text
stringlengths 182
626k
| id
stringlengths 47
47
| dump
stringclasses 1
value | url
stringlengths 14
379
| file_path
stringlengths 139
140
| language
stringclasses 1
value | language_score
float64 0.65
1
| token_count
int64 49
202k
| score
float64 2.52
5.34
| int_score
int64 3
5
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
how do you parse by reference in java(with JGrasp) 0 Answer(s) 5 years and 8 months ago
Posted in : Java Beginners
Example of parse wise reference in Java
Related Tutorials/Questions & Answers:
how do you parse by reference in java(with JGrasp) howdoyouparse by reference in java(with JGrasp) i am a 1st year beginner in java programming(GR 10) at hillcrest High School in south Africa
My question is
howdoyouparse by reference in java(with JGrasp)
please help me i
How do you add a numerical value to a regex Howdoyou add a numerical value to a regex howdoyou add a numerical value in a regex. I want to replace my pics ex: bob.jpg susan.jpg mike.jpg with 1.jpg 2.jpg 3.jpg etc. Thanks
What do you understand by Hibernate in Java?
What doyou understand by Hibernate in Java? Hey, doyou know about... for the any Java based project?
Since you have assign... the JDBC code.
From youJava program you will issue the command to save the Entity
How to parse an XML as per dtd in java How to parse an XML as per dtd in java Please help to tell me a logic to parse an xml as per mentioned dtd inside xml.
I've used SAX and DOM both but that only check for well formed xml tags but don't validate as per DTD.
parse map in java parse map in java What is a Parser? Can you give the source code to parse map in Java
how do i write a java program for this?? howdo i write a java program for this?? ‚??Ask the user if they have a dog. If ‚??yes‚??, ask the user how old is and compute the dog‚??s age... as the source for your calculations. You only have to account for input from this table
how to parse xml in j2me tutorial how to parse xml in j2me tutorial i want to parse xml file in j2me... in j2me & i try to execute same example on my pc i some how manage to run... it is running so can anyone pls tell me how to create a localhost easily step by step
Reference passing in java Reference passing in java plz tell me wat d meaning of refernce in java?
for example :
wats dis meaning
do-while Loop in Java
In this example you will see how to use the do-while loop...
do-while Loop in Java
In some conditions in java, you need to run some statements
Pass by Reference - Java Beginners
by Reference?can u please explain with examples.is java supports Pass by reference...);
Java programming language does not pass objects by reference...(i);
Pass By Reference: It refers to pass an object
java call by reference - Java Beginners java call by reference in javado we have ane term like call... you call a method by reference, the callee sees the caller?s original variables... affect the caller?s original variables. Java never uses call by reference. Java
HOW TO DO WEBSITE INTERFACE FOR JAVA MODULE HOW TO DO WEBSITE INTERFACE FOR JAVA MODULE Hi , Greetings.
I have created modules in java separately , example student registration , view information etc. All these modules work fine in browser. I use JCreator. How to place
how to parse a csv file using standard libraries? how to parse a csv file using standard libraries? hie i am a beginner in java i want to parse a csv file using any standard libraries i want to know how the libraries are imported and used in eclipse thanks in advance | <urn:uuid:a0cdbfd0-24c4-479d-9c46-a9510b0052f2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.roseindia.net/answers/viewqa/Java-Beginners/13287-how-do-you-parse-by-reference-in-java(with-JGrasp).html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.837783 | 810 | 2.5625 | 3 |
The 14th-century Gothic Cathedral of St. Nicholas, which has since been turned into a mosque named Lala Mustafa Camii, is the most important monument in Famagusta, Northern Cyprus.
History of St. Nicholas' Cathedral (Lala Mustafa Mosque)
Possibly designed by the Frenchman Jean Langlois, St. Nicholas' Cathedral was begun in 1298 and consecrated in 1326. Until 1372, the Lusingnan kings came here to be crowned King of Jerusalem—a purely ceremonial honor, since the Crusaders lost the Holy Land in 1291.
Several royals were buried here, including James II the Bastard and his infant son James III, the last two Lusignan rulers, in 1473 and 1474. And it was at St. Nicholas' that the widow of James II renounced her royal rights and ceded Cyprus to the Doge of Venice in 1489.
The cathedral was badly damaged during the attacks of 1571 and by an earthquake in 1735. After the Ottoman conquest, the cathedral was transformed into a mosque with the addition of a mihrab and minaret and the complete destruction of all art depicting human figures. The frescoes were whitewashed and the altars were demolished. The twin towers were decapitated, and, as at Nicosia, the floor-tombs were emptied.
Nevertheless, the architecture remained entirely intact and its use as a mosque spared it from the Baroque additions and 19th-century restorations that were inflicted on most European cathedrals. The building is thus a rare example of pure Gothic architecture.
What to See at St. Nicholas' Cathedral (Lala Mustafa Mosque)
The Cathedral of St. Nicholas was inspired by that at Reims in France, particularly the twin towers. Only the lower sections of the towers survive and the north tower has been topped with a slender minaret. As is customary in the Eastern Mediterranean, the roof is flat.
The cathedral's façade, in honey-colored stone, makes for an impressive sight as one emerges from the narrow streets of Famagusta. The west front has three shallow porches, with the center one wider than the others.
Over the center porch is a lovely six light window and above that, a rose window (with glass from the early 20th century). The side doors are topped by tall blind double light windows.
The plaza in front of the cathedral-mosque has been pedestrianized, and the outdoor tables of two cafés provide vantage points from which to admire the façade at leisure.
The parvis, shaded by an ancient Ficus sycomorus tree, was originally much larger. It was here that St. Briget of Sweden is said to have preached against the profligacy of Famagustan society. And after the Ottoman conquest in 1571, Bragadino, the Venetian commander of the garrison, was flayed alive here, between two columns from Salamis. To one side of the courtyard, a small Venetian loggia has been converted to an ablutions fountain.
Inside, the cathedral of Famagusta has a nave with two side aisles, no transepts, and a triple apse. It is 55m long and 23m wide, with six columns on each side supporting splendid vaulting. Two chapels were added on the south side and one on the north.
Quick Facts on St. Nicholas' Cathedral (Lala Mustafa Mosque)
|Names:||St. Nicholas' Cathedral (Lala Mustafa Mosque)|
|Categories:||cathedrals; mosques; change of religion|
|Visitor and Contact Information|
|Coordinates:||35.124867° N, 33.942583° E|
|Lodging:||View hotels near St. Nicholas' Cathedral (Lala Mustafa Mosque)|
- Bernard McDonagh and Ian Robertson, Blue Guide Cyprus, 4th ed. (1998), 225-26.
- Marc Dubin, The Rough Guide to Cyprus, 5th ed. (2005), 389.
- Famagusta Travel Forum - TripAdvisor
- Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque - Cypnet
- Photos of St. Nicholas' Cathedral (Lala Mustafa Mosque) - here on Sacred Destinations
Map of St. Nicholas' Cathedral (Lala Mustafa Mosque)
Below is a location map and aerial view of St. Nicholas' Cathedral (Lala Mustafa Mosque). Using the buttons on the left (or the wheel on your mouse), you can zoom in for a closer look, or zoom out to get your bearings. To move around, click and drag the map with your mouse. | <urn:uuid:ef042105-b2dd-480e-ab96-6881ab005333> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.sacred-destinations.com/cyprus/famagusta-st-nicholas-cathedral-lala-mustafa-camii | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947704 | 988 | 3.453125 | 3 |
Specimens of Bushman Folklore, by W.H.I. Bleek and L.C. Lloyd, , at sacred-texts.com
"It is the Story of the Lions and the Ostrich."
And the Lions conspired together that they might deceive the Ostrich; for, the women were
[1. The Lion was a man, the Ostrich was also a man, at the time when the Lion kicked the Ostrich's ||hatten-ttu; when they called (in) the #gebbi-ggu. Therefore, the nail of the Ostrich decayed, while it felt that he (the Ostrich) had kicked the Lion's |una-ttu. Therefore, it decayed. Therefore, the people, with regard to the scar yonder on the Ostrich's ||hatten-ttu, they say that it is (from) the Lion's nail.
2. The women of the Ostriches and of the Lions.]
wont, with regard to the Ostrich, they only praised the Ostrich for calling finely; the women did not praise them. And they (the Lions), speaking, said: "In what manner shall I we deceive?" And another Lion answered, he said: "We must tell the women to make a (game of) #gebbi-ggu, that we may see whether the women will again do as they are wont to do; when they only admire (?) the Ostrich; that we may really see whether it be true that the women admire (?) the Ostrich. We shall see what the Ostrich will do." And another Lion spoke, be said: "Why can it be that the Ostrich calls so well (lit. does not a little call sweetly)?" And the other Lion answered, he said: "The ostrich calls with his lungs; therefore, his throat sounds in this manner; his chest's front. Thou dost call with thy mouth; therefore, thou dost not call nicely."
The other Lion answered, he said: "Ye must make a (game of) #gebbi-ggu, that ye may kill the Ostrich, that ye may take out the Ostrich's lungs,
[1. The |goo or #gebbi-ggu among the Grass Bushmen.
They (the Grass Bushmen) call [like the male ostrich]; the women clap their hands for them; they (the men) call to the women. The women are those who dance; they (the men) call. And this woman goes out (from the dance), she stands [being weary], while two other persons (i.e. two other women), they come forward in among the men, while the men call. They call more sweetly than anybody, for, their throats sound like real Ostriches; while the women are those who sing, while the men call.]
that ye may eat them; and ye will call, sounding like the Ostrich, when ye have eaten the Ostrich's lungs."
And the Lions spoke, they said to the women: "Make a (game of) #gebbi-ggu" They would listen whether it were true that the Ostrich calls finely.
And the women made a (game of) #gebbi-ggu on account of it; and the Lion called. The Ostrich was still yonder at his house; the Lion called; the women did not applaud the Lion, because they felt that the Lion did not call well; for, they continued to look at the Lion; and the Ostrich came; and the Ostrich called, sounding afar. And the women exclaimed: "I do wish that the Lion called in this manner; for, he sounds as if he had put his tail into his mouth, while the Ostrich calls in a resounding manner."
And the Lion, answering, said: "Dost thou not see that the women act in this manner towards the Ostrich? and it is only the Ostrich whom they cherish, because he possesses this sweet call. The women cherish him only."
And the other Lion became angry on account of it; namely, that the Ostrich was the one whom the women cherished; and he seemed as if he were about to move away; and he scratched the Ostrich's ||hatten-ttu; scratched, tearing it. And he called out: "is it a thing which calls sweetly?" while he kicked the Ostrich's ||hatten-ttu. And the Ostrich also quickly (?) turned back. And the Ostrich also kicked, tearing his |uan-ttu; and the Ostrich, speaking, said: "This person, it is his |uan-ttu, he is wroth with me, because he is the one who is wont to hold his tail in his mouth
when he calls; this is why the women do not praise him; while the women feel that he does not call nicely for the women. This is why the women are not willing to make a #gebbi-ggu for him; the women feel that he does not call, sounding like me; in that case the women would have praised him."
Therefore, my grandfather spoke, he said to us about it, that we should also do as the Lion formerly did to the Ostrich about it, when he had formerly killed the Ostrich; he ate the Ostrich's lungs, while he wished that he might call, sounding like the Ostrich. Therefore, he ate the lungs.
My grandfather also gave us the Ostrich's lungs to eat, that we might also resemble the Ostrich; and we spoke, we asked our grandfather, whether we should not baking cook the Ostrich's lungs; and our grandfather spoke, he said to us about it, that we should not cook the Ostrich's lungs; for, we in this manner eat the Ostrich's lungs, eat them raw. For, we should, if we were to eat the Ostrich's lungs when they were cooked, we should not call, sounding like the Ostrich, if we ate them when they were cooked. Our grandfather, speaking, told us about it, that, we should not chew the Ostrich's lungs, we should swallow them down, while they were whole. For, we should, if we had chewed the Ostrich's lungs, we should not call, sounding like the Ostrich, if we had chewed them.
And, our grandfather, speaking, said: "Ye must come and stand around, that I may be cutting off from the Ostrich's lungs, that I may be giving
[1. We who were little boys," the narrator explains.]
them to you, that ye may be swallowing them down." And we, answering, said: "O my grandfather! We do not wish to eat the Ostrich's lungs when they are raw."And our grandfather answered, he said to us about it, that we also wished to resemble the Lion; he formerly became angry with the Ostrich, about the Ostrich's fine calling. We also should be wont if we heard that our companions called, sounding very sweetly, we should become angry with our companions, when we heard that they called, sounding very sweetly; we should fight with them, if we felt that the women did not applaud (?) us. Therefore, we become angry. We are fighting with them, because we are angry that the women do not applaud(?) us.
Translation of Notes.
The Lion was a man, the Ostrich was also a man, at that time when the Lion kicked the Ostrich's ||hatten-ttu; when they were calling the #gebbi-ggu. Therefore, the nail of the Ostrich decayed; while it felt that he had kicked the Lion's |uan-ttu. Therefore, it decayed on account of it. Therefore, the people are used to say to the scar which is yonder upon the Ostrich's ||hatten-ttu, that it is the Lion's nail.
The time when the Lion had not killed the Ostrich, was the one at which they made the #gebbi-ggu's fight. He, afterwards, killed the Ostrich; and he ate the Ostrich; it was at a new time that he ate the Ostrich; and he made "a food's thing" of the Ostrich; therefore, the old people say, that, the Lion is a thing which is wont, when it has killed an Ostrich, it is not willing to go away in fear, leaving the Ostrich; for, it is wont, even if we are speaking very angrily to it, it is not willing to go away in fear, leaving the Ostrich. For, it would be very angry with us, if we even thought that we would drive it away. | <urn:uuid:ae980bc1-7b76-44a1-9e8a-dbacaaefd392> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.sacred-texts.com/afr/sbf/sbf18.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979216 | 1,909 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Pagan Christs, by John M. Robertson, , at sacred-texts.com
The sacrifice of a Saviour-God is a specialisation of the general practice of human sacrifice, which takes many forms. 1 The most readily intelligible are those in which (a), after a tribal war, captives are ritually slain to appease or compensate the spirits of those killed in fighting; (b) those in which, in time of pestilence or 1 danger, or by way of precaution, victims are slain to propitiate the deities supposed to be concerned; (c) those by way of thank-offerings to the Gods after a victory; 2 and (d) those in which, on the death of a savage chief, slaves and wivesand, it may be, animalsare slain to accompany him in the "other" life, whatever it may be. The victims in the last case are the analogues of the weapons and the food placed in or on or near the grave in ordinary savage burial.
The fourth form of ritual slaying is sometimes differentiated from human sacrifice "in the true sense" as being simply a provision, dictated by filial piety, for the comfort and dignity of a savage aristocrat in the other world. 3 It is well to note the distinction; but it is no less important to realise how completely the conception in this case fuses psychologically with that behind the express sacrifice of a victim to appease a deity, and, further, how the funeral sacrifice leads up to the "messenger" and "scapegoat" sacrifices, which blend in that of the Saviour-God-Man. All three of the forms specified are common in savage and barbaric life, and it is in the psychic atmosphere of such conventional blood-shedding that there grows up the whole body of the religious doctrine of sacrifice. Human sacrifice, indeed, may be defined as one specialisation of ritual slaughter and sacrament.
Strictly speaking, the "messenger" and "scapegoat" victims are also outside the primary conception of sacrifice inasmuch as
they are not, or not necessarily, offered up to any God by way of propitiation. The pharmakos or "magic-man" (literally "medicine-man," but not in the received sense of that term) who was ritually beaten and put to death in the festival called Thargelia at Athens was strictly a scapegoat, upon whom were put all evils, the people's sins included: he took them away, and was killed to complete the process of riddance, but was not "offered up" to any God. 1 But in point of fact the Hebrew scapegoat was specifically a "sin offering"; and of the two goats concerned one was "for the Lord" and the other "for Azazel," the Goat-God. 2 And even in the Greek case the act of ritual slaying is akin to the others inasmuch as all alike are supposed to work either the salvation or benefit of the community or the good of an eminent individual. As we shall see, the slaying which it most concerns us to trace, that of the Saviour-God, may in some cases be only in this general sense a sacrifice, being conceivably rather an act of ritual magic, like the slaying of the pharmakos, than a propitiation of a God, since the victim (even in the case of the scapegoat) is a God. But, as we shall see, the forms of the slaying assimilated, all being alike "religious," and the psychic connotations were very much the same. 3
Of the first of the four common forms above specified the typical examples are those furnished by the practice of the North-American Indians, 4 who commonly added cannibalism 5 to their torture-sacrifices, apparently combining the motives which led some savages to eat their dead by way of symbolic "communion," and those which suggested the eating of brave enemies, or animals, in the hope of acquiring their courage. This last is still common in Africa; where, again, we have instances of individual appeasement of the slain. "In cases of murder or manslaughter a sacrifice is made to lay the spirit of the victim"; 6 and among the Nilotic negroes, when a warrior has killed a man, he must in propitiation shave his head, catch a fowl, hang it round his neck by the beak, and cut away the body, leaving the head hanging. 7 Here the fowl is a surrogate for
the man. In the case of funeral sacrifices also, we shall see, the element of cannibalism enters; and here too the primary principle appears to have been that which underlay "kin-eating," though a new sacramental element begins to be involved. In any case the procedure is clearly religious. A contemporary anthropologist tells that among the Unyoro and other tribes of Uganda, before British rule, on the death of a king,
[paragraph continues] "How any beings could hit on this method of honouring a dead king," he concludes, "passes the range of the most morbid imagination." 2 The really surprising thing is that a professed anthropologist in the twentieth century should have been so perplexed. The cruelly simple usage in question is one of the most familiar types of human sacrifice; 3 and even the further development of "messenger" sacrifices, which we shall have to consider later, proceeds on the same primitive and transparent reasoning. In the still later development of the Man-God sacrifice, which partly involves the last-mentioned, the psychic causation is more complicated, and, as we shall see, the variations of practice set up a variety of problems. In some forms it is simple enough. At Benin, for instance, hundreds of criminals were sacrificed annually at one festival, at the rate of twenty-three a day. On these occasions the king, regally attired, "addressed
the victims in a kind voice, telling them he was sending them with a message 1 to his father. They were to salute his father, and tell him that his son was not ready to join him yet, but he sent them, the victims, to be with his father and salute him." 2 In less primitive societies we shall find the office of messenger doubled with that of the sacrificed God-Man. He in turn appears at times to be doubled with the Scapegoat, or remover of sins and evil spirits; and there are yet other variantse.g., the simple sacrifices of victims slain in treaty-making as "blood of reconciliation." 3 But if each phase be handled in a scientific spirit, it will be found to reveal in turn much if not all of its anthropological significance.
The most remarkable of the Man-God-slaying cults which have come under what maybe termed scientific observation, while actually in force, is that which prevailed till fifty or sixty years ago among the mountaineer Khonds, 4 or Kui, of Orissa. The first observer, Major Macpherson, was a man abnormally qualified in his day both for the study of the sacrificial rite and for its peaceful abolition; and science owes him on the former head nearly as much as civilisation does on the latter. It would be hard to find an anthropological research before his day more marked by the scientific spirit.
On the face of his report, there are various reasons for regarding the Khonds as a Dravidian race 5 driven to the hills (where they subjugated other aborigines) by invading Oriyas; and one of several grounds for surmising that their religion derives from ancient Central-Asiatic sources is the fact that, like the Chinese, they show great respect for parents and ancestors. One of their boasts is, or was, "that they reverence their fathers and mothers, while the Hindus treat theirs with contempt." 6 Another reason is their rejection alike of temples and images. "They regard the making, setting-up, and worshipping of images of the Gods as the most signal proof of conscious removal to a hopeless distance from communion with them; a confession of utter despair of being permitted to make any
direct approach to the deity: a sense of debarment which they themselves have never felt." 1 Yet another reason is the fact that they had no official priesthood, the function being open to anyone who felt called to assume it, and went through the normal preliminary symptoms of a state of trance.
Politically the hill Khonds of Orissa were governed in general by patriarchs, patriarchal councils, and popular assemblies; and there was no trace of Christian influencesthe very existence of the tribes having been unknown to the Government before 1835. Their religious system was a normal polytheism, with a Supreme Creator God, known as Boora Pennu or Light God, at the head. Under him were Tari (or Bera) Pennu, 2 the Earth-Goddess, and certain second-class deities of natural or social forces, as rain, vegetation, increase, hunting, war, and boundaries. Next came the deified sinless men of the first age, who were the tutelary Gods of tribes and septs; and under these ranked a multitude of local spirits, all named Gods, who presided over villages, houses, hills, fountains, streams, forests, and so forth. With the second order of Gods was ranked Dinga, the judge of the dead and allotter of retribution, who has some appearance of being taken over from another cult.
It was to Tari, the Earth-Goddess, that human sacrifices were offered; and from the fact that they occurred only among certain tribes, who theoretically admitted the inferiority of Tari to Boora, but gave her their chief devotion and credited her as the Boora-worshippers did Boora with raising fallen man from misery and introducing civilisation, it may be inferred that the cults were originally independent. In the Māliahs (hill districts) of Goomsur, the sacrifice was to "Thadha Pennu," the Earth-Goddess, symbolised as a peacock. 3 To the last, the sect of Boora regarded human sacrifice "with the utmost abhorrence as the consummation of human guilt, and believed it to have been adopted under monstrous delusions devised by Tari as the mother of falsehood, with a view solely to the
final destruction of her followers." 1 It is told of Boora, too, that he interfered, through a minor God, according to one myth, to substitute a buffalo for a man as an oblation to Tari; and this miracle is commemorated at an annual great festival of Boora, called the "jakri" or "dragging," on account of the way in which the buffalopreviously treated as a meriahis finally handled. According to another account, Boora sent four divine agents to prevent a human sacrifice for which Tari had called. Afterwards, however, her worshippers relapsed. 2
The common relationship of exogamous tribes, who are constantly at war yet habitually intermarry, 3 is the apparent explanation of such a permanent schism. But it seems not impossible that the sacrificial cult was originally that of a conquered race, and that a section of the Khonds adopted it from them, as so often happens where a primitive rite or mystery practised by aborigines is able to appeal to later comers. 4 It was from an apparently subject race who participated in the cult that the Tari-worshipping Khonds purchased their human victims. 5
As normally practised, the rite was not totemistic, 6 but of the nature of "sympathetic magic," and the purpose was to promote agricultural fertility; but it was also resorted to as a special means of propitiation in the case of a pestilence or other sign of divine displeasure, such as a calamity in the family of a chief; and individual families similarly made propitiation for individual disaster. 7 The victim, called the meriah, or tokki, or keddi, 8 was in all cases either purchased from the procuring caste (who at times kidnapped children from the plains for the purpose) or bred as a hereditary victim, a number of families being set apart and cherished for the purpose, so that heor she, for it was often a womanwas either personally willing to be slain on religious grounds or was the property of the sacrificers. As it was the universal conviction that
the meriah became a God by the act of sacrifice, there was no difficulty in keeping up the supply; and in times of famine Khonds would sell their own children as victims, considering the sacrificial death a highly honourable one. And the Meriah, being consecrated from the beginning, had unlimited sexual liberty, his intercourse with the wife or daughter of any tribesman being welcomed as a boon from the deity. Generally, however, he had assigned to him a wife, herself a destined victim, and mother of victims to come. 1
The special religio-ethical feature of the rite was the universally accepted doctrine that the victim, if not a volunteer, must be "bought with a price," 2 and died "for all mankind," not merely for the Khonds; 3 and this view was set forth in the ritual, though it also expressed distinctly the local demand for greater wealth. An odd feature of it was that, although the flesh of the slain victim was cut up into shreds so that a piece might be buried in every field, the recited myth told that Tari demanded blood because when the earth was soft mud she made it firm by the blood she dropped when she cut her finger. 4 And there was put in her mouth the injunction: "Behold the good change! cut up my body to complete it." 5 It thus appears that originally the victim had represented the Earth-Goddess herself; and in a variant of the Khond legend in which two women, Karaboodi and Thartaboodi, figure as the "only two females on the earth," each with a male son, the former, finding that a drop of her blood hardens the wet earth, tells her son to cut her up, which he does. Thereafter the God "Boora Panoo" comes upon the scene, and the cult of human sacrifice is methodically established, the spirit of Karaboodi insisting on its continuance when her descendants offer a monkey as a substitute for a man. 6 Obviously it is an agricultural rite; and it may be that the pretence of drying up the soft mud was a magical device to put the evil spirits of drought on a false scent.
The sacrificial rite lasted three or five days. On the first, the meriah's hair, previously kept long, was shaved offsave in cases where it had been shorn ten or twelve days beforeand the people
passed the night in a licentious revel. 1 On the second, he was carefully bathed and newly clothed, taken in procession to the sacred (or taboo) Meriah grove, where he was fastened to a stake, 2 seated, and anointed with ghee, oil, and turmeric 3 (red dye), garlanded with flowers, and worshipped during the day by the assembly, who again spent the night in debauchery. On the third day he was given milk to drink, and the final act of ritual and sacrifice began. At this stage we are struck by the importance of the priest: "a great and fitly instructed priest alone can officiate"; and it is to be gathered from the accounts of the Janni, as well as from the ritual (1) that he was traditionally a celibate and recluse, parading his austerities and securing sanctity by personal uncleanness; (2) that it was primarily his function to brave the curse of the sacrificed and deified victim; and (3) that it was thus the priestly influence that maintained the sacrifice. Four days after the sacrifice of the meriah there was sacrificed a buffalo, of which the remains were left for the meriah's spirit 4a safeguard against blood-guiltiness. 5 The ritual, however, was so framed to begin with as to distribute the responsibility over the village headman or patriarch and the body of the people. On the one hand, the victim reproached his slayers while avowing the belief that he was made a God by the act; on the other hand, the priest and the headman, pleading this, defended themselves by reciting the circumstances under which he was purchased and dedicated, he consenting as a child. The idea seems to have been to set forth thoroughly both points of view, so that there should be no misunderstanding about the religious nature of the act, and the responsibility of the entire community for it; but whether by way of sympathetic imagination on the part of some ritual-making priest, or by simple adoption of the actual language of some past sufferer, the victim in one form of the ritual was made to invoke a curse upon the priest, while the latter declared that it was he, as minister of the Creator God, who gave the death its virtue, and threatened to deprive the resisting one of a place among the Gods. 6 Finally he was either fastened to a cross of which the horizontal bar, pierced by the upright, could be
raised or lowered at will, 1 or placed in the cleft or split made in a long branch of a green tree, which was made to grasp his neck or chest, the open ends being closed and tightly tied so as to imprison him in the wood, and make as it were a cross, of which he was the upright; and it appears to have been at this stage that there occurred one of the most significant acts in the entire ritual. It being essential that the victim should finally not resist, his arms and legs, or, where the arms were sufficiently secured, the legs only, were broken, save in cases where the end was attained by drugging him with opium or datura. 2 This accomplished, the priest slightly wounded the victim with an axe, and the crowd instantly cut him to pieces, leaving untouched the head and intestines. These, after being carefully watched in the interim, were next day, in some cases, burned to ashes with a whole sheep; and the ashes were spread over the fields, or laid as a paste over the houses and granaries. In the same spirit, the portions of flesh were solemnly carried to the participating villages, religiously divided among the people, and buried in the fields, each man placing his piece in the earth "behind his back without looking."
Upon this ritual there were many local variations. Major-General Campbell, who had followed Macpherson in the Khond agency, tells of a form of the rite in which the victim was first drugged, then taken to the place of execution, where his head and neck were placed in the cleft of a strong split-bamboo, the ends of which were secured and held; whereafter the priest with his axe broke the joints of the legs and arms, and the sacrifice was consummated by the people in the usual frightful way. 3 Among the Khonds of the Māliahs of Goomsur there was much feasting and intoxication for a month prior to the sacrifice; on the day before the rite the victim was intoxicated with toddy, garlanded, bound to a post bearing the peacock effigy of the Earth-Goddess, 4 and ritually addressed as a God. On the next day he was again intoxicated and anointed with oil, of which each one present sought to obtain a touch for his own head. Finally a hog was sacrificed; and the
victim was stifled in the mud made with its blood, then cut in pieces. A buffalo calf was afterwards maimed in front of the post, and on the third day was killed and eaten, 1 visibly as a surrogate. Among the hill tribe called Codooloo, as among the Khonds, there were two sects, of which one offered human sacrifices to the God "Jenkery." In this case the purchased victim had absolute sexual liberty and the right to eat and drink whatever he would. From the moment of seizure till the sacrifice he was kept intoxicated. The signal for slaughter was a wound in the stomach, with the blood from which the image of the God was besmeared. Then he was cut to pieces, everyone trying to secure a morsel, to be presented to the God of his own village. 2
In yet other cases, according to M. Elie Reclus, the two methods of preventing the victim's struggles were combined. "She must not die in her bonds, since she dies voluntarily, of her own freewill, as they say. He [the priest] loosens her from the stake, stupefies her by making her gulp down a portion of opium and datura, then breaks her elbows and knees with the back of the hatchet. 3 Other variations are noted in the use of the drug; 4 and in different districts the entire sacrifice varied. Thus among the Kotaya hill tribes the victim was taken before the image of the Earth-Goddess, and rice, coloured (red) with turmeric, was thrown on his hair, 5 while he was kept under the influence of opium. In this case the victim had enjoyed special privileges for an unspecified period, all his wishes being granted, and every woman in the village being at his command as a concubine. 6 No quasi-crucifixion is specified, the victim being simply stabbed "in the stomach," and the blood used to bathe the idol, whereafter he was cut to pieces by the crowd. 7 In yet another case (at Ramgherry and Lutchampore) the victim was placed in irons, new clothed, made drunk with arrack, and forced into the "temple" of the Goddess, a hole three feet deep. There his throat was cut and his head cut off; the remains being
covered with earth and with a pile of stones. When the next victim was to be sacrificed, the hole was cleared out afresh for the purpose.
In this district occurred yet another variation. Every third year two victims were sacrificed in honour of the Goddess; and, whether thus triennially or annually, at Bundair in Jeypore there were sacrificed to the Sun-God at one festival three victims, "one at the east, one at the west, and the third in the centre of the village." 1 In this case each victim was tied by the hair to a post near his grave, over which he was suspended horizontally with the face downwards, his legs and arms being held outstretched by the assistants. 2 He was then beheaded, and the head, stuck on the stake, was there left to decay. A further variation was in the direction of the principle that the infliction of pain made the sacrifice specially efficacious. 3 In some districts the victim, after being exposed on a couch, and led in procession round the place of sacrifice, was put to death by slow burning, or by applying hot brands to the body on a sloping pyre, and tortured as long as possible, "it being believed that the favour of the Earth-Goddess, especially in respect of the supply of rain, will be in proportion to the quantity of tears which may be extracted." 4 It is needless to recapitulate the further variants at any length. "Victims were stoned, beaten to death with tomahawks or heavy iron rings......; they were strangled; they were crushed between two planks; 5 they were drowned in a pool in the jungle, or in a trough filled with pig's blood......Sometimes the victim was slowly roasted......; sometimes he was despatched by a blow to the heart, and the priest plunged a wooden image into the gaping wound, that the mannikin might be gorged with blood." 6
All that is constant is the principle of a redemptory bloody sacrifice. But by way of synopsis it may be noted that there prevail certain principles of procedure and symbolism, especially (1) that of (2) stupefying or laming the victim to secure apparent acquiescence; the counter-principle of the need either for suffering as such or for such suffering as shall cause the victim to weep mucha conception belonging to sympathetic magic; (3) the anointing, and the
consequent sanctification of the oil; (4) the deification of the victim; (5) the according to him of remarkable privileges, sexual and social; and (6) a certain propensity to the symbol of the cross.
