and have been read around the world. Much of his writing addresses the ways science and technology influence our culture, though he has written some great biographies and monographies on other topics as well.
- Timothy Ferris: Not to be confused with Timothy Ferriss, science writer Tim Ferris has written a number of best-selling popular books on physics and cosmology. His best works to date are The Science of Liberty and Coming of Age in the Milky Way.
Oldies but Goodies
If you want to take in some classic science writers, these are all excellent choices, showing you where great science writing has its roots.
- Charles Darwin: If you can move past his sometimes dry Victorian prose, the content of Darwin's greatest books, The Voyage of the Beagle and The Origin of Species is nothing less than game-changing. While it would be simple to read about the ideas they contain in a textbook, reading through Darwin's own witty, beautifully told tales can be much more enlightening.
- Isaac Newton: Few would argue that Newton was one of the greatest thinkers to ever live and his works like Principia Mathematica helped change the very way we and the scientific community think about our world. While some of his text may be a bit dry to modern readers, it is accessible and offers insight into the fundamentals that are center to much of our modern understanding of science.
- Galileo Galilei: In times past, scientific inquiry in so much that it disagreed with the church's teachings was…discouraged, to say the least. Galileo's writings stood up to this and his witty Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems landed him in the hot seat during the Inquisition– a beautiful testament to those who fought for truth over doctrine.
- Nicolaus Copernicus: Copernicus wrote throughout his life, but he waited until he was on his deathbed to release his best and most important work– On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres. It is by no means an easy read, but for those who love mathematics, it can be an amazing journey into how a man could have made such huge discoveries with such limited equipment.
- Aristotle: Most know Aristotle for his writings on philosophy, but he dabbled in the sciences as well writing on physics, biology and zoology. His views were to carry well into the Medieval and Renaissance eras thought today we known many (but not all) of them to be false. No history of scientific thought is complete without a reading of Aristotle's works.
- Primo Levi: A brilliant chemist, Levi came close to losing his life after spending a year in Auschwitz during WWII. His book The Periodic Table was named the best science book every by the Royal Institution of Great Britain.
by Carol Brown | <urn:uuid:8adc3235-a007-4640-920b-749ad345d41a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nanopatentsandinnovations.blogspot.com/2011/05/50-best-science-writers-of-all-time.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959656 | 3,657 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Temper Tantrums in Children Could Be a Sign of Serious Problems
Witnessing a temper tantrum oozing from the sticky mouth of a spoiled little whipper-snapper is not only a less than desirable experience, but it also carries enough nerve-bending weight to turn us adults into the Jimmy Hoffa of the local cherry red behind union.
However, a new study finds that maybe we shouldn’t act so crass in our executioner style judgment against a little tyke’s despicable behavior, because those little rage displays may just be signs of more problematic issues to come.
The study, which was based on a survey of nearly 1,500 parents, discovered that 84 percent of preschool aged kids had pitched a hissy fit within the last month, while only nine percent got medieval on a daily basis.
According to lead researcher Lauren Wakschlag of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, daily tantrums are not typical, even in young children, and that means daily outbursts may be symptomatic of deeper, more serious issues.
The study found that it was uncommon for children to throw tantrums out of the clear blue sky, as opposed to when they were frustrated or angry. It also found that relatively few children showed signs of aggression, such as biting or kicking, during a tantrum, and that it was not typical for that type of behavior to last a very long time or difficult for the child to recover from.
Researchers hope that their findings help to reduce over treatment of behavior that is actually typical for children. “There’s been a real danger of preschool children with normal misbehavior being mislabeled and over-treated with medication,” said Wakschlag. “This is why it’s so crucial to have tools that precisely identify when worry is warranted in this age group.”
Wakschlag adds that random temper tantrums could possibly be linked with serious mental health and social problems. Her team is currently conducting that portion of their research now. | <urn:uuid:203a1c60-e0d1-4068-b0a5-459f7849dc00> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ksisradio.com/temper-tantrums-children/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969348 | 417 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Even the most basic tasks related to health care can seem impossible when the language and the system are unfamiliar. The 20 Spanish-speaking mothers in the Family Literacy program learn how to manage these challenges in English, resulting in better access to vital medical care for their children and their families.
“I was impressed with how effective the instruction was,” said Laney Durland, an ESL teacher at ACLAMO who specializes in the Health Literacy curriculum. “Many of the mothers have said it has helped them have more confidence in making appointments, and going to appointments and talking with the doctor.”
Funded by a generous $25,000 grant from The Aetna Foundation, the Health Literacy curriculum covered many important topics during the more than 50 hours of instruction last year. The students learned how to handle each step of a visit to the doctor, such as how to make and change appointments by telephone, how to give an accurate medical history, how to describe body parts and illness symptoms, and how to ask follow-up questions. They also learned about medicine and prescriptions, such as the medication’s purpose, instructions and dosage, even how to measure a teaspoon and tablespoon.
Other topics covered included nutrition and the importance of a healthy diet, especially in relationship to avoiding common conditions such as hypertension and diabetes. The students learned about the hazards of lead poisoning and how to keep their children safe from exposure, as well as how to avoid other household hazards. A dentist explained to the mothers and the children how to brush and maintain healthy teeth.
ACLAMO teachers also explained how to navigate the basics of the health care system, including how to fill out forms, vaccination records, and how to apply for medical insurance for their children. | <urn:uuid:76676c42-e614-44d2-af24-cbd7c9f01686> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aclamo.org/health_literacy.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972594 | 358 | 3.28125 | 3 |
Compliment slip from Association for the Supply of Pure Vaccine Lymph
After calves had been inoculated with smallpox, the lymph containing white blood cells which fight against disease are extracted and preserved in capillary tubes. This is then used to vaccinate people against smallpox. Calf lymph replaced the human kind in 1898 as human lymph spread other infections, such as syphilis. The vaccine was blown on to a clean arm and scratched into the skin using a needle or pin point. The vaccine was supplied by the Association for the Supply of Pure Vaccine Lymph, as the compliment slip shows.
Related Themes and Topics
There are 583 related objects. View all related objects
The introduction of vaccine into the body for the purpose of inducing immunity. Coined originally to apply to the injection of smallpox vaccine, the term has come to mean any immunising procedure in which vaccine is injected.
Glossary: capillary tube
A glass tube with a very small internal diameter.
Clear, slightly yellowish fluid derived from the blood and similar in composition to plasma. Lymph conveys white blood cells and some nutrients to the tissues.
Smallpox is an infectious virus unique to humans. It results in a characteristic skin rash and fluid-filled blisters. After successful vaccination campaigns throughout the 1800s and 1900s, the World Health Organisation certified the eradication of smallpox in 1979. Smallpox is the only human infectious disease to have been completely wiped out.
A substance given to humans or animals to improve immunity from disease. A vaccine can sometimes contain a small amount of bacteria that is designed to stimulate the body's reaction to that particular disease. The first vaccine was developed in 1796 by Edward Jenner to prevent smallpox.
Glossary: compliment slip
A slip of paper that accompanies a goods order or information request. It typically provides the name, logo and address of the supplying business. | <urn:uuid:83cbf84c-c904-40ec-8557-acc5f9d55f59> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/objects/display.aspx?id=5299 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935262 | 389 | 3.8125 | 4 |
Did life originate on Earth, or did it come from somewhere else?
In a recent issue of "Astronomy Now" there was an article by an associate of Hoyle, Chandra Wickramasinghe, explaining the theory of panspermia, that earth was seeded by life having developed in the bowels of a comet which struck the earth a glancing blow billions of years ago.
My question is: Is this theory mainstream? And if not, what do most astronomers believe was the origin of live on earth?
A quick correction: panspermia is simply the theory that life came to Earth from somewhere else--be it from inside a comet, in a meteorite from another planet in our Solar Sytem, in the form of bacterial spores carried by light pressure from another solar system, by deliberate or accidental inoculation by an alien intelligence, or by some other mechanism.
The origin of life on Earth is still very much an open question, and I don't think that there are too many astronomers who feel that panspermia could be conclusively ruled out with the current evidence we have in hand--mostly because we have so little evidence.
The evidence we do have raises many interesting questions. DNA studies indicate that the oldest life on Earth is a class of single-celled organisms called archae, or extremophile bacteria. They are called extremophiles because they can survive--even thrive--in environments previously thought too harsh for life: extreme temperatures, high salinity, extreme pH, etc. Some species of archae can even survive high doses of radiation.
Were archae the first form of life to evolve on Earth? Or did many other primitive lifeforms evolve, only to be wiped out by one catastrophe after another, leaving only the hardiest organisms? Or did extremophiles come to Earth from somewhere else, using their unique abilities to survive the hazards of space?
I would say that most astronomers find panspermia to be improbable, but not necessarily impossible. The default assumption is usually that life arose on Earth from organic compounds, probably borne by comets.
Very few astronomers think that life could arise in comets, however. Comets spend most of their time in a deep freeze, after all! Dr. Wickramasinghe also claims to have collected extraterrestrial bacteria in the upper atmosphere. The bacteria, he says, are originally from interplanetary dust and from comets that have burned up in the atmosphere. As would be predicted by the panspermia hypothesis, these bacteria are indistinguisable from terrestrial bacteria. ;) Most aspects of Dr. Wickramasinghe's work are considered fringe science.
Most astronomers are also quite skeptical of the notion that life could be efficiently transfered from one solar system to another. If life came to Earth this way, it seems like a one-in-a-billion shot, and we don't like theories that require such long odds. They might be correct, but a mechanism that doesn't require the Earth to be a cosmic oddball, a lucky chance, would be more satisfying. Panspermia is a somewhat unsatisfying answer to the question of the genesis of life on Earth, because it simply pushes the question back a step. If life came to Earth from elsewhere, how did it arise there? Why did it not arise independently on Earth? Would life have arisen on Earth if it had not been colonized by alien life?
These objections do not rule panspermia out, of course. I must emphasize the primitive state of our understanding of this question. At this stage of the game, we are guided more by intuition and aesthetic arguments than by the hard evidence we crave. In the coming decades, we will be discovering the first earth-sized planets around other stars, and, with any luck, we will be able to determine the compositions of the atmospheres of some of these planets. If we find the telltale signature of oxygen, we will have a much better idea of how common life as we know it is in the Galaxy.
Even more exciting, we might find life on other bodies in the Solar System. Life on Mars or fossil evidence of past martian life would give us great insight into the origins and evolution of life. Some astronomers think that there is a liquid ocean beneath the icy surface of Europa, a moon of Jupiter, which may harbor life. Finding life in the Solar System would be a great boon, because we would be able to retreive samples and study it up close.
Any information about life elsewhere would give us a lot more to work on. If life is common and seems to be very similar, then the panspermia hypothesis will have to be examined more closely. However, it could just be that there's really only one type of life that could be successful, and it evolved in many places independently.
Without much evidence to guide us, we can speculate endlessly. I'm hoping that this is a quesition that we will be able to address with a great deal more scientific rigour in the near future!
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Thursday, June 17, 2010
Canonical correlation is a method of modelling the relationship between two sets of variables. This post provides: (a) Examples of when canonical correlation can be useful; (b) Links to good online resources where you can learn about the technique; (c) Links to examples of running the analysis in R or SPSS; and (d) Examples of articles showing how to report a canonical correlation analysis.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
I previously posted a set of links to online videos on R. I organised videos into three categories: (1) what is R; (2) how to do basic data analysis in R; and (3) how to use intermediate and advanced tools in R. Since writing the post I've discovered six or seven additional sources of videos. Each source has multiple videos (over 20 in one case). The majority of the links I've added are in the "how to do basic data analysis" category. It's great to see so many people sharing videos on R. Given the healthy number of introductory-level videos, it would be great to see more videos designed for the intermediate to advanced level. See my updated post for the full list of links to these additional videos. | <urn:uuid:8de1ad14-083d-475e-867b-368463128a9f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jeromyanglim.blogspot.com.au/2010_06_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929677 | 252 | 2.546875 | 3 |
ALL ABOUT DOGS and CATS Resource Center for Canine & Feline Lovers
Pet Behavior Articles - Canine Behavior
Several canine behavior experts believe yawning plays a similar role in canine social
behavior. Recently I saw dogs playing at a local dog park use yawning behavior to slow
down a really rough play session. Several large dogs were running around the dog park,
with a few small terriers in pursuit. When the terriers caught up with the big dogs, they
began nipping at legs, jumping at faces, and otherwise showing some really rough play. In
the middle of the rough play, two of the larger dogs sat down, scratched, and yawned.
After these two dogs yawned, a third and fourth yawned, and the activity level of the play
slowed significantly. A potential dog fight was averted -- all because a few of the dogs
scratched and yawned!
Recently I was teaching Riker, my four-year-old Australian Shepherd, a new scenting
exercise in which he had to find a scented article hid among other articles with different
scents. (This is similar to the AKC scent discrimination exercise in Utility-level obedience.) I
thought the training was progressing well, but then I noticed Riker was yawning at me. He
would make eye contact, hold it for a second, look away and then yawn. He was trying to
tell me to ease up a bit. We did something else (a few easy retrieves) so I could stop his
training session with praise for him, and then took a break from our training for a few
minutes. I let him run, relieve himself, I rubbed his tummy, and then we went back to
training. With that break, he was back on course and our training session ended well.
Although some experts have suggested that dog owners can use yawning to change their
dog's behavior (for example, to calm a tense situation), I have not seen that to be very
effective. For a human yawn to change canine behavior would require the dog to be willing
to accept that kind of guidance -- and if the dog were willing -- other training tools or
techniques would work just as well.
However, knowing that your dog may yawn to calm you or to relieve stress you may be
putting on the dog (especially in training situations) can be very useful. Just recognize that
a yawn may signal more than sleepiness!
Article by Liz Palika , writer for The Dog Daily
Yawning Doesn't Always Mean Your Dog Is Tired
By Liz Palika
Yawning is something many animals do, from lizards and
snakes to almost all of the primates, including people. Often
yawning signifies sleepiness or boredom, but many experts
believe yawning is also a social behavior. Psychologist Robert
Provine of the University of Maryland in Baltimore County
notes that human yawning is not just a gaping mouth but a
gaping mouth combined with a stretched jaw, a tilted head
and squinting eyes. And a true yawn can be contagious; one
person yawns and those watching all soon begin to yawn.
Provine suggests this contagious yawning could be a
subconscious behavior that ties people together -- a signal of | <urn:uuid:61029805-bf20-4152-a63b-f03bee1ed2a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.allaboutdogsandcats.com/PetBehaviour/YawningDoesntAlwaysMeanDogIsTired.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968186 | 693 | 3.078125 | 3 |
See this page in: Bulgarian, French, Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia), Italian (Italiano), Portuguese, Spanish
Some critics charge that the Gospels have obscured the historical Jesus of Nazareth by cloaking Him in layers of legend and myth. They claim that the Bible's stories of Christ's resurrection are myth, not history. There are at least FOUR REASONS why the mythological interpretation fails.
- Comparative literature demonstrates that myth takes a number of generations to develop. There are no parallels in other literature of myth developing and being believed in the presence of eye-witnesses and within the short timeframe in which the New Testament was formed. (for more info)
Historical research is on the side of an immediate belief in Jesus' resurrection. An early apostle's creed includes the Resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:3-9) and has been dated by many scholars to within 3 to 7 years of Christ's death and resurrection. This implies prior public belief.
Scholars agree that the first letters by St. Paul appeared within 25 years or less of Jesus ministry, and the four Gospels within 21 (and no later than 65 years). The preaching of the apostles always centered on the Resurrection. In a very short period of time, devout Jews throughout the Roman Empire who had formerly faithfully worshiped God on the seventh day of each week, converted to Christianity and began meeting on the first day, in celebration of Christ's resurrection.
Hundreds of witnesses saw Christ alive after his death. Once he appeared to 500 people at once (1 Corinthians 15:6).
- Many of these eyewitnesses to Christ's public ministry were hostile toward the Jesus the Gospels describe (Matthew 12:22f). These opponents had both motives and means to correct falsehoods about Him had the first disciples attempted them. Yet their opportunity did not produce a serious correction.
- The Gospels don't resemble either Greek myth or Jewish legend. In contrast to those, the Gospels understate and lack embellishment, yet contain details counterproductive to the invention of legendary heroes. For example, the following six factors in John chapter 20 are at odds with the tendency of legendary material:
With great restraint, no attempt is made to describe the resurrection itself.
Mary neither initially recognized the risen Jesus (the “hero”) (John 20:14).
nor even considered that there was anything special about Him (John 20:16).
Indeed, even by the end of the day, the disciples (the secondary “heroes”) were still in hiding "for fear of the Jews" (John 20:19).
And, were the Gospels the free creation of paternalistic bias, as feminists charge, it is incredible the writers would have chosen women to be the first witnesses of the risen Jesus. The testimony of women didn't even count legally.
Yet, it was their courage the morning after the Resurrection that put the men's contrasting cowardice to shame.
- Jews were the poorest of candidates for inventing a mythical Christ. No other culture has so opposed mythically confusing deity with humanity, as did the Jewish.
SIX SKEPTICAL OBJECTIONS most frequently leveled by critics of Christ's resurrection
- Christ's resurrection is a myth, not history.
- The Resurrection stories are full of contradictions.
- Miracles are not possible.
- The body was stolen.
- Jesus only fainted and then recovered from His wounds.
- The witnesses were just “seeing things.”
REFERENCES AND FOOTNOTES
- Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology (Scribner's, 1958). [up]
- John A.T. Robinson argues that, given its silence on the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D., the New Testament must have been written prior to that date. For since the demise of the Temple in Jerusalem would have fueled Christian preaching that Jesus had replaced the Temple sacrificial system (John 1:29, Hebrews 10:11f), the New Testament would certainly have referred to its destruction as a past event, and distinguished it from the end of the world (Luke 21:25-28), had it already happened. [John A.T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament (SCM Press, 1976).]
John Macquarrie writes, "Myth is usually characterized by a remoteness in time and space… as having taken place long ago." By contrast the Gospels concern "an event that had a particularly definite location in Palestine… under Pontius Pilate, only a generation or so before the New Testament account of these happenings." [John Macquarrie, God-Talk: An Examination of the Language and Logic of Theology (Harper, 1967), pp. 177-180.]
A.N. Sherwin-White writes, "The agnostic type of form-criticism would be much more credible if the compilation of the Gospels were much later in time… than can be the case… Herodotus enables us to test the tempo of myth-making, [showing that] even two generations are too short a span to allow the mythical tendency to prevail over the hard historic core." [A.N. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament (Oxford University Press, 1963), pp. 189-190.] [up]
- See Reginald Fuller, Foundations of New Testament Christology (Scribner's, 1965), p. 142. [up]
- See Frederick Fyvie Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (Downer's Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1972), pp. 11f, 14f. [up]
- Eta Linnemann, writes, "The eyewitnesses [both hostile and sympathetic] did not disappear from the scene in a flash after two decades. [Many are] likely to have survived until the second half of the A.D. 70's… Who at the time would have dared to alter the 'first tradition' beyond recognition?" [Eta Linnemann, Is There a Synoptic Problem? (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1992), p. 64.] Interestingly, Dr. Linnemann was previously a negative critic of the New Testament in the line of Rudolf Bultmann. Having renounced her former position she now urges readers to “trash” her earlier works. [up]
- Michael Grant writes, "Modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory [Osiris, Mithras, etc.]. It has again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars." [Michael Grant, Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels (Scribner's, 1977), p. 200.] [up]
- Michael Green, The Empty Cross of Jesus (Downer's Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1984), p. 115. [up]
- M. Grant. writes, "Judaism was a milieu to which doctrines of deaths and rebirths of mythical gods seems so entirely foreign that the emergence of such a fabrication from its midst is very hard to credit." [Michael Grant, Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels (Scribner's, 1977), p. 199.] Oxford's N.T. Wright demolishes Spong's assertion that the Gospels are Jewish midrash and therefore fantasy in N.T. Wright, Who Was Jesus? (Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co, 1992). The two are different literary genres. And midrash is not fantasy anyway, but "tightly controlled and argued" material (p. 71f). See also Paul Barnett, Peter Jensen and David Peterson, Resurrection: Truth and Reality: Three Scholars Reply to Bishop Spong (Aquila, 1994). [up]
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Rev. Gary W. Jensen, M.Div. Editor: Paul S. Taylor, Films for Christ. Provided by Films for Christ.
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Gilbert AZ 85299 Submit your Questions | <urn:uuid:eab9f269-c2cb-4827-b1bc-0d0773fc995a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-t009.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935125 | 1,777 | 3.65625 | 4 |
Climate Change Reducing Ocean's Carbon Dioxide Uptake, New Analysis Shows
ScienceDaily (July 11, 2011) — How deep is the ocean's capacity to buffer against climate change?
As one of the planet's largest single carbon absorbers, the ocean takes up roughly one-third of all human carbon emissions, reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide and its associated global changes.
But whether the ocean can continue mopping up human-produced carbon at the same rate is still up in the air. Previous studies on the topic have yielded conflicting results, says University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor Galen McKinley.
In a new analysis published online July 10 in Nature Geoscience, McKinley and her colleagues identify a likely source of many of those inconsistencies and provide some of the first observational evidence that climate change is negatively impacting the ocean carbon sink.
"The ocean is taking up less carbon because of the warming caused by the carbon in the atmosphere," says McKinley, an assistant professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and a member of the Center for Climatic Research in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.
The analysis differs from previous studies in its scope across both time and space. One of the biggest challenges in asking how climate is affecting the ocean is simply a lack of data, McKinley says, with available information clustered along shipping lanes and other areas where scientists can take advantage of existing boat traffic. With a dearth of other sampling sites, many studies have simply extrapolated trends from limited areas to broader swaths of the ocean.
McKinley and colleagues at UW-Madison, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, and the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris expanded their analysis by combining existing data from a range of years (1981-2009), methodologies, and locations spanning most of the North Atlantic into a single time series for each of three large regions called gyres, defined by distinct physical and biological characteristics.
They found a high degree of natural variability that often masked longer-term patterns of change and could explain why previous conclusions have disagreed. They discovered that apparent trends in ocean carbon uptake are highly dependent on exactly when and where you look -- on the 10- to 15-year time scale, even overlapping time intervals sometimes suggested opposite effects.
Article continues: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110710132816.htm | <urn:uuid:579fe3d7-10c3-43ff-b125-a99dc6d3fd46> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/42917 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928207 | 491 | 3.359375 | 3 |
The Slave Route
Ignorance or concealment of major historical events constitutes an obstacle to mutual understanding, reconciliation and cooperation among peoples. UNESCO has thus decided to break the silence surrounding the slave trade and slavery that have affected all continents and have caused the great upheavals that have shaped our modern societies.
The Slave Route Project, launched in Ouidah, Benin, in 1994, has three objectives, namely to:
- Contribute to a better understanding
of the causes, forms of operation, issues and consequences of slavery in the world (Africa, Europe, the Americas, the Caribbean, the
Indian Ocean, Middle East and Asia);
- Highlight the global transformations and
cultural interactions that have resulted from this history; and
- Contribute to a culture of peace by promoting reflection on cultural pluralism, intercultural dialogue and the construction of new identities and citizenships.
The project has played a significant role in securing recognition by the United Nations, at the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, held in Durban in 2001, of the slave trade and slavery as crimes against humanity.
Marcus Miller: Slave Route Project Spokesperson
On 22 March Marcus Miller, UNESCO Artist for Peace and the Slave Route Project Spokesperson, performed at the United Nations General Assembly in a concert as part of events leading up to The International Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade (25 March). The theme of the 2013 International Day -- "Forever Free: Celebrating Emancipation" -- pays tribute to the struggle for emancipation of enslaved peoples across the world, including in the United States, celebrating this year its 150th anniversary. | <urn:uuid:225e3e7c-4427-4222-8b18-9dac3057a8fd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/dialogue/the-slave-route | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909757 | 352 | 3.515625 | 4 |
What should I expect of my child?
As you participate in class, listen to the CD together and try the activities at home. What kind of response should you expect? Some children are spontaneous singers and movers, others are careful and astute observers. In either case, after sufficient listening and observing time at home and in class, you may begin to notice your child singing or chanting parts of songs, sometimes with words, sometimes without. However, even when your child gives no response or seems uninterested in listening or participating, important unconscious learning is taking place.
Keep in mind the following points:
- Most children choose (wisely) to observe more often than to participate actively in class. They are taking in information, which they will act on later at home.
- Most children become accustomed to the class routine and their classmates around the fifth or sixth week. At this point, their participation is likely to increase.
- Children are assimilating important music information whether or not they are outwardly participating. At home, this means it may be important to play the CD or sing the songs yourself even if your child seems to be unaware or uninterested, especially during the first few weeks of class.
Remember that you are the most important model and teacher for your child. Your most effective role is to participate and enjoy the class yourself, even though your child might choose to sit back and observe. If you are enjoying yourself, your child will soon wish to share that enjoyment with you.
We know it might be difficult to watch other children zealously participate in the group while your child does not. This is especially true if your child performs all of his class favorites as soon as you arrive home. Try to understand that he is very wisely "practicing" in private and will make his public "debut" when he feels more confident. Meanwhile, if you feel suddenly overwhelmed with frustration by the lack of your child's participation in class, just count to three, relax, and participate yourself!
A word about children with special needs:
Children’s delight in music transcends many life circumstances making Music Together a perfect environment for children with special needs and those who are typically developing to participate side by side. Siblings, cousins, classmates, and friends make music and move together—this is what makes Music Together great!
What should I expect of myself?
Some parents are somewhat disconcerted by the concept of being their child's most important role model, especially when it comes to music! You may feel that you are not particularly musical - perhaps you even describe yourself as being "tone deaf". You may be great at singing but feel unsure of yourself or "vague" when dancing or trying to "keep the beat". Whatever the level of your technical skill, remember the most important things you can model for your child are simply pleasure, interest, and the desire to participate in music activities.
