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Beauty, Plato wrote, is not easy to define, but something that "slips through and evades us". For this reason, many logic-oriented philosophical approaches tend to divorce and even oppose truth and beauty. "The question of truth", wrote | Beauty, Plato wrote, is not easy to define, but something that "slips through and evades us". For this reason, many logic-oriented philosophical approaches tend to divorce and even oppose truth and beauty. "The question of truth", wrote logician Gottlob Frege in one of his most influential works, "would cause us to abandon aesthetic delight for an attitude of scientific investigation."
For some who do not see the very questions of what motivates one to distinguish what it is that attracts our search for meaning it is not lost on me that the push toward experimentation is a validation of sorts to the thought or idea of what can exist in another state(aesthetic delight) can arrive for our discriminative facet of clarification as if demonstrated in some prism of light.
“Nature and Nature’s laws long lie hid in Night: God said ‘Let Newton be,’ and all was light.”Alexander Pope’sAs crazy as Sheldon Glasgow would have us "seen of the character of Newton," it should not be lost that the diversity of opinion coming from such a man, was to gather and understand all he could about who we are as human beings.
'Tis yours a Bacon or a Locke to blame,
A Newton's genius, or a Milton's flame:
But oh! with One, immortal one dispense;
The source of Newton's Light, of Bacon's Sense.
(Dunciad, III, 215-18)
The Alchemy search for understanding was more then the aesthetic delight that would appear so off offhandedly as a sign of the ignorance, was a constant search throughout the times for our humanity, that it was not without a sense of purpose that such persons would come to want to know about what materialization would be solidified in human experience.
Opticks is a book written by English physicist Isaac Newton that was released to the public in 1704. It is about optics and the refraction of light, and is considered one of the great works of science in history.
Opticks was Newton's second major book on physical science. Even if he had not made his better-known discoveries concerning gravity and the invention of the calculus, Opticks would have given him the reputation as one of the greatest scientists of his time.
This work represents a major contribution to science, different from—but in some ways rivaling—the Principia. The Opticks is largely a record of experiments and the deductions made from them, covering a wide range of topics in what was later to be known as physical optics. That is, this work is not a geometric discussion of catoptrics or dioptrics, the traditional subjects of reflection of light by mirrors of different shapes and the exploration of how light is "bent" as it passes from one medium, such as air, into another, such as water or glass. Rather, the Opticks is a study of the nature of light and colour and the various phenomena of diffraction, which Newton called the "inflexion" of light.
In this book Newton sets forth in full his experiments, first reported in 1672, on dispersion, or the separation of light into a spectrum of its component colours. He shows how colours arise from selective absorption, reflection, or transmission of the various component parts of the incident light. His experiments on these subjects and on the problems of diffraction (which he never fully mastered) set the subject of optics on a new level.
The search for the understanding of the "refraction of light" was such an effort to see this aspect developed through our cultural understanding as to see the ultimate source as something th |
By David Midgley - The chocolate cichlid is another of South Americas underrated species. This is a large cichlid which is quite gentle natured, despite its size. This, however, should not suggest that they should be housed | By David Midgley - The chocolate cichlid is another of South Americas underrated species. This is a large cichlid which is quite gentle natured, despite its size. This, however, should not suggest that they should be housed with small fishes such as neon tetras - which they will readily consume.
The tank should be well planted with tough indigestable species, such as java fern and anubias. If possible, plants should be placed such that the tank can only be viewed from one side, this helps to reduce the stress the cichlid feels at being “exposed” to predators. In addition the tank should be furnished with wood, dark subrstrate and floating plants. The dark substrate and floating plant cover help further to calm this nervous cichlid.
As described early there are some reports that this fish will leap out of the water to catch flying insects - as such tight fitting (and adequately thick) tank lids are required.
The species is reasonably sensitive to dissolved metal ions (from pipes) and as such peat filtration may be helpful in chelating some of these free ions. The species is known to fall ill to a variety of “pitting” diseases when metal ion concentrations are too high.
Species: Hypselecara temporalis (Gunther, 1862)
Synoma: Acara crassa, Heros goeldii, H. crassa, Cichlasoma hellabrunni, Cichlasoma temporalis
Common name: Chocolate cichlid
Origin: South America
Localities/Morphs: widespread, Amazon river drainages. Some variation does exist in populations along the length of the Amazon.
Maximum size: 20-30cm
Natural habitat: stagnant, generally in white water 0.5 - 2.0m deep. The species has, however, also b |
The Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation was the executive order given by US President Abraham Lincoln on the 1st of January, 1863, during the American Civil War. It proclaimed that 3.1 million | The Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation was the executive order given by US President Abraham Lincoln on the 1st of January, 1863, during the American Civil War. It proclaimed that 3.1 million of the the U.S.'s 4 million slaves were to eventually be freed as Union Armies advanced, and that 50,000 of them would be freed immediately. During September the year before, Lincoln had announced the forthcoming proclamation, which would formally free all slaves in any Confederate State that did not return to the fold.
Lincoln's decision was controversial, even in the North, since it granted freedom only to slaves over which the Union had no control. Though once southern slaves heard of the Pro |
Salmon Farms Infect Fraser River Sockeye Salmon
by Raincoast Conservation Foundation
Sidney, B.C. - A
new study published yesterday in the journal Public Library of Science ONE by researchers from Raincoast Conservation Foundation, Waters | Salmon Farms Infect Fraser River Sockeye Salmon
by Raincoast Conservation Foundation
Sidney, B.C. - A
new study published yesterday in the journal Public Library of Science ONE by researchers from Raincoast Conservation Foundation, Watershed Watch Salmon Society, and the Universities of Victoria and Simon Fraser provides the first link between salmon farms and elevated levels of sea lice on juvenile Fraser River sockeye salmon.
The article, Sea Louse Infection of Juvenile Sockeye Salmon in Relation to Marine Salmon Farms on Canada's West Coast, genetically identified 30 distinct stocks of infected Fraser sockeye that pass by open net-pen salmon farms in the Strait of Georgia, including the endangered Cultus Lake stock. The study found that parasitism of Fraser sockeye increased significantly after the juvenile fish passed by fish farms. These same species of lice were found in substantial numbers on the salmon farms.
Not only did juvenile Fraser sockeye host higher lice levels in the Georgia Strait after they passed salmon farms, these fish hosted an
order of magnitude more sea lice than Skeena and Nass River sockeye that migrated along the north coast where there are no farms.
"The implications of these infections are not fully clear, but in addition to any direct physical and behavioural impacts on juvenile
sockeye, sea lice may also serve as vectors of disease or indicators of other farm-origin pathogens" said Michael Price, lead author.
he data further showed that the differences in infection level for one species of louse in relation to fish farm exposure could not be
explained by differences in salinity or temperature.
"Given the high intensities of lice observed on some juveniles in this study-up to 28 lice/fish- there's an urgent need to understand
the extent of threat posed by sea lice to juvenile Fraser River sockeye" said Dr. Craig Orr, a co-author of the study.
The study also recorded the highest lice levels on juvenile sockeye near a farmed salmon processing plant in the Georgia Strait,
heightening concern for the full potential impact of the salmon farm industry on wild salmon in this region.
Sea lice from salmon farms are likely another stressor for sockeye already subjected to multiple human impacts. Importantly, however, risks to juvenile sockeye from open net-pen salmon farms can be much more easily mitigated than changes to ocean conditions from climate change and ocean acidification. Options already recommended include removal of farm salmon from the migration routes of juvenile sockeye, and transition of salmon farms to closed-containment facilities. |
Müller-warmuth Surname History
The family history of the Müller-warmuth last name is maintained by the AncientFaces community. Join the community by adding to to our knowldge of the Müller-warmuth:
- Müller | Müller-warmuth Surname History
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- Müller-warmuth family history
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- Müller-warmuth last name meaning & etymology
- Müller-warmuth spelling & pronunciation
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The nationality of Müller-warmuth can be very difficult to determine because countries change over time, leaving the nation of origin indeterminate. The original ethnicity of Müller-warmuth may be difficult to determine as result of whether the family name originated naturally and independently in various locales; e.g. in the case of family names that are based on a profession, |
Think about what you want your country to look like 50 years from now at the 100th anniversary of the March on Washington.
As anniversaries approach, we generally tend to look backward and remember the past. But today, as we | Think about what you want your country to look like 50 years from now at the 100th anniversary of the March on Washington.
As anniversaries approach, we generally tend to look backward and remember the past. But today, as we approach the 50th anniversary of the historic March on Washington, I'd like to look forward and consider the future.
In his famous Letter From A Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. warned America about a phenomenon he called "a tragic misconception of time." He cautioned us to avoid the "strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills." The truth, Dr. King told us, is more complicated. "Time itself is neutral," he explained. "It can be used either destructively or constructively."
With that in mind, as we commemorate the March on Washington, I want to reconsider the way we use our time. Many will use this occasion to speculate what Dr. King would think about the past five decades. This is fitting and appropriate, but I also want to encourage us to apply Dr. King's principles to the next 50 years. To truly honor Dr. King, we must acknowledge that he was never so engaged in commemorating the past as he was in creating the future.
The changes that took place during the civil rights era did not happen by accident. Nor did they occur because people with privilege suddenly and willingly surrendered their privilege. Instead, change took place because people of conscience used their time to create that change. Thus, if we are to follow in their footsteps, it seems we must abandon the fantasy that the world will become more progressive on its own. The future depends not so much on the mere passage of time but on the active engagement of the people.
Think about this. What do you want your country to look like 50 years from now at the 100th anniversary of the March on Washington? Now consider these two different visions of the future.
In one vision of 2063, we're still engaged in the same tired old debates that take place today. President Obama was the first and only Black president and no women have been elected to the White House. Black unemployment continues its persistent path high above white unemployment and the government is unwilling to invest in job training or policies that put people to work and rebuild our infrastructure. Millions of Americans still remain without health care coverage after opponents of Obamacare finally succeeded in |
ORLANDO — After years of investigating poisons they know are in pesticides, state and federal regulators are turning their attention to the unknown: chemicals that lurk in pesticide formulas but are not listed on labels.
More than half the ingredients in pesticides | ORLANDO — After years of investigating poisons they know are in pesticides, state and federal regulators are turning their attention to the unknown: chemicals that lurk in pesticide formulas but are not listed on labels.
More than half the ingredients in pesticides are kept confidential by manufacturers, a practice that worries Florida officials because these chemicals sometimes are more toxic than those identified on the label.
The state and federal governments are starting sweeping programs designed to identify and regulate these unlisted chemicals, called inert ingredients.
These chemicals usually are designed not to kill insects or bacteria but to boost the efficiency of killing agents in pesticides. Manufacturers want to keep these substances unknown so competitors can`t copy their formulas.
Sometimes the chemicals aren`t intentionally added to a pesticide, but are impurities created in the manufacturing process.
They include DDT, banned from use but still found as an impurity in the pesticide dicofol; EDB, banned but found as an impurity in diquat; trichloroethylene, a cancer-causing organic solvent; formaldehyde, another carcinogen; toxic metals such as cadmium; and xylene, which is poisonous to fish.
``If you look at inerts there are some unbelievable things,`` said Al Hire, a spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington. ``It`s amazing.``
Chemical industry representatives say they have removed many of the more toxic inactive contents such as asbestos and benzene. So far the EPA has classified 55 of these ingredients as toxic, and a survey by the National Agricultural Chemical Association showed that most of its members don`t use 29 of the chemicals.
``I think it certainly is responsible of EPA to evaluate any or all chemicals found in our products that they suspect are a hazard to the public and environment,`` said association president Jack Early in Washington. ``But I don`t think it is the magnitude of problem that people have been led to believe.``
State officials complain that federal regulations allow manufacturers not to list inert ingredients even though these chemicals make up 50 to 90 percent of pesticides and can harm harm humans or wildlife. Manufacturers also determine what is an inert ingredient and what is an active ingredient that must be listed. |
- ISHN GLOBAL
- EHS RESEARCH
Emergency response safety and health professionals are concerned, naturally, with quality. Employee safety is given their highest priority. But how can quality be screened?
First, conduct a hazard/risk assessment to | - ISHN GLOBAL
- EHS RESEARCH
Emergency response safety and health professionals are concerned, naturally, with quality. Employee safety is given their highest priority. But how can quality be screened?
First, conduct a hazard/risk assessment to determine your personal protective equipment needs. Next, seek out PPE manufacturers with excellent reputations. Then, confirm that the PPE has been independently certified by an accredited certification organization such as the Safety Equipment Institute (SEI) or Underwriters Laboratories (UL). The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and Standards Council of Canada (SCC) operate programs to accredit product certifiers.
A list of certified products can be found at UL's Web site (www.ul.com) or SEI's Web site (www.seinet.org).
For hazardous materials protective clothing, three standards are used as the basis for certifying the quality of protective clothing and ensembles:
- National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 1991 Standard on Vapor-Protective Ensembles for Hazardous Materials Emergencies (2000 edition)
- NFPA 1992 Standard on Liquid Splash-Protective Ensembles and Clothing for Hazardous Materials Emergencies (2000 edition)
- NFPA 1994 Standard on Protective Ensembles for Chemical/Biological Terrorism Incidents (2001 edition)
NFPA 1991 and 1992 were written in the late 1980s in response to the growing number of hazardous material responders who were using chemical protective clothing from a variety of sources without consistent protection. In 1985, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended that government agencies support the development of protective standards for chemical protection after several first responders were exposed to a hazardous chemical from a leaking railcar, even though the manufacturer recommended the use of their suits for the chemical involved.
As a result, NFPA 1991 and NFPA 1992 were prepared and generally correspond to the Environmental Protection Agency's Level A and B configurations that are common in the hazardous chemical response and remediation industries. The following table shows how the two standards were positioned to provide performance-based, instead of configuration-based definitions of chemical protective clothing provided by the EPA.
Widely adopted internationally, many government agencies, fire departments and corporations reference these NFPA standards in their purchasing specifications.
NFPA standards developmentThe Technical Committee (TC) on Hazardous Materials Protective Clothing and Equipment of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) has worked diligently under the chairmanship of Bryan Heirston, Safety - Battalion Chief, Oklahoma City Fire Department, to develop standards offering performance criteria for emergency chemical protective ensembles and clothing. During the standards development process, the NFPA accepts proposals and comments from the public for the TC to review and, when feasible, incorporate into the performance standards.
The TC volunteer members include a broad range of interests including representation from fire and emergency response personnel, protective clothing (boots, gloves and suits) manufacturers, testing labs, certification organizations and government and military experts. No single interest dominates the standards development process.
The NFPA HazMat Clothing TC has developed information to help users of Protective Ensembles for Hazardous Materials Emergencies understand the NFPA performance standards.
NFPA 1991NFPA 1991 defines an ensemble (similar to EPA's Level A suit) consisting of a suit with attached gloves that totally encapsulates the wearer and his or her breathing apparatus, that may also be worn with an overcover, outer gloves, and outer boots to meet the requirements of the standard. Some products can achieve these requirements without these extra layers. Ensembles must be provided in a minimum of four sizes and must have protective inverted pockets over exhaust valves. Gloves and footwear are subject to minimum length and height requirements, respectively. Performance requirements include:
- Inflation of ensembles to determine integrity against gas penetration and shower testing for demonstrating integrity of clothing against liquid penetration.
- Permeation testing of suit, visor, glove, and footwear materials and seams against a 21-chemical battery to demonstrate resistance against a broad range of industrial chemicals; the chemical battery contains |
How the End of World War II Made Us Fat
The American economy took off following the end of World War II, fattening both our wallets and our waistlines. In this video, Academic Earth examines the post-war boom that busted our seams | How the End of World War II Made Us Fat
The American economy took off following the end of World War II, fattening both our wallets and our waistlines. In this video, Academic Earth examines the post-war boom that busted our seams.
About the Video
American waistlines are expanding – this isn’t news. And really, the cause isn’t revelatory either – people expend fewer calories than they consume – simple math. We’ve been trending this way for the last sixty years, and for very good reason. The post-ware era ushered in suburban living and the techno-age of food. This relatively sedentary life of car-centric neighborhoods, television, and television dinners gave rise to the modern obesity epidemic.1
Following WWII, America saw a suburban construction boom. As men came home, ready to settle down and raise families, they hopped in their Chevrolets and left the overcrowded cities and isolated farming towns for comfortable living within a short commute to work.2 The suburbs were not designed for walking. The active lifestyles of city and farm living were sacrificed for the sprawling cinderblock landscapes of supermarkets and shopping malls.
The advent of processed, pre-packaged food coincided nicely with suburban living. Supermarkets boasted expansive aisles of neatly packaged, easy to prepare, high-calorie foods. Where families once locally sourced their food, production became centralized at large factories. Food was abundant, cheap, and non-perishable welcoming the opportunity to stock-up and indulge.
And here we are, mired in a cultural legacy left by post-war abundance. The question to ask ourselves is – how do we get out of this mess?
1 Cutler, David M., Edward L. Glaeser, and Jesse M. Shapiro. “Why Have Americans Become More Obese?“ Journal of Economic Perspectives 17.3 (2003): 93-118.Chicagobooth.edu. The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Web. 1 May 2013.
2 Galyean, Crystal. “Levittown: The Imperfect Rise of the American Suburbs.“Ushistoryscene.com. US History Scene, 13 Aug. 2012. Web. 01 May 2013.
Today, three out of five Americans are overweight, and one in five is obese—that is, a body mass index over 30. And as obesity rates continue to rise, especially among American children, this health crisis has never felt more urgent.
But it’s important to know our collective fattening didn’t happen overnight.
The adult obesity rate in the U.S. increased by 214 percent between 1950 and 2000, in large part due to the unprecedented economic, technological, and cultural shifts rippling through America in the wake of World War II.1 The war was over, the allies won. We all got fat.
Emerging from a period of patriotic scrimping and sacrificing, the U.S. post-war era became an age of total expansion—there was an economic boom, a baby boom, and a hungry consumer class driving it. It wasn’t much of a shock when the American waistline expanded right along with everything else.
Soon there was a car in nearly every middle-class driveway, drastically reducing our daily amounts of physical activity; labor-saving appliances like washing machines and microwaves turned into middle-class staples; television sets found their way into the nation’s living rooms.
And then there was the food itself. Postwar tech and economic changes meant a whole new kind of diet. WWII left the government with a large quantity of unused ammonium nitrate and poison gases – what became America’s fertilizer and pesticides.3 These chemicals were a pivotal part of creating a huge food surplus and a market for cheap, high-calorie foods—especially anything with corn. Consider the potato chip: in 1945 per capita consumption was at 1.91 pounds, in 1955 it was at 2.56 pounds of chips.
TV shows and the ads swarming around them promoted easy, unhealthy foods like popcorn, pork rinds, and cheese crackers. Soon supermarkets – the suburb’s food hub – stocked their shelves with everything salty, fried or sweet.4
But these ads weren’t simply selling junk food. They were marketing the entire suburban way of life. Stuffed refrigerators and snack-bearing moms with oversized smiles became the symbols of domestic well-being. And once the taste was acquired, it stuck – and the weight stuck too. Overexposed to fast and cheap junk food, obesity became the problem we all know so well. Today the infrastructure and appetites that make us overweight are firmly in place with little to no sign of their origins.5
1 Bird, Beverly. “How Much Have Obesity Rates Risen Since 1950?“ LiveStrong.com. Demand Media, Inc., 26 May 2011. Web. 29 Apr. 2013.
2 “The U.S. Economy: Key Data.“ The Public Perspective Nov.-Dec. 1992: 22-27. The Public Perspective. Roper Center for Public Opinion Research. Web. 29 Apr. 2013.
3 Will, George F. “Corn as a Health Issue.“ The Washington Post. The Washington Post, 08 Mar. 2009. Web. 29 Apr. 2013.
4 Crum, Madeleine. “How World War II Changed The Way Americans Ate.“ The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc., 03 Apr. 2012. Web. 29 Apr. 2013.
5 McKenzie, Richa |
The Lim Bo Seng Memorial at Esplanade Park commemorates a local hero who was tortured to death by the Japanese during World War II. I photograph it as part of the documentation for the AsiaExplorers self-guided walking tours.
| The Lim Bo Seng Memorial at Esplanade Park commemorates a local hero who was tortured to death by the Japanese during World War II. I photograph it as part of the documentation for the AsiaExplorers self-guided walking tours.
Major General Lim Bo Seng was born in Nan-An, in Fuj |
|Stable release||9.04 / June 20, 2013|
|Type||Electronic design automation|
|License||GNU General Public License|
The Electric VLSI Design System is an EDA tool written in the early | |Stable release||9.04 / June 20, 2013|
|Type||Electronic design automation|
|License||GNU General Public License|
The Electric VLSI Design System is an EDA tool written in the early 1980s by Steven M. Rubin. Electric is used to draw schematics and to do integrated circuit layout. It can also handle hardware description languages such as VHDL and Verilog.
Electric is currently part of the GNU project and has been developed in Java and distributed as free and open-source software, subject to the requirements of the GNU General Public License (GPL), version 2 or any later.
Powerful Design Style
Electric has a powerful way of doing integrated circuit (IC) layout. The system considers integrated circuits to be composed of nodes and arcs. Nodes are circuit elements such as transistors and contacts. Arcs connect the nodes. This style of design is quite different from typical IC layout systems, such as Magic and Cadence, which do IC layout by manipulating polygons on different layers of the wafer.
This powerful design style makes it possible for the designer to run Layout Versus Schematic (LVS) on layouts which are not yet Design Rule Check (DRC) clean. This is extremely useful during the design process. It also makes it possible for the design tool to back-annotate wire-lengths from a layout to a schematic even if the layout is not yet DRC clean. Finally, because layouts are stored internally as a graph (rather than "paint"), the LVS check is exceptionally fast, often running in under a second on full-chip designs (such as the recent Marina chip). The ability to run LVS near-instantaneously on large designs has a big impact on ease of design.
It has been observed that people with no previous experience in IC layout are comfortable with Electric's unusual style, but those who have done IC layout on other systems find Electric difficult to use.
One added advantage of the nodes-and-arcs view of a circuit is that it is possible to add layout constraints to the arcs. There are only a small set of these constraints, but with careful placement, the circuit can be programmed to stay properly connected when physical changes are made.
Tools and Technologies
Electric incorporates many synthesis and analysis tools:
- Design rule checking two built-in checkers and two interfaces to industry tools.
- Electrical Rule Checking a Well/Substrate checker and an Antenna rule checker.
- Simulation two built-in simulators and interfaces to over a dozen industry tools (Spice, Verilog, etc.)