Seeing that the drinking of the soma was primordially a religious act in the East, and that intoxicants play a similar part among modern Polynesians, 1 it seems not impossible that the drugging or intoxicating of the victim was a development from a form of the rite in which he took part in a common banquet; but of this no clear trace had been left, save among the Native Americans of the past. 2 It is to be noted, too, that while the destined child victim among the Khonds went about freely, in some cases at least the adult victim was kept fettered, though well fed, in the house of the village patriarch. 3
Very significant, further, is the horrible stratagem employed by the Bataks of the Malay Peninsula to secure acquiescence from the boy victim in their Pangulabalang, a sacrifice of one "to be sent out for the overthrow of enemies." "A boy is taken from a stranger tribe, and for a time well-fed with titbits, till he has grown quite trustful. Then one day he is taken and blindfolded; a hole is dug, and he is put in it; and the sorcerer comes and asks him: 'Wilt thou go where we send thee?' 'Wilt thou do only good to us, and evil to our enemies?' 'Wilt thou aid us in war and overthrow our enemies?'and so on. To all the questions the trusting boy answers 'Yes.' Meanwhile lead has been melted on the fire; it is thrown suddenly on his neck, whereof he dies. The corpse is burned; but the ashes and fat are carefully preserved. These remains are now precious magic-medicine, for through them the spirit of the dead may be forced to do all he promised in life." 4 Here too the victim is evidently deified, and his ritual "willingness" is an essential element in the efficacy of the sacrifice.
It is to be noted, finally, that when, by the persuasions of Macpherson or the menaces of his successors, open human sacrifices were put an end to among the Khonds, they treated the henceforth substituted buffalo very much as they had treated the meriah. The ritual accosts him as a human being, and commiserates him, as it
did the meriah, for being sold; he is frequently anointed; he is implored to be a willing sacrifice; cakes are offered to him; he is promised a happy immortality in the paradise of the Earth-Goddess; and he is instantly cut to pieces, and the fragments buried in the fields, as was done with the flesh of the human victim. A song preserves (inaccurately) the memory of the work done by Macpherson and Campbell. 1 Among the Koyis "a langur monkey is frequently substituted" for the human victim, "and called for occasion Ekuroma Potui.e., a male with small breasts. This name is given in the hope of persuading the Goddess [Māmili or Pele] that she is receiving a human sacrifice." 2 The sheep or goats offered by the same tribe to the smallpox-Goddess are given toddy to drink; their acceptance is regarded as of good omen; and when they are eaten the women are excluded from the repast, 3 as happens in so many cannibal banquets. 4 And, again, there is record that it is or was recently "the practice, a few years ago, at every Dassara festival in Jeypore, Vizagapatam, to select a specially fine ram, wash it, shave its head, affix thereto red and white bottu and nāman (sect marks) between the eyes and down the nose, and gird it with a new white cloth after the manner of a human being. The animal being then fastened in a sitting posture, certain pūja (worship) was performed by a Brahman priest, and it was decapitated." 5
Here we have the plainest substitution of the animal for the man; and the process entitles us to credit the old record in the Satapatha Brāhmana that "in the beginning the sacrifice most acceptable to the Gods was man," and that "for the man a horse was substituted, then an ox, then a sheep, then a goat, until at length it was found that the Gods were most pleased with offerings of rice and barley." 6 What has happened under our own eyes is very likely to have happened in progressive periods of ancient civilisation. The progression from man to animals has repeatedly occurred, 7 and it is impossible to explain such cases as either survivals or revivals of totem sacrifices. The victims are the
ordinary domestic animals; 1 and they are ceremonially invested with the attributes and the divinity of the human being. It is reasonable to assume that the same evolution as is here traced took place in at least some of the ostensible surrogate sacrifices in Greece 2 and elsewhere, seeing that there are so many records or traditions of the suppression of human sacrifices in the countries in question. And all this is in keeping with the theory of the present inquiry.
105:1 For lists of instances in all times and countries see Adolf Bastian, Der Mensch in der Geschichte, 1860, iii, 110-112; Constant, De la religion, liv. xi, ch. ii (ed. 1833, vol. iv, p. 158 sq.); and Kalisch, Comm. on Leviticus, 1867, i, 326 sq.
105:2 "Those thank-offerings are not as a rule spontaneous; the Gods demand them, as their fruits of the victory, through the priests" (A. B. Ellis, The Ewe-speaking Peoples, 1890, p. 119).
105:3 Cp. Major Mockler-Ferryman, British West Africa, 2nd ed. 1900, p. 389; Mary H. Kingsley, Travels in West Africa, 1897, p. 442.
106:1 See the argument of Miss J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 2nd ed. 1908, pp. 95-109.
106:2 Lev. xvi, 5-11. Marg.
106:3 Miss Harrison (p. 109) begs the question when she says that "the ceremonials of sacrifice and riddance express widely different conditions and sentiments in the mind of the worshipper."
106:4 Lafitau, Murs des sauvages ameriquains, 1724, ii, 266 sq.; Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, iii, 159.
106:5 Not always. The Pani and the Natchez are said not to have practised cannibalism, though the latter at times and the former customarily offered human sacrifices (waltz, iii, 159). But these tribes were among the least savage.
106:6 Livingstone, Popular Account of Missionary Travels and Researches, 1861, p. 292: ed. 1905, p. 405. Compare the slaughter of Polixena on the grave of Achilles. Euripides, Hecuba, 535 sq.
106:7 Sir H. H. Johnston, The Uganda Protectorate, 1002, ii, 794.
107:1 There is here suggested the interesting question whether the adytum or cave which was the nucleus of Semitic and other ancient temples (see Christianity and Mythology, 2nd ed. p. 306) was originally a victim-pit or grave. On the other hand compare the usage as to "upper chambers," noted hereinafter.
107:2 Uganda and its Peoples: Notes on the Protectorate of Uganda, especially the Anthropology and Ethnology of the Indigenous Races, by J. F. Cunningham, F.R.G.S., F.Z.S., 1905, 0. 31. Cp. pp. 56, 318.
107:3 Mr. Cunningham notes (pp. 32-33) that the nine victims must belong to the king's tribe. The reason is obvious: they must be his friendly servants. This is quite clear in the case of the Baganda kings, whose chief attendants were sacrificed. Cp. Allen and Thomson, Narrative of the British Expedition to the Niger, 1848, i, 328. In other parts of Africa the number of twelve victims is common: see Great Benin, by H. Ling Roth, 1903, p. 70. It is hardly necessary to recall the sacrifices of twelves in the Hebrew cult, or that of the twelve Trojans to the manes of Patroclus by Achilles. In the latter case the theory would be that the slain would serve as slaves to Patroclus in the Shades, an office for which, in the circumstances, only enemies were available.
108:1 "The slaying of victims to convey messages is a later modification; and is seemingly at variance with the accepted idea that the dead are cognizant of what is taking place in the world." Sir A. B. Ellis, Ewe-speaking Peoples, p. 118.
108:2 C. Punch, cited by H. Ling Roth, Great Benin, 1903, p. 74.
108:3 Major Glyn Leonard, The Lower Niger and its Tribes, 1906, p. 444.
108:4 The name is often spelt Kandh or Khand, but it is officially declared that the proper spelling is Kondh. See Thurston's Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Madras, 1909, iii, 356. Kondh or Khond (from the Telugu word Konda, a hill) is a name given by neighbouring peoples. Those so named call themselves Kui. The race is found, in various stages of civilisation, and with varying dialects, in other parts of southern India. Id. pp. 357, 367.
108:5 Cp. Elie Reclus, Primitive Folk, pp. 247-8; Tyler, Primitive Culture, 3rd ed. ii. 271. Dalton, Ethnography of Bengal, p. 243, classes the Khonds as certainly Dravidian. So Grierson, in Thurston, iii, 357.
108:6 Memorials of Service in India. From the Correspondence of the late Major S. C. Macpherson, C.B. Edited by his brother, William Macpherson. London, 1865, p. 67.
109:1 Id. p. 103. It is open to question whether the psychological analysis here does not partly stand for the thought of the observer. Lack of art, and of permanent dwellings, may be the true explanation. See above, Pt. I, ch. ii, p. 71 note, and cp. the Memorials, p. 106, n., as to similar phenomena among mountaineers in Siam. See also Lubbock, Origin of Civilisation, 5th ed. p. 374, as to the lack of temples and images among the Malagasy, the wild tribes of Cambodia, the Toorkmans, and other races of Siberia; and Turner, Nineteen Years in Polynesia, 1861, p. 88, as to the primitive Tannese, who "have no idols." Dapper, a seventeenth-century Dutch traveller, who sojourned at Benin, describes the natives as holding that it would be absurd to make images of "God" who is invisible, though they have many images of their "idol-Gods." Here again the psychology of the observer is suspect. (Roth, Great Benin, 190 t, p. 50.)
109:2 Dr. John Shortt, "Contribn. to the Ethnology of Jeypore" in Trans. of Ethnol. Soc. N.S. vol. vi (1868), p. 271, gives the names of the two deities in another district as Bona Peimu and Tari Peimu.
109:3 Report of Mr. Russell, 1837, in Selections from the Records, Govt. of India, No. V. Human Sacrifice and Infanticide, 1154, cited by E. Thurston, Ethnographic Notes in Southern India, 1906, p. 511; also in Castes and Tribes of Southern India, iii, 372.
110:1 Macpherson, p. 98. Cp. p. 131, and Shortt, as cited, p. 271.
110:2 Macpherson, pp. 108. 109; Shortt, as cited.
110:3 Macpherson, p. 69.
110:4 See Memorials, p. 124; and cp. Short History of Freethought, 2nd ed. i, 43-44. The Sect of Boora represent that the Tari-worshippers, debased by her tuition, lived like savages "until by intercourse with us, as in receiving wives, they became civilised" (p. 110). But tribes of the Boora-worshippers practised female infanticide (p. 113).
110:5 Id. pp. 65, 114, 115.
110:6 In one case, where an Elephant-God was worshipped, the victim was fastened to and swung by the proboscis of a wooden elephant, and thus identified with the God (Major-General Campbell, Narrative of Thirteen Years Service among the Wild Tribes of Khondistan, 1864, pp. 51, 126). This rite may have been totemistic; but where the Earth-Goddess was figured as a bird, and the Earth-God as a peacock, these creatures were not sacrificed (Id. pp. 51. 54).
110:7 So also in the Māliahs of Goomsur. Russell, cited by Thurston, p. 511. Both motives were acted on in the human sacrifices of the Pawnees and the Dakotas in North America. Lindesay Brine, Travels amongst American Indians, 1894, p. 132.
110:8 Meriah is the Oriya word; the others are Khond terms. The former probably means "messenger"the victim being a messenger to the deity. Dalton, Ethnography of Bengal. 1872, p. 29.
111:1 Macpherson, p. 116.
111:2 Shortt, as cited, p. 273; Campbell, as cited, p. 52; Russell, as cited by Thurston. Among the Khonds of the Māliahs of Goomsur, private families purchased children, and reared them as future victims. "Criminals, or prisoners captured in war," says Russell, "are not considered fitting subjects."
111:3 Macpherson, pp. 98, 115, 116, 117, 122, 136.
111:4 Shortt, p. 271; Macpherson, pp. 121, 124.
111:5 Macpherson, p. 121; Shortt, p. 271. M. Elie Reclus (Primitive Folk, pp. 312-313, 316- 317) makes the doctrine more explicit, saying that according to the Khond legend "Tari had intended each time to submit to the sacrifice in her own person," saying, "I am the meriah: I come to be immolated," and that her worshippers in each case persuaded her to accept a proxy.
111:6 Thurston, Castes and Tribes, iii, 368-370, following the statement of Mr. A. B. Jayaram Moodaliar.
112:1 Macpherson, pp. 107, 117, 118; Shortt, as cited.
112:2 Sometimes placed between two shrubs. Macpherson, p. 118.
112:3 Turmeric is a principal crop with the Khonds, and part of their argument for a blood sacrifice was that blood was needed to secure the deep red colour of the plant.
112:4 Macpherson, p. 130. Cp. p. 108, as to the buffalo sacrifice to Boora Pennu. And see hereinafter as to the buffalo sacrifice among the Bataks.
112:5 The primitive sense of the danger incurred by the sacrificer is often apparent in these Dravidian rites. See Thurston, Castes and Tribes, iv, 313.
112:6 Macpherson, pp. 120-7. An abbreviated account of the ritual is given in J. Ludlow's British India, its Races and its History, 1858, i, 25-30.
113:1 See the photograph of a preserved "Meriah sacrifice post," given by Thurston, Notes, p. 510; Castes and Tribes, iii, 377.
113:2 Shortt, p. 274; Macpherson, p. 119. The main details are confirmed by Major-General Campbell (Narrative of Thirteen Years' Service among the Wild Tribes of Khondistan, 1864), who, following the report of Mr. Russell, describes the victims as being stupefied with toddy" (pp. 54-5). Similarly in the human sacrifices formerly offered by the nomad tribe of Koravas, the victim (tricked) was made drunk. Thurston, Castes and Tribes, iii, 464.
113:3 Narrative cited, pp. 112-113.
113:4 There appears to be some confusion, as the effigy was further associated with the village deity Zakaree Pennu, represented by three stones. This deity appears to be of the generic type elsewhere called "Jenkery," and propitiated in the same fashion. Thurston, Ethnographic Notes, pp. 512-513; Castes and Tribes, iii, 374-5.
114:1 Russell, cited by Thurston, Notes, pp. 511-13.
114:2 Report of Mr. Arbuthnot, 1837, cited by Thurston, Notes, pp. 513-514; Castes, iii, 375.
114:3 Elie Reclus, Primitive Folk, Eng. tr. p. 319. In the matter of references M. Reclus is notably careless, and I have been unable to trace all of his authorities. His own special studies, however, give his synopsis a measure of authority. The inadequacy of our English works of reference in regard to India is more surprising than the laxities of M. Reclus. Even the valuable recent compilations of Mr. Thurston, a monument of disinterested scientific devotion, does not give all the details; but he appends a bibliography to his article on the Kondhs.
114:4 H. B. Rowney (Wild Tribes of India, 1882, p. 105) follows Russell's report (cited also by Campbell, pp. 54-55).
114:5 So among the Coodooloo, who coloured the rice with saffron, and brought the victim before the God. Arbuthnot, as cited. Among the hill Koyis (kin of the Khonds) of the Godavari district, again, sheep sacrificed to the Goddess of small-pox and cholera "have garlands hung round their necks, their heads are adorned with turmeric, and pots of cold water are poured over them." Thurston, iv, 59. 7
114:6 Arbuthnot, as cited.
114:7 Shortt. pp. 274 5.
115:1 Shortt, p. 275.
115:2 On this method cp. Dalton, Ethnography of Bengal, 1872, p. 292.
115:3 This concept is found among the Ostiaks of Siberia, who used to sacrifice reindeer "in the manner of a bloody atonement," killing them slowly by stabbing in different parts, or suffocating by repeated immersion. Erman, Travels in Siberia, Eng. tr. 1848, ii, 54.
115:4 Macpherson, pp. 118, 130; Shortt, p. 274.
115:5 For this see Campbell, as cited. pp. 57-58.
115:6 Reclus, Primitive Folk, pp. 319-330. M. Reclus (in translation) always speaks of the single victim as a woman, but either sex served.
116:1 "There is no public rite whatsoever, and scarcely any in private, at which the ceremony of drinking cava does not form a usual and often most important part." Mariner, Tonga Islands, 1827, ii, 150. Cp. p. 167, and Turner, Samoa, 1884, pp. 20, 51, 334; also Cook's Voyages, iii (by King), 1785, p. 161.
116:2 Cp. Lafitau, Murs des sauvages ameriquains, 1724, ii, 295.
116:3 Hunter, Orissa, ii, 97; Shortt, as cited, p. 273. Major-General Campbell, whose attempts to discredit some of Macpherson's statements recoiled badly on himself, states first (p. 53) that meriahs "are seldom subjected to any restraint," and again that "when of age to understand for what purpose they are intended they are chained; two had been years in chains; one so long that he could not recollect ever having been at liberty" (p. 57).
116:4 Wurm, Handbuch der Religionsgeschichte, etc., Aufl. 1908, p. 70; Warneck, Die Religion der Batak, 1909, pp. 64-65.
117:1 Thurston, Castes and Tribes, iii, 371, 378-9, 381-2-4-5.
117:2 Id. iv, 58.
117:3 Id. iv, 59.
117:4 This is the probable explanation of the throwing of clods by the women at the men in the surrogate sacrifice of the buffalo among the Khonds of the Ganjam Maliahs. Id. iii, 385.
117:5 Id. iv, 379.
117:6 R. W. Frazer, Lit. Hist. of India, 1898, p. 43, citing the Satapatha Brāhmana, xii, 3, 5. Cp. p. 85, citing the Aitareya Brāhmana, iii, 8.
117:7 Among the natives of the Gold Coast, where human sacrifices are a matter of simple killing and use of blood, "a regularly descending scale of sacrifice, from human victim to bullock, from bullock to sheep, and from sheep to fowl, may be traced. The Chama god Prate, to which human victims were formerly offered, has now a bullock sacrificed to him; and Behnya, the war-god of Elmina, has descended from human victim to bullock, and from the latter to sheep. Fohsu, at the Salt Pond at Cape Coast, has within a short period descended from sheep to fowl," A. B. Ellis, The Tshi-Speaking Peoples, p. 72,
118:1 There are reasons, hereinafter set forth, for seeing in the sacrifice of cocks, in certain cases, an old substitution for human sacrifices; and the same surmise arises in some sacrifices of goats. (See Thurston, Castes and Tribes, i, 74; iv, 193; v, 235; vi, 76: as to cocks see v, 106, 392, 467, and as to sacrifice of he-goat and three cocks, ii, 376.) But the point can be made out in the case of other animals in recent times.
118:2 Cp. Paul Stengel, Opfergebräuche der Griechen, 1910, p. 93, citing his Kultusaltertümer, 117 sq. | <urn:uuid:1eaadd12-e9c0-4609-94d3-ec7462e17373> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/cv/pch/pch29.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967974 | 10,193 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Grades 2 - 4
Grade level Equivalent: 5.3
Lexile® Measure: 820L
Guided Reading: S
- Ceremony and Tradition
- Ghosts, Monsters, Vampires, Witches
- Magic and Supernatural
About This Book
Fact and fiction meet — for Halloween! This book describes some of the most famous ghost sightings, including those in New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and Great Britain.
When Jack and Annie got back from their adventure in Magic Tree House #42: A Good Night for Ghosts, they had lots of questions. What are some of the most famous ghost stories? Why do people believe in ghosts? Do most cultures have ghost stories? What are ghost hunters?
Find out the answers to these questions and more as Jack and Annie track the facts. Filled with up-to-date information, photos, illustrations, and fun tidbits from Jack and Annie, the Magic Tree House Fact Trackers are the perfect way for kids to find out more about the topics they discovered in their favorite Magic Tree House adventures. | <urn:uuid:b113181f-eba2-4fec-bf36-9abd897cc975> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/book/ghosts-2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.905313 | 219 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Revista del Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales
versión On-line ISSN 1853-0400
PUJANA, Roberto R; MARTINEZ, Leandro C. A y BREA, Mariana. The fossil wood record of Leguminosae from South America. Rev. Mus. Argent. Cienc. Nat. [online]. 2011, vol.13, n.2, pp. 183-194. ISSN 1853-0400.
The Leguminosae has an extensive fossil wood record worldwide. In South America 56 records with affinity to Leguminosae were counted. Each record is analyzed and unpublished data is also included. The Leguminosae is the most palaeoxylological diverse family of South America. It has an extensive temporal record, from the Palaeocene to the Pleistocene, and a broad geographical span, from Patagonia to north Colombia.
Palabras clave : Leguminosae; Fabaceae; Fossil wood; Review; South America. | <urn:uuid:b6776239-390d-4949-b823-8263b597a7f8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.scielo.org.ar/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S1853-04002011000200008&lng=es&nrm=iso&tlng=en | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.779142 | 220 | 2.75 | 3 |
South African Journal of Education
On-line version ISSN 2076-3433
In this pilot study, we sought to examine the influence of the beliefs of Grade 10 to 12 physical science teachers on their intended and actual usage of interactive simulations (Physics Education Technology, or PhET) in their classrooms. A combination of the Theory of Planned Behaviour, the Technology Acceptance Model and the Innovation Diffusion Theory was used to examine the influence of teachers' attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control on their intention to use simulations in their classrooms. Using regression and factor analyses, it was found that beliefs about the perceived usefulness and the pedagogical compatibility of PhET have a significant effect on teachers' attitude towards the use of the simulations in their classrooms. The expectations of the teachers' colleagues contribute to the subjective norm of these teachers. The regression and partial correlation result also highlights the importance of teachers' general technology proficiency. Although we were not able to confirm a direct link between attitudes, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control, and the teachers' behaviour intention we show the influence of behaviour intention on the actual use of the simulations with an accuracy of 70.83%.
Keywords : interactive simulations; PhET project; physics; teacher beliefs; Theory of Planned Behaviour. | <urn:uuid:f2a75f1a-43cf-4cb0-bab1-8cc555f303c9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S0256-01002010000300007&lng=en&nrm=iso | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918233 | 256 | 2.828125 | 3 |
GLOBAL warming could sound the death knell for some of Scotland’s wildlife and unique habitats, according to a major international report to be released tomorrow.
The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report will present the strongest evidence yet of the drastic negative effects of human activity on the world’s oceans and the threat to life on Earth.
It will warn that the impact of oxygen-starved seas, coastal erosion, changing seasons and the spread of invasive alien species could in turn wipe out countless species, or force them to migrate away from Scotland.
The second of a trilogy of reports from world-leading climate scientists will say that rising sea levels, extreme weather and acidic oceans could lead to mass extinctions and the permanent loss of vital ecosystems in many parts of the world, including Scotland.
Scotland’s coastal habitats and wildlife are already suffering from the effects of climate change. And this report is the first to single out the country’s rare machair grasslands as one of the habitats most at risk of irreversible damage.
Scotland’s internationally important peatlands and salt marshes, both of which act as valuable stores for climate-warming carbon dioxide, could also be destroyed.
Machair is unique to the British Isles and 70 per cent is located in western Scotland, but many parts have already been adversely hit by erosion and could be further devastated by rising sea levels and flooding.
Half a metre of machair is washed away every year on the Isle of Tiree, removing the life-support system for threatened wildlife such as the corncrake, ringed plover and great yellow bumblebee, while dry conditions on Coll in spring and summer of 2010 meant the machair did not flower.
The report has sparked calls for urgent action to curb emissions of greenhouse gases and halt the annihilation of Scotland’s natural assets.
Conservationists fear flooding, droughts, erosion and shifting seasons could result in key bird species being wiped out in Scotland. They say already threatened birds – including the dotterel, capercaillie and kittiwake – will face an even bigger fight for survival if efforts to save them are not stepped up.
“Some of our most special wildlife and habitats are suffering now from the impacts of a changing climate,” said Jim Densham, senior climate policy officer at conservation charity RSPB Scotland.
“The report is a wake-up call for all governments, including our own, to redouble efforts to halt climate change by cutting greenhouse gas emissions.”
Experts blame man-made climate change for a steep decline in kittiwakes breeding in Scotland, with warming seas affecting sand eels, their main food source. Numbers have fallen by nearly 70 per cent across the country, but populations in parts of Orkney have declined by up to 91 per cent.
Almost two-thirds of the UK population of dotterels, a bird that breeds only on the highest mountain tops of Scotland, are found in the Cairngorms, but figures show the total number of breeding males fell from 630 in 1999 to just 423 in 2011. It is feared rising temperatures could force the birds uphill, shrinking their habitats and leaving them short of food.
Warmer and wetter weather is also hampering the survival of capercaillie chicks.
Densham said the report highlights the need for immediate “decisive action” to take account of the shifting climate and help wildlife to adapt and survive the changes.
“This will need everyone – from government to each citizen – to take the threat seriously and to act,” he said.
“We must intervene to help nature where it is struggling now and where it will be challenged in the future. We must invest in our countryside, to make habitats healthy and resilient places, up to scratch for wildlife. A healthier environment can provide clean water, flood protection, food and many other benefits that we will need in a future Scotland.”
Protecting key habitats is vital not just for wildlife but also to counter global warming, according to a spokesman for Scottish Natural Heritage, the caretaking body for the country’s nature.
“Our peatlands cover around 20 per cent of the land mass of Scotland and are a massive carbon sink, storing around 1.6 billion tonnes of carbon deposits,” he said.
“Restoration of these bog systems in Scotland will ease some of the effects of climate change by reducing the escape of greenhouse gases and increasing carbon capture and storage. And a healthy bog is more resilient to changing climate conditions than a degraded one.”
Climate change is an issue taken “extremely seriously” in Scotland, a spokeswoman for the Scottish Government said.
“That is why Scotland has set world-leading greenhouse gas emission reduction targets with detailed plans on how to meet them, and we are developing Scotland’s first statutory Climate Change Adaptation Programme to increase the resilience of Scotland’s people, environment and economy to the impacts of a changing climate.” | <urn:uuid:67488740-fde1-4d60-8737-4279322c611f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/climate-change-threat-to-native-wildlife-1-3358321 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938999 | 1,050 | 3.65625 | 4 |
An article by Jay Tow, M.S. Certified Sexologist
Much has been written and discussed about the things we can teach our children in order help them avoid being victims of a sexual predator or molester. We all know about staying away from strangers and good and bad touching. There are steps parents can take beginning early in a child’s life (and some prior to becoming a parent) that will significantly decrease the likelihood that a child will be singled out by a predator for grooming and molestation. These involve the parents learning better parenting skills and having healthier attitudes about themselves and about sex and sexuality.
It is important to have healthy coping skills and good self esteem that you want to teach to your children. Young children learn mostly by imitating behaviors and coping skills of parents and caregivers. If you have some unresolved issues including abuse issues or lack healthy coping skills and good self esteem, seek help from a professional prior to starting a family. Predators seek children with poor self esteem and those maladapted to society because they are easiest to groom. I also suggest that those planning to have a family take parenting classes in order to be better prepared for parenthood. There are many things in life you wouldn’t think of doing without some formal instruction. I believe that parents can be more affective with preparation and education.
Beginning early in life, children need to become comfortable with their bodies and learn not to be ashamed. We do this by example (for example not appearing uncomfortable if your child finds you in a state of undress) and by using the correct names for all body parts. Referring to genitals with pet names (pee pee, private parts, down there, etc.) indicates that this is a part of the body we need to feel shame about. We don’t have special names for other body parts. If someone approaches your child and tries to touch them sexually, they will better equipped to talk to you about it if they feel comfortable discussing those parts of their bodies.
A normal part of being a human being is sexuality and sex. Many parents are very uncomfortable discussing sex with their children. When a child comes to a parent with a question about the body or sex, many parents are flustered and fumble for an answer. This may come from their shame or discomfort or just not knowing how to answer the questions. This can cause a feeling that it is somehow wrong to talk about sex and can trigger shame in the child. If there is an easy flow of information regarding sex, a child is more likely to talk to a parent if they are approached by a predator. There are plenty of books and articles on how to talk to a child about sex. Also, it would be helpful for parents to overcome their own sexual hang-ups.
Children need to feel safe talking to parents about everything and anything. Honesty needs to be rewarded, not punished. They need to know that making a mistake or doing something wrong does not make them a bad person. They need to gain the understanding that making mistakes, as well as honesty is expected. Most children will feel uncomfortable when they are being groomed or approached by a predator. Make sure they feel comfortable and safe with you so they can come to you about concerns and how they feel.
Finally, be involved in your children’s lives. Know the adults they come into contact with. Talk to them and make sure they know you are very much involved in your children’s life. Children with good self-esteem, good sense of self, who feel unconditionally loved by parents, and have a healthy view of their bodies and sexuality, are much less likely to fall victim to a sexual predator.
I am a Life Management and Relationship Coach as well as a board certified sexologist. I have been counseling individuals and couples for nearly 20 years. I have also worked with clients throughout the country via the internet on Skype for several years. Distance counseling and coaching is becoming more accepted and is as effective as face to face. My focus is to provide solution focused and judgment-free counseling/coaching.
I have both experience and training in sex therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, trauma resolution, and addiction counseling. I continue to add to my skills. Prior to having a full time private practice I worked in both Inpatient and Intensive Outpatient programs. My goal with all my clients is to help them achieve a more rewarding and fuller life.
Please visit my website for more information. www.alttherapist.org. | <urn:uuid:7c17326b-6d17-4df1-811b-726c12389a54> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/advice-to-parents-things-you-can-do-to-decrease-the-likelihood-of-your-child-being-the-vict | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975707 | 915 | 2.96875 | 3 |
What is consent?
Consent is defined as permission to act. It may be given by words or actions, so long as those words or actions create clear, mutually understood permission to engage in (and the conditions of) sexual activity. Consent must meet all of the following standards:
- Active, not passive. Silence, in and of itself, cannot be interpreted as consent. There is no requirement that an individual resist a sexual act or advance, but resistance is a clear demonstration of non-consent.
- Given freely. A person cannot give consent under force, threats, or unreasonable pressure (coercion). Coercion includes continued pressure after an individual has made it clear that he/she does not want to engage in the behavior. Consent can be withdrawn at any time and sexual activity must stop immediately without any pressure to continue.
- Provided knowingly. Prior to sexual activity all parties must disclose personal risk factors such as any known STD’s and all parties are encouraged to use safer sex practices.
Legally valid consent to sexual activity cannot be given by:
- A person under the legal age to consent (16 years old in West Virginia), or
- An individual who is known to be (or based on the circumstances should reasonably be known to be) mentally or physically incapacitated. An incapacitated individual is someone who cannot make rational, reasonable decisions because he or she lacks the capacity to understand the “who, what, when, where, why, or how” of a sexual interaction. This includes a person whose incapacity results from mental disability, sleep, involuntary physical restraint, unconsciousness, use of alcohol or other drugs.
- *For additional information regarding “Incapacitation of the Victim”
- Specific. Permission to engage in one form of sexual activity does not imply permission for another activity. In addition, previous relationships or prior consent do not imply consent to future sexual acts. It is the responsibility of the initiator of the act to receive permission for the specific act. As a result, consent may be requested and given several times by multiple parties during a sexual encounter involving multiple acts.
(This information is adapted from the ATIXA Gender-Based and Sexual Misconduct Policy by the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management (NCHERM) and the Association of Title IX Administrators (ATIXA), 2011 and courtesy of Harper College.) | <urn:uuid:9c685c8c-3e3c-482a-a4ea-6589492457da> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.shepherd.edu/safweb/SUIVRC/sa/sawhatis.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939785 | 491 | 3.453125 | 3 |
Billy Budd Theme of Duty
Since Billy Budd is set in the wake of the Nore Mutiny, a sense of military duty is not just a formality; it is a safeguard against massive uprisings in the British fleet. Duty often allows one to act thoughtlessly and simply follow orders, but in Billy Budd one's sense of duty becomes a true burden to carry. As the characters try to sort out difficult moral questions, it is unclear whether they are serving a higher obligation by doing their duty or simply hiding behind it. The story is nuanced enough that there is room for plenty of debate.