Many adults feel deprived, confused, or inadequate about their ability in music, as if they have been denied something that should be effortless and natural. In fact, this is often the case. As your understanding of your child's music development grows in the coming weeks, you may also come to understand that unfortunate circumstances in your own childhood music experience may be at the root of some of these feelings. More important, by participating with your child, you can begin to rediscover within yourself the natural human musicality that is everyone's birthright.
What about practicing at home?
Play your Music Together CD at home. If there is a CD player in the car, it's also great to play the CD while driving. Do not limit its use to the car, though - children are less able to move to the music while strapped into a car seat!
Many children will want specific songs repeated again and again. Try to accommodate them by replaying their favorite track. They crave the repetition because it is necessary for their development. Repetition is one way they "practice".
Another way they "practice" is through spontaneous, playful imitation of the songs and activities they experience in class. These imitations will, of course, probably not be "correct" but they will certainly be fun!
Some children may not demonstrate interest in the recording. Right now, they may have different developmental needs and interests or simply have other current favorites. Perhaps they haven't adjusted to the class experience yet and are holding some enthusiasm in reverse! Just play the CD in the background, perhaps as they play or take a bath. Their interest in both the class and the CD will grow with familiarity.
The CD provides a way of reinforcing and following up on the class experience of live adults participating in live musical activities. The more you can continue this kind of participation at home by singing the songs or doing the chants and fingerplays yourself, the better it is, as long as you do it in the spirit of fun and enjoyment. Nothing sets a better model for your child than doing an activity you enjoy yourself.
Remember to use the songbook, even if you don't read music! Use it like a story book and "read" the songs to your child, especially the ones with pictures. In time, you might suggest that your child draw his or her own pictures for the songs, especially for those that don't have one!
Notice the effects of your child's experience in class and note his listening habits with the CD at home during the week. Write down or remember any questions you might have about your child's responses and then ask your teacher and discuss with other parents in class.
What can I expect from class?
Music Together is designed for children ages birth through age 7. At Music Together we believe that music ability is as much a basic life skill as walking and talking, and that all children can learn to sing in tune, keep a beat, and participate with pleasure and confidence in the music of their culture. Music Together classes nurture the child’s natural enthusiasm for music and movement as we sing, dance, chant, and play instruments in an informal setting that will enrich her musical environment and guide her towards a lifetime of music-making enjoyment.
Are these classes appropriate for my child with special needs?
Music Together classes are accessible for children with special needs through Music Together’s focus on accepting and including each child (and their adult!) every step of our musical journey. Contact your local licensed center director to inquire about your family’s options.
Why aren’t there separate classes for different age groups?
In the 1980s Music Together pioneered the development of the mixed-age approach in early childhood music. In each class we strive to create a musically rich, developmentally appropriate environment where the whole family can enjoy music and nurture skills at the level right for each child. Mixed-age classes also provide a rich learning environment because children of different ages thrive when they interact with each other: the babies are often fascinated by the older child, and the "big" children (3- and 4-year-olds) enjoy helping and sharing with the "little" ones. This approach is based on research from music education, early childhood development, and family relationships, as well as our 20 years experience in the field.
Because children aged 5, 6, and 7 are developmentally so different from the children birth through 4, Music Together does offer a class beyond the mixed-age class created specifically for this older age group. Children 5 through 7 are ready for more independence and new challenges and are both more social and more comfortable with a structured classroom setting. Music Together Big Kids® classes are designed to meet the needs of 5- through 7-year-olds, whether or not they have participated in Music Together mixed-age classes before. | <urn:uuid:92ab8ef7-0f2e-40af-a423-4fdb19ed1bd5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://musictogether.com/FAQs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966729 | 1,576 | 2.96875 | 3 |
54:59 minutes (12.59 MB)
Teaching about the crises in Japan is the focus of this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers. What relevance does the earthquake/ tsunami/ nuclear power catastrophe unfolding in Japan have to our students lives and our curriculum? We suspect that there are many “teachable moments” in the stories coming to us from Japan. But what are they? What are the lessons we might be learning alongside our students?
Many teachers contributed their thoughts and links in the chat (see below), and four guest joined us in the Skype conversation:
- To help us answer some of our questions, we invited Dave Mammen
to join us. Dave is an urban planner who has worked on disaster recovery efforts in Kobe, Japan and Aceh, Indonesia. He was a Visiting Professor at the Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI) at Kyoto University and has directed many joint research projects with Japanese government agencies, universities and thinktanks. His research on ten years of recovery efforts in New York after 9/11 will be published later this year in Japanese and English by Fuji Technology Press. Recently Dave answered question on a CNN blog: Lessons from 9/11 will apply to helping earthquake victims in Japan – In the Arena - CNN.com Blogs http://t.co/030uvui.
- We were also joined by Martha, a senior where Paul Allison teaches,
East-West School of International Studies. Martha is not shy about her love of all things Japanese, an affection that only grew after she was able to visit Tokyo on a school trip in the summer of 2009. This was the podcast we did with Martha her Japanese teacher and another student upon their return in the summer of 2009: Teachers Teaching Teachers #161 - 07.29.09 - Summer Special: Submitting Your Own Docs Templates, Japan, and Digital Storytelling.
- Kim Cofino gave us her perspectives as well. Kim is currently the Technology and Learning Coach at Yokohama International School in Japan.
On her blog, Always Learning, Kim writes, "As in all my previous schools, I enjoy working with my colleagues to design authentic and engaging international projects incorporating social networking, blogs, wikis, and podcasts, and whatever comes next!" On the podcast, Kim talked about how difficult it was to write about this crisis, but she found a way. Kim was able to develop some of her thoughts in a post well worth checking out, Two Crises, Many Connections.
- Our fourth guest, Scott Lo also has a few wonderful places where you can continue to hear his perspectives. It's often a treat to check out Scott's Radio Tokyo, especially these days. Scott's plan "is to make the live recordings of these podcasts on Friday evenings on ds106 Radio." We were delighted to learn from Scott on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers as well!
We encourage you to share your teaching and learning ideas and your questions!
Click Read more to see a copy of the chat that was happening during the webcast. | <urn:uuid:347d30ea-3bbb-499b-a0a1-8dbeb174b8b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.edtechtalk.com/taxonomy/term/1918 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967031 | 622 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Calculation of Serum Osmolality
The serum osmolality may be estimated by the following equation:
Osmolality = 1.86 Na + (Glucose/18) + (BUN/2.8) + 9 (or) 1.91 Na + (Glucose/15) + (BUN/2.25). The difference between this calculated value and the measured osmolality usually ranges from +13 to -13 mosm/Kg. Larger discrepancies are seen when the formula is simplified (e.g., using 2 x Na). Large disparities between measured and calculated osmolalities are most commonly encountered in alcohol intoxications. Serum osmolality is increased by 0.26 mosm/kg for each 1.0 mg/dl of ethanol in serum. | <urn:uuid:3e98431f-6f77-4e50-abd0-bc3901077145> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/pub/medlabs/lab-handbook-test-directory/appendices/calcserumosmol.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.905371 | 172 | 2.859375 | 3 |
See other books in this series.
This guide is also available online.
For a limited time, order the current 16 volumes of this series at a discount. All sixteen guides for $85.93. [More Information] [Order Now]
Who are the most influential thinkers, and which are the most important concepts, events, and documents in the study of the American political tradition? How ought we regard the beliefs and motivations of the founders, the debate over the ratification of the Constitution, the historical circumstances of the Declaration of Independence, the rise of the modern presidency, and the advent of judicial supremacy? These are a few of the fascinating questions canvassed by George W. Carey in A Student's Guide to American Political Thought. Carey's primer instructs students on the fundamental matters of American political theory while telling them where to turn to obtain a better grasp on the ideas that have shaped the American political heritage. | <urn:uuid:3ad835f7-b914-4768-aa9f-02fc0bb2f125> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.isi.org/(S(ml12mw3qm23k4tbzje4tvk55))/books/bookdetail.aspx?id=a62c1e29-7635-4631-8584-24fe7bff11e4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921754 | 184 | 3.1875 | 3 |
According to the World Health Organization, pedestrians are among the most vulnerable road users, accounting for 22% of the total 1.24 million road traffic deaths each year. The Second United Nations Global Road Safety Week (6–12 May) kicks off worldwide under the banner “Make Walking Safe”, to draw attention to the needs of pedestrians. WHO is calling on governments to take concrete actions to improve the safety of pedestrians.
There are many steps which can be taken to protect pedestrians on the roads. The newly released Pedestrian safety: a road safety manual for decision-makers and practitioners, produced by WHO and partners, promotes a focus on combined enforcement, engineering and education measures, which include among others:
* adopting and enforcing new and existing laws to reduce speeding, curb drinking and driving, decrease mobile phone use and other forms of distracted driving;
* putting in place infrastructure which separates pedestrians from other traffic (sidewalks, raised crosswalks, overpasses, underpasses, refuge islands and raised medians), lowers vehicle speeds (speed bumps, rumble strips and chicanes) and improves roadway lighting;
* creating pedestrian zones in city centres by restricting vehicular access;
* improving mass transit route design;
* developing and enforcing vehicle design standards for pedestrian protection, including soft vehicle fronts;
* organizing and/or further enhancing trauma care systems to guarantee the prompt treatment of those with life-threatening injuries.
“The Second United Nations Global Road Safety Week offers an opportunity to highlight the myriad challenges that pedestrians face around the world each and every day,” notes WHO Assistant Director-General of Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Health Dr Oleg Chestnov. “We are all pedestrians, and governments should put in place measures to better protect all of us. This will not only save lives, but create the conditions needed to make walking safe. When roads are safe, people will walk more, and this in turn will improve health and protect the environment.”
Pedestrians are among the most vulnerable road users. Studies indicate that males, both children and adults, make up a high proportion of pedestrian deaths and injuries. In developed countries, older pedestrians are more at risk, while in low-income and middle-income countries, children and young adults are often affected. Both children and adults with disabilities suffer higher rates of injury as pedestrians compared to their non-disabled peers.
The proportion of pedestrians killed in relation to other road users is highest in the African Region (38%) and lowest in the South-East Asia Region (12%). In some countries, the proportion of pedestrian fatalities can reach nearly two thirds of road traffic deaths, such as in El Salvador (62%) and Liberia (66%).
“More than 5000 pedestrians are killed on the world’s roads each week. This is because their needs have been neglected for decades, often in favor of motorized transport,” says Dr Etienne Krug, WHO Director of the Department of Violence and Injury Prevention and Disability. “We need to rethink the way we organize our transport systems to make walking safe and save pedestrian lives.”
About 1.24 million road traffic deaths occur annually on the world’s roads, making road traffic injuries the eighth leading cause of death globally, and the leading cause of death for young people aged 15–29 years. The Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020, declared by the United Nations General Assembly, offers a broad framework for drawing attention to the need for greater safety on the roads. Launched in May 2011 by governments across the world, the Decade of Action seeks to build road safety management capacity in countries; improve the safety of roads and vehicles; enhance the behaviour of all road users; and strengthen post-crash care.
WHO supports road safety efforts generally by providing guidance to countries on five key risk factors: speeding, drinking and driving, and failing to use motorcycle helmets, seat-belts and child restraints; assisting efforts to improve data collection and trauma care; monitoring progress through global status reports; and serving as the secretariat for the Decade of Action.
For more information please contact:
Telephone: +41 22 791 4547
Mobile: +41 79 249 3520 | <urn:uuid:cd33d49a-b739-4675-ab0d-6f62f1244774> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mywellnessnetwork.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938386 | 867 | 3.515625 | 4 |
|握る||にぎる||1: to clasp; to grasp; to grip; to clutch;
2: to make (nigirizushi, rice ball, etc.); to form; to press into shape; to mold; to mould;
3: to seize (power, etc.); to take hold of
Look up kanji details for 握る.
Denshi Jisho uses the Edict and Kanjidic2 dictionaries, provided by the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group at Monash University. Please see the data and copyright information for more details.
ASCII safe link to this page: http://jisho.org/words?jap=%E6%8F%A1%E3%82%8B;dict=edict | <urn:uuid:1422678d-6f74-4f81-ad55-28e38d3611f4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jisho.org/words?jap=%E6%8F%A1%E3%82%8B;dict=edict | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.76581 | 173 | 2.609375 | 3 |
"I can't confirm individual cases; the only thing I can say is we have a case reported from Clay County," said Lon Kightlinger, state epidemiologist with the South Dakota Department of Health.
He can't confirm whether the individual who has the illness lives in Vermillion.
Only one case has been reported, Kightlinger said, and studies have been conducted to see who has been in contact with the infected individual.
"Those people are under advisement to get educated about the disease," he said.
Establishing whether or not a person is suffering from whooping cough, also known as pertussis, is a multi-step process. A physician first makes a clinical diagnosis seeing if a person's symptoms match those of whooping cough.
"Then there would be lab testing," Kightlinger said. "And once a case is confirmed, we do a contact study to see who may have been exposed. The reason that is done is to prevent other cases amongst the contacts and derail any community contact."
A person exposed to pertussis doesn't become ill right away.
"There's an incubation period of usually 10 days, but it could range to 20 days," he said. "What people are advised to do is if they've been exposed to undergo an antibiotic therapy."
Turn to pertussis on Page 14
Whooping cough is spread in much the same way as mumps, which recently swept through the county.
"They are very similar in the way that they are spread," Kightlinger said. "They are both spread with droplets that are coughed out or sneezed out. When you are speaking, there are even little droplets that are coming out."
Mumps, however, may be slightly less communicable, because coughing usually isn't a hallmark of the illness.
"Whooping cough is especially contagious," he said, "because you're coughing; you're coughing hard and that's a good way to shower everyone around you with pertussis bacteria."
Years ago, both mumps and whooping cough were thought of as childhood diseases, and were usually widespread among youngsters.
Today, both illnesses are vaccine-preventable, Kightlinger said.
"Pertussis vaccinations have been available since the 1940s, and there have been dramatic decreases in the number of cases reported annually in the nation," he said. "The mumps vaccine has been widely available since the 1970s. We haven't seen mumps in South Dakota for 15 years."
Most South Dakotan children receive five pertussis vaccinations by the time they start kindergarten.
"But the immunity starts to wane about 10 years later, and it's only been in the past year that a shot for people over 7 years of age has been available for whooping cough," Kightlinger said.
He is unable to predict whether pertussis will, like mumps, make a comeback in South Dakota, particularly in Clay County.
"Clay County is just unfortunate," he said. "Back in the 1990s, South Dakota had five or six pertussis cases per year."
These were people who had never been vaccinated for the illness, Kightlinger said.
"Then the upper Midwest starting seeing a lot of cases," he said. "Last year, our region of the country had 183 cases (of pertussis), and Clay County had not had any cases yet, so Clay County may just be in the chain of this."
University classes have ended in Vermillion, and students are no longer living in close contact in dormitories.
That initially seems like good news that will minimize any spread of pertussis.
"That's very helpful, but there's one thing that always works against us," Kightlinger said. "When school gets out, a lot of the younger kids will go into day care." | <urn:uuid:22fcb976-f301-4a84-8208-9a6a5ab4b436> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://plaintalk.net/2006/06/whooping-cough-confirmed-in-county/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98423 | 802 | 2.921875 | 3 |
The term interfaith dialogue refers to cooperative, constructive and positive interaction between people of different religious traditions (i.e., "faiths") and/or spiritual or humanistic beliefs, at both the individual and institutional levels. It is distinct from syncretism or alternative religion, in that dialogue often involves promoting understanding between different religions to increase acceptance of others, rather than to synthesize new beliefs.
Throughout the world there are local, regional, national and international interfaith initiatives; many are formally or informally linked and constitute larger networks or federations. The often quoted "There will be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions. There will be no peace among the religions without dialogue among the religions" was formulated by Dr Hans Küng, a Professor of Ecumenical Theology and President of the Foundation for a Global Ethic.
The United States Institute of Peace published works on interfaith dialogue and peacebuilding including a Special Report on Evaluating Interfaith Dialogue Interfaith dialog forms a major role in the study of religion and peacebuilding.
To some, the term interreligious dialogue has the same meaning as interfaith dialogue. Neither are the same as Nondenominational Christianity. The World Council of Churches, though. distinguishes between 'interfaith' and 'interrreligious.' To the WCC, 'interreligious' refers to action between different Christian denominations. So, 'interfaith' refers to interaction between different faith groups such as Muslim and Christian or Hindu and Jew for example.
The history of interfaith dialogue is as ancient as the religions since men and women when not at war with their neighbours have always made an effort to understand them (not least because understanding is a strategy for defence, but also because for as long as there is dialogue wars are delayed). History records many examples of interfaith initiatives and dialogue throughout the ages.
- Interfaith dialogue and action have taken place for many centuries. The Emperor Akbar the Great, for example, encouraged tolerance in Mughal India, a diverse nation with people of various faith backgrounds, including Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Christianity. Religious pluralism can also be observed in other historical contexts, including Muslim Spain. Zarmanochegas (Zarmarus) (Ζαρμανοχηγὰς) was a monk of the Sramana tradition (possibly, but not necessarily a Buddhist) from India who journeyed to Antioch and Athens while Augustus (died 14 CE) was ruling the Roman Emprire.
- The Ottoman Turks' administration of the Balkans from the 15th to 19th centuries provides another historical example of generally peaceful coexistence between peoples of different faiths, including Sufi and non-Sufi Muslims, Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians and Jews. The tolerant context of this period contrasts dramatically with the ethnic strife and atrocities in the region during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.
- There have been several meetings referred to as a Parliament of the World’s Religions, most notably the World's Parliament of Religions of 1893, the first attempt to create a global dialogue of faiths. The event was celebrated by another conference on its centenary in 1993. This led to a new series of conferences under the official title "Parliament of the World's Religions".
- Early 20th Century - dialogue started to take place between the Abrahamic faiths - Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Bahá'í.
- The 1960s - The interfaith movement gathered interest.
- 1965 - The Roman Catholic Church issued the Vatican II document Nostra Aetate, instituting major policy changes in the Catholic Church's policy towards non-Christian religions.
- In the late 1960s interfaith groups such as the Clergy And Laity Concerned (CALC) joined around Civil Rights issues for African-Americans and later were often vocal in their opposition to the Vietnam War.
- September 11, 2001 - After September 11, under the leadership of James Parks Morton, Dean Emeritus of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the Interfaith Center of New York's mission became increasingly centered on providing assistance to immigrant and disenfranchised communities whose religious leaders were often the only source of knowledge for new immigrants about coping with a new life in an urban environment like New York City. New programs were launched that responded to the needs of these constituents, combining practical information about establishing civic connections and information about other religions with insight about common social concerns. New programs included Religious Communities and the Courts System (2003), Teacher Education in American Religious Diversity (2003), Mediation for Religious Leaders (2005), and Religious Diversity Training for Social Workers (2005).
- On October 13, 2007 Muslims expanded their message. In A Common Word Between Us and You, 138 Muslim scholars, clerics and intellectuals unanimously came together for the first time since the days of the Prophet[s] to declare the common ground between Christianity and Islam.
- In 2008, through the collaboration of The Hebrew Union College, Omar Foundation, and the University of Southern California Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement was created. This inter-faith think tank began to hold religious text-study programs throughout Los Angeles and has an extensive amount of resources on its website including scholarly articles about Creationism, Abraham and Human Rights.
- July 2008 - A historic interfaith dialogue conference was initiated by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to solve world problems through concord instead of conflict. The conference was attended by religious leaders of different faiths such as Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism and was hosted by King Juan Carlos of Spain in Madrid.
- January 2009, at Gujarat’s Mahuva, the Dalai Lama inaugurated an interfaith "World Religions-Dialogue and Symphony" conference convened by Hindu preacher Morari Bapu from January 6 to 11th 2009. This conference explored ways and means to deal with the discord among major religions, according to Morari Bapu. Participants included Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche on Buddhism, Diwan Saiyad Zainul Abedin Ali Sahib (Ajmer Sharif) on Islam, Dr. Prabalkant Dutt on non-Catholic Christianity, Swami Jayendra Saraswathi on Hinduism and Dastur Dr. Peshtan Hormazadiar Mirza on Zoroastrianism.
- July 2009, the Vancouver School of Theology opened the Iona Pacific: Inter-Religious Centre for Social Action, Research, and Contemplative Practice under the leadership of Principal and Dean, Dr. Wendy Fletcher, and Director, Rabbi Dr. Robert Daum.
Policies of religions to interfaith dialogue
Bahá'í Faith
Interfaith and multi-faith interactivity is integral to the teachings of the Bahá'í Faith. Its founder Bahá'u'lláh enjoined his followers to "consort with the followers of all religions in a spirit of friendliness and fellowship." Bahá'ís are often at the forefront of local inter-faith activities and efforts. Through the Bahá'í International Community agency, the Bahá'ís also participate at a global level in inter-religious dialogue both through and outside of the United Nations processes.
In 2002 the Universal House of Justice, the global governing body of the Bahá'ís, issued a letter to the religious leadership of all faiths in which it identified religious prejudice as one of the last remaining "isms" to be overcome, enjoining such leaders to unite in an effort to root out extreme and divisive religious intolerance.
Buddhism is a religion which teaches people to 'live and let live'. In the history of the world, there is no evidence to show that Buddhists have interfered or done any damage to any other religion in any part of the world for the purpose of introducing their religion. Buddhists do not regard the existence of other religions as a hindrance to worldly progress and peace.
The 14th century Zen master Gasan Joseki indicated that the Gospels were written by an enlightened being:
- "And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these...Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself."
- Gasan said: "Whoever uttered those words I consider an enlightened man."
The 14th Dalai Lama has done a great deal of interfaith work throughout his life. He believes that the "common aim of all religions, an aim that everyone must try to find, is to foster tolerance, altruism and love". He met with Pope Paul VI at the Vatican in 1973. He met with Pope John Paul II in 1980 and also later in 1982, 1986, 1988, 1990, and 2003. During 1990, he met in Dharamsala with a delegation of Jewish teachers for an extensive interfaith dialogue. He has since visited Israel three times and met during 2006 with the Chief Rabbi of Israel. In 2006, he met privately with Pope Benedict XVI. He has also met the late Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Robert Runcie, and other leaders of the Anglican Church in London, Gordon B. Hinckley, late President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), as well as senior Eastern Orthodox Church, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, and Sikh officials.
In 2010, the Dalai Lama was joined by Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, and Islamic scholar Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr of George Washington University when Emory University's Center for the Study of Law and Religion hosted a "Summit on Happiness".
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Traditional Christian doctrine is Christocentric, meaning that Christ is held to be the sole full and true revelation of the will of God for humanity. In a Christocentric view, the elements of truth in other religions are understood in relation to the fullness of truth found in Christ. God is nevertheless understood to be free of human constructions. Therefore, God the Holy Spirit is understood as the power who guides non-Christians in their search for truth, which is held to be a search for the mind of Christ, even if "anonymously," in the phrase of Catholic theologian Karl Rahner. For those who support this view, anonymous Christians belong to Christ now and forever and lead a life fit for Jesus' commandment to love, even though they never explicitly understand the meaning of their life in Christian terms.
While the conciliar document Nostra Aetate has fostered widespread dialogue, the declaration Dominus Iesus nevertheless reaffirms the centrality of the person of Jesus Christ in the spiritual and cultural identity of Christians, rejecting various forms of syncretism.
Pope John Paul II was a major advocate of interfaith dialogue, promoting meetings in Assisi in the 1980s. Pope Benedict XVI has taken a more moderate and cautious approach, stressing the need for intercultural dialogue, but reasserting Christian theological identity in the revelation of Jesus of Nazareth in a book published with Marcello Pera in 2004.
For traditional Christian doctrine, the value of inter-religious dialogue is confined to acts of love and understanding toward others either as anonymous Christians or as potential converts.
In mainline liberal Protestant traditions, however, as well as in the emerging church, these doctrinal constraints have largely been cast off. Many theologians, pastors, and lay people from these traditions do not hold to uniquely Christocentric understandings of how God was in Christ. They engage deeply in interfaith dialogue as learners, not converters, and desire to celebrate as fully as possible the many paths to God.
Much focus in Christian interfaith dialogue has been put on Christian–Jewish reconciliation. One of the oldest successful dialogues between Jews and Christians has been taking place in Mobile, Alabama. It began in the wake of the call of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) of the Roman Catholic Church for increased understanding between Christians and Jews. The organization has recently moved its center of activity to Spring Hill College, a Catholic, Jesuit institution of higher learning located in Mobile. Reconciliation has been successful on many levels, but has been somewhat complicated by the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle East, where a significant minority of Arabs are Christian.
Orthodox Judaism forbids interfaith dialogue. Prominent Rabbinic authorities in ruling on this issue, further caution that the intent is to convert Jews, that participation leads to confusion and wrong ideas and that Judaism's prohibition of proselytism, combined with other religions' "missionary zeal", creates an unbalanced dynamic such that the "dialogue" effectively becomes a monologue. The Modern Orthodox movement allows narrow exchanges on social issues while forbidding discussion of doctrine. Reform Judaism, Reconstructionist Judaism and Conservative Judaism encourage interfaith dialogue.
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Islam has long encouraged dialogue to reach truth (and not interfaith dialogue which seeks to find common between people and leave differences aside). Islam also stressed that the supreme law of the land should be Islam and that Islam regulates all life affairs and therefore regulates how non Muslim and Muslims live under an Islamic state, with historical examples coming from Muslim Spain, Mughal India, and even starting as far back as Muhammad's time, where people of the Abrahamic Faiths lived in harmony.
Many traditional and religious texts and customs of the faith have encouraged this, including specific verses in the Quran, such as: "O people! Behold, we have created you from a male and a female and have made you into nations and tribes so that you might come to know one another. Verily, the noblest of you in the sight of God is the one who is most deeply conscious of Him. Behold, God is all-knowing, all-aware." [Qur'an 49:13]
In recent times, Muslim theologians have advocated inter-faith dialogue on a large scale, something which is new in a political sense. The declaration A Common Word of 2007 was a public first in Christian-Islam relations, trying to work out a moral common ground on many social issues.