- Routing five differ |
mad cow woes
deer, ill elk
death in New Guinea
not panic, is consumers' best response to the mad cow threat. Where did
YOUR lunch come from?
Could mad cow disease
jump the Atlantic, infect the U.S | mad cow woes
deer, ill elk
death in New Guinea
not panic, is consumers' best response to the mad cow threat. Where did
YOUR lunch come from?
Could mad cow disease
jump the Atlantic, infect the U.S. cattle herd, and then infect people?
Not likely, say some experts, but others are more cautious.
The protection rests
on twin pillars: import restrictions and tests of diseased cattle and people
performed at the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center (see
"On Watch..." in the bibliography). The center
examines tissue from some CJD victims, and to date, no sign of the human
disease associated with mad cow disease has appeared.
fresh ground beef contain fresh prions, and cause fresh disease? Federal
regulators say it need not happen here.
The last imports
of British beef occurred in 1989, and only 32 British animals entered
the food chain during the 1980s. By 1990, the United States had prohibited
the entry of live sheep and cattle, and rendered animal protein, from
1997, a year after the mad cow meltdown in the United Kingdom, the Food
and Drug Administration (FDA) banned the feeding of ruminant offal to
ruminants. Since then, sparked by the recognition that aberrant prions
spread more easily than expected, federal regulators have banned imports
of beef and byproducts from all of Europe and, just recently, Brazil,
which imported British cows in the 1980s.
Even a scare about BSE would spell disaster for the beef industry. (Want
The Why Files guide to mad cow lingo?) Skeptics point to these reasons for worrying about the
concentrations of disease prions cannot be detected in the laboratory,
so it's not possible to say that a certain food is not contaminated.
Furthermore, the accepted test, made by Prionics
and used on heavily infected animal parts, may miss some cases, according
to a Jan. 11 Reuters
have a long incubation period, so disease can crop up years after exposure.
That means control measures take years to work, and errors take years
prion resists standard techniques for inactivating pathogens, including
heat, radiation, sterilization with formaldehyde.
fish and fowl are both eating rendered animal protein. And while there
is no proof these animals can get a TSE from mad cows, TSEs have produced
plenty of surprises to date.
replacers fed to calves and pigs contain dried
blood products taken from cows.
may be flouted. A Food and Drug Administration report in January, 2001,
found that "hundreds of feed manufacturers and rendering companies were
not complying with regulations intended to ensure the safety of domestically
produced food," the New York Times reported (see "Stringent Steps..."
in the bibliography).
British renderers (who dispose of diseased cattle) continued to ship
meat and bone meal around the world, and European producers used the
cheap meal at least until November, 2000. Maura Ricketts, a World Health
Organization official, told the New York Times that "The murky movement
of live cattle and rendered animals around the world" had allowed the
cattle disease to spread around the world.
by-products are still being imported under loopholes in federal regulations.
Permitted beef products include glandular material from cattle used
for health supplements, and milk, blood, fat, gelatin, tallow, bone
mineral extracts, collagen, semen. The materials are used for vaccines,
medical products and other purposes. The
FDA recently found that some manufacturers were ignoring guidelines
intended to ensure that raw materials for vaccines came from BSE-free
locations. The FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research says
the chances of vaccine transmission are "remote," but still worth evaluation.
Still, with no
sign that mad cow is present to date, and fairly stiff regulations in
place, the beef industry says the biggest fear is fear itself. Rick McCarty,
an issues manager with the National
Cattlemen's Beef Association, says, "What alarms the industry is misunderstanding
of the disease in this country, seeing everything that's going on in Europe,
and thinking the same thing could happen here."
But prion researchers
have learned never to say never.
Big news. Cannibalism
could be dangerous. Even ritual cannibalism. |
The Teachers’ Lounge: Stories
An original translation of new Hebrew fiction from Bernstein Prize-winner Dror Burstein, author of ‘Kin’
The Philosophy Teacher
We had a Philosophy teacher who said he was a student of Epictetus. | The Teachers’ Lounge: Stories
An original translation of new Hebrew fiction from Bernstein Prize-winner Dror Burstein, author of ‘Kin’
The Philosophy Teacher
We had a Philosophy teacher who said he was a student of Epictetus. We were ignorant and didn’t know who Epictetus was or when he lived. Years later, when I checked and realized that he died around two thousand years ago, I recalled the Philosophy teacher and his lessons. Our school administration did not look kindly upon lessons in Greek philosophy in a state-religious institution and therefore the Philosophy teacher was forced to claim that Epictetus was among the sages of the Mishnah. He said, there’s Antigonus, there’s Aristobolus, thus there’s Epictetus as well. This wasn’t strange at all. They could sell us anything, and sell they did. I recall, for instance, a Pythagorean Theorem that does not exist, which the Math teacher taught us, in the days just before he was stricken with forgetting. His Pythagorean Theorem was valid not just for right angle triangles but for all triangles. The errors we made following this geometrical theorem will forever accompany us as a mark of disgrace. When the time is ripe, I will recount his mathematical innovations. For now I’ll mention just a few claims and proofs. He claimed, for instance, that the original Pythagorean Theorem, the one dealing with right angle triangles, also applies to the Bible. In what sense—he didn’t specify. He tended to be late and excused this with explanations like: I was stuck at home because I was calculating the height of the Tower of Babel using Trigonometry. I found cosine based on the data in the Bible. He also invented types of numbers. Like the almost-prime numbers. An almost-prime number, I remember, is a number divisible by 1, itself, and one additional number. For instance, 4. Almost prime. 9 as well. And 25. He resented that 16 is not an almost prime. If it were, there would have been a beautiful series. At night he labored over his calculations, in an effort to find the mistakes. He had a shoe box he would schlep everywhere. He would come into class, open it a crack, and remove a slip of paper. And whatever was written on the slip he’d teach.
Only the Math teacher is not my interest here but rather the Philosophy teacher. The Philosophy teacher was hostile toward the Math teacher due to the freedom the latter assumed for himself with regards to the wonders of the Greek mathematicians. He would sometimes come into Geometry lessons and sit, visibly full of wrath, and listen, and calculate. The high point was when the Math teacher argued that a straight line is a triangle since the s |
This eco-friendly structure, entitled the Solar Roofpod, was created by a group of a hundred students from City College New York and submitted to the prestigious Solar Decathlon in Washington DC. Within these stylish clean lines there is a flurry of energy. | This eco-friendly structure, entitled the Solar Roofpod, was created by a group of a hundred students from City College New York and submitted to the prestigious Solar Decathlon in Washington DC. Within these stylish clean lines there is a flurry of energy. The structure is not only able to produce enough energy via the sun and wind to sustain itself, but also can generate enough power to provide electricity to the building is perched on.
Rooftops are the only space left in the densely packed streets of NYC and are most underused urban spaces. With space at a premium in urban areas, the students of CUNY felt it was time to tap into this sky-high resource. There is over 1.6 billion feet of roof space available in NYC alone, which if populated with structures like the Solar Roofpod, the city would generate enough sustainable energy to power the city's |
- Enter a word for the dictionary definition.
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:
Xylophagides \Xy`lo*phag"i*des\, prop. n. pl. | - Enter a word for the dictionary definition.
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:
Xylophagides \Xy`lo*phag"i*des\, prop. n. pl. [See Xylophagous.] (Zool.) A tribe or family of dipterous flies whose larvae live in decayed wood. Some of the tropical species are very large. [1913 Webster] |
Siddarameshwara Jayanti is the birth anniversary of the 12th century saint poet from Karnataka. In 2014, Siddarameshwara Jayanti will be observed from January 14 to 16. Shri Shiv | Siddarameshwara Jayanti is the birth anniversary of the 12th century saint poet from Karnataka. In 2014, Siddarameshwara Jayanti will be observed from January 14 to 16. Shri Shivayogi Siddarameshwara was a great contributor to Lingayat Teaching and he is considered as one of the five important teachers of |
Good news for partially paralyzed pooches: scientists can now nearly reverse that affliction by injecting dogs with cells grown from the lining of their nose. The Cambridge University team behind the feat says they are cautiously optimistic that the technique could eventually have a role | Good news for partially paralyzed pooches: scientists can now nearly reverse that affliction by injecting dogs with cells grown from the lining of their nose. The Cambridge University team behind the feat says they are cautiously optimistic that the technique could eventually have a role in treating human patients, the BBC reports. This is the first time the method has been proven to work on “real life” injuries rather than on lab animals.
All of the dogs used in the study had suffered spinal injuries which prevented them from using their back legs. The researchers took cells from the animals’ olfactory system—the only part of the body where nerve fibers continue to grow in adults. The cells in question, olfactory ensheathing cells, enable humans, our canine cousins and other mammals to smell and convey these signals to the brain.
For this study, some of the dogs’ olfactory ensheathing cells were removed from the lining of their nose, then grown for several weeks in a lab. The researchers injected 23 dogs with their self-grown cellular transplant at the site of their injury. Another 11 dogs receiving a neutral fluid instead, as a placebo.
Most of the dogs that received the cellular transplant showed considerable improvement, the BBC writes, and many were able to walk on a treadmill with the support of a harness after the procedure. The placebo dogs, on the other hand, didn’t regain any use of their back legs.
The researchers told the BBC:
“We’re confident that the technique might be able to restore at least a small amount of movement in human patients with spinal cord injuries but that’s a long way from saying they might be able to regain all lost function.”
Though the technique is still no cure-all, for the study participants, it meant a lot. Jasper, a ten-year-old dachshund who participated in the trial, is enjoying his new mobility. His owner described her pet’s enthusiasm to the BBC: ”Before the treatment we used to have to wheel Jasper round on a trolley because his back legs were useless. Now he whizzes around the house and garden and is able to keep up with the other dogs. It’s wonderful.”
More from Smithsonian.com: |
Every teacher is involved in the complex business of fostering high aspirations in our learners. Finding a practical way to do this through the learning that we design and how we deliver it can be incredibly challenging. It is true to say that to do so would | Every teacher is involved in the complex business of fostering high aspirations in our learners. Finding a practical way to do this through the learning that we design and how we deliver it can be incredibly challenging. It is true to say that to do so would constitute far more than a Marginal Learning Gain as if we are able to find a way to establish a highly aspirational culture in our lessons, then this has the potential to pervade whole-school culture. As always, striving for an aspirational culture, the Marginal Learning Gains can be found nestled deep inside what is meant by ‘aspiration’.
What is really worth focusing on is ‘expectations’. It’s a mindset thing. The MLG here is characterised by the mindset of the teacher and how this is communicated through the design and delivery of learning experiences. It comes down to a (tiny) change in our language and, as a result, the language of our learners.
Here’s where the concept of ‘expectation-language’ first originated as MLG was developing…(taken from http://www.fullonlearning.com)
“How ‘hopeful’ was Dave Brailsford on the morning of the first leg of The Tour De France or on the morning of the first cycling competitions in London 2012? Did he hope that Bradley Wiggins would win or did he expect it? Did he hope that Team GB Cycling would reach their targets on the medal tables or did he expect it? More to the point, did he and his team communicate an expectation of success to the riders, or simply pat them on the back as they cruised to the start line and then say that they hoped they would win?
This got me thinking about the relationship between thinking and speaking. The language in our heads and the language we use to communicate. “
Often, when planning lessons together, teachers state that they hope that the students will get to the (x) task. When reflecting on lessons, teachers often say that they had hoped that the group would have achieved (x).
Some enquiry questions may help here:
- How do we establish a culture of aspirational learning through the language of learning in which we think and speak?
- What practical strategies can I implement to establish a culture of aspirational learning?
- How can we deliberately develop learner aspirations through our own mindset and language?
- How will we know when it’s working?
- What language do I think in?
The final question here is the one to hone in on as a first MLG opportunity.
When you are thinking about the lessons you are going to teach, rather than thinking in terms of ‘hope‘ the MLG comes when you start thinking in terms of what you expect. In thinking and talking in highly aspirational ways and trying really hard to avoid using the word ‘hope’ and with it, ‘might’ and ‘should’, I am in no ways advocating ‘hopeless‘ teaching or, indeed, a strict, no-compromise rigid and inflexible all-or-nothing succeed-or-fail approach to teaching and learning. But the Marginal Learning Gain in employing an expectant mindset means that our lesson design is influenced by some real ambition and aspiration for our students and start to sound like this:
What do I hope students will be able to do as a result of this lesson?
What do I expect students to be able to do as a result of the lesson?
When we ask students to set their own goals ahead of the lesson, we can, using the same language, require them to frame their thinking and goal-setting in the language of expectations so that students agree / write / feedback:
- “I expect to complete…”
- “I expect to achieve….”
- “I expect to be able to…”
When we assess whether students have achieved their goals and ask them to reflect on their own progress, we can ask them to use the same language as a prefix to stating what they actually achieved:
I expected to have completed / achieved / to be able to…and I did / didn’t quite/ didn’t…because…
Another expectant-language MLG by changing “I can” statements into “I will” statements. These can be used either as a replacement:
As a result of today’s lesson, I can….
As a result of today’s lesson, I will….
Or as an addition: |
Speaking at an international conference of geochemists, chemist Steven Benner of the Westheimer Institute of Science and Technology argued Thursday that early Mars provided a more hospitable environment for life to spring up than early Earth.
"The evidence seems to be | Speaking at an international conference of geochemists, chemist Steven Benner of the Westheimer Institute of Science and Technology argued Thursday that early Mars provided a more hospitable environment for life to spring up than early Earth.
"The evidence seems to be building that we are actually Martians; that life started on Mars and came to Earth on a rock," he said in a statement.
Scientists generally agree that earliest life took the form of an RNA molecule that could create other RNA molecules based on the same template.
The trouble is, no one has been able to satisfactorily explain how the original "living" bit of RNA formed.
As anyone who has cooked down sugar knows, simply adding energy to organic molecules and then leaving them alone doesn't get you life -- it usually gets you a sticky mixture that Benner describes as "better suited for paving roads than supporting Darwinian evolution." |
Description: Prairie Shrews can be distinguished from the other two Kansas shrews by their long tail (more than 30 per cent of the total length). Like Elliott's Short-tailed Shrew, this species has 32 red-t | Description: Prairie Shrews can be distinguished from the other two Kansas shrews by their long tail (more than 30 per cent of the total length). Like Elliott's Short-tailed Shrew, this species has 32 red-tipped teeth; but it is smaller than the Short-tailed Shrew, and distinctly bicolored, cinnamon-brown on the back with greyish underparts. Although it is about the same color and o |
Costa Rica’s golden toad has gone extinct because its natural habitat has dried up, sending a warning that freshwater species and habitats around the world are in serious trouble, according to the World Wildlife Fund’s new 1999 Living Planet Report. | Costa Rica’s golden toad has gone extinct because its natural habitat has dried up, sending a warning that freshwater species and habitats around the world are in serious trouble, according to the World Wildlife Fund’s new 1999 Living Planet Report. It found that climate change, pollution, and heavy fishing threaten frogs, alligators, flamingos, and river dolphins, among other species. The report also determined that since 1970, the world has lost 10 percent of its natural forests, equivalent to 150,000 square kilometers a year, |
Individual differences |
Methods | Statistics | Clinical | Educational | Industrial | Professional items | World psychology |
Reading disabilities RE conditionS in which a sufferer displays difficulty reading resulting primarily from neurological factors. There are different types of reading disabilities that include Word-Level | Individual differences |
Methods | Statistics | Clinical | Educational | Industrial | Professional items | World psychology |
Reading disabilities RE conditionS in which a sufferer displays difficulty reading resulting primarily from neurological factors. There are different types of reading disabilities that include Word-Level Recoginiton Disability (RLRD), also known as Dyslexia, Fluency, and Reading Comprehension.
There is currently no consensus on how to define all learning disabilities, including reading disability. Definitions have previously been developed by committee in a political context in response to the advocacy of parent groups and the educational system. These definitions have a focus on an unexpected difficulty in reading, with unexpected referring to low achievement in the absence of difficulties in home life, economic disadvantage, interruptions in school, sensorimotor problems, severe emotional disturbance, or developmental delay. The unexpected component has been included in many definitions, including the DSM-IV, and school districts have interpreted this as a discrepancy between measured academic achievement and measured intellect. Research based definitions, however, have veered away from a discrepancy between intellect and achievement, and instead have stressed low achievement coupled with poor response to intervention.
Types of Reading Disorders
The most well-known type of reading disorder is the Word Level Reading Recognition Disability (WLRD). This is also known as dyslexia, a neurologically based condition which is characterized by difficulty understanding and applying the alphabetic principle.
Some people with reading difficulties are able to use phonetic strategies to decode words but have problems with reading comprehension; that is, they struggle to understand what they have read.
Another form of reading difficulty is the lack of reading fluency or reading automaticity. People with this condition are likely to read slowly and to stumble over the words. For them, reading continues to require great effort and often becomes something that they avoid.
A fourth group is emerging, people with preventable reading disorders. The number of students with reading disorders can be considerably reduced by good quality early intervention. This group may not necessarily have an underlying neurological condition but without the intervention can later not be distinguished readily from those who do Reading disabilities are a form of learning disorder that make it difficult for people to read. They include alexia and dyslexia. A reading disability is a condition in which a sufferer displays difficulty reading resulting primarily from neurological factors.
Selected list of reading disabilities
References & Bibliography
- ↑ Fletcher, J.M, Lyon, G. R, Fuchs, L.S, & Barnes, M.A (2007) Learning Disabilities: From Identification to Intervention. The Guildford Press, New York
|This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia (view authors).| |
Better Students Ask More Questions.
Lincoln's Gettysburg AddressIdentify two rhetorical devices Lincoln used in his...
1 Answer | add yours
Elementary School Teacher
Two rhetorical devices Lincoln used in his famous Gettysburg Address are | Better Students Ask More Questions.
Lincoln's Gettysburg AddressIdentify two rhetorical devices Lincoln used in his...
1 Answer | add yours
Elementary School Teacher
Two rhetorical devices Lincoln used in his famous Gettysburg Address are repetition and hypozeuxis.
Repetition: A rhetorical device in which a word or word pattern is used several times to create emphasis. This particular device is one of the simplest rhetorical devices to use and easy to find within a piece.
Example:... of the people, by the people, for the people...
Hypozeuxis: A rhetorical device that uses many parallel clauses (or sentences), all starting with the same subject, noun, or pronoun. In fact, within the clause or sentence the wording is almost identical, there being only a slight rewording from the first one to the last.
Example:... we cannot dedicate--we cannot consecrate--we cannot hallow...
The Gettysburg Address has some |
Lesson 4: A Class Census
Strand: Managing Data
Skills and Objectives
- Recognize that data represent specific
pieces of information about real-world activities
- Understand the mapping of areas or cities
through such concepts as location | Lesson 4: A Class Census
Strand: Managing Data
Skills and Objectives
- Recognize that data represent specific
pieces of information about real-world activities
- Understand the mapping of areas or cities
through such concepts as location and direction
Before starting, print and copy the student worksheets and hang the wall map. Then download the It's About Us Census Fact Sheet to aid classroom discussion.
Time Required: 40 minutes in class; approximately one hour outside of class for conducting the census.
- Explain that you are going to take a class census. Direct students' attention to the wall map. Review the compass rose and directions. Ask: Which state to the north of our state would you most like to visit? (Based on your state, you might need to select south, east, or west.)
- Create a tally chart. Make certain students understand the terms data, row, and column.
- Explain: A tally chart is one way to show data. There are other ways. One example is a bar graph. Let’s show the results from our chart in a bar graph.
- Create a bar graph like the one above. Discuss features of the bar graph, emphasizing that it shows the same data shown in the tally chart.
- Separate students into small teams. Explain that students will now take a school-wide census.
- Distribute Your Own Census Student Worksheet 4a and read the instructions with students. Answer any questions and review the Tips for Taking Your Census section.
- Provide monitored time for census taking (in the cafeteria at lunchtime, during homeroom periods, etc.).
- Instruct students to show the results of their census in a bar graph. Ask: What did you find most interesting about this activity? If you were the principal of your school, what changes might you recommend based on the results? Why?
- Use Student Assessment Student Worksheet 4b to find out what the 2010 Census form will look like.
- Review the form as a class and answer the questions to assess understanding of this unit.
Using the Student Worksheets
Student Worksheet 4b: 1) Census counts are used to determine how many congressional representatives your state receives; 2) Government and businesses use census information to make decisions about your local community; 3) Yes. Answers to second part of the question may vary; 4) Answers will vary. |
If you think the glasses you have to wear at every 3D movie today are a pain, remember to be grateful that we're not all stuck with the early 20th century's version.
Back in the 1910s, many | If you think the glasses you have to wear at every 3D movie today are a pain, remember to be grateful that we're not all stuck with the early 20th century's version.
Back in the 1910s, many people were experimenting with next-big-thing technologies for motion pictures. Much of the promise was in developing synchronized sound, a technology that wouldn't come into common use until the end of the 1920s. But some prognosticators at the dawn of the Roaring Twenties imagined that 3D must be the wave of tomorrow. Albeit, 3D with a decidedly Victorian flair.
Yesterday's 3D glasses of the future had to be held up to your face by a cumbersome telescoping arm (something akin to opera glasses) and used stereoscopic tech that had become a popular amusement utilized in still photos in the 19th century. Feature movies — still a relatively new undertaking in 1919 — were destined for the delights of 3D, according to Electrical Experimenter magazine.
From the April 1919 issue:
The accompanying illustration shows a possible later-day development of the present moving picture, which, altho it has been greatly perfected in the past few years, leaves considerable detail yet to be worked out. No matter how clear or flickerless a motion picture may be when viewed on the screen as projected by modern moving picture machines, it would still be one hundred per cent more perfect to our vision, if it could be thrown on the screen in duplicate then undoubtedly it will be necessary for the theater proprietor to provide or make readily accessible, by means of slot machines arranged on the back of the theater chairs, etc., a special small size stereoscope similar in appearance to a pair of opera glasses, thru which the duplicate moving images on the screen could be properly viewed and focust. These would of course be fitted with proper lenses for the purpose.
It might seem off-hand that this latter refinement would be unnecessary, but it is really one of the great marvels of science that causes us to see the images stand out, as it were, from the picture, when we look thru a stereoscope at the photographs or other views mounted in duplicate. The stereoscope operates on a very simple and yet peculiar physiological arrangement, based on the inter-action of the optical powers of the two eyes when they are focust on two properly made and similar images.