Questions About Duty
- During Billy's trial, does Captain Vere hide behind his sense of duty to avoid making a moral decision?
- Since a sense of duty comes from above, does this mean that the lower down you are on the naval totem pole, the greater should be your sense of duty?
- Aside from the duty prescribed by military law in the book, what other sense of duty do the characters begin to feel? How and why do these come into conflict?
- How does Billy's failure to do his duty (by not turning in the afterguard) compare to Vere properly caring out his duty (by executing Billy)?
Chew on This
Captain Vere is motivated less by a sense of military duty than by fear that the failure to execute Billy would spark an uprising against him.
Captain Vere tries to simplify his dilemma by speaking of military law in terms of duty but also by refusing to speak of natural moral obligations in terms of duty. | <urn:uuid:0b0517b1-72c5-4130-893b-26630275df8b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.shmoop.com/billy-budd/duty-theme.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97283 | 320 | 3.46875 | 3 |
Analysis: What's Up With the Title?
Once you've read "The Pit and the Pendulum," the title seems pretty… obvious. Yes, the story features a pit and a pendulum, and, yes, they're two truly terrible torture devices. So what?
The thing is, in order to really appreciate the title, you have to step back and remember a time when you didn't know what the story was all about (i.e. before you started reading). Neither a pit nor a pendulum is necessarily dangerous, and they also seem totally unrelated. But as it turns out, they're the things that have a shot at killing our precious narrator… yikes.
By putting those two things together in the title, Poe does something pretty cool and pretty strange. For one thing, he creates a neat alliterative phrase ("pit" and "pendulum" both begin with the "p" sound).
More importantly, though, Poe uses his title to create suspense in his story. Sounds strange right? But hear us out. The moment you figure out that the pit is a method of torture, you begin to realize that the pendulum most likely is, too. So now you're anticipating the appearance of the pendulum and, the moment the narrator finds himself gazing up at it, you figure out (probably before he does) that nothing good will come of it. Pretty cool, right?
And, of course, this title is a little subtler than some alternative titles. Would you really want to read a story called "A Scary, Gruesome, Terrible, Horrible Story in Which a Guy Gets Tortured By the Spanish Inquisition"? No? That's what we thought. | <urn:uuid:46918d9c-e76a-4cd8-9143-99a19be97f09> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.shmoop.com/pit-pendulum/title.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968458 | 350 | 2.515625 | 3 |
How Long is a Year in
Is the 360 day year advocated for Mahadasa usage some how Moon related and the 365 day year Sun related?
Those who advocate the 360 day year say it is Lunar while the 365 day year is Solar and say something like the following:
I once had a conversation with a jyotishi here in Australia who told me he uses the 360 day calendar as opposed to the 365 day calendar when calculating Vimsottari dasa. His argument was, why should we use a solar based calendar for calculating a lunar based dasa system?
This argument reveals several fallacies:
The first fallacy is that Vimsottari Mahadasa is "lunar based." Simply because the apparatus used for ascertaining what the mahadasa should be is based upon the Moon and Naksatras doesn't mean we should reject the standard year simply because it is based on the movement of the Sun. There are other systems of mahadasa which are not based on the Naksatras does that mean we should shift definitions for the length of the year to suit them? There is also the fact that Satyacarya has suggested that the Janma-naksatra be chosen from the stronger of the Moon or Lagna. If the Lagna were stronger then this would not be based on the Moon. In such cases would the length of the year be a different amount? Of course I want to quickly point out that Satycarya's suggestion of using the Lagna is not followed by many astrologers and the Moon's position is almost universally accepted as the standard for the janma-naksatra.
There are other systems of mahadasa which are not based on the Naksatras does that mean we should shift definitions for the length of the year to suit them?
The second fallacy, is the (wrong) assumption that since 365.25 is a solar year, we should reject it because mahadasa is a lunar based phenomena and rather accept a 360 day year. The unspoken assumption is that a 360 day year is somehow "Lunar." As we have pointed out before the Lunar year is not 360 days long but rather 360 tithis (lunar days) long, which is about 354.36 solar days long. Thus, since the 360 day year in not "Lunar" then it should not be favored and the 365.25 day year should not be rejected for being "Solar."
There is a third fallacy in this argument which leads us to the next question.
What is the relationship between the Solar and Lunar year?
The third fallacy is a bit more complex. The implicit assumption is that time measured by the lunar and solar calendar somehow yield different results. If we were to use a 360 d/y rather than a 365.25 d/y, for mahadasa calculations then there would be a difference. After some time they would become more and more divergent. After one year they would only be different by five days, but in six years it would be a gap of 31.5 days (counting leap years). After 35 years it would be about six months out of phase and after 70 years a whole year out of phase. Thus the older the person got the farther out of phase the mahadasas would be. Thus using the 360 d/y Jupiter mahadasa may start at age 35 but at age 35 y 6m using the solar year. This would introduce serious difficulties in timing events especially in regards to the Bhuktis. This difficulty would only increase with age. However, contrary to the implicit assumption of the advocates of the 360 d/y, there is no such discrepancy between the Vedic Lunar calendar and the Solar calendar. Actually the Vedic Lunar calendar is Solar as will be seen from the following quotation from Dikshit's BJS (emphasis mine):
'They purchased 'Soma' juice from the thirteenth month, and hence the thirteenth month is censurable.' Aitareya Brahmana
'Should the reins in the horse-sacrifice be twelve cubits in length or thirteen? The year consisting of (six) seasons is a kind of bullock whose hump is the thirteenth month. The horse-sacrifice is the best of all sacrifices. The year in the form of a bullock has got a hump (in the form of the thirteenth month).' Aitareya Brahmana
It is clear from the above quotations that the year was solar in the Vedic age. The natural means of measuring a year used to be one complete cycle of the seasons, just as the natural means of measuring a day was the period between two consecutive sunrises or that for measuring a month used to be the period between two full moons. The year as a unit of time could not come into being if seasons didn't exist. It is, therefore, obvious then that the year must have been solar.
. . . the seasons were naturally supposed to recur after 12 lunar months. Although, one complete cycle of seasons required 11 days more than 12 lunar months . . .[and the result of this difference of 11 days]. . . . . the lunar month which used to fall in the summer must shift to occur in the winter and later on in the rainy season and thus have gradually receded through all the seasons. Every month of such a calendar, like the Muharram of the Muslims, was bound to pass through all the seasons, thus completing a revolution in 33 years. [To avoid such a 33 year cycle] . . .to insert an intercalary month; and the fact that such an intercalary month used to be reckoned in the Vedic times goes to prove that the year was solar [even] in those days. This may appear trivial today, but it certainly was no ordinary matter that our people conceived the idea of inserting an intercalary month in those days of hoary antiquity. As a matter of fact it is extremely significant. The ancient Romans were at one time a very powerful nation, they used to regard the year as consisting of 10 months for quite a long time. . . (BJS vol. 1, pp. 20-21)
The Vedic Lunar calendar is actually a luni-solar calendar, that is, it is not independent from the Sun. A lunar month starts with the new Moon after the Sun enters into a sign and is named in accordance to the Solar sign or sometimes to the Naksatra in which the full Moon will take place in that Lunar month, the naming conventions differ in various geographical areas of India. In any case the lunar month is tied to the solar month. How the Solar year and Lunar year are linked shall now be explained.
The Vedic Lunar calendar is actually a luni-solar calendar, that is, it is not independent from the Sun.
The Lunar year consists of 12 lunar months each consisting of 30 tithis but this does not add up to 30 solar days since in the course of a lunar month a tithi will vary from about 19 hours to 26 hours with an average length of 23h 37m 28s. The lunar month would be 29.530589 days. Because the Lunar year is 360 tithis long, that is only 354.36 solar days long, after only three years it would be about one month out of phase with the solar year. However, to keep it in phase with the solar year, and thus with the seasons and religious observances, a leap month (adhika-masa) is introduced. The introduction of the adhika-masa is not artificial, but a natural occurrence (Metonic cycle) because about every third year there will be experienced the phenomena of two new Moons while the Sun transits through one Rasi. And, since the lunar month is defined as the length of time between successive new Moons and that there can only be one Lunar month corresponding to a solar month, the extra lunar month becomes a leap month. Thus the solar and lunar years would continue to stay in phase perpetually, their difference never being more than about 22 days. In the first year they would be out of phase by 11 days, the second year out of phase by 22 days, the third year the leap month brings them back in phase, the fourth year out of phase by 11 days, etc.
If the Vedic Lunar year were not linked to the solar year then within only a few years there would be very noticeable differences in a change of seasons in relation to the calendar. By an accumulation of about 11 days per year it would not take long before a festival associated with the summer such as Krsna Janmastami would be observed in the spring when Gaura Purnima should be observed. That would be absurd. However, there is a Lunar calendar which is independent of the Sun, the Islamic. In this calendar, based on a cycle of 30 years, 19 of which are 354 days long and 11 of which are leap years, having 355 days each. In 30 years each lunar month will have cycled through all the solar months. Thus the first month of the Muslim calendar Muharram will retrogress through the whole solar Gregorian calendar, and also through the Vedic luni-solar calendar. Returning to our argument; the Vedic lunar calendar is tied to the Sun thus the Vedic Lunar calendar is actually a Solar calendar. It will always be very close to the Solar calendar and never go out of phase as would a 360 day year which would only become more divergent with time. | <urn:uuid:c4b115c1-2436-4deb-b737-d662c3643c47> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.shyamasundaradasa.com/jyotish/resources/articles/how_long_year/how_long_year_4.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956038 | 1,966 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Seeking Solutions for Urban Violence
by Kristen A. Graham
The nation reeled when a gunman stormed into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., killing 26 people, including 20 children, on Dec. 14, 2012. Mobilized by grief, anger and sadness, Americans launched into a spirited discussion of gun control, of mental illness, of how to prevent such events in the future. But Maria Kefalas, Ph.D., saw the Connecticut tragedy in another way, calling the violence “a rare form of cancer — as opposed to a more common form of the disease we have in urban areas.”
Kefalas, director of the University’s Richard Johnson Center for Anti-Violence (RJC) and a professor of sociology, understands the shock and horror. “That kind of mass violence is not supposed to happen in that kind of place,” she says, “but we have horrifying outcomes in inner-cities every day.”
While the gun control debates are important, Kefelas says, in some ways they’re a distraction, a red herring. “There are more guns than people in some places,” she says. The way to deal with urban violence, she believes, is not to simply go after the guns, or incarcerate the people who use them.
Many young men growing up in tough urban neighborhoods don’t believe they’re going to live to be adults — they truly have trouble envisioning a future where they survive to live full, productive lives. “They don’t feel like their lives are worth anything, and that’s what we have to fix,” says Kefalas.
But that reality rarely pierces the everyday lives of most people, who don’t need to worry about preventing their children from seeing a dead body or keeping them safe on a potentially perilous walk home from school. Call it the pathology of low expectations — hundreds of deaths in an urban area just feels normal. A homicide in many urban areas merits a newspaper brief, or a short story on the evening news, and people gloss over it.
“We have reached a point in our society,” Kefalas says, “where people look at the murders happening in cities and say, ‘Those people somehow deserved it, or made bad choices, and somehow their lives being lost is not tragic and painful.’ It’s just easier that way.”
The psychological impact of living in such conditions is profound. Consider the perspective of a young woman interviewed by Susan Clampet-Lundquist, Ph.D., an urban sociologist and associate professor of sociology, for a research study. This young woman, who grew up in public housing, was so used to violence that “she says she was constantly looking behind her back,” Clampet-Lundquist recalls. “That fight-or-flight pose works well if you have a lion behind you, but it doesn’t work if you’re in a classroom. How can you do well when you’re constantly on guard?”
In a study of inner-city 7-year-olds, Clampet-Lundquist says, three-quarters say they had heard gunshots. Nearly 20 percent said they had seen a dead body. And for many people living in such situations, the police are no comfort. Clampet-Lundquist’s research indicates, among both young men and women of all ethnicities, “a huge lack of trust — and this comes out of being harassed on an almost daily basis by police officers,” sometimes for legitimate reasons, and sometimes for no reason at all. “When you’re thrown up against a wall going about the course of your daily life,” she says, “you’re not going to want to cooperate with the police.”
Still, Clampet-Lundquist points out successful models, ways to begin to remedy that mistrust. The city of Philadelphia’s PhillyRising initiative is one beginning to make inroads. PhillyRising calls on multiple agencies, including the police, to work with people in high-crime neighborhoods to address quality-of-life issues. In a North Philadelphia neighborhood, for example, “People started meeting together, having honest conversations about what was needed in their neighborhood,” she says. “They worked together to close down vacant buildings, opened up a community center, a pool, a computer center. And there was a drop in crime.”
Start with Low-Level Crime
Thomas Gilbert ’94 (M.S.) has spent his entire adult life in law enforcement. Until August 2011, he was a member of the New Jersey State Police Department, where he eventually became a lieutenant colonel and the department’s chief of staff, running the force’s day-to-day operations. Policing large urban areas — Trenton, Newark, Camden — was a big part of that big job.
“One of the challenges we all find ourselves in is how we chase homicide numbers,” Gilbert says. “It’s how we measure success and failure. Because of the public attention to what the homicide count is at any time, it’s easy to focus on that.”
But he believes that just trying to stop homicides isn’t the answer. “When a murder happens, people have already decided to put a gun in their hand and shoot someone else,” he explains. “You really have to look at what’s causing somebody to get to that point where they’ll put a gun in their hand and say, ‘I’ll point this at someone, and I’ll kill them.’”
Now retired from the state police, Gilbert is commander of the state-created Atlantic City Tourism District. Though most of the crime in the city occurs outside of the district, that crime affects Atlantic City’s reputation and the willingness of tourists to travel there and, in turn, Gilbert’s work. The governor and his bosses in the Attorney General’s office have given him wide latitude, Gilbert says, to focus on prevention.
“We’re not going to say, ‘Don’t worry about that shooting or that homicide because it’s not in the tourism district,’” he says. “So we embraced a holistic approach.” Gilbert supports the “Broken Windows” theory — basically, that policing low-level, quality-of-life crime assiduously leads to an atmosphere where violent crime is less likely to occur. That theory was a game-changer in New York City in the early 1990s, when strictly enforcing laws about petty crimes like public drinking and the “squeegee men” who would clean the windshields of stopped cars and demand money led to a drop in both petty and violent crime.
“You can’t do everything, but we have to chip away at the little things,” Gilbert says. Atlantic City has what Gilbert calls “a very aggressive” law enforcement program, with a violent crime task force and a cadre of Class II officers who work on an hourly basis and have more limited powers than regular officers. The city also has an ambassador program, with unarmed workers in brightly colored uniforms patrolling key areas. “They integrate with our eyes and ears concept,” Gilbert says. “We try to expand out the eyes and ears, to prevent people from making bad decisions.”
Another key component is to bring stakeholders from all facets of the community together — from schools to juvenile delinquency programs — to work on preventive measures. That coalition uses data and focuses on getting youth on the right path with jobs, training and mentorship. “We have to look at histories and say, ‘Is there a point where support would have made a difference?” he adds. “What programs can we focus on? A lot of times, you get stuck in the cop world — you’ve got to knock crime down, you’ve got to deal with homicides. But we have to focus on preventive efforts.” Now, there’s a generation of young people — young men, mostly — who have already made decisions to engage in counterproductive behavior. But reach them at 10 or 12 and show them alternatives, and the implications of crime and the community are considerable. The goal, Gilbert says, is to produce better citizens, and a byproduct of that will be a lower crime rate.
Not everyone shares Gilbert’s attitude; chipping away at such an enormous problem as urban violence is far from easy. As Kefalas puts it, “Politicians don’t get re-elected by saying, ‘Let’s invest in the young people who are killing each other.’ They would be labeled as soft on crime.” Other causes inspire people to open their wallets. Take the case of Alexandra Scott, the Wynnewood, Pa., girl who died at age 8 and whose dream of raising money to fight pediatric cancer led to Alex’s Lemonade Stand, a foundation that has raised more than $60 million to date. Unlike urban violence, childhood cancer is a cause everyone sympathizes with.
“Where is our Liz Scott [Alex’s mom]?” Kefalas says. “Where is our Alex’s Lemonade Stand? That’s what we need. I guarantee you, we can fix this. We know the kids who are at risk. We know the kids who have the disease.”
Push for Legislation, Public Support
Richard J. Ross Jr. ’04 (M.S.), first deputy commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department, agrees with Kefalas and believes that the tide can be turned.
“I think you just have to work as hard as you can to try to make as many people understand that, in some way or another, violence affects us all,” Ross says. “Economically, we’re subsidizing a lot of the people who get stabbed or shot. It affects our quality of life, the reputation of our city. There’s just not enough of a push to fix it, not enough of a push on legislators.”
Ross is clear: Government can’t and shouldn’t be responsible for the whole problem. “I don’t believe in making excuses — some of it starts at home, in families,” he says. “We have to make families a more cohesive unit, like they used to be. If you don’t see a person who’s showing you how to be a productive member of society, how do you know how to do that?”
Ross often thinks of his own experience, growing up in the city’s Fern Rock section. Everyone was lower middle class, but it was a proud place, a place where people looked out for one another. One night, a burglar tried to break into his home. A woman outside walking her dog saw the crime in progress, and instead of fleeing, she stood and screamed, gaining the attention of Ross’s family and several neighbors. Ross vividly remembers his father and perhaps 10 other men, gathering outside in pajamas, combing the neighborhood, trying to figure out who the criminal was and where he came from. “That was community,” Ross says. “Without that, there’s this whole breakdown.”
Some experts see urban violence as a public health issue, a problem of such proportions that it touches everything. Though conditions are improving slightly, nearly half of all city public school students still don’t graduate from high school. “Until we can find a way to have an impact on all of those things — school, economy, everything — we’re going to be on this treadmill,” says Ross. “You haven’t changed what’s really driving it. The police will just be here as a MASH unit to put our fingers in the proverbial dam.”
Apply the Research
SJU’s Richard Johnson Center (www.sju.edu/int/academics/centers/rjcenter) aims to be part of the solution. Founded in 2001, the RJC is designed to both study violence and use research to improve prevention efforts. It is named after a bright young 17-year-old who was killed the summer before he was to enter Saint Joseph’s on a full scholarship. Johnson, a 2005 graduate of St. Joseph’s Preparatory School, died of a gunshot wound near his home in South Philadelphia.
The RJC is unique, Kefalas says, in large part because of the University’s Jesuit mission. Early on, Kefalas remembers, one of her board members asked her, “What’s the point if you’re just doing research? You need to get out in the community and apply it.”
“That’s not always rewarded in my field — when professors go out into the field, that’s social work,” says Kefalas. “St. Joe’s encouraged it.”
Even when the RJC wasn’t bringing in any money, the University supported it, Kefalas says. But now, it is growing, and becoming a respected resource in the city. Kefalas talks so often with members of the mayor’s cabinet that his chief of staff jokingly calls her his boss.
“We’re really proud of that, and I don’t think it would be possible any place other than St. Joe’s,” she says. “I don’t think other universities would be committed to social justice issues, and putting their money where their mouth is, time and again.”
Champion the Cause
Expanding the Richard Johnson Center’s reach is part of the mission of Amy McHugh ’04 (B.S.). Prior to hiring her as associate director of programs and outreach, the RJC had been largely research-based. Now, McHugh and program administrator Kataney Couamin ’11 (B.S.) work with several Philadelphia high schools and hold events on campus to educate students and staff about relevant topics in urban violence, like a recent symposium on bullying. “We’re really trying to build awareness, on and off campus, of the issues facing Philadelphia schools and communities,” says McHugh.
But the main focus has been the Philadelphia Youth Solutions Project (http://pysp.org), a way to encourage city youth to be part of a solution to violence. Staff go into partner schools and discuss issues that feel personally important to students. Last school year, RJC staff spent time at Kensington International Business High School, where students tackled the issue of school violence. The group wrote, filmed and starred in a public service announcement because “it was an issue specific to their school that they identified as a problem,” McHugh says.
There have also been youth summits, motivational speakers and a flash mob for peace. McHugh hopes to strengthen the RJC’s partnership with the Philadelphia School District and perhaps adopt two city schools to develop a school safety program. “What we’ve been looking at a lot is how to change school culture,” McHugh says. “How do we create a sense of citizenship in the schools we work in, and then have kids take that into their communities?”
Kefalas dreams of becoming the Liz Scott of urban violence, making urban violence something that people want to talk about, get their arms around. View violence as a public health epidemic, view young people not as problems, but as solutions, as soldiers in an army to fight gun violence. The momentum started by the Richard Johnson Center must continue, she says — too much depends on it not to. “We are working,” she says, “to get the science of this research to people who can use it to make things better.” | <urn:uuid:dafa9c20-f225-4275-9d1e-0b4d824da68a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.sju.edu/news-events/magazines/sju-magazine/sju-magazine-spring-2013/seeking-solutions-urban-violence | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96534 | 3,424 | 2.53125 | 3 |
What is the definition of your biome? . A temperate deciduous forest has four seasons, many animals and a lot of rain. The trees are deciduous which means the leaves change color and fall off in winter. . Plant life in my biome:. A temperate forest has three levels of plants:1 - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author.While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server.
1. Temperate Deciduous Forest Science Project
2. What is the definition of your biome? A temperate deciduous forest has four seasons, many animals and a lot of rain. The trees are deciduous which means the leaves change color and fall off in winter.
3. Plant life in my biome: A temperate forest has three levels of plants:
1 – lichen, moss, ferns, wildflowers, and small plants on the forest floor.
2 – Shrubs fill the middle level
3 – The third level contains hardwood trees like maple, oak, birch, magnolia, sweet gum and beech. Conifers (spruce, fir and pine trees) are also mixed in.
4. Animal Life in the Temperate Deciduous Forest There’s great diversity of animals. There are a lot of insects, spiders, frogs, salamanders, turtles, and slugs.
Examples of birds include hawks, cardinals, blue jays, eagles, snowy owls and woodpeckers.
Mammals include deer, bobcats, chipmunks, squirrels, raccoons, black bears, possums, porcupines and red foxes.
5. Where are temperate forests found? Temperate forests are located in the eastern U.S., western Europe, China, Korea, Japan and Australia, and a tiny bit at the tip of South America.
6. How do plants adapt to the conditions (light, soil and precipitation) of your biome? Give at least two examples. Forest plants need to live near or in water. They also need to live in clay and acidic soil.
Deciduous trees can form a canopy blocking sunlight to plants on the forest floor. In order to adapt, some flowers reach full growth in early spring before the tree leaves grow out.
7. How do animals adapt to the conditions (light, soil, precipitation) of your biome? Give at least two examples. Some animals are nocturnal. They come out at night when it isn’t so bright.
In cold winter months, some animals hibernate. Others, like squirrels, chipmunks and blue jays collect acorns and seeds and store in hollows of trees.
8. How does weather affect the conditions (light, soil, precipitation of your biome? Give at least two examples. There’s a lot of rain and a lot of erosion, it carries dirt with it.
Most temperate forests get their precipitation in the winter and spring seasons. In winter, it comes in the form of sleet, snow and hail, and in spring, it comes in the form of rain.
9. How do humans affect the conditions (light, soil, precipitation) of your biome? Give at least two examples. Humans have developed some of the temperate forest land and cut down trees for timber. Less than one quarter of the original forests remain.
Humans create pollution by running factories and driving cars and that leads to acid rain. Acid rain hurts the forest.
10. What are some other interesting bits of information about your biome? Give at least two examples. Temperate forests cover about 32 million square miles of the earth’s surface.
The American Beech tree is used to make furniture and paper.
The American Beech tree is from 90 to 100 feet tall.
The bald eagle’s name in Latin means “the sea eagle with a white head.”
11. More interesting facts: North Carolina is located within the temperate deciduous forest global biome.
One of the many places to experience the diversity of animal and plant life in N.C. is at Grandfather Mountain.
On the west side of Mount Mitchell in North Carolina, half of the red spruce and fir trees are dead. Scientists believe this is because of acid rain. | <urn:uuid:16e2bf6c-8dad-468c-b49b-27f46ac82b8e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.slideserve.com/ivi/temperate-deciduous-forest | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932259 | 949 | 3.453125 | 3 |
Leadership is the influencing processof leaders and followers to achieveorganizational objectives throughchange.
The 4 Leadership Theory Classifications Include:Trait Contingency Behavioral Path- Goal
The trait model of leadership is based on thecharacteristics of many leaders - both successful andunsuccessful - and is used to predict leadershipeffectiveness. The resulting lists of traits are thencompared to those of potential leaders to assess theirlikelihood of success or failure.
Strengths/Advantages of Trait Theory•It is naturally pleasing theory.•It is valid as lot of research has validated the foundation and basisof the theoryLimitations of The Trait Theory•There is bound to be some subjective judgment in determining who isregarded as a „good‟ or „successful‟ leader•The list of possible traits tends to be very long. More than 100 differenttraits of successful leaders in various leadership positions have beenidentified. These descriptions are simply generalities.
Conclusion•The traits approach gives rise to questions: whetherleaders are born or made; and whether leadership is anart or science.• Even if there are certain inborn qualities that make onea good leader, these natural talents needencouragement and development. A person is not bornwith self-confidence. Self-confidence is developed,honesty and integrity are a matter of personal choice,motivation to lead comes from within the individual,and the knowledge of business can be acquired.• While cognitive ability has its origin partly in genes, itstill needs to be developed. None of these ingredientsare acquired overnight.
Ohio State University Studies Initiating structure + Consideration = High-highleader University of Michigan Studies Employee-oriented and Production-oriented
Fiedler‟scontingency theory of leadership effectiveness wasbased on studies of a wide range of group effectiveness, andconcentrated on the relationship between leadership andorganizational performance.Thisis one of the earliest situation-contingent leadershiptheories given by Fiedler.According to him, if an organization attempts to achieve groupeffectiveness through leadership, then there is a need to assessthe leader according to an underlying trait, assess the situationfaced by the leader, and construct a proper match between thetwo.
In contingency theory of leadership, the success of the leader is afunction of various contingencies in the form of subordinate, task,and/or group variables. The effectiveness of a given pattern ofleader behavior is contingent upon the demands imposed by thesituation. These theories stress using different styles of leadershipappropriate to the needs created by different organizationalsituations. No single contingency theory has been postulated. Someof the theories are:Fiedler‟s contingency theory:Fiedlers theory is the earliest and most extensively researched.Fiedler‟s approach departs from trait and behavioral models byasserting that group performance is contingent on the leader‟spsychological orientation and on three contextual variables: groupatmosphere, task structure, and leader‟s power position.Hersey & Blanchard‟s situational theoryThis theory is an extension of Blake and Mouton‟s Managerial GridModel and Reddin‟s 3-D management style theory. With this modelcame the expansion of the notion of relationship and taskdimensions to leadership and adds a readiness dimension.
The Path-Goal Theory of Leadership was developed todescribe the way that leaders encourage and support theirfollowers in achieving the goals they have been set bymaking the path that they should take clear and easy.In particular, leaders: Clarify the path so subordinates know which way to go. Remove roadblocks that are stopping them going there. Increasing the rewards along the route.
There have been many criticisms on path-goal theorydue to its inclusive nature. First, it is not an elegant theory. The proposition are widely scattered over the motivational terrain, and thus must be learned one at time. Second criticisms is that due it complexity, there is no basis of leadership training programs.
In conclusion, the path goal theory of leadership is certainlyvery sensible and if it is applied timely by the leaders, outcomeswill be outstanding.Path goal theory gives leaders a broader aspect on the way tovalue their subordinates and motivate them to give their fullefforts for their own betterment and for the betterment of theorganization.An advantage of this theory is that those leaders whosuccessfully motivates and maximizes the subordinates‟ task, bymeans of clarifying the paths towards the goal and which meansgiving rewards to subordinates who put much effort to theirtasks, will obtain high performance in the organization.
Commonly known as participative leadership. The staff and employees are given opportunities to voice their opinions The business decision making involves the staff of the organization. Open communication and synthesizing of ideas.
Legendary EX-CEO of General Electric. Energetic leader who encouraged his employees and subordinates. Used flexible methods to manage his organization. He struck a balance between tasks and employees.“EMBRACE CHANGEDON‟T FEAR IT”
Oldest form of leadership Rigid lines of communication No involvement of staff in decision making Ultimate power and authority in the hands of the leader. Specific rewards and punishments.
Has humility to learn Active involvement in all tasks Self-Confident Decision maker | <urn:uuid:5a154f78-c6b4-4f47-bb93-389807444e79> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.slideshare.net/abhilash_agrawal/organizational-behavior-14272847 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92936 | 1,103 | 3.171875 | 3 |
3-5 lb melon. Flesh is light orange, sweet and fragrant
California OP heirloom. In the 1920's Oliver Crane, farming near Santa Rosa, crossed a cantaloupe and a delicate Japanese melon resulting in this 3 to 5 lb tear drop shaped melon. Flesh is light orange, succulent, sweet and fragrant. Until it was placed in the Slow Food Ark of Taste and offered by SSE it was rearely seen out of the original area. Ready to harvest when green specks on rind turn orange.Cucurbitaceae Cucumis melo
Crane Cantaloupe - Eel River Melon
Round or oval cantaloupe found in Europe. Skin is beige with a gray toned netting with a well defined seam. Flesh is orange and meat is fragrant when ripe.
- Ease of Growing
- Grown as
- Days to Maturity
- 75-85 (Spring/Summer)
- Growing Habit
- Very Tender
Melons can't tolerate cold weather.
- Spring Transplant, Summer
- Growing Season
- Cultivar Type
- Growing Conditions
- Warm, Hot
Melons must have hot weather (ideally 90 F) if they are to make the sugar needed to produce sweet fruits. In cooler areas you need to give them as much sun and heat as possible. They should also be sheltered from cool winds.
If Melons don't get enough heat they won't taste very good (even if you do grow them successfully.)
- Outdoor Growing Temp
- 65°F - 95°F
- Min Outdoor Soil Temp
Melons need warm weather, so don’t plant them until all danger of frost is past and the soil temperature is at least 70˚ F.
- Start Indoors
- Start Outdoors
- Sun: min. 6 hours daily (Warm, Hot)
Melons need full sun.
Melons are quite shallow rooted, so need fairly constant water. The best way to water them is with a drip system or soaker hose, as they don't like having wet leaves (this encourages fungus disease).
Melons are fairly hungry plants. They don't like a lot of nitrogen, but they do need plenty of phosphorus and potassium.
- High heat, Needs lots of space
- Small Gardens?
- Yes, but will need a large one, like a half wine barrel
Though it's not ideal, the smaller cultivars can be grown in large containers (at least 18" deep and preferably bigger). This is sometimes done in cool climates, where the plants are grown in greenhouses.
- Attracts beneficial insects?