Relations between Muslims and Jews remain quite difficult, exacerbated by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are inter-Muslim issues in between Sunnis and Shiites that are very much unresolved in the Middle East. Also, relations between Muslims and Hindus in India and Pakistan could theoretically be much better if interfaith efforts were more successful.
According to the Ahmadiyya understanding, interfaith dialogues are an integral part of developing inter-religious peace and the establishment of peace. The Ahmadiyya Community has been organising interfaith events locally and nationally in various parts of the world in order to develop a better atmosphere of love and understanding between faiths. Various speakers are invited to deliver a talk on how peace can be established from their own or religious perspectives.
Zoroastrianism has long encouraged interfaith, all the way from Cyrus the Great's speech in Babylon, which permitted the population to keep following their own religion and keep speaking their own language. Cyrus did not enforce the state religion unto the people. As well, Cyrus freed all the Jewish slaves from Babylon, which earned him a place in the Jewish scriptures. Zoroastrians believe that all religions are equal, and that their religion is not superior to other religions. They believed that the Prophet Zoroaster implied the religion unto them, and did not convert each of them. Therefore, they do not even accept converts into their religion. All adherents must be born into the religion.
Interfaith organisations
Muslim Christian Dialog Forum is an Interfaith Dialog Forum established by Minhaj-ul-Quran-a sufi based moderate Islamic Organization started by Tahir_ul_Qadri to promote religious tolerance and cultural co-existence between Muslims and Christian community.
Interfaith Encounter Association (IEA) was established in 2001 and works to build genuine coexistence and sustainable peace, through joint community building on the grassroots level, using interactive interfaith dialogue as its vehicle. The a-political and all-inclusive approach of the organization and its activities continuously form the human infrastructure for peace in the Holy Land and the Middle East. In its ten years of existence, the IEA have held – in its three regional focuses: in Israel, between Israelis and Palestinians and in the larger Middle East – more than 1000 programs, with thousands of participants. A most significant fact is that the participants in IEA programs include people of all political and religious views, as well as all ages, genders, walks of life etc.; and that the vast majority of them have met 'the other' for the first time through IEA. The IEA have formed till now 41 on-going community-groups of interfaith encounter – from the Upper Galilee to Eilat, including 10 groups that bring together on a regular basis Israelis and West Bank Palestinians. Among the latter we maintain the three only groups in the country that bring together Palestinians with Settlers. IEA maintains working relations with 7 Palestinian organizations, across the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and is a founding partner of the Middle East Abrahamic Forum, with additional organizations from Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey.
Messiah Foundation International is an interfaith organisation which aims to promote mutual love, peace and understanding between members of all religions and faiths through the spiritual sciences taught by Ra Gohar Shahi. MFI has centres across the globe, including in the United States of America, Canada, the United Kingdom of Great Britain, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Japan.
Project Interfaith is a non-profit organization that aims to grow understanding, respect and relationships among people of all faiths, beliefs and cultures. The goals of the organization are approached through online media resources (particularly RavelUnravel) as well as community-building programs that educate and engage a variety of audiences on issues of faith, religion, identity, interfaith relations, and religious and cultural diversity.
While there are many essentially religious organisations geared towards working on interfaith issues (see Interreligious organisations) there is also a less common attempt by some governmental institutions to specifically address the diversity of religions (see Australasian Police Multicultural Advisory Bureau for one example).
In India, many organizations have been involved in interfaith activities because of the diversity of religion in the nation.
United Religions Initiative (URI) was founded in 2000 to promote daily, lasting interfaith cooperation, end religiously motivated violence, and create cultures of peace, justice, and healing for the Earth and all living beings. With hundreds of thousands of members in 80+ countries representing over 200 religions and indigenous traditions, URI uses "cooperation circles" to promote dialogue and action.
The Jordanian Interfaith Coexistence Research Center is a Jordanian non-governmental organization for promoting peaceful religious coexistence. It fosters grassroots interfaith dialogue and works on creating interreligious harmony.
The Global Peace Pioneers - GPP is a Pakistan based non-governmental organization advocating for peaceful religious coexistence. It cultivates the seed for grassroots interfaith dialogue and works on creating interreligious harmony with in Pakistan.
United Nations support
On December 2, 2008, Anwarul Karim Chowdhury said:
- "Interfaith dialogue is absolutely essential, relevant, and necessary. ... If 2009 is to truly be the Year of Interfaith Cooperation, the U.N. urgently needs to appoint an interfaith representative at a senior level in the Secretariat."
- The Republic of the Philippines will host a Special Non-Aligned Movement Ministerial Meeting on Interfaith Dialogue and Cooperation for Peace and Development from March 16 to 18 in Manila. During the meeting, to be attended by ministers of foreign affairs of the NAM member countries, a declaration in support of interfaith dialogue initiatives will be adopted. An accompanying event will involve civil society activities.
- In 2010, HM King Abdullah II addressed the 65th UN General Assembly and proposed the idea for a ‘World Interfaith Harmony Week’ to further broaden his goals of faith-driven world harmony by extending his call beyond the Muslim and Christian community to include people of all beliefs, those with no set religious beliefs as well. A few weeks later, HRH Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad presented the proposal to the UN General Assembly, where it was adopted unanimously as a UN Observance Event.
The first week of February, every year, has been declared a UN World Interfaith Harmony Week. The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre released a document which summarises the key events leading up to the UN resolution as well as documenting some Letters of Support and Events held in honour of the week.
Criticism of interfaith dialogue
Conversely, organisations labelled as extremist have been accused of adopting interfaith dialogue as a political front, as well as to raise funds. One commentator has noted of Islamist groups, that, "Interfaith is the perfect ‘do-good’ agenda with which to legitimise their reputation and obfuscate their genuine, more sinister, intentions."
British MP Paul Goodman has questioned the UK Government's decision to fund Campusalam, a University interfaith group, that has received under half a million pounds of taxpayers' money, despite the group's open links to the Lokahi Foundation, widely considered to be an Islamist organisation.
See also
- A Common Word Between Us and You
- Buddhism and Jainism
- Buddhism and Hinduism
- Buddhism and Christianity
- Centre for Dialogue
- Daughters of Abraham
- Ecumenism (Christian)
- Esalen Institute
- The Elijah Interfaith Institute
- Fethullah Gülen
- Gülen movement
- Interfaith Center of New York
- International Center for Religion & Diplomacy
- Jewish views of religious pluralism
- Jordanian Interfaith Coexistence Research Center
- Multifaith space
- Parliament of the World's Religions
- Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue
- Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim–Christian Understanding
- Relations between Catholicism and Judaism
- Religions for Peace
- Roland de Corneille
- Saltley Gate Peace Group
- Scriptural Reasoning
- Seventh-day Adventist interfaith relations
- Temple of Understanding
- Temple of All Religions
- United Religions Initiative
- United States Institute of Peace
- World Council of Churches
- World Interfaith Harmony Week
- Musser, D & Sunderland, D., War or Words: Interreligious Dialogue as an Instrument of Peace Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, (2005) 1.
- Smock, D. (ed), (2002)Interfaith Dialogue and Peacebuilding Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace Press
- Abu Nimer, M., et al, (2007) Unity in Diversity: Interfaith Dialogue in the Middle East Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace Press
- Renee Garfinkel,What Works: Evaluating Interfaith Dialogue, United State Institute of Peace, Special Report #123, (2004)
- "Interreligious Dialogue". World Council of Chruches. Retrieved 24 July 2012.
- Progressive Scottish Muslims: Learning Interfaith from the Mughals: Akbar the Great (1556-1605)
- Strabo, xv, 1, on the immolation of the Sramana in Athens (Paragraph 73).
- Dio Cassius, liv, 9.
- Give Peace a Chance: Exploring the Vietnam Antiwar Movement ISBN 978-0-8156-2559-9
- http://www.saudiembassy.net/press-releases/press07170801.aspx Saudi Embassy - Saudi King Abdullah Commences Interfaith Dialogue Conference in Madrid, Spain
- Saudi Gazette - Let concord replace conflict – Abdullah
- Dalai Lama inaugurates 6-day world religions meet at Mahua
- Dalai Lama to inaugurate inter-faith conference
- Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh, page 22, Bahá'u'lláh, From the "Bishárát" (Glad-Tidings).
- Catharine Cookson, ed. (2003). Encyclopedia of religious freedom. Taylor & Francis. p. 9.
- The Buddhist View toward Other Religions
- The Buddhist Attitude Towards Other Religions
- 101 Zen Stories; #16
- Tibetan Buddhism
- Kamenetz,Rodger (1994)The Jew in the Lotus Harper Collins: 1994.
- Top 10 Things Religious Leaders Say about Happiness
- Chabad.info sighting Rambam, Rav Feinstein, Lubavitcher Rebbe
- L'Chaim: 672: Beha'aloscha
- L'Chaim: 673: Sh'lach
- A Modern Orthodox Approach to Interfaith Dialogue
- "Ahmadiyya Muslim Community to hold Peace Conference in Malta". Ahmadiyya times. Retrieved 19 October 2010.
- About the Meeting
- How It Began
- The First UN World Interfaith Harmony Week Booklet
- The Inevitability of Clash of Civilisation | <urn:uuid:2eebbcd2-2fc6-4744-b755-a0aa02dba33c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interfaith | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928657 | 5,224 | 3.34375 | 3 |
Tirpitz was the sister battleship to the Bismarck like the Bismarck she was sunk during World War II .
Tirpitz was the second of two Bismarck-class battleships built for the German Kriegsmarine (War Navy) during World War II. Named after Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz. Tirpitz was laid down at the Kriegsmarinewerft Wilhelmshaven in November 1936. She was launched two and a half years later. When work was completed in February 1941, Tirpitz was commissioned into the German fleet. Like her sister ship Bismarck, Tirpitz was armed with a main battery of eight 38-centimeter guns in four twin turrets. After a series of wartime modifications she was 2,000 metric tons heavier than Bismarck.
Tirpitz completed sea trials in early 1941, Tirpitz briefly served as the centerpiece of the Baltic Fleet. It was intended to prevent a possible break-out attempt by the Soviet Baltic Fleet. In early 1942, the ship sailed to Norway to act as a deterrent against an Allied invasion. While stationed in Norway, Tirpitz was also intended to be used to intercept Allied convoys to the Soviet Union. Two such missions were attempted in 1942. Tirpitz acted as a fleet in being, forcing the British Royal Navy to retain significant naval forces in the area to contain the battleship.
In September 1943, Tirpitz, along with the battleship Scharnhorst, bombarded Allied positions on the island of Spitzbergen, the only time the ship used her main battery in anger. Shortly thereafter, the ship was damaged in an attack by British mini-submarines and subsequently subjected to a series of large-scale air raids.
On 12 November 1944, British Lancaster bombers equipped with 12,000 pounds "Tallboy" bombs destroyed the ship; two direct hits and a near miss caused the ship to capsize rapidly. A deck fire spread to the ammunition magazine for one of the main battery turrets, which caused a large explosion. Figures for the number of men killed in the attack range from 950 to 1,204. The wreck was broken up by a joint Norwegian and German salvage operation after the war from 1948 to 1957. | <urn:uuid:f28cbdbe-5656-4752-b62e-b357f9e0f60e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://midnightangel50.blogspot.com/2012/04/shipwreck-monday-tirpitz.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975878 | 473 | 3.359375 | 3 |
By Andrew Freedman (Climate Central)
Recently I reported on a study showing links between rapid Arctic climate change and shifts in the jet stream throughout the Northern Hemisphere. The study, led by Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University, suggests that there may be an Arctic connection to some extreme weather events, particularly ones that result from stuck, or "blocked," weather patterns.
The study shows that by changing the temperature balance between the Arctic and mid-latitudes, rapid Arctic warming is altering the course of the jet stream, which steers weather systems from west to east around the hemisphere. The Arctic has been warming about twice as fast as the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, due to a combination of human emissions of greenhouse gases and unique feedbacks built into the Arctic climate system.
The jet stream, the study states, is becoming “wavier,” with steeper troughs and higher ridges. As a result, weather systems are progressing more slowly, raising the chances for long-duration extreme events, like droughts, floods, and heat waves.
This video looks great on an IPad, just select and expand. Enjoy! | <urn:uuid:fc5c01a6-f137-452c-a6a9-3135f40cb07d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://weatherclimatematter.blogspot.com/2012/05/video-extreme-weather-and-rapid-arctic.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950226 | 232 | 3.671875 | 4 |
At the heart of skateboarding ability is balance. Missed tricks and falls are the result of losing your balance. Being born with good balance will help you progress as a skater. However, balance can be learned and improved with practice.
Balance is maintained by adjusting your center of gravity. Center of gravity is a term used to describe the place where the bulk of a person’s or object’s weight is concentrated.
When an object is at rest—be it a chair, alarm clock, or Labrador retriever—its center of gravity is spread across the width of its connection to the ground. This is why you have better balance when you stand with your feet apart than with your feet together. Think about a bowling ball: Its connection to the ground is a very small point, and so it’s very easy to move the ball with a light touch even though it is heavy. It takes very little force to push the ball’s center of gravity beyond its base. However, if you could find an object of identical mass and weight that was square, it wouldn’t move with the same amount of pressure because its base is much wider—making it far more difficult to move its center of gravity beyond its base.
If you think about this principle in relation to skateboarding, it makes perfect sense. Any time the board contacts something that offers resistance or has changes in its pitch (such as a bank or a slope), your body needs to adjust. Hitting a rock, for example, can stop the board, but your body will continue moving forward. With a wide stance you have a better chance of adjusting in time and regaining your balance.
Center of gravity is also affected by its distance to the ground. When you’re standing still, your center of gravity is right around your belly button. Bending your legs lowers your center of gravity and makes you more stable, whereas standing tall raises your center of gravity and makes you less stable.
When you are standing on a skateboard the same principles apply; standing tall with your feet together makes you unstable, while bending your knees with your feet apart improves your stability. When you are stable you can maintain control.
To see the benefits of a wide, low stance for yourself, stand with your feet touching each other and your knees locked, and swivel your hips as if you were using a Hula-Hoop. If you go crazy swiveling your hips, you may feel yourself losing your balance. Now try again with your feet about a foot apart and your knees bent. It is virtually impossible to throw yourself off balance with this stance. Keeping your center of gravity low and your stance wide is fundamental to good skateboarding.
You will find myriad balancing toys, mock skateboards, and devices that promise to improve your skating. The best way to improve your skateboarding balance is simply by riding a skateboard. This will prepare you for the small things that happen while skating and strengthen the muscle groups that skating requires. | <urn:uuid:e7bfc6fa-1ff7-4ae6-b660-47522acd8133> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.humankinetics.com/excerpts/excerpts/balance?ActionType=2_SetCurrency&CurrencyCode=5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953506 | 615 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Checking your blood sugar levels often and writing down the results will tell you how well you are managing your diabetes so you can stay as healthy as possible. The best times to check your blood sugar are before meals and at bedtime. Your blood sugar meter may have computer software to help you track your blood sugar level. This is usually available from the manufacturer' s website.
Reviewed last on: 2/14/2009
David C. Dugdale, III, MD, Professor of Medicine, Division of General Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine. | <urn:uuid:8cc64141-4213-421d-95b8-402c539220d8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.umm.edu/ency/carepoints/Manage-your-blood-sugar.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931713 | 116 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Ward's Book of Days.
Pages of interesting anniversaries.
What happened on this day in history.
On this day in history in 1912, The Titanic sank.
The Titanic surnamed Unsinkable, the most opulent luxury liner of The White Star line, sank on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York. She was cruising at a steady pace off Newfoundland when she suddenly struck an iceberg. The hold gradually filled with seawater and within three hours the vessel sank. Of the 2,224 passengers on board, 1,513 were drowned as the vessel only had lifeboats for half the passengers.
The event caused a scandal and prompted key upgrading of nautical safety measures chief amongst which were that vessels were obliged to provide a lifeboat place for every person on board. Since the sinking of the Titanic, no shipping line has ever dared to designate any of its ships unsinkable.
In 1985, the wreck of the Titanic was discovered and filmed but little of the once lavish liner remained.
Thistlethwaite, Diane and Noon, Steve. Story of the Titanic.
Buy it here at Amazon
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©2006 Ward’s Book of Days | <urn:uuid:7cbc5b9e-de90-4ac1-9628-3c0b446d18d1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wardsbookofdays.com/15april.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964695 | 245 | 2.765625 | 3 |
DUTCH SEPHARDIC JEWRY IN THE AGE OFDid you know that the first book about the workings of a stock market was written in Spanish by a Dutch Sephardic Jew, Joseph de la Vega, and was entitled Confucion de los Confucions (Confusion of the Confusions)? Did you know that in 17th Century the Portuguese Synagogue of Amsterdam had rules against carrying a gun, wearing spurs or raising one's voice during the services. (to this day it is rare to see someone carrying a gun or wearing spurs in our synagogue, we have to work on the third admonition.)? Did you know that the leaders of the Dutch Sephardic community advised against giving alms to Ashkenazi beggars and that Sephardics who had married Ashkenazis could not be buried in the Sephardic Cemetery? One man was forced to apologize because he had bought a chicken from an Ashkenazi butcher.
REMBRANT AND SPINOZA
If you had attended the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies colloquium, you would have learned about all of the above and much more. The colloquium is an annual affair sponsored by the Maurice Amado Foundation. This year the topic was: Dutch Sephardic Jewry in the Age of Rembrandt and Spinoza. The speakers were: Johathan Israel, the Amado Visiting Professor of Sephardic Studies at UCLA; Mariam Bodian of the University of Michigan; and Daniel Swetschinski .
Those who attended the event learned that Baruch Spinoza (or Bento Espinoza) came from a family of Portuguese Jews who ran a small trading business involving cargoes of fruits and olive oil from Portugal and North Africa. After major business losses to wars and piracy, Spinoza turned more and more to his philosophical writings. He eventually abandoned the commercial world. He was a leader in the movement towards rationalism. He would not accept the view that the bible was to be taken literally. Because of this "heresy" he was excommunicated by the Jewish leaders.
The Portuguese began moving to Holland several generations after the mid to late 1500s. They integrated with and adapted the forms of the Dutch commercial class. Prof. Bodian show pictures of their dress and architecture which were very similar to that of the Dutch. However, for several centuries most Jews continued to speak Portuguese.
Jews were admonished not to congest streets during weddings and funerals so as not to annoy Christians. Gambling was denounced and commerce was regulated. For the most part the Jewish leaders who made rules for the Sephardic community were restrained and level headed. The excommunication of Spinoza was extreme and an exception. Most penalties were minor, involving small fines or apologies. | <urn:uuid:255fb30d-f29a-4d2b-8eaf-16a02cc94f05> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://home.earthlink.net/~benven/DutchJews.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983044 | 572 | 2.78125 | 3 |
English Language Learners
Here are our teachers:
In the elementary schools the ELL program is a push-in and pull-out program. The ELL teachers take students from their regular class for 30-60 minutes a few times a week depending on the students’ needs.
Students work on:
- Listening - Learning to understand English spoken in a wide range of social and academic contexts.
- Speaking - Learning to speak English with increasing accuracy and fluency in order to convey meaning appropriate to a wide range of social and academic contexts.
- Writing - Learning to produce written English with increasing fluency and accuracy to convey meaning appropriately in a range of social and academic contexts.
- Culture - Learning concepts that result in knowledge and awareness of the history and culture of classmates, Virginia and the United States.
ELL teachers work with classroom teachers to ensure the academic success of our students. Students are evaluated throughout the year to determine their English level and to make appropriate lesson plans suitable for their individual needs.
The goal of ELL is to use sheltered techniques to give background knowledge in specific content areas to students so they can be as successful as their native English-speaking peers. We strive to ensure that all ELL students are challenged and engaged in all areas of study. | <urn:uuid:cfbbda33-0c42-48b3-b05a-9442cd1a200b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lcps.org/domain/9737 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94095 | 260 | 3.3125 | 3 |
The bilateral trade relations between India and Japan are built on a range of breathless possibilities endorsed by tenuous past and new emerging stereotypes. Both Japan and India agree that a sizable trade exists between the two nations, but their assessment of this trade and its potential differ radically. These differing perspectives are based on a number of factors ranging from economic and political to cultural and social. The Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh's visit to Japan in December 2006 must be seen in this light.
Undoubtedly trade between the two countries is on the increase, if we take into cognizance the ODA Japan offers to India and the large contingent of Indian IT professionals working in Japan. In itself, this looks quite promising, but is not enough.
Military, economic, educational and infrastructure cooperation between the two countries are either minimal or virtually non-existent. Japan believes that any such cooperation functions in the realm of possibility while India thinks it is a forgone conclusion. Differing perceptions are also visible in the way both countries interpret trade relations. Japan sees a significant growth in the actual volume of trade with India, while India sees stagnation. In the recent past we have seen the rise of Indian schools in Tokyo and Yokohama, but they are meant predominantly for children of Indian expatriates.
Popular Perceptions and Stereotypes
Japan's perceptions of India are changing, not changed. The popular stereotype of India as a 'poor country, curry rice' is gradually being replaced with a new stereotype, '20x20 and IT.' This new stereotype is altering the image of India amongst the general populace in Japan, but most people, other than those directly involved with information technology, do not know what to do with it. Japan has yet to fully comprehend the potential of the Indian market, and for that to happen, it has to shed its condescending attitude of being the reigning economic superpower in Asia and the giver of economic largesse first to China and then to India. This unequal relationship between Japan and India comes in the way of fully comprehending the message that the Indian prime minister carried to Japan last year.
Centuries of looking towards Europe, for both ideas and technology, and during the post-war era focusing primarily on the United States for practically everything from military protection to language learning, Japan has not been able to escape the rather circumscribing and often debilitating influence of the American and European political and economic hegemony. However, in the last few years Japan's growing ambition to become the leader of the world, claim a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council, become autonomously capable of handling China's muscular foreign policy, deal effectively with North Korea's brinkmanship, and combat Russia's maritime assertiveness, has forced it to question Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution that prohibits the possession and use of nuclear weapons and start a contentious debate about the nuclear option.
This new shift in Japanese thinking, which Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has termed 'nation-building', can make Japan more self-reliant and assertive in world affairs. The political notions of nation building and an independent foreign policy have brought about many structural changes in the bureaucracy and administration that will finally impact on bilateral trade relations between Japan and India. When Manmohan Singh was in Japan the Japanese Diet passed a bill upgrading its Defense Agency to Defense Ministry. This will enable the Defense Ministry to decide its own budget and not seek the direct approval of the prime minister.
The Nuclear Issue
India feels that the recent endorsement of its status as a responsible nation by the United States after the passing of the civilian nuclear transfer of technology deal would automatically allow it to be accepted by all pro-American nations, more so when China its main adversary has given the deal a clean chit. Undoubtedly the recent American tilt towards India and India eschewing decades of pro-Soviet foreign policy have taken Japan and the rest of the world by surprise. Harried by China's objections to former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, and the eliding of wartime atrocities by the Japanese Imperial Army in China, Japan has increasing faced obstacles in developing a viable trade partnership with China. We must, however, remember that in spite of anti-Japanese sentiments fanned in China, China was the most important trade partner of Japan superseding the United States. This rather complex Sino-Japanese relationship coupled with border disputes with South Korea and Russia has created a strong threat perception in Japan where Japan seeks constant reassurance from the United States for protecting its sovereignty and integrity in the eventuality of a nuclear strike by any belligerent nation. The recent assurances by the U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, that the United States possesses the capability to protect Japan were highly publicized by the Japanese media more than Manmohan Singh visit.
The Japanese threat perception has triggered calls from within the LDP to conduct a national debate on the nuclear issue strongly denied by the top leadership of the party. However the increasing concern with national security and differing voices on the nuclear issue itself constitutes a debate though of a lesser intensity than the one that emerged in the 1960s in India in the wake of its defeat in the Sino-Indian war of 1952 and the subsequent nuclearization of China in 1964. A perceived threat as many nuclear analysts believe is invariably the most convincing argument that can be put forward by any national government before its populace for endorsing a nuclear policy. This is what Japan is doing now.
In itself, this may not be important for India but changing notions of the nuclear issue has altered Japanese perceptions of India's nuclear policy. Since the last few decades Japan has been a vociferous critic of India's nuclear policy and did not see much in common in terms of national values and priorities. The Indian economy too had nothing to offer Japan. From the early to the middle of the twentieth century the exploitative nature of the British colonial economy did not allow India to grow. Even after independence in 1947, Indian economy grew by a meager 1 percent. Only with the rise of technology and private entrepreneurs in 2000 Indian economy showed a substantial growth of 6 percent. Recent 8.5 percent growth rate has surprised even the erstwhile colonial masters. The Said Business School, University of Oxford is collaborating with The Confederation of Indian industry (CII) to set up a Business Center in India and the U.K. to study the reasons for the phenomenal growth of the Indian economy and its transition from poverty to prosperity.
Changing Geopolitical Reality
The changing geopolitical reality in the world has realigned nations in a new constellation against the emerging threat of what is termed as 'Islamic terrorism' and the Chinese dragon. These two threats, felt more by the United States and less by Europe, have reconfigured the global politics of the Cold War period in Asia and shifted the focus from the threat of the spread of Soviet communism to the spread of fundamentalist Islam. In other words, the United States, Japan and India have increasingly begun to feel the emerging threat of China to the peace and stability in Asia. Though the U.S. tilt towards India and India's shift from Soviet communism to American capitalism have been in the interest of both the countries, it has nevertheless reconfigured the power balance in Asia. Now China's hegemonic intentions can be challenged and contained by a strong and emerging nation like India. India's emergence as a young nation with 52 percent of its population below 25 years of age has drawn the attention of both political analysts and demographers who see India in the immediate future as outpacing China. Einoske Sakikabara of Waseda University argues that within ten years India will outpace China in commerce and other areas, something that even Indian planners would find hard to endorse.