The magazine assured readers that this new "movie" invention (yes, they put the word in quotes) was just over the horizon, ready to invade a theater near you. And while we thankfully don't need to hold our glasses to our heads any longer, their prediction (for better or worse) was absolutely correct. |
The idea that our Universe could be a small component within a vast assemblage of other
universes that together make up a "multiverse"
has been treated by physicists as intriguing, but so far it has remained in the
realm | The idea that our Universe could be a small component within a vast assemblage of other
universes that together make up a "multiverse"
has been treated by physicists as intriguing, but so far it has remained in the
realm of theory without any experimental tests that could
That might change now when a
team of scientists has found evidence that other universes, as
well as our own actually lie within "bubbles" of space and time.
"It would be a pretty amazing thing to show that we have actually made physical contact in another universe," George Efstathiou University of Cambridge said.
The theory that invokes these bubble universes is a theory formally called "eternal inflation". According to this theory, such universes are popping
into and out of
existence and colliding all the time, with the space between them rapidly expanding, meaning that they are forever out of reach of one another.
Of course, due to the difficulties proving the theory many scientists have remain cautious.
With so many scientists having their hands in these tests and theories, the end game could be plenty of
groundbreaking results with universal implications for years to come.
I'd heard about this'multiverse' for years and years, and I never took it seriously because I thought it's not testable," Dr Hiranya Peiris, a cosmologist at University College London.
"I was just amazed by the idea that you can test for all these other universes out there - it's just mind-blowing."
Dr. Peiris and her colleagues have now worked out that when these universes are created adjacent to our own, they may leave a characteristic pattern
in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) - the faint glow left from our Universe's formation.
Dr Peiris' team first proposed these disc-shaped signatures in the CMB in a paper published
in Physical Review Letters, and the
new work fleshes out the idea, putting numbers to how many bubble
universes we may be able to see now.
Crucially, they used a computer program that looked for these discs automatically - reducing the chance that one of the collaborators would see the
expected shape in the data when it was not in fact there.
The team has located possible "bubble universe" evidence in WMAP data
The programs' results revealed that particular areas that look likely to be signatures of the bubble universes, where the bubbles were 10 times more likely
than the standard theory to explain the variations that the team saw in the CMB.
Despite these interesting results, Dr. Peiris says we should not jump to conclusions. More scientific work needs to be done before researchers can be confident they have found evidence of the existence of the "multiverse".
Planck Telescope. Credit: ESA
"Finding just four patches is not necessarily going to give you a good probability on the full sky.
That's not statistically strong enough to either rule it out or to say that there is a collision," Dr. Peiris explained in an interview with BBC.
Data from the Planck telescope that is especially designed to study CMB with far greater sensitivity, will put the multiverse idea on a
firmer footing, or refute it. However, the data from Planck cannot be discussed publicly before January 2013.
George Efstathiou, director of the Kavli Institute of Cosmology at the University of Cambridge, called the work "the first serious attempt to search
for something like this from the methodology point of view it's interesting".
He noted that the theories that invoked the multiverse were fraught with problems, because they dealt in so many intangible or immeasurable quantities.
"My own personal view is that it will need new physics to solve this problem," he told BBC News.
"But just because there are profound theory difficulties doesn't mean one shouldn't take the picture seriously."
Although there could be many universes next to our own, we will never see them direclty.
Dr Peiris said that even if these bubble universes were confirmed, we could never learn anything further about them.
"It would be wonderful to be able to go outside our bubble, but it's not going to be possible," she explained.
"They're born close together - that's when the collision happens - and this same inflation happens between the bubbles.
They're being hurled apart and space-time is expanding faster than light between them."
But Professor Efstathiou said the search was inherently worth it. He explained: "It would be a pretty amazing thing to show
that we have actually made physical contact in another universe. It's a long shot, but it would be very profound for physics."
The |
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I love the food, fellowship, and the chance to reflect on the abundance of blessings in my life. I’m filled with a spirit of gratitude.
I experienced this same feeling of thankfulness after thinking about recent | Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I love the food, fellowship, and the chance to reflect on the abundance of blessings in my life. I’m filled with a spirit of gratitude.
I experienced this same feeling of thankfulness after thinking about recent scientific research from the Catholic University of America in Washington DC. These scientists have gained new insight into the structure and function of the DNA packaging machine of the T4 virus.1 Their discoveries have uncovered a cornucopia of new evidence for intelligent design.
The Infection Process
Viruses are infectious agents that consist of a protein capsule that houses genetic material (either DNA or RNA). Multiple copies of identical protein subunits interact to form the capsid. Some viruses also possess a protein tail that extends from the base of the viral capsid, which also consists of several protein subunits.
Viruses infect cells by binding to the surface of a target cell and injecting their own genetic material into the cell. When present, the viral tail binds the virus to the target cell’s surface and injects the viral genetic material into the host cell.
Once inside the cell, the viral genetic material uses the host cell’s enzymatic machinery to make copies of itself and its proteins, which then assemble to form multiple copies of the virus. With time, the newly produced virus particles cause the host cell to rupture, releasing the nascent viruses to repeat the infectious cycle.
The T4 virus infects the bacterium, E. coli. The embedded video clip depicts the binding of the T4 virus to the surface of E. coli followed by the injection of its genetic material (DNA) into the host cell.
The T4 Virus’ DNA Packaging Motor
Researchers have taken long-term interest in the T4 virus, particularly because of the way the DNA double helix is packed extremely tightly within the viral head. As the DNA presses against the capsid walls, it generates high pressure (about ten times that of a bottle of champagne). This high pressure serves a functional purpose by driving the viral DNA into the host cell during the injection process.
The tight packing is achieved by a molecular machine called the DNA packaging motor. This motor binds to the opening of the empty capsid and translocates DNA into the capsid. The breakdown of ATP (a high-energy compound that liberates energy when key bonds within its structure are broken) powers this operation. When DNA is completely translocated, the packaging motor dissociates from the capsid.
As the video below shows, DNA is driven into the capsid when parts of the motor alternate between two distinct structural states. This motion, powered by ATP breakdown, generates an electrostatic force that pushes the highly negatively charged DNA molecule into the capsid.
Virologists had assumed the DNA packaging motor would bind only to empty capsids. The latest work, however, indicates that the motor will bind to full capsids as well, jamming even more DNA into the viral head.
This behavior is advantageous for the virus. Occasionally, the DNA packaging motor will prematurely debind from the capsid before DNA translocation has been fully achieved. When this happens, the resulting viral p |
Nuts and Bolts of Transaction Processing
Transaction management is one of the most crucial requirements for enterprise application development. Most of the large enterprise applications in the domains of finance, banking and electronic commerce rely on transaction processing for delivering their business functionality. | Nuts and Bolts of Transaction Processing
Transaction management is one of the most crucial requirements for enterprise application development. Most of the large enterprise applications in the domains of finance, banking and electronic commerce rely on transaction processing for delivering their business functionality. Given the complexity of today's business requirements, transaction processing occupies one of the most complex segments of enterprise level distributed applications to build, deploy and maintain.
This article walks the reader through the following:
- What is a transaction? What is ACID?
- What are the issues in building transactional applications? Why is transaction management middleware important?
- What is the architecture of a typical transaction processing application? What are the responsibilities of various components of this architecture?
- What are the concepts involved with transaction management systems?
- What are the standards and technologies in the transaction management domain?
This article is not specific to any product, and so attempts to be generic while describing various issues and concepts. This article does not aim to compare various transaction processing technologies/standards, and offers a study only.
What is a Transaction?
Enterprise applications often require concurrent access to distributed data shared amongst multiple components, to perform operations on data. Such applications should maintain integrity of data (as defined by the business rules of the application) under the following circumstances:
- distributed access to a single resource of data, and
- access to distributed resources from a single application component.
In such cases, it may be required that a group of operations on (distributed) resources be treated as one unit of work. In a unit of work, all the participating operations should either succeed or fail and recover together. This problem is more complicated when
- a unit of work is implemented across a group of distributed components operating on data from multiple resources, and/or
- the participating operations are executed sequentially or in parallel threads requiring coordination and/or synchronization.
In either case, it is required that success or failure of a unit of work be maintained by the application. In case of a failure, all the resources should bring back the state of the data to the previous state (i.e., the state prior to the commencement of the unit of work).
The concept of a transaction, and a transaction manager (or a transaction processing service) simplifies construction of such enterprise level distributed applications while maintaining integrity of data in a unit of work.
A transaction is a unit of work that has the following properties:
- ATOMICITY: A transaction should be done or undone completely and unambiguously. In the event of a failure of any operation, effects of all operations that make up the transaction should be undone, and data should be rolled back to its previous state.
- CONSISTENCY: A transaction should preserve all the invariant properties (such as integrity constraints) defined on the data. On completion of a successful transaction, the data should be in a consistent state. In other words, a transaction should transform the system from one consistent state to another consistent state. For example, in the case of relational databases, a consistent transaction should preserve all the integrity constraints defined on the data.
- ISOLATION: Each transaction should appear to execute independently of other transactions that may be executing concurrently in the same environment. The effect of executing a set of transactions serially should be the same as that of running them concurrently. This requires two things:
- During the course of a transaction, intermediate (possibly inconsistent) state of the data should not be exposed to all other transactions.
- Two concurrent transactions should not be able to operate on the same data. Database management systems usually implement this feature using locking.
- DURABILITY: The effects of a completed transaction should always be persistent.
These properties, called as ACID properties, guarantee that a transaction is never incomplete, the data is never inconsistent, concurrent transactions are independent, and the effects of a transaction are persistent. For a brief description of what can go wrong in distributed transaction processing, see Fault Tolerance and Recovery in Transaction Processing Systems.
Issues in Building Transactional Applications
To elicit the issues involved in building transactional applications, consider an order capture and order process application with the architecture shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Order Capture and Order Process Application
This application consists of two client components implementing the order capture and order process operations respectively. These two operations constitute a unit of work or transaction. The order capture and order process components access and operate on four databases for products, orders, inventory and shipping information respectively. In this figure, while the dotted arrows indicate read-only data access, the continuous arrows are transactional operations modifying data. The following are the transactional operations in this application:
- create order,
- update inventory,
- create shipping record, and
- update order status.
While implementing these operations as a single transaction, the following issues should be addressed:
- The application should keep track of all transactional operations and the databases operated upon. The application should therefore define a context for every transaction to include the above four operations.
- Since the order capture an |
The National Conservation Wall Map tells the story of the changing face of land conservation in the United States and the continuing threats to the nation's open space. Side one: “Natural States of America," highlights the ever-growing role that land trusts are playing | The National Conservation Wall Map tells the story of the changing face of land conservation in the United States and the continuing threats to the nation's open space. Side one: “Natural States of America," highlights the ever-growing role that land trusts are playing in private land conservation across the U.S. It features descriptions of the major ecological divisions of the U.S., with a stunning photographic “transect" of the nation's diverse ecosystems. Inset maps highlight imperiled species hotspots, vertebrate species richness, dollar investments in open space, and land trust activity across the country. Side two: “Open Space at Risk," highlights pressures facing open space preservation from development pressure to oil and gas development to loss of agricultural lands. Inset maps show projected residential development in 2030, areas most vulnerable to climate change, seve |
Due to eddy currents, high temperatures often occur in structural parts adjacent to conductors carrying large currents. This paper deals with this problem and specifically with the minimum safe height and orientation of steel beams in a reinforced concrete ceiling above a three-phase transformer | Due to eddy currents, high temperatures often occur in structural parts adjacent to conductors carrying large currents. This paper deals with this problem and specifically with the minimum safe height and orientation of steel beams in a reinforced concrete ceiling above a three-phase transformer delta closure.
The power losses in the steel members due to induced eddy currents are calculated, from which the temperature increases are determined,
properly accounting for convection and radiation effects. The methods presented are substantiated by experimental data and applied to a practical installation.
Ryff, Peter F., "Induced Heating In Steel-Induced Heating In Steel-Beam Reinforced Ceilings" (1980). Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications and Research. Paper 3. |
The Russian Influence on American Sport
"The Soviet sport experience impacted the American sport experience in five specific ways," remarked Robert Edelman, Professor of History, University of California-San Diego, at a Kennan Institute seminar held on 12 December | The Russian Influence on American Sport
"The Soviet sport experience impacted the American sport experience in five specific ways," remarked Robert Edelman, Professor of History, University of California-San Diego, at a Kennan Institute seminar held on 12 December 2002. Edelman, joined by panelists Craig Masback, the current CEO of the U.S. Track and Field Association, and Ken Dryden, President of the Toronto Maple Leafs, began the discussion by noting the Russian contribution to western sport. Masback and Dryden provided insight about the Russian influence from an athlete's perspective, both having participated in international competition against the U.S.S.R.
Edelman categorized the Soviet and Russian contribution to American sport into several areas: the introduction and development of women's sports, the development of sports science, the professionalization and politicalization of sports, and finally, the use of the sport system as a "Potemkin village" facade to camouflage deeper economic and political problems. Edelman explained that the visibility of Soviet women's participation in sports had two purposes, "the first was to demonstrate gender equality in the Soviet Union, and the second was to ‘win' the Olympics, which required winning the most medals." In order to meet the challenge posed by Soviets, opportunities for American women increased, including the establishment of Title IX, which led to the formation of women's sports programs. Edelman argued that the Soviets had a profound influence on the development of sports science, in both the laboratory and at the coaching level. He characterized the success of Russian coaches as one of the greatest achievements of Soviet sports.
Edelman noted that "the introduction of the Soviet ‘state-professional' athlete to the Olympics had a profound impact on the Olympic movement," and has continued to evolve to the present. Edelman explained that Soviets viewed sports as an opportunity to show both foreign and domestic audiences the power and success of Soviet communism. According to Edelman, Americans were generally impressed by this version, perhaps more so than other international audiences who were more familiar with the Soviets' ongoing struggles in international soccer. Edelman contended that the Soviets used their sport system as an idyllic "Potemkin village," to mask the overall weaknesses of the Soviet system, especially those of the economy.
Masback, a former member of the International Olympic Committee, discussed the Russian influence on Olympic sports. According to Masback, the Soviets shaped the Olympics in three primary areas: the use of sport as ideology; a systematic approach to identifying and developing talent; and finally, the use of drugs in sports. He explained that the old Soviet adage "a medal is a medal" and their use of the overall medal count to claim superiority are now fundamental elements of the U.S. Olympic Committee guidelines for the development of U.S. sports today. Each year, the U.S. Track and Field Association must predict how many medals U.S. athletes will win in each event in order to receive funding from the U.S. Olympic Committee.
Masback concluded that, though the Soviet system was never as successful as it seemed, it has triumphed in a number of ways. He stated that the Soviet Union "succeeded in achieving its ideological aims through sports," and an indication of influence is that "we have all adopted their practices now and are aspiring to do what they achieved decades ago."
Dryden concluded the panel by discussing his experience as a direct participant in competitions against the Soviets. He explained that, while we now know more about the economic realities that confronted the Soviet system during the 1970s, during the Cold War "people lived what they imagined to be the realities and were hugely impacted by what they imagined the situation to be." Dryden noted that the Russian professionalization of amateur sports, especially in sports such as hockey, had a profound impact. Dryden explained that amateur hockey was historically club versus club, town versus town, or country versus country, but that "when it got to be way of life versus way of life, then the stakes started to rise, and amateur sports became state-professional sports, with the biggest stage being the Olympics."
Dryden discussed his experience as a goalie on the Canadian national hockey team during the 1972 "Summit Series" against the Soviet national team. He noted that perhaps the greatest Russian influence on professional sports was their ability to turn their weaknesses and limited resources into advantages. In the case of hockey, Russians could not afford to buy new sticks or have state-of-the-art skates. Therefore, they invented a new style of play, relying on quick passes and different skating techniques to compensate for their constraints. Dryden stated that the Russians were also instrumental in introducing off-season training, which increased the conditioning and skills of the players. These evolutionary changes surprised the Canadians and other members of the international hockey world in 1972, and soon became recognized as reasonable alternatives to the norm. |
In this tour, students will hone their visual observation and critical thinking skills while engaging in writing activities. Skilled docents invite close looking through Visual Thinking Strategies and facilitate genre or persuasive writing through creative prompts. Docents will use the European galleries as | In this tour, students will hone their visual observation and critical thinking skills while engaging in writing activities. Skilled docents invite close looking through Visual Thinking Strategies and facilitate genre or persuasive writing through creative prompts. Docents will use the European galleries as the backdrop to this exciting experience. Teachers may indicate specific curricular needs or focus areas on the tour registration page.
Grades 3–5 will engage in an exposi |
Revealed: lost Jews of Calabria
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As in Spain 500 years ago, southern Italy’s thriving Jewish community was almost completely destroyed by forced mass conversions and emigration.
Although many people lost track of | Revealed: lost Jews of Calabria
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As in Spain 500 years ago, southern Italy’s thriving Jewish community was almost completely destroyed by forced mass conversions and emigration.
Although many people lost track of their Jewish past over time, Jewish traditions and customs were passed on to new generations who were often not aware where they had come from.
Now these traditions are helping with the identification of scores of ‘Anusim’ — Italian Marranos — and allowing some to be brought back to Judaism.
Many Anusim learning about their roots under the guidance of US-born Reform Rabbi Barbara Aiello at Ner Tamid del Sud, the shul she founded in Serrastretta, Calabria — her ancestral home — a few years ago.
“Several people approached me and said they had Stars of David in their homes — Reform Rabbi Barbara Aiello”
Rabbi Aiello said that when she first started asking local people if they had Jewish roots, she was met with denial.
“I was asking the wrong question,” she explained. “When I moved from ‘do you think your family was Jewish?’ to ‘tell me your family traditions’, then the treasure trove opened before my eyes.
“When I began using the Star of David on the gates of the synagogue, several people approached me and told me they had a similar sign in their homes — often carved into the tiles on the floor. Other families had low chairs for mourning, while others covered mirrors and paintings in white during the time of mourning.”
At her Centre for the Study of Jewry in Calabria and Sicily, Rabbi Aiello is working with local historians to unravel Calabria’s rich Jewish past.
However, she is not alone in her quest to bring southern Italy’s Anusim back into the fold. Italy’s Orthodox Jewish establishment is following a similar path, said Gadi Piperno, head of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities’ (UICJ) outreach efforts to Anusim descendants.
Last year, the UICJ helped organise a seminar aimed at Anusim in Syracuse, Sicily, together with the town’s Orthodox Rabbi, Stefano Di Mauro.
However, a UICJ spokesman last month told an Italian newspaper: “The only Jewish community in southern Italy is that of Naples.”
“Historically, that is true,” said Mr Piperno, sidestepping the issue of the Syracuse community. There are, he explains, many practising Jews south of Naples, although not in established communities. He also stressed that UICJ welcomes conversions, if done according to Italy’s Orthodox rules.
Rabbi Aiello claims that 40 per cent of Calabria’s population are of Jewish descent but, even if the figure is 15 per cent as many scholars believe, it would still be a large number. The battle for the Anusim has barely begun. |
Blueberries are delicious and incredibly healthy fruits, but unfortunately they also tend to be expensive. If your family enjoys blueberries, growing them in your garden can help to stretch your food budget. The bushes are very particular about soil conditions, making them | Blueberries are delicious and incredibly healthy fruits, but unfortunately they also tend to be expensive. If your family enjoys blueberries, growing them in your garden can help to stretch your food budget. The bushes are very particular about soil conditions, making them difficult to grow in some areas. It is also a challenge to grow blueberries if you are cramped for space. It is possible, however, to grow them in almost any situation by planting the bushes in containers. Dwarf varieties are the best choice, as most of the larger bushes will not grow in pots.
Select a planting container that is 2 feet wide and 2 feet deep. It should have several drainage holes in the bottom to prevent over-watering. Place the container its permanent location before planting the blueberry bush, as it will be difficult to move once filled.
Fill the container halfway with two parts potting soil and one part peat moss. Gently squeeze the sides of the blueberry bush's growing container to loosen the root ball enough that it slides out easily. Loosen any compacted roots with your fingers.
Place the plant into the container with the roots 4 inches below the rim. Finish filling the pot with the growing mixture, taking care not to cover the roots more deeply than they were covered in the original growing container.
Add a 1-inch layer of mulch over the top of the soil. Water until the soil feels moist, but not wet.
Water the blueberry bush anytime the soil looks dry. You will likely have to add moisture every day during hot weather.
Feed once each month with rhododendron fertilizer, beginning in spring. Take a break from fertilizing in July, then feed the plant again in August. Stop feeding from September until spring.
Wrap the container in a blanket in late fall to protect the roots from the cold.
Prune the blueberry bush beginning in its third growing season. In early spring clip off the oldest branches and remove any spindly, unhealthy looking foliage. Remove one-third of the remaining branches to promote new growth. |
Difference Between Internet and Ethernet
Internet vs Ethernet
We all know the Internet. Since you are reading this, then you are on the Internet and using it. Another similar, but totally alien to some, is the term Ethernet. The Internet and | Difference Between Internet and Ethernet
Internet vs Ethernet
We all know the Internet. Since you are reading this, then you are on the Internet and using it. Another similar, but totally alien to some, is the term Ethernet. The Internet and Ethernet are two totally different things, although they are often found together. By definition, Ethernet is a term that is used to identify a group of technologies that allow for computers to be interconnected in order to transmit data from one to the other. On the other hand, the Internet is the name used to refer to the global interconnection of networks and computers that allow those who are connected to quickly share massive amounts of information.
Since the computers that are in the Internet are interconnected, they must use a standard for interconnection. This is where Ethernet comes in as it and its compatible standards are the underlying technologies that allow the Internet to work as it is doing so.
The term Ethernet is also used to refer to a network of computers. There are therefore thousands of Ethernets all over the world. In comparison, there is only one Internet as its size means that it is not feasible to have duplicates. Ethernets are also managed by a few system administrators, which can also be just one person. The system administrator has full control of the network. With the Internet, it is too big to be under one group. Although there are agencies that handle certain aspects of the Internet, they do not have full control over it.
Another key issue with networks is security. Ethernets are relatively safe as access to the network is rather limited; restrictions are also in place to prevent unauthorized access to the network. When connected to the Internet though, you should take extra precautions as you may be exposing yourself to security risks. Just about anyone can gain access to the Internet and launch attacks or release malware.
1. Ethernet is a collective term for technologies that allow for the interconnection of computers while the Internet is the name used to refer to the global web of interconnected computers
2. Ethernet and its compatible standard make the Internet possible
3. You can have multiple Ethernet set-ups but there is only one Internet
4. Ethernets are usually under the control of a few people while the Internet is not
5. Using Ethernets is more safe than using the Internet
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Worrying is hard not to do. If you worry, as many of us do, then you are probably modeling this behavior to your children. A colleague of mine has a high level of anxiety. When I mentioned it might be beneficial for | Worrying is hard not to do. If you worry, as many of us do, then you are probably modeling this behavior to your children. A colleague of mine has a high level of anxiety. When I mentioned it might be beneficial for him examine his reaction to everyday circumstances, he said he didn’t think it mattered and it wasn’t hurting him any. A few weeks later, he spent a long weekend with his mother and suddenly saw his anxiety in the light of hers. During this visit he not only understood why he might be anxious, but he also realized that maybe his behaviors were impacting him more than he realized.