- Fruit Size
- Plant Height
- Plant Diameter
- Hardiness Zone
- Disease Resistance
- Taste Profile
Extremely sweet with a rich Cantaloupe flavor. | <urn:uuid:cd35a465-8f96-4cc7-a4f8-80101cd17592> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.smartgardener.com/plants/5633-melon-crane-cantaloupe---eel-river-melon/overview | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.895609 | 602 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Hundreds of years ago, a small group of Polynesians rowed their wooden outrigger canoes across vast stretches of open sea, navigating by the evening stars and the day's ocean swells. When and why these people left their native land remains a mystery. But what is clear is that they made a small, uninhabited island with rolling hills and a lush carpet of palm trees their new home, eventually naming their 63 square miles of paradise Rapa Nui—now popularly known as Easter Island.
On this outpost nearly 2,300 miles west of South America and 1,100 miles from the nearest island, the newcomers chiseled away at volcanic stone, carving moai, monolithic statues built to honor their ancestors. They moved the mammoth blocks of stone—on average 13 feet tall and 14 tons—to different ceremonial structures around the island, a feat that required several days and many men.
Eventually the giant palms that the Rapanui depended on dwindled. Many trees had been cut down to make room for agriculture; others had been burned for fire and used to transport statues across the island. The treeless terrain eroded nutrient-rich soil, and, with little wood to use for daily activities, the people turned to grass. "You have to be pretty desperate to take to burning grass," says John Flenley, who with Paul Bahn co-authored The Enigmas of Easter Island. By the time Dutch explorers—the first Europeans to reach the remote island—arrived on Easter day in 1722, the land was nearly barren.
Although these events are generally accepted by scientists, the date of the Polynesians' arrival on the island and why their civilization ultimately collapsed is still being debated. Many experts maintain that the settlers landed around 800 A.D. They believe the culture thrived for hundreds of years, breaking up into settlements and living off the fruitful land. According to this theory, the population grew to several thousand, freeing some of the labor force to work on the moai. But as the trees disappeared and people began to starve, warfare broke out among the tribes.
In his book Collapse, Jared Diamond refers to the Rapanui's environmental degradation as "ecocide" and points to the civilization's demise as a model of what can happen if human appetites go unchecked.
But new findings by archaeologist Terry Hunt of the University of Hawai'i may indicate a different version of events. In 2000, Hunt, archaeologist Carl Lipo of California State University, Long Beach, and their students began excavations at Anakena, a white sandy beach on the island's northern shore. The researchers believed Anakena would have been an attractive area for the Rapanui to land, and therefore may be one of the earliest settlement sites. In the top several layers of their excavation pit, the researchers found clear evidence of human presence: charcoal, tools—even bones, some of which had come from rats. Underneath they found soil that seemed absent of human contact. This point of first human interaction, they figured, would tell them when the first Rapanui had arrived on the island.
Hunt sent the samples from the dig to a lab for radiocarbon dating, expecting to receive a date around 800 A.D., in keeping with what other archaeologists had found. Instead, the samples dated to 1200 A.D. This would mean the Rapanui arrived four centuries later than expected. The deforestation would have happened much faster than originally assumed, and the human impact on the environment was fast and immediate.
Hunt suspected that humans alone could not destroy the forests this quickly. In the sand's layers, he found a potential culprit—a plethora of rat bones. Scientists have long known that when humans colonized the island, so too did the Polynesian rat, having hitched a ride either as stowaways or sources of food. However they got to Easter Island, the rodents found an unlimited food supply in the lush palm trees, believes Hunt, who bases this assertion on an abundance of rat-gnawed palm seeds.
Under these conditions, he says, "Rats would reach a population of a few million within a couple of years." From there, time would take its toll. "Rats would have an initial impact, eating all of the seeds. With no new regeneration, as the trees die, deforestation can proceed slowly," he says, adding that people cutting down trees and burning them would have only added to the process. Eventually, the degeneration of trees, according to his theory, led to the downfall of the rats and eventually of the humans. The demise of the island, says Hunt, "was a synergy of impacts. But I think it is more rat than we think."
Hunt's findings caused a stir among Easter Island scientists. John Flenley, a pollen analyst at New Zealand's University of Massey, accepts that the numerous rats would have some impact on the island. "Whether they could have deforested the place," he says, "I'm not sure."
Flenley has taken core samples from several lakebeds formed in the island's volcanic craters. In these cores, he has found evidence of charcoal. "Certainly there was burning going on. Sometimes there was a lot of charcoal," he says. "I'm inclined to think that the people burning the vegetation was more destructive [than the rats]."
Adding to the civilization's demise, European explorers brought with them Western diseases like syphilis and smallpox. "I think that the collapse happened shortly before European discovery of the island," Flenley says. "But it could be that the collapse was more of a general affair than we think, and the Europeans had an effect on finishing it off."
Flenley, who initially surveyed Easter Island in 1977, was one of the first scientists to analyze the island's pollen—a key indicator of foresting. The island's volcanic craters, which once housed small lakes, were ideal sites for his research. "The sediment was undisturbed. Each layer was put down on top of the layer before," says Flenley, referring to core samples from one crater's lakebeds. "It's like a history book. You just have to learn to read the pages." The samples showed an abundance of pollen, indicating that the island had once been heavily forested. The pollen rate then dropped off dramatically. "When I dated the deforestation at that site, it came starting at about 800 A.D. and finishing at this particular site as early as 1000 A.D.," a finding in line with other radiocarbon dates on the island. Since this was one of the first settlement sites, Flenley says, it makes sense that deforestation would have occurred even earlier than it did on other parts of the island.
This crater, Flenley believes, would have been one of the only sources of freshwater on the island, and therefore one of the first places the Polynesians would have settled. "It wasn't only a site of freshwater, it was also a very sheltered crater," he says. "It would have been possible to grow tropical crops." Anakena, the beach where Hunt did his research, would have been a good place to keep their canoes and to go fishing, but not a good place to live. Hunt, Flenley says, "has definitely shown a minimum age for people being there, but the actual arrival of people could have been somewhat earlier."
Other scientists who work on the island also remain skeptical of Hunt's later colonization date of 1200 A.D. Jo Anne Van Tilburg, founder of the Easter Island Statue Project and a scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, is one of the island's leading archaeologists and has studied the moai for nearly 30 years. "It's not logical that they were constructing megalithic sites within a few years of arrival on the island," she says. Van Tilburg and her colleagues have surveyed all 887 of the island's statues. "By 1200 A.D., they were certainly building platforms," she says referring to the stone walls on which the islanders perched the moai, "and others have described crop intensification at about the same time. It's hard for me to be convinced that his series of excavations can overturn all of this information."
Despite these questions, Hunt remains confident in his findings. Many scientists, he says, "get a date, tell a story, invest a lot in it, and then don't want to give it up. They had a very good environmental message."
Hunt, Lipo, and their students continue to do excavation work on the island. They have recently moved on from Anakena to do work on the northwest coast. They also plan to date the earliest rat-gnawed seeds. "We keep getting a little more evidence," says Hunt, who has published his findings in Science. "Everything looks very consistent."
Scientists may never find a conclusive answer to when the Polynesians colonized the island and why the civilization collapsed so quickly. Whether an invasive species of rodent or humans devastated the environment, Easter Island remains a cautionary tale for the world.
Whitney Dangerfield, a freelance writer in Washington, D.C. whose work has appeared in National Geographic and the Washington Post, is a regular contributor to Smithsonian.com. | <urn:uuid:311035dc-9c84-4b0d-9410-9e19df91505a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/the-mystery-of-easter-island-151285298/?device=iphone&no-ist=&page=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977808 | 1,915 | 4.0625 | 4 |
Hondarribia Defensive Walls and Gates
The town of Hondarribia is surrounded by a wall, defended by six bastions.The entrance to the town is through two gates, the main being Santa María. The gate has a segmental, voussoired arch on top of which is the town's coat of arms dated 1694. There is a Neoclassic crest dating from the 19th century with a sun dial.The other gate is called San Nicolás and is located in the street with the same name.This door is made of ashlar stones.The outside is formed by a segmental arch.Inside there is a lintel supported by decorated and dressed pilasters.
- Bouw: Gateway
- Artistieke periode: Medieval
- Historische periode: 15th century
- Omgeving: Puerta de Santa María, Puerta de San Nicolás. | <urn:uuid:234e1f9b-2a89-4d7b-9d87-f0534173339d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.spain.info/nl/que-quieres/arte/monumentos/guipuzcoa/murallas_y_puertas_de_hondarribia.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914632 | 194 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Beyond Mars, the solar system becomes a different place altogether. The planets are no longer small rocky worlds, they become ice giants that would dwarf the Earth. Out here, the solar system is so cold that hydrogen and hydrogen rich gases could be captured in the planet making process. Because there was so much of this type of this building material available, the planets formed on a grand scale of size.
Jupiter contains over
70 percent of the total planetary mass. This planet is truly the lord of
the solar system. It is not just the largest planet, it has a diameter
over 11 times the diameter of the Earth, and is over 320 times more massive.
Jupiter is a ringed world, surrounded by many moons, some of which are
the most interesting objects in the solar system. | <urn:uuid:c3df10d6-0f41-467d-91d9-6ee80b06efaa> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.starryskies.com/solar_system/Jupiter/jupiter.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948753 | 163 | 3.265625 | 3 |
Finding the Balance in Light Intensity
Recording good videos is a real challenge, but it's something that is easier if you know about light intensity. When recording videos, light is very important because this is what is captured and makes up your photo. Without adequate lighting, the video will be too dark to be seen clearly.
Too Much Light
There can also be problems if there is too much light in your scene. This creates the opposite effect of not enough light. Subjects will be burnt out because the video will be overexposed. While this can be useful if you are trying to create a silhouette, it's not always this way.
Too Little Light
If there is too little light, then the video will often be grainy and difficult to see. You will need to ensure that there is plenty of light to illuminate the scene for your camera.
In order to record high quality videos, you must balance the light intensity. To do this, a light meter is very helpful. These devices can be aimed at the subjects you are recording, and it will tell you the brightness of the light. Another useful way to test is using your video camera to take a sample of a recording. Start recording, and then play the results back to take a look at how it looks. | <urn:uuid:8a96b34f-9458-4284-98e4-15acb0db9d70> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.steves-digicams.com/knowledge-center/how-tos/film-and-video-production/finding-the-balance-in-light-intensity.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948221 | 261 | 2.8125 | 3 |
One of the most exciting things about science fairs is the multitude of working models that you get to see at them. The thrill of seeing something that you made actually do what you wanted it to do can give you quite a high. Putting science into actual practice is what the whole deal about science fairs is.
So why not start early this year and pick up a proper working model for your science fair project. It can be something as simple as a conductivity test for metals and non metals. Or something as complicated as a remote controlled robot. There is no limit to what your mind can imagine as your science project.
So sit down and think of a list of things that can be made into working models. It can be a robotic arm which can pick and stack blocks. Or a car which you can control with a remote. Or even something as complicated as a robot that can climb stairs.
On paper there is no limit to what you may make. Try making a submarine! The only limiting factor will be the time and resources that you have at hand. While some projects are easier to make and will hardly take any time, if you are starting a more complicated project, make sure you do it as fast as possible.
It is always good to finish off the project a couple of days in advance so that you can see if any modifications are needed. It will also give you time to work on the project report, the display board and your presentation script. All of which are important components. | <urn:uuid:46514054-108c-4646-b95b-58ac553d27e7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.superchargedscienceprojects.com/?p=360 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970624 | 304 | 3.59375 | 4 |
This page is about the meaning, origin and characteristic of the symbol, emblem, seal, sign, logo or flag: Butterfly Symbol.
The meaning of the Butterfly symbol signifies transformation as the ugly caterpillar changes into the beautiful butterfly.
The butterfly is also believed to be a messenger from the spirit world. The message the butterfly brings depends their color. A black butterfly indicates bad news or illness, yellow brings hope and guidance, brown signifies important news, red signifies an important event and white signifies good luck. A butterfly who lands on your shoulder brings you comfort. According to Native American legends and myths of some tribes the Butterfly played a part in their Creation myth. According to Native American legends and myths of the Pueblo tribes of southeastern Arizona and northwest Mexico the Butterfly played a part in their Creation myth. The Creator took the most beautiful colors of all living things and placed them into a magical bag. He have the magic bag to the children and when it was opened colored butterflies flew out singing. The children were enchanted by the butterflies but the song birds were so jealous that the Creator took away the ability to sing from the butterfly.
Symmetric, Open shape, Monochrome, Contains curved lines, Has no crossing lines.
Category: Native American Symbols.
More symbols in Native American Symbols:
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America and their descendants. Pueblos indígenas (indigenous peoples) is a common term in Spanish-speaking… read more » | <urn:uuid:46776519-3a7a-4224-9a40-f65de4e1bf34> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.symbols.com/symbol/1249 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94309 | 312 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Cooking Process Alone Won't Guarantee Safety
When it comes to preparing meats, many of us believe that the cooking process alone solves any potential problems with the growth of microorganisms. What we may forget is that safe handling of meat begins well before-and extends well beyond-the cooking process.
Safe handling needs to begin the moment meats are delivered. Meats should be stored immediately after delivery in their own storage unit or in the coldest part of the refrigerator. Fresh meats must be held at or below a temperature of 41¡F, while frozen meat must be stored at a temperature that will maintain its frozen state. Raw cuts of meat, especially ground beef, should be wrapped in an airtight manner.
"Where you store meat is a critical component, too,'' says Karen Combs, marketing manager for Daydots International. "Red meat should be put in the bottom of a refrigerator so any juice that leaks won't drip onto fruits or vegetables.''
When preparing meat, temperature-control guidelines should be adhered to strictly. Steaks must reach and hold an internal temperature of at least 145¡ F for 15 seconds. Ground beef, pork, poultry and other meats or fish must be cooked to an internal temperature of 155¡ F for at least 15 seconds.
"During the process of removing meat from the refrigerator, cooking it and then returning the cooked meat to the refrigerator, it is important to make sure the meat doesn't come into contact with other foods,'' Combs says. "This is how cross-contamination occurs. To avoid the problem, cooks should never touch other foods with the utensils that were used to prepare the meat. Any container used for the meat should not be used for other food items without being thoroughly washed. ''
Food handlers should also be aware that aprons worn while preparing meat should be changed before another type of food arrives on the cutting board-which also must be changed out.
Far more than temperature control is needed in the preparation of meats. Activities before and after the cooking process are just as pivotal in the elimination of contamination and cross-contamination.
Contributed by Karen Combs and Jack Flanders, Daydots International, Fort Worth, TX | <urn:uuid:53c167dd-41ab-4611-bb97-a2d593354d6b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.sysco.com/customer-solutions/meats.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945075 | 452 | 2.75 | 3 |
Expansion Compression Contacts for Thermoelectric Legs
- Created: Friday, 01 May 2009
Ordinarily regarded as disadvantageous, thermal-expansion mismatch would be turned to advantage.
In a proposed alternative to previous approaches to making hot-shoe contacts to the legs of thermoelectric devices, one relies on differential thermal expansion to increase contact pressures for the purpose of reducing the electrical resistances of contacts as temperatures increase. The proposed approach is particularly applicable to thermoelectric devices containing p-type (positive-charge-carrier) legs made of a Zintl compound (specifically, Yb14MnSb11) and n-type (negative-charge-carrier) legs made of SiGe.
This combination of thermoelectric materials has been selected for further development, primarily on the basis of projected thermoelectric performance. However, it is problematic to integrate, into a practical thermoelectric device, legs made of these materials along with a metal or semiconductor hot shoe that is required to be in thermal and electrical contact with the legs. This is partly because of the thermal-expansion mismatch of these materials: The coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of SiGe is 4.5 × 10–6 °C–1, while the CTE of Yb14MnSb11 is 20 × 10–6 °C–1. Simply joining a Yb14MnSb11 and a SiGe leg to a common hot shoe could be expected to result in significant thermal stresses in either or both legs during operation. Heretofore, such thermal stresses have been regarded as disadvantageous. In the proposed approach, stresses resulting from the CTE mismatch would be turned to advantage.
The figure depicts a thermoelectric unicouple according to the proposed approach. By use of established techniques, the n-type SiGe leg would be bonded to the hot shoe, which would be made of Si, Mo, or graphite. However, the Yb14MnSb11 leg would not be bonded to the hot shoe: instead, the Yb14MnSb11 leg would be inserted in a precisely fit hole in the hot shoe. The precision of the fit would be such that upon assembly at room temperature, the contact pressure between the hot shoe and the Yb14MnSb11 leg would be low. During heating up to a hotshoe operating temperature of 1,000 °C, the thermal expansion of the Yb14MnSb11 leg would exceed that of the hole by an amount that would increase the contact pressure to >100 MPa. This pressure would suffice to keep the thermal and electrical contact resistances acceptably low.
Optionally, if the hot shoe were made of Si or Mo, the contact resistances could be made even lower by adding a thin, reactive layer of a metal at the interface between the Yb14MnSb11 leg and the hot shoe. Another option would be to taper the hole and the mating portion of the Yb14MnSb11 leg and to pressfit the leg and the hot shoe together at room temperature, thereby providing for maintenance of at least some pressure and prevention of separation during thermal cycling.
This work was done by Jeffrey Sakamoto of Caltech for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. NPO-44896
This Brief includes a Technical Support Package (TSP).
Expansion Compression Contacts for Thermoelectric Legs (reference NPO-44896) is currently available for download from the TSP library.
Please Login at the top of the page to download. | <urn:uuid:8991d4ad-96cc-4749-b8fa-513bde62a663> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.techbriefs.com/2009/9-ntb/tech-briefs/physical-sciences/5190-npo-44896 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933826 | 757 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Flexible’ Machine Vision: Sensors, Lenses, and Software
- Created: Saturday, 01 June 2013
At the heart of any machine vision system is the image processing software. Recent camera developments provide portability to multiple hardware devices and scalability to other platforms.
Early innovations in machine vision software have laid the foundation for today’s flexible programs, which have evolved from custom-programmed products, requiring a group of engineers to develop and deploy, to the present- day drag-and-drop interfaces with intuitive vision tools. Some programs use an object-oriented approach to describe a vision program as a sequence of steps, where each step, in turn, further processes the data produced by the preceding step.
For a machine vision system, the first piece of data is the image, with an eventual output of pass/fail. Over the years, developers have refined and enhanced the abilities of these steps, making assumptions for the user along the way to produce an easy-to-use interface with fewer parameters to navigate, while at the same time retaining the power and flexibility of the underlying architecture. Applications can therefore be created in a simple environment and then loaded into a broader structure with additional parameters for more complex functionality.
Microscan’s patented software technology recreates objects on a target platform rather than interpreting them, allowing for portability from one hardware device to another. Objects on a smart camera and PC, for example, are the exact implementation and sequence of objects; adding new functionality to a smart camera is the same as adding to a PC. By way of contrast, using an interpretive model would require two separate development efforts.
Today’s machine vision technology also features more flexible software environments and user-friendly interfaces (see Figure 4). WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) employs the declarative language XAML to define the look of the various UI elements, and how they are linked to the underlying data. The technology separates look and content, much in the same way that HTML and CSS do so for web pages. Developers determine the best way for setting up a program for a richer user experience, independent of the look and feel, without the need to write extensive code.
Large multi-national companies are increasingly deploying machine vision technology across their plants. Scalable software that can be deployed across multiple cameras, and the flexibility to make system modifications without extensive downtime, are essential to optimizing operational efficiency in global, multi-facility environments. Employees need only be trained on one standardized platform that can be used on many cameras, instead of learning a different program for each piece of hardware. In addition, the user’s time, effort, and investment are protected if the scope of the application grows over time or requires a different hardware configuration.
As more and more industries adopt machine vision, manufacturers of the technology will continue to focus on the ease of use of their products in order to address a range of user levels. Customers are also looking for higher throughput, which means higher frame rates and/or the ability to take one image and run multiple inspections on it — not moving the object or camera and taking multiple images. A higher throughput enables faster job changeover in applications such as PCB assembly. An ongoing emphasis on ease of use will continue to make machine vision more accessible to a wider user group in the years to come.
This article was written by Cathy McBeth, Global Commercial Marketing Manager at Microscan (Renton, WA), or visit http://info.hotims.com/45604-140. | <urn:uuid:b82d3d77-1bbe-4d7b-8336-01cace94a291> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article?id=16634&start=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907929 | 721 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Don’t you hate it when the power goes out and you discover your flashlight batteries are dead? Well, so long as you have some body heat, a new flashlight will be able to illuminate your way through the dark.
Ann Makosinski, a 15-year-old from Vancouver, British Columbia, entered the Google Science Fair with her creation of a flashlight that is powered by body heat channeled through Peltier tiles. (Anyone who has seen the Matrix trilogy of films is sure to be feeling a little squeamish right about now.) The technology works when one side of the tiles is heated and the other cooled, which led to the flashlight performing better in colder temperatures, but it does indeed work.
Makosinski is one of 15 finalists in the Google event and will now go to Mountain View, Calif. in Sept to be judged for her entry in her age group. The grand prize winner will receive $50,000 and a trip to the Galapagos Islands. Seeing as the flashlight only cost $26 to build, that would be a pretty good return on investment. While the price tag may sound high, you have to remember that is one person buying parts to assemble it, the price would be sure to drop should this idea ever go into mass production for sale.
While the design and cost may not be perfect, we definitely think Makosinski is on to something here. | <urn:uuid:64887471-6353-4f37-ab69-bd9a0d2559f1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.technobuffalo.com/2013/07/01/body-heat-flashlight/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964248 | 287 | 2.6875 | 3 |
NASA's Johnson Space Center told TechRepublic the whole story behind one of the most important tools it uses to train astronauts: virtual reality. Learn how the agency pulled off VR's greatest triumph.
For the first time, astronaut Doug Wheelock hung on to a handrail outside the International Space Station (ISS), and looked down at the Earth.
"I know exactly where I am," he thought. "It looks just like the VR Lab."
That familiarity is a quick comfort not only for Wheelock, but for many astronauts past, present, and future, floating hundreds of miles above the Earth, trying to get a job done in one of the most hostile working environments imaginable.
In space, an astronaut's next minutes are never guaranteed. They have to adjust to the drastically modified rules of physics, and to a calmness and a slowness that masks danger.
Inside Wheelock's spacesuit, he was aware of the frightening silence of space, broken only by the voices coming in through his communications cap, the ventilation system of his suit, and his own heartbeat. Outside, temperatures were fluctuating between 300 degrees Fahrenheit and negative 300 degrees in 90-minute cycles.
Space is beautiful—but unforgiving.
Wheelock knew it would be like this.
His preparation from the Virtual Reality Lab at NASA's Johnson Space Center was both mental and physical.
As the spacewalk—or extra vehicular activity (EVA)—turns 50 in 2015, its history is inextricably linked to the development and use of a technology that's long been derided as a toy.
For as long as virtual reality has existed, even conceptually, its constant companions have been hype, gimmickry, and unmet expectations. While the commercial VR industry has waited for another shot at world domination, Johnson Space Center's VR Lab doggedly worked on ways to better train astronauts for one of the most dangerous excursions of their lives.
Virtual reality has matured and developed into a mission-critical training tool. NASA has pushed a number of different technologies to their limits to pull it off, without the glare of industry expectations or the pressure of packaging it into a consumer product. Their solution isn't flashy, but it's immensely powerful. And it works.
The main reason for the success of NASA's VR experiment is ridiculously obvious—there's no other way to replicate space here on Earth.
By the scruff of your neck
Johnson Space Center sprawls across nearly 1,700 acres of land near Nassau Bay, southeast of Houston, Texas. There are more than 200 buildings, all randomly numbered. The Virtual Reality Lab is in Building 9, which is mostly indistinguishable from the rest.
Through gray metal doors is a room that looks like a standard-issue office, with off-white walls and pressed wood desks. But, there are posters from different space missions everywhere. A section of the lab is set off by a narrow open doorway and two half walls made of plywood. The walls are draped with black sheets, and smattered with a few handfuls of glow-in-the-dark stars—the kind kids put on the ceiling above their beds. The stars were Evelyn Miralles' doing. She's the lead engineer, and a full-time staple in the lab for the past 16 years.
There's a tall cart with electronics, two office chairs EVA trainees can sit in, and on each side of the space are two metal cubes suspended from the floor and ceiling by wires. The wires look like a web, and that's why those cubes, which are really robots, are called Charlotte.
Then there are the head-mounted displays (HMDs). They're black with a band around the back, and are always a work in progress. The previous week, one of them got a revamp. The OLED displays now show 1920x1080p per eye at 20 to 60Hz, depending on the load, task, and complexity of the scene being rendered.
Put on one of the HMDs and you're floating above the truss of the ISS. The Earth spins down below, and the moon is small and barely visible over your shoulder.
Welcome to the closest experience there is to floating above the Earth.
VR face is a term for the dumbstruck look people get when they experience virtual reality. It's that slack-jawed mix of awe and obliviousness that other people are watching them while they're buried under a mound of plastic and sensors. The lab's rig also includes gloves with sensors, so when users hold up their hands and flip them around a few times, they're looking at the hands of an astronaut.
In the lab, VR face is really hard to avoid.
Miralles and team can fly whoever is sitting in the VR chair around the ISS, up close to the sides of the structure, even just outside the upside down dome observatory, the cupola. The lab's founder Dave Homan equated it to getting picked up by the scruff of your neck.
For a visitor passing through the lab, that quick trip around the ISS is a brain-melting party trick.
For the astronauts, it's critical preparation toward completing a complicated and dangerous assignment.
A solution without a problem
For NASA, VR started out the same way it did for a lot of other folks in the 1990s: "Hey, here's this thing, is there anything we can actually do with it?"
In effect, Homan was the one asking that question.
He was working at NASA as an engineer, and had developed simulations and graphics to support analysis for tasks like maneuvering the space shuttle's robotic arm.
In the early 90s, NASA headquarters hosted a conference of sorts on virtual reality in Wyoming. Homan was the only person in his division who was interested in going.
So, he went to the conference and started thinking about how to use virtual reality in a "legitimate" way—perhaps for astronaut training. To help him figure that out, he recruited Brad Bell, who had worked with him since 1985.
Initially, Homan and Bell thought they'd use VR to replace the training for the high dexterity tasks astronauts were practicing in the giant pool they called the Neutral Buoyancy Lab—skills like using tools, or loosening bolts. It didn't take long to realize that the pool was still better suited for that type of training.
However, that legitimate use they'd been looking for materialized in the form of a repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. Soon after the Hubble launched in 1990, excitement gave way to disappointment. The $2.5 billion telescope was blurry. The fix would be STS-61, a 1993 mission to correct a problem with the mirror and scrub the proverbial egg off the face of the telescope.
One of the first problems Homan wanted to address was how an EVA crew member and robotic arm operator had nowhere to practice their communication. If a spacewalker was upside down on the end of the robotic arm, it wasn't really clear what a command like "move me up" meant, and Homan said valuable time in orbit was spent sorting that out.
Virtual reality brought together both the simulations and graphics NASA had been working on, and the live EVA crew members and robotic arm operators.
"They could actually go through the entire EVA scenario, and work out what they meant by 'move me up' and 'move me down' and what coordinate system they were talking about," Homan said.
Using virtual reality also meant that training didn't have to conform to the physical restrictions of the pool.
In preparing for the repair mission, NASA had assembled a replica of part of the Hubble in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, but had to split it in half as the whole telescope couldn't fit in the 40-foot-deep pool, and the astronauts had to practice working at its top.
Homan said that when they configured the telescope, arm, and orbiter in VR, they realized the arm couldn't actually reach the spot where the repairs needed to be done.
"You wouldn't want to find that out when you got out to orbit," Homan said.
They changed the configuration, modified it in the pool, and eventually, used that configuration to make the repair.
By 1994, the VR Lab introduced Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue (SAFER) training. Every astronaut is equipped with a jetpack, and though it hasn't happened before, they still have to anticipate the chance that they'd become detached and start free floating in space.
Yes, it's kind of like the movie Gravity, but Hollywood has a different version of physics. In real life, traveling in orbital space requires a different approach than flying in Earth's gravity.
The spacewalking astronauts who flew on STS-64 on the space shuttle Discovery—a mission that included the first untethered EVA in 10 years—trained with SAFER.
The next big addition to the VR Lab's training offerings was Charlotte. Originally, the robot, designed by aerospace manufacturing company McDonnell Douglas, was used as a way for support on the ground to tend to experiments on the shuttle while astronauts slept. Homan saw the opportunity to use it another way, and modified it to work Earth-side. Charlotte became a means to help astronauts maneuver objects no longer subject to the Earth's laws of physics, which means they're weightless, but still have mass and centers of gravity influenced by orbital mechanics. Wheelock put it like this:
"[If] you fly through [the ISS] like Superman, and there's a metal hatch waiting for you at the other end, it's not going to be a pretty picture. F still equals MA [force=mass times acceleration], so you're going to slam into that hatch unless you catch yourself on something."
In 2007, as part of STS-120, Wheelock had to disconnect a solar array from the top of ISS's truss and move it. It was 37,000 pounds. In space, you can hold it up with one finger, he said.
But, if that piece had started moving in a certain direction, and he were to try and hold it, it could have torn the glove off his hand.
Training with Charlotte means avoiding lost solar arrays, lost gloves, and worse.
"[The VR Lab] is the only place where we can get that hands on, tactile feel for mass distribution," Wheelock said.
And beyond that, Charlotte is adaptable. After all, when wearing the HMD, astronauts aren't looking at that metal cube anymore.
Following the 2003 space shuttle Columbia disaster, the shuttle program halted for two years. The next two shuttle missions were called Return to Flight missions, and incorporated a new tactic to ensure that what happened with Columbia wouldn't happen again.
Shuttles started undertaking the Rendezvous Pitch Maneuver, in which a shuttle would essentially show its underside to the space station, and astronauts aboard would photograph it to make sure there was no damage to the heating tiles on the shuttle, as there had been for Columbia.
That's not an easy task. Those on the station had to make sure they scanned the entire surface, and within a limited timeframe. The VR Lab modified Charlotte to use real camera lenses to project a simulation of the shuttle's belly onto the camera's sensor.
"To get the detail you need, you're zoomed in so tight, all you're seeing is just this wall of tiles, so it's like you're looking at a brick wall," said Jeff Hoblit, the VR Lab's contractor lead, and one of the first engineers in the lab.
Changing tech and an exploding HoloLens
Another way to trace the evolution of the VR Lab is through its hardware.
The current lab team—Miralles, Bell, Hoblit, plus lab manager Eddie Paddock, and engineer John Schweers—sit around and try and tally up just how many different HMDs they've had, and all the things they've done to them.
They've had six, with untold iterations in between. Here's the timeline:
1991 - Flight Helmet Virtual Research (LCD displays - 320x240)
1992 - N-Vision Datavisor (CRT displays - 1280x1024)
1994 - N-Vision Datavisor(CRT displays - 1280x1024)
2005 - N-Vision Datavisor (Micro-OLED displays - 800x600)
2012 - In-house built (LCD displays - 1280x720)
2015 - In-house built (OLED displays - 1920x1080)
Bell wasn't a huge fan of the N-Vision Datavisors—the distortion correction was done through pot adjusters on the side, and as it was analog, it would drift over time, which meant he'd get simulation sickness trying to readjust the helmet.
"He would actually wait until the end of the day [to adjust it] because he knew by the time he got done... he was going to be sick, so then he could just go home," Hoblit said.