India is envious of Japan working with a low population though does not fully comprehend the problems arising from a graying population and declining birthrate. The high standard of law and order in Japan, developed infrastructure, and total commitment to work even at lower levels of the social system are the envy of both Indian private entrepreneurs and professionals, something missing in India. Encouraged by the Japanese investment in the Delhi Metro and purification of a stretch of Ganga River, Indian leaders are calling for a larger ODA investment by Japan in India which could bring rich dividends in the future. In fact at present the ODA has extended yen loans to nine projects in India ranging from the prevention of diseases to reforestation and fast transit system.
Japanese Investment in India
The success story of the Japanese automobile company Maruti-Suzuki in India in the last few decades is always shown as an example of the enormous potential that Japanese investment has in India. Encouraged by the incredible sale of its cheaper car models Maruti 800 and Zen 1000, Suzuki has planned an additional investment of 210 billion yen in India by 2010 to increase production and sales. Japanese themselves are surprised that not so popular companies in Japan are making tremendous profits in India and have proved to be second to none in road worthiness, maintenance cost and fuel efficiency. Surprised by the success of Suzuki, Toyota Motor Corporation has set up a plant in south India which will produce compact low priced cars by 2010. Other Japanese companies such as Zentek Technologies, Mitsubishi-UFJ Securities and Nissan have already entered the Indian market to make a kill. If the highly skilled workforce of Japan can combine with the high technology professionals from India it would not only benefit both the countries but also revolutionize Asia at large, thereby providing the necessary counterbalance to the hegemonic ambitions of China in both commerce and politics.
Another area of cooperation could be in the medical profession. As Japan faces a shortage of competent doctors and qualified nurses, it can exploit the rich resources of the Indian medical industry'which many U.S. companies are already doing'if both nations can overcome the linguistic divide. Junichiro Koizumi's visit to India in 2005 has greatly encouraged the learning of Japanese language and the craft of origami in Indian schools. The demand for Japanese language learning has increased in the western states of India and language-learning centers have increased in Poona. Japan can profit from a competent ESL workforce in India, another country like the United States, which was an erstwhile colony of the British Empire.
It was expected that the recent visit of the Indian prime minister would leave an indelible mark on the Japanese consciousness but sadly it did not draw the attention of either the media or the public at large. The Indian media on the contrary placed great significance on the visit. Most Japanese were ignorant of the visit and the Japanese press paid scant attention to it. On the contrary both the Indian press and NDTV publicized the prime minister's visit to Japan including the joint communiqu' from the prime ministers of both the countries.
This could be a matter of differing perceptions. The Japanese feel happy with the 'Look East' policy of India, while the Indians feel frustrated that Japan is not doing enough to promote bilateral trade. The Japanese argued that in 2004 the actual volume of trade between Japan and India rose by 16 percent and 80 more Japanese companies were added to the list of already existing 220 companies doing business with India. Japanese business houses were elated by the fact that 90 percent of Japanese companies were making substantial profits and were considering expanding their operations in India. The Indians on the other hand felt that trade with Japan at 493 billion yen represented stagnation when this figure was compared to the trade with China and Korea. Japanese investors do not find enough information about trade with India in Japanese, while the few books available in English written by Japanese experts are merely a rehash of newspaper articles. Indian investors feel the huge investment potential of about 1.2 trillion yen exists in India especially with the proposed quadrilateral railway line linking different parts of India and other infrastructural investments.
It must be remembered that Japanese interest in India is of recent origin beginning with the advent of Japanese automobiles in the 1980s. India's impressive economic growth of the last two decades, spearheaded by the Indian Institutes of Technology, has generated a keen interest in the Indian technology-and-mathematics-based education system. Many Japanese universities are trying to comprehend the quality and caliber of IIT education and establish a link with some of its distinguished alumni. With the changed American perception of India from a 'nuclear threat' to a 'nuclear partner,' Japanese criticism of India's nuclear status has also softened. Japan too wishes to do business with India in the area of civilian nuclear technology transfer. Many Japanese companies are trying to cut a deal to build nuclear power plants in India to supply India's growing energy needs. These developments are heartening and a sign of a growing economic partnership between Japan and India.
This partnership, however, will remain unequal as long as India depends heavily on Japanese ODA and Japan cannot expand business into other lucrative sectors like mobile phones, urban transit and infrastructure building. The CII has a point when it suggested that India and Japan should link their knowledge economies directly and share the transfer of technologies with each other more substantially than at present. Also the CII recommended that Japan should convert its ODA (Overseas Development Assistance) into FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) in order to substantially increase business with India. | <urn:uuid:a788b4d7-ac5f-4f98-8e49-d0566b78f5d7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=7543 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955769 | 2,692 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Search Results for "H"
One born in lawful matrimony, who succeeds by descent, and
blood, to lands, tenements or hereditaments, being an estate of
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One who has an indefeasible right to the inheritance,
provided he outlive the ancestor. 2 Bl. Com. 208.
A term used in the civil law. Beneficiary heirs are
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A collateral heir is one who is not of the
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In Louisiana, irregular heirs are those who are
testamentary nor legal, and who have been established by law to take the
succession. See Civ. Code of... more
HEIR AT LAW
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civil law. A testamentary heir is one who is
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Klinefelter's syndrome is a genetic condition that only affects males. Affected males have an extra X chromosome.
Males with Klinefelter's syndrome have small testes which do not produce enough of the male hormone testosterone before birth and during puberty. This lack of testosterone means that during puberty, the normal male sexual characteristics do not develop fully. There is reduced facial and pubic hair, and some breast tissue often develops. The lack of testosterone is also responsible for other symptoms, including infertility.
Treatment includes testosterone replacement. This can help improve some of the symptoms but does not have an effect on fertility. The majority of men with KS lead an independent life, forming relationships and getting a normal job. They also have a normal lifespan.
What is Klinefelter's syndrome?
In general, each cell in your body contains 46 chromosomes arranged in 23 pairs. One chromosome from each pair is inherited from your mother and the other is inherited from your father. One of these chromosome pairs is known as the sex chromosomes because this pair of chromosomes determines our sex.
Females have two of the same kind of sex chromosome (XX). Males have two different sex chromosomes (XY). The Y chromosome contains the male determining genes. So a female normally has 46, XX chromosomes and a male normally has 46, XY.
Klinefelter's syndrome (KS) is when males have an extra X chromosome. It is a genetic problem that only affects boys and men. It is a sex chromosome trisomy. Instead of being 46, XY, men or boys with KS are usually 47, XXY.
Dr Harry F. Klinefelter first described this syndrome in the USA in 1942. The condition affects sexual development. Males with KS have small testes which do not produce enough of the male hormone testosterone before birth and during puberty. This lack of testosterone means that during puberty, the normal male sexual characteristics do not develop fully. There is reduced facial and pubic hair, and some breast tissue may develop. The lack of testosterone is also responsible for some of the other symptoms (see below), including infertility.
In most cases, KS develops because there is an extra copy of the X chromosome in each of a male's cells (47, XXY). Because there are extra X chromosome genes, this interferes with male sexual development. The testes don't work normally and they produce lower levels of testosterone.
However, some males with KS only have the extra X chromosome in some of their cells. This is known as mosaic KS. If you have mosaic KS, you may be more mildly affected, depending on how many cells have an extra X chromosome. About 1 in 10 males with KS have mosaic KS. They are 46, XY; 47, XXY.
Rarely, males with KS can have several extra copies of the X chromosome or extra copies of both the X and Y chromosomes in all their body's cells. For example, they can be 48,XXYY, 48,XXXY, 49,XXXYY, and 49,XXXXY. These variants are rare, but if one does happen, males tend to have more severe symptoms.
What causes Klinefelter's syndrome?
KS is a genetic condition but it is not 'inherited' from your parents. It usually happens randomly during meiosis - cell division that produces egg and sperm cells (reproductive cells). Because of an error in cell division called nondisjunction, an egg or a sperm cell can have an extra copy of an X chromosome. This means that when it meets a 'normal' egg or sperm at conception, the embryo produced (which will go on to develop into the baby) will have one extra copy of the X chromosome in each of their body's cells. This is known as a sex chromosome trisomy (there are three sex chromosomes in the body's cells instead of two).
Mosaic KS also occurs randomly and is not 'inherited'. During early development in the womb, there is a problem with cell division. This means that some of the body's cells have one X chromosome and one Y chromosome (46, XY), and other cells have an extra copy of the X chromosome (47, XXY).
It is thought that mothers or fathers who are at an older age may be more likely to have a child with KS.
How common is Klinefelter's syndrome?
Between 1 in 500 and 1 in 1,000 boys are born with KS.
What are the symptoms of Klinefelter's syndrome?
KS is usually not noticed until you go through puberty. Puberty may be late or incomplete if you have KS. Sometimes the condition may only be diagnosed if you are investigated for infertility as an adult.
The typical features of KS in an adult are:
- Small testes.
- Decreased facial hair compared to a usual male.
- Gynaecomastia (some breast tissue development).
- Decreased pubic hair compared to a usual male.
- A tall, thin body with disproportionately long arms and legs.
- Obesity - this may cause a thicker waistline but it is often partially disguised by wider than normal hips.
Children and adolescents with KS may also have:
- A delay in the age of first walking.
- Dyspraxia (which causes co-ordination problems).
- Speech and language delay or difficulties.
- Attention problems.
- Mild learning disabilities.
- Dyslexia or reading problems.
- Behavioural problems - boys tend to be shy and have low self-confidence; they may appear to be immature when compared to their peers.
In adulthood, in addition to the main typical features:
- You may also have problems getting an erection and have a low libido (sex drive).
- Anxiety and depression may be a problem.
- 'Thin bones' (osteoporosis) may develop in young or middle age rather than the usual older age for this condition.
- You may also be less muscular than other men.
- Most men who are 47, XXY have normal intelligence. However, your intelligence may be affected if you have a higher number of X chromosomes.
- Almost all men who are 47, XXY will be infertile.
How is Klinefelter's syndrome diagnosed?
KS is often diagnosed when a man is being investigated for infertility. The diagnosis can be confirmed by a test called a karyotype. A blood sample is taken from the man and the chromosomes are studied. This test can show the extra X chromosome.
Sometimes KS is diagnosed in an unborn baby boy during antenatal screening carried out for another reason. If, for example, screening tests have shown an increased risk of Down's syndrome, the mother may go on to have a further test called an amniocentesis. This is where a sample is taken from the amniotic fluid around the baby in the womb (uterus). A karyotype test can then be done in the sample and can show if the baby has KS.
KS may also be diagnosed at the time of puberty. Puberty may be delayed or noticed as abnormal. A doctor may notice signs of KS when they examine you; for example, if your testes are small, or if you have breast tissue development or reduced pubic hair for your age. Your doctor may then suggest a karyotype blood test.
Other blood tests may also be done if your doctor suspects that you may have KS. These include hormone blood tests. For example, if you have KS, towards the end of puberty and in adulthood your levels of testosterone in your blood will be low.
What is the treatment for Klinefelter's syndrome?
If you have KS, you will usually be referred to a hormone specialist (an endocrinologist).
The main treatment for KS is with testosterone to boost the low levels. Ideally, testosterone replacement should begin at puberty and is needed lifelong. Testosterone can help to:
- Increase your strength and build a more muscular body type.
- Increase facial and pubic hair growth.
- Increase your libido (sex drive).
- Enlarge your testes.
- Improve your mood and self-esteem.
- Protect against 'thin bones' (osteoporosis).
However, testosterone treatment does not have any affect on your fertility. It also has little effect on breast tissue development (gynaecomastia).
Treatment for gynaecomastia
Gynaecomastia can be a troubling problem for males with KS. Sometimes men choose to have surgery to remove the breast tissue.
If you have KS and you are considering having children, you will need to see an infertility specialist. There have been great developments in the treatment of infertility over recent years and there have been cases of men with KS fathering children. Also, men with KS mosaicism (46,XY/47,XXY) can be fertile.
Investigation will show if you have any viable sperm in your testes. If this is the case, the sperm may be able to be extracted from your testes and then used for in vitro fertilisation (IVF) or intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). ICSI involves an individual sperm being injected directly into an egg. The egg containing the sperm is then placed in the womb (uterus) in the same way as with IVF. See separate leaflet called Infertility - a Summary of Treatments for more detail.
However, you should first see a genetic counsellor. This is because the exact risk of someone with KS having a child with KS or another chromosomal problem is unknown, but it appears to be low.
Other treatments for KS may include, for example, speech and language therapy and behavioural therapy in children (if required). Physiotherapy and occupational therapy are also sometimes needed.
What are the complications of Klinefelter's syndrome?
Males with KS may have an increased risk of certain conditions including:
- Cardiovascular disease - this is due to increased cholesterol levels which may occur and the risk can be reduced with testosterone treatment.
- 'Thin bones' (osteoporosis) - low levels of testosterone increase the risk of developing osteoporosis. If you have KS you should have regular bone density screening tests.
- Breast cancer - the risk of developing breast cancer is about 20 times higher than in otherwise healthy men. If you have KS, you should regularly examine your breast area and see your doctor if you notice any lumps or have any concerns.
- Thromboembolism - men with KS have an increased risk of deep vein thrombosis and blood clots in blood vessels (pulmonary embolism).
- Autoimmune diseases - these include systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis and Sjögren's syndrome.
- Diabetes - this is also more common if you have KS.
What is the outlook (prognosis) for Klinefelter's syndrome?
Sometimes boys with KS may struggle through adolescence. They may have difficulties at school, many frustrations and, occasionally, may have serious emotional or behavioural difficulties.
However, the majority of men with KS go on to lead an independent life, forming relationships and getting a normal job. Men with KS have a normal lifespan.
Further reading & references
- Bruining H, Swaab H, Kas M, et al; Psychiatric characteristics in a self-selected sample of boys with Klinefelter syndrome. Pediatrics. 2009 May;123(5):e865-70. Epub 2009 Apr 13.
- Klinefelter syndrome; Genetics Home Reference, 2008
- Chen H; Klinefelter Syndrome, Medscape, Jul 2011
- Blevins CH, Wilson ME; Klinefelter's syndrome. BMJ. 2012 Dec 3;345:e7558. doi: 10.1136/bmj.e7558.
- Paduch DA, Fine RG, Bolyakov A, et al; New concepts in Klinefelter syndrome. Curr Opin Urol. 2008 Nov;18(6):621-7. doi: 10.1097/MOU.0b013e32831367c7.
|Original Author: Dr Tim Kenny||Current Version: Dr Colin Tidy||Peer Reviewer: Dr Adrian Bonsall|
|Last Checked: 04/01/2013||Document ID: 12403 Version: 2||© EMIS|
Disclaimer: This article is for information only and should not be used for the diagnosis or treatment of medical conditions. EMIS has used all reasonable care in compiling the information but make no warranty as to its accuracy. Consult a doctor or other health care professional for diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions. For details see our conditions. | <urn:uuid:40573466-d5a0-411a-8de7-5b18fde2dea8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.patient.co.uk/health/klinefelters-syndrome | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931915 | 2,690 | 3.875 | 4 |
In Nigeria, electronic waste harms environment and workers
- Year: 2012
- Length: 4:50 minutes (4.43 MB)
- Format: MP3 Mono 44kHz 128Kbps (CBR)
In Brazil, delegates at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development continued talks today, addressing the world’s decreasing biodiversity, the promotion of green jobs and renewable energy projects. Some activists have criticized the official agenda for its top down approach and on Wednesday, the official start of the summit, thousands packed the streets of Rio De Janeiro as part of a People’s Summit. Indigenous leaders, women advocates, youth and community groups from across the world demanded stronger action from world leaders and a greater say in the process. Also on Wednesday, Seventeen-year-old Brittany Trilford of New Zealand demanded action in an address to delegates. “I am hear to fight for my future. That’s why I’m here. And I would like to end today by asking you to consider why you’re here and what you can do. Are you here to save face? Or are you here to save us?” One of the main objectives of the Rio+20 Conference is to ensure environmental protection through the creation of green jobs with low carbon emissions. That could offer greater opportunity in places like Nigeria, where thousands of unemployed people make a living by recycling electronic waste through burning. The process which leads to greenhouse gas emissions has negative consequences for the environment and human health. The e-waste includes items like computers, mobile phones and television sets and IS OFTEN exported illegally from developed countries to Africa. FSRN’s Sam Olukoya reports from Lagos. | <urn:uuid:f802ed19-657b-46ec-b791-9a3cf8d9f845> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fsrn.org/audio/nigeria-electronic-waste-harms-environment-and-workers/10482 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933196 | 350 | 2.90625 | 3 |
What is common cold?
attack your body, primarily your nose and your throat causing your
nose to run, your throat to feel sore and in general body ache and
weakness. These germs are of so many types that even if your body
fights one type of germ, the other germs are just ready to attack
you, whenever they get a chance. In fact, there are more than 80
types of viruses (pronounced as why-rus-is) that cause cold.
These germs usually are mild and the body fsights them off within
a week. But till then you may feel tired, your nose may run like
a tap and your nose will be all red like a red nosed reindeer.
Your doctor will usually prescribe some syrups
and medicine to make you feel comfortable. These medicines will
make the congestion less and your nose less runny.
Sometimes if your cold is severe, your watery fluid from the nose
becomes yellow or you get a severe earache, then your doctor may
also give you antibiotics (pronounced as NT-bye-o-tics). These are
drugs that kill the bacteria (pronounced as back-tea-ri-ah) germs.
You should take adequate rest when you have the cold. Drinking hot
liquids, soups help you feel better. Sometimes you mom may make
you inhale steam (shell make you breathe the vapor from a
pot containing boiling water).
present, there are no shots available to prevent common cold. So,
the only way to take care of it is when you get it, take care! | <urn:uuid:861543ca-d202-46a1-aeea-4a395f57e3e4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pediatriconcall.com/kidscorner/commonill/achoo.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93688 | 346 | 3.234375 | 3 |
BALANCING ACT: Shrewd operators know the importance of keeping their menu pirces in line with inflation.
STICKER SHOCK: That $100 produce bill from 1983 would run about $183 right now.
Chances are that you haven't been giving much, if any, thought to inflation lately. Those white-hot increases in the cost of living throughout the '70s, '80s and early '90s are largely a memory now. With inflation hovering around two percent for the last several years, there are other, more important, economic considerations in your business life. Besides, inflation rates are an abstract concept to many people — just a lot of numbers.
In truth, inflation, whatever the current rate, plays a vital role in everyone's life, business owners as well as individuals.
Consider how consumers are complaining about today's gasoline prices. This past summer, many Americans were groaning at the "highest prices ever" for a gallon of gas. But was the average $1.82 per gallon we were paying at midsummer the highest ever?
No way. Gasoline averaged about $1.35 per gallon 20 years ago. With inflation factored in, a gallon of that same gas would cost $2.47 per gallon today. At today's general price level, that makes gasoline cheaper than it was in 1983.
If you've been around long enough to remember when McDonald's dished up their 15-cent hamburgers in 1955, you may feel nostalgic when you shell out 89 cents for that same treat today. But which burger offers the better deal?
Surprise. That same hamburger would sell today for about $1.05 if it kept pace with inflation.
Inflation is misleading because it makes direct price comparisons
from one year or era to another meaningless.
Inflation's Effects Are Complex
That's the trouble with inflation: It's misleading. It makes direct price comparisons from one year or era to another meaningless. It makes some of today's products seem expensive when they are actually cheaper, and vice-versa.
The only meaningful way to compare prices from one period to another is to compare them with the general price level of each period or to the percent of average wages necessary to pay for the item during each period.
Money itself takes on a flexible value when inflation rears its ugly head. We've all heard that computer guru Bill Gates is the richest person in America today. With a reported net worth of $45 billion, Gates is thought of by some as the richest American ever. But he's a long way from that distinction when you compare his fortune's purchasing power with some of the great industrialists of a century ago.
While the fortunes of John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan were far less than $ 45 billion ( expressed in dollars of their day), their purchasing power greatly exceeded that of Bill Gates today. That's because a product or service that costs $1 today sold for five cents a hundred years ago. Put another way, if you paid $1 for a product in 1903 and bought the exact same product today, it would cost you $20.76.
Obviously, the bargain-price phenomenon evident in such areas as the price of hamburgers and gasoline doesn't extend itself throughout our universe of products and services. During the Great Depression, a first-run movie ticket in a neighborhood theater sold for 15 cents. How does that compare with the tab at one of today's multiplexes? With inflation factored in, a movie ticket should cost $1.90 today. Obviously, with ticket prices now running at $6 or higher, it's costing us a lot more to visit the local movie emporium than it did back in the dark days of the Depression (and don't forget today's $2.50 Coke, which used to cost a nickel).
Any restaurant owner paying for medical services or health insurance is well aware that costs have risen far faster than inflation. College tuition is another of today's costs that is mind-numbingly more expensive than in days of yore.
So what does all this have to do with your restaurant? Plenty. Misleading comparisons of prices can lead not only to a healthy dose of nostalgia, but faulty business decisions as well. Being aware of the true increase in costs after inflation is a necessary part of good financial management.
Inflation Never Lets Up
The rate of inflation can vary wildly from one year to the next. However, regardless of the variations, inflation continues its work relentlessly year after year. And, of course, each year's increase compounds on top of the previous year's.
Even that harmless-seeming two percent inflation rate of recent years takes a significant toll over time. After a decade of two percent inflation, that dollar bill in your pocket today would be worth only 82 cents in today's dollars.
Perhaps more important, it is unlikely that the current low rate of inflation will last much longer. An analysis of the long-term trend over the past 70 years clearly indicates that yet another round of stiff inflationary increases is inevitable.
When Franklin Roosevelt decided that something had to be done to stop the destructive deflation of the Great Depression, he instituted an economic policy with a built-in inflationary bias. His New Deal in 1933 guaranteed that there would never again be deflation serious enough to disrupt our economy. But his bold move came with a hitch: Inflation, sometimes rising well above 10 percent, would become a permanent part of our economic life.
Inflation may seem to be a rather tame beast of late, but don't be fooled. That ravenous predator is poised to come roaring back. When it does return, action on your part now will make it easier for you to deal with it then.
How Inflation Affects Your Restaurant
Here's an example of how inflation has affected your business in recent years: If you paid $100 for some fresh produce in 1983, the cost for those same items in 2003 was $182.35.
In another example, if you paid $500 for a cash register in 1993, it would cost you about $640 to buy a similar model this year.
Of course, these figures assume that the increases in costs for the items mentioned kept exact pace with the rate of inflation. In practice, the inflated price may be higher or lower than the calculated one.
Either way, the overall costs for running your restaurant are rising steadily, more or less in step with the annual inflation rate.
That's why it's so important for you to understand that when you fail to adjust your prices to reflect trends in inflation, you have effectively lowered them.
Are your prices keeping pace with inflation? Are you maintaining your markup over the increased costs you're paying to suppliers? If not, the shortterm effects may not be especially noticeable, but over the longer term, the consequences will be unavoidable: Profits will be eroded, your ability to attract and pay quality employees will suffer and the overall health of your business will enter into a destructive decline.
Yes, raising menu prices can be a risky business in an uncertain economic climate, but failing to keep pace with inflationary pressures poses an even greater threat. Remember, if you fail to adjust your prices to at least mirror inflation, you are effectively losing money.
So, how do you go about determining the proper amount by which to increase your prices? If you do it on an annual basis, the calculations for figuring inflation's effects are simple enough. Just look up the previous year's inflation rate and adjust prices upward by that percentage.
But calculating inflation's effects over a period of two or more years can be dauntingly complex. That's why it's difficult to make simple dollar-to-dollar comparisons from one year to another. If you'd like an easy way to gauge inflation's effects on some specific costs in the operation of your restaurant, log on to http://www.westegg.com/inflation/. This easy-to-use inflation calculator adjusts any given amount of money for inflation, according to the Consumer Price Index, from 1800 to 2002.
Until the website's publisher updates the chart to include 2003, you'll have to add that year's percentage of increase (1.9 percent) to the 2002 result to arrive at the latest result.
One type of economic comparison that remains valid from one era to another is figures expressed as percentages. For example, the 25 percent unemployment rate reached at the height of the depression would be just as devastating today as it was in 1933.
When you don't adjust your prices in line with inflation,
you have effectively lowered them.
Another economic yardstick that has remained valid through the years is the prevailing interest rate. An interest rate of two percent on a passbook savings account would bring the same return today as it brought 60 years ago.
From another perspective, that miserly 1.2 percent interest rate on your one-year CD today is worth far less to you than the 10 percent you were getting 10 or 15 years ago. Further, with inflationat 1.9 percent, your investment is actually losing-money.
The complexities of inflation and its effect on your business can be daunting when viewed from a strictly technical perspective. But you don't have to be a mathematical wunderkind to benefit from an understanding of the inflation phenomenon and how it mandates periodic upward adjustments in the prices you charge your customers.
Raising menu prices, especially in a less-thanvibrant economy, may seem distasteful, even harmful, in view of competitive pressures and skittish customers. Still, an understanding of inflation and how it works leaves little room for alternatives.
William J. Lynott is a former management consultant and corporate executive who writes on business and financial topics for a variety of consumer and trade publications. His latest book, Money: How to Make the Most of What You've Got, is available through bookstores. You can reach him at [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:7c89e5c3-c5dd-4877-813e-bb16a4280cd4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://restaurant-hospitality.com/features/rh_imp_6781 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958704 | 2,043 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Egypt is located in the northeastern fringes of Africa and shares international boundaries with Libya to the west (692 miles), Sudan to the south (791 miles),
The highest elevations in Egypt are in the southern part of the country. The southern regions of the Sinai Peninsula are also mountainous. Most of Egypt is an arid desert with little or no vegetation. The Nile, the longest river in the world, flowing from the south to the north, cuts through this desert plateau and renders the county habitable. In fact, the Nile endows its delta with fertility unheard of in desert regions. With the exception of the Nile basin, the rest of the country is an arid desert with little or no vegetation. The ancient Egyptians called the Nile basin Black Land due to its rich alluvial deposits. In contrast, they referred to the desert land as Red Land.