What causes us to worry? Fear. Fear is a natural reaction to what we perceive the future might bring. More times than not, our very active imagination (or as some say, Monkey Mind, Gremlin, or Committee on the Brain) will paint some very dreadful pictures about what could happen. Once we begin this line of thinking, it’s hard to see the situation in a different light. We find ourselves creating bad story line after bad story line. Mark Twain is attributed with saying: “I am an old man, and I’ve lived through many trials and tribulations, most of which never really happened.”
Does your child tend to over worry? Maybe your child becomes excessively irritated or talks about the bad things that could go wrong. If your child is a worrier, you probably know the identifying behaviors. If you are unsure, then start asking questions when he or she is dealing with potentially stressful situations. This will help you understand more of the child’s thought processes and if assistance is needed to tame Monkey Mind thinking. Knowing that most people are dealing with Gremlins on a regular basis lets you know that your child will probably benefit from learning more about how to tame that beast. It’s not the easiest thing to do, but there are ways to become aware and then learn how to respond more positively. If you also struggle with this, then maybe the tips will be helpful for you as well.
1. To move towards making change, you must first be aware of what you are doing and identify when your Monkey Mind is rampant. The best way to do this is to make a concerted effort to examine your behavior for one or two days. Actively pay attention to your thoughts. How often are you thinking worrying thoughts? What are you saying to yourse |
3D-Printed Lithium-Ion Battery Is the Size of a Pinhead
Harvard University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and visiting researchers from South Korea have demonstrated the ability to 3D print a pin | 3D-Printed Lithium-Ion Battery Is the Size of a Pinhead
Harvard University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and visiting researchers from South Korea have demonstrated the ability to 3D print a pinhead-sized battery. These interlaced and stacked electrodes were printed layer by layer to create the working anode and cathode. (Source: Jennifer A. Lewis/Harvard University)
1. battery power in mAh ratings is directly proportional to the physical size of the cell. 2. The future applications are going to be toward much smaller, lower power devices. The second point is validated by the fact that MEDICA Dusseldorf as identified low power design as the medical device market driver. So if the design is low power, then even a battery wil less ampere hour rating can be used.
Jim, that's a brilliant comparison. I'd still like to know exactly what process/materials they've invented and how it differs from others already in existence. The lead author, Jennifer Lewis, was quoted in an MIT Technology Review article here http://www.technologyreview.com/news/516561/a-battery-and-a-bionic-ear-a-hint-of-3-d-printings-promise/ saying that her team's method could print 2D and 3D electronics, including antennas, which sounds like the printed 3D electronic circuits Optomec is doing as we covered here http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1392&doc_id=265097 although of course they're not made with thin-film. She also says the process is extrusion. Another similarity with Optomec is that in this same MIT article, Lewis talks about the potential for integrated electronics.
Ann-You know what the article's image reminded me of, were MEMS devices, etched from silicon. The 3D printing might be just the disruptive technology that the MEMS industry needed, as the silicone-etching process is so cost prohibitive.
Remember that battery power in mAh ratings is directly proportional to the physical size of the cell. While this is a breakthrough for 3D printing, there is a long way to go before it could power a pace-maker – if ever. I think the future applications are going to be toward much smaller, lower power devices.
Charles - your 800 uM estimate seems about right, from the scale in the image. It looks like 800 or maybe 1,000.
But I have a difficult time envisioning uM's, or microns. In order to wrap my head around that tiny number I had to convert it to a unit I am much more familiar with, being either millimeters or thousands of an inch, which I understand better in my head.
That image is ~ 1,000 microns --- or, about 1.0mm --- or, about.040".
When I see 1mm [.040"] now I'm clearly seeing a more tangible size -- about the plastic wall thickness of a common molded housing.
Still unbelievably small for a battery; but not microscopic. – (Just helps me to visualize it better.)
vimalkumarp --My thoughts exactly. I know the technology is somewhat distant but when ready, I can see a device such as this powering a pace maker or maybe a pump implant delivering medication to a diabetic. This is the type of life-saving R&D worth the time and money. Also, the probability of powering sensors needing somewhat low power would seem to be a suitable candidate for this 3D device. Great post Elizabeth. Very informative.
Lonegity is also another important criteria in the batteries used for implantable medical devices. There is an increase in number and types of implanatable devices and power ratings of these are different understandably. Like rating for a cochlear implant battery may be different for ICD requirement and same is true with longevity. |
The Lhasa Apso is a Tibetan breed that is related to the Tibetan Terrier and the Tibetan Spaniel. This breed was bred as a luxury item that was treasured by the upper classed. Today this breed still maintains its position | The Lhasa Apso is a Tibetan breed that is related to the Tibetan Terrier and the Tibetan Spaniel. This breed was bred as a luxury item that was treasured by the upper classed. Today this breed still maintains its position as a treasured lap dog and family member.
The Lhasa Apso is a small dog that stands between 10 and 11 inches tall and weighs between 13 and 15 pounds. They have a long, fluffy coat that comes in shades of sand, dark grizzle, smoke, white, gold, honey, black particolor, and brown. This cute little dog has a sweet disposition and they make a loyal companion.
History and Origin of the Lhasa Apso
The Lhasa Apso originated in Tibet, and were originally only bred by holy men and nobles. The breed originated hundreds of years ago in the isolated regions of the Himalayan Mountains.
It is known in its home country as the “bark lion sentinel dog,” the Lhasa Apso was used to guard Tibetan palaces and temples. Thought to bring good luck, this breed was considered to be sacred. There is an ancient belief that when its master died the master’s soul entered the Lhasa Apso’s body.
In the early 1900s, a few of the breed were brought by military men returning from the Indian subcontinent to England, where the breed was referred to as “Lhasa Terriers”. Lhasa Apsos are used to working with larger dogs and may relate to them more than smaller dogs.
Lhasa Apso Appearance and Abilities
The Lhasa Apso is a small but hardy and vigorous breed with a beautiful cloak of hair that parts down their back from head to tail. Their body length is longer than their height.
Its long coat comes in many colors and patterns and should be heavy, straight, and hard, not woolly or silky, and it should be very dense. All colors are equally acceptable with or without dark tips on the ears and beard.
They are highly intelligent, with keen instinct and acute hearing.
Lhasa Apso Temperament and Tendencies
They are wary and suspicious of strangers. Their temperament is unique and they are joyful and mischievous, dignified and aloof. They are great companion dogs with friendly, assertive, manners. They can be very obedient to their masters.
It is one of the strongest-minded and strongest-willed of all small breeds. However, this breed responds to motivational training. Positive reinforcement is the best way to make them follow commands. Praises are great motivation for the breed.
They are highly expressive of their love |
During "the Anarchy'"of the war between Stephen and Matilda over the throne of England, David I of Scotland had taken advantage of English weakness to seize the lands of Northumbria, directly south of the Scottish border. Stephen was forced | During "the Anarchy'"of the war between Stephen and Matilda over the throne of England, David I of Scotland had taken advantage of English weakness to seize the lands of Northumbria, directly south of the Scottish border. Stephen was forced to recognise Northumbria as Scottish territory. However, only three years after his accession, the new young English king, Henry II, launched a campaign to take back the region, and succeeded in reclaiming it from the young Malcolm IV.
Editors. "Northumbria regained by Henry II for England". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 31 July 2012
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics |
Britannica Web Sites
Articles from Britannica encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.
- mass - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
In physics, mass refers to the amount of matter in an object. | Britannica Web Sites
Articles from Britannica encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.
- mass - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
In physics, mass refers to the amount of matter in an object. The standard unit of measurement for mass is the kilogram. Although the terms mass and weight are often used interchangeably, in science the terms have quite different meanings. The mass of an object remains constant, but its weight varies from place to place according to the strength of gravity. Thus, as a satellite moves away from Earth’s g |
It is widely recognized that authentic materials such as advertisements are beneficial to language learners. In addition to stimulating students’ interest and motivation, advertising in the target language exposes students to different styles of expression and offers a window into another culture. This article proposes | It is widely recognized that authentic materials such as advertisements are beneficial to language learners. In addition to stimulating students’ interest and motivation, advertising in the target language exposes students to different styles of expression and offers a window into another culture. This article proposes a more comprehensive approach to integrating commercial advertisements into the foreign language classroom through content-based learning. In an effort to develop its international business curriculum, California State University, San Bernardino has added Introduction to French Advertising to its already strong business course options in French. This article describes the course in detail, including topics of discussion, collaborative activities for the classroom, and the use of interactive Web technologies to build critical reflection skills needed for lifelong learning.
"Using Advertising to Expl |
(PRWEB UK) 22 February 2013
Add to this the fact that obesity related illness costs the NHS £5.1 billion per year and the scale of the problem starts to become apparent.
The report does not blame at any one | (PRWEB UK) 22 February 2013
Add to this the fact that obesity related illness costs the NHS £5.1 billion per year and the scale of the problem starts to become apparent.
The report does not blame at any one individual or body. Instead it says that we all have a responsibility to tackle the problem urgently through collective action.
The report describes the problem as “the greatest public health crisis facing the UK.” One of the consequences is heart disease and the report states that people are dying needlessly from avoidable diseases.
High blood pressure (Hypertension), a major cause of heart disease, affecting an estimated 30% of the population. That’s a staggering 16,000,000 people in the UK alone. Over 90% of which is primary hypertension, which has no known medical cause. However, we do know that being overweight is a significant factor in primary high blood pressure.
Paul Howard, co-founder of ‘Hypnotension’ says, “Although the we deal with all of the lifestyle factors that affect blood pressure, weight is often a major factor in reducing blood pressure. In the main, our Hypnotension practitioners have to tackle weight control for most clients.”
“The advantage of the Hypnotension approach is that it can deal with the lifestyle and emotional factors which contribute to high blood pressure, which makes it easier for people to take back control and stay motivated so the lifestyle changes stick.”
His colleague and co-founder, Rob Woodgate, adds, “Everyone with primary hypertension can do something to help themselves reduce high blood pressure naturally, whether it’s losing a few pounds, reducing their salt intake, making time for relaxation or adding some more exercise - such as walking.”
Research confirms that changes in lifestyle can have a big impact on high blood pressure. A study in 2004 showed within 12 weeks of making lifestyle changes, more than 60% of those with high blood pressure met their blood pressure goals, without the use of medication.
The Hypnotension programme is an interesting, simple and natural approach to lower blood pressure that works alongside conventional medical treatment to offer hypertension suffers a chance to take control of the lifestyle factors affecting their blood pressure
The Hypnotension programme |
The article connected to the image is pretty good, too.
Triple transistor: Single graphene transistors like this one can be made to operate in three modes and perform functions that usually require multiple transistors in a circuit.
Credit: Alexander B | The article connected to the image is pretty good, too.
Triple transistor: Single graphene transistors like this one can be made to operate in three modes and perform functions that usually require multiple transistors in a circuit.
Credit: Alexander Balandin
Also from the link:
Researchers have already made blisteringly fast graphene transistors. Now they’ve used graphene to make a transistor that can be switched between three different modes of operation, which in conventional circuits must be performed by three separate transistors. These configurable transistors could lead to more compact chips for sending and receiving wireless signals.
Chips that use fewer transistors while maintaining all the same functions could be less expensive, use less energy, and free up room inside portable electronics like smart phones, where space is tight. The new graphene transistor is an analog device, of the type that’s used for wireless communications in Bluetooth headsets and radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags. |
Addiction is characterized by the repeated, compulsive seeking or use of a substance despite harmful consequences. Addiction is often accompanied by adverse physical and psychological dependence on the substance. Nicotine is the addictive drug in tobacco.
The 1982 Surgeon | Addiction is characterized by the repeated, compulsive seeking or use of a substance despite harmful consequences. Addiction is often accompanied by adverse physical and psychological dependence on the substance. Nicotine is the addictive drug in tobacco.
The 1982 Surgeon General's Report stated that "Cigarette smoking is the major single cause of cancer mortality in the United States." This statement is as true today as it was in 1982. Because cigarette smoking and tobacco use is an acquired behavior, one that the individual chooses to do, smoking is the most preventable cause of premature death in our society.
About 87% of lung cancer deaths are caused by smoking. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among both men and women, and is one of the most difficult cancers to treat. It is very hard to detect when it is in the earliest, most treatable stage. Fortunately, lung cancer is largely a preventable disease. Groups that promote nonsmoking as part of their religion, such as Mormons and Seventh-day Adventists, have much lower rates of lung cancer and other smoking-related cancers.
But cancers account for only about half of the deaths related to smoking. Smoking is also a major cause of heart disease, bronchitis, emphysema, and stroke, and contributes to the severity of pneumonia.
It isn't easy giving up something that is so much a part of what you do every day?
[Only registered and activated users can see links. ] |
The idea of Bookmarking is very simple and everyone has used it at some point. Standard bookmarking is simply a method of storing a link in your browsers bookmarks or favorites folder for you to visit later on. Sometimes you also supply a little description | The idea of Bookmarking is very simple and everyone has used it at some point. Standard bookmarking is simply a method of storing a link in your browsers bookmarks or favorites folder for you to visit later on. Sometimes you also supply a little description.
Social Bookmarking is simply taking the existing bookmark function used in browsers, and making it sharable with other people, or “Social”. You’re still doing exactly the same thing: storing the URL of a site, and sometimes supplying a small description.. but now you’re sharing it with a community of other people. To organize all the bookmarks, you and other users can tag or label bookmarks. This means that other people can search for that particular label or tag to find your bookmark along with other related results. Furthermore, you and other users can rate bookmarks using either a simple “Good” & “Bad” system, or a 1 to 5 gold stars system, or something similar. These fundamental rules mean that Social Bookmarking sites develop and evolve into huge repositories of links where the junk is lost and only the best survive but only ever for a short period of time. To understand why Social Bookmarking is so popular and where it came from, we have to take a look back at the history of the web.
Since the dawn of the internet people have always been trying to find something, trying to find a website to sell them tickets to a game, book a restaurant for tomorrow night, find statistical data on the African Swallow or whatever they need or are interested in. In the very early years, people would find websites by typing in the URL or web address alone, and there were no reference points and very little organization or reference points which made it difficult to find what you wanted.
Soon, directories showed up. Directories were simply repositories of web addresses, usually with a short description about the site, and usually filed under various categories. While these did their job and worked well, so |
equites (ĕkˈwĭtēz) [key] [Lat., = horsemen], the original cavalry of the Roman army, chosen, according to legend, by Romulus from the three ancient Roman tribes; | equites (ĕkˈwĭtēz) [key] [Lat., = horsemen], the original cavalry of the Roman army, chosen, according to legend, by Romulus from the three ancient Roman tribes; the equites were selected from the senatorial class on the basis of wealth. During the late republic they numbered 1,800, but during the empire their number more than doubled. A law passed by Caius Sempronius Gracchus in 123 B.C. transferred judicial functions from the senate to the body of equites, who, though later deprived of these powers by Sulla, attained much influence in the state. In the 1st cent. B.C. the equites were a distinct class allowed to engage in business and they allied themselves |
The news story suggests lots of interesting topics for discussion and research.
In groups discuss the differences. This isn't about right or wrong. Your choice is as good as ours as long as you can explain and defend it.
Now have a go at | The news story suggests lots of interesting topics for discussion and research.
In groups discuss the differences. This isn't about right or wrong. Your choice is as good as ours as long as you can explain and defend it.
Now have a go at some of the topics - ours or yours.
|It includes both an interactive and a printable version of the water cycle and the concept of a water table.|
Liquid water flows on Earth all the time. Do some research to investigate the water cycle on Earth. In your groups prepare and deliver a short presentation on it.
If the whole idea of a water cycle is new to you, you could start with Learn about the water cycle from Pond World.
UCAR has a nice explanation of what it's all about, divided into beginner, intermediate and advanced. Start with the beginner story then move on to the others.
Take a look at the flash interactive on the hydrologic cycle (just a fancy name for the water cycle) at Teachers' Domain. Notice the different steps in the cycle.
You might like to use the animation from NASA and put a soundtrack on it explaining what's happening at each stage.
You can find more at the Met office "The water cycle is the process by which water travels from the Earth's surface to the atosphere and then back to the ground again. It is a constant process with the same water going through the cycle over and over again."
Finally here are some fun facts about water.
Now let's build on the last activity. In your groups you're going to learn about the water cycle on Mars, if there is one, and compare it with the water cycle here on Earth.
The big difference between the two planets is that Earth is wet - especially the west of Scotland, which is where I'm writing this now.
It's pouring with rain outside my window. The frogs in my small garden pond are loving it. But I'm not so keen. I have a leak in my roof and I'm catching the water in a bucket. So every few seconds there's a splash as the next drip falls. Not loud but worrying.
I wouldn't have this problem on Mars because there seems to be no running water on the surface of Mars today (again look at the beginner, intermediate and advanced versions and take what you can from them).
Take a look at the two theories scientists have for what happened to water on Mars
One of these is a water cycle. Draw a simple diagram for this one.
Make a list of all the things in this cycle that are the same as the water cycle on Earth and another list of the things that are different.
Take a look at these and try to answer this question: What is the main reason for these differences?
Take a look at what it was like on Earth during the ice-age, using the Creswell Crags website. Explore it a little. Try to answer this question: Could you have survived during the ice-age? What makes you think so, or think not?
Now take a look at this activity from the Scottish Earth Science Forum. Show it to your teacher. Build a timeline of the ice-age on Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh.
"The sea, a deep blue in the distance, is glittering with reflected sun. A breeze wafts over you carrying the scents of the forest. Underfoot it is mossy and grassy. Small flowering shrubs nestle in crannies, and heathers and feathery-headed plants shimmer gently in the breeze. As you walk about you sink into beds of crowberry, squashing its blue-black berries underfoot. There are lush mixed forests everywhere."
Some wonderful images of Mars have been taken by the HiRISE camera (It stands for high resolution imaging science experiment.)
Some of these are in 3-D so to get the full effect you need 3-D glasses. You can buy these cheaply. But a nice project is to make your own in class. Here's how.
You may have used Google Earth in your geography classes - or just to look at your own house. Well the HiRISE team has got together with Google to produce Google Mars. Here's how you can explore Mars from your own computer.
Finally take a look at the images of Promethei terra, where these latest discoveries have been made.
Petal, pancake and splosh. Sounds like a variety act or a firm of solicitors, doesn't it? Actually these are names given to different types of crater on Mars. Find out ab |
FEMA:Flood Website here
New Hampshire Dept. of Safety, Homeland Security and Emergency Management Flood related information here
Latest Maine Snowpack Information here
See Also the NWS Northeast River Forcast Center here
Flooding is a coast to | FEMA:Flood Website here
New Hampshire Dept. of Safety, Homeland Security and Emergency Management Flood related information here
Latest Maine Snowpack Information here
See Also the NWS Northeast River Forcast Center here
Flooding is a coast to coast threat to the United States and its territories in all months of the year. National Flood Safety Awareness Week is intended to highlight some of the many ways floods can occur, the hazards associated with floods, and what you can do to save life and property. Details are found here.
From the FEMA:Flood Website
Floods are one of the most common hazards in the United States. Flood effects can be local, impacting a neighborhood or community, or very large, affecting entire river basins and multiple states.
However, all floods are not alike. Some floods develop slowly, sometimes over a period of days. But flash floods can develop quickly, sometimes in just a few minutes and without any visible signs of rain. Flash floods often have a dangerous wall of roaring water that carries rocks, mud, and other debris and can sweep away most things in its path. Overland flooding occurs outside a defined river or stream, such as when a levee is breached, but still can be destructive. Flooding can also occur when a dam breaks, producing effects similar to flash floods.
Be aware of flood hazards no matter where you live, but especially if you live in a low-lying area, near water or downstream from a dam. Even very small streams, gullies, creeks, culverts, dry streambeds, or low-lying ground that appear harmless in dry weather can flood. Every state is at risk from this hazard.
If a flood is likely in your area, you should:
- Listen to the radio or television for information.
- Be aware that flash flooding can occur. If there is any possibility of a flash flood, move immediately to higher ground. Do not wait for instructions to move.
- Be aware of streams, drainage channels, canyons, and other areas known to flood suddenly. Flash floods can occur in these areas with or without such typical warnings as rain clouds or heavy rain.
If you must prepare to evacuate, you should do the following:
- Secure your home. If you have time, bring in outdoor furniture. Move essential items to an upper floor.
- Turn off utilities at the main switches or valves if instructed to do so. Disconnect electrical appliances. Do not touch electrical equipment if you are wet or standing in water.
If you have to leave your home, remember these evacuation tips:
- Do not walk through moving water. Six inches of moving water can make you fall. If you have to walk in water, walk where the water is not moving. Use a stick to check the firmness of the ground in front of you.
- Do not drive into flooded areas. If floodwaters rise around your car, abandon the car and move to higher ground if you can do so safely. You and the vehicle can be quickly swept away.
Driving Flood Facts
The following are important points to remember when driving in flood conditions:
- Six inches of water will reach the bottom of most passenger cars causing loss of control and possible stalling.
- A foot of water will float many vehicles.
- Two feet of rushing water can carry away most vehicles including sport utility vehicles (SUV’s) and pick-ups.
From the New Hampshire Dept. of Safety, Homeland Security and Emergency Management web page.
Natural disasters have historically not occurred as frequently in New Hampshire as in other parts of the world, but the state has had its share. Since 2005 it has experienced a destructive series of events, including floods, a major tornado and the most serious ice storm in its history.
During Fiscal Year 2009, which began on July 1, 2008, and ended on June 30, 2009, New Hampshire received four presidential disaster declarations including all 10 counties.
The most common hazard in New Hampshire is flooding. Every year some part of the state experiences flash flooding, main stem river flooding, coastal flooding or a combination of the three.
The most recent series of floods began in October 2005 with a flood that primarily affected the southwest corner of the state and devastated the town of Alstead. The flood killed seven people. It was followed by floods in May 2006 and April 2007 and a series of floods during the late summer and early fall of 2008.
These floods all had one thing in common – continuous heavy rain caused by two or more weather systems that stalled over the state. Because of the state’s rough topography, its many small rivers and streams can quickly overflow their banks during heavy, continuous rain. There is no place for the excess water to go except onto roads and fields and into populated areas.