Early headsets cost hundred of thousands of dollars. And, they weren't exactly plug and play.
Eventually, instead of buying new ones, the VR Lab started modifying the ones they had, and that hasn't changed.
"Brad uses his garage as basically a manufacturing plant," Paddock said.
Other tech in the lab has also been through multiple updates, for example, moving from powering the headsets with a 4-rack mainframe to using PCs. The cost of replacement was less than the cost of the annual maintenance of the mainframe. And then eventually, they just built their own computers.
It's been almost 20 years of scoping out the latest in displays, video cards, tracking systems, and whatever else emerges on the market and proves stable enough to integrate into the lab.
There are a lot moving parts to the lab's setup, and integrating new technologies takes time and care. In another example, the current tracking system is electromagnetic-based and uses a transmitter, and six-degree trackers. Electromagnetic means that occlusion isn't a problem, unlike in an optical solution where tracking can get lost if something is in the way of the sensor. When TechRepublic visited the lab in August 2015, the team was interested in VR and 3D graphics entertainment company Sixense's STEM System, which is also electromagnetic, but is wireless. A wireless system could interfere with the audio system they build into the headset. So, if they ever decide to integrate it, it won't be until they're dead sure it won't snag any other part of their setup.
The flock of consumer HMDs threatening to hit the market in early 2016 has piqued their interest. The team is looking at Oculus and all the other companies about to dive into the VR space.
The Space Station was supposed to get Microsoft HoloLens to try out, but the much-hyped augmented reality headset was among the cargo of the SpaceX rocket that exploded at the end of June 2015.
In any case, the new wave of VR and AR is very much welcome in Houston.
Though the lab has been staffed and supported by many people over the years, there are typically only between four and seven people working there full time. They don't have the time, manpower, or money to dig into researching issues like simulator sickness.
"We're very happy the money's being thrown into that [research] space because all of us who do VR are going to benefit from the dollars being spent that aren't ours," Bell said.
It's easy to focus on the hardware. It's the thing you can hold in your hand or strap on your face. But in truth, it would be useless without the software behind it.
These days, the graphics engine that powers NASA's virtual reality training is the Dynamic Onboard Ubiquitous Graphics, or DOUG for short. And Miralles, they call her Dougalina.
She's supported the lab since just about the beginning, but started there full time around 2000 when she and Bell undertook the creation of a graphics engine that was, in a sense, portable. It would be the next evolution on the lab, making it possible to not just prepare in the lab in Houston, but up on the Space Station as well.
"It was pretty fun because we had to experiment a lot with different scripting languages and interfaces in the environment," Miralles said.
One of the most impressive aspects of DOUG is that it's an incredibly detailed 3D graphical replica of the ISS. Each piece is its own module—with more than 5 million polygons—and it changes every time the space station does.
Sitting in a Chinese restaurant in Houston, Miralles grabbed the salt and pepper shakers from the table to explain that as the Space Station was being constructed, adding on piece by piece, shaker to shaker, if you will, it was undergoing the same transformation in DOUG.
Earlier that day in the lab, Wheelock stood in front of a large monitor, describing a mission that involved coaxing a ripped solar array to retract properly. He couldn't initially remember which solar array it was, until Miralles zoomed in on the station using DOUG, and there it was—the tear he'd been describing.
Now DOUG is all over NASA, as well as the Space Station, and used in a variety of ways.
Before an EVA, the lab prepares the procedure (reconfigs) so that the spacewalkers can review the EVA using the 3D graphics, frame by frame.
Hoblit said that the Russians used to review their EVAs on paper, but once they saw what their US counterparts were doing, they asked if the lab could also use DOUG to prepare the Russian EVAs. Now the lab also prepares reconfigs for the Russians.
DOUG is also used for SAFER training aboard the ISS since astronauts are spending longer periods of time in space, and are experiencing long gaps of time since their last training. They couldn't send up additional hardware, but Bell came up with an idea for using an upside down laptop attached to a simple set of goggles as an HMD. By 2012, virtual reality training had arrived in space.
On a wall outside the lab, there's a print of the ISS pulled from DOUG. One of NASA's public affairs officers mentioned that it took him a surprisingly long time to realize that the image was from DOUG, and not a photo. It looks that real, even when you put your nose right up to it.
The VR Lab is the product of a lot of people, both engineers and astronauts.
That relationship is part of the reason the lab has evolved the way it has. As the lab prioritizes the needs of the astronauts, the astronauts advocate for the lab. Homan protected the lab from much of the bureaucratic oversight that would make it difficult to quickly adapt to the training needs of EVA crews.
From the beginning, Homan and Bell sought input from astronauts like Jeff Hoffman and John Young.
"We wanted to include the crew early on because we didn't want to create a solution that had no problem [to solve]," Bell said.
Playing to the astronauts' training needs helped the lab sidestep some of the signature problems that VR's run into over the years, like latency.
When Homan and the lab were starting out in the 90s, the graphics were classically mediocre and computers just didn't have the power to render the scenes fast enough. They found themselves having to choose between more detailed graphics or lower latency.
But in talking with the astronauts, it turned out they prefered the details to the lower latency, partly because the latency didn't matter that much.
In space, they move slowly and deliberately. Getting out a wrench is the most important task in the world, until it comes time for the next step. So, if it took a half second for the scene to catch up with orientation of the astronaut's head, that was actually okay because they were moving about that slow anyway.
Homan does remember one case, though, where latency proved a problem.
One afternoon, upper management came by the lab during a period where they were trying to secure funding. The Astronaut Office had been talking up the technology, but when the powers-that-be tried it, VR didn't exactly sell itself.
"On the ride back to their office, they were all complaining about how anybody could possibly want to do that. Actually, it had made most of them sick," Homan said.
Another familiar issue is the comfort of the HMDs. In the past, they've been heavy and awkward, sometimes enough to turn off casual observers.
But even if early on the helmets in the lab weren't all that comfortable to wear, dealing with them was by no means the most uncomfortable part of astronaut training.
One of the VR Lab's selling points is time.
"The fact that you can zip over to the VR Lab and do an hour of training in your shirt sleeves without having to go through the huge cost of doing an actual run in the pool gives virtual reality a huge advantage," said astronaut Clay Anderson.
For every astronaut in the pool, there are four other divers. Getting into the space suit is something of a production. If someone really needs to take one more run through of a task on a weekend, the folks in the lab will accommodate. And that includes times when something unexpected comes up on the ISS and an unplanned EVA has to happen, or one has to be modified. The VR Lab can do that rather quickly.
Miralles and the other members of the lab like to reiterate that every astronaut comes through the lab for training since it became a requirement in 1994. During the space shuttle program, the lab supported four to seven missions a year.
Astronauts could spend hours at a time under the helmet. The lab would be packed with trainers and crew members, and of course, the staff, ready to fix or modify if asked.
Wheelock remembers walking into the lab for the first time. He was nervous. It felt like something out of a James Bond film.
That didn't last long. Wheelock remembers training for a mission, one where he and his spacewalking partner Scott Parazynski would at one point pop up across from each other on opposite sides of a truss they were disconnecting. On one VR run through, Wheelock popped up over the side to see Hello Kitty peeking out at him from Parazynski's helmet.
"You can get yourself balled up in here, you're sweating, and you know everyone is watching, and you want to do well, and you want to survive," Wheelock said.
And while much of the training is skills-oriented, one of its best functions is to get astronauts in the right frame of mind for completing the task. There's a great advantage in just feeling as though the environment isn't entirely new.
"It means everything. It's not hard to realize that just beyond that thin little visor is instantaneous death. It's oblivion," Wheelock said.
It's space, so there's liable to be a surprise at any moment.
"That's why we show Hello Kitty," Miralles laughed, explaining that part of the training involves not only occasional comic relief, but some sensitivity to those going through this process. Sometimes an animated cat is the best tool for re-establishing focus.
That looseness is also part of the working culture of the lab. Homan said that while most labs at NASA forbid food and drink, for example, he always encouraged it.
"A lot of times, astronauts would just come over there to get away from everything, and sit down, and eat our candy," he said.
Miralles, Bell, Paddock, Schweers, and Hoblit have known each other a long time. It's an old cliche, but they really can finish each other's sentences, and do.
They crack jokes and erupt into short raucous bursts of laughter that sound like Statler and Waldorf from the Muppets.
All these years of working together leads to a certain comfort in expressing ideas, even if they seem a little wacky.
"For example, when Brad first presented the idea of the [upside down] laptop," Hoblit started.
"They laughed at me," Bell finished.
"We assumed he was joking," Hoblit said.
"I did a foam core mock-up and they were like 'oh, yeah, maybe that will work,'" Bell said.
"But when you first told us, we just shook our heads," Hoblit said. They break into laughter again.
Hoblit sees it like this: "When you have people you work with for that length of time, and everybody has a lot of respect for the other people, what their capabilities are, it actually makes for a very fun work environment because you're not afraid to tease each other, you don't feel threatened, nobody gets their feelings hurt."
Paddock thinks part of the reason everyone's gotten so comfortable is that NASA needs VR. Like the rest of NASA, the Johnson Space Center has seen plenty of layoffs due to budget cuts over the years, but VR training is not something they can just lob off in order to cut expenses.
Beyond 50 years of spacewalks
Without the space shuttles, training has slowed, but there's plenty else to do.
The lab also produces data products, and is involved with many other projects. For example, they've been working with an IMAX team that's making a movie about the ISS. When a certain event is going to occur, like SpaceX flying a mission to the station, they ask the VR lab which cameras placed in which spots on the Space Station will best capture the action. So, Miralles looks at the trajectory, checks the views from the windows, and picks the best cameras, and sends those images from DOUG to the IMAX team.
And as long as the Space Station is active, there will be projects to tackle. Miralles said they could see another spike with the rise of commercial space flight. Plus, the ISS will be in operation for at least another 10 years.
"That means we'll be here at least that long," Bell tells her.
"Oh, God!" she says and they dissolve into laughter again.
With almost two decades behind them, Miralles said they do think about what comes next for the VR Lab. For her, it's a concern that's specific to the lab, but also attached to a passion that's formed after a career of being a woman engineer.
She hasn't always been the only woman in the lab, but the ratio has shaped how she views women in STEM and the unique challenges they face learning how to communicate in an all-male environment—first hand, she felt the pressure to always be exactly sure of the next thing she was about to say, and had to learn to not worry about asking the questions she needed to ask.
It's made her more demonstrative in her outreach to young women who may turn away from STEM because they feel they don't fit the idea of what an engineer is.
Originally from Venezuela, Miralles grew up playing Lost in Space with her brothers, and eventually came to the US to get a bachelors in computer science and another in computer graphics. She also got an MBA in management of technologies.
Recently, she was serving as a judge for an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) robotics competition for middle school and high school students. During one of the judging rounds, she got a string of phone calls. They were from her friend Samantha Cristoforetti, who was aboard the ISS. Cristoforetti left her a voicemail saying hello, and Miralles took it back to the group she was judging, a team of three girls, to show off not only this dispatch from space, but that is was from a woman astronaut.
"The sparkle in the eyes... it was so neat, and so sweet being able to share that moment with them," Miralles said.
On the morning of February 25, 2015, Miralles woke up and turned on her television.
Astronauts Terry Virts and Barry Wilmore were going to be embarking on EVA-31, and Miralles and Bell had been working on the reconfigs since December for that and EVA-30, which took place just a few days before.
On the ground in Houston, Miralles drank her coffee and watched Virts and Wilmore install a new communications system called the Common Communications for Visiting Vehicles (C2V2). It was going to require a lot of cabling, so Miralles had emailed Virts some advice—make sure you keep your tether attached.
Whenever there's an EVA, Miralles watches, at least the beginning, sometimes staying home an extra hour or two just to see that the task is underway and on schedule. Once she knows that's the case, she drives to work and immediately turns on the TV in the lab.
By the time astronauts exit the Space Station, they've rehearsed and reviewed the EVA so many times in the pool, in the lab, and on the station, Wheelock said they can practically do it with their eyes closed and feel their way along.
Miralles and the lab also know every single handrailing. Spending months with the crew members, training, prepping, advising, updating—it makes watching EVAs resonate on a personal level.
The ISS orbits roughly 250 miles above Earth, which is just about the distance from Atlanta, Georgia to Nashville, Tennessee. That means the work that the lab does comes to fruition a long way away.
The twist is that it doesn't quite feel that way, Miralles said. In fact, it's quite the opposite, and, perhaps, quite apropos to the world of virtual reality.
"We feel like we're there."
For more on this story...
Photos: Inside Johnson Space Center's Neutral Buoyancy Lab
NASA Mission Control: Photos of the past and present at Johnson Space Center
Video: 3 big takeaways for the future of virtual reality from NASA's VR Lab | <urn:uuid:5c782b0c-3f4b-4fdf-a271-b38e41d8cdd8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.techrepublic.com/article/nasa-shows-the-world-its-20-year-vr-experiment-to-train-astronauts/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973144 | 6,302 | 2.8125 | 3 |
The history of early personal computing is interwoven with that of phone phreaking, where people would try to figure out ways to take advantage of the automated phone systems becoming common.
One popular trick was trying to figure out the special sequence of touch tones required to gain access to free phone calls. It was laborious work, but with the arrival of the Apple II computer, John Draper, a famous phone phreaker and Apple employee, decided a computer could do the job much more easily.
In this article republished from the Oct. 1, 1984, issue of Infoworld, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak describes the trick.
An Apple For The Captain
By Steve Wozniak
The best prank I've seen with the Apple was played by Cap'n Crunch. John Draper, one of Apple's first employees, was responsible for designing a telephone board for us. Much more than a modem, the board could send touch-tone or pulse dial data; it could also transmit any tones that were programmable down the line, listen for specific sounds and a bunch of other things.
At one point Draper was motivated to crack the WATS extenders that are used by companies with incoming and outgoing free 800 lines. Company executives call in on the incoming 800 line and tap out a fourdigit code, which gets them on their outgoing 800 line. Then they can dial a free call anywhere they want. The only system protection is the four-digit code.
It would take a long time to dial ten thousand phone calls manually, searching for the extender code. But Draper had designed this new telephone board, and he knew a bunch of companies that had WATS extenders. He programmed the Apple to call the company on its 800 number, automatically get to the WATS extender, type out a four-digit code and check to see if the attempt succeeded or failed. The Apple with the board would listen to all the tones on the phone line to determine when it was ringing, when it went to the WATS extender, and so on.
It took about ten seconds for the Apple to dial the call and try a new four-digit code. The Apple would restart and try it again. And then try the next number. It was able to dial about five thousand calls a night-the average number of calls to crack a WATS extender. Draper cracked about twenty WATS extenders, averaging one a night.
The city of Mountain View, California, where he lived at the time, keeps an index of how well the phone system is working. An average of 30 percent of all calls made from the city don't go through. The month Draper was cracking the WATS extenders, the index jumped to 80 percent! For that month Draper made more than 50 percent of the calls originating from Mountain View, California, whose population is over sixty thousand ... | <urn:uuid:0552527a-f644-4223-9364-b6d6fa197f9c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.techworld.com.au/article/597031/apple-40-here-what-woz-had-say-about-apple-ii-phone-phreaking-1984/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963158 | 590 | 3.25 | 3 |
1. The RMS Titanic was the world’s largest passenger ship when it entered service, measuring 269 metres (882 feet) in length, and the largest man-made moving object on Earth. The largest passenger vessel is now the MS Allure of the Seas, at 362 metres.
2. The ship burned around 600 tonnes of coal a day – hand shovelled into its furnaces by a team of 176 men. Almost 100 tonnes of ash were ejected into the sea each day.
3. The ship's interiors were loosely inspired by those at the Ritz hotel in London. Facilities on board included a gym, pool, Turkish bath, a kennel for first class dogs, and a squash court. It even had its own on board newspaper – the Atlantic Daily Bulletin.
4. There were 20,000 bottles of beer on board, 1,500 bottles of wine and 8,000 cigars – all for the use of first-class passengers.
5. The Grand Staircase on board descended down seven of the ship’s 10 decks and featured oak panelling, bronze cherubs and paintings. Replicas can be found at the Titanic Museum in Branson, Missouri.
6. The staircase at the White Swan Hotel in Alnwick, contains banisters from the Grand Staircase of the Titanic’s sister ship, the Olympic. The staircases are presumed to have been identical.
7. Only 16 wooden lifeboats and four collapsible boats were carried, enough to accommodate 1,178 people, only one-third of Titanic's total capacity, but more than legally required.
8. There were 246 injuries and two deaths recorded during the ship’s 26-month construction in Belfast.
9. Twenty horses were required to carry the main anchor.
10. 100,000 people turned up to see the ship’s launch on May 31, 1911.
11. 22 tons of soap and tallow (rendered beef or mutton fat) were smeared on the slipway to assist its unhindered passage into the River Lagan.
12. The ship made two stops after leaving Southampton – at Cherbourg in northern France, and Cobh (then Queenstown) in Ireland.
13. Of the 885 crew on board, just 23 were female. 699 boarded in Southampton, and four in 10 were natives of the town.
14. The last supper served to first-class passengers consisted of 11 courses.
15. First-class passengers were given a music book containing 352 songs. Musicians on board were required to know them all, in case requests were made.
16. John Jacob Astor IV was the richest passenger on board, with a net worth of around $85m (approximately $2bn today), and went down with the ship. One legend claims that after the ship hit the iceberg he quipped to a waiter: “I asked for ice, but this is ridiculous”.
17. Another notable victim was Benjamin Guggenheim, an American businessman. Realising that the ship was going down, he and his valet, Victor Giglio, reputedly changed into their evening wear while he remarked: “We've dressed up in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen." They were last spotted on deck chairs drinking brandy and smoking cigars.
18. Noel Leslie, the Countess of Rothes, was also on board, but survived. She is mentioned in an episode of Downton Abbey. "Isn't this terrible? When you think how excited Lucy Rothes was at the prospect,” remarks the Countess of Grantham when she hears of the disaster.
19. Two of the nine dogs on board were rescued – a Pomeranian and a Pekinese.
20. Numerous people held tickets for the journey, but did not actually sail, including Milton S. Hershey, founder of the chocolate firm, Guglielmo Marconi, and Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, who died on the RMS Lusitania three years later.
21. The last remaining survivor of the disaster, Millvina Dean, died on May 31, 2009, aged 97. She was two months old at the time.
22. The iceberg was spotted at 11.40pm on April 14, 1912, by lookout Frederick Fleet, who proclaimed: “Iceberg! Right ahead!” Fleet survived the disaster and was a lookout on the RMS Oceanic during the Twenties, before serving in the Second World War. Pranksters placed a pair of binoculars on his grave in 2012 with a note “sorry they’re 100 years too late”.
23. The iceberg was around 100 feet tall and came from a glacier in Greenland.
24. Just 37 seconds elapsed between the sighting of the iceberg and the collision.
25. First Officer William McMaster Murdoch ordered the ship to turn, but it was too large to do so in time. It has been suggested that the ship would not have sunk if it hit the iceberg head-on. Murdoch went down with the ship; a memorial to him is found in his hometown of Dalbeattie, Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland.
26. Edward Smith, the ship’s captain, also went down with the vessel. His last words were “"Well boys, you've done your duty and done it well. I ask no more of you. I release you. You know the rule of the sea. It's every man for himself now, and God bless you." A statue of him can be seen in Lichfield, Staffordshire.
27. The ship received six warnings about icebergs during the voyage.
28. A lifeboat drill, scheduled for April 14, was cancelled for unknown reasons.
29. The ship broke in two at around 2.20am on April 15, and sunk, sending all remaining passengers into the ocean. The temperature would have been -2 °C – few would have survived longer than 15 minutes in the water, while around one in five would have died within two minutes from cold shock.
30. Charles Joughin, however, the ship’s baker, reportedly tread water for two hours before being rescued with little ill-effects. He claimed he had not felt the cold due to the amount of whiskey he had drunk.
31. 26 of those on board were honeymooning couples.
32. Musicians played for two hours and five minutes as the ship sank.
33. The SS Californian was criticised for ignoring the Titanic’s distress signals. She was later sunk herself, by a German submarine.
34. The RMS Carpathia arrived at 4am and transported the survivors to New York. 40,000 greeted its arrival at Pier 54.
35. Only 306 bodies were found. The dead were taken to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Its Maritime Museum has a dedicated section that includes a deckchair recovered from the wreck, mortuary bags, and the shoes of an unknown victim. See maritime.museum.gov.ns.ca.
36. The wreck of the Titanic was discovered in 1985 and lies 370 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, around 12,500 feet below the surface. The marine dive specialists Deep Ocean Expeditions previously offered trips to the wreck using a Mir submersible chartered from the Russian Academy of Sciences - with berths costing $59,000 - but stopped offering them in 2012.
37. The bow penetrated 18 metres into the sea bed.
38. Dozens of films and documentaries have been made about the disaster, the most controversial of which was commissioned by Joseph Goebbels in 1943. Its plot discredited British and American businessmen and features brave German passengers. The epilogue states: "the deaths of 1,500 people remain un-atoned, forever a testament of Britain's endless quest for profit."
39. James Cameron’s 1997 effort is undoubtedly the most successful – it has grossed more than $2bn and won 11 Oscars.
40. The film’s main theme song – My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion – was the biggest selling single of 1998 and has been covered by Neil Diamond, Sarah Brightman, Kenny G (instrumental), and Miss Piggy from the Muppets.
This article was updated in full on September 1, 2015 | <urn:uuid:81268978-d7b6-4797-ae12-f5394cf4be37> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/lists/Titanic-40-fascinating-facts/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980804 | 1,736 | 3.28125 | 3 |
Science Matters: Big Bang breakthrough
A telescope at the South Pole recently discovered gravity waves dating back to the moment of the Big Bang. Science columnist Peter Spinks discusses the findings with astrophysicist Professor Karl Glazebrook.PT0M0S 620 349
In the first moment following the Big Bang, scientists believe the universe got very big, very quickly.
On Monday, US astronomers said they had peered further back in time than ever before and detected compelling evidence of this dramatic and rapid expansion, a theory known as ''cosmic inflation''.
''It is somewhat of a mad theory, which was introduced in the 1980s to solve a lot of issues with the way the universe looked,'' said University of Melbourne cosmologist Alan Duffy.
''This discovery is really the first confirmation that a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang the universe grew enormously,'' he said. ''We're all pretty ecstatic about this result.''
The announcement is also significant because it provides proof for Einstein's final prediction, the theory of general relativity, which predicts a violent event such as the rapid expansion of the universe would create ripples in space-time called gravitational waves.
After using a radio telescope at the South Pole, a team from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics said it had detected very specific patterns of light, known as B-modes, which were almost certainly caused by very early gravitational waves as a result of cosmic inflation.
''We're very excited to present our results because they seem to match the prediction of the theory so closely,'' said John Kovac, the leader of the BICEP project.
While strong circumstantial evidence existed for gravitational waves, no one had observed them directly, which was why the detection of light patterns left by primordial gravitational waves had astronomers so excited.
If the result was verified it promised to be one of the biggest advances in cosmology in 20 years, comparable to Australian Nobel prize winner Brian Schmidt discovering the expansion of the universe was accelerating. It also had implications for scientist's understanding of quantum mechanics.
University of Sydney astrophysicist Bryan Gaensler said normally the effect of gravitational waves was so small it was extremely difficult to detect.
But the rapid and violent expansion caused by inflation would have set the whole universe ringing with them, he said.
And although these early waves had long disappeared, the theory of inflation predicted they would leave behind a very specific and subtle imprint in the form of B-modes.
Professor Gaensler said scientists had been looking for B-modes for years, but the radio signal they emitted was very faint and travelled from the edge of the universe.
''It's like looking through a really dirty window at something that's thousands of kilometres away,'' he said.
University of Melbourne cosmologist Katie Mack said while the detection of primordial gravitational waves in the early universe was a ''really big deal'' and was consistent with the theory of inflation, their presence alone was not direct evidence of the theory.
''We can't say for sure that those gravitational waves were produced by inflation,'' she said.
But she said their detection was evidence that gravity had quantum mechanical properties, like particles, something physicists suspected but had not seen evidence of. | <urn:uuid:feefcc83-6317-480a-a9a5-a803a19288b4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.theage.com.au/technology/sci-tech/big-bang-einsteins-relativity-theory-backed-by-newwave-discovery-20140318-350eq.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971881 | 667 | 3.375 | 3 |
Meet GoldieBlox, the lady engineer who hopes to unseat the princesses from their toy-store thrones
Bob the Builder. Jimmy Neutron. Lego Man. Sid the Science Kid. Handy Manny.
The science-loving, tower-building cartoon heroes popular among kids today are all boys, or -- I suppose, in the case of Lego Man -- men.
Incidentally, so are about 90 percent of America's engineers (pdf).
San Francisco-based entrepreneur Debbie Sterling wants to change that statistic. Sterling was trained as an engineer at Stanford, where she was one of 181 women in a program that graduated nearly 700 people in all. To even out the score, she decided to begin with an early intervention in a girl's life, and she set her sights on the toy aisle. Girls, she says, begin demonstrating less interest in science, math, and engineering when they are as young as eight. "Take a walk through a toy store and you can begin to see why; the 'blue aisle' is filled with construction toys and chemistry sets, while the 'pink aisle' is filled with princesses and dolls," read the press materials from her company. "If we want more female engineers, we need to open their minds to engineering at a young age."
How could a toy engage girls in engineering? What would make it different from the "standard" (read: geared-toward-boys) Lego and Erector sets? Sterling spent more than a year researching these questions and, gradually, GoldieBlox -- a female engineer character, Goldie, and a related construction toy -- emerged. It hit Kickstarter this morning as Sterling seeks to raise $150,000 for a first round of production.
At the center of Sterling's creation are several strategies for getting girls to build: engage them with a story, challenge them to build with a problem-solving purpose, use materials that are warm or soft to the touch (no metal) and have shapes with curved edges, and presented in colors that American girls in the year 2012 tend to be attracted to. The toy set includes the story of its heroine, "GoldieBlox and the Spinning Machine" (available as a book or iOS app), five character figurines (Goldie's "friends"), and building kit that includes plastic elements and a ribbon.
The premise is that as Goldie's story unfolds, she builds different devices that help her accomplish certain tasks. Every time the "build" icon appears, girls following along have to build along with her in order for the story to continue. For example, in the book's first story, Goldie needs to build a spinning machine for her dog. "There's just this moment of excitement for a girl when they wrap this ribbon around this wheel and they pull it and it spins," Sterling says. "It's such a basic engineering principle of a wheel spinning on an axle, but it is this magical moment for every girl I have tested."
Since most girls are used to playing with static toys, Sterling points out, the simple act of creating motion can prove to be exciting for them.
As the book progresses, the building projects get more complex, and the girls have to create contraptions that can spin more and more of the story's characters. Sterling recalled, "I kept hearing the same thing over and over again: Girls saying 'I want to spin all the animals! I want to spin all the animals!' They get really into it. Rather than just tossing the construction element aside and just play-acting with the characters (which is what I thought might happen), they really wanted to build."
Part of Sterling's hope is that by getting girls to build for Goldie, they'll come to see building and design as something that can have their own social value. "Girls really want to help people and they care about nurturing," she says. "When you think about how back in the day, most doctors were male. As women began to gain more power, guess who starts to become doctors? Women. Because they love nurturing and caring about people -- it was an obvious step. I think the same thing will happen with engineering, once we learn what engineering really is and we get beyond the stereotype of a nerdy man sitting alone in a cubicle at a computer. Engineers are solving some of the world's biggest problems and helping people."
Sterling's basic conceit -- that by playing to girls' inclination to help and imbuing their designs with practical purpose she can get them designing and building -- is echoed in the work of Christine Cunningham, a vice president of the Museum of Science in Boston and director of the Engineering is Elementary program. Like Sterling, Cunningham has found that if you embed an engineering dilemma in a story, girls will have more interest in figuring out the challenge. For example, she says, kids' kits for electrical engineering, which is one of the most heavily male of the different kinds of engineering, tend to ask kids to build circuits to make a light turn on or a fan blow air. When Cunningham set about to redesign an electrical-engineering activity with girls in mind, she and her team embedded it in a story about a girl living on a ranch who needs to keep a trough filled with water for the baby lambs. The character decides to build herself an alarm as a reminder. That gives girls a purpose, and they'll "engage in the same tasks and have the same sort of outcomes, because they're linking it back to the safety of the baby lambs," Cunningham told me.
Does it somehow undermine the goals of gender equality and girls' empowerment to engage them in engineering by buying into and relying on so many stereotypes about girls in the first place? Cunningham says we need to keep in mind, by the time they've reached the age of five (the youngest age GoldieBlox is recommended for), many girls will already have well developed gender identities, and oftentimes that identity will be quite, for lack of a better word, girly. "How can we take the places that girls are and develop the same kinds of innovative problem-solving skills? ... We're very much based in, 'what is the reality of the now?' And how do you work with that? Are there small ways you can push the meter to bring in these kinds of skills?"
Sterling reiterated this same idea to me: You have to meet girls where they are.
And the advantages of engaging girls in engineering through play go beyond the spatial skills they will develop, or even the fun they will have: A children's toy is meaningful as a symbol of what parents value. Children have toys not because they have purchased them but because they have received them as gifts from their parents or other adults. That transaction sends important signals to young girls and boys about who their parents want them to be. As sociologist Barry Schwartz wrote in his seminal 1967 essay "The Social Psychology of the Gift" (pdf), "Gifts are one of the ways in which the pictures that others have us in their minds are transmitted. ... The function of' 'masculine" and 'feminine' gifts relative to sexual identification is clear enough. By the giving of different types of 'masculine' gifts, for example, the mother and father express their image of the child as 'a little soldier' or 'a little chemist or engineer.' " In putting a girls' engineering toy on store shelves, Sterling is giving parents the opportunity to send the message to their daughters that they are "little engineers" too, and they don't have to be any less girly to be excited about building and design.
When we think about what a world would look like that brought men and women equally into the engineering fold, we have to reimagine many aspects of society: toy aisles, classrooms, work environments, etc. That is all to say, we have to build a culture that is radically different than the one we have. There are a million buttons we'll need to press in order to get there. Sterling is pushing on just one of them, but she's doing so with all her might. | <urn:uuid:a0ae6162-7bce-4f12-969c-6c327d511144> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/can-a-kids-toy-bring-more-women-into-engineering/262373/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96915 | 1,663 | 2.515625 | 3 |
UK Farming Statistics
02 January 2013
The latest National Statistics on United Kingdom agriculture and horticulture, and cereals and oilseed rape production were released on 20 December 2012 according to the arrangements approved by the UK Statistics Authority. These data are produced by Defra on behalf of the agriculture departments of the United Kingdom.
This release has been updated to include final estimates for land use, crop areas, livestock populations, the agricultural workforce and the size of the UK cereals and oilseed rape harvest for 2012. These results replace those provisional results published on 15 October 2012. The key results are given below.
Agricultural Land Areas
The total utilised agricultural area (UAA) in the UK remains unchanged at 17.2 million hectares. The increases in areas of total crops and temporary grass have offset the decreases seen in the uncropped arable land and permanent grassland areas.
Crop Areas, Yields and Production
Wheat: The 2012 wheat harvest for the UK is 13.3 million tonnes, a decrease of 13% on 2011. This is a result of a 1.1% increase in the wheat area to 2.0 million hectares combined with a 14% decrease in the yield to 6.7 tonnes per hectare. This decrease is a result of the poor weather conditions this year.