The river Nile is fed by the White Nile, the Blue Nile and the Atbara rivers of central Africa. Nile enters Egypt near Wadi Halfa in Sudan.
Lake Nasser to the south of Egypt is a man-made reservoir resultant from the construction of the Aswan Dam across the Nile. The Aswan Low Dam was constructed at the First Cataract of the Nile in 1902. The High Dam was constructed between 1960 and 1970. The region extending from the Aswan Dam to the city of Cairo is referred to as the Nile Valley. The region further up north is the Nile Delta. Low-lying, flat, and rich in silt deposits, the Nile Delta's agricultural products support the entire country. The Nile is said to have had seven distributaries creating the fan-shaped valley. At present only two of these distributaries, the Damietta and the Rosetta carry the Nile waters to the Mediterranean Sea. An extensive network of canals now crisscrosses the delta region and assists the flow of the waters into the agricultural fields. A number of lakes and marshes dot the Nile Delta.
In early Egypt, the Nile went through cycles of inundation and relinquishment. When the Nile would flood its banks it irrigated the crops on its banks and endowed the land with great fertility. But the floods could just as easily wreak havoc on the agriculture and spell a year of economic low. The most fertile regions were those where the elevation was high or those where the primary products were tree crops. The relinquishment of the Nile spelt an enhancement of the land's fertility since the floods left behind a rich deposit of alluvial silt. The flooding of the Nile also depended largely on the amount of rainfall received by Central Africa where the tributaries of the Nile arise.
The construction of an irrigation system and the dams on the Nile, especially the Aswan dams, has changed a lot. The flow of the Nile no longer depends quite as heavily on the rainfall received by Central Africa. The deposit of silt is now around Lake Nasser. This has also significantly affected the fertility of the Nile basin.
Two major deserts make up the Egyptian desert region - the Eastern Desert and the Libyan Desert. The Eastern Desert, thus called due to its location to the east of the Nile, extends upto the Red Sea. The mountain range traversing this region is called the Eastern Desert. Shaiyb al-Banat is the highest peak of the range. To the west of the Nile is the portion of the Sahara Desert which is referred to as the Libyan Desert. The Libyan Desert is characterized by massive sand dunes and eight great depressions. The desert is mostly uninhabited except for sporadic settlements such as those in the Siwa Oasis near the Qattara Depression. The lowest point of Egypt (133 meters below sea level) is in the Qattara Depression. The Temple of Amun in the Siwa Oasis is known for its prophetic oracles. The Fayyum Oasis is another oasis in the Libyan Desert which is cultivable at certain points. Mount Catherine (2,642 meters) in the Sinai Peninsula is the highest elevation in Egypt.
Temperatures in most of Egypt range from 80°F to 90°F in summer and from 55°F to 70°F in winter. The Mediterranean coast enjoys a cooler temperature in comparison to the rest of the country. Frequent dust storms called 'Khamaseen' blow south-north in summers. Rainfall is scanty and unpredictable. The higher elevations in the Sinai Peninsula face snowfall occasionally in winters. February-March and October-November are the tourist-friendly months in the country. | <urn:uuid:72aeaa0f-54ee-4812-b24d-dfa0ebac7592> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mapsofworld.com/egypt/geography/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953766 | 930 | 3.609375 | 4 |
Chemicals found in household items such as non-stick cookware and flame-retardant furnishings may affect fetal brain development - photo by Martin Dee
UBC Reports | Vol. 52 | No. 10 | Oct. 5, 2006
Household Items May Pose Danger During Pregnancy
By Hilary Thomson
What do popcorn bags, frying pans and mattresses have in common?
Chemicals contained in these and other common household items may affect maternal thyroid function and may lead to impaired fetal brain development, according to PhD candidate Glenys Webster, of UBC’s School of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene.
Webster is leading an investigation into the effects of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), chemicals that are used as flame-retardants, and perfluroinated compounds (PFCs), used as stain or water repellents. The chemicals are found at low levels in all Canadians. They leach out of many products, can last for a long time in both indoor and outdoor environments, and accumulate in both animals and humans via dust, foods and air.
Called the Chemical, Health and Pregnancy study (CHirP), Webster believes it is one of the first such studies in the world. She is collaborating with investigators from BC Women’s Hospital & Health Centre, Health Canada, and the University of Alberta.
Animal studies have shown that certain PBDEs interfere with the thyroid system, critical to fetal development. A butterfly-shaped gland in the lower front part of the neck, the thyroid controls metabolism and keeps basic functions such as body temperature, blood pressure and energy levels working properly.
It is known that thyroid disruption in early pregnancy can result in neurological damage in babies, but the mechanism — including any negative environmental factors — is not known. Although there are no known human health risks from common levels of PBDEs and PFCs, very few studies have been conducted in humans, says Webster, so at this point nothing is conclusive.
She suspects the chemicals may put additional stress on the thyroid system. Animal and laboratory studies have shown that certain PBDEs can mimic thyroid hormones and bind to a transport protein that sends the damaging “imposter” hormone from the mother to the fetus, possibly directly to the brain.
“Until recently, we didn’t have the analytical methods we need to measure low levels of these chemicals and study effects on human health,” says Webster, whose previous research focused on environmental toxicology and looking at how chemicals move through the environment. “There is considerable new interest among scientists to start looking at human health effects, and governments, including Canada’s, are now making decisions about regulating these chemicals.”
Researchers will enroll 150 pregnant women for the study, which was launched last month and will extend to September 2008. Participants will be asked, during in-home surveys, about exposures to PBDEs found in mattresses, furniture foam, plastic casing of electronic equipment such as TVs and computers, and other household goods. The women will also be asked about exposure to PFCs via products ranging from microwavable popcorn bags to non-stick cookware coatings and self-cleaning ovens.
Levels of PBDEs and PFCs will be measured in the air, dust and dryer lint in homes. Also, maternal blood samples will be collected in mid-pregnancy and a sample of umbilical cord blood will be collected at delivery. Levels of both groups of chemicals won’t be analyzed until all 150 subjects have been recruited.
In humans, accumulation rates and toxicity relative to exposure levels are not well understood. It is known that PFCs are some of the most persistent compounds known, and the half-life of PBDEs in human tissues ranges from approximately 15 days to six years. However, fast-degrading PBDEs don’t actually “clear” the body after two weeks. They transform into slower degrading chemicals and persist. A puzzling factor is that age doesn’t necessarily affect PBDE accumulation.
In North America, PBDE levels in humans are approximately 10-100 times higher than levels found in Europe or Japan, according to a review of PBDE levels in humans conducted in 2004. Health Canada data showed PBDE levels in Vancouver mothers’ breast milk increased approximately 15-fold from 1992-2002, but are still lower than levels found in certain areas of the US. Canada has this year prohibited the importation of certain chemicals that turn into PFCs.
Should expectant mothers be alarmed?
“We’re not expecting to see dramatic changes here – the effects, if any, will be subtle but may still be important, and show a trend that should be monitored,” says Webster. “I think it’s important to start looking at connections so we can take precautionary measures, if needed. Even if effects are subtle, because virtually everyone is exposed to these chemicals, any small effects may still represent a public health concern.”
For more information about the study, visit www.cher.ubc.ca/chirp.
BC Women’s Hospital & Health Centre is an agency of the Provincial Health Services Authority. | <urn:uuid:08707539-65e7-4733-8d27-fccbdfe2ad15> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/ubcreports/2006/06oct05/household.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951462 | 1,085 | 2.578125 | 3 |
(Venography, Phlebography, Lower Limb Venography)
What is a venogram?
A venogram is a procedure that provides x-ray visualization of the veins, particularly in the lower extremities (legs). A special dye is injected that is visible upon x-ray. The contrast dye allows the physician to evaluate the size and condition of the veins. A venogram is one of the more accurate tests used for diagnosing deep vein thrombosis (DVT), but can also be used to diagnose other abnormalities.
Depending on the reason for the procedure, several methods can be used to examine the veins with venography:
- ascending venography - identifies the presence and location of DVT.
- descending venography - assesses the function of the deep vein valves.
- venography of the upper extremities - assesses blockage, lesions, or thrombosis in the veins of the neck and axillary (armpit) region.
- venacavography - evaluates the inferior vena cava, the vein that brings bloods to the heart, for obstruction and malformation.
What is an x-ray?
X-rays use invisible electromagnetic energy beams to produce images of internal tissues, bones, and organs on film. X-rays are made by using external radiation to produce images of the body, its organs, and other internal structures for diagnostic purposes. X-rays pass through body structures onto specially-treated plates (similar to camera film) and a "negative" type picture is made (the more solid a structure is, the whiter it appears on the film).
Other related procedures that may be used to diagnose problems of the veins include vascular studies and renal venogram. Please see these procedures for additional information.
Reasons for the Procedure
A venogram is used to confirm a diagnosis of DVT and to distinguish clot formation from other venous obstructions. It can also be used to evaluate congenital (present at birth) venous malformations or to locate a vein for arterial bypass graft surgery. It may be used to determine the cause of swelling or pain in the extremity and also to determine the source of pulmonary emboli (blood clots that have traveled to the lung).
Risks of the Procedure
The amount of radiation used during a venogram is considered minimal; therefore, the risk for radiation exposure is very low.
If you are pregnant or suspect that you may be pregnant, you should notify your physician. Radiation exposure during pregnancy may lead to birth defects.
Because contrast dye is used, there is a risk for allergic reaction to the dye. Patients who are allergic to or sensitive to medications, contrast dye, or iodine should notify their physician.
Patients with kidney failure or other kidney problems should notify their physician. In some cases, the contrast dye can cause kidney failure, especially if the person is taking Glucophage (a diabetic medication).
Notify your physician if you have a history of bleeding disorders or if you are taking any anticoagulant (blood-thinning) medications, aspirin, or other medications that affect blood clotting.
For certain individuals, a venogram may be contraindicated. These include persons with a known allergy to contrast dye, severe congestive heart failure, and severe pulmonary hypertension.
There may be other risks depending on your specific medical condition. Be sure to discuss any concerns with your physician prior to the procedure.
Certain factors or conditions may interfere with the accuracy of a venogram. These factors include, but are not limited to, the following:
- ability of the patient to remain still during the procedure
- extreme obesity
- severe swelling in the legs
Before the Procedure
- Your physician will explain the procedure to you and offer you the opportunity to ask any questions that you might have about the procedure.
- You will be asked to sign a consent form that gives your permission to do the test. Read the form carefully and ask questions if something is not clear.
- Notify your physician if you have ever had a reaction to any contrast dye, or if you are allergic to iodine.
- Notify your physician if you are sensitive to or are allergic to any medications, latex, tape, and anesthetic agents (local and general).
- You may be asked to stop eating and/or drinking for at least four hours before the procedure.
- Notify your physician if you are pregnant or suspect you may be pregnant.
- Notify your physician of all medications (prescribed and over-the-counter) and herbal supplements that you are taking.
- Notify your physician if you have a history of bleeding disorders or if you are taking any anticoagulant (blood-thinning) medications, aspirin, or other medications that affect blood clotting. It may be necessary for you to stop these medications prior to the procedure.
- If a sedative is given before or during the procedure, you may need to have someone drive you home afterwards.
- Based upon your medical condition, your physician may request other specific preparation.
During the Procedure
A venogram may be performed on an outpatient basis or as part of your stay in a hospital. Procedures may vary depending on your condition and your physician's practices.
Generally, the venogram follows this process:
- You will be asked to remove your jewelry or other objects that interfere with the procedure.
- You will be asked to remove clothing and be given a gown to wear.
- A pen may be used to mark various sites of pulses on the leg before the procedure. This will allow easier monitoring of the pulses after the procedure.
- You will lie on your back on the x-ray table.
- After cleansing the area, an intravenous (IV) line will be inserted into a vein in your foot.
- An injection of contrast dye will be given. You may feel some effects when the dye is injected into the IV line. These effects include a flushing sensation, a brief headache, or nausea and/or vomiting. These effects usually last for a few moments. Also, let the physician know if you are having difficulty breathing, itching of the skin, or hives.
- X-rays will be taken at timed intervals as the dye travels through the lower extremities.
- A tourniquet may be placed on the extremity to control the speed of blood flow.
- The intravenous site will be flushed with heparin/saline solution, and the needle will be removed from the vein.
- A pressure dressing will be placed over the puncture site.
After the Procedure
Following the procedure, your vital signs (heart rate, breathing rate, and blood pressure) will be monitored frequently and then at intervals determined by your physician. The peripheral pulses in your feet, as well as the temperature, color, and sensation in your legs will be checked. The injection site will also be monitored for redness, warmth, swelling, and tenderness.
Normal activities and diet can be resumed after the procedure as directed by your physician.
Drink plenty of fluids to prevent dehydration and to help pass the contrast dye.
Notify your physician to report any of the following:
- fever or chills
- increased pain, redness, swelling, or bleeding or other drainage from the injection site
Your physician may give you additional or alternate instructions after the procedure, depending on your particular situation.
The content provided here is for informational purposes only, and was not designed to diagnose or treat a health problem or disease, or replace the professional medical advice you receive from your physician. Please consult your physician with any questions or concerns you may have regarding your condition.
This page contains links to other Web sites with information about this procedure and related health conditions. We hope you find these sites helpful, but please remember we do not control or endorse the information presented on these Web sites, nor do these sites endorse the information contained here.
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Disclaimer - This content is reviewed periodically and is subject to change as new health information becomes available. The information provided is intended to be informative and educational and is not a replacement for professional evaluation, advice, diagnosis or treatment by a healthcare professional. © 2009 Staywell Custom Communications. | <urn:uuid:71592023-2554-4f99-ad82-0448ab243339> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.reshealth.org/yourhealth/healthinfo/default.cfm?pageid=P08309 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919864 | 1,710 | 3.953125 | 4 |
<storage> (DRAM) A type of semiconductor memory in which the information is stored in capacitors on a MOS integrated circuit. Typically each bit is stored as an amount of electrical charge in a storage cell consisting of a capacitor and a transistor. Due to leakage the capacitor discharges gradually and the memory cell loses the information. Therefore, to preserve the information, the memory has to be refreshed periodically. Despite this inconvenience, the DRAM is a very popular memory technology because of its high density and consequent low price.
The first commercially available DRAM chip was the Intel 1103, introduced in 1970.
Early DRAM chips, containing up to a 16k x 1 (16384 locations of one bit each), needed 3 supply voltages (+5V, -5V and +12V). Beginning with the 64 kilobit chips, charge pumps were included on-chip to create the necessary supply voltages out of a single +5V supply. This was necessary to fit the device into a 16-pin DIL package, which was the preferred package at the time, and also made them easier to use.
To reduce the pin count, thereby helping miniaturisation, DRAMs generally had a single data line which meant that a computer with an N bit wide data bus needed a "bank" of (at least) N DRAM chips. In a bank, the address and control signals of all chips were common and the data line of each chip was connected to one of the data bus lines.
Beginning with the 256 kilobit DRAM, a tendency toward surface mount packaging arose and DRAMs with more than one data line appeared (e.g. 64k x 4), reducing the number of chips per bank. This trend has continued and DRAM chips with up to 36 data lines are available today. Furthermore, together with surface mount packages, memory manufacturers began to offer memory modules, where a bank of memory chips was preassembled on a little printed circuit board (SIP = Single Inline Pin Module, SIMM = Single Inline Memory Module, DIMM = Dual Inline Memory Module). Today, this is the preferred way to buy memory for workstations and personal computers.
DRAM bit cells are arranged on a chip in a grid of rows and columns where the number of rows and columns are usually a power of two. Often, but not always, the number of rows and columns is the same. A one megabit device would then have 1024 x 1024 memory cells. A single memory cell can be selected by a 10-bit row address and a 10-bit column address.
To access a memory cell, one entire row of cells is selected and its contents are transferred into an on-chip buffer. This discharges the storage capacitors in the bit cells. The desired bits are then read or written in the buffer. The (possibly altered) information is finally written back into the selected row, thereby refreshing all bits (recharging the capacitors) in the row.
To prevent data loss, all bit cells in the memory need to be refreshed periodically. This can be done by reading all rows in regular intervals. Most DRAMs since 1970 have been specified such that one of the rows needs to be refreshed at least every 15.625 microseconds. For a device with 1024 rows, a complete refresh of all rows would then take up to 16 ms; in other words, each cell is guaranteed to hold the data for 16 ms without refresh. Devices with more rows have accordingly longer retention times.
Many varieties of DRAM exist today. They differ in the way they are interfaced to the system - the structure of the memory cell itself is essentially the same.
"Traditional" DRAMs have multiplexed address lines and separate data inputs and outputs. There are three control signals: RAS\ (row address strobe), CAS\ (column address strobe), and WE\ (write enable) (the backslash indicates an active low signal). Memory access procedes as follows: 1. The control signals initially all being inactive (high), a memory cycle is started with the row address applied to the address inputs and a falling edge of RAS\ . This latches the row address and "opens" the row, transferring the data in the row to the buffer. The row address can then be removed from the address inputs since it is latched on-chip. 2. With RAS\ still active, the column address is applied to the address pins and CAS\ is made active as well. This selects the desired bit or bits in the row which subsequently appear at the data output(s). By additionally activating WE\ the data applied to the data inputs can be written into the selected location in the buffer. 3. Deactivating CAS\ disables the data input and output again. 4. Deactivating RAS\ causes the data in the buffer to be written back into the memory array.
Certain timing rules must be obeyed to guarantee reliable operation. 1. RAS\ must remain inactivate for a while before the next memory cycle is started to provide sufficient time for the storage capacitors to charge (Precharge Time). 2. It takes some time from the falling edge of the RAS\ or CAS\ signals until the data appears at the data output. This is specified as the Row Access Time and the Column Access Time. Current DRAM's have Row Access Times of 50-100 ns and Column Access Times of 15-40 ns. Speed grades usually refer to the former, more important figure.
Note that the Memory Cycle Time, which is the minimum time from the beginning of one access to the beginning of the next, is longer than the Row Access Time (because of the Precharge Time).
Multiplexing the address pins saves pins on the chip, but usually requires additional logic in the system to properly generate the address and control signals, not to mention further logic for refresh. Therefore, DRAM chips are usually preferred when (because of the required memory size) the additional cost for the control logic is outweighed by the lower price.
Based on these principles, chip designers have developed many varieties to improve performance or ease system integration of DRAMs:
PSRAMs (Pseudo Static Random Access Memory) are essentially DRAMs with a built-in address multiplexor and refresh controller. This saves some system logic and makes the device look like a normal SRAM. This has been popular as a lower cost alternative for SRAM in embedded systems. It is not a complete SRAM substitute because it is sometimes busy when doing self-refresh, which can be tedious.
Nibble Mode DRAM can supply four successive bits on one data line by clocking the CAS\ line.
Page Mode DRAM is a standard DRAM where any number of accesses to the currently open row can be made while the RAS signal is kept active.
Static Column DRAM is similar to Page Mode DRAM, but to access different bits in the open row, only the column address needs to be changed while the CAS\ signal stays active. The row buffer essentially behaves like SRAM.
Extended Data Out DRAM (EDO DRAM) can continue to output data from one address while setting up a new address, for use in pipelined systems.
DRAM used for Video RAM (VRAM) has an additional long shift register that can be loaded from the row buffer. The shift register can be regarded as a second interface to the memory that can be operated in parallel to the normal interface. This is especially useful in frame buffers for CRT displays. These frame buffers generate a serial data stream that is sent to the CRT to modulate the electron beam. By using the shift register in the VRAM to generate this stream, the memory is available to the computer through the normal interface most of the time for updating the display data, thereby speeding up display data manipulations.
SDRAM (Synchronous DRAM) adds a separate clock signal to the control signals. It allows more complex state machines on the chip and high speed "burst" accesses that clock a series of successive bits out (similar to the nibble mode).
CDRAM (Cached DRAM) adds a separate static RAM array used for caching. It essentially combines main memory and cache memory in a single chip. The cache memory controller needs to be added externally.
RDRAM (Rambus DRAM) changes the system interface of DRAM completely. A byte-wide bus is used for address, data and command transfers. The bus operates at very high speed: 500 million transfers per second. The chip operates synchronously with a 250MHz clock. Data is transferred at both rising and falling edges of the clock. A system with signals at such frequencies must be very carefully designed, and the signals on the Rambus Channel use nonstandard signal levels, making it incompatible with standard system logic. These disadvantages are compensated by a very fast data transfer, especially for burst accesses to a block of successive locations.
A number of different refresh modes can be included in some of the above device varieties:
RAS\ only refresh: a row is refreshed by an ordinary read access without asserting CAS\. The data output remains disabled.
CAS\ before RAS\ refresh: the device has a built-in counter for the refresh row address. By activating CAS\ before activating RAS\, this counter is selected to supply the row address instead of the address inputs.
Self-Refresh: The device is able to generate refresh cycles internally. No external control signal transitions other than those for bringing the device into self-refresh mode are needed to maintain data integrity.
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Nearby terms: dynamic link library « Dynamic Object-Oriented Requirements System « dynamic RAM « dynamic random-access memory » dynamic routing » DYnamics ANAlyzer » dynamic scope | <urn:uuid:adf0312f-b7db-4d90-a586-094267016119> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://foldoc.org/dynamic+RAM | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921824 | 2,041 | 3.640625 | 4 |
The Polish Jewish pianist Ignaz Friedman may not be a household name, but his majestic artistry, honored by a brilliantly researched new biography by Allan Evans, “Ignaz Friedman: Romantic Master Pianist,” just published by Indiana University Press, makes him of urgent interest to anyone who loves piano music.
“Poland evoked poverty and antisemitism in Friedman’s mind,” Evans tells us, but he fortunately found a philosemitic teacher in Vienna, the Polish Catholic Theodor Leschetizky, who famously said that “three indispensables” were needed for a virtuoso, to be Slavic, Jewish and a child prodigy. A Viennese nobleman offered to pay for Friedman’s studies if the youngster converted to Catholicism, to which Friedman’s mother replied: “My son is not for sale.”
This staunch independence continued throughout his lifetime, in heroic performances of Chopin and in adopting his teacher Leschetizky’s esthetic criteria. In 1924, when a Jewish child prodigy played for Friedman, his reaction was: “As a Jewish boy, he should have played better.” As fascism conquered Europe, Friedman pleaded with a fellow Polish Jew, star pianist Josef Hofmann, long established in America, for help, and Hofmann abjectly did not lift a finger. Instead, Friedman eventually fled to Australia, where, as a chain smoker since age ten (!) he developed health problems and died in 1948.
Although not religiously observant, he asked a student to recite the Kaddish for him. Whether in bewitching versions of Mendelssohn’s “Song without Words” or dazzlingly free and virtuosic Chopin and Hummel, Friedman is a pianist to be permanently treasured.
Listen here to Ignaz Friedman discuss Chopin on Australian radio.
Watch a brief, silent home movie of Friedman toddling along Fifth Avenue in Manhattan below. | <urn:uuid:48e11776-51df-4a86-b65b-a88d4382dfd2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forward.com/articles/117873/ignaz-friedman-great-jewish-pianist/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944593 | 419 | 2.9375 | 3 |
tenor drumArticle Free Pass
tenor drum, cylindrical drum larger and deeper toned than the closely related snare drum and lacking snares. It is usually about 18 inches (45 cm) in diameter and 14 inches (35 cm) in height and is normally beaten with two soft-headed sticks. The heads are tensioned by rope lacings or metal rods. Like the snare drum, the tenor drum descended from the medieval tabor. Though usually associated with military bands, especially since the early 19th century, it occasionally appears in orchestral scores, such as Benjamin Britten’s opera The Rape of Lucretia (1946).
What made you want to look up "tenor drum"? Please share what surprised you most... | <urn:uuid:eebfdff4-2e75-42ff-af8f-f7a768fcf223> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/587458/tenor-drum | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941196 | 158 | 2.953125 | 3 |
LONDON: The phenomenal speeds reached by the teenage Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen at the 2012 Olympics are raising questions about whether the gap between men and women in sport may one day disappear.
Ye, who has so far won two gold medals and broken a world record at the London Games, clocked a time for the last, freestyle lap of her medley swim that rivaled the male champions.
There’s plenty of evidence to show the gender gap exists. Yet the gap has been narrowing over the decades – so will women one day catch the men?
They’ll get close, says John Brewer, a professor of sports science at Britain’s University of Bedfordshire – but only in some events.
Women first took part in the Olympic Games in Paris in 1900, four years after the first games of the modern era, held in Athens.
Female participation has increased steadily since then, with women accounting for around 45 percent of athletes at the 2012 Games, compared with 23 percent in Los Angeles in 1984 and little more than 13 percent in Tokyo in 1964.
But women have not always been allowed to compete in all the sports at all the distances that men tackle.
In sports where women and men have been running, jumping or swimming alongside each other in international competition for decades, the gap has stabilized, Brewer said. “But where the gap is still narrowing is in female sports that are less ‘mature,’ like the endurance events – the marathon, the 10,000-meter, and long-distance swimming,” he said.
Women have only been allowed to run the marathon at Olympic Games since 1984, while the women’s 10,000-meter was only introduced in 1988.
A study published in 2010 in the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, which looked at the difference between men’s and women’s world records since the start of the modern Olympics in 1896, found that the gap narrowed consistently until about 1983, then stabilized.
The average difference between men and women across all events is around 10 percent, but that ranges from 5.5 percent in the 800-meter freestyle swim to 18.8 percent in long jump.
Experts point to important physiological differences between men and women. “Females tend to have more body fat, which makes them more buoyant in the water, and that can sometimes help in terms of speed,” said Alexis Colvin, assistant professor of orthopedics at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
“But on the flip side, women have less muscle mass and power, so the effect is cancelled out.”