Historically, the state’s two largest floods occurred in 1936 and 1938. The 1936 flood was associated with snow melt and heavy precipitation. The 1938 flooding was caused by the Great New England Hurricane of 1938. Those floods prompted the construction of a series of flood control dams, built in the 1950s and ‘60s. They continue to be operated by the US Army Corps of Engineers.
The threat of flooding is most common in the spring from a combination of snow melt and rain. But floods may strike the state at an |
Confusing Texts, Emails Could Suggest More Than Meets the Eye
Garbled texts and email messages can indicate more than careless communication or poor spelling on the sender’s part. They could be warning signs of possible strokes and other brain disorders | Confusing Texts, Emails Could Suggest More Than Meets the Eye
Garbled texts and email messages can indicate more than careless communication or poor spelling on the sender’s part. They could be warning signs of possible strokes and other brain disorders, according to a UT Southwestern vascular neurologist.
Unclear text messages — a phenomenon known as “dystextia” — along with jumbled emails and other unusual patterns in communicating could signal dysphasia, which is an inability to communicate due to brain injury and a common indicator of a stroke.
“What we’re looking for — whether it’s speaking, emailing, or texting — are real errors in terms of using the wrong words in the wrong way at the wrong time,” says Mark J. Alberts, M.D., Vice Chair of Neurology and Neurotherapeutics. “Saying ‘I took my car out for a walk’ instead of ‘I took my dog out for a walk’ could be indicative of a language problem, and that can tell us something worrisome might be occurring in the brain.”
Dystextia is a term popularized by Harvard University researchers who recently wrote of a case in which the garbled text messages of a 25-year-old pregnant woman were the first apparent signs that she had suffered an acute ischemic stroke. Her texts — which included such nonsensical phrases as “every where thinging days nighing” — alerted her husband to the potential problem.
“A stroke is a medical emergency, and the best thing people can do is seek help right away,” Dr. Alberts says. “The sooner somebody having a stroke seeks medical help, the better the chance we have at intervening and either reversing the effects of the stroke or preventing it from getting worse.”
Suspect a Stroke?
If you’re concerned that someone is having a stroke, try this simple three-question test. If the individual has trouble doing any of these, call 911 immediately.
- Say a simple sentence, such as “My name is …”
- Smile (Do you notice an asymmetry in the smile?)
- Raise both arms (Any difficulty in keeping an arm up?) |
English to English
1. Cleaning off surfaces, or cleaning away dust, dirt, or litter, as a broom does; moving with swiftness and force; carrying everything before it; including in its scope many persons or things; | English to English
1. Cleaning off surfaces, or cleaning away dust, dirt, or litter, as a broom does; moving with swiftness and force; carrying everything before it; including in its scope many persons or things; as, a sweeping flood; a sweeping majority; a sweeping accusation.
2. taking in or moving over (or as if over) a wide area; often used in combination
a sweeping glance|a wide-sweeping view of the river
3. ignoring distinctions
sweeping generalizations|wholesale destruction
4. the act of cleaning with a broom |
Coma is a term that is used to describe a state of unconsciousness from which a person cannot be aroused.
What is going on in the body?
A person in a coma is unable to respond to the environment. He or she cannot be | Coma is a term that is used to describe a state of unconsciousness from which a person cannot be aroused.
What is going on in the body?
A person in a coma is unable to respond to the environment. He or she cannot be awakened by any means. A coma may or may not be reversible with treatment.
What are the causes and risks of the condition?
There are many possible causes of a coma, including:
stroke, also called brain attack. This is brain damage that usually occurs due to a lack of oxygen because the blood supply to a part of the brain was interrupted.
diabetes that is out of control
severe liver disease or kidney disease
seizures, jerking movements or other unusual symptoms caused by abnormal electrical activity in the brain
abnormally low body temperature, also called hypothermia
severe salt imbalances, such as abnormally low or high sodium levels in the blood
medication, drug, or toxin exposure. This may include alcohol, barbiturate, or narcotic overdose, or carbon monoxide poisoning.
bleeding into or around the brain. This may occur with a subdural hematoma, epidural hematoma, subarachnoid hemorrhage, or severe head injury.
infections, such as the brain infections called meningitis and encephalitis
low blood sugar levels, called hypoglycemia
low oxygen levels in the blood. This can occur with severe lung or heart disease. For example, severe asthma, emphysema, irregular heartbeats, or arrhythmias, and a blood clot in the lung, called a pulmonary embolus, can all cause coma from low oxygen levels.
Other causes are also possible. Sometimes, the cause cannot be found.
What can be done to prevent the condition?
Prevention is related to the cause. For example, avoiding drug use can prevent cases due to overdose. Proper treatment of diabetes can prevent many cases due to this cause. Wearing a helmet when riding a motorcycle or bike can prevent head injuries leading to coma. Following sports safety guidelines for children, adolescents, and adults can avoid unnecessary injuries. Many cases cannot be prevented.
How is the condition diagnosed?
When a person is unconscious and does not respond |
We study the genetic networks that enable plants to dynamically sense and respond to environmental signals. My lab is currently investigating a mystery of fire ecology: how is seed germination activated after a fire by chemical signals found in smoke? A potent class of ger | We study the genetic networks that enable plants to dynamically sense and respond to environmental signals. My lab is currently investigating a mystery of fire ecology: how is seed germination activated after a fire by chemical signals found in smoke? A potent class of germination-promoting compounds known as karrikins were identified in smoke in 2004. We are using genetic approaches in the model organism Arabidopsis thaliana to define the karrikin signaling mechanism in plants. Along the way we are discovering how strigolactones, a family of plant hormones that use the same signaling pathway, control plant development. We are using our knowledge of karrikin and strigolactone signaling mechanisms in Arabidopsis to determine how parasitic weeds detect their hosts - a key first step toward solving a major agricultural problem. |
Cannabis, the origin of marijuana, is derived from the cannabis plant – cannabis sativa. It grows wild in many of the tropical and temperate areas of the world.
The cannabis plant can be grown in almost any climate, and is | Cannabis, the origin of marijuana, is derived from the cannabis plant – cannabis sativa. It grows wild in many of the tropical and temperate areas of the world.
The cannabis plant can be grown in almost any climate, and is increasingly cultivated by means of indoor hydroponic technology.
Cannabis is used in three main forms: marijuana, hashish and hash oil.
THC, or Tetrahydrocannabinol, is the main psychoactive compound found in cannabis. Almost all cannabis is dominated by this compound.
THC has mild to moderate analgesic effects. Other effects include relaxation, alteration of visual, auditory, and olfactory senses, fatigue, and appetite stimulation.
CBD, or Cannabidiol, is often the second most common compound found in cannabis. This compound was discovered more recently than THC and shows great therapeutic promise.
CBD has displayed a sedative effects in some animal tests and in other studies indicate CBD can heighten alertness. |
March 6, 2013 – We’ve all had those moments: you’re sitting at your computer, reviewing your own or another’s writing, softly reading aloud to yourself. “Am I supposed to use a comma or a semicolon here | March 6, 2013 – We’ve all had those moments: you’re sitting at your computer, reviewing your own or another’s writing, softly reading aloud to yourself. “Am I supposed to use a comma or a semicolon here? Hmm…” Though you think you have the answer, you’re not quite as confident as you’d like to be. What do you do? A quick Google search might provide an answer, but who wants to wade through search results for an authoritative resource? To help you cut to the chase, I have reviewed five great websites where you can find answers to your burning grammar and writing questions.
OWL Purdue Writing Lab
The Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University provides resources for students, faculty, and the public.
Pros: Offers subject-specific writing resources (academic, creative, journalistic, writing for the field of nursing, engineering, etc.); information on APA, MLA, and Chicago Style formatting; and tips for job search writing. Has a great site map.
Cons: Focuses more on style and less on grammar.
Best Use: Answering formatting questions in APA, MLA, or Chicago Style; researching subject-specific writing genres; obtaining worksheets, handouts, or presentations on grammar and style. Before printing or copying worksheets, be sure to check OWL’s permissive use policy.
com ESchutz dkattorneys Elizabeth Schutz is a library assistant at Davis & Kuelthau, Milwaukee. She recently graduated from U.W.-Milwaukee with a coordinated master’s degree in English and Library & Information Science.
Guide to Grammar and Writing
Sponsored by the Capital Community College Foundation, the Guide to Grammar and Writing site provides assistance for writers at various stages of composition – from sentence level organization to overall structure and writing process.
Pros: Well organized content, extensive index (more than 400 entries!) for quick reference.
Cons: Layout of the site is a little dated. When I tried to use the site-wide search engine, I got an error message.
Best Use: Good information available for all types of use – quick reference seekers can consult the index, those looking for practice can use the quizzes, and the truly zealous can review some of the entertaining PowerPoint presentations.
Grammarbook.com was created by the author of The Blue Book of Grammar, Jane Straus. The blog on is updated frequently. You may browse entries by subject – entries go back to 2006.
Pros: Good site-wide search feature, video segments add value to lessons, lots of examples. The “Helpful Links” tab has links for online writers’ workshops, vocabulary improvement, help for kids, ESL students, and teachers.
Cons: Ads for Jane Straus’s book, must subscribe to site to get full content.
Best Use: A quick resource for correcting common errors, enhancing understanding of rules with quizzes, reading examples, watching videos.
AIS Writing Tips
Penn State’s Administrative Information Services publishes the AIS Newsletter every month. From the homepage, you can select the drop box arrow and scroll through archived articles. Not all content is grammar based: there are some tips on pronunciation, style suggestions (how to format lists, etc.), and fun with ordinal numbers.
Pros: Easy-to-read entries, wide range of topics covered.
Cons: Some examples are buried within the blog entries.
Best Use: Brushing up on usage, staying on top of current trends.
In addition to electronic versions of countless works of classic literature, Bartleby.com also provides access to some essential reference works. Here you’ll find books of quotations, dictionaries, thesauruses, and classic works on the English language like William Strunk Jr.’s The Elements of Style.
Pros: Offers access to resources that are rarely found outside of a library (i.e. Frank’s A Dictionary of Similes, Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable), authoritative collections of proverbs and quotes.
Cons: Material is older, not much available for specific grammar help.
Best Use: Bartleby is a great resource if you’re looking for inspiration, quotations, or historical resources.
There are countless resources available to the public from universities, nonprofit organizations, and those rare individuals that are truly passionate about writing well. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it is a good starting point for those looking for a little help. |
Static Weight: Front Bias and Left Bias
The most fundamental way of changing the handling of your car is by redistributing the weight. The weight distribution of a car is determined by literally placing a scale under each wheel. When making weight distribution adjustments | Static Weight: Front Bias and Left Bias
The most fundamental way of changing the handling of your car is by redistributing the weight. The weight distribution of a car is determined by literally placing a scale under each wheel. When making weight distribution adjustments, you must consider the weight transitions that the car experiences while you are driving. For example, when you accelerate, weight shifts toward the back of the car onto the rear wheels. When you turn right, weight shifts to the left side of the car. You can feel these weight transfers on your body while you are driving.
The most useful weight adjustment for road racing is front bias, or the weight distribution between the front and rear wheels. The purpose of adjusting front bias is to balance the weight of the car evenly between the front and rear …Read More |
The recent closure of the Mississippi River due to low
releases of water flows from the Missouri River
and drought conditions underscores
the critical importance of river transportation infrastructure
to the economy
of the mid-west region and the nation. The Upper | The recent closure of the Mississippi River due to low
releases of water flows from the Missouri River
and drought conditions underscores
the critical importance of river transportation infrastructure
to the economy
of the mid-west region and the nation. The Upper Mississippi River
the Missouri River are essential to our nation's economy, as is the lock and
dam system which makes the rivers navigable and provide major arteries for
commerce in America's agricultural and industrial heartland.
"More than 150 million tons of commerce valued at over $24 billion flows
annually into, out of, and within the Upper Mississippi River Basin on America's
Navigation System. The building blocks of our nation such as grain, coal,
petroleum and chemicals are dependent on these vital transportation arteries,"
said Barry Palmer, President & CEO of Waterways Work!
More than 650 manufacturing facilities, terminals, power plants and docks
located in the Upper Mississippi River Basin ship and receive tonnage on the
river. 54 million tons of river transported grain commodities are exported to
world markets. Over 27 million tons of coal are supplied on the river to more
than 18 power plants providing electrical power generation to millions of
residents and industrial facilities throughout the basin. The Port of Metropolitan
St. Louis is the second largest inland port in the United States.
"Our waterways transport cargo equal
to 40 million trucks or 10 million rail
cars each year. We must keep these vital water transportation arteries open
and efficient for our nation's economy to flourish," continued Palmer. |
Strip-Tilled Continuous Corn Yields More Than Conventional Tillage
Strip-tilling resulted in relatively greater yields across all seeding rates compared to conventional tillage under continuous corn in a one-site, non-replicated trial at Monsanto’s Learning Center | Strip-Tilled Continuous Corn Yields More Than Conventional Tillage
Strip-tilling resulted in relatively greater yields across all seeding rates compared to conventional tillage under continuous corn in a one-site, non-replicated trial at Monsanto’s Learning Center near Monmouth, Ill., in 2011.
However, conventional tillage was the yield leader in the corn-soybean rotation at seeding rates of 35,000 and 42,000 per acre.
A greater yield response to tillage practices was observed in the corn-soybean rotation compared to continuous corn. This effect could be due to the boost in yield usually seen in corn-soybean rotations.
In general, strip-till had little effect in the first year of the tillage study, but fertilizer wasn’t placed in the strips in these trials.
This placement is one of the main advantages of the tillage system. Therefore, the results found in this study may not translate to other field situations.
Five trials were conducted in 2011 at the Monmouth Learning Center to evaluate the yield impact of multiple management practices on corn production under strip-till and conventional till.
The conventional-tillage system included chisel plowing in the fall and soil finishing in the spring. Weed management for all trials consisted of a pre-emergence application of Harness Xtra 5.6L at 2 quarts per acre and a post-emergence application of Roundup PowerMAX at 22 ounces per acre.
There were three separate trials that investigated the yield impact of planting date, seeding rate and foliar fungicide in strip-till and conventional tillage.
Only the late-planted corn showed a decrease in yield of 7.5 bushels per acre vs. the early and mid-planted corn. These results support previous studies by Monsanto and universities, which state that corn yield potential can decrease with delayed planting because of a shorter growing season, insect and disease pressure and moisture stress during pollination.
However, little difference between tillage systems was observed within any planting date.
Regardless of the rotational system, yield was similar for corn planted at 35,000 and 42,000 seeds per acre.
In general, there was a substantial decrease in yield of 15 bushels per acre at a seeding rate of 28,000 seeds per acre. The yield response to tillage practices varied depending on the rotational system.
Foliar fungicide and tillage practices had little effect on yield in either rotational system suggesting that foliar fungal disease pressure was low this year at this particular site.
Overall, tillage practices across all trials and rotation systems had very little effect on yield.
Similar demonstrations are planned in 2012 at the Monmouth Learning Center to include nutrient placement for strip-till. |
In the Garden:
Southern California Coastal & Inland Valleys
Iris, watsonia, and sweet peas thrive without much fertilizer.
Hot Weather Watering and Fertilizing
Watering and fertilizing patterns you begin now will help or | In the Garden:
Southern California Coastal & Inland Valleys
Iris, watsonia, and sweet peas thrive without much fertilizer.
Hot Weather Watering and Fertilizing
Watering and fertilizing patterns you begin now will help or hinder your plants' abilities to thrive -- not just survive -- during the extended heat of summer.
When germinating seeds, water the beds or flats several times a day until the plants are up, and then at least once a day until the second set of true leaves develops. "True" leaves look like miniature versions of mature leaves. No fertilizer is needed because most seed-starting and potting mixes contain a small amount.
After you transplant your seedlings, change to a less-frequent and deeper watering pattern to encourage roots to grow deeply into the soil for moisture rather than spread just below the soil surface. During hot, dry spells, these deeper roots will have access to moisture for continued strong growth, but the shallow roots won't. This watering pattern also will save you time and water, since the water will sink deeper and less will evaporate.
Avoid overhead irrigation so late in the day that foliage cannot dry completely before sunset. Fungal and bacterial diseases thrive in warm, moist conditions and can develop overnight.
Don't Overdo It
When transplanting seedlings or larger plants, apply a mild solution of a balanced fertilizer, such as 16-16-16, or one that is low in nitrogen and high in phosphorus and potassium, such as 5-10-10. This gives the plants a complete supply of the nutrients they need for sturdy growth. A heavy application of nitrogen, such as 16-5-5, at planting time will encourage too much green growth too soon and result in lower yields later.
Feed plants again six weeks after transplanting, and again when the first fruit and vegetable blossoms open, to encourage continued strong growth and plentiful fruit set.
When preparing the soil in your growing beds, be aware of the salt content. While some manure is good for your garden, a lot is not necessarily better, especially if it's chicken manure and the weather is hot. Excessive levels of salt and ammonia can burn seedlings and reduce yields, if not kill the plants, and the salt level of the soil may limit your choices for future crops.
Care to share your gardening thoughts, insights, triumphs, or disappointments with your fellow gardening enthusiasts? Join the lively discussions on our FaceBook page and receive free daily tips! |
Trail : home / Early Years
The guidance note is for local authority early years and assessment advisors, headteachers and all practitioners working with reception-age children. The aim is to support practitioners in developing dialogue with parents and children, empowering them to engage | Trail : home / Early Years
The guidance note is for local authority early years and assessment advisors, headteachers and all practitioners working with reception-age children. The aim is to support practitioners in developing dialogue with parents and children, empowering them to engage actively in assessment. Having a forum for shared voices enables all contributors to participate on equal terms. This in turn ensures that scale point judgements are based on a holistic picture of a child, drawn from multiple perspectives.
There are increasing numbers of children entering Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) settings f |
- 1According to what is morally right or fair; fairly: we deal justly with complaintsMore example sentences
- Only the triumph of nonviolence, secured through just laws justly applied, will bring the terrorists down.
- The | - 1According to what is morally right or fair; fairly: we deal justly with complaintsMore example sentences
- Only the triumph of nonviolence, secured through just laws justly applied, will bring the terrorists down.
- The wretched uncles were justly punished by being sent to Siberia for life.
- Aristotle said that all virtue is summed up in dealing justly.
- 1.1In a way that is well founded; justifiably: we can justly be proud of our achievementsMore example sentences
- The last scene of the book is justly renowned.
- His advocacy on a wide range of human rights issues is something of which he can be justly proud.
- They are justly proud of the record, which explains why, in a 13-song set, they play all 10 tracks. |
PLA - Plain Language Analysis Tool lets you analyze any document you can imagine to first make it clear, concise and unambiguous using the Plain Language technique and second analyze it for major themes. If you are able to use an Internet search engine you | PLA - Plain Language Analysis Tool lets you analyze any document you can imagine to first make it clear, concise and unambiguous using the Plain Language technique and second analyze it for major themes. If you are able to use an Internet search engine you are able to use PLA. So children can use it in they're writing and English classes. Analyze manuals, proposals, legislation, constitutions, studies, scripts, and any other document from 1 page to 1000 pages. PLA is for every writer, editor, legislator, policy maker, manager, staff, professor, teacher, student, school, university, college and even a company. PLA is for anyone involved in editing, publishing, and reviewing small or large documents.
What's new in this version: Version 1.5 has updated demo keys and added demo keys link.
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view a plan
“The Ebeneezer Scrooge Music Experience” is a delightfully clever idea for presenting Christmas music past, present, and future
K, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
| view a plan
“The Ebeneezer Scrooge Music Experience” is a delightfully clever idea for presenting Christmas music past, present, and future
K, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Title – Ebeneezer Scrooge Music Experience
By – Denise Taylor
Primary Subject – Music
Grade Level – K- 5
This is an “Ebeneezer Scrooge” experience for music. Start by dressing in a robe and night cap and pretend to be “Ebeneezer Scrooge”. You have a “bah humbug” attitude about Christmas music that your students must help you overcome. Flicker the classroom lights on and off as you travel to Christmas music from the past, then present, then future. I use the origins of Silent Night as the song I present from the past. I also tell them the story of how Silent Night brought peace to a group of soldiers in WW1. I end our “past” experience by turning off the lights and singing Silent Night around a small lit Christmas tree. We then journey to the “present” where I tell them the origins of Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer. We then play this song on hand bells. Our last journey is to the “future”. I tell my students that they are the future and ask for volunteers to share their talents. Students sing, play the piano or dance without any hesitation. This impromptu talent show is their favorite part. Instead of a talent show, you could help the students write their own Christmas song and tell them that they are the “future” composers. You can also use this idea to frame a school winter music concert.
E-Mail Denise Taylor! |
Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal
Highlights: Emerging Infectious Diseases, Vol. 19, No. 6 (June 2013)
The articles of interest summarized below will appear in the June 2013 issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases | Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal
Highlights: Emerging Infectious Diseases, Vol. 19, No. 6 (June 2013)
The articles of interest summarized below will appear in the June 2013 issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, CDC’s monthly peer-reviewed public health journal. This issue will feature global health/ Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). The articles are embargoed until May 15, 2013, at noon EDT.
Note: Not all articles published in EID represent work done at CDC. In your stories, please clarify whether a study was conducted by CDC (“a CDC study”) or by another institution (“a study published by CDC”). The opinions expressed by authors contributing to EID do not necessarily reflect the opinions of CDC or the institutions with which the authors are affiliated.
1. New Delhi Metallo-β-Lactamase–producing Enterobacteriaceae, United States, J. Kamile Rasheed et al.
Infections caused by Enterobacteriaceae are becoming harder to treat as these bacteria develop more resistance to antibiotics, including last-line agents such as carbapenems, by making carbapenemase enzymes that destroy the antibiotic. One enzyme produced by carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), the New Delhi metallo-β-lactamase (NDM), was first reported in healthcare settings in India and Pakistan. In the three years since its identification, it has now been recognized in numerous countries worldwide. Although previously considered rare in the United States, a recent analysis of bacteria isolated from eight patients (all of whom had travelled to India or Pakistan and six of whom received inpatient health care while there) were found to produce NDM, as well as many other resistance mechanisms. Their spread worldwide will pose a major threat to public health. The relative ease with which this resistance mechanism seems to move within and between different types of bacteria and the mobility of humans carrying these bacteria highlight the need for reliable and rapid ways to detect them and prevent their spread.
Press Officer, CDC Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion
2. Haemophilus influenzae Serotype an Invasive Disease among Alaska Native Children, United States, Michael G. Bruce et al.