Oilseed rape: The oilseed rape harvest has shown a decline of 7.3% to 2.6 million tonnes for 2012. The yield has decreased by 14% to 3.4 tonnes per hectare following the very poor weather during spring and summer. This has been balanced out by an increase in area of 7.3% to 756 thousand hectares following favourable planting conditions in autumn 2011.
Barley: Despite a small reduction in the yield, barley production for 2012 has remained almost static with only a slight increase of 0.5% to 5.5 million tonnes. The yield for barley has fallen by 2.7% to 5.5 tonnes per hectare. Winter barley area has increased by 7.2% to 385 thousand hectares, while the spring barley area has increased only very slightly by 1.1% to 618 thousand hectares.
The total area of horticultural crops has decreased by 2.0% between 2011 and 2012, now standing at 172 thousand hectares. Vegetables and salad for human consumption make up the majority of this area at 123 thousand hectares, a reduction of 4.1% from 2011.
- The total number of cattle and calves has remained almost unchanged between 2011 and 2012 at 9.9 million. Whilst the main beef herd saw a 1.0% decrease to just under 1.7 million, there was almost no change seen in the main dairy herd which remained at 1.8 million.
- Pig numbers saw a small increase of 0.9% from 2011, now standing at almost 4.5 million. This is mainly due to the 1.0% increase in fattening pigs as improvements in sow productivity means availability of pigs for slaughter has been good.
- The UK population of sheep and lambs has risen by 1.8% to 32 million animals, largely due to the 2.4% increase in the female breeding flock to 15 million.
- Laying and breeding fowl decreased by 4.1% between 2011 and 2012 and now stands at 47 million birds. The number of table chickens remained virtually unchanged at 103 million.
The total number of people working on agricultural holdings in the UK is 481 thousand as at June 2012. This is an increase of 1.2% on the same period in 2011 and equates to a rise of approximately 5 thousand people.
Key Country Level Changes
Figure 1 shows how the UK percentage change for certain items compares to the country level changes. Despite decreases seen in the wheat and potato areas in Scotland and Northern Ireland the small increases in the England areas have driven the UK level change. This is due to the largest proportion of these crops being grown in England.
|Percentage Changes Between 2011 and 2012 by UK Country|
|UK % change||England % change||Scotland % change||N. Ireland % change||Wales % change|
Data Uses, Next Publications and Survey Methodology
Information on how each of the UK countries run their surveys can be found on pages 17 to 21 along with data uses and upcoming publication dates.
Utilised Agricultural Area
Total Utilised Agricultural Area at 1 June 2000 to 2012
The utilised agricultural area is made up of all arable and horticultural crops, uncropped arable land, land used for outdoor pigs, temporary and permanent grassland and common rough grazing. In June 2012 the total utilised agricultural area in the UK was 17.2 million hectares, covering 70% of the UK land area. Figure 2 shows that the total utilised agricultural area has been fairly stable since 2000.
Croppable land consists of land currently under arable or horticultural crops, uncropped arable land and temporary grass. At June 2012 the croppable area stood at 6.3 million hectares, an increase of 2.5% from the same period in 2011. This area represents over a third of the utilised agricultural area.
Despite fluctuations in individual crop and land areas, the proportions of land that make up the croppable area tend to remain stable from year to year. Figure 3 shows how these proportions have remained almost unchanged between 2011 and 2012, with cereals continuing to account for half of the croppable area.
Breakdown of Croppable Area at 1 June 2012 Compared to 2011
Cereals and Oilseeds
Crop Areas in the UK Between 1984 and 2012
Figure 4 shows the area of the three most popular crops grown in the UK, wheat, barley and oilseed rape. Since 1984 the wheat area has fluctuated between approximately 1.6 and 2.1 million hectares. The area of barley has declined considerably over the years and now stands at roughly half the area it was in 1984. Conversely the area of oilseed rape has increased almost threefold from 269 thousand hectares in 1984 to 756 thousand hectares in 2012.
Crop Production in the UK Between 2011 and 2012
Figure 5 shows that wheat production was the hardest hit by the poor weather conditions in 2012 as poor yields greatly reduced the tonnage produced. Winter barley has shown a small increase in production while oats have remained fairly static. Spring barley and oilseed rape both showed a drop in production.
UK Crops Yields Between 2000 and 2012
As figure 6 shows, yields for all crops shown have fallen between 2011 and 2012 with wheat and oilseed showing the greatest drops. The wheat yield is the lowest it has been during the last 20 years. Note that regional figures are available in the cereal and oilseed dataset on our website at: http://www.defra.gov.uk/statistics/foodfarm/landuselivestock/farmstats/.
The final estimate of the UK wheat harvest for 2012 is 13.3 million tonnes which is a decrease of 13% on 2011. This decrease is mainly due to the large drop in yield to 6.7 tonnes per hectare along with a very slight 1.1% increase in the wheat area to 2.0 million hectares. The area of planted wheat in England which has been harvested as wholecrop for silage in 2012 was 25 thousand hectares, representing 1.4% of the total planted area. This is a slight increase on 2011 where the area of wheat taken for wholecrop represented 1.0% of the total planted area.
As figure 7 shows, wheat yields continue to vary between the English regions with the highest yield of 7.3 tonnes per hectare being found in the Eastern region. The lowest yield was in the North West and Merseyside at 5.0 tonnes per hectare. Yields have been affected by the poor weather this year which led to high levels of disease during spring and summer along with low sunlight levels during the grainfill period. This can be seen in figure 7 where all regions except the Eastern region have shown a noticeable decrease in yield.
Wheat Yield by English Region 2011 to 2012
The yield for barley has decreased slightly on 2011 to 5.5 tonnes per hectare. On a regional basis, the highest yields for barley were in the Eastern region with an average of 6.4 tonnes per hectare. The lowest regional yield of 4.5 tonnes per hectare was in the North West and Merseyside.
UK production for 2012 has decreased by 7.3% to 2.6 million tonnes. This drop was due to a 14% decrease in yield to 3.4 tonnes per hectare, partially balanced by a 7.3% increase in area. This reflects a return to the level of yields seen in recent years. Yields have suffered in comparison to the very high yields of 2011, primarily as a result of wind and rain flattening the crop in the run up to the harvest, and low sunlight levels during pod fill.
The total area devoted to horticultural crops reduced by 2.0% between 2011 and 2012 to 172 thousand hectares. This decline was mainly driven by a 4.1% decrease in the area of vegetables and salad for human consumption, which fell to 123 thousand hectares and accounts for 72% of total horticultural land (see figure 8). Orchards account for the next largest area at 24 thousand hectares, followed by hardy nursery stock, small fruit and glasshouse.
Breakdown of Total Horticultural Area at 1 June 2012
Dairy and Beef Herd Numbers at June 2005 to 2012
The total number of cattle and calves in the UK remained almost unchanged in 2012 at 9.9 million head. Numbers in the dairy herd stayed virtually the same between 2011 and 2012 at 1.8 million, halting the long term decline seen since 2005 (see figure 9). The beef herd saw a 1.0% decrease from 2011 in contrast to the increases seen in the previous two years. The main dairy and beef herds are made up of female cattle aged 2 years or more that have calved.
The total number of pigs in the UK increased by 0.9% and now stands at 4.5 million. While the numbers of fattening pigs increased by 1.0% to almost 4.0 million, breeding pig numbers remained unchanged since 2011 at 523 thousand. A younger breeding herd has led to improvements in sow productivity therefore availability of pigs for slaughter is good, which may explain the increase in the fattening pigs. However recent high feed and input costs may start to impact on returns and some destocking is expected, which may have more impact later in 2012.
In June 2012 there were 32 million sheep and lambs in the UK, an increase of 1.8% on the 2011 figure. This increase has mainly been driven by the 2.4% increase in the female breeding flock which now stands at 15 million head. The number of rams has also increased between 2011 and 2012, rising from 378 to 392 thousand, while lamb numbers have increased by 1.5% to 16 million.
On the whole conditions have been favourable this year. A mild winter combined with a younger breeding flock, good feed availability in most regions and exports remaining strong have all contributed to the increase seen in the breeding flock.
In 2012 the total number of laying and breeding fowl fell by 4.1% from 49 million in 2011 to 47 million. The number of table chickens remained almost unchanged from 2011 at 103 million, whereas the total number of ducks, geese, turkeys and other poultry fell by 5.3%.
The number of farmers, partners, directors and spouses remained almost unchanged between 2011 and 2012 at 298 thousand. The number of salaried managers saw a small decrease of 1.2% but still remains at approximately 11 thousand as it has since 2009.
Regular and casual workers saw an increase of 3.6%, which was largely due to the 6.9% increase in seasonal and casual workers. Traditionally this category of workers tends to fluctuate more than the others due to the seasonal nature of the work.
DOWNLOAD REPORT:- Download this report here | <urn:uuid:0f41838c-429b-4627-89ce-6e87ad39ab7e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.thecropsite.com/reports/?category=87&id=1385 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946711 | 2,495 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Running Out of Oil
|David Room and Steve Tanner||May 5th 2008|
|Shell Geologist M. King Hubbert|
When did Shell executives first learn that the world would one day face the moment of peak oil, known to many as Hubbert’s Peak? Answer: as far back as 1956 when M. King Hubbert delivered his seminal speech to Shell employees predicting the day when oil reserves would begin to decline. For more than a half century, Shell has known that the world of the 21st Century would begin running out of oil with disastrous ramifications. Yet little was done to prepare society.
The story begins in 1950s when the United States was the world’s largest producer and exporter of oil, making it mostly self-sufficient. The U.S. also was the largest creditor nation, while its manufacturing output fed the world’s demand for tools and machinery. This new world power from the West emerged relatively unscathed from the second of two world wars, for which its unprecedented access to oil proved the deciding factor. This quite literally was America’s peak in wealth and potential.
Before embarking on an ambitious plan to rebuild the bombed-out cities of Europe, the U.S. built more than 2 million homes on the home front, mostly to meet the unprecedented demand of returning GIs. The resulting paradigm shift, constructed around a flawed assumption of infinite bounty, was the beginning of the suburbanization of America that continues to follow its terminal path. Intensive highway development would continue for decades, further solidifying American’s love affair with the automobile and redefining the American Dream.
1950s America was rapidly automating, highly productive but now using more carbon energy than human muscle. Thousands of laborers, many blue-collar African Americans, would be replaced by fossil-fuel-guzzling machines. Shell geologist M. King Hubbert said in his seminal speech to members of the petroleum industry’s trade association that fuel and not human energy was doing virtually all of the work in the United States, replacing most human and animal labor. Some energy came from hydroelectric and other sources, but most of that was — and still is — fossil fuel.
In this context of American exuberance and seeming mastery of the world, Hubbert took a stand that was antithetical to the accepted view of what was “normal,” forecasting that the ultimate source of American power –– Texas gold — was headed for imminent decline. He took that stand, geographically speaking, in the heart of the U.S. oil patch.
Hubbert was invited to give a broad-brush picture of the overall world energy situation, including the state of U.S. energy resources, at the spring meeting of the Southwest Section of the American Petroleum Institute. Driving from Houston, he and his wife went to the Plaza Hotel in San Antonio to drop off 500 copies of his talk for distribution at the meeting. “To my surprise, I found myself surrounded by the petroleum press, wanting to know, was this paper going to be given? I said, ‘Why, certainly.’
“But it was perfectly obvious, there was something going on that I didn’t know about, and I was furious. The press, all the gas journals, various petroleum journals… the oil reporters… In fact, I was so angry that I refused to go back to my hotel… my wife and I had dinner and went to a motion picture, and we didn’t get back to the hotel room until around midnight. And then the next morning, when the meeting was opening, the program consisted of the Mayor of San Antonio giving an address of welcome. I was the next speaker, when I got a signal calling me off the platform,” Hubbert recalled in a 1989 interview.
While the Mayor was making his address, Hubbert got a telephone call from an executive assistant in New York, expressing “considerable alarm” about his paper. The assistant pleaded with Hubbert to “tone it down,” taking out parts he claimed were “sensational.” To which Hubbert replied: “Nothing sensational about it, just straightforward analysis.” The assistant then asked Hubbert, “That part about reaching the peak of oil production in ten or fifteen years, it’s just utterly ridiculous.”
Hubbert tried to get the admin off his back, since he was supposed to take the podium after the Mayor, who was currently speaking. Hubbert later recalled, “The vice president for so-called public relations, otherwise known as propaganda, had read… a release on it, and had gone through the ceiling.” The release had been written by the PR department in Houston. The New York office didn’t even have a copy of the paper.
“All they had was a synopsis written by the public relations man in Houston. But anyhow, they blew up in smoke, and there wasn’t a responsible official in the New York office. They were all out at a meeting somewhere else… Anyhow, I went ahead, gave my paper, informally of course but with lantern slides and exactly as written. No modification whatever. And later when I got back to Houston, I found that the tension was very high around the office in Houston. Apparently all hell had been going on during my absence,” Hubbert said.
In his talk, Hubbert explained the growth of fossil fuel extraction along a bell curve and how the downward slope from concave to convex can be used to predict when the rate of growth would stop at a peak before declining. Knowing that the production both started and ended at zero simplified the mathematics such that Hubbert could forecast the peaking of the lower 48 states using an estimate of total recoverable reserves. Rather than conjure up his own numbers, Hubbert used the range of the estimates for the most highly regarded geologists of the time – 150 to 200 million barrels. Simply graphing the curves and counting squares, he showed that the lower 48 states would peak between 1965 and 1971.
On that smaller scale, at least, his theory was proven.
Hubbert also plotted oil on a scale of 10,000 years - 5,000 years ago to 5,000 years in the future – showing how mankind’s use of petroleum is “a unique event in human history, a unique event in biological history. It is non-repetitive, a blip in the span of time.” He then posited nuclear power as a possible substitute.
Hubbert’s forecast caused shock, consternation and denial in various parts of the petroleum industry. He would later say, “That caused a jolt… The first reaction was honest incredulity. Then the industry split. One side refused to accept the situation and started changing the figures. The other side, people like Shell, found they could not change the figures.
“Well, after about a week, when the responsible people did begin to come back, I think there were some pretty red faces in the New York office and maybe even in Houston. For one thing, they had a chance to look at their data and they found they couldn’t disprove anything I’d said. So the whole thing had been a tempest in a teapot by people who didn’t know what the hell they were talking about.”
The 1956 volume of Production Practice, the journal of record for the American Petroleum Institute, didn’t come out until early 1957. Hubbert’s paper was the lead story. In the speech, Hubbert had said “the discovery, exploitation and exhaustion of the fossil fuels will be seen to but an ephemeral event in the span of recorded history.”
Shell deleted the following comments from the published paper that contained Hubbert’s estimates: “Assuming that this prognosis is not seriously in error, it raises grave policy questions with regard to the future of the petroleum industry. It need not be emphasized that there is a vast difference between the running of an industry whose annual production can be depended upon to increase on the average 5 to 10 percent per year and one whose output can be depended upon to decline at that rate. Yet in terms of the production of natural gas and crude oil, this appears to be what the petroleum industry is now facing.”
Shell replaced that prediction with the following statement: “The culmination for petroleum and natural gas in both the United States and the State of Texas should concur within the next few decades.”
Shell was just starting a new program of their highest level executive training, in-house training of hand-picked people who were obviously going up the executive ladder, and the first meeting was in July, 1956. Hubbert was one of the lecturers in that course. “They had 50 people holed up for a solid month, and most of the speakers were company officials, presidents, vice presidents, production exploration managers and so on. And a few outsiders brought in by Columbia Business School and so on as consultants from the outside. How to justify my being there? I wasn’t a president or a vice president, or high company official. So I was said to be there in the category of an outside consultant.”
The lecture was successful to this group; Shell had about two or three such meetings per year. Hubbert said he talked about the same topics he covered at that API meeting in San Antonio, complete with lantern slides. “And so I was, you might say, an outside member of that group… So I talked to most of the potential officialdom of Shell Oil Company in the ascendancy.”
They responded with “a certain amount of uneasiness,” he recalled. “I have a letter that I received… five or six years ago, from a president… of Shell Chemical Company who said he’d been in one of those sessions where I’d talked. He thought I was the most pessimistic geologist he’d ever heard. And that I’d hit the nail right on the head."
David Room and Steve Tanner write on energy issues including Hubbert’s Peak. This article is drawn from an oral history interview with Marion King Hubbert by Ronald E. Doel, January 4 to 6 February 1989, located at the Niels Bohr Library of the American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD. More information can be found at Hubbert Tribute: http://www.mkinghubbert.com/. Photo courtesy of the Hubbert Tribute. | <urn:uuid:3af910bf-6a7f-4657-b80f-4636ef2c84be> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=476 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976829 | 2,201 | 3.171875 | 3 |
A Reader's View
Editor: Domestic, industrial and agriculture water use is rising across Canada, putting many rivers and lakes under increasing strain. As an organization that works to protect natural areas across P.E.I., Island Nature Trust is concerned that any increase in the number of high-capacity groundwater wells will affect fish and wildlife in the province negatively. How much water can be withdrawn while still maintaining healthy natural aquatic ecosystems? It takes the expertise of hydrologists, engineers and biologists to understand and predict the changes in fish habitat in response to altered flow regimes/water systems.
Conservation practices such as longer crop rotations that include forages, better residue management and strip cropping increase the moisture holding capacity of the soil. The presence of organic matter enhances the soil’s structure, thermal, and nutritional regimes; and decreases wind and water erosion. Healthy soils hold moisture better than those with low organic material. In other words, soils with high organic matter need less water for healthy plant growth.
Withdrawing water from existing ground water supplies at times of the year when those water levels are at their lowest and at a time when 100 per cent of the surface water flow is from groundwater (springs) will further reduce the volume of ground water flowing into springs, streams, rivers and estuaries. Reduced water flow coupled with high levels of nutrients currently found in the very potato-rich watersheds to be irrigated in central P.E.I., will lead to increased over-nutrification of water systems and then to an increase in anoxic events.
Wildlife in all parts of waterways will be affected by less water and by the associated issues such as eutrophication and anoxia. Extracting more groundwater from P.E.I. is about so much more than simply water volume issues. The permanent loss of high volumes of water in an already fragile aquifer at a very sensitive time of year will have negative impacts on aquatic animals and plants, including those harvested by humans.
Human health is important, and the high nitrate level found in groundwater in many wells in high potato production areas is a serious concern to the health of Islanders. However, wildlife and natural areas often take a back seat to human needs and health issues. In many jurisdictions fish and wildlife management agencies sit on the sidelines of important water management decisions.
On behalf of the health of our natural systems, including springs, streams, rivers, their riparian zones and estuaries we strongly encourage the P.E.I. Government to adopt a provincial water management plan to effectively integrate water quantity, quality and wildlife management and to maintain the existing moratorium on high-capacity deep water well construction.
Fiep de Bie,
President, Island Nature Trust,
Board of Directors | <urn:uuid:1358fcee-ad98-4c9f-a6a3-31ff84a99184> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.theguardian.pe.ca/Opinion/Letter-to-editor/2014-03-18/article-3653836/Province-needs-water-management-plan/1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938426 | 562 | 3.671875 | 4 |
Tiny frog claimed as smallest vertebrate ever
Mine's smaller, yells irate ichthyologist*
Boffins have found what they believe to be the world's smallest vertebrate. The tiny amphibian was discovered when scientists grabbed some leaves from the forest floor in Papua New Guinea and shoved them in a plastic bag.
With an average body size of 7.7mm (0.27 inches), the translucent nano-frogs sit easily on a US dime (which has a diameter of nearly 18mm, making it similar in size to the UK five pence coin).
While researching frog cries in the rainforest, researchers Christopher Austin and Eric Rittmeyer identified the newcomer's tiny insect-like cries coming from the ground, and after trying to find the frog in the leaves, became frustrated and jammed the whole lot in a plastic bag:
"It was night, these things are incredibly small; so what we did after several frustrating attempts was to grab a whole handful of leaf litter and throw it inside a clear plastic bag. When we did so, we saw these incredibly tiny frogs hopping around," research leader Chris Austin from Louisiana State University told the BBC.
The discovery of the froglet, named Paedophryne amauensis brings the title of smallest vertebrate back to the frogs. It had previously been held by an Indonesian swamp-dwelling fish, the Paedocypris progenetica, measuring 7.9 to 10.3mm in length.
The researching scientists say that the breadth and limits on vertebrate size have been of great interest to biologists due to the functional and physiological constraints associated with extreme body size Adaptions that make this frog work biomechanically at its tiny size include the shortening of its fingers and toes to "vestigial nubs" and the simplification of its skull.
Tiny frogs are particularly susceptible to drying out, because of their high surface area to volume ratio, so scientists believe they can only survive in wet forest litter in tropical zones. Where normal frogs eat normal insects, tiny frogs eat tiny insects. ®
* An ichthyologist has disputed that the frog is genuinely the smallest vertebrate, telling the Associated Press that the males of a species of deep-sea anglerfish should take the tiny crown. The males of this species are a tiny 5mm, but the fact that they don't have stomachs and live as parasites on the backs of 50mm females has led some scientists to discount their existence as separate creatures.
Ecological Guild Evolution and the Discovery of the World's Smallest Vertebrate, co-authored by Eric N Rittmeyer, Allen Allison, Michael C Gründler, Derrick K Thompson, Christopher C Austin, was published on 11 January, 2012 in PloSONE | <urn:uuid:43c07a35-04aa-460e-ba24-48fb433afda0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2012/01/13/tiny_new_frog_worlds_smallest_vertebrate/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951228 | 570 | 3.34375 | 3 |
Graham Hancock is no stranger to controversy. The former journalist, whose books have sold five million copies in the past 10 years, has repeatedly dared to challenge scientific shibboleth, taking a run at entrenched thinking in archeology, geology and astronomy.
His central thesis, laid out in Fingerprints of the Gods and Heaven’s Mirror,is that a lost, seafaring civilization, both highly cultured and scientifically advanced, preceded what we now regard as our earliest known communities in Sumer, the Mediterranean and the Indian subcontinent. How else to reconcile these otherwise primitive societies with their extraordinary inheritance — a legacy of sophisticated astronomical, cartographical and mathematical understanding?
Now, in the vast, 743-page Underworld, The Mysterious Origins of Civilization (Doubleday), Mr. Hancock takes the argument a long step farther.
His central premise is widely accepted: The great meltdown that accompanied the end of the last ice age (7,000 to 17,000 years ago) inundated about 65 million square kilometres of habitable land — roughly the size of South America and the United States combined.
There is less consensus on how rapidly the mega-melt occurred. Mr. Hancock cites geological evidence that deglaciation occurred not gradually, but in three wrenching and violent cataclysms — a tidal catastrophe sufficient to raise sea levels 130 metres, abruptly change the geography of the planet and erase, more or less instantly, whatever low-lying cities that existed.
In the antediluvian world, he suggests, Sri Lanka was attached to southern India, Malta to Sicily, via a 60-kilometre land bridge, and the Persian Gulf was essentially dry. After the floods, the Earth’s inventory of islands experienced a dramatic increase. “I’ve tried to take this forward by correlating the science” — including work by University of Alberta geologist John Shaw — “to the flood myths that turn up in cultures around the world,” Mr. Hancock said this week in Toronto.
And there is a correlation: In areas that were clearly submerged by deglaciation, popular myths describe the event and its aftermath — the retreat to higher ground by survivors and the renaissance of communal life. Many stories also allude to a civilization of stature that was suddenly erased.
Of course, for many academics, such myths are exactly that, legends that have no basis in historical event. But Mr. Hancock maintains that the ubiquity and similarity of such myths in so many widely dispersed cultures attest to a universal memory of a genuine flood so vast and so destructive as to constitute a root saga of early human history.
In the past, Mr. Hancock’s assumptions and extrapolations have exposed him to sharp ridicule. The scientific community has excoriated his methodology, denounced his conclusions and dismissed him as a circus act. A few years ago, BBC2’s Horizons series aired a two-hour dcoumentary that, he charged, tarnished his work and his reputation; he appealed its findings to a BBC ombudsman, who ruled in his favour.
In Underworld, Mr. Hancock has tried to cloak himself more carefully in the recognized vestments of traditional science. The work of respected experts is sprinkled liberally through the text, and the book is more deferential to scientific authority and less extravagant in making claims.
But the general proposition is still liable to make waves (no pun intended) — that buried in our oceans, largely ignored, are the remnants of once-great civilizations, a lost chapter in human history. If modern homo sapiens, as science insists, have been here for 120,000 years, but our traceable family tree goes back to only about 10,000 BC, what happened in the interval? Nothing? We were hunter-gatherers for 110 millennia?
Mr. Hancock’s own efforts have turned up “a handful of genuinely mysterious ruins . . . that cannot be explained within the established model of prehistory. All were last above water at the end of the last ice age and all are too large and complex to have been made by any known culture of that period.”
But do they constitute the smoking gun — definitively Paleolithic (before 10,000 BC), certifiably man-made, reliably carbon-dated structures or artifacts?
“There are things that definitely do not fit in with the historical picture,” Mr. Hancock contends. “Structures off the coast of Japan at Yonaguni, and off the eastern coast of India, near Poompuhur, are certainly enough to raise fruitful areas of further inquiry.”
At Yonaguni, there are parallel megaliths, stone circles, ramps and other rock formations that may suggest human design — the jury is still very much divided. But you can see the designs clearly in the book’s photographs, taken by Hancock’s wife, Santha Faiia.
At Poompuhur, facing the Bay of Bengal, Indian divers found a horseshoe-shaped object, measuring 85 metres in length, in water more than 23 metres deep. According to one scientist, the land on which this structure was built last stood above water more than 11,000 years ago.
In January, Indian marine scientists discovered what may be the more extensive remains of two ancient cities in the Gulf of Cambay. The site spans an area of about 25 square kilometres, 35 metres deep, which, until as late as 6,900 years ago, was entirely above water. About 2,000 possibly man-made artifacts have been dredged and carbon-dated from 8,500 to 9,500 years old.
Mr. Hancock suggests that a comprehensive attempt to mine the oceans archeologically would validate his hypothesis. But he personally is finished with this chapter of his life, at least for now. “I’m really tired of the personal venom. I find elements of it extremely insidious. I’m moving on” — notably to new books about the origins of humankind and (with Robert Bauval) about sacred myths hidden embedded in the design of Paris, Washington and other cities.
As for the underworld, he hopes that oceangraphic institutes will continue to explore. It’s expensive, he concedes, “but it’s doable. And if you were going to look for lost civilizations, the oceans are where you’d look.”
Michael Posner is a Globe and Mail arts reporter. | <urn:uuid:f9e82194-778e-4ef3-b049-549a00c5f2eb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=396 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959348 | 1,338 | 3.03125 | 3 |
Consider for a minute the diversity of birds. There are nearly 10,000
species! Is it possible to trace these birds back to one common ancestor?
If so, who is it?
One of the major criticisms of Darwin's Origin of Species was
the apparent lack of any evidence showing the evolution of birds. Then,
as luck might have it, only two years after he first published his book,
Archaeopteryx appeared in a site in Germany.
Today there are 8 preserved fossils of Archaeopteryx in various
museums of the world. What an amazing find for science because it stirred
scientists to try to figure out how birds were related to other creatures.
was amazing for a few reasons. First it superficially resembled both a
bird and a reptile. In fact, except for the feathers, the
bird-like feet, and the fact that it had a wishbone
(furcula) it didn't really look like a bird. The jaws
had teeth in them, of which no bird today has teeth. It also
had the ankle bone fused to the shinbone. Clearly this
bird had features of dinosaurs AND birds. So where did birds evolve?
Three hypothesis on origin of birds finally arose:
- Therapod dinosaur hypothesis: The first was a hypothesis
that they came from the therapod dinosaurs. Therapods are meat eating
dinosaurs such as Allosaurus.
- Crocodiles - the second hypothesis was that they
came from crocodiles because they had an endolymphatic duct. Yet, as
more research was conducted, they discovered that there was a tremendous
amount of variation in this duct even among the lizards and other reptiles.
Not many people today give much attention to this hypothesis
- Neither crocodiles or dinosaurs:Neither on the dinosaur
line or the crocodile line. Reasoning because several dinosaurs were
very specialized already.
Today we can show that birds are related in many ways to Dinosaurs. By
using key characters we can use cladistics to understand better the relationships.
For instance we can look at features they share in common with animals
such as reptiles, and ancient dinosaurs in order to figure out where they
may have evolved. They can thus, be linked generally to Ornithodira
and more specifically to Manirapterans.
If you look at a cladogram
of Diapsids which includes snakes, lizards, crocodiles (archosaurs),
and dinosaurs and birds, you can get a better picture as to where birds
Looking in particular at the Ornithodira, Dinosaurs, Saurischian
dinosaurs, Therapods, Tetanurae, Coelesaurs, Manirapterans. (list
||Advanced metatarsal ankle
||3+ sacral vertebrae; reduced fibula
||5+ sacral vertebrae, opptisthopubic pelvis, predentary
bone in lower jaw
||10+ sacral vertebrae, ankles have an ascending process
||Elongate, narrow metatarsus; hollow bones, metatarsal 5 reduced
||(Allosaurus etc.), has a tooth row on the upper row that
does not extend back past the orbital (eyes). Also has a antorbital
||because has a semi-opisthopedic pelvis. Means that
the pubis bone of the pelvis is rotating backwards and has a foot.
||Presence of feathers
Summarization of the set of derived characters that link them
to the dinosaurs:
Once the idea that birds came from dinosaurs began, there was a scurry
to find fossil evidence that could link birds back to their dino-roots.
Several different dino-birds arose in the last century. One was Caudipteryx
In China a fossil
was found that was dinosaur-like but had feathers. It seems that the wings
would have been too small to allow it to fly, but, the fact that it had
wings made it big news! Thus, the idea was that the initial evolution
of feathers may not have been for powered flight. In fact, if you look
at the tail feathers, it looks as though they are symmetrical around the
shaft. This finding forced a reconfiguration of the systematics of the
Another fossil was found that, although it was not a fossil with wings,
it was a closely related dinosaur to birds that was very small and appeared
to be arboreal. This tiny fossil is only about 10 cm long and if it lived
in the trees could have glided from tree to tree.
ORIGIN OF FLIGHT.
How did it evolve?
For almost a century scientists have been debating this issue. The common
belief was that flight must have evolved from the trees down. This is
because every known modern semi-airborn animal (glider), seems to be arboreal.
Yet, another competing theory is that the wings are used to catch insects
and thus evolved from the ground up.
One set of reasoning for the 'ground-up' hypothesis is that dinosaurs
could have been leaping to catch insects and wings allowed them to come
down in one piece. Part of the evidence is that the capturing of prey
was the same movement for flight.
Wing-Assisted Incline running. (copy
of the study).