Men’s hearts are generally larger, allowing them to pump more blood for each heartbeat, and their lungs are able to take in more oxygen for each breath. The combination means their blood can take more oxygen to the muscles, making them stronger and more powerful.
The relative infancy of women’s inclusion in some disciplines means the gap could tighten as coaches, sports scientists and psychologists learn more about how to train and push women at elite levels.
With so many more years of data to study, the science behind training is likely to be skewed toward men. Learning more about how elite women competitors train, improve and compete could help coaches get more out of them. “Even though biology is responsible for a lot of things, we’re also learning a lot more about the most effective ways for women to train and recover,” Colvin said.
Brewer thinks much of that women-specific knowledge has already been gained and implemented – something that could account for the rapid narrowing of the gender gap in some swimming and running events in recent years.
Brewer laments: “At the highest level the very best females won’t be able to beat the very best males. Sadly, in my view, the gap will never close completely.” | <urn:uuid:c24ff903-ccea-49d5-a9b8-66cf50a8a3af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dailystar.com.lb/Sports/Olympics/2012/Aug-06/183506-go-girl-women-pushing-to-close-gender-gap-in-sports.ashx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96781 | 807 | 2.875 | 3 |
Intel's Photodetector Aimed at Future Computing
Researchers at Intel have pushed the boundaries of silicon photonics once again by developing the first avalanche photodetector (APD). The silicon-based device, which Intel claims could reduce costs and improve the performance of existing commercially available optical devices, promises to revolutionize how multiple processor cores communicate within computing systems. Intel has published the results of the research upon which the APD was developed in a recent issue of Nature Photonics.
APD’s underlying technology uses standard silicon to transmit and receive optical data among computers and other electronic devices, aiming to provide a reliable platform for future bandwidth needs of data-intensive computing applications such as remote medicine and 3D virtual worlds. According to Intel engineers, silicon photonics–based technology is the optimal cost-efficient method to dramatically increase communication speeds between devices powered by multiple processor cores.
The APD is a light sensor that amplifies weak signals as light is directed onto silicon. “Intel's APD converts the light beams into electrical signals,” says Yimin Kang, a senior researcher at Intel, who also noted that until now manufacturers paid more than $100 for a single device of this kind. Kang also said that the product was specially designed to be robust, hence the usage of silicon — a relatively inexpensive and tested commodity that can produce devices equivalent to mature, commercially available indium phosphide (InP) APDs.
Last year, Intel announced the development of a photodetector made from germanium and silicon. The device, which had a bandwidth of 31 gigahertz, made use of germanium’s capability to efficiently detect light in the near infrared, which is the standard for communications. However, design defects compromised the product’s electrical performance and prompted Intel to explore a slightly different approach. The new photodetector has built-in amplification, which according to the company makes the product much more useful in detecting signals when minimal light falls on the detector.
Mike Morse, principal engineer at Intel, explains the technology behind the novel device: “First, a negative and a positive charge [electrons and holes, in semiconductor terminology] are created when the light strikes the detector. The electron is accelerated by an electric field until it attains a high enough energy to slam into a silicon atom and create another pair of positive and negative charges. Each time this happens, the number of total electrons doubles, until this ‘avalanche’ of charges is collected by the detection electronics.”
It is largely accepted in the electronics industry that less-expensive silicon photonics produce inferior results. While this is true in many cases, Intel claims it is not so with APDs. In fact, company engineers say that silicon’s properties allow for higher gain with less excess noise than that recorded in InP devices. Moreover, the new approach, they say, also results in higher sensitivity, a metric defined as the smallest amount of optical power falling on the detector needed to maintain a low bit error rate.
APD utilizes silicon and CMOS processing to attain a "gain-bandwidth product" of 340GHz — a breakthrough achievement, according to Intel engineers. The gain-bandwidth product is a standard measure for APD performance that multiplies the device's amplification capability (gain) by the fastest speed signal that can be detected (bandwidth). This opens the door to lower the cost of optical links running at data rates of 40 gigabits per second or faster and proves, for the first time, that a silicon photonics device can exceed the performance of a device made with traditional, more expensive optical materials such as indium phosphide, say the engineers. They add that higher speeds, along with lower power and noise levels, are essential in applications related to supercomputing, data center communications, consumer electronics, automotive sensors and medical diagnostics.
According to Dr. Mario Paniccia, director of Intel’s Photonics Technology Lab, this research demonstrates once again how silicon can be used to create very high performing optical devices. He also noted that, apart from optical communication, the silicon-based APDs could be employed in other areas such as sensing, imaging, quantum cryptography and biological applications.
The research was conducted by Intel in collaboration with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Numonyx, a manufacturer of memory solutions based on Switzerland. During APD development, Intel consulted with a number of experts, among them Professor John Bowers of the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has assisted engineers with testing the new device. "This APD utilizes the inherently superior characteristics of silicon for high-speed amplification to create world-class optical technology," says Bowers.
Morse reports that the company is now looking at two potential extensions to the new technology. The first would be to develop a wave guide–based APD, which could improve the absorption at wavelengths up to about 1600 nanometers and allow for easy integration with other optical devices, such as demultiplexers and attenuators. Intel also hopes to lower the operational voltage of the industry standard to “something more common in consumer electronics, to open up a much broader user base,” Morse says.
Researchers at Intel believe that commercial optics are just a couple of years away, which is leading the company to aggressively drive optics in its upcoming platforms.
Anuradha Menon and Sarah Gingichashvili write for the electronic magazine The Future of Things at www.thefutureofthings.com. | <urn:uuid:c9bb0937-8319-4093-8efb-ab2fa45f9ef5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.biztechmagazine.com/article/2009/06/intels-photodetector-aimed-future-computing | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946865 | 1,134 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Currently, coal provides approximately 50% of our electricity supply, making it the largest source of domestic, reliable, and affordable energy. Coal will necessarily be a critical and expanding source for our future electricity and fuels needs. To use coal cleanly and to address CO2 emissions, we need to greatly increase our research, development, and demonstration of clean coal and carbon capture and sequestration technologies. We also must establish a fair and predictable regulatory environment.
Coal is the largest source of energy produced domestically. Demonstrated reserves of U.S. coal stand at about 491 billion tons, about 264 billion tons of which are recoverable. At the current production rate of about 1.1 billion tons a year, this is enough coal to last for well over 200 years.
The United States has nearly 1,500 coal plants in operation. These plants make up about one-third of the nation’s generating capacity, but they generate a much larger portion—more than half—of the nation’s electricity. This is because coal plants, like nuclear power plants, are run constantly to meet baseload power needs while other types of plants, like natural gas plants, are generally run more intermittently to meet peak-load demand.
Not only must coal remain a viable source of energy in the United States, it is likely to play an increasingly important role globally in the generation of electricity and over time in the production of transportation fuels through coal-to-liquids (CTL) technology. The Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects significantly greater global coal use, accounting for more than one-third of the total increase in energy consumption in 2030 compared to 2005, the highest amount for any single energy source. Coal is expected to supply about 29% of energy demand in 2030, up from 26% in 2005. Much of this growth is expected to come in the developing world, especially from large developing countries—such as China, India, Indonesia, and South Africa—that possess large reserves of coal.
Coal, however, poses significant environmental challenges, not least of which is that it emits the most CO2 per unit of energy of any fuel source. Because coal will remain an important resource in the global energy portfolio, we must develop technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) that allow us to use coal while minimizing the resulting air pollution and CO2 emissions. For countries to adopt this technology, especially developing countries, the cost of a CCS-equipped coal plant will have to come down considerably. This will require a substantially expanded and expedited research, development, and demonstration program focused on both pre- and postcombustion CO2 capture technologies as well as a scientifically-intensive program that includes largescale tests to study and understand the impacts and methods of large-scale and permanent geologic storage or sequestration of CO2.
However, for all of the promise of CCS, the technologies are very complex, expensive to build and operate, result in large “parasitic” energy losses, and require significant supporting infrastructure. Parasitic energy losses—that is, the energy lost to the grid because it is required to operate the CCS equipment of the plant— can run as high as 30%, which means that more or larger plants will be needed to supply the equivalent amount of energy to the grid compared to plants without CCS. These high costs could result in fuel switching from coal to natural gas, which could exacerbate, not improve, our energy security challenge.
Bringing down the cost of CCS is therefore an important goal, and one that can be achieved only with some fundamental breakthroughs in technology. A recent report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on coal’s future similarly concluded that to take advantage of the most widely available energy resource—coal—both the deployment time and cost of CCS need to be reduced.
Given the prominence of coal as a fuel for power production, an accelerated program of CCS technology development and demonstration should be undertaken to determine the technical and economic practicability of the technology. If CCS technology proves too costly or research reveals adverse environmental impacts from storage, it is better to discover this earlier rather than later so that alternative technology paths can be pursued.
A number of CCS technologies are being pursued for different types of coal plants. CCS technologies for Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) plants rely on precombustion technologies that capture carbon before the fuel is combusted. However, there are only a couple of IGCC plants in operation today in the power sector (gasifiers are common in the petrochemical industry), and IGCC is more expensive, with a capital cost premium and parasitic energy loss of about 20% over a state-of-the-art pulverized coal (PC) plant. In addition to lowering the cost of capture technologies, improvements in IGCC plant efficiency, turbines, and other technologies will play an important role in making CCS more affordable.
Maintaining a strong federal clean coal program overall is therefore extremely important.
PC plants of different types and vintages make up nearly all of the coal-fired power plants now operating in the United States. CO2 from traditional coal plants can be captured from the flue gas using postcombustion technologies. Because CO2 accounts for only 10–15% of the flue gas, a large amount of it must be processed per unit of CO2 captured. Carbon capture technology using oxyfuel combustion is another technology being considered.
Concerning sequestration, estimates suggest that there are hundreds of years of geologic storage capacity in North America and thousands of years worldwide. Field tests sequestering at least a million tons of CO2 per year are needed to test the environmental and technical feasibility of large-scale sequestration. The three largest sequestration projects in the world today—Sleipner in the North Sea, Weyburn in Canada, and In Salah in Algeria—together store approximately 3 million metric tons annually, which is the amount of CO2 produced in one year by a single 500 megawatt coal-fired power plant. DOE is planning, through its Carbon Sequestration Regional Partnerships, at least seven such tests in different geologic formations. It is important that the partnerships receive the necessary funding to move ahead. The significant experience of the oil and gas industry with injecting CO2 through enhanced oil recovery programs should be harnessed to supplement geologic storage R&D.
The widespread use of CCS also would entail a considerable amount of infrastructure to move the captured and compressed CO2 from the plant at which it was generated to the sequestration site. If the CO2 from all existing coal-fired electricity generation in the United States were captured and compressed, its volume would be about 2.5 times the volume of oil handled each day. There is a great deal of uncertainty about how extensive this infrastructure would have to be—e.g., how much pipeline capacity would be needed—but it is safe to say that under almost any circumstances the infrastructure requirements would be quite large.
Advances in measurement and monitoring technologies for geologic storage also are needed to assess the integrity of subsurface reservoirs and transportation systems and the potential leakage from geologic storage. CCS technology development and demonstration should be among our highest R&D priorities, and they will require more funding from both government and private sector sources. DOE and the private sector should continue to work together to support large-scale CCS on commercial plants to demonstrate and assess the performance of a range of capture, transport, storage, and monitoring technologies.
However, alternative methods to assemble the necessary level of funding should be considered for such an expanded program and new management regimes should be explored to allow private sector entities with the greatest stake in the outcome to participate in the management of such an expanded R&D effort. One way to accomplish this would be to administer a small fee on fossil-based utilities and match it with federal funds for a technology fund devoted to developing and demonstrating CCS on commercial plants.
We believe that an average of $2 billion each year over 10 years should be devoted to develop and demonstrate the full range of clean coal technologies (including CCS). One-half of the funds should come from the DOE (as part of the increase in R&D funding recommended in Section V of this Blueprint) and half should be provided by the private sector through the fee indicated above.
EPAct2005 provided $1.65 billion in investment tax credits to stimulate clean coal technology, $800 million of which was devoted to IGCC for electricity production. However, this amount would support about two new IGCC plants for each coal type. A more robust tax incentive could accelerate IGCC even further by significantly decreasing the capital costs and increasing the knowledge base of the power sector with IGCC technology. These tax credits should support three to five additional plants to be built for each coal type at an accelerated pace.
As the technology proceeds, we must also develop policies, laws, regulations, and liability regimes that will govern geologic sequestration. How will long-term responsibility be managed? How will space in underground storage facilities be apportioned? Will the federal government provide guarantees? How will compliance be monitored? How will siting and permitting of CCS infrastructure be handled? These and other questions create substantial uncertainty about the risks of CCS and illustrate the need for a sound legal and regulatory infrastructure for this technology. Without this, investors and developers lack the certainty that can prevent capital from forming and developers from moving forward with coal plants that include CCS. The EPA is at work on an underground storage injection rule to address some of these issues. It is important that this and other carbon sequestration rulemaking processes proceed in tandem with technology development, and field tests should be timed to provide input into the regulatory process. Finally, for CCS technology to be successful in attracting financing and achieving a foothold in the market, the use of DOE’s existing loan guarantee authority likely will be needed.
Despite best efforts, it must be recognized that CCS technologies will not be ready for widespread commercial uptake until 2020 at the very earliest, and maybe closer to 2030. Climate change policies must take this timeframe into account. Until the technology is ready for deployment, policies should focus on improving the efficiency of the existing fleet of fossil fuel–fired power plants and the commercial use of highly efficient state-of-the-art coal plants. | <urn:uuid:4116e288-6be0-4fe3-8d7b-ebbde1ca059e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.energyxxi.org/commit-use-clean-coal | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946973 | 2,129 | 3.78125 | 4 |
Lung function means how well your lungs work. When you have COPD, your lungs can't move as much air in and out as they should. And the more serious your COPD is, the less air your lungs are able to move.
Spirometry tests are used to measure lung function. They measure how much air you breathe out when you take long, deep breaths and push the air out of your lungs. For people with COPD, the test measures how well the lungs do two important jobs:
When you have COPD, your FEV1 number will be lower than normal. Just how low it is depends on what stage your COPD is—mild, moderate, severe, or very severe. Your FVC number may also be lower than normal. These numbers are usually stated in the form of a percentage.
Picture a glass of water. If the glass is full to the brim, it is 100% full. If it is only half full, it is 50% full. And 33% means it is only one-third full, and so on. Likewise, if your FEV1 is 50%, your lungs are able to handle only half as much air as they should. If your FEV1 is 33%, your lungs are able to handle even less—only a third as much. The lower your FEV1 percentage, the less air your lungs are able to handle.
If you don't understand your lung function numbers, ask your doctor to explain them for you.
Here are the FEV1 numbers for the various stages of COPD, according to the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD):1
|Mild COPD (stage 1)||80% or higher. People at this stage may not have shortness of breath and may not know that their lungs aren't as healthy as they should be.|
|Moderate COPD (stage 2)||50% to 79%. People at this stage may think that their symptoms are just part of getting older.|
|Severe COPD (stage 3)||30% to 49%. At this level, the lungs are not working well at all.|
|Very severe COPD (stage 4)||Less than 30% (or 30% to 49% plus chronic respiratory failure, which means the lungs aren't able to get rid of carbon dioxide). People at this stage get out of breath with just a little activity. When symptoms get worse, they can be life-threatening.|
|Primary Medical Reviewer||E. Gregory Thompson, MD - Internal Medicine|
|Primary Medical Reviewer||Brian D. O'Brien, MD - Internal Medicine|
|Specialist Medical Reviewer||Ken Y. Yoneda, MD - Pulmonology|
|Last Revised||November 8, 2012|
Last Revised: November 8, 2012
To learn more visit Healthwise.org
© 1995-2013 Healthwise, Incorporated. Healthwise, Healthwise for every health decision, and the Healthwise logo are trademarks of Healthwise, Incorporated. | <urn:uuid:59beefe0-5020-425a-84b7-2694b37d6fa7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.healthlinkbc.ca/kb/content/special/zx3599.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94444 | 634 | 3.53125 | 4 |
Ninety-two-year-old Col. Charles McGee poses at Oshkosh next to a P-51C "Red Tail" Mustang similar to the one he flew as one of the fabled Tuskegee Airmen in WWII. The Army Air Corps 332nd Fighter Group, composed entirely of African-American pilots, painted the tails of all their aircraft red. During the war they flew cover for lumbering B-17 bombers, inflicting heavy losses on the Germans.
This 1944 P-51C is one of only four left in existence; it was used as a training craft at several U.S. bases and did not see combat. The Commemorative Air Force Minnesota Wing restored the P-51C and painted it to look like the famous Red Tail to commemorate the accomplishments of the Tuskegee Airmen. | <urn:uuid:5425db51-e45d-46de-9593-7835cbfbde82> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/news/best-aircraft-of-oshkosh-air-show-2011-p-51c | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96734 | 170 | 2.921875 | 3 |
versión impresa ISSN 1870-3453
Rev. Mex. Biodiv. vol.82 no.4 México dic. 2011
Effects of a snowstorm event on the interactions between plants and hummingbirds: fast recovery of spatiotemporal patterns
Efecto de una tormenta de nieve sobre la interacción colibríplanta: los patrones espaciotemporales se recobran rápido
Román DíazValenzuela1,2 and Raúl OrtizPulido1,3*
1 Laboratorio de Ecología de Poblaciones, Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo. Apartado postal 69, 42001 Pachuca, Hidalgo, México.
2 Laboratorio de Vertebrados, Centro Iberoamericano de la Biodiversidad, Universidad de Alicante, 03080 Alicante, España.
3 Current address: Laboratorio de Ecología de la Conducta, Centro Tlaxcala de Biología de la Conducta, Universidad Autónoma de TlaxcalaUNAM, Carretera TlaxcalaPuebla km 1.5, Colonia Xicohtencatl S/N, 90070 Tlaxcala, Tlaxcala, México. *[email protected].
Recibido: 25 octubre 2010;
aceptado: 02 marzo 2011
The global climatic change could cause, in some places, appearance of meteorological phenomena considered rare. If we understand the effect of these phenomena on birds we can understand how birds respond to weather changes. We report here the effect of a severe snowfall on hummingbird activity, flower abundance and hummingbirdplant interaction in a temperate forest of central Mexico. During our study we registered 1 hummingbird species (Hylocharis leucotis) and 7 plant species (Fuchsia thymifolia, F. microphyla, Salvia amarissima, S. elegants, Cestrum roseum, Penstemon campanulatus and Lonicera mexicana). Before the sudden climatic phenomena we registered 66 records of hummingbirds, 8 700 flowers, and 6 hummingbird visits to flowers. During the phenomena, there were zero hummingbird records, 160 flowers and zero visits. A month after the event there were 67 hummingbirds records, 1 825 flowers and 13 visits. Hummingbird activity recovered rapidly after the snowstorm, but 6 of 7 plants species lost all their flowers, except for L. mexicana, which received all hummingbird visits a month after the climatic event.
Key words: bird pollinated flowers, global climate change, hummingbirds, ornithophylous plant species, snowstorm effect, sudden changes in the average state of the time.
El cambio climático global podría causar fenómenos meteorológicos considerados como raros. Si entendemos el efecto de estos fenómenos en las aves podríamos comprender como las aves responden a este tipo de cambios en el tiempo. Aquí documentamos el efecto de una nevada severa sobre la actividad de colibríes, la abundancia floral y la interación colibríplanta en un bosque templado del centro de México. Durante nuestro estudio registramos 1 especie de colibrí (Hylocharis leucotis) y 7 especies de plantas (Fuchsia thymifolia, F. microphyla, Salvia amarissima, S. elegants, Cestrum roseum, Penstemon campanulatus y Lonicera mexicana). Antes de la nevada registramos 66 avistamientos de colibríes, 8 700 flores y 6 visitas de colibríes a las flores. Durante el fenómeno hubo cero registros de colibríes, 160 flores y cero visitas. Un mes después del evento climático hubo 67 registros de colibríes, 1 825 flores y 13 visitas. La actividad de los colibríes se recuperó rápido después de la nevada, pero 6 de 7 especies de plantas perdieron todas sus flores, exceptuando a L. mexicana, que recibió todas las visitas de colibríes 1 mes después del evento climático inusual.
Palabras clave: flores polinizadas por colibríes, cambio climático global, colibríes, plantas ornitofílicas, efecto de nevada, cambios repentinos en el estado del tiempo.
The Earth's climatic system is changing (Peterson et al., 2002; Watkinson et al., 2004). The evidence suggests that it could be a global climatic change (Ordano, 2003; Watkinson et al., 2004), and among the consequences are sudden changes in the average state of the weather (SuCAST) which in turn will cause apparition of meteorological phenomena considered rare in some places. Among these SuCAST will be droughts, low temperatures, hurricanes and severe snowstorms (e.g., Watkinson and Gill, 2002; Watkinson et al., 2004). The effect of these phenomena on the fauna could be long or short term. A drought, for example, can affect a locality for months or years, while a hurricane or a severe snowstorm can have immediate catastrophic effects (Rotenberry et al., 1993).
There is evidence that birds are sensitive to SuCAST (e.g., Kalela, 1949; Knopf and Sedgwick, 1987; DeSante et al., 1993; Peterson et al., 2001; TejedaCruz and Sutherland, 2005). However, SuCAST has been only hypothetically related to fauna (e.g., Wagner, 1946; Inouye et al., 1991; Gass et al., 1999). SuCAST, depending on their intensity, duration and affected area, can influence in different ways avian populations (e.g., Pickett and White, 1985; Rotenberry et al., 1993).
The hummingbirdplant interaction is an excellent model to understand how SuCAST influence birds, both directly, through mortality due to changes in temperature, and indirectly, through loss of food sources. Both SuCAST effects has been hypothesized, but never tested in field (Wagner, 1946; Inouye et al., 1991; Gass et al., 1999). The hummingbirdplant interaction could be affected by such events since the abundance and distribution of hummingbirds dependent on the flower / nectar availability in the environment (Stiles, 1977, 1978; OrtizPulido and Díaz, 2001; OrtizPulido and VargasLicona, 2008) and SuCAST affects such flower availability (Wagner, 1946; Gass et al., 1999).
Hummingbirds pollinate close to 15% of angiosperm plants in many vegetation types in America (Buzato et al., 2000). Therefore, a SuCAST influencing hummingbirds will affect the reproductive success of the plants visited by them, and in turn will affect other animals that depend on flowers and fruits.
Here we report how a SuCAST affected the activity of a hummingbird species, the abundance of flowers visited by this species and the interaction between these in a temperate forest located in central Mexico. We present data on hummingbird activity, flower abundance, and interaction between both groups, before, during, an after the SuCAST.
Materials and methods
This study was conducted in the El Chico National Park located near Pachuca City, Hidalgo, Mexico (98°42'33''W, 20°11'22''N, 2 9003 080 m a.s.l.). The climate is semicold subhumid with summer rains (COEDEUAEH, 2004), with a mean annual precipitation of 1 030 mm, mean annual temperature of 14.3°C, and mean temperature of the coldest month of 12.1°C (National Water Commission, unpublished data). The place is dominated by a dense temperate forest, with a 2040 m canopy, and 2 lower vegetation strata: a scarce herbaceous, and a shrub cover (Calderón and Rzedowski, 2001). In the El Chico National Park there are reports of 7 hummingbird species and at least 20 plant species whose flowers are visited by them (Villada, 1873; Arregui, 2004; Mauricio, 2005; MartínezGarcía, 2006; DíazValenzuela, 2008; OrtizPulido and VargasLicona, 2008; OrtizPulido et al., 2008).
On January 1, 2008, there was an intense snowstorm, accompanied by wind and rain (MotaLópez, 2008). It left an accumulated snow layer of approximately 20 cm deep. The temperature varied between 6° and 3°C during 3 days. This type of phenomena is uncommon in the place. During the last 50 years it has been reported only 3 times (1978, 1997, and 2008); however for the first 2 events there is no technical information about their magnitude (Sergio Alarcón Martínez, National Water Commission Hidalgo, com. pers.). During the 2008 snowstorm, close to 50% of the trees (Abies religiosa, Pinaceae) lost many of their branches in a surveyed area of 12 ha (RVD, pers. obs.). The snow remained in the area for at least 15 days.
The only hummingbird species recorded during the 2008 SuCAST was the Whiteeared Hummingbird (Hylocharis leucotis), which is a resident species. At the locality, this species has been recorded foraging throughout the year on flowers of Castilleja tenuiflora, C. moranensis, Penstemon barbatus, P. roseus, P. campanulatus (Fam. Scrophulariaceae), Fuchsia thymifolia, F. microphylla (Onagraceae); Macromeria pringlei (Boraginaceae), Salvia elegans, S. amarissima, Stachys coccínea, Stachys sp., Scutellaria caerulea, Prunella vulgaris (Labiateae), Solanum nigrescens, Cestrum roseum (Solanaceae), Lonicera mexicana (Caprifoliacea), Tillansdia violacea, T. erubescens (Bromeliaceae) and Senecio angulifolius (Compositae) (Arregui, 2004; DíazValenzuela, 2008; OrtizPulido et al., 2008).
Our fieldwork was carried out before, during, an after the SuCAST, from December 2007 to February 2008. We established a 350 x 350 m plot (i.e. 12 ha) on the north face of a hill. The area was divided into 49 subplots of 50 x 50 m. We registered all visual and acoustical hummingbird records (from here, hummingbird activity), and introductions of hummingbird bills into flowers (from here, hummingbird visits) in a 25 m radius from the center of every subplot. Every subplot was surveyed from 07:00 to 12:00 h during 10 minutes every month, registering hour, hummingbird species, and hummingbird activity. Each subplot was visited 1 time during the SuCAST. To determine the avian species we used hummingbird field guides (Williamson, 2001; Howell, 2002; OrtizPulido et al., 2006). To determine flower abundance we registered the number of flowers in 4 areas of 9 x 9 m (i.e. 324 m2) in every subplot. The 4 values were averaged to obtain flower abundance per subplot. This technique has proved to indicate a reliable measure for flower abundance in subplots of 50 x 50 m (DíazValenzuela, 2008; OrtizPulido and VargasLicona, 2008). We only took into account open and mature flowers from those plant species whose flowers were visited by hummingbirds during the study period. Plant species identity was determined using a reference collection located in the Herbarium of the Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Hidalgo.