Haemophilus influenzae (Hi) is a bacterium that can cause serious, even fatal disease, especially in young children. Before vaccine was available, rates of infection with type b (Hib) were among the highest in the world among Alaska Native children. But after Hib vaccine became available, type b infections decreased dramatically. Now, however, infection with type a (Hia), which was not present in Alaska before 2002 and is not covered by the vaccine, is emerging among Alaska Native children. Rates of infection are especially high among children in one region, where risk factors for respiratory infection (household crowding, decreased availability of in-home running water, indoor wood smoke, and poverty) are common. Infections seem to be spreading slowly, but persistently from person to person in this area. Although a vaccine for Hia could be modeled after the successful Hib vaccine, a vaccine for such a small population will probably not be produced any time soon. Meanwhile, efforts to decrease the spread of infection include giving preventive antimicrobial drugs to those in close contact with patients who have invasive Hia disease and reducing risk factors such as increasing availability of running water, improving housing ventilation, and decreasing indoor wood smoke.
Contact Dr. Michael G. Bruce via:
CDC Media Relations
3. Hepatitis E Outbreak in Dadaab Refugee Camp, Kenya, 2012, Jamal A. Ahmed et al.
Hepatitis E virus is spread through the fecal–oral route. Infection is common in overcrowded areas with poor sanitation, such as refugee camps. In 2012, after 10 years with no reported cases among Somali refugees, an outbreak of hepatitis E was reported at Dadaab, located in eastern Kenya near the Somalia border, which is one of the largest refugee camps in the world. This outbreak caused concern for several reasons primarily because implementing effective prevention measures under camp conditions was difficult, and the area was dangerous for aid workers. Among 339 patients, 10 died (nine new mothers and one child). In response, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention attempted to enhance disease tracking, improve patient care, and step up preventive measures. To minimize further disease spread, these agencies also trained health care workers, increased community awareness, promoted good hygiene practices (including hand washing), improved access to latrines by constructing new latrines, and increased clean water access especially in affected parts of the camp. As of February 2013, no new cases have been reported. Future outbreaks mi |
"Environmental problems create winners and losers... Losers suffer from lost resources, health, and livelihood. Their powerlessness is often tied to poverty, ethnicity, or religion. "
Although Alaska is blessed with parks and preserves of considerable scope, | "Environmental problems create winners and losers... Losers suffer from lost resources, health, and livelihood. Their powerlessness is often tied to poverty, ethnicity, or religion. "
Although Alaska is blessed with parks and preserves of considerable scope, migratory animals like caribou and waterfowl ignore the artificial political and management boundaries humans impose upon the landscape. A caribou herd may cross over from Canada, traverse native territory, pass through several federal refuges, and ultimately calve in a state park. Conserving these species is a complex effort that involves coordination among many constituents.
The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act placed special pressures on park managers to deal with consumptive practices on park lands. The act, a compromise among a range of interests, opened preserves to sports hunters and allowed the continuation of native hunting and fishing practices in newly formed parks.
The National Park Service is in the difficult position of mediating between traditional harvest practices, which may view resources as being sentient and in infinite supp |
Luce Foundation Center for American Art
Folk Art: Folk Ceramics: Bean Pot with Incised Corn Maiden Figures
(born Tuba City, Navajo Nation, AZ 1933)
Faye Tso was one of the first | Luce Foundation Center for American Art
Folk Art: Folk Ceramics: Bean Pot with Incised Corn Maiden Figures
(born Tuba City, Navajo Nation, AZ 1933)
Faye Tso was one of the first Navajo potters to use unconventional imagery in her ceramic pots. Traditional Navajo pottery has very little decoration, but Tso applied images of corn maidens, warriors, and dancers onto the surface of the clay. She is a practicing Navajo herbalist, and her husband and a son are both medicine men. The family often uses Tsos pottery in their ceremonies, because "fire, cloud, and earth are all part of the Navajo way" (Chuck and Jan Rosenak, The People Speak: Navajo Folk Art, 1994).
Image Credits: Originally photographed by Chuck Rosenak. Image is courtesy of the Chuck and Jan Rosenak research material, 1990-1999, in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. |
Location: The Sackler Wing Galleries for the Arts of Japan, 2nd Floor
Press viewing: Monday, November 28, 10:00 a.m.–noon
Japan has enjoyed a long tradition of storytelling through paintings and | Location: The Sackler Wing Galleries for the Arts of Japan, 2nd Floor
Press viewing: Monday, November 28, 10:00 a.m.–noon
Japan has enjoyed a long tradition of storytelling through paintings and illustrated books, which continues today in the popular art of manga (comic books for children and adults). Showcasing more than 90 vibrant works drawn from the New York Public Library and other local collections, as well as works from the Metropolitan’s own holdings, Storytelling in Japanese Art will trace the rich history of illustrated narratives that thrived in the medieval and early modern periods of Japan. The focus of the exhibition will be on some 20 rare illustrated handscrolls called emaki. Highlights among them will be: an exceptional fragment of the set of handscrolls nicknamed Frolicking Animals, whose parent scrolls in Japan have the designation of National Treasure and are often referred to as ancestors of modern manga; The Tale of the Drunken Demon, capturing a dramatic and gory scene of a warrior chopping off a demon’s head; and the Illustrated Legend of Kitano Shrine, a set of five handscrolls that will be displayed simultaneously for the first time. Dating from the 12th to the 19th century, the exhibition will also include works in other formats: handscroll, fan, book, and screen.
The exhibition is made possible by The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Foundation.
Additional support is provided by the Japan Foundation.
Illustrated handscrolls, or emaki, represent an artistic tradition that stretches back to the eighth century in Japan. Extant emaki from the 12th and 13th centuries represent the quintessence of narrative presentation in this highly developed format. The tales, many now part of the canon of classical Japanese literature, include miraculous events of the Buddhist and Shinto religious traditions, romantic trysts of courtiers and court ladies, heroic adventures of men and women during times of war, and antics of animals in the roles of humans, not to mention the macabre escapades of ghosts and monsters.
Other highlights of the exhibition include rarely seen masterworks such as A Long Tale for an Autumn Night, a homoerotic tale of a romance between a Buddhist monk and a young male novice. The exhibition also will feature works in various formats illustrating dramatic episodes from The Great Woven Cap, a tale of Fujiwara no Kamatari, the founder of the powerful Fujiwara clan; in its climactic scene, a female diver is chased by a dragon.
Some |
Carbon dioxide, or CO2, adds to the ability of Earth's atmosphere to trap the sun's heat, potentially leading to rising global temperatures and changing climate.
That rise of CO2 parallels the increase in the use of fossil fuels, said Pi | Carbon dioxide, or CO2, adds to the ability of Earth's atmosphere to trap the sun's heat, potentially leading to rising global temperatures and changing climate.
That rise of CO2 parallels the increase in the use of fossil fuels, said Pieter Tans, a Boulder-based senior scientist with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.
Tans said radioisotopic analysis indicates that the carbon dioxide is coming from a very old, organic source — fossil fuels.
Scientists measure the levels of carbon 14 and carbon 12, two principal isotopes.
Carbon 14 has a decay rate of 5,000 years. It is used to date trees, mummies and artifacts.
The carbon coming from fossil fuels, which have been in the ground millions of years, has no carbon 14.
The isotope ratio between carbon 14 and carbon 12, correcting for the solar cycle and bomb tests in the 1950s, shows that the CO2 building up in the atmosphere is "lighter" and therefore older.
Since 1960, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen 25 percent to 394 parts per million. |
Although the word “blocking” sounds ominous, like something that should be avoided, it’s actually one of the most important steps to successfully completing your garment. In essence, blocking is a method of shaping and molding your crocheted pieces to match | Although the word “blocking” sounds ominous, like something that should be avoided, it’s actually one of the most important steps to successfully completing your garment. In essence, blocking is a method of shaping and molding your crocheted pieces to match the measurements and shapes on the schematics. Blocking will also remove wrinkles and creases that might occur if the pieces have been folded.
Keep in mind that blocking is only to shape and not to correct mistakes by making a piece wider or longer so it matches another piece. Unlike most grunt work, the payoff to a successfully blocked garment is huge. With some time and effort the end result will be a beautiful sweater that looks lovingly handmade rather than a homemade mess.
There are two main categories of blocking: wet and steam. To know which one to use with the yarn that was used for your project, refer to the ball band for the fiber content and to the pressing guide below. To get started, gather up all the supplies you’ll need, including the schematics or the measurements from the pattern. The schematics and measurements will serve as a blueprint for you to follow, so you’ll know exactly what size and shape the pieces should be stretched and molded into.
There are two ways to wetblock your crocheted pieces. Both techniques work equally well, so choose the one that appeals to you most. The first is to immerse the pieces in cool water, then squeeze out the water, taking care not to wring or twist them. Working one at a time, place the piece on a flat, covered, padded surface (or a blocking board), then stretch and mold the piece into the same size and shape shown on the schematic. Referring to “Pinning and Blocking,” pin the key edges to hold the piece in shape until it is totally dry. Depending on the room temperature and humidity, drying time can be in excess of twenty-four hours, so just be patient.
The second method is to pin the pieces first (following the schematics), then wet them down using a spray bottle filled with cool water. Again, leave them be until they are dry. And no cheating! If you unpin pieces that are even slightly damp, they will lose the blocked shape and you will have to start all over again!
To steamblock, first pin the pieces on a flat surface following t |
Temperature vs. Depth
Date: November 28, 2002
How hot is the earth at a depth of 1 mile? I know there
is a constant calculable formula for temperature as you go deeper and
deeper. | Temperature vs. Depth
Date: November 28, 2002
How hot is the earth at a depth of 1 mile? I know there
is a constant calculable formula for temperature as you go deeper and
deeper. Therefore the temp in a cave or well or archeological dig should
be an exact answer, and I would like to know what that is.
The rate of change of temperature with depth is referred to as the
geothermal gradient. The geothermal gradient varies depending on location,
so there is no uniform answer. On average, the geothermal gradient is
approximately 75 degrees F per mile. In volcanically active areas, the
gradient can be as high as 150 degrees F per mile. In ocean trenches, the
gradient may be as low as 15 degrees F per mile. Decay of naturally
occurring radioactive elements may also cause localized increases in
temperature in some locations.
Click here to return to the Environmental and Earth Science Archives
Update: June 2012 |
The Bigger Picture: Visual Archives and the Smithsonian
Combining Interests: You never know what you might find at the Smithsonian Institution Archives
As part of the work I do as a volunteer with the Digital Services Division at the Smithsonian Institution Archives | The Bigger Picture: Visual Archives and the Smithsonian
Combining Interests: You never know what you might find at the Smithsonian Institution Archives
As part of the work I do as a volunteer with the Digital Services Division at the Smithsonian Institution Archives, I often check the playback of videos within our collections to determine condition and required software for viewing. While reviewing the records of the Archives’ Accession 12-096—Audiovisual Recordings, National Museum of Natural History, Office of Public Affairs, c. 1983–2009—I found a VHS tape entitled “Putting Triceratops Together Again.”
Since I am also a volunteer at the FossiLab at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), this title caught my eye. At the FossiLab I work as a preparatory, which involves tasks to clean and maintain fossilized remains. Among other duties, I work to remove dirt, called matrix, from around fossilized bones collected by the paleobiologists at the museum. Steve Jabo, the fossil preparator I work with at NMNH, appears in a couple of the video clips I encountered in the Archives’ collections. How could I not check this out?
The tape contains several short videos related to the Triceratops exhibit at NMNH. The videos tell the story of how the Triceratops specimen first came to NMNH more than one hundred years ago, and about some of the more recent work to restore, correct, maintain, and redisplay the exhibit.
One video shows how computer programs and scanning technologies were used to create digital representations of the Triceratops bones. These digital representations were used to fabricate models of missing bones for the Triceratops. Scanned data also provided an internal view of bone integrity. This information was used to aid conservation activities.
Another video shows how animation was used to investigate the way the Triceratops probably moved. Team members explain how they were able to make small scale replicas of Triceratops bones using computer technology. Using the smaller scale bones and computer animation, they worked to understand Triceratops movement.
Using the data scanned from the bones, the Triceratops was recreated in a virtual world on the computer. With the aid of animation and their knowledge of bone structure, the paleobiology team was able to determine a more realistic stance for the Triceratops mount in the Dinosaur Hall at NMNH.
There are a total of six short videos on the Archives’ VHS tape discussing various parts of the work to restore, maintain, and understand the Triceratops mount displayed in the Dinosaur Hall at NMNH. These videos are also a part of the exhibit at the Natural History Museum. By digitizing these kinds of collections at the Archives, we not only preserve the video content currently found in this exhibition, and make it accessible to many audiences, but we also help preserve the history of exhibitions at the Smithsonian and how they change over time.
As I often find in my own work here, there’s no telling what you might find, and the connections you might make, as you search through the Archives’ collections. |
Most Active Stories
Mon January 9, 2012
Origins Of The Mayan Calendar Myth
2012 is here -- much to the terror of some of the world's doomsayers. It's the year that the ancient May | Most Active Stories
Mon January 9, 2012
Origins Of The Mayan Calendar Myth
2012 is here -- much to the terror of some of the world's doomsayers. It's the year that the ancient Mayans are said to have predicted the end of the world. Not so, say scholars of the Maya, who lived and live today in Mexico and Central America.
Among those scholars is John Hoopes, an associate professor of Archeology at the University of Kansas. Hoopes is an expert in pre-Columbian civilizations, and has helped debunk the 2012 myth.
But along the way, he's become fascinated with it, and has gone from studying the myths of ancient Latin America to the myths of the modern-day United States. Hoopes has a blog hosted by Psychology Today, where he recently wrote the post, What You Should Know About 2012. |
Reviewed by Sarah Ansari
“There are three ways in which we use memory: through amnesia, nostalgia and selection. The collective memory of a community contains each of these. We use amnesia and nostalgia to give us selective memory”. These insights | Reviewed by Sarah Ansari
“There are three ways in which we use memory: through amnesia, nostalgia and selection. The collective memory of a community contains each of these. We use amnesia and nostalgia to give us selective memory”. These insights drawn from the work of Pierre Nora, the French intellectual responsible for pioneering work on the relationship between history and memory, underpin the exploration of collective as well as individual remembering in Sindh: Stories from a Vanished Homeland. On its pages fragments of memory are pieced together by Saaz Aggarwal in a very personal search for the Sindh left behind by Hindus who departed in the years following Partition. Taken as a whole, the stories included here shed fresh light on how their narrators, both men and women, and their families remember the past, and in the process also draw attention to the challenges of resettlement that awaited them across the newly constructed border between India and Pakistan.
Partition-related migration, after all, was a two-way process, and Sindh witnessed both comings and goings on a massive scale in the years after 1947. While Pakistanis today are familiar with the considerable demographic upheaval that drew Muslims from other parts of the subcontinent to the province, the story of the non-Muslims who migrated to India has taken longer to be told. As with their counterparts crossing the border in the other direction, getting used to their new surroundings was far from straightforward, though the support from the wider Sindhi Hindu diaspora could often prove invaluable. Of course, Sindh in reality is not |
John M Haddon
Bush Vetch is a member of the pea and clover family (legumes) which can be found scrambling through many different habitats including woodland edges, rough grassland, roadside verges and scrubland. Small groups of | John M Haddon
Bush Vetch is a member of the pea and clover family (legumes) which can be found scrambling through many different habitats including woodland edges, rough grassland, roadside verges and scrubland. Small groups of two to six pale lilac-blue flowers appear between April and November attracting bumblebees and Honey Bees. Weevils, beetles and caterpillars also feed on Bush Vetch.
How to identify
Bush Vetch has ladder-like leaves which are arranged in pairs on either side of the stem. Branched tendrils used for climbing and grasping often spiral from the ends. The seed pods of Bush Vetch are black and hairless and look like peapods.
Where to find it
When to find it
How can people help
Our common plants provide vital food and shelter for all kinds of wildlife from butterflies to birds. But habitat loss and fragmentation caused by development and agricultural intensification threaten the future of our countryside |
Leading a team of five other explorers in a quest to achieve a feat no other human has managed, Sir Ranulph Fiennes is planning to walk across 2000 miles across Antarctica in 2013. Antarctica is the worlds highest continent | Leading a team of five other explorers in a quest to achieve a feat no other human has managed, Sir Ranulph Fiennes is planning to walk across 2000 miles across Antarctica in 2013. Antarctica is the worlds highest continent – covered by an average ice sheet 1.6 km (a mile) thick with some of the lowest temperatures recorded on Earth.
The ship leaves in March and will take a month to get there and the actual crossing, accompanied by two bulldozers, is expected to take 6 months. Sir Ralph is hoping the event will race is $10 million (£6.2 million) for Seeing is Believing, a blindness charity.
BBC article: Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ ‘coldest journey’ begins
The Coldest Journey website |
Cuban photography of the later 19th century is an unexplored area of Cuban art, despite being one of the most active periods in the history of photography on the island. It is, in fact, the moment when this reproductive | Cuban photography of the later 19th century is an unexplored area of Cuban art, despite being one of the most active periods in the history of photography on the island. It is, in fact, the moment when this reproductive technology was introduced in Cuba.
Among the photographers of this era who have been largely overlooked is José Gómez de la Carrera, a pioneer in this medium who was for decades considered the best 19th-century Cuban photographer.
The Spanish-born Gómez de la Carrera arrived in Havana in 1885. He set up his studio at 23 O'Reilly Street, a major commercial artery in what is now the Habana Vieja district. There, he began his photographic production, which unfolded, more or less, in four phases: commercial advertising photography from 1885 to 1890; social photography from 1890 to 1895; war photojournalism from 1895 to 1902; and studio photography from 1902 to 1908. In this last phase, the photographer recorded a detailed vision of Cuban life of that time—its architectural and urban features, its social types, customs, and national identity. His images became historical artifacts of an era, which can be revisited and rebuilt from these visuals.
Photoengraving began in Cuba in 1881, prompted by the initiative of Portuguese artist Alfredo Pereira Taveira, who founded the first photoengraving workshop. This process allowed photographic images to illustrate the newspapers and magazines of the time, and encouraged the spread of these image across the country. Newspaper editors began including photographers on their staffs, whose work provided a greater sense of immediacy and reality than earlier procedures such as etching and drawing. Photographic works flooded the pages of newspapers, and photojournalism emerged in Cuba.
José Gómez de la Carrera was, above all, a man of the press. He worked for national newspapers such as La Caricatura (1888-1892), La Lucha (1892-1895), La Discusión (1898-1903), Cuba y America (1904-1906), La Ilustración Cubana and El Figaro (1893-1902). He also worked for international journals: La Ilustración Española y Americana, The Illustrated American and Harper’s Weekly.
The images from Gómez de la Carrera’s early career, produced for commercial advertisements, depict entertainment spaces of the upper classes: business, shopping, clubs, and ostentatious houses—a testament to the late 19th-century Cuban bourgeois lifestyle. The interiors of houses and other premises, and the elegance of the façades, reflected the status and economic power of this social strata, conforming to Spanish media policy, which was related to th |
Twice the education: Dual-language programs are on the rise.
Innovative educational programs, and foreign-language classes, tend to be the first on the chopping block during tough economic times. But several states and districts are bucking that trend— | Twice the education: Dual-language programs are on the rise.
Innovative educational programs, and foreign-language classes, tend to be the first on the chopping block during tough economic times. But several states and districts are bucking that trend—by embracing two-way bilingual immersion, also known as dual-language learning. McHenry County, Illinois, has expanded its dual-language program from elementary to middle-school; in California, Glendale and Pasadena school districts just received a total of more than $3 million in federal grants to expanded their programs. And New Jersey has approved not one but two new dual-language charter schools, which are expected to open in time for the 2010–11 school year.
Dual-language programs are widely seen as a win-win proposition by their participants: ELLs get the time and support they need to master English, while young English speakers are exposed to the benefits of foreign language study. Evidence suggests that these benefits include greater cognitive development, an increase in listening skills, memory, and a greater understanding of one’s own language. Employers are also considering bilingualism a desirable skill.
“It’s the reality,” said Glendale board of education vice president Greg Krikorian. “We’re in a global economy and it’s important to learn multiple languages.”
PreK works for ELL in PA. Is PreK even more essential for foreign language speakers? A new report from Pennsylvania’s PreK Counts says yes. During the 2008–09 school year, 11,800 children took part in the program, of which a major goal was to reach young ELLs early and provide additional early education to help them succeed. According to the report, 99 percent of children—including ELLs—showed age-appropriate or emerging age-appropriate proficiency in literacy and other skills after attending the program. School districts also reported that ELLs who took part in PreK tended to be more prepared for kindergarten than those who didn’t take part.
District-level commitment Key to ELL success. High expectations and strong oversight from the district, training for all teachers in how to work with ELLs, and careful monitoring of data to continually adjust instruction to match student needs—these are the traits common to four urban districts that have showed extended growth in ELL student achievement, according to an investigation by the Council of Great City Schools. The report also found that the successes in San Francisco, Dallas, New York City, and St. Paul, Minnesota, resulted from districts applying these practices as an integrated system, rather than piecemeal policies.
ELL and RTI. Response to Intervention can be an effective tool for providing early assistance to ELL students who are having difficulty making academic progress, according to the Center for Research on the Educational Achievement and Teaching of English-Language Learners. A new brief published by the center explains how to apply RTI to ELL students and lessen the chance of misidentifying them as having a learning disability.
Defining the right to access for ELLs. A California school district’s decision to eliminate the ELL program at one of its high schools is being challenged in federal court. Centinela Valley district officials claim that the decision was driven by budget considerations and that ELL students can be served at another campus. But the suit argues that ELL students have “the right to attend their local school, just as non-ELL students do.” If the court accepts that interpretation, schools could find themselves with fewer options for balancing shrinking budgets. |
A golf cart sized robot that can autonomously navigate its way through a field will soon take the work out of weeding for Queensland farmers.
The AgBot, a light-weight, driverless buggy, can navigate around a 4000 hectare | A golf cart sized robot that can autonomously navigate its way through a field will soon take the work out of weeding for Queensland farmers.
The AgBot, a light-weight, driverless buggy, can navigate around a 4000 hectare wheat farm using low-cost sensors, eradicating small weeds and causing minimal damage to soil.
The world-first project, headed up by the QUT Robotics lab, in collaboration with Swarm Farm in Emerald and the Australian Centre for Field Robotics, aims to revolutionise broad acre farming by creating a new class of small, intelligent, cooperative, autonomous robots to increase farming production.
"The farmer we are working with currently uses a single large heavy chemical weed sprayer that is unable to traverse the fields immediately after rain when the weeds are small," Chief Investigator Professor Gordon Wyeth said.
"Eradicating weeds when they are small requires far less chemicals, leading to significant savings both financially and environmentally.