In a 2003 article in science, Kenneth Dial proposed his theory of 'wing-assisted
incline running' as a way for wings to evolve. In the study he used chucker
partridges and had them run up grades from 0 to 90 degrees. From 0 to
45 degrees, they just used their legs, but greater than 45 they used their
wings too. When they flap their wings, they put traction on the surface
and thus, increase their ability to run up the incline
Links about Bird Evolution and the Evolution of flight:
By Rob Nelson
Can't find what you're looking for? Search for it here | <urn:uuid:4c4859fb-6ab7-4470-82db-60e14d6750cb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.thewildclassroom.com/biodiversity/birds/aviantopics/originandevolution.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95263 | 1,260 | 3.671875 | 4 |
1. The first general officer insignia was established by general order on July 14, 1775 which stated ''To prevent mistakes, the general officers and their aides-de-camp will be distinguished in the following manner: The Commander-in-Chief by a light blue ribband, worn across his breast, between his coat and waistcoat; the Majors and Brigadier Generals by a pink ribband worn in like manner;…''
2. Stars were first used to identify general officers on June 18, 1780 when it was prescribed that Major Generals would wear two stars and Brigadier Generals one star on each epaulette. Three stars were established in 1798 for the rank of Lieutenant General and were worn by the Commander-in-Chief, General Washington. Four stars were authorized for the rank of General when the rank was established by Act of Congress on July 25, 1866. Grant was the first officer of the Army to hold the rank of General and to wear the insignia of four silver stars.
3. The title of General of the Armies was established after World War I. No special insignia was developed and General Pershing wore four stars. He was the only person appointed as General of the Armies.
4. General of the Army was established by Congress on December 14, 1944 and provided that no more than four officers could be appointed. President Roosevelt appointed Generals George Marshall, Douglas MacArthur, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Henry H. Arnold. Act of Congress, approved September 15, 1950, authorized the President to appoint General Omar N. Bradley to the grade of General of the Army. The insignia of grade for General of the Army is prescribed as five silver stars set in a circle with the coat of arms of the United States, in gold, above the circle of stars. | <urn:uuid:49acdf6d-a1aa-44cc-b702-2c0f2348d358> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.tioh.hqda.pentagon.mil/Catalog/Heraldry.aspx?HeraldryId=15699&CategoryId=9170&grp=2&menu=Uniformed%20Services&ps=24&p=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982622 | 370 | 3.65625 | 4 |
Little local effect from mad cow scare
In the entryway of B&J Country Mart, a sign tells customers that the store only sells beef grown in the United States.
Clearly, the nationwide mad cow scare has hit home.
Last week, a Holstein cow butchered in the state of Washington tested positive for mad cow disease.
By the time the diagnosis of mad cow disease was made, there was the possibility that ground beef from this cow, which had been imported from Canada in 2001, had been shipped to eight states.
Kansas was not one of them.
Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is associated with a rare and fatal brain-wasting disease in humans, known as Creutzfeld-Jakob disease.
Dennis Meacham, meat market manager at B&J for 10 years, said customers have been inquiring about mad cow disease.
But he said, their concerns hadn't sliced into sales of beef -- at least not yet anyway.
"If they're worrying about it, it would reflect in the sales, and the sales of beef are still way up there," said Meacham, who raises cattle at his farm north of Topeka. "If they were having a problem about the beef, they would switch to pork, and they haven't."
Because of the large volume of beef produced in the Midwest, there's only a slim chance that Kansas grocers would carry beef from Washington, where the infected cow was detected, Meacham said.
"In this five-state area, there are the biggest beef producers in the world," Meacham said. "Texas is number one, Kansas is second. ... We're going to get our beef from this area."
Even so, Meacham said, the scare will hurt the industry.
For instance, Japan bought more than $1 billion worth of U.S. beef last year.
Meacham said he plans to continue eating beef, despite the mad cow scare.
"It's just extremely rare," Meacham said. "If you go out here and walk across the street or try to cross the street in downtown Tonganoxie, you're in a lot more danger than you are from this meat." | <urn:uuid:282ff551-83f7-4185-868d-7a8ec7f04fb5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.tonganoxiemirror.com/news/2003/dec/31/little_local_effect/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98049 | 468 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Everywhere one looks at Bayon, one sees stone faces looking into eternity, smiling enigmatically as they brave Time and temporal corruption.
B&W photo given a sepia treatment from a scanned film used with my old Minolta SRT101.
The Bayon (Khmer: ប្រាសាទបាយ័ន, Prasat Bayon) is a well-known and richly decorated Khmer temple at Angkor in Cambodia. Built in the late 12th century or early 13th century as the official state temple of the Mahayana Buddhist King Jayavarman VII, the Bayon stands at the centre of Jayavarman's capital, Angkor Thom. Following Jayavarman's death, it was modified and augmented by later Hindu and Theravada Buddhist kings in accordance with their own religious preferences.
The Bayon's most distinctive feature is the multitude of serene and massive stone faces on the many towers which jut out from the upper terrace and cluster around its central peak.
The temple is known also for two impressive sets of bas-reliefs, which present an unusual combination of mythological, historical, and mundane scenes.
The current main conservatory body, the Japanese Government team for the Safeguarding of Angkor (the JSA) has described the temple as "the most striking expression of the baroque style" of Khmer architecture, as contrasted with the classical style of Angkor Wat.
According to Angkor-scholar Maurice Glaize, the Bayon appears "as but a muddle of stones, a sort of moving chaos assaulting the sky."
Critiques | Translate
francio64 (39888) 2012-10-28 12:51
sono sempre stato attratto da questi luoghi e da tutto ci˛ che Ŕ archeologico e sono veramente pentito di non aver proseguito gli studi con l'universitÓ.
Fare l'archeologo sarebbe stata una bella professione per chi come me ama tutto questo.
A volte vorrei anche poter fare un salto indietro nel tempo all'epoca degli antichi cambogiani, giusto per vivere il periodo florido di questi luoghi.
Ottimo punto di ripresa che ben mette in vista il sorriso delle antiche sculture che come scrivi nel titolo, forse sorrideranno in eterno.
Bello il trattamento in bianco e nero.
Well done and TFS!
kathryn_weir (2056) 2012-10-29 2:35
Bayon temple is such a rich photographic playground and you have captured a lovely image here. The main smiling countenance placed well in the foreground and then echoed with the second face behind . My only comment with regard to the composition is i wonder if it might have been possible to move the main face more to the right so as it was closer to the third rather than in the centre. however having said that it is quite likely that it was impossible to move further to the left as access to some areas here can be tricky, and we wouldn't want you falling off a temple ledge. It is always easy to say "maybe you could" with these pictures but we don't see the limitations outside of the frame. These images cry out for the sepia treatment and I have a number of mine treated similarly- yours is outstanding. I wish I could visit again as I am so much more engrossed in my photography now than the first time I visited.
Thanks for sharing
PecoBud (3824) 2012-10-29 13:35
Klaudio, thank you so very much for your kind words and keeping me and my family in your thoughts and prayers. As I try to get back into the mix of things here on TE, I read the critiques of my last two photos and find it very hard holding back tears. It's nice to have an extended family that hasn't even met me before, which makes you all even that more special to me.
Gorgeous B&W photo, showing happiness. Superb clarity and presented perfectly and at the right time for me..........Thank you again Klaudio!!
TFS.......Your Friend from California.........Buddy
wolf38 (31296) 2012-11-01 10:57
Hello Klaudio. Faces chiseled in stone. One look is enough to see the world-famous facility in Seam Reap. I was a few years ago with some friends there. It takes a lot of time to explore all the temples. Rgds wolfgang.
pajaran (60039) 2012-11-01 23:59
Kod nas je poceo lep jesenji dan sa suncem.
Lep pogled na skulpturu ...
Dobra ostrina snimka i kontrast.
Dobar tekst i kompozicija, lepo pokazana skulptura.
Dobar rad sa filmom.
Prijatan dan i sve najbolje za vikend.
batalay (38773) 2012-11-02 19:19
In B&W this photos works especially well. I remember from my childhood seeing B&W images in old encyclopedias of Bayon. Those haunting hidden faces were precisely the memories I brought with me. I would love to see Cambodia, and of course its unquestionable gem Angkor Wat.
Incidentally, I posted a photo of Montenegro with you in mind. Thank you for the lovely note you wrote last time about your ancestors. My grandfather was born in Thesalanicca in 1881, and was a childhood friend of Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk). They attended the same schools, and even spent time in jail together for publishing anti-Ottoman literature. My father was born in Ohrid, then part of the Ottoman Empire, in 1910, when my grandfather was posted there. If you get a chance, take a look at A Love Story Lent a Helping Hand....
macondo (19483) 2012-11-03 22:59
This one's probably a little more successful than the other, with the faces closer to the camera, its slightly sepia look, and the way the stone stands out against the slightly hazy trees (they could almost be gums) behind, giving greater depth and focus. Plus, the lighter bits of stone seem to have more effect. There's no doubt that b/w does provide that sense of eternity or timelessness.
ikeharel (70655) 2012-11-04 2:24
At first I thought it was only my imagination, seeing a face carved on the rock - but reading the note, realized the whole.
Good choise of Sepia, sky's were not allowing good WB.
*** On the Baha'i shrine I had to apply "noise-reduction" due to strong light, "grained" the image.
Silvio1953 (141991) 2012-11-05 0:34
Ciao Klaudio, great POV on fantastic sculpture, excellent clarity and splendid light, very well done, my friend, ciao Silvio
annjackman (21895) 2012-11-09 10:38
It was only a few days ago that I was standing in front of these stone faces. I like your sepia treatment that brings out the textures and detail very well. A super reminder of an outstanding place.
Kind Regards, Ann
kato (11630) 2012-11-24 22:42
Hi dear Klaudio,
You're capturing well the group of this stone face by good angle and excellent cepia tone/clarity, so it's interesting and impressive to see the mysterious Buddhist's face minced by the huge stone. Considering whether it was built with a king's authority or it was built as incarnation of a Buddha, it is interesting.
leo61 (0) 2013-03-07 10:19
I`ve been there twice and never forget these smiles.I spent hours at Bayon and loved it.
Good composition with this tree and nice grey/sepia tones. | <urn:uuid:a6ef7268-47f5-477b-8e07-a6d49f422874> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Asia/Cambodia/photo1389784.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914185 | 1,804 | 2.5625 | 3 |
When most people imagine a teacher in a classroom, they picture a person standing at a chalkboard. Icons used to signify the education world are rulers, apples, and books, but the average classroom no longer revolves around chalk, rulers, and textbooks any more. Our world has become high tech and our schools and students have evolved with it.
Most classrooms in the greater D.C. area have at least a single computer for each teacher. Chalkboards have gone by the wayside. Many classrooms now have interactive whiteboards, such as SMART Boards or Promethean Boards. One area county has been issuing new lap tops to each teacher and still more schools are lucky enough to have iPads in their classrooms for student use.
Bringing technology to the classroom is a great way to enhance learning. With different learning styles, students process knowledge in different ways. There are many applications of a computer, iPad, or SMART Board that can bring a lesson to life for all students. Technology can allow a teacher to present a lesson in way that will target all learning styles. Using technology in this way could help those students that perhaps would not have grasped the concept without it. The use of multi-media applications can help keep even the most distracted student engaged.
To take the learning style focus a step further, some educators and parents have found success engaging students with special needs by using assistive technology inclusive of multiple learning styles. In one case, an iPad app helped a student communicate, which in turn helped her gain new confidence. Interactive technology can provide new opportunities for students with special needs to participate and accomplish skills that would otherwise require assistance from a live person.
One of the biggest challenges with technology in our schools is whether or not the teachers know how to maximize its benefits. Without proper training, teachers may have a SMART Board in their classroom but only use it as a resource to project images. This is a waste of a great tool. At the request of local teachers, we created a course for beginners, SMART Board for the K-12 Educator, Part I, and the first four sections quickly filled. The participants in that course gained confidence in the introductory skills and instantly wanted more, thus, we added a SMART Board, Part II, which we will offer for the first time on Saturdays this fall.
The world around us does not stand still. Technology touches a part of our lives every day. We take classes and buy our groceries on lap tops, pay bills, check email and video chat on our phones. People have become accustomed to instant online services. To keep up with those demands, we added the conveniences of online registration, access to online grades and transcript requests, as well as Continuing Ed courses conducted completely online. Those automated services are what afforded us the ability to branch out into developing new courses, such as the SMART Board course. Perhaps adding technology components to your instruction will provide you with some much deserved extra time in your classroom.
As we approach the 2012-2013 school year, familiarize yourself with the technology tools available to you. We offer a few Continuing Ed tech courses here, but county schools and community centers also offer trainings on classroom technology and every teacher should take advantage. The start of the school year is also a great time to find a tech savvy colleague you can go to when you have a question. Just like children, teachers need to set an example and keep learning.
We won’t be going back to the chalkboards anytime soon, so embrace technology and what it can do for you. What are you doing to get ready? | <urn:uuid:8d23743a-1260-4758-b740-d3cd91518a87> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.trinitydc.edu/continuing-education/2012/08/02/go-high-tech-in-2012/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966579 | 730 | 3.65625 | 4 |
New Book Defines Digital Literacy, Offers Guidance for Educators and Policymakers
BERKELEY, CA, October 25, 2010 — In today's world of texting, tweeting, blogging, and social networking, young people are writing more than ever. Students are faced with learning multiple new literacies to succeed in our fast-paced, information-rich world, yet most schools have not caught up with the digital reality that students live in daily. Because Digital Writing Matters, a new book from the National Writing Project (NWP), looks at what educators, parents, and policymakers can do to help schools meet the challenges of new digital literacies and to equip students with the technology-related communication skills they need to thrive in school and in the global workplace.
"Today's young people are using a range of digital tools to compose and create in new and exciting ways," said Sharon J. Washington, executive director of the National Writing Project. "It is a game-changing moment for teachers of writing. The very notion of what it means to write is shifting, and educators are faced with adapting their teaching practices to integrate new technologies while redefining writing and learning for the 21st century."
Digital Writing Matters describes how:
Digital writing is more than just a skill; it is a means of interfacing with ideas and with the world, a mode of thinking and expressing in all grades and disciplines.
Digital writing can help students develop critical thinking skills and support learning across all subject areas.
Educators, community members, and policymakers must work together to promote technology development in schools to create learning environments that support digital literacy.
The authors stress that writing classrooms will need to embrace tools, strategies, and skills beyond those that traditional classrooms required. Through stories, examples, and vignettes, Because Digital Writing Matters illustrates how cutting-edge educators have successfully used digital writing tools in diverse classroom and school settings to enrich learning and provide meaningful writing experiences for students at all grade levels. The book offers practical solutions and models for educators and policymakers involved in planning, implementing, and assessing digital writing initiatives and writing programs. Since the early 1990s, National Writing Project teacher-leaders have been at the forefront of exploring the implications of new digital tools for the teaching of writing.
Because Digital Writing Matters is part of NWP's ongoing national effort to create and disseminate resources and learning opportunities for educators as they develop effective strategies for teaching and improving new media literacies. Because Digital Writing Matters, a companion to What Is Digital Writing and Why Does It Matter? New Book Defines Digital Literacy, Offers Guidance for Educators and Policymakers For Immediate Release NWP's popular 2003 book Because Writing Matters, is published by Jossey-Bass, and will be available in early November 2010. To learn more about the book, or to order a copy, visit www.nwp.org/r/digitalwritingmatters.
The National Writing Project (NWP) is a nationwide network of educators working together to improve the teaching of writing in the nation's schools and in other settings. NWP provides high-quality professional development programs to teachers in a variety of disciplines and at all levels, from early childhood through university. Through its network of more than 200 university-based sites located in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, NWP develops the leadership, programs and research needed for teachers to help students become successful writers and learners.
For more information, visit www.nwp.org.
NWP's Related Resources
See other digital writing books by Writing Project teachers.
Read about the innovative work of NWP's Technology Liaisons Network.
Follow NWP on Twitter: @writingproject | <urn:uuid:d5ac1e09-6fc7-48e6-94de-b5db7cba097d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/CLAS/Centers/denverwritingproject/diglit/Pages/default.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929588 | 761 | 3.4375 | 3 |
Students are expected to know, understand, and comply with the ethical standards of the University. In addition, students have an obligation to inform the appropriate official of any acts of academic dishonesty by other students of the University. Academic dishonesty is defined as a student's use of unauthorized assistance with intent to deceive an instructor or other such person who may be assigned to evaluate the student’s work in meeting course and degree requirements. Examples of academic dishonesty include, but are not limited to, the following:
Plagiarism is the use of another person’s distinctive ideas or words without acknowledgment. The incorporation of another person’s work into one’s own requires appropriate identification and acknowledgment, regardless of the means of appropriation. The following are considered to be forms of plagiarism when the source is not noted:
- Word-for-word copying of another person's ideas or words.
- The mosaic (the interspersing of one’s own words here and there while, in essence, copying another's work).
- The paraphrase (the rewriting of another’s work, yet still using their fundamental idea or theory).
- Fabrication of references (inventing or counterfeiting sources).
- Submission of another’s work as one's own.
- Neglecting quotation marks on material that is otherwise acknowledged.
Acknowledgment is not necessary when the material used is common knowledge.
Cheating involves the possession, communication, or use of information, materials, notes, study aids or other devices not authorized by the instructor in an academic exercise, or communication with another person during such an exercise. Examples of cheating are:
- Copying from another's paper or receiving unauthorized assistance from another during an academic exercise or in the submission of academic material.
- Using a calculator when its use has been disallowed.
- Collaborating with another student or students during an academic exercise without the consent of the instructor.
Fabrication and Falsification
Fabrication involves inventing or counterfeiting information, i.e., creating results not obtained in a study or laboratory experiment. Falsification, on the other hand, involves deliberately altering or changing results to suit one’s needs in an experiment or other academic exercise.
This is the submission of academic work for which academic credit has already been earned, when such submission is made without instructor authorization.
Misuse of Academic Materials
The misuse of academic materials includes, but is not limited to, the following:
- Stealing or destroying library or reference materials or computer programs.
- Stealing or destroying another student’s notes or materials, or having such materials in one’s possession without the owner’s permission.
- Receiving assistance in locating or using sources of information in an assignment when such assistance has been forbidden by the instructor.
- Illegitimate possession, disposition, or use of examinations or answer keys to examinations.
- Unauthorized alteration, forgery, or falsification.
- Unauthorized sale or purchase of examinations, papers, or assignments.
Complicity in Academic Dishonesty
Complicity involves knowingly contributing to another’s acts of academic dishonesty. | <urn:uuid:e7cb78c9-22bc-40eb-8124-6cf6ccf3c506> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/CLAS/faculty-staff/policies/HandlingAcademicDishonesty/Pages/Definition-of-Academic-Dishonesty.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924254 | 660 | 3.15625 | 3 |
University of Chicago Plant Geneticist Edward D. Garber, 1918-2004
November 22, 2004
Edward D. Garber, PhD, a plant geneticist and professor emeritus of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago, died of kidney failure Oct. 9, 2004, at the age of 86, in Skokie, Ill.
Born in Manhattan in 1918, Garber spent his 50-plus-year career dedicated to genetic research, teaching and international projects.
"He worked very nearly up until his death bed," said colleague Manfred Ruddat, PhD, associate professor of ecology and evolution at Chicago. Ruddat collaborated with Garber studying anther smut, a fungal organism that changes the sex expression of the host plant, white campion (Silene latifolia).
Much like Mendel and his famous peas in the 19th century, Garber distinguished many variations of color and shape to understand the genetics of anther smut. "Although we don't yet know how many chromosomes it has, [Garber] was able to genetically map the organism," Ruddat said.
In the mid-1970s, Garber spent a number of summers at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, under the auspices of the U.S.-Israel Bi-National Science Foundation. Using a process called electrophoresis, he helped the Israelis genetically identify varieties of prawns that would flourish in brackish water ponds rather than commercial tank fisheries.
Other Israeli projects included breeding hybrid carp and developing yeast as protein sources for people.
During that same time back on campus, Garber worked with Richard J. Boyajian of University Lab School to develop the human genetics curriculum for the city's school system. The project was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Garber was awarded a New York state grant that paid part of his tuition to Cornell University, where he graduated in 1940 with a bachelor's degree in botany. Two years later, he earned a master's degree in genetics from the University of Minnesota. He then joined the U.S. Army and served for four years.
After his discharge in 1946, Garber went to the University of California-Berkeley under the GI Bill, and by 1949, he had earned a doctorate in genetics.
He then worked for several years at the Office of Naval Research in Oakland before realizing he wanted to be in an academic setting. In 1953, he joined the University of Chicago and remained there until retirement in 1988, when he became professor emeritus.
As a plant geneticist, Garber wrote more than 150 papers, books and reviews. His first published work was his 1949 dissertation on the genetics of sorghum that received the University of California-Berkeley's John Belling Prize in Genetics the following year.
In 1982 he was honored with the University of Chicago's Quantrell Award for Excellence in Teaching. A decade later, the alumni association of the university's Biological Sciences Division presented Garber its Gold Key Award, recognizing his service to the institution.
After working together for more than 30 years and collaborating on about 20 papers, Ruddat remembers his colleague as a dedicated researcher, teacher and friend.
Garber served as a team member for the North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement, and he served for nearly three decades as co-editor of the International Journal of Plant Sciences (1992-2000), formerly the Botanical Gazette (1974-1992).
Garber's enthusiasm for science was evident to his students, many of whom attended his funeral, Ruddat said. "He had an uncanny ability to keep in contact with many of the people who came into in his life, which is not always easy."
Garber was also a fencing enthusiast. He was on the fencing team at Cornell, and never lost his love for the sport after graduating, according to Ruddat, adding that Garber would often help out Chicago's fencing team.
Garber is survived by his wife of 61 years, Rosalie; two daughters, Martha and Jane; son Joel; and two grandchildren, Becky and Matt.
The University of Chicago Medicine
950 E. 61st Street, Third Floor
Chicago, IL 60637
Phone (773) 702-0025 Fax (773) 702-3171 | <urn:uuid:97b94b28-f957-4897-b0a1-a029ddfa95f2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.uchospitals.edu/news/2004/20041122-garber.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974186 | 877 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Cassini captured the "tiger stripe" fissures on the Saturn's moon Enceladus, from which geysers were first spotted in 2005. The discovery started a debate over whether "icequakes" grind the frozen crust of the moon enough to warm and release gases there or whether a lake is hidden within Enceladus. The extended mission flew only 29 miles above tine moons South Pole. The discovery started a debate over whether "icequakes" grind the frozen crust of the moon enough to warm and release gases there or whether a lake is hidden within Enceladus, feeding the geysers. Liquid water is considered a crucial ingredient for life.
The geyser discovery alone on Enceladus surprised scientists, who thought that the 310-mile-wide moon was too small to harbor any significant earthquake activity or a core hot enough to power geysers. The flyby images reveal more clues to the mystery of the tiger stripes.*They appear to be about 980 feet deep and have steep walls. A snowy fallout of smooth ice lines their sides. Ice boulders the size of houses surround them. "The report that they see self-sealing and evidence for movement of the vents up and down along the fractures over time is great news.
The presence of prehistoric sites – megalithic tombs, stone circles and standing stones, Ley Lines indicated that these energy currents were known in prehistoric times and that the sites did not merely mark the route but somehow also tapped into this energy source. Frequently, important prehistoric monuments occupy sites where two or more Ley Lines intersect. Also located along these Ley Lines are sites associated with Dragons and Dragon Killers.
The early British Christians built their churches on the old sacred sites, which is a reason why most old churches are also on Ley Lines of energy coursing through the earth. The two early Saints Michael and George took over hill and dale. Both of these Saints were famous Dragon killers.
(Most of St. Michael's churches are located on hilltops such as St Michael's Mount in Cornwall, England), St. Michael kept a lookout over the high ridges, and St. George took over the lowlands. On St. Michael's feast day, which was originally celebrated on the Fall Equinox, but was later changed to the 29th of Sept., everyone spends the night celebrating. Dowsers who have experimented with Ley Lines have found that many double in width at sunrise and sunset, and fluctuate during the phases of the moon and at the change of the seasons. The energy is most intense at noon on the full moon, but quiets down just before the sunset. The energy has been known to reverse direction at times. The E-line is the largest ley line found. This line circles the globe and is 70 to 100 paces in width. It is thought UFOs use the Ley Lines for navigation or possible propulsion.
The old straight paths of the serpent in Australia run across the deserts. The aborigines have the job of caring for the rock painting made by their ancestors at the points where the lines cross. Each tribe takes care of their own area, repainting the rocks at the proper time and season. They are called the Song Lines here, as the aborigines sing songs of the creation to release the power of the serpent to make the land fertile. Australia s largest monolith Ayers Rock or Uluru in aborigine is the aborigine's center of life in Australia. They say that it marks the spot where two serpents come together.
Persia also sports absolutely straight roads, which run for miles across the land. Ethiopia also has it own straight paths connecting its standing stones. These stones were also associated with the Dragon in ancient times.
Even the Bible contains stories of the old paths. For instance the Book of Samuel contains the story of the Philistines capture of the Ark of the Covenant. They put it in a cart pulled by oxen and allowed the oxen to pull it away, destination unknown. The oxen took the straight way of Beth-Shemesh, turned not left or right, and ended up at a standing stone.
From ancient Greece, comes the story of the energy of Dragon Python, who was worshipped in Delphi as the creator of the earth. This energy connected all the ancient holy sites, and was ruled over by Castor and Pollux, the twins equated with the constellation of Gemini, and ruled over by Hermes (Mercury), who was the overseer of energy and paths.
Ancient legends abound that tell the story of the killing of the Dragon or the Serpent. These range from the Babylonian Dragon Tiamet, or the first creator. There is also the story of St. Patrick driving the serpents out of Ireland. All the old knowledge is still alive, but is hidden and embedded in the old legends, symbolism, and traditions. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2003/denver_2003/2769875.stm
During my four year Air Force tour in England I visited many prehistoric sites such as Stonehenge that could have been a landing place for disc shaped UFOs. A couple miles away is Woodhenge older than Stonehenge and was made from wood also in the shape of a disc. Archeologists claim the ancients worshipped the Sun or Moon, but these are balls not discs shaped. The timber circles were uncovered at Durrington Walls, the site of a Stone Age village and prehistoric earthworks were discovered in the early summer of 1925 as Squadron Leader Insall sat at the controls of his Sopwith Snipe and noticed the recently ploughed remains of several disc barrows which had been almost obliterated by decades of farming. One particular barrow in Dough Covert caught his eye as it appeared to resemble Stonehenge, visible two miles away. Woodhenge was made by skilled carpenters who lived 4000 years ago. It was 127 feet in diameter and contained 2750 yards of wooden framework that required ten acres of land. It was probably built prior to Stonehenge and may have been as a model for the stone monolith.
The Squadron Leader's subsequent aerial photography showed that there were indeed circles of holes or pits in the chalk. It consisted of an outer ditch and bank some 76 meter (250 feet) in diameter enclosing several concentric circles of holes, originally intended for timber posts long since disappeared. Unlike Stonehenge, there was no central alter stone. Further investigation showed that the monument, dated at 2300BC, was older than parts of the Stonehenge complex. For the want of a better name the investigators christened the new discovery 'Woodhenge', as this title seemed so appropriate it was adopted permanently.
Archaeologists found evidence that two timber circles once stood within Durrington Walls around 2500 B.C. At the south of the Durrington site, five concentric rings measuring 130 feet (40 meters) across and a smaller circle with two timber rings to the north. Mike Parker Pearson of the Stonehenge Riverside Project believes Durrington Walls and nearby Stonehenge were intimately connected represent the domains of the living and the dead, respectively. The shape of Woodhenge and Stonehenge are similar to flying discs. The standard thirty foot disc could have been able to land on the top of the structures.
I have a great interest in prehistoric sites and UFOs. Archaeologists often claim that Stone Age man worshipped the sun, moon or Mother Earth. Having chased UFOs over the UK, I feel our ancestors would also have seen these flying disc shaped objects and that they built their burial mounds to duplicate the UFOs. Many mounds were also fitted with landing pads to welcome the visitors. We can assume the extraterrestrial visitors brought gifts and knowledge and promises of everlasting life. Reverend Barry Downing, Ph.D. author of The Bible and Flying Saucers, has coined a theory termed the God Hypothesis that UFOs are found in the Bible, in the Sumerian writings, the Hindu Vedic literature, cave art and in the megalithic art and the legends and writings of people all over the world. He feels UFOs have been with us for thousands of years, were seen by the ancients and were known to carry certain saints to heaven. Further we must seek a deeper understanding of UFOs relationship with humans.
If the purpose of the mound was to worship the sun would a landing area at the top be included?
The Great Mound at Knowth was built over 5000 years ago, and is similar in size to Newgrange and is surrounded by 17 smaller satellite mounds. Knowth is both the largest and most remarkable ancient monument in Ireland. Though Newgrange is more famous, Knowth has turned out to be a very interesting and important site with a collection of 261 engraved stones and some finely carved artifacts from the neolithic builders.
Knowth is the site of a Neolithic Passage Grave one of the ancient monuments of the Brú na Bóinne complex in the valley of the River Boyne. It is the largest of all Passage Graves or tombs in Ireland.. Passage graves are distributed extensively all over much of Europe and many were constructed at the tops of hills or mountains, where UFOs are seen landing or hovering. Archeologists feel the ancients worshiped the sun or moon, but if the mounds represent planets they would require fewer satellite tombs. This design may represent a Mothership and 17 smaller flying discs.
Notice there are figures in the stones above possibly representing gods? The passages are independent of each other and it contains three recesses and basin stones into which the cremated remains of the dead were placed. The right-hand recess is larger and more elaborately decorated with megalithic art. This chamber is separated from the passage by a sillstone. The chamber seems to have also contained a basin stone. This was later removed and is now located about two thirds down the passageway. The burial chambers are reached along two passages so that the sun shines into the passage.
An engraved Knowth Kerbstone K15, is possibly a sundial or lunar calendar according to archeologists. The lines have been superimposed using Photoshop by Martin Byrne to show the ancient drawing. Two disc shaped objects are shown at the right apparently spinning. A large engineering type drawing of half a disc is shown at the bottom of the stone. Crashed disc UFOs reportedly are segmented like a pie cut into to pieces as shown in the drawing.
The great mound of Knowth and some of the satellites, with the megalithic art of a kerbstone from the great mound inverted in Photoshop and added to the sky.
Knowth has been designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. George Eogan and his team of archaeologists began excavating the Great Mound at Knowth in 1962; five years later they discovered the first passage and chamber, subsequent excavation revealed a collection of 200 carved stones that comprises a third of Western European Neolithic art. Most of the art shows multiple spirals, and some lozenges ?that again may be depicting UFOs.
Kerbston 5 could also represent a UFO. The shape of the mound structures seems to show the wrap around aspect of the typical UFO disc. The burial sites often contain small discs or models about a foot in size. Great passage mounds, dolmens, stone circles, standing stones, alignments are all an important feature of the landscape and likely indicate religious worship in some form. It would be reasonable to assume the UFOs were seen floating overhead and were associated with the recycling or transmigration of souls as explained in ancient Egyptian and Vedic writings. The ancients who lived relatively shortened lives were often concerned with the soul's journey to paradise. Although, the actual beliefs is not known, belief in a soul and everlasting life, being carried to heaven or paradise is practically universal. Thanks to www.Knowth.com and http://www.carrowkeel.com/sites/boyne/knowth/index.html
Tucson -- I'm a videographer and on August 5, 2008, at 7:30 PM, a friend and I were videotaping an approaching storm as the lightning was really going off. I often film these storms and go back through my footage to find cool still images of lightning. I uploaded my video and started going through and flying across the top right corner of my screen was an object moving too fast to be a plane. Then I discovered that prior to seeing this object, something appears from a cloud in the middle of the screen and zigzags what appears to be into the distance then it shoots off with incredible speed and you here this sound like a ricochet. I decided I needed to go through this footage and see if I had captured any other activity.