The month long relationship between hummingbird activity and flower abundance, previous, during, and after the SuCAST, was tested using a Spearman correlation test. Monthly relationships were obtained taking into account 49 samples, 1 for each subplot. Spatial autocorrelation in the response variable was tested using the Mantel test provided by the XLstat program (Addinsoft, 2007), and when spatial dependence was found, we used the Spearman correlation test modified by Dutilleul (1993). This test changes the degree of freedom (using decimal places) to achieve the best interpretation of the statistical significance of spatially explicit data (Dutilleul, 1993; Legendre et al., 2002; Rangel et al., 2006).
A month before and after the 2008 SuCAST, we recorded 1 hummingbird species (Whiteeared Hummingbird), but none during the phenomena (the 15 days with snow on the ground). We recorded 66 hummingbird sightings before the SuCAST, zero during the climatic phenomena, and 67 afterward, for a total of 133 hummingbird sightings. From this total we were unable to identify the hummingbird species in 17 instances.
Before, during, and after the SuCAST the richness of flourishing plant species varied (Table 1), as well as the number of openmature flowers. Before SuCAST we recorded 8 700 flowers, 160 during the phenomena, and 1 825 afterward. During SuCAST all the herbaceous flowers disappeared, except for L. mexicana that displayed 160 flowers (Table 1). Apparently, the SuCAST event determined the disappearance of ~98% of the flowers.
We recorded 6 hummingbird visits to flowers (4 to F. microphylla, 1 to S. elegant and 1 to S. amarissima) before SuCAST, zero during the phenomena and 13 visits (all to L. mexicana) afterward. Before and after SuCAST there were significant correlations (Fig. 1) between hummingbird activity and flower abundance (in December rs=0.56, d.f.= 45.70, F= 21.12, p= 0.00003; in February rs= 0.40, df.=51.5, F=9.70, p= 0.00301). During the SuCAST we did not apply a correlation test, because there was no hummingbird activity in the 49 subplots.
The 2008 SuCAST event was related to low levels of hummingbird activity in the El Chico National Park. This effect was most likely caused by hummingbirds dying due to the freezing conditions, and indirectly by a reduction of hummingbird food sources, that forced hummingbirds to enter into torpor, or move to other locations. Before and after the 2008 SuCAST there was a significant correlation between hummingbird activity and flower abundance. This relationship has been reported in other studies without a SuCAST context (Wagner, 1946; Wolf, 1970; Feinsinger, 1976; Stiles, 1977, 1978; Feinsinger and Colwell, 1978; Baltosser, 1989; Inouye et al., 1991; Gutiérrez and Rojas, 2001; OrtizPulido and Díaz, 2001; Lara, 2006; DíazValenzuela, 2008; OrtizPulido and VargasLicona, 2008).
Exactly how the hummingbirds responded to the phenomena we could not reliably determine. They could have suffered an increase in mortality (as suggested by Wagner, 1946; Inouye et al., 1991), made altitudinal movements to search for food (as suggested by Ornelas and Arizmendi, 1995), or employ torpor (as suggested by Bench et al., 1997). We did not record dead hummingbirds in the sampled 12 ha during the SuCAST (but we recorded 4 dead bats in the snow), did not find any evidence of altitudinal movements or detect torpor for the hummingbirds. At nearby sites of El Chico National Park at lower altitudes (approx 2 3502 900 m a. s. l, with 3 different kinds of vegetation: xerophic shrub, Juniperus forest and oak forest) we did not register unusual variation in hummingbird relative abundance. In the lower elevation sites we conducted the same fieldwork effort reported here, and the SuCAST effects were not so severe, with hummingbird activity and flower abundance being similar to other years.
Even though the 2008 SuCAST had an immediate drastic effect on the number of hummingbird sightings, the effect remained shortterm. A month after the SuCAST hummingbird activity returned to the same levels (66 previous vs. 67 after). However, the effect on the plants was more destructive. Only 1 of 7 plant species (L. mexicana) displayed flowers after the climatic phenomenon. Therefore the SuCAST was costly in reproductive terms for the majority of the local plant species. Nevertheless, L. mexicana may have benefited from the SuCAST event. It attained all the hummingbird visits after the SuCAST and perhaps profited from an increase in pollen transference. However this was not tested. All our data indicate that the planthummingbird interaction system underwent a rapid recovery and that L. mexicana was a main element providing nectar sources to hummingbirds a month after the SuCAST.
The rapid recovery detected of the planthummingbird interaction could be explained by the high temporal and spatial variability of the hummingbirdplant interaction systems (DíazValenzuela, 2008; OrtizPulido y VargasLicona, 2008). In nature the flower abundance varies and is an aggregated source in time and space, usually located in isolated patches with high local abundance (e.g. Baltosser, 1989; Fleming, 1992; DíazValenzuela, 2008; OrtizPulido y VargasLicona, 2008). At our study site, without the occurrence of SuCAST, it has been detected that the flower abundance in 50 x 50 m patches can change from thousands to zero within 4 days (OrtizPulido and VargasLicona, 2008). From a local perspective, i.e., 50 x 50 m, it is possible that the change in floral density originated by the 2008 SuCAST is very similar to the variation which occurs naturally in our study site. However, from a landscape perspective, i.e., 12 ha or more, the 2008 SuCAST imposed a serious energetic challenge to hummingbirds, since the flowers of many plant species disappeared from the landscape.
In the 2008 SuCAST event, we detected that flower availability was reduced significantly in the landscape and this was related to hummingbird activity. During normal conditions, the landscape of El Chico National Park shows ~5.68 Kj/ha in floral nectar (OrtizPulido and Lara, unpub. data), and a Whiteeared Hummingbird individual (~3.5 g) needs ~27 kj/day to survive (based on Baltoser, 1989, and Montgomerie y Gass, 1981, estimates). In a SuCAST event, when ~98% of the flowers disappear, the available nectar energy is reduced at the landscape level. In such conditions hummingbirds either die or deal with the stressful conditions, by moving away or using torpor (as suggested by Wagner, 1946; Inouye et al., 1991; Ornelas and Arizmendi, 1995; Bench et al., 1997). The consequences at the community level are different in each case. If hummingbirds die, some community dynamics could be disrupted or will be decreased for some time. Among the disrupted community dynamics are the hummingbirdplant interactions and the seed production of hummingbird pollinated plant species. If the hummingbirds died, we hypothesized that the interactions would be reestablished slowly after the SuCAST, since hummingbird species must explore and colonize the site again. Community dynamics restart would depend, in this case, upon the response of the hummingbirds to the SuCAST. On the other hand, if hummingbirds flew away or used torpor, we hypothesized that the interaction could be restarted swiftly after the SuCAST, as individual hummingbirds would only need to return to the site and continue with their normal activities when the flowers reappear. However, there is evidence that suggests that a bird species can survive only few hours in torpor state (Bicudo et al., 2002), so torpor may only be a temporal answer for hummingbirds to SuCAST events. If hummingbirds fly away or use torpor, community dynamics restart depends on the reaction of the plants to the SuCAST, because hummingbirds are still present in the landscape.
When a SuCAST occurs, surely some hummingbirds die, others fly away and others may endure part of the SuCAST using torpor. Unfortunately, the hummingbird primary reaction to SuCAST has not been determined yet. This study revealed evidence that indicates that hummingbird activity was reduced during a SuCAST event, but the causes remain yet unknown.
We thank the El Chico National Park Direction for permissions and their logistical support in field, Nadja Weisshaupt for the English translation and 2 anonymous reviewers, whose kind suggestions helped us to improve an early version of this paper. Financial support was given by the Programa de Mejoramiento del Profesorado (Secretaria de Educación Pública México), Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (doctoral scholarship to RDV and sabbatical scholarship to ROP) and the Consejo de Ciencia y TecnologíaHidalgo (project Diversidad Biológica del Estado de Hidalgo, segunda fase, FomixCONACyT200895828).
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Wolf, L. 1970. The impact of seasonal flowering on the biology of some tropical hummingbirds. Condor 72:114. [ Links ] | <urn:uuid:92fe8dab-a353-43c3-b0ee-e4775fbb8594> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1870-34532011000400018&lng=es&nrm=iso&tlng=en | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.70533 | 7,629 | 2.625 | 3 |
Brief SummaryRead full entry
M. hjorti was originally described from five badly damaged specimens from the North Atlantic, then redescribed by Rancurel (1973) from three squid from the Gulf of Guinea. The species is distinctive and widely distributed but uncertainty exists on the taxonomic status of populations in other oceans.
A Mastigoteuthis ...
- with two photophores on each eyeball.
- with very large fins (length ca 90% of ML). | <urn:uuid:9ab6b727-a43b-4458-9d9a-7d2a2c682f03> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://eol.org/pages/9104395/overview/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.905343 | 102 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Taxus baccataThe Yew Tree
The thick, somber yew has adorned the graveyards of Europe for centuries, casting its dark shadow over the living and the dead. The ancient Druids thought them sacred, possibly because of the yew's longevity, and planted them by their temples. There are yews surviving in Europe that are believed to be 2000 years old. In very old trees the trunk can span 13 feet and becomes fluted and shaggy.
"Bring me yew to deck my graves"
The yew is a conifer and native to Europe, northwest Africa and Asia Minor. The needles are dark green, are spirally arranged yet lie flat on either side of the branchlet. Its modified seed cone resembles a red juicy berry open at one end. It is called an aril and much fancied by birds. The aril is the only non-poisonous part of the yew, and covers the single seed which is toxic to animals and humans. Even the needles of the yew have poisonous qualities. Poets have lavished thousands of words over the yew, seeing it as a symbol of the transcendence of death over life.
In the battle of Agincourt, the archers of Henry IV with their longbows of yew wood defeated the French knights who were mounted and dressed in armor. The inside of the longbow is made of the yew's heartwood which resists compression: the outside is made of the sapwood which resists stretching. The popularity of the longbow as a weapon in the wars of the Middle Ages almost caused the extinction of the yew from Europe. In the 1990's, the chemotherapy drug, Taxol, was derived from the bark of the Western Yew, Taxus brevifolia. That species also faced extinction from over-harvesting, until a process was developed using the needles of the European yew, which is far more widespread.
||Small tree or large shrub
||Part shade to full sun; well drained soil kept moderately moist, moderate salt tolerance
||Seed cones contains a single seed surrounded by a succulent red aril open at one end
||Widely used in landscaping and ornamental horticulture. Great as a pruned shrub, hedge or topiary
||Some of the oldest trees are estimated to be more than 1000 years old, with the belief that some could be 3,000 or more, but no ring count can be taken as all ancient yews have decayed centers
Torreya californica, California nutmeg, is also in the Taxaceae family. The seed is also enclosed in an aril but is green and olive-like
Highly valued in furniture industry for its hard reddish lumber resistant to insects and fungi
Taxus baccata can be found in the Redwood Grove (specifically surrounding the outdoor redwood classroom, Beds 48G and 48N); Temperate Asia Garden (Bed 20); Rhododendron Garden (Beds 73D, 73E); California Garden (Bed 40A.)
IN BLOOM CONTRIBUTORS:
Photos by Docent Joanne Taylor
Text by Docent Kathy McNeil
Profile by Associate Curator David Kruse-Pickler | <urn:uuid:5a0a51d9-a2de-426c-b40a-36687dac6afc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sfbotanicalgarden.org/garden/bloom_11_07.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94131 | 674 | 3.390625 | 3 |
Corn: The Latest Glue Ingredient?
Chemist Mila Hojilla-Evangelista tests the breaking point of plywood laminated with vegetable-based glues to determine the strength of the glue bond.
After oil is extracted from it, corn germ meal is typically sold to farmers for use as a nutritious feed for poultry and other livestock.
But a surplus of corn germ could be looming on the horizon. That’s if America’s biorefineries can increase corn-ethanol production from the current 9 billion gallons (2008) to 15 billion gallons by 2015. But prescient researchers aren’t waiting. Take, for example, Milagros P. Hojilla-Evangelista.
In studies begun in 2005 at ARS’s National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research in Peoria, Illinois, the chemist determined that corn germ can be used as a protein extender for plywood glues, potentially opening a new, value-added market for the byproduct. Glue extenders reduce the amount of the main binder, or resin. that’s used, thus lowering production costs. They also enhance adhesive action and impart textural properties to the glue.
The conventional extender for most plywood glues is wheat flour. Hojilla-Evangelista has sought to expand the list of agricultural extenders to include not only corn germ protein, but also sorghum flour and soybean meal. The price and performance of industrial-grade wheat flour make it a dominant extender, but alternative sources are still important to consider.
Technician Debra Stamm (right) feeds a sheet of wood into a glue spreader where it will receive an even coating of vegetable-based glue before being laminated to another sheet to form plywood. Chemist Mila Hojilla-Evangelista watches and waits to receive the piece as it exits.
“If something should happen—say, the price of wheat flour goes too high—glue manufacturers would like to be able to have something else they can use that’s comparable,” says Hojilla-Evangelista, who’s in the ARS center’s Plant Polymer Research Unit.
In earlier work there, she developed a soy-flour-based plywood glue formula for foam-extrusion applications. This process pumps out evenly spaced, pastalike, foamed strands of adhesive onto plywood veneers, which are then pressed together. The corn germ formula she’s now testing is for sprayline coating, in which the liquid adhesive is applied by overhead nozzles to wood surfaces.
“I chose a sprayline formulation because it’s more tolerant of nonprotein components such as oil, which is a defoamer,” says Hojilla-Evangelista. “But since foaming isn’t critical to sprayline applications, the presence of oil isn’t an issue.”
For tests, she applied the required amount of glue onto one side of 12-inch x 12-inch southern pine veneers, then hot-pressed them following industry-standard conditions to produce three-ply panels. She found the bonding strength of the corn germ-based glue to be the same as that of the wheat flour-based formula.
The corn germ glue’s viscosity and mixing properties also compared well with the industry adhesive, notes Hojilla-Evangelista, who, in June 2008, presented her work at the Corn Utilization and Technology Conference in Kansas City, Missouri.
“Next, I plan to increase the amount of corn germ in the glue,” she says. “If I can do that, I can reduce the amount of resin that’s used, which cuts down on the costs of glue manufacturing.”—By Jan Suszkiw, Agricultural Research Service Information Staff.
This research is part of Quality and Utilization of Agricultural Products, an ARS national program (#306) described on the World Wide Web at www.nps.ars.usda.gov.
Milagros P. Hojilla-Evangelista is in the USDA-ARS Plant Polymer Research Unit, National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research, 1815 N. University St., Peoria, IL 61604; phone (309) 681-6350, fax (309) 681-6691.
"Corn: The Latest Glue Ingredient?" was published in the September 2009 issue of Agricultural Research magazine. | <urn:uuid:6049716f-8381-4fb9-9655-eee6bfd220ae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/sep09/corn0909.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.898418 | 955 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Anosmia in elderly
Saturday, March 05 2011 @ 09:34 AM IST
Contributed by: Admin
age group has disastrous consequences, including safety hazard. It affects the food preferences and nutritional status of the already compromised population.
The absolute odor sensitivity as well as sensitivity to suprathrehold odors decreases in aging population Introduction: Anosmia in geriatric age group is really common.
Statistically speaking about 15% of geriatric population are anosmic. Anosmia in geriatric age group has disastrous consequences, including safety hazard.
It affects the food preferences and nutritional status of the already compromised population. The absolute odor sensitivity as well as sensitivity to suprathrehold odors decreases in aging population.
Loss of smell sensation could be a component of degenerative disorders like Alzeimer's disease and Parkinson's disease which commonly affect elderly age group.
Anosmia in elderly could very well be caused by pathologies involving either the transport of odoriferous molecules to the olfactory cleft or central processing mechanisms.
Applied anatomy & Physiology of smell:
Odors usually reach the olfactory epithelium present in the olfactory cleft orthonasally (anteriorly) via the nose and retronasally via the oropharynx.
This retronasal pathway is essential for appreciating flavor of food consumed. In animals this pathway is essential to maintain the vital sense of smell even while
feeding since it is very important for their survival. Odorants are appreciated when these molecules bind to the olfactory epithelium found in the roof of the nasal cavity.
The most important feature of these olfactory receptor cells is the presence of non motile cilia which are the primary receptors of olfaction.
These cilia are endowed with a large number of olfactory receptor proteins to which the odoriferous molecules bind.
When these odoriferous molecules bind to the olfactory epithelium the G protein and cyclic AMP pathway is activated causing depolarisation of the olfactory receptor.
The signal from the depolarized receptors are carried by the olfactory fibers to the primary olfactory cortex present in the uncus.
The function of these receptors are dependent on the composition of mucous blanket which covers them. This mucous blanket
is secreted by Bowman's glands and sustentecular cells. The quantity and quality of this mucosal blanket drastically changes in older age group blunting their ability to smell.
Since the cilia over olfactory epithelium are nonmotile, the mucosal blanket clearance depends on the normal ciliary motility of the nasal epithelium.
The quality of the mucous blanket over the olfactory epithelium changes
1.During upper respiratory tract infection
3.Inhalation of toxic substances
Pattern of airflow in to the nasal cavity plays an important role in olfaction. Studies have shown that major air flow occurs through the floor
of the nose, next comes through the middle meatus. Only 10% of the inspired air traverses through the roof of the nasal cavity (olfactory area).
It is this superiorly directed air flow that determines the acuity of olfaction. In elderly individuals due to atherosclerotic changes of submucosal vessels the turbinates
dont congest and decongest automatically, causing the air flow through the nasal cavity to be laminar in nature.
Laminar air flow always occurs through the floor of the nasal cavity depriving the olfactory area's exposure to the inspired air.
Hence elderly individuals resort to sniffing in order to perceive smell. Alar muscles of the nose must be acting normally in these persons for eddy currents to develop in the inspired air.
Eddy currents ensure atleast a portion of the inspired air travels through the roof of the nasal cavity. In elderly individuals the alar muscles are weak
and periodical sniffing acts leaves them really tired and drowned hence they avoid making this consious effort to perceive smell.
The olfactory epithelial layer is endowed with the presence of progenitor cells. These cells on maturation can progressively replace degenerated olfactory receptor cells.
The number of these progenitor cells undergoes progressive reduction as the patient ages. Hence the regenerative ability of olfactory epithelium is highly restricted in geriatric age group compounding the problem of anosmia.
Olfactory receptor cells: These are bipolar neurons which are not only constantly exposed to odoriferous molecules but also to the insults heaped upon by viral infections,
inflammations, and inhaled toxins. They undergo regular death by a process known as apoptosis. Their population is continuously replaced by the maturing progenitor
cell pool. In nasal and sinus disorders the level of enzyme capsase 3 increases to alarming levels. This enzyme stimulates apoptosis (programmed cell death) of the olfactory receptors.
Importance of mucosal blanket over olfactory cleft in maintaining the function of smell:
1.The odoriferous molecules dissolves in the mucosal blanket before they are exposed to the olfactory epithelium
2.The mucosal blanket also clears the odoriferous molecules after they have stimulated the olfactory epithelium
3.The water content of the mucosal blanket plays an important role in maintaining the normal olfactory function.
In patients of geriatric age group the hydration of the mucosal blanket is poor and hence there is a diminition in the olfactory function.
4.Exposure to cigarette smoke delays clearance of the mucosal blanket causing diminition of sensation of smell
5.Exposure to heavy metals like manganese (prolonged) causes alteration in the metabolism of the mucosal blanket causing subtle changes
in its composition leading on to blunting of sensation of smell. This is the third common cause of olfactory problems in elderly.
Olfactory epithelial changes that occur due to aging:
As the individual grows older the olfactory epithelium gets progressively replaced by respiratory epithelium causing a diminition in the sensation of smell.
Studies have shown that significant amount of olfactory epithelium gets replaced by respiratory epithelium by the time a person reaches the age of 70.
Damage to olfactory bulb and neuronal olfactory pathways due to degenerative neurogenic disorders are common in old age group. This is one
important cause for blunting of sensation of olfaction in a patient above the age of 80. Alzeimer's disease is the most common degenerative disorder affecting this group of patients.
It not only causes dementia in this age group, but also blunts their olfaction. Diminition of olfactory sensation is seen in early stages of Alzeimer's disease.
Appreciation of flavor of food:
This is dependent on retronasal olfaction. This is commonly affected in elderly individuals who use palate covering dentures. This is one of the common cause of loss of
flavor of food stuffs seen in geriatric patients. In addition healthy oral cavity is a must for perception of flavors. Dry oral cavity commonly seen in elderly also cause loss of perception of flavor of food. | <urn:uuid:84469148-a29d-48f6-9c0b-26aefa43cc23> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.drtbalu.co.in/news/article.php?story=2011030509345533 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.904899 | 1,521 | 2.671875 | 3 |
In 1994, supporters promised that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) would help create jobs and prosperity to the U.S, Canada, and Mexico. Yet the real results have been just the opposite: wages have stagnated in Mexico and we’ve lost 3 million manufacturing jobs in the U.S. Worse yet, some 1.3 million Mexican campesinos have lost their livelihoods, causing a massive increase in displacement and migration .
But instead of fixing the problem, the Bush administration has been attempting to expand the failed NAFTA model to countries around the world – particularly to Latin America. Efforts towards a hemisphere-wide Free Trade Area of the Americas fell apart in November 2003.
Since then, the Bush administration has been trying to pressure smaller countries to sign so-called "free trade" agreements with the U.S. The Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) was approved by the US Congress in July of 2005.
The attempt to expand NAFTA to the Andean region (comprising Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia) were launched on November 2003, but has faltered. Bolivia never joined, the citizenry having elected a new president – Evo Morales – who had campaigned against the neoliberal model that has kept the Bolivian people impoverished despite vast natural resource wealth. Negotiations with Ecuador have drawn to a halt .
But negotiations have concluded on “Free Trade Agreements” with Peru and Colombia.
Large mobilizations against the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement (PUFTA) have wracked Peru for months. [link to] Over 60,000 Peruvian citizens signed petitions demanding that the agreement be submitted to a popular referendum. Anti-PUFTA candidates won a majority in their Congress in June of 2006. But the Congress (that had just been voted out but was still in office!) pulled a sneaky maneuver, voting to approve PUFTA in their last remaining weeks.
Check out Public Citizen for the latest scoop on how to prevent NAFTA expansion to Peru. We can stop the US – Colombia FTA from ever coming to the US Congress for a vote if we stop PUFTA first. | <urn:uuid:1e31d8a7-f5d5-4ee3-9abd-ee5e59606122> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.globalexchange.org/print/176 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959001 | 442 | 2.734375 | 3 |
United States History II
US History II isn’t just for history majors! It’s often required regardless of major at most colleges and universities, and that means it’s usually offered as a survey course to hundreds of students at the same time. Skip the lecture hall and take it on your own, online, and enjoy live, one-on-one help when you need it with StraighterLine.
US History II picks up after the Civil War, in a period known as Reconstruction, and covers every significant theme in American society up to and including the post-9/11 era. You’ll evaluate the successes and failures of various Reconstruction plans and identify the factors that led to the rise of Populism, American expansionist policy, and the development of the Progressive movement. Investigate the causes of US involvement in “The War to End All Wars.” Analyze the social and economic developments of the period between World War I and the Great Depression. Study the factors that led to World War II and the Cold War, and the major economic, social, and diplomatic developments of the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations. Separate the facts from the fiction about the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, U.S. involvement in Vietnam and the impact of the war on American society. Finally, you’ll assess the major domestic and international developments of the Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and first Bush administrations, along with major domestic and international developments since 1990.
Online United States History II is transferable for 3-credits and comes with:
Choose your online United States History II course options below:
Do you prefer self-paced courses, or do you want to study as part of a small group (cohort) of students? Maybe even a professor-led course? Choosing the right course takes more than just knowing how it works. Which courses are our best values? Most popular? Highest rated by students like you?
Click on the courses below to find out more about your online course options, or to enroll right now. | <urn:uuid:6d7c5a9c-931b-4ec4-b935-d0cc1af86ff6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.straighterline.com/online-college-courses/humanities/united-states-history-ii/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935052 | 431 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Importance of Education
Education is the process of learning and knowing, which is not restricted to our school text books. An educated person has the ability to change the world.
What is the Significance of Education?
It makes us better citizens:
Education makes a worthy contribution to our lives by making us responsible citizens. We get to know our history and culture and can imbibe those values. Education opens our mind and enables......
us to understand our duties as a citizen and encourages us to follow them. We cannot deny the fact that an educated person is a better citizen.
It ensures a good future:
Education ensures a secure future. Our productivity is increased by acquiring new skills and talents, we find ourselves in the most competitive fields; all thanks to education. The importance of education is evident by the soaring heights we achieve in life.
It spread awareness:
Lack of awareness is lamented everywhere. Education spreads awareness, informing us about our rights and the services that we can access. It teaches us to differentiate between right and wrong.
It boosts our confidence:
An education is a confident person. It gives us a positive outlook and allows us to believe in ourselves and to take on the world.
It helps in decision making:
Decision making is an integral part of our life. We have to take decision throughout our lives and sometimes it can be a tough and challenging process. It leaves us confused and at times wonder what is the right choice. Education is significant because it allows us to take the right decision and prevent losses.
Therefore I believe "EDUCATION" is a must for every human being to lead a better life.