"Our research will combine cheap cameras and other sensors with new navigation and perception algorithms, which we believe will save the wheat industry $620 million in weeding alone."
Queensland Premier Campbell Newman inspected QUT's AgBot at Gardens Point Campus yesterday (May 21).
The AgBot's first field trial is scheduled for June on Swarm Farm in Emerald.
Other QUT robotics projects include: - Building underwater robots that are highly manoeuvrable, travel hundreds of kilometres, stay deployed at sea for multiple weeks, and carry a wide variety of instruments. -Fleets of eco-friendly, robotic farm-hands to intelligently apply herbicides -Dinner plate sized robots that can zoom to hard-to-reach places to do jobs which are too difficult or dangerous for people -GPS navigation systems using low-resolution cameras instead of satellites, which often get scrambled in cities - Developing, with partners, technology to enable unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to fly regularly in civilian airspace. |
The home was a two-bedroom apartment in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood, populated mostly with lower middle class Jews. Ellison remembers his adoptive mother as warm and loving, in contrast to his austere, unsupportive, and often distant adoptive | The home was a two-bedroom apartment in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood, populated mostly with lower middle class Jews. Ellison remembers his adoptive mother as warm and loving, in contrast to his austere, unsupportive, and often distant adoptive father, a Russian Jew from the Crimea who adopted the name Ellison to honor his point of entry into the USA, Ellis Island, as well as to conceal his Jewish ancestry. Louis was a modest government employee who had made a small fortune in Chicago real estate, only to lose it during the Great Depression.
Ellison was a bright but inattentive student. He left the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign at the end of his second year, after not taking his final exams because his adoptive mother had just died. After spending a summer in Northern California where he lived with his friend Chuck Weiss, he attended the University of Chicago for one term, where he first encountered computer designing. At 20 years of age, he moved to northern California permanently.
Ellison was inspired by the paper written by Edgar F. Codd on relational database systems named "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks." He founded Oracle in 1977, putting up a mere $2000 of his own money, under the name Software Development Laboratories (SDL). In 1979, the company was renamed Relational Software Inc., later renamed Oracle after the flagship product Oracle database. He had heard about the IBM System R database, also based on Codd's theories, and wanted Oracle to be compatible with it, but IBM made this impossible by refusing to share System R's code. The initial release of Oracle was Oracle 2; there was no Oracle 1. The release number was intended to imply that all of the bugs had been worked out of an earlier version.
In 1990, Oracle laid off 10% (about 400 people) of its work force because of a mismatch between cash and revenues. This crisis, which almost resulted in Oracle's bankruptcy, came about because of Oracle's "up-front" marketing strategy, in which sales people urged potential customers to buy the largest possible amount of software all at once. The sales people then booked the value of future license sales in the current quarter, thereby increasing their bonuses. This became a problem when the future sales subsequently failed to materialize. Oracle eventually had to restate its earnings twice, and also to settle out of court class action lawsuits arising from its having overstated its earnings. Ellison would later say that Oracle had made "an incredible business mistake."
Although IBM dominated the mainframe relational database market with its DB2 and SQL/DS database products, it delayed entering the market for a relational database on UNIX and Windows operating systems. This left the door open for Sybase, Oracle, and Informix (and eventually Microsoft) to dominate mid-range and microcomputers.
Around this time, Oracle fell behind Sybase. In 1990-1993, Sybase was the fastest growing database company and the database industry's darling vendor, but soon fell victim to its merger mania. Sybase's 1993 merger with Powersoft resulted in a loss of focus on its core database technology. In 1993, Sybase sold the rights to its database software running under the Windows operating system to Microsoft Corporation, which now marke |
Tierra del Fuego is the name that designates the lands south of the Strait of Magellan and is the name under which the archipelago is known by the Big Island and hundreds of islands and smaller islands to the south of Cape Horn | Tierra del Fuego is the name that designates the lands south of the Strait of Magellan and is the name under which the archipelago is known by the Big Island and hundreds of islands and smaller islands to the south of Cape Horn and shares borders with Argentina and Chile, both are known by the same name. The Big Island is considered the largest in South America. To the south is bounded by the Beagle Channel to the east by the Atlantic Ocean and west by the Pacific Ocean, the Argentina of the island corresponds to the province of Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and South Atlantic Islands, whose capital is the city of Ushuaia, Chilean and part corresponds to the province of Tierra del Fuego and its capital is homecoming.
The topography of the island has two well-marked areas in the north are seen gently undulating plateaus and plains, whereas the south is decorated by mountains that are branches of the Andes, at the foot of these beautiful valleys are observed with lakes of breathtaking beauty and the higher mantle albo glaciers that impress the visitor. The Big Island has many rivers have their headwaters in the Andes and whose waters feed the flow of the Rio Grande de Tierra del Fuego flowing into the Argentine sea.
Almanza Tierra del Fuego:
The area north of the island is covered with short-stemmed plants dominated by grasses that are used by grazing animals such as sheep and cows, this land is used for the breeding of these animals which gives the area that rural environment. In the south the appearance begins to change, the natural border between north and south is Lake Fagnano, dominate the landscape the slopes |
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After crossing the frankly uninspiring, albeit historic, car park that is the Grand Parade
(where the troops mustered for the famous Night Sortie that ended the | Unless you disable cookies in your browser, using this website means you agree to this.
After crossing the frankly uninspiring, albeit historic, car park that is the Grand Parade
(where the troops mustered for the famous Night Sortie that ended the Great Siege) the Alameda Gardens come as a stark contrast.
They were founded in 1816 on the instructions of Lieutenant-Governor Sir George Don as pleasure gardens for the inhabitants of Gibraltar. For
many years they served this purpose until they fell into disrepair in the 1970s.
In June 1991 the Government of Gibraltar employed a private firm, Wildlife (Gibraltar) Ltd, to implement the Gibraltar Botanic Gardens
Project. The aim of this was to restore the gardens and convert them into a botanic garden. And a jolly good job they have done too
The memorial to General Sir George Augustus Eliott who led the defence of Gibraltar during the Great Siege of 1179-1782,
was originally a "colossal" statue carved from the bowsprit of the Spanish man-o-war San Juan.
This was replaced in 1858 by a bronze bust of the General on a marble pillar, which was presented to Gibraltar by one of his descendants.
It is surrounded by three 10 inch howitzers made in 1783 and one 8 inch howitzer dating from 1778.
Situated in the top South-East corner of the Alameda is the grandiosely named Alameda Wildlife Conservation Park.
It is actually a small zoo, with the animals housed in compact enclosures; adequate, but hardly park-like, surroundings
It was started in 1994 from a collection of animals and birds that had been
confiscated by the local customs authorities from illegal animal traders who were passing them through Gibraltar.
Its scope has now been extended to include unwanted exotic pets and animals, such as the Cotton-topped Tamarins, that are
on loan from international zoos to raise awareness of import |
Short Essay Questions Key
1. What did Thoreau say a man should do when his government was acting immorally?
In 'Civil Disobedience', Thoreau claimed that when one's government was acting immorally, | Short Essay Questions Key
1. What did Thoreau say a man should do when his government was acting immorally?
In 'Civil Disobedience', Thoreau claimed that when one's government was acting immorally, it was a citizen's duty to disobey and withdraw his support from the government.
2. How did Thoreau begin 'Civil Disobedience'?
Thoreau began his essay, 'Civil Disobedience' by proposing a motto, "That government is best which governs not at all."
3. What did Thoreau say government got involved in, and what did he think was the result of this?
Thoreau said that government tended to get involved in control of trade and commerce and politics and did not accomplish anything except to get in the way of those who were trying to make a living off of those industries.
4. What did Thoreau claim not to be in 'Civil Disobedience' and what was his support for this?
In 'Civil Disobedience', Thoreau was quick to add that he was not an anarchist. He supports this claim by pointing out that he did not call for the abolition of government, but the building of a better government that is based on justice.
This section contains 2,615 words
(approx. 9 pages at 300 words per page) |
What you see on the readout is the amplifier gain.
The sound level will increase or decrease due to 2 things; the gain setting and the input voltage to the unit.
You can set the gain to 0db, and that means | What you see on the readout is the amplifier gain.
The sound level will increase or decrease due to 2 things; the gain setting and the input voltage to the unit.
You can set the gain to 0db, and that means unity gain. If 500 millivolts RMS is the average input voltage from some source, then the output voltage to the speaker will also be 500 millivolts. Some sources may have different output levels than others, so the even though the receiver gain says the same the volume will change.
A CD player may also have different output voltage levels depending on the CD being played. There are huge differences in the levels on CDs, so that will also change the volume with the same gain setting.
A setting less than 0db gain (-)on the amplifier will mean the output voltage to the speaker is less than the input voltage from the source component. A setting over 0 db (+) means the output voltage is higher than the input.
When the amplifier is set to 0 db, there is unity gain, which means the amplifier is not amplifying the input voltage, but it IS putting out a lot more CURRENT (to the speaker) than is coming in from the signal source, so it is acting as a POWER amplifier nevertheless.
The sensitivity of the speaker also has a big effect on the volume, without changing the gain setting of the receiver (amplifier).
Speakers are rated in db per watt. A speaker that is rated |
Poignant letters from American servicemen and their families in the midst of war.
Hindsight plays a major role in reading these letters. Many of the authors featured were dead by the time the addressees received their messages. Writing from the Civil | Poignant letters from American servicemen and their families in the midst of war.
Hindsight plays a major role in reading these letters. Many of the authors featured were dead by the time the addressees received their messages. Writing from the Civil War to the Gulf is included, with the different mentalities of each era shining through. In the War Between the States, writers committ more spelling errors and describe their campaigns extensively, including stories of meeting the enemy in person. In WWI, writers seem bewildered by the events they experience: Bombarded from afar while in trenches or sailing through waters infested with submarines, soldiers and sailors are more likely to describe their cramped living quarters and conditions in m |
What is a Credit card?A credit card is a small plastic card issued to users as a systemof payment.It allows its holder to buy goods and services based on the holderspromise to pay for these goods and services.The issuer of the card creates | What is a Credit card?A credit card is a small plastic card issued to users as a systemof payment.It allows its holder to buy goods and services based on the holderspromise to pay for these goods and services.The issuer of the card creates a revolving account and grants a line ofcredit to the consumer (or the user) from which the user can borrowmoney for payment to a merchant or as a cash advance to the user.
• A credit card is different from a charge card: a charge card requiresthe balance to be paid in full each month.• In contrast, credit cards allow the consumers a continuing balanceof debt, subject to interest being charged.• A credit card also differs from a cash card, which can be used likecurrency by the owner of the card.• Most credit cards are issued by banks or credit unions, and are theshape and size specified by the ISO/IEC 7810 standard as ID-1. Thisis defined as 85.60 53.98 mm (33/8 21/8 in) in size.
History of Credit CardThe concept of using a card for purchases was described in 1887by Edward Bellamy in his utopian novel Looking Backward. Bellamyused the term credit card eleven times in this novel.The modern credit card was the successor of a va |
ESA astronomers say they’ve made the first detection of a substellar object – either a brown dwarf or a giant planet (aka a super-Jupiter) – having its outer layers ripped off by a black hole. Earlier today (April 2, | ESA astronomers say they’ve made the first detection of a substellar object – either a brown dwarf or a giant planet (aka a super-Jupiter) – having its outer layers ripped off by a black hole. Earlier today (April 2, 2013), the astronomers released the video below, which is an animation portraying this event. The event took place in a galaxy called NGC 4845, 47 million light-years away. The animation shows the super-Jupiter moving through space, straying too close to the black hole (at the center of the screen). The black hole rips away the super-Jupiter’s outer layers, which then spiral into the hole. The debris becomes heated and emits a blast of x-rays, which the ESA astronomers observed.
The astronomers used ESA’s Integral space observatory to make this discovery, with follow-up observations from ESA’s XMM-Newton, NASA’s Swift and Japan’s MAXI X-ray monitor on the International Space Station. They say they were watching a different galaxy when they noticed a bright x-ray flare in the same wide field-of-view. The origin of the x-ray flare was confirmed as NGC 4845, a galaxy never before detected at high energies.
Maximum emission of x-rays by NGC 4845 was in January 2011. The galaxy got 1,000 times brighter in x-rays, then subsided over the course of the year. Marek Nikolajuk of the University of Bialystok, Poland, lead author of a paper about this event in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics said:
The observation was completely unexpected, from a galaxy that has been quiet for at least 20–30 years.
By analyzing the characteristics of the x-ray flare, the astronomers could determine that the emission came from a halo of material around the galaxy’s central black hole as it tore apart and fed on an object of 14–30 Jupiter masses. This size range corresponds to brown dwarfs, substellar objects that are not massive enough to fuse hydrogen in their core and ignite as stars.
Most galaxies nowadays are thought to have central black holes, including our own Milky Way. In fact, it’s believed we will see our Milky Way’s central black hole devour a gas cloud later this year.
Bottom line: Astronomers of the European Space Agency said on April 2, 2013 that they have, for the first time, observed the disruption of the outer atmosphere of a brown dwarf or super-Jupiter – an object with 14 to 30 times the mass of Jupiter – by a black hole. |
In questions, γάρ asks for confirmation of a preceding statement, or expresses assent or dissent; asks whether an act before mentioned was not reasonable; asks a question prompted by some form of emotion; and serves to indicate transition, etc.
a | In questions, γάρ asks for confirmation of a preceding statement, or expresses assent or dissent; asks whether an act before mentioned was not reasonable; asks a question prompted by some form of emotion; and serves to indicate transition, etc.
a. In questions γάρ often marks surprise or indignation, and may frequently be translated by what, why, then, really, surely. Thus, ταυτὶ_ λέγεις σὺ στρατηγὸν πτωχὸς ὤν; ἐγὼ γάρ εἰμι πτωχός;
b. Brief interrogative formulae asking for confirmation of a preceding statement are:
ἦ γάρ; is it not so? surely this is so? (cp.
οὐ γάρ; is it not so? often in indignant questions; when not standing alone, why not?
πῶς γάρ; πόθεν γάρ; imply that something is impossible (often of surprise). Cp. πῶς γὰρ οὔ; in negative rhetorical questions.
Herbert Weir Smyth [n.d.], A Greek Grammar for Colleges; Machine readable text [info] [word count] [Smyth]. |
Burning Man is a festival that happens every year at Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada, in the United States. It lasts a week, and it starts on the last Monday in August, and ends on the first Monday in September (which is | Burning Man is a festival that happens every year at Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada, in the United States. It lasts a week, and it starts on the last Monday in August, and ends on the first Monday in September (which is also Labor Day in the U.S.). The festival is called Burning Man because a large wood sculpture of a man is set on fire on Saturday. The festival has been happening every year since 1990. Many people go to Burning Man; in 2012, over 55,000 people were there. The Black Rock desert is far from any cities or towns, and is very dry, so people who go to Burning Man have to bring their own water, food, and shelter.
History[change | edit source]
Burning Man started in 1986 at San Francisco. An artist named Larry Harvey made a 9-foot tall (2.7 m) wooden sculpture of a man, and decided to burn it a nearby beach as a bonfire for Summer Solstice. It was a success, so he did it again at the beach the next year, and then again a couple years after that. Each year the sculpture was made bigger. In 1987 “the Man” was almost 15 feet (4.6 m) tall, and in 1989 it was almost 40 feet (12 m) feet tall.
In 1990, the police stopped Harvey from burning the Man because Harvey did not have a permit. Around the same time, two people named Kevin Evans and John Law were planning a group trip to a dry lake, called The Playa, in the Black Rock Desert. They were members of a group of Dadaists named the Cacophony Society. Harvey decided to take the sculpture, which had been taken apart, to the desert to be burned. Since that time the festival has happened in the desert.
John Law knew how to make neon signs, so starting in 1991 neon lights have been added to the Man.
One of the members of the Cacophony Society is named Michael Mikel, who uses the name “Danger Ranger”. He was worried about people getting lost in the desert, which can be very dangerous. He started a group named the Black Rock Rangers to help keep people safe, and to help break up conflicts.
Starting in 1991, Harvey got a permit from the Bureau of Land Management (who take care of land owned by the US government) to hold the festival. The festival was becoming more popular every year. In 1991 about 250 people were there. In 1995 about 4,000 people were there, and in 1997 it was about 10,000. In 2000 attendance was about 25,000, and by 2010 it had reached over 50,000 people. The festival has become so large, sometimes it is called Black Rock City because it is like a small city.
Values[change | edit source]
- Radical Inclusion – everyone is welcome.
- Gifting – people should give gifts to each other without asking for anything in exchange.
- Decommodification – people should not let money get in the way of having an experience.
- Radical Self-reliance – people at Burning Man should try to take care of themselves and not ask others to take care of them.
- Radical Self-expression – everyone should share what makes him or her special.
- Communal Effort – people at Burning Man should cooperate to make the festival good and safe.
- Civic Responsibility – people should be good citizens
- Leaving No Trace – people should clean up after themselves. After they leave there should not be any sign they were there.
- Participation – Everyone should join-in and not just watch.
- Immediacy – People should not let things stop them from learning about themselves.
Rules[change | edit source]
Everyone who goes to Burning Man must have a ticket. Tickets must be bought before the festival starts.
Burning Man is designed for pedestrians and people on bicycles. Most cars can only be used for entering or leaving the festival. Because there have been many car accidents in the past, cars are only allowed to go 5 miles per hour.
Money is only allowed for a few things at Burning Man. It can only be used to buy ice, to buy coffee and other drinks, to pay for recreational vehicle services, to pay for emergency services like an auto mechanic or a locksmith, and a few other things.
Art[change | edit source]
Many artists choose to show their art at Burning Man. Because the dry lake where the festival happens is so empty, it is like a white canvas.
Every year since 1996 Harvey has chosen a theme, which is a word or idea that some of the artists use as part of their artwork. For example, in 2011 the theme was “Rites of Passage”, while in 2013 the theme was "Cargo Cults".
Mutant Vehicles[change | edit source]
People who want to bring motor vehicles to drive around while at Burning Man must get permission before they arrive. The group that gives permission is called the "Department of Mutant Vehicles”, or DMV. The cars, trucks, and buses must be changed to look very different from normal. These are called Mutant vehicles. Mutant vehicles often have complicated lights. Some mutant vehicles have loudspeakers for playing music, and some have flames and other pyrotechnics.
City plan[change | edit source]
The city that is built for the festival is named Black Rock City, or BRC for short. Because it is so big, some volunteers start building about 3 weeks before the festival starts. Some people also stay as long as 4 weeks after to clean-up and take everything apart.
The city has streets which are planned in the shape of a clock. There are streets that go towards the Man, which are named after times on a clock (12:00, 12:30, 1:00, and so on). There are also streets that curve in a circle around the Man. These streets are given new names every year. The area closest to the Man doesn't have any buildings or tents. This area only has different works of art. The street that runs along the inside of the circle surrounding the Man is called the Esplanade.
A small airport is also built every year, away from the rest of the city.
Criticisms[change | edit source]
E |
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help us get to 1,000
by May 28, 2010
Though all pimples form the same way, they often take on different shapes and characteristics, and react differently on different people. Ac | we've got signatures,
help us get to 1,000
by May 28, 2010
Though all pimples form the same way, they often take on different shapes and characteristics, and react differently on different people. Acne is formed when a hair follicle becomes clogged and what is called a comedo is formed. As the follicle becomes clogged with more oil, the comedo becomes larger, inflaming the skin around the area and forming what we know of as a pimple. There are several types of acne, each requiring different methods of Acne treatment. This article covers some of those types, explaining each and making treatment suggestions.
Non-inflammatory acne often takes the form of a closed comedo, or whitehead. This occurs when the plugged hair follicle stays beneath the surface of the skin, and appears on the skin as a small whiteish bump.
An open comedo, or blackhead, occurs when the plug enlarges and pushes through the surface of the skin. Its dark appearance is not due to dirt, but rather to a build up of the dark pigment of the skin called melanin. Blackheads are also a type of inflammatory acne.
The mildest form of inflammatory acne is a papule, a small, firm, pink bump appearing on the surface of the skin. These bumps can be tender to the touch, and are often considered an intermediary step between non-inflammatory and inflammatory acne.
Pustules are like papules in that they are small, round lesions. Unlike papules, pustules are clearly inflamed and visibly contain pus. They may appear red at the base with a yellowish or whiteish center. Pustules do not generally contain a great deal of bacteria, but are inflamed due to chemical irritation from sebum components.
Nodular or cystic acne is usually very painful. Nodules are inflamed pus-filled lesions lodged deep within the skin. They develop when the contents of a comedo has spilled into the surrounding skin and immune system responds, producing pus. The most severe form of this type of acne may persist for weeks or even months, eventually hardening into a cyst. Both nodules and cysts often leave deep scars.
Acne conglobata, a rare form of inflammatory acne, forms primarily on the back, buttocks, and chest.
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The Janson Media DVD Guadalupe: A Living Image (1 x 52′) was recommended in a recent review by Video Librarian.The reviewer praises the investigative film and its thorough overview of the facts and theories behind the Miracle of | The Janson Media DVD Guadalupe: A Living Image (1 x 52′) was recommended in a recent review by Video Librarian.The reviewer praises the investigative film and its thorough overview of the facts and theories behind the Miracle of Guadalupe.
“This beautifully filmed documentary explores the miraculous origins of the image of the Virgin Mary on a peasant’s tilma (cloak), which is displayed today in Mexico City’s Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Backed by dramatic re-enactments, historic documents, and animated maps, the current rector of the church describes how the Virgin appeared to a man named Juan Diego in December 1531, impressing her image upon his garment as a sign to take back to the disbelieving |
Humans mostly use two dimensions to organize and identify things: Space and Time. I’ve talked about how people use space to organize and identify things in my article on spatial thinking. So let’s talk about time now.
While you may use the space | Humans mostly use two dimensions to organize and identify things: Space and Time. I’ve talked about how people use space to organize and identify things in my article on spatial thinking. So let’s talk about time now.
While you may use the space of your desk to organize files you’re currently interested in, you don’t do the same with files you’re not likely to be interested in for quite some time, if ever again. You probably store these things sorted by time. Perhaps you have folders for each year, and you search the documents inside these folders by their position, because the position inside the folder is determined by the exact time you put the document into the folder. So when you’re looking for a particular document, even if it’s years old, you have a pretty good idea where to start.
Here’s another way you use time: When looking at something, you identify its relevancy by how old it looks. For example, the more yellowed a piece of paper is, the older it is, which may make it either more or less relevant to you, depending on what you’re doing at the moment.