First, I zoomed in the image and found three disc shaped objects flying together. I captured the still images for the evidence file. Earlier in the film I discovered two more UFOs. The first appeared about 100 yards away and very quickly flies up from behind a large pine tree across the street and flips then descends and appears to go directly behind my buddies' truck. The other UFO is moving very fast through the clouds.
I discovered another object moving very fast along the horizon real low. It enters from the right as it reaches the left side of the screen in moves in a very fast circular pattern upwards the disappears into the clouds. Further along in the footage an object is seen on the right side of the screen. It appears to be moving towards us the changes direction sharply and zigzags two times then flies quickly into the distance. I zoomed up on this to discover it was 3-4 disc shaped objects flying together. My buddy and I saw nothing during the time we were videotaping. Thanks to Peter Davenport Director http://www.ufocenter.com/
On August 17, 2008, my family and I were on our way back from Costa Rica and had taken a connecting flight in Atlanta, Georgia. Upon leaving Atlanta airport on Delta Flight #125, at 4:15 PM, I was seated in the last aisle of seats on the left side of the plane.
About an hour and fifteen minutes into our flight at 5:15 PM, I was looking out the window when I saw a disk shaped ufo fly from right to left of my window heading west as we were flying east towards Los Angeles. The sighting lasted about 5-10 seconds in duration.
Our altitude was 32,000 feet and flying at 512 miles per hour. Thanks to MUFON CMS
Olema -- A group of six people were camping at Olema RV Resort when we saw a triangle shaped object (1) cruise over head at about 11 PM, on August 9, 2008. It had a single white light at each corner and red light in the center. It made no sound and was flying south toward San Francisco. Observation time, 30 seconds. (NUFORC Note: Witness elects to remain totally anonymous; provides no contact information. We would like to correspond with the source of the report, or any of the other witnesses, in order to inquire whether the red light, alluded to above, was blinking, or solid. PD)
CHICAGO -- I had just gotten home and unloaded the car on August 17, 2008, and went out to the yard and saw a white glowing orb hovering very low in the western sky. Planes that normally come in over the tree line were coming in way below the tree line. This orb hoveredand probably moved a couple feet in five minutes. Also, it had looked like either a red then blue flash to it quickly. This glowing orb had no FAA lights or moved like the rest of the Midway Airport traffic in the area. It also just disappeared without a trace. A day later it was glowing white in about the same place around 8:20 pm in the western sky. And it, too, was the same in appearance and had the same characteristics. Except on Sunday, the planes flew over it. The timing was about the same. Thanks to MUFON CMS
Evansville -- I can't believe I am reporting this because my boyfriend and I talked about not telling anyone since this would make us seem crazy or people would just not believe us anyway. On August 17, 2008, was the scariest night of our lives. We were driving down Morgan Avenue at 9:30 PM, with corn fields on each side of the road, right across Ohio River from Kentucky. I had seen a car parked on the side of the road and then another not too far up the road. I had a feeling they were watching something and looked over at the fields and noticed two bright lights that were not close to each other, but at the same height. They looked like they were above the trees and in front of them. The color was not right or normal and was kind of a bright yellow.
The light to the left descended and disappeared, but the other light that was closer to us was still there. We turned on one of the country roads off Morgan Avenue and were trying to drive towards the lights. We could tell were getting closer and I thought we would just find out it was a radio tower. The road was dark, and my boyfriend said, "It's moving towards us." I was scared and told him to stop the van, and we stopped and it started moving the opposite direction. It did NOT turn around like an airplane; it just started going in the opposite direction away from us rather fast. We kept following but there were heavy trees everywhere blocking our view. In between breaks in the trees, we could see the light and it was getting smaller and disappeared.
We decided to turn around and as we turned in on his side of the road was this big long fat cigar shaped thing. It was huge. Lights were going down the sides of it, and they were going in a row down the side of it and then instantly they would go down the side of it again. I was so scared; we couldn't believe what we were seeing and it changed my life.
It was huge and he turned and backed up and then it was on my side. The trees were heavy and thick and there was this "thing" the size of an airplane, kind of shaped like an airplane without any wings. It was kind of like a big fat whitish cigar. It was so close to us. It was going down behind the trees looking like it was landing, but it made absolutely no noise. We were so scared. I kept telling my boyfriend, "To go, go, go!" He drove fast and finally we made it back to the main highway. Duration of sighting was 8 to 10 minutes and I kept looking back and didn't see it anymore. We could not believe what we had seen. The lights were so weird as they flickered down a row down the side of the "craft."
Comments: Quite clearly the witnesses were very frightened by what they saw. Given the detailed report and the fact that other witnesses may have also seen something unusual this sighting cannot be explained. Thanks to William Puckett UFOS Northwest http://ufosnw.com
Southborough -- On August 3, 2008, at 7:45 PM, I was at a stop sign ready to take a right turn onto Route 85, when I saw what I thought was auto headlights coming and also heard a truck. I waited for the vehicle to pass, but it took longer than expected and realized it wasn't what I'd expected. Traveling along the main road about five feet off the pavement was a triangular shaped flying object 2.5 inches in thickness and about the size of two large pickup trucks in length, with three bright lights emitting to the front of the vehicle and it was darker than stainless steel. There was one light on each side and one in the middle of the front.) and was moving slower than the 35 mph speed limit. Very shortly after passing in front of me it completely disappeared. Thanks to Peter Davenport Director http://www.ufocenter.com/
Canton -- On August 4, 2008, at 7 PM, as I was in my backyard and observed a cigar shaped object with no blinking lights, or sounds, or wings. The object then continued through the open sky then into clouds and came out a few seconds later then disappeared into the tree line. Thanks to Peter Davenport Director http://www.ufocenter.com/
Sudbury -- On August 4, 2008, a 7:45 PM, my husband and I were returning from a movie and noticed a strangely bright light over to my right. I was driving and could not stay focused on it, so my husband watched as I kept trying to grab glimpse as well. We discussed that it was too big and close to be a star and was not moving, so not a plane? I pulled into the drive way and it was now front and center above the tree line before us. We stood watching its reflectively bright metal, very roundish with a slight bluish tint, but it made no sound. We remained calm and my husband suggested we go inside and get a camera and binoculars. We saw a bluish light coming from our computer room, even though the computer was off.
We went outside but the camera could not pick up any details, but the binoculars showed a craft of metal in the shape of a cylinder on end or a roundish object. I could not see any "spinning" or movement of the craft itself. Later we went inside and the computer was on, even though we knew we had shut it off, and my husband asked if I smelled body odor, but I felt it was more an electrical smell with biological undertones to it. We then took a flash light and walked the entire house but found nothing else disturbed. We are pretty average people employed by corporations and work hard. (NUFORC Note: Witness elects to remain totally anonymous; Thanks to Peter Davenport Director http://www.ufocenter.com/
Niles -- On August 9, 2008, I woke from sleeping in a tent and stepped out to use the restroom at 4:24 AM. When I looked up I saw three dancing lights, all in sync with each other toward the east, like a triangle. Then I looked north and saw one and another to the west. I watched them for about five and went back to sleep in the tent. They were a bit brighter than stars. Thanks to Peter Davenport Director http://www.ufocenter.com/
MILINGTON - I was sitting in my family room doing some computer work when I heard a low flying helicopter. I grabbed my digital camera to take some pictures of it and noticed it was flying a bit erratic, and only about 400 feet elevation. I figured it may be looking for someone. I did not notice any other objects in the sky when I was taking the pictures. Later when I was showing my wife the pictures she noticed when we zoomed in on the helicopter, in every picture there was an object either around the helicopter or the helicopter facing the direction of the object(s).
On one photo I was able to zoom in and see "Police" on the side of the helicopter. Thanks to MUFON CMS.
Reno -- On August 9, 2008, normally you can't see bright stars in downtown Reno but when I was looking up at the sky at 1 AM, I saw a bright sphere dance around for a second or two and then watched it fly away. It flew away at such a high speed that it couldn't have been a plane or helicopter. It was too big to be a meteorite and it flew away from the earth. Thanks to Peter Davenport Director http://www.ufocenter.com/
Somerset -- My uncle called and my Mother and I ran outside to see these red and blue lights blinking. We thought it was some type of aircraft moving at a very fast pace but my uncle insisted it wasn't an airplane. I stayed outside with him while my mother and step-father went inside. My uncle searched the sky and told me to look and I saw the white, blue, and red lights with many little aircraft with two bright lights each blinking in the dark sky, with a saucer leading the way about 10:55 PM. It was very close to us and every time the lights blinked, the outline of a saucer was visible. I was in shock since I had always wanted to see a UFO. It passed us and then we really started searching the sky. After 15 minutes, we saw two more. These looked triangular shaped by the way the lights were fixed. The aircraft were very close to one another. We watched for twenty minutes later and I had to go inside and my uncle went home but called for me to look out the window to see a triangular shaped aircraft that was following. When he got home five minutes later, there was one above his house. He got our grandma who saw it and agreed it had too many blinking lights to be an aircraft. About 11:40 PM, my uncle saw one more above the church. Thanks to Peter Davenport Director http://www.ufocenter.com/
Scotch Plains -- On August 4, 2008, at 10 PM, my family and I were sitting outside on our deck around 10 PM. Out of nowhere a thin rectangular object lit-up white above the houses. It was moving very, very fast (faster than any airplane or meteor) with an emerald green light trail, and no sounds at all were emitted. The sky lit up around like daylight and it was gone in an instant. Thanks to Peter Davenport Director http://www.ufocenter.com/
Albuquerque -- My husband found these circle Monday, July14, 2008, and called to see if I knew anything about them. He was going into the horse arena when he noticed them. I was home all weekend and did not hear anything out in the arena.
The only thing that I can think back about that was unusual was that sometime late in the night on Saturday, I woke up to find my lab pup up on the love seat in our bedroom looking out at the arena. Once I spoke to him, he just gave me a strange look and laid back down. When there is someone or something on or near the property, he and my other dogs bark quite loudly. He did not even growl!!!
The circles are approximately 20 feet. in diameter and approximately in the ground about 1-2 inches. There are absolutely no tracks leading up to the arena.
State Director Donald R. Burleson - State Director investigated and states, "Having discussed this with the submitting witness I am convinced that she is sincere, that her secondary witnesses are sincere, and that this represents an anomalous phenomenon, i.e. not readily accountable-for by any facile means; as no crop fields are involved, one would call these "earth circles" presumably. There is no evident explanation for their being there. They created something of a media stir, locally, as Albuquerque's Channel 7 had flyovers to photograph them." Thanks to MUFON CMS
LORDSBURG -- Ramon Ortiz writes, "We have a great deal of UFO activity going day and night I'm capturing on video. This still is taken from a video taken on August 8, 2008, shows a bright object hovering in the sky, and periodically changing shape. Many manoeuvring objects were recently captured near Pyramid Mountain. There seems to be some kind of a portal nearby." Thanks to Benjie Medina and Ramon Ortiz
Wapakoneta --My wife and I were heading north on Glynwood-New KnoxvilleRoad on August 2, 2008, at 11:10 PM. We were 500 feet from the 33A intersection when I noticed an orange object in the northern sky. I stopped the car and we got out; and tried to capture a picture of the object with our cell phones. Unfortunately the pictures did not come out.
The object was moving southwest with no sound. It looked like a sphere with an orange flame moving across the sky. It could not have been a hot air balloon because there was no canopy visible and it moved too fast across the sky.
SUN RIVER -- I was watching our local glider rides guy on August 3, 2008, a 10:30 PM, and I spotted this sparkling object in the sky to the west of Sunriver. I grabbed the video camera and shot over 15 minutes of video and watched for over 45 minutes. It started to the west of Sunriver out over the Cascades, moved to the south east over LaPine, then headed north. It was way up there. I saw a jet flying which I guessed was at 30-36 thousand feet and this object was over twice as high. You can see in the video I shot that the object is spinning and has somewhat of an irregular shape. You can watch the video at http://share.ise10.tv/UFO/ufo_over_sunriver_8-3-08.wmv
Bucks County – Fox TV in Philadelphia reports, "So far, nobody has reported taking a ride in any unidentified flying objects." But people who never believed in them before say they've sighted them, literally, in their own backyards. Kolpan reported that, back when he was a kid, it seemed people spotted UFOs every few minutes and there was something of a panic over them. Most of that panic has subsided, but people still see them -- especially people in Bucks County.
"The first time I've ever saw it was above this yellow townhouse," said Denise, who believes she was a UFO witness. Denise -- who said she has never believed in little green men -- has seen UFOs over her backyard five times since April. "It was kind of like oval shaped and it was about the size of a car, a small car, and it had three giant headlights on the bottom of it," she said.
Since June 25 between Bucks and Philadelphia, 44 such bogeys have been spied. How do we know? Well, people like Denise have pictures. "Between the malls to my right and Don Pablo's is right here there's been V-shaped objects," said Bob Gardner, a field investigator for MUFON -- the Mutual UFO Network. He says the sightings over Bucks are legion, in regular old neighborhoods, right over the Oxford Valley Mall and above the now-shuttered Don Pablo's restaurant.
"With the universe that vast, it's like Columbus discovered America, these aliens or extraterrestrials are trying to discover new worlds," Gardner said. Of course, none of this explains the mystery of why the Don Pablo's closed down. But maybe the aliens are like everyone else and love Mexican food and they abducted the kitchen staff. "I understand they do that with people they like," said Kolpan, right before beaming out. Bucks county residents have snapped pictures of what they believe are UFOs.
There have been dozens of sightings recently in the suburban Philadelphia County, and Fox 29's Gerald Kolpan found neighbors aren't afraid to talk about it. http://www.myfoxphilly.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=7234285&version=2&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.2.1
Denton -- On August 9, 2008, I went outside to have my afternoon break, which today was at 5:25 PM, and happened to look up and see the same disc as I had seen the day before. It was shiny white/silver disc shape with a domed top. It was traveling from the northeast to the southwest, traveling at a leisurely pace. This time it traveled from the tree line to the north across the sky in front of me until it almost reached the tree line to the south, at which time it turned around and traveled back to the northeast. So again I saw this object from many angles. I was able to watch it for at least five minutes or more.
Today there was also a small plane in another part of the sky a little lower than the object, but I was able to compare the two and see that this object was not a plane. It also appeared to be about the same size as the plane but with no wings, or tail, or rudder. The sky was clear except for a few cirrus clouds to the northeast. When the object turned going back in the direction that it had come from it passed behind the cirrus clouds, yet I was still able to see it. Thanks to Peter Davenport Director http://www.ufocenter.com/
On Sunday August 16, 2008, we had a lightning storm and I decided to go out and try to catch a picture. It was strange because there was no wind, rain or thunder; just lightning. My girl friend suggested we go out and try to take some pictures, and so I started to do a little movie on my camera and I saw a white light flying around in the cameras view screen. Then I thought to take some more pictures facing the lightning and this is what I got. I did some cut and paste to get a lot of the different shapes colors and sizes on one picture and the only other thing I did was to lighten the pictures and enhance the color that was already there. I have all the original pictures and these are all on one and enhanced for easer viewing. Could these be UFOs, if so I got a real show for my money! hanks to MUFON CMS
Perth City -- I was at work having a smoke break on the 2nd story balcony and towards Armadale I spotted a light brighter than a star. I continued to watch the light as it darted to the left to quick for a plane or helicopter to move, and then it darted back to the right and continued to move until it disappeared. It then reappeared over Perth City side in a matter of seconds and disappeared. Thanks to Brian Vike Director of HBCC UFO Research http://www.hbccUFO.org
Windsor, Ontario -- I happened to look up into the sky on August 2, 2008, at 11 PM, to see a bright oval shape object moving slowly in the sky at a fairly low altitude. It suddenly vanished as it picked up a tremendous amount of speed. A flash of light occurred before it vanished. The sighting lasted about 4 to 5 seconds.
Aylmer – We were crossing the Champlain Bridge over Ottawa River at 9:43 AM, on August 9, 2008, when we spotted a bright orange rectangle above the river. We drove down street parallel to the river, and it had already disappeared. I saw a huge disk with two big lights and several smaller lights around it.
I was star gazing and I saw a huge light thinking it was a plane. Then I saw it was like a disk shape with two huge lights and several smaller lights. It was dark but I could see its form and knew100% it was no plane. I yelled, "Everybody come quick. Hurry, hurry...." My cousin and brother saw it too and screamed in horror. But by the time my father came, it vanished.
Etang Salé -- According to some witnesses who called up radio stations on August 14, 2008, about 6 PM, a flying vessel with blinking lights fell or dived into the sea two kilometers offshore from the Reunion southwestern coastline near Etang Salé. I heard air traffic control request to an Air Madagascar plane about to land at FMEP airport to check for a crash. The pilot told the control tower there were no debris nor had they heard any distress call while descending from 10,000 feet.
Information about the sighting is in the newspaper this morning. The four main witnesses say it was like a red ultra light air craft, but nobody at the two airports (FMEE and FMEP) got a flight plan neither a departure of any ultra light nor private aircraft or helicopter at this time the mystery remain unsolved. According to another witness he saw three balloons (two red and one black). These balloons could have been mistakened for an object falling into the sea.
Comments: Apparently several saw an unusual craft hit the water. According to the "second-hand" witness no regular aircraft with flight plans were missing. A link to a local newspaper article was sent, but the newspaper is written in French so no additional information could be gathered. One witness believes that the object was a balloon. Thanks to William Puckett UFOS Northwest http://ufosnw.com
BLANFORD -- On July 29 and 30, 2008, the four of us saw an object in the sky, brighter and bigger than Mars. At 10:10 PM, it was moving across the sky quite fast and as it was dimmer until it disappeared. The same thing then happened on Wednesday night, but we saw it from a different location. Other people I know have also seen similar things but when they saw it, the flying object it zoomed off in another direction and then disappeared. Thanks to Brian Vike Director of HBCC UFO Research http://www.hbccUFO.org
Birmingham -- A bright light was travelling fast, turning quickly and returning the way it had come from on August 10, 2008, at 11:55PM. It was visible through a thin cloud cover green/blue chevron in shape, travelling very fast. Initially thought it was a shooting star but it turned around and travelled back the way it had come.
((NUFORC Note: Witness elects to remain totally anonymous; provides no contact information. Morning or evening sighting?? PD)) Thanks to Peter Davenport Director http://www.ufocenter.com/
Tile Hill, Coventry – A group of six people sitting in a garden on August 2, 2008, at 10:15 PM, saw nine orange lights in this formation: 1,3,2 slight gap then 2 more then a final one. The lights moved across the sky in silence, then rose into the sky and vanished. Thanks to Brian Vike Director of HBCC UFO Research http://www.hbccUFO.org
Cardiff, Glamorgan, Wales – On August 2, 2008, at 9:35 PM, we saw what we first thought was a hot air balloon on fire in the skies just east of RAF St Athan and Cardiff Wales International Airport.It looked like something on fire and was fairly motionless. Our initial thought was that it was a hot air balloon flaring up or on fire. The object then started moving at a fairly fast pace (like an aeroplanes speed) east over Cardiff. Thanks to Brian Vike Director of HBCC UFO Research http://www.hbccUFO.org
Join your host David Twichell the first Saturday of each month at 10:00 AM (EST) for the one hour radio show on WHFR.FM. Listen to interviews with UFO experts like Stanton Friedman, Budd Hopkins, Linda Moulton Howe, George Filer and many more. Go to http://whfr.fm/index.php and click on "Listen Live Now". You may listen to the archived shows anytime by going to WHFR's homepage and click on "The Forum" button then click on the first date of each month on the list. Please visit David's website at http://www.ufoimplications.com
Donations to Filer's Files. It is becoming more expensive and difficult for everything I do here at the National UFO Center and taking more of a bite out of my pension. If you would care to lend a hand it would be greatly appreciated. I have placed a donation button below. Also I should add, I don't know of anyone in the UFO field who makes any funds out of what they enjoy doing, all expenses that myself and others in the UFO field come straight out of our own pockets. I guess one has to have a passion for the topic, but it does get expensive for everything one does. Consider helping, UFO experts need your support. Only a few people who have enjoyed these files for almost ten years have chosen to provide a donation. Don't miss the latest images of UFOs from Earth and Mars. Subscribe today and receive a free UFO Photo CD. Be sure to ask for the CD.
Send check or money order to:
George Filer, 222 Jackson Road, Medford, NJ 08055.
You can also go to: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr for [email protected]
Become a MUFON member today! Benefits of membership include a subscription to the monthly UFO Journal which contains current investigations, sightings reports, articles by world-renowned researchers and more. To join now, click here. www.mufon.com
Filer's Files is copyrighted 2008, by George A. Filer, all rights reserved. Readers may post the COMPLETE files on their Web Sites if they credit the newsletter and its editor by name, and list the date of issue. These reports and comments are not necessarily the OFFICIAL MUFON viewpoint. Send your letters to [email protected]. Sending mail automatically grants permission for us to publish and use your name. Please state if you wish to keep your name or e-mail confidential. CAUTION MOST OF THESE ARE INITIAL REPORTS AND REQUIRE FURTHER INVESTIGATION.
God Bless Our Troops
Please subscribe or see the Filer's Files website for images in this weeks issue. | <urn:uuid:f57c904e-abf5-40ce-a4d0-5efacc4ab39b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ufoinfo.com/filer/2008/ff0835.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977043 | 8,595 | 3.609375 | 4 |
The KWRRI supports several educational programs that focus on water and water-related environmental issues. These include:
The Kentucky Water Resources Research Institute assists with the development of curriculum and participates as an instructor for students interested in Natural Resources across the state.
Learn more about the Kentucky Forestry and Entomology Leadership Program.
Kentucky River Watershed Watch is a tax-exempt, nonprofit organization formed in 1997 through the cooperation of the Sierra Club, the Kentucky Waterways Alliance, and the Division of Water's Water Watch program. Its membership focuses water quality monitoring and improvement efforts within the Kentucky River Basin. The basin extends over much of the central and eastern portions of the state and is home to approximately 710,000 Kentuckians. The watershed includes all or parts of 42 counties and drains over 7,000 square miles, with a tributary network of more than 15,000 miles.
Learn more about Watershed Watch.
The Environmental Protection Scholarship is administered through the Kentucky Water Resources Research Institute and funded by the Kentucky Department for Environmental Protection. The objectives of the program are to promote environmental education at the undergraduate and graduate level in the state universities, and assist the state's environmental protection agencies in their efforts to hire the best graduates available for their professional staff.
Water Pioneers provides Robinson Scholars (high school students) with experiences and curriculum for in-depth study of an Appalachian watershed. The students use this knowledge to partner with East Kentucky PRIDE educators, Kentucky Water Watch volunteers, and other interested local groups to increase awareness of Best Management Practices for water quality in their respective counties.
Learn more about the Water Pioneers.
Staff representatives of the Kentucky Water Resources Research Instititute serve on the Project Wet steering committee, addressing the concerns, issues, and implementation of the national curriculum Project WET.
Learn more about Project Wet. | <urn:uuid:8869a9cd-89bd-4b36-9c86-4b6045ef0cc1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.uky.edu/WaterResources/new/programs/education.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925681 | 371 | 3.015625 | 3 |
10-11 May 2014
Can you imagine a world without migratory birds? If not, think again.
In 2012, one billion people crossed international borders for tourism. Such is our fascination with nature. But each year, billions of migratory birds undertake a hazardous migratory journey across countries and continents just to survive.
About a quarter of the 500 bird species that breed in Europe migrate to sub-Saharan Africa, where they spend a greater part of their lives, before flying back to breed in Europe. In the United States, millions of birds migrate north and south of the Great Lakes Region. In the animal kingdom, birds hold the record in long-distance migration. For some of the Eurasian birds, for instance, two thirds of the year is spent migrating. The Barn Swallow can travel up to 10,000 km in a year, crossing deserts in Africa and Asia. The pollination of plants is one of the major benefits we reap from this migration.
But scientists warn that the feeding grounds for some of the migratory birds are declining, making it harder for birds to survive. Many are arriving in their breeding grounds earlier or much later than normal, which is upsetting their breeding schedules and patterns. And it is not just birds.
Globally, the population of many migrating mammals is declining. Elephants, wildebeest, guanaco and antelope migration has fallen by 35-90% in the last decades. The change is mostly due to ecosystem degradation from land use change for agriculture, degradation of wetlands through land degradation and growing drought effects as well as the expansion of dry areas due to climate change.
We are extracting value – soils, water, biodiversity – from ecosystems, but hardly re-investing in them. Animal migration plays a big part in the structure and functioning of our ecosystems. And migratory species support livelihoods and service a multi-billion-dollar tourism industry. By investing some of the revenue from tourism to build sustainable tourism along important locations along the migratory bird routes, The Destination Flyways Project is a valuable example of what it means, practically, to secure healthy ecosystems. We all extract value from the ecosystems, but most of us are underpaying or not paying for it at all.
Imagine what the world would look like without birds. Now imagine what we could achieve, if each of the three million international tourist birdwatchers who travelled in 2012 invested something small in The Destination Flyways project. Imagine further what the world would look like, if each of us re-invested back into the ecosystems that support our livelihoods – soils, water or biological diversity.
To invest in the ecosystems that sustain our livelihoods is to take responsibility for our ecological footprint. Each of us must find practical ways to reinvest in the ecosystems that make our lives on Earth possible and meaningful. | <urn:uuid:ff93966b-b499-47e0-ac07-47e9378d9654> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.unccd.int/en/media-center/MediaNews/Pages/highlightdetail.aspx?HighlightID=302 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932336 | 574 | 3.453125 | 3 |
Learning from ancient droughts
A project involving the geoscience community, but also biologists, archaeologists, historians, meteorologists and astrophysicists looked far into our past to examine how quickly ecosystems and civilizations are able to recover from catastrophic events. Working in unison, they pieced together the events that brought pharaohs to their knees, and how Egypt bounced back.
Some 11,300 years ago, the Sahara was dotted with lakes. Giraffes, hippopotamuses, lions, elephants, zebra, gazelles, cattle and horses roamed across grasslands that may have received ten times more rainfall than the same area today.
By 9,000 years ago, pastoralists had colonized much of the Sahara. They prospered for another 3,000 years, until a shift in the monsoon belt to lower latitudes steered potential rains away from the continent, causing catastrophic droughts. The pastoralists took refuge in the Sahel, Saharan highlands and Nile Valley, where they gave rise to numerous African cultures, including that of Pharaonic Egypt.
Those who settled in the Nile Valley were forced to abandon nomadic pastoralism for lack of summer rains. Instead, they adopted an agricultural way of life. Small sedentary communities gradually coalesced into large social groups. About 5,200 years ago, the first pharaoh managed to unify Upper and Lower Egypt into a single state with Memphis as its capital. A long period of prosperity followed, characterized by bountiful Nile floods that produced abundant grain harvests. Successive pharaohs took advantage of this prosperity to launch ambitious pyramid-building programmes to give themselves a tomb worthy of their rank. The pharaohs asserted their authority over the population by claiming the power to intercede with the gods to ensure the Nile River flooded each year. This strategy worked perfectly – until about 4,200 years ago when the harvests failed for six long decades. Brought about by a drop in rainfall at the Ethiopian headwaters during a prolonged El Niño cycle, this drought was so long and so severe that the Nile could be crossed on foot. With the pharaoh powerless to prevent the resulting famine, regional governors seized control.
It took 100 years for Egypt to reunify and thereby bring to an end a century of political and social chaos known as the First Intermediary Period. The return to stability heralded the advent of the Middle Kingdom. This time, the pharaohs would not make the same mistake. To avoid suffering the fate of their improvident predecessors, they would invest massively in irrigation and grain storage.
This work was part of an International Geoscience Programme (IGCP) project on the Role of Holocene Environmental Catastrophes in Human History (IGCP project 490). The project focused on the inter-disciplinary investigation of Holocene geological catastrophes, which are of importance for civilizations and ecosystems. The objective was to examine how quickly ecosystems and civilizations are able to recover from catastrophic events. With the growing recognition that major natural events can have abrupt global impacts, this project is a timely opportunity to assess the sensitivity of modern society to extreme natural threats.
<- Back to: Earth Sciences | <urn:uuid:304cbb0a-4c74-4e76-8e75-65e2323bcd0f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/environment/earth-sciences/single-view-earth/news/learning_from_ancient_droughts/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951466 | 652 | 3.953125 | 4 |
Summary: Good and bad reasons for your teacher wanting you to learn the phonemic script
By: Alex Case |Audience: All|Category: Learning English
Good reasons why your teacher might teach you the phonemic script
- To spend more time on pronunciation/ to give variety to pronunciation practice - Most students come to English class with improving their pronunciation as one of the top priorities, but this is something textbooks only spend a little time on and it is difficult to practice outside class. If the teacher is going to work more on your pronunciation that will usually mean spending more classroom time on it, which means you will get bored and so not learn much if you only do drilling. Most of the other activities you can do to improve your pronunciation in class, such as pronunciation games, need you to write down the sounds in some way. The only good way to write down the sounds of English is with the phonemic script.
- To help you write the pronunciation down - There is no way of representing all the sounds of English clearly using just the alphabet of English or any other country. If you do try to write down what you hear in the alphabet of your own country, that will just make your own non-native accent stronger and make it more difficult to understand people who do not speak the same way as you. Therefore, if you want to write down the pronunciation in your notebook so you can refer to it later in the same way as you write down the meaning of vocabulary and grammar, you must learn the phonemic script.
- To help you remember the pronunciation - Writing something down is a great way to help you remember it, and the same is true of pronunciation.
- To teach you how to use a dictionary - If you want to recognize a word you have read and looked up in a dictionary when you hear it later, you will need to learn the pronunciation as well as the spelling and meaning. All good dictionaries give the pronunciation using the phonemic script.
- To help you study pronunciation outside class - As well as using a dictionary, you also need the phonemic script to use self-study pronunciation books and language laboratories.
- So you can organize the pronunciations you write down - Like vocabulary, the best way of learning pronunciation is to group things together by similarities. In fact, many people believe that this is how the information is stored in your head. If you understand the phonemic symbols for each word you are learning, you can group vocabulary together by the same sound and so help your pronunciation and your vocabulary learning at the same time.
- To show the difference between spelling and pronunciation - The students who complain about English spelling often think of the phonemic script as another type of spelling to learn, but actually it is the best way of making sure you don't get confused by the English spelling when trying to pronounce a word and of practicing different spellings of the same sounds.
- To show how sounds change when they are put together - When two sounds from different words are next to each other, this often changes the sounds. To give one example, when there are two /t/ sounds next to each other like in "What to do?", one of the /t/ sounds is changed or lost. Studying this point can help with comprehension of natural speech and with fluency of speaking. The only clear way to show such changes is with the phonemic script.
- To show how sounds change in natural speech - As well as sounds next to each other, the sounds of English change in lots of other ways such as the different pronunciations of "can" when stressed in "YES, i CAN" and unstressed in "I can DO it". The only way of writing these changes is with the phonemic script.
- To give a good model for drilling - As well as copying the teacher's voice or the tape and the instructions on