(by Mrs. Lolita Kar) | <urn:uuid:5371743b-a82b-465b-b45e-dbef87f1b307> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://alamaalschool.com/index2.php?page=articles&articleID=7 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95696 | 347 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Wednesday November 11, 2008 (foodconsumer.org) -- A new
study suggests that pesticides can pose a serious threat to the environment and
possibly human health when used in combination in agricultural products at even
levels the EPA allows although they may not cause any harm when used
The study led by researchers from the University of
Pittsburgh found that concentrations of 10 most commonly used pesticides that fell
within EPA safe-exposure levels when combined killed 99 percent leopard frog
Amphibian populations have been on the decline while the number
of deformed frogs has been seen to increase in states like Illinois and Pennsylvania.
For the study published Nov. 11 in the online edition of
"Oecologia", Rick Relyea and colleagues tested five
insecticides-carbaryl, chlorpyrifos, diazinon, endosulfan, and malathion-and
five herbicides-acetochlor, atrazine, glyphosate, metolachlor, and 2,4-D in
The researchers found a mixture of all 10 chemicals
killed 99 percent of leopard frog tadpoles as did the insecticide only mixture.
The herbicide mix had no effect on the tadpoles.
They also found that Endosulfan - a neurotoxin banned in
several nations but still used extensively in the U.S. agriculture - was more
deadly to leopard frog tadpoles than previous thought. This pesticide when used
alone killed 84 percent of the leopard frogs.
The findings are alarming because current regulations
from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did not require amphibian
testing, Relyea said.
This chemical is
most lethal among the tested pesticides.
"Endosulfan appears to be about 1,000-times more
lethal to amphibians than other pesticides that we have examined," Relyea
said. "Unfortunately, pesticide regulations do not require amphibian
testing, so very little is known about endosulfan's impact on amphibians,
despite being sprayed in the environment for more than five decades."
For most of the pesticides, the concentration used in the
study was far below the human-lifetime-exposure levels set by the EPA and also
fell short of the maximum concentrations found in natural bodies of water.
The study suggests that the potential harm by pesticides
should be considered when they are used in combination, but not individually.
Many people may not know this, but multiple pesticides
have already been detected in many types of fruits and vegetables.
According to the Environmental Working Group, the data
from the US government show that apple can contain more than 30 types of
Although, the pesticides individually
may not pose too much of a risk, the risk from these pesticides in combination remain
Those who want to avoid as much as of pesticides may want
to consider avoiding certain produce. The conventionally grown fruits and
vegetables that contain highest levels of pesticides include peaches, apples,
sweet bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, lettuce,
imported grapes, pears, spinach, potatoes, carrots, green beans, hot peppers,
cucumbers, raspberries, plums, oranges, and domestic grapes according to the
But the fruits and vegetables with lowest concentrations
of pesticides include
broccoli, eggplant, cabbage, banana, kiwi,
asparagus, sweet peas (frozen), mango, pineapple, sweet corn (frozen), avocado
and onion, according to
foodnews.org, a website of the EWG.
Disclaimer: What's published on this website should be considered opinions of respective writers only and foodconsumer.org which has no political agenda nor commercial ambition may or may not endorse any opinion of any writer. No accuracy is guaranteed although writers are doing their best to provide accurate information only.
The information on this website should not be construed as medical advice and should not be used to replace professional services provided by qualified or licensed health care workers. The site serves only as a platform for writers and readers to share knowledge, experience, and information from the scientific community, organizations, government agencies and individuals.
Foodconsumer.org encourages readers who have had medical conditions to consult with licensed health care providers - conventional and or alternative medical practitioners. | <urn:uuid:747e0c76-07d8-4fdc-bddb-4165d9b9a314> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://foodconsumer.org/7777/8888/Agri_amp_Environ_41/111206582008_Pesticides_risky_when_used_in_combination_watch_produce_you_eat.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920089 | 899 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Folklife Resources for Educators
Materials Related to Race discrimination
There are 1 titles in this list.
A Singing Stream: A Black Family Chronicle - Curriculum Guides
Three curriculum guides to accompany the film “A Singing Stream: A Black Family Chronicle,” created by filmmaker Tom Davenport with Daniel Patterson and Allen Tullos in 1986. The 57-minute film, available as streaming video on folkstreams.net, traces the history of the Landis family of Granville County, North Carolina, over the lifetime of its oldest surviving member, 86-year-old Bertha Landis. In the film, her sons' gospel quartet, "The Golden Echoes" rehearses and performs during a Landis family reunion. Family members also describe their migration North, work, race relations, music, and family ties. The site includes a film study guide by Beverly Patterson for 8th and 9th grades that explores African American history, music, family life and culture, and film as a social and historical document. Also available is an intergenerational film discussion guide by Paddy Bowman that offers ideas for considering issues of Jim Crow segregation, voting rights, gospel music-making, and faith and resilience in African American families. In addition, the site includes a teaching guide for grades 10-12 by Paddy Bowman focusing on aspects of the film mentioned above plus background essays on gospel quartets, Bertha Landis, and Granville County, North Carolina.
|Grade Level: 6-8; 9-12; Undergraduate
||Curriculum: Art and Culture; History and Social Studies; Language Arts; Music; Performing Arts
|Resource Type: Activities; Lesson plans; Primary sources; Video recordings
|Subjects: African Americans; North Carolina--Social life and customs; Segregation; Civil rights; Family--History; Gospel music; Race relations; Oral history; Music; African American families; Ethnographic films; Family reunions; Educational films; Family--Folklore; Race discrimination
Geographic locations: North Carolina | <urn:uuid:40a987e3-62d0-444c-b3a7-318ba883516e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://loc.gov/folklife/teachers/subject_list.php?subjectID=341&subject=Race%20discrimination | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.869008 | 425 | 3.3125 | 3 |
Last week’s jobs report was on the weak side as U.S. economic growth, which recently had shown some signs of life, stalled in April. While overall unemployment fell one percentage point to 8.1 percent, the labor force only added 115,000 jobs, down 39,000 from the previous month.
The percentage of the working age population that is participating in the job market is at its lowest rate in 30 years. Somewhat hidden in the tepid news are positive numbers for one segment of the population: black women.
Since December 2011, black women have knocked more than 3 percentage points off of their unemployment rate, going down from 13.9 percent to 10.8 percent. That drop is the largest for any demographic group, with the growth concentrated in education, health care, and the retail industry.
Meanwhile, unemployment for their black male counterparts has gone down from 15.7 percent in December to 13.9 percent currently. White men and women both have an unemployment rate just below 7 percent, but the gap between black and white workers has closed significantly since the economic downturn began.
The lack of enthusiasm over the April jobs report is due to the fact that nearly 342,000 workers dropped out of the labor force. Such a high number for the economic indicator known as the “labor force participation rate” is cause for alarm because it means that, while the overall unemployment number went down from March to April, it wasn’t because of an improving economy and increased opportunities for the unemployed. It means that a significant number of job seekers are leaving the workforce and aren’t being counted in the overall rate. Many of those workers are long term unemployed for whom unemployment insurance has run out or who have had difficulties landing new jobs because of lack of employment for such long periods of time.
The reason the positive numbers for black women stand out amongst this mediocre economic outlook is because their changing rate was not the result of a decrease in the “labor participation rate.” In fact, black women, by and large, are getting back into the market and the workforce. The “labor participation rate” for black women has increased from 53.5 percent in December up to 56.1 percent in April’s jobs report.
Overall, the economy has a long way to go before it fully recovers from the financial crisis that left so many unemployed. Nearly 9 million jobs were lost and, as of April 2012, only 3.7 million jobs have been added back in. The jobs numbers are important politically as we head into election season, where both sides cherry pick data which they can spin in their favor or to attack the opposition.
The numbers reflect an economy still reeling from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and, even though there are significant positive signs for black women, the rest of American workers are not out of the woods yet.
Follow Zerlina Maxwell on Twitter at @zerlinamaxwell | <urn:uuid:1db1a7f4-3218-4c9c-b167-8c2fee4ab836> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thegrio.com/2012/05/07/black-women-benefiting-during-weak-jobs-market/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972673 | 606 | 2.546875 | 3 |
At a press conference held today at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. scientists with the Curiosity Mars rover mission announced findings from the analysis of rock powder obtained when the rover first used its drill on bedrock near its landing site. The findings indicate that ancient Mars could have once been habitable for microbial life.
Scientists identified sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon -- some of the key chemical ingredients for life -- in the powder Curiosity drilled out of a sedimentary rock near an ancient stream bed in Gale Crater on the Red Planet last month.
"A fundamental question for this mission is whether Mars could have supported a habitable environment," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "From what we know now, the answer is yes."
Clues to this habitable environment come from data returned by the rover's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) and Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instruments. The data indicate the Yellowknife Bay area the rover is exploring was the end of an ancient river system or an intermittently wet lake bed that could have provided chemical energy and other favorable conditions for microbes. The rock is made up of a fine grain mudstone containing clay minerals, sulfate minerals and other chemicals. This ancient wet environment, unlike some others on Mars, was not harshly oxidizing, acidic, or extremely salty.
The patch of bedrock where Curiosity drilled for its first sample lies in an ancient network of stream channels descending from the rim of Gale Crater. The bedrock also is fine-grained mudstone and shows evidence of multiple periods of wet conditions, including nodules and veins.
Curiosity's drill collected the sample at a site just a few hundred yards away from where the rover earlier found an ancient streambed in September 2012.
"Clay minerals make up at least 20 percent of the composition of this sample," said David Blake, principal investigator for the CheMin instrument at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
These clay minerals are a product of the reaction of relatively fresh water with igneous minerals, such as olivine, also present in the sediment. The reaction could have taken place within the sedimentary deposit, during transport of the sediment, or in the source region of the sediment. The presence of calcium sulfate along with the clay suggests the soil is neutral or mildly alkaline.
"We have found a habitable environment that is so benign and supportive of life that probably — if this water was around and you had been on the planet, you would have been able to drink it," said Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger, of Caltech in Pasadena.
Scientists were surprised to find a mixture of oxidized, less-oxidized, and even non-oxidized chemicals providing an energy gradient of the sort many microbes on Earth exploit to live. This partial oxidation was first hinted at when the drill cuttings were revealed to be gray rather than red.
"The range of chemical ingredients we have identified in the sample is impressive, and it suggests pairings such as sulfates and sulfides that indicate a possible chemical energy source for micro-organisms," said Paul Mahaffy, principal investigator of the SAM suite of instruments at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
An additional drilled sample will be used to help confirm these results for several of the trace gases analyzed by the SAM instrument. Scientists plan to keep Curiosity in Yellowknife Bay Area for several weeks before starting the long trip to Mount Sharp, the central mound of Gale crater. | <urn:uuid:00f9414e-58be-4301-92eb-d2fc992e71fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.examiner.com/article/nasa-rover-finds-evidence-that-ancient-mars-could-have-supported-life?cid=rss | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948026 | 726 | 3.96875 | 4 |
What are the signs of nerve problems?
The nervous system consists of two parts. The central nervous system includes the brain and spinal cord. The peripheral nervous system transmits sensory information between the muscles, tissues and nerves in the rest of the body to the brain.
Nerve Problems Spotlight
Nerve symptoms often originate in the peripheral nervous system and can manifest with burning, numbness, pins-and-needles sensations, muscle weakness or paralysis, and sensitivity. These symptoms may be caused by a local injury, when the pain can be directly related to a trauma, or a systemic illness that affects your entire body. Referred pain is a more complex condition when you feel the sensation of pain in a different part of your body from where the injury or illness actually occurred. Referred pain is the most difficult to diagnose and treat.
Nerve symptoms can arise from one nerve or many. Some syndromes occur when a nerve is compressed and deprived of proper blood flow, For example, carpal tunnel syndrome may develop from repetitive wrist or hand motions. Diabetes is a common cause of peripheral neuropathies (nerve disorders), the result of nerve damage from high blood sugar. Nerve symptoms can also stem from autoimmune diseases (such as lupus erythematosus or Guillain-Barré syndrome) or viruses such as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), Epstein-Barr, or varicella-zoster.
Nerve conditions due to a malfunctioning of the autonomic nervous system (part of the peripheral nervous system) may interrupt involuntary actions such as breathing, swallowing, bladder control, or perspiration. They may be accompanied by symptoms of low blood pressure such as dizziness or vertigo or loss of consciousness. Seek immediate medical care (call 911) if you, or someone you are with, have any of these symptoms, as they can be life threatening. Seek prompt medical care if your nerve symptoms cause you concern.
What other symptoms might occur with nerve symptoms?
Nerve symptoms may accompany other symptoms, which vary depending on the underlying disease, disorder or condition. Nerve symptoms are diverse because the nervous system governs or participates in a number of functions as well as body systems, including control of body temperature, blood pressure, muscles, digestion and appetite, movement, and sight.... Read more about nerve symptoms symptoms
What causes nerve symptoms?
The causes of nerve symptoms are as diverse as the nervous system itself. A common origin for nerve symptoms is the peripheral nervous system, which transmits sensory signals from the rest of the body to the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord).... Read more about nerve symptoms causes | <urn:uuid:cf60f312-e80a-4924-b1d4-c21c91133b11> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.localhealth.com/article/nerve-symptoms | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925324 | 541 | 3.359375 | 3 |
On January 20, a state engineer with the Utah Division of Water Rights approved two applications that would allow Blue Castle Holdings to take a total of 53,600 acre-feet of water from the Green River annually for a proposed nuclear power plant. That's more than 17 billion gallons a year, enough for a city of 100,000 households.
The Blue Castle Project would be the first new nuclear power plant to go online in the American West since the late 1980s. So you might think it would be a model of modern water-conservation technologies. But you'd be wrong.
Blue Castle proposes to cool its two-unit plant by circulating river water through a closed-cycle system. In such systems, up to 5 percent of the water is typically lost to evaporation on each pass through a cooling tower, and the other 95 percent is recycled. Once the concentration of dissolved solids in the water reaches an unacceptable level, the dirty water -- dubbed "blowdown" -- is discharged to an onsite evaporation basin and replaced with fresh water piped in from the river.
A closed-cycle system has some advantages over the "once-through" cooling systems still used at many older power plants, which dump hot water directly into nearby rivers, lakes, or oceans -- killing fish and altering local ecosystems. Both types of cooling systems will also kill fish by sucking them into equipment or trapping them against intake screens, but the once-through method is more deadly because it diverts more water than does a closed-cycle system. For example, in New York state, Indian Point's once-through nuclear-generating units, which consume about 2.5 billion gallons of water from the Hudson River daily, kill more than one billion aquatic organisms annually.
To be sure, a closed-cycle system such as that proposed by Blue Castle uses less water than a once-through system -- but it's a consumptive use. None of the water withdrawn from the Green River will ever be returned to the river. That means there will be less water for fish. And less water means hotter water.
Meanwhile, climate change is already raising water temperatures. Global warming is usually considered a problem of air pollution: Power plants, vehicles, and other sources are emitting too many greenhouse gases into the atmosphere; that's why the icebergs are melting and why some polar-bear-loving Prius owners are smug about their rides. But what most people don't realize is that global warming is much more complex and that thermal water pollution is itself a very big problem.
Does it really matter if water gets a few degrees warmer? In the case of the oceans, the answer is yes. Water expands as it heats, and this expansion is the main reason why sea level is rising.
At power plants, too, it's a matter of degrees. The lower the temperature of the water used to condense steam, the more efficiently the cooling system works. That's why nuclear power plants tend to have a higher net output in winter than in summer.
The one-two punch of power production and climate change has already made some rivers so hot during the summer that they can no longer provide adequate cooling at power plants without exceeding legal limits on temperature. During the past two summers, the Tennessee Valley Authority had to reduce power production by 50 percent at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant because the water in the Tennessee River -- where the plant's cooling water is discharged -- was already at 90 degrees. A further complicating factor: At Browns Ferry and many other plants, "uprating" has cranked up the power produced by old reactors. In other words, if climate change and cooling-system impacts weren't already bad enough, now bureaucracy is increasing the temperature allowances of coolant water by a couple of degrees.
The proposed Blue Castle Project will also face water-quality challenges. Kent Jones, the Utah state engineer who approved the water allocation, called it "a significant new diversion from the Green River where efforts are underway to provide habitat for recovery of endangered fish." And regardless of the needs of fish, rivers in the desert have a tendency to dry up now and then. Utah's Department of Natural Resources noted that water-rights approval for Blue Castle "does not guarantee sufficient water will always be available from the river to operate the plant."
Nuclear power is not going to be a panacea. Like every energy sector, nuclear power production must become less thirsty in order to adapt to climate change and increased growth in the 21st century. And, luckily, that goes for the Blue Castle proposal, too. As Michael T. Masnik, water and ecology team leader for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Office of New Reactors wrote after an October 2011 pre-application readiness assessment visit to the Blue Castle Project site: "In light of the arid nature of the site and environs, the scarcity of surface waters, and the consumptive nature of the proposed cooling system, the staff expects that a number of alternative cooling systems will be discussed."
One such alternative might be a system like the one used at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in Arizona, the only nuclear power plant in the world -- so far -- that was not built next to a large body of water. Palo Verde uses treated sewage water from Phoenix, instead of fresh water, to meet its cooling needs. A similar system is proposed for Jordan's Majdal plant.
Blue Castle's proponents say that their project would use a relatively small volume of water compared with the total amount in the Green River or with the amount withdrawn statewide for agricultural irrigation. That's a little like saying, compared with the national debt, Bernie Madoff didn't take that much money. Blue Castle also argues that this water was already approved for use in coal-fired power plants -- plants that were not constructed, but never mind. In any case, none of those arguments really address the question of water quality -- an issue that will only get hotter in the future. | <urn:uuid:3ec4d59d-730d-4e42-abb5-a7bd08a518cb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/dawn-stover/hot-water-the-other-global-warming | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958624 | 1,212 | 3.3125 | 3 |
It's hard not to spend too much time at the dinner table during the holiday season, getting fatter on our way to the poor house. Though we are lectured constantly about eating right, most of us don't. And the reason, it seems, is more a matter of economics than self-indulgence.
Eating right, new research shows, is getting so expensive that millions of Americans can't afford it.
In what is believed to be the first study of its kind, researchers at the University of Washington focused on the cost of eating foods that are rich in nutrients, and low in calories, like fresh vegetables, whole grains, fish and lean meats. That's the stuff we're told we have to eat if we are going to shed a few pounds and remain healthy.
But when the researchers checked prices at numerous stores around the Seattle area, they found that the good, healthy foods had soared in price over a two-year period, jumping by nearly 20 percent compared to a 5 percent increase in the overall food price inflation. And during that same period, high-calorie foods had remained about the same price, and in some cases had actually dropped.
"We were shocked," Adam Drewnowsky, director of the Center for Public Health Nutrition at the University of Washington, said in an interview. Drewnowsky and fellow researcher Pablo Monsivais published their findings in the December issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.
"The nutrient-rich calories, the food we should be eating, are zooming out of sight," Drewnowsky said. "So eating well is really becoming unaffordable for many, even in the middle class."
Even some of the most popular diets are beyond the economic reach of many.
"I don't think people were told when the Atkins or the South Beach diets came out that those diets would really cost them double or triple the amount they were spending on food," he said.
If you can afford either of those diets, he added, you're probably not obese.
Some who understand the importance of weight control would probably like to eat right, but eat cheaper foods instead.
"Sometimes it's the only decision they can make when the rent is due," Drewnowsky said.
The finger of blame has been pointed at many culprits, ranging from agricultural policies and farm subsidies to the rising cost of labor and energy, but Drewnowsky believes one huge factor is quite elemental.
"When it comes to empty calories, it's very difficult to compete with sugar," he said.
In Brazil, for example, sugar "is produced [from sugar cane] at the cost of 30,000 calories for one dollar. Nothing else comes close."
The high cost of eating right is not reflected in the annual report from the U.S. Department of Labor. The government tracks the cost of what it considers to be the typical "food basket," which includes a lot of things with added sugar and added fat and fewer nutrients.
To find out the true cost of eating right, Drewnowsky and Monsivais concentrated on two types of food — those with high calories per gram, like grains and sugars, and those with low calories per gram but high in nutrients, like fish and fresh vegetables.
We're supposed to eat fish two or three times a week, but many consumers could drop most of a paycheck at the fish counter, and that situation is likely to get worse. The resource has become dangerously depleted around the world, and it's common for a nice salmon fillet to net around $20 per pound.
"Who can afford fish three times a week?" Drewnowsky asked. | <urn:uuid:c1b7dd0f-e3e3-4e21-b28d-8b98f3024ecb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://[email protected]/Technology/DiabetesResource/story?id=4021965&page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979933 | 748 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Definition of Training, cross
Training, cross: Doing two or more aerobic activities such as jogging, bicycling, and swimming on a regular basis.Source: MedTerms™ Medical Dictionary
Last Editorial Review: 6/14/2012
Drug Medical Dictionary of Terms by Letter
Medical Dictionary Term:
Find the secrets to longer life. | <urn:uuid:44df2cf5-a2e6-4a21-88e1-1b8262791e61> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rxlist.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=10804 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.801569 | 70 | 2.703125 | 3 |
2002 - Cholera in Democratic Republic of Congo
16 September 2002
Disease Outbreak Reported
As of early September 2002, the Ministry of Health, Democratic Republic of the Congo has reported 2 636 cases of cholera and 67 deaths (case-fatality rate, 2.5%) in Katanga province, since the outbreak began in July 2002. The most affected areas in Katanga province are: Malemba Nkulu, Kabala, Butombe, Songwe, and Twite-Mwanza.
A team from the Ministry of Health and Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) has gone to the affected province to coordinate the response. | <urn:uuid:f986f099-b3df-4dfe-8611-aa672a1a2359> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.who.int/csr/don/2002_09_16/en/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911364 | 141 | 2.625 | 3 |
It may want to keep it quiet, but South Korea is developing a modern, more assertive military, says David Axe.
More than half a century since the end of the Korean War and the beginning of a long period of relative military isolation, South Korea is gradually, and quietly, playing a larger role in world security.
Despite strong US support, South Korea’s rise as a military power is complicated by domestic politics, and by a belligerent North Korea. To avoid provoking foreign and domestic opposition, Seoul has cleverly disguised its newest overseas military operation as a strictly peaceful affair.
Despite a technologically advanced military and a gross domestic product just shy of $1 trillion, making it the world’s 15th wealthiest country, the Republic of Korea has rarely deployed troops outside its borders. Granted, more than 300,000 South Koreans fought in the Vietnam War, and about 5,000 died. But it wasn’t until 1999, when Seoul sent 400 soldiers to boost a UN force trying to stabilize East Timor, that the country of 49 million participated in an overseas military campaign.
South Korean medics and engineers joined the US-led coalitions in Afghanistan in 2001 and in Iraq in 2003. The Afghan mission was curtailed after the Taliban kidnapped a South Korean church group in Afghanistan and murdered 2 of its 23 members. The extremists released the surviving captives when Seoul promised to stick to a planned withdrawal by the end of 2007; the departing South Koreans left behind only a small civilian-run hospital at Bagram Air Field, outside Kabul. The Iraqi mission ended peacefully in 2008. That year, Seoul also sent a warship to patrol Somali waters for pirates.
But it was a second deployment to Afghanistan in 2010 that marked South Korea’s true debut as a military power. In response to US President Barak Obama’s call for a bigger international coalition in Afghanistan, Seoul last year pledged a Provincial Reconstruction Team and a powerful infantry force to accompany the team—a total of around 500 troops.
South Korea also plans to send helicopters to support these ground troops. The aircraft, scheduled to arrive this year, will integrate into the US Army’s 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade based at Bagram, according to brigade commander Colonel Don Galli.
Engineering and reconstruction are core strengths of the Korean military. But the planned Afghan PRT represents a ‘face-saving vehicle’ for Seoul, providing political cover for the combat force, according to Scott Snyder, an analyst with the San Francisco-based Asia Foundation. While South Korea is committed to making a meaningful contribution to the Afghan war, sending fighting troops ‘is somewhat sensitive in the South Korea political context,’ Snyder told The Diplomat magazine. Hence the ‘reconstruction’ rubric.
Photo Credit: Anja JohnsonView as Single Page | <urn:uuid:178d7817-8cba-45f9-a544-23e6154b3c5d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thediplomat.com/2010/04/27/south-koreas-secret-war/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939841 | 578 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Old Fort Depot and Museum
Old Fort, in western McDowell County, was the site of Davidson's Fort, built in 1776 as a defense against the Cherokee and as colonial America's westernmost outpost at the time.
In 1858, the Western North Carolina Railroad opened 84 miles of track from Salisbury to Morganton. After the war, by 1869, the railroad had reached Old Fort, where the mountains presented a challenge. Financial troubles also slowed progress until 1877 when the state owned most of the operation and work resumed. All together it took 11 years and some 500 convicts to build the nine miles of track and blast through rock for seven hand-dug tunnels across the Swannanoa Gap, costing some 120 workers their lives. The 1,800-foot Swannanoa Tunnel, the longest, opened in 1879. It took another year before the railroad reached Asheville.
Prior to the opening of the line through Swannanoa Gap, westbound trains stopped at Henry's Station, about three miles west of Old Fort, where passengers and freight transferred to stagecoach and wagons. The railroad station was built here in 1880.
In the summer, I would take the train to visit my grandparents in Hendersonville. My favorite part was across Swannanoa Gap. Often when the train stopped at the Old Fort Depot, school children would scramble on with bag lunches for a field trip up the mountain. As the train entered each of the seven tunnels, we heard squeals and screams throughout the passenger cars. During winter, long icicles glistened on the tunnel walls.
The last passenger train stopped at Old Fort Depot in 1975. When renovations were completed in 2005, it was re-opened as a Railroad Museum and Visitors Center. Artifacts and exhibits include original tools, signal lights, an original caboose, photographs and information related to the history of Old Fort, the depot and the Southern Railway Company. | <urn:uuid:b8b12afd-4664-46fa-9004-b7b19f255f94> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.carolinacountry.com/index.php/carolina-adventures/item/old-fort-depot-and-museum?category_id=46 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962201 | 398 | 3.140625 | 3 |
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