All humans constantly use temporal aspects when interacting with things. People are pretty good at thinking in the dimension of time. We can take advantage of this ability when designing human interfaces. Here are a few examples.
Ordering Items by Time
This is the simplest possible way we can take advantage of temporal organization: Simply let users sort their files by time. Here’s an example of Mac OS X letting users sort files by their modification date:
Note how Mac OS X says «Yesterday». Computers love dates, but for humans, it’s easier to think in time spans (a day ago, a last weekend, a few months ago, last year) than in precise dates.
This view has two advantages: It shows files people are more likely to be interested in at the top, and it lets users browse through files in a way which makes sense to them. Most people probably have a pretty good idea of the order in which they actually used files.
One problem with this view is that files are visually sitting next to each other regardless of how far apart their dates are. Another problem is that each file only appears once; if you’ve used a file a year ago, but again yesterday, only the more recent date will be visible
A possible solution to these issues would be to display all file accesses in a linear scale. live.gnome.org has a mockup of Gnome Journal which aims to provide such a file management system:
Another solution would be to show them in a calendar. Nemo does this:
If your application stores any kind of data, it’s worth thinking about how you can show this data to your users in a time-based view.
Showing the Age of Things
Instead of providing a new time-based view, it’s possible to incorporate temporal aspects into your existing views. This first example is from Microsoft’s Canvas for OneNote which provides a spatial view of documents. By dragging the time slider at the bottom of the screen, different documents which match the selected time span are highlighted, while the other documents are dimmed out:
This way, users can access temporal information without leaving the spatial view.
Keith Lang points out another option: Files and folders themselves could show signs of aging, giving the user a more visceral idea of how old they are.
Chris Clark notes that an unintended side-effect of this could be that users would create new files and folders to replace (and thus «clean out») the «dirty» ones. This is actually one of the reasons why I went with a similar system in my employer’s workflow management system. Part of what a workflow management system does is hand out tickets (or work items) to people. The system can show these tickets in various different ways, one of which is as actual images of tickets.
If our users get a list of tickets they have to handle, it’s extremely useful for them to see which tickets are older and which are new. Tickets can be sorted by time, of course, but that doesn’t really help, because such a list doesn’t immediately tell you whether you got ten new tickets today, or whether you’re looking at the same ten tickets you got a week ago.
To get around this problem, tickets age visually. New tickets look fresh, while older tickets become more yellowed and wrinkly:
In this part |
Herbs & Botanicals
Pumice (fu hai shi)
What is pumice? What is it used for?
Pumice is a type of igneous rock produced by volcanic eruptions. During some eruptions, | Herbs & Botanicals
Pumice (fu hai shi)
What is pumice? What is it used for?
Pumice is a type of igneous rock produced by volcanic eruptions. During some eruptions, liquid lava is ejected into the air as a frothy mixture that contains gas bubbles. As the lava solidifies, the bubbles are trapped within the rock, resulting in pumice, which has the ability to float in water.
In fact, the pinyin name for pumice is "fu hai shi
," which means "float on the sea stone." Although it has a rough exterior, pumice is technically considered a type of glass because it has no crystal structure. It has a variety of industrial uses, including an additive for cement, a polish, an abrasaive, and a cosmetic exfoliant. In addition to its industrial purposes, pumice is an important component of traditional Chinese medicine.
According to the principles of traditional Chinese medicine, pumice has salty and cold properties, and is affiliated to the Lung meridian. Its main functions are to help clear phlegm and thick sputum caused by infections. It also promotes urination and helps treat dysuria, hematuria and gallstones.
How much pumice should I take?
The typical dose of pumice is between 6 and 10 grams, powdered and drunk as a decoction.
What forms of pumice are available?
Whole pumice can be found at gem and mineral stores worldwide. Pumice is also available in capsule, pill and powder forms, and as a part of several herbal formulas.
What can happen if I take too much pumice? Are there any interactions I should be aware of? What precautions should I take?
Pumice should not be used to treat coughs caused by cold or weakness. As of this writing, there are no known adverse effects or drug interactions associated with pumice. As always, however, make sure to consult with a licensed health care provider before taking pumice or any other herbal remedy or dietary supplement.
- Blackwood JA, Dilley DC, Roberts MW, et al. Evaluation of pumice, fissure enameloplasty and air abrasion on sealant microleakage.
Pediatr Dent. 2002 May-Jun;24(3):199-203.
- Blanco-Davila F. Beauty and the body: the origins of cosmetics. Plast Reconstr Surg. 2000 Mar;105(3):1196-204.
- Chen JK, Chen TT. Chinese Medical Herbology and Pharmacology. City of Industry, CA: Art of Medicine Press, 2003, p. 712.
- Giampaolo ET, Machado AL, Pavarina AC, et al. Different methods of finishing and polishing enamel. J Prosthet Dent. 2003 Feb;89(2):135-40.
- Price RB, Loney RW, Doyle MG, et al. An evaluation of a technique to remove stains from teeth using microabrasion. J Am Dent Assoc. 2003 Aug;134(8):1066-71. |
Festive Amazons are beautiful birds. The body color of these parrots – which range from 11 to 13 inches long – is forest green with slight black scalloping. Their crowns are blue, and the birds have | Festive Amazons are beautiful birds. The body color of these parrots – which range from 11 to 13 inches long – is forest green with slight black scalloping. Their crowns are blue, and the birds have red to maroon markings on the brows and a dark frontal band. Primary and secondary flight feathers are green with blue tips; tail feathers are green with yellowish-green tips complemented by red patches on the outer feathers. Mature festives have a bright red patch on the rump, which is not found in any other species. (In juveniles, the rumps are mostly green.)
In the wild, the birds inhabit lowland tropical rainforests along the Amazon and Orinoco rivers and their tributaries. They live in swampy forests, river islands, cacao plantations, gallery forests and savannahs and are found in pairs and small flocks of up to 50 birds. These hardy parrots can live up to 60 years. In the wild, they feed primarily in trees, but because of their remote habitat, details of the wild diet are not well known.Subspecies A.f. festiva lives in the Amazon River basin; the bird has a horn-colored beak, narrow red frontal band and yellow on the forecrown.
A.f. bodini lives along the Orinoco river; the beak is black, and the birds have extensive red on the crown.
Festive Amazons are seldom available as pets, and males are more common than females. They are intelligent and inquisitive but tend to be relatively shy, with only poor to moderate speaking ability.
Juveniles are generally tame and can usually be handled. The birds should always be provided with toys, blocks of wood or branches that they can chew. Young Amazons should be socialized to many people and exposed to a variety of situations such as new cages, toys, visits to the veterinarian, handling by friends, wing and nail clips, etc. to avoid fear of novel situations. Since they are active by nature, festives need to have space to exercise.
Festives are not as prone to obesity as are other Amazons. They should be fed a formulated (pelleted or extruded) diet supplemented with fresh fruits and vegetables daily to add variety and psychological enrichment. Feed approximately 1/4 cup of formulated diet and 1/4 cup of fresh fruits and vegetables daily. Monitor food intake. Overfeeding leads to pickiness, selective feeding and wasteful food throwing. Festive Amazons should be offered seeds or nuts by hand as treats for bonding. Vitamin supplements are not needed for birds eating a formulated diet.
Birds that are fed only seeds need vitamin and mineral supplementation to prevent deficiency diseases. Preferably, vitamins should be added to soft food rather than water, which dilutes the vitamins. Note, too, that water-soluble vitamins break down rapidly, and water containing vitamins and their sweeteners is a good growth medium for bacteria. Vitamins added to the outside of seeds are usually lost when the bird shells the seeds.
Routine bathing or showering is vital for maintaining good plumage and skin condition. Birds can be misted and allowed to dry in a warm room or in the sun, or they can be gently dried with a blow dryer. Care should be taken not to clip the wing feathers excessively as Amazons often fall and injure themselves. Clip only the primary flight feathers and only enough so the bird will glide to the floor. Festives are relatively light-bodied and require removal of more flight feathers than most Amazons.
Festive Amazons are very active and should be provided the largest cage that space and budget allows (one which will provide room for flight). Durable cage construction is not as critical as it is for macaws and cockatoos, but locks or escape-proof latches may be necessary. Festives should also be supplied with a retreat to guard against insecurity and fear responses. Ideally, the bird should also have an outdoor cage to allow playtime in the fresh air and sunlight.
Breeding age is approximately 3 to 5 years. Festives are relatively difficult to breed in captivity; a limited breeding season typically runs from February or March to June or July. Clutch size is usually three to four eggs.
The breeding cage should be about 8 feet by 4 feet by 4 feet suspended 4 feet above the ground or floor. Grandfather-style wooden nest boxes can be used. Size should be approximately 10 inches by 10 inches by 28 inches.
Incubation period is approximately 24 to 26 days. Chicks will usually fledge at approximately 10 to 12 weeks of age. Festive Amazons are relatively easy to hand-rear, and most hand-rearing formulas can be used successfully.
Breeding males become very aggressive toward their keepers, often attempting to bite while feeding. They are also occasionally aggressive toward their mates. Clipping the wings of the male prior to the breeding season may be necessary in aggressive individuals. Festives can be noisy when breeding, so noise and proximity to neighbors must be considered.
Common Diseases and Disorders
Festive Amazons are relatively healthy birds but are susceptible to the following:
Poor eating habits
Bacterial and fungal infections
Toxicity, ingestion of metals |
Antarctica is the coldest place on earth and temperatures vary from place to place. Interestingly, the South Pole is not the coldest part of the continent. The lowest temperature ever recorded on earth's surface was -128.6°F (- | Antarctica is the coldest place on earth and temperatures vary from place to place. Interestingly, the South Pole is not the coldest part of the continent. The lowest temperature ever recorded on earth's surface was -128.6°F (-89.6°C) at Russia's Vostok Station on July 21, 1983.
Antarctica is synonymous with cold, thanks to its polar location, its high elevation, its lack of a protective, water-vapor-filled atmosphere and its permanent ice cover, which reflects about 80% of the sun's radiation back into space.
Palmer Station (USA)
Palmer Station is located at 64°46'S, 64°03'W, on a protected harbor on the southwestern coast of Anvers Island off the Antarctica Peninsula. Palmer is the only U.S. Antarctic station north of the Antarctic Circle. The temperature is mild, with monthly averages ranging from minus 10°C in July and August to 2°C in January and February. The annual mean is minus 3°C. The extreme range is minus 31°C to 9°C.
The station, built on solid rock, consists of two major buildings and three small ones, plus two large fuel tanks, a helicopter pad, and a dock. Construction was completed in 1968, replacing a prefabricated wood structure ("Old Palmer,'' established in 1965) two kilometers away across Arthur Harbor. Old Palmer has been disassembled and removed from Antarctica. Somewhat over 40 people can occupy Palmer in the summer. Wintering population is about 10, although Palmer does not have a long period of winter isolation as do McMurdo and South Pole.
Palmer Station is named for Nathaniel B. Palmer, a Connecticut sealer who, on 17 November 1820, during an exploratory voyage ranging southward from the South Shetland Islands, may have been the first person to see Antarctica. (British and Russian ships were in the area at about the same time.)
Temperature & Wind Chill Calculators
The calculators below are provided for general use and SHOULD NOT be used for actual weather forecasting, please rely on NOAA Weather Radio or commercial broadcasts for the latest warnings and advisories. Commercial, aviation, marine, etc. should use standard or official weather forecast sources. No information on this page has been endorsed or approved by Eco-Photo Explorers.
Use the Temperature calculator below to convert Fahrenheit into its Celsius equivalent or visa versa or use the Wind Speed and Pressure Conversion Calculators below to convert into its equivalent reading.
What is Wind Chill?
Wind Chill is a measure of the cooling effect of wind. Wind
increases the rate at which a body loses heat, so the air on a windy
day feels cooler than the temperature indicated by a thermometer.
This heat loss can be calculated for various combinations of wind
speed and air temperature and then converted to a wind chill
equivalent temperature (or wind chill factor). Use the Wind Chill
Calculator below to calculate and see how wind speed and air
temperature effects wind chill.
Weather & Ice Terminology
Submerged ice which is attached to the sea bottom.
The region where colder Antarctic seas meet the warmer waters of the northern oceans. This is often called the Polar Front.
A piece of floating ice rising between 1 |
Imparting the importance of saving money to children, teens and even young adults is no small challenge.
Here are a few websites with helpful tips:
401Kidz • Covers a variety of saving and investing programs for kids, at http://bit | Imparting the importance of saving money to children, teens and even young adults is no small challenge.
Here are a few websites with helpful tips:
401Kidz • Covers a variety of saving and investing programs for kids, at http://bit.ly/OG9o8H
American Credit Foundation • Spotlights steps parents can take to teach children about saving and personal finance at http://bit.ly/cAHuR7
The Mint • Features five “tricks” to teach children about saving money at http://bit.ly/1nbuu
MoneyInstructor.com • Discusses saving techniques for several age groups at http://bit.ly/d0RSPZ
Securities and Exchange Commission • Offers points to teach children about saving and investing at http://www.sec.gov/investor/students/tips.htm
McClatchy-Tribune News Service |
reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction
[re-verse tran-scrip-shun puh-lim-er-ace]
also called RT-PCR. A very sensitive test for finding specific cancer-related genetic changes (mutations) in blood, | reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction
[re-verse tran-scrip-shun puh-lim-er-ace]
also called RT-PCR. A very sensitive test for finding specific cancer-related genetic changes (mutations) in blood, bone marrow, lymph nodes, or other tissue. RT-PCR uses chemical analysis of the ribonucleic acid or RNA (a substance related to deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA) to look for gene changes. See also bone marrow, chromosome, deoxyribonucleic acid, lymph node, mutation, ribonucleic acid, translocation. |
- Historic Sites
The Spies Who Went Out In The Cold
February 1972 | Volume 23, Issue 2
De Birniere survived the rout of Gage’s only real attempt to break out of Boston and the slaughter | - Historic Sites
The Spies Who Went Out In The Cold
February 1972 | Volume 23, Issue 2
De Birniere survived the rout of Gage’s only real attempt to break out of Boston and the slaughter at Bunker Hill in June. When the British left Boston forever, on March 17, 1776, among the things they left behind were De Birniere’s maps, his plan for a military post in Worcester, and his account of his days as a spy. The last was “printed for the information and amusement of the curious” by J. Gill of Court Street, Boston, in 1779. Nearly two hundred years later it should remind us that the American Revolution was not something that started on April 19, 1775—that was merely the shooting phase. The “hearts and minds of the people,” as John Adams was fond of saying, were already made up. |
You can find antioxidants in fruits, veggies and herbs. But what are they and why do you need them for your facial mask recipe?
Oxidation is a chemical reaction at the cells, that all of our body is always going through. | You can find antioxidants in fruits, veggies and herbs. But what are they and why do you need them for your facial mask recipe?
Oxidation is a chemical reaction at the cells, that all of our body is always going through. The chain reaction in the cells creates free radicals from an oxygen, which is usually crucial for the all life forms.
The free radicals are the ones that are damaging the cells, including the skin cells, so our body needs antiox. to prevent the damage that the free radicals cause.
What can cause the oxidation in the human body?
Drugs abuse, smoking, excessive sunlight exposure and extreme temperatures will fasten the oxidation process at your body, for sure.
In the oxidation process your skin loses its firmness, radiance and elasticity so at the bottom line it will fasten its aging.
Vitamin C – Ascorbic acid - Fruits and vegetables, especially citrus fruits and their extracts. Lemon, orange, peach, guava, sweet red pepper, and essential oils made of these fruits are rich with this vitamin.
In homemade facial scrubs world, the vitamin C recipes are usually for exfoliation, i.e. cleaning and dead-skin-cell removing abilities.
Oily skin and ageing skin usually need this, because this process will clean the clogged pores and rejuvenate the epidermis.
Vitamin E (Tocopherol) - Vegetarian edible oils like sunflower oil, olive oil, wheat germ oil and avocado oil. Also many nut oils can be full of this essential nutrient.
Moisturizers with this vitamin will be more powerful. You will find that dry areas of your skin will respond better to moisturizers and masks with this vitamin than any other nutrient.
Homemade facial masks with herbs, which contain these acids, are good for all of the skin types. The additional mask contents are usually the ones that make the mask effective
Vitamin A (Retinol) - Carrots, butternut squash, apricots, sweet papaya, mango, sweet red peppers and many more.
This vitamin is suitable for all types of skin, depends how do you make the mask recipe:
For oily skin and acne you should better mix fresh grated ingredients, which have more acidity and pore-cleaning capacity. For dry skin you should make a mask out of cooked ingredients or to add some oily ingredients to add moisture to your skin.
The above nutrients are essential not only to your skin, but also to your nutrition: So be aware not to skimp on healthy foods, always prepare it at home and avoid fast food chains as much as possible. |
Individual differences |
Methods | Statistics | Clinical | Educational | Industrial | Professional items | World psychology |
Optimism bias is the demonstrated systematic tendency for people to be over-optimistic about the outcome of planned actions. People tend to see the future | Individual differences |
Methods | Statistics | Clinical | Educational | Industrial | Professional items | World psychology |
Optimism bias is the demonstrated systematic tendency for people to be over-optimistic about the outcome of planned actions. People tend to see the future through "rose-colored glasses," as the saying goes. Optimism bias applies to professionals and laypeople alike. Optimism bias arises in relation to estimates of costs and benefits and duration of tasks. It must be accounted for explicitly in appraisals, if these are to be realistic. Optimism bias typically results in cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and delays, when plans are implemented.
The UK government explicitly acknowledges that optimism bias is a problem in planning and budgeting and has developed measures for how to deal with optimism bias in government (HM Treasury 2003). The UK Department for Transport requires project planners to use so-called "optimism bias uplifts" for large transport projects in order to arrive at accurate budgets for planned ventures (Flyvbjerg and Cowi 2004).
In a debate in Harvard Business Review, between Daniel Kahneman, Dan Lovallo, and Bent Flyvbjerg, Flyvbjerg (2003) – while acknowledging the existence of optimism bias – pointed out that what appears to be optimism bias may on closer examination be strategic misrepresentation. Planners may deliberately underestimate costs and overestimate benefits in order to get their projects approved, especially when projects are large and when organizational and political pressures are high. Kahneman and Lovallo (2003) maintained that optimism bias is the main problem.
Sources and further readings Edit
Flyvbjerg, Bent, Mette K. Skamris Holm, and Søren L. Buhl, "Underestimating Costs in Public Works Projects: Error or Lie?" Journal of the American Planning Association, vol. 68, no. 3, Summer 2002, pp. 279-295.
Kahneman, Daniel and Dan Lovallo, 2003. "Response to Bent Flyvbjerg." Harvard Business Review, December Issue, p. 122.
Lovallo, Dan and Daniel Kahneman, 2003. "Delusions of Success: How Optimism Undermines Executives' Decisions," Harvard Business Review, July Issue, pp. 56-63. |
Herschel links water in Jupiter's stratosphere to 1994 comet impact
23 April 2013
Astronomers have finally found direct proof that almost all water present in Jupiter's stratosphere was delivered by comet | Herschel links water in Jupiter's stratosphere to 1994 comet impact
23 April 2013
Astronomers have finally found direct proof that almost all water present in Jupiter's stratosphere was delivered by comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which struck the planet in 1994. The result is based on new data from Herschel that revealed more water in Jupiter's southern hemisphere, where the impacts occurred, than in the north as well as probing the vertical distribution of water in the planet's stratosphere.
Distribution of water in Jupiter's stratosphere. Credit: Water map: ESA/Herschel/T. Cavalié et al.; Jupiter image: NASA/ESA/Reta Beebe (New Mexico State University)
The origin of water in the upper atmospheres of the Solar System's giant planets has been debated for almost two decades. Astronomers were quite surprised at the discovery of water in the stratosphere – an intermediate atmospheric layer – of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, which dates to observations performed with ESA's Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) in 1997. While the source of water in the lower layers of their atmospheres can be explained as internal, the presence of this molecule in their upper atmospheric layers is puzzling due to the scarcity of oxygen there – its supply must have an external origin. Since then, astronomers have investigated several possible candidates that may have delivered water to these planets, from icy rings and satellites to interplanetary dust particles and cometary impacts.
Answers are now starting to flow in from studies using ESA's Herschel space observatory. Herschel boasts unprecedented sensitivity as well as high spatial and spectral resolution at the far-infrared wavelengths, where many water emission lines can be observed. In 2011, a study based on Herschel data indicated that water in the stratosphere of Saturn is provided by its icy moon Enceladus; in 2012, the same origin was suggested for water in the atmosphere of Titan, another of Saturn's moons. Now it's the turn of Jupiter.
Soon after ISO's results, astronomers suspected that stratospheric water on Jupiter may have been, at least in part, supplied by comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, whose fragments famously hit the planet in July 1994. Until now, the claims were based on indirect evidence, such as the observations of carbon dioxide (CO2), which can be produced from the photo-chemistry of water; but the new Herschel data have yielded the long-sought direct proof.
Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 approaching Jupiter in 1994. Credit: NASA, ESA, H. Weaver and E. Smith (STScI) and J. Trauger and R. Evans (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
"We have been eagerly looking forward to observing Jupiter with Herschel," comments Thibault Cavalié from the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Bordeaux, France, who led the study.
"Herschel has a unique combination of instruments that allowed us to perform a three-dimensional reconstruction of water in Jupiter's stratosphere: using PACS, we could map the distribution of water across the entire disc of the planet, and we probed the vertical profile of water in the stratosphere using HIFI. The combination of both data sets was crucial to linking the source of water to the famous cometary impact of almost 19 years ago," he adds.
Cavalié and his colleagues c |
SoTL as an evidence-based way for continuous improvement of teaching and learning is not a passing fad in research or pedagogy. It is a legitimate form of research that is creating a “sustained culture of inquiry about teaching and learning | SoTL as an evidence-based way for continuous improvement of teaching and learning is not a passing fad in research or pedagogy. It is a legitimate form of research that is creating a “sustained culture of inquiry about teaching and learning” (Maki) and an increased awareness of the nature, role and potential of SoTL for improved learning.
“The only real evidence of life is growth.” _ John Newman
Teaching can always become more effective and learning more significant and enduring. Growth in students and their learning is the life-juice of being a teacher. SoTL can stimulate those juices to flow in innovative, effective, and reflective ways.
SoTL is not only the engagement by individuals in vigorous research on teaching and making that research public in building a body of knowledge, but also an attitude and a way of thinking about teaching. SoTL emphasizes that teaching is serious intellectual activity that can be both deeply personal and highly collegial. SoTL, as understood in an expansive sense, is perhaps the best way to improve teaching for student understanding. That is a lofty claim, yet one not only possible, but when done well, probable. |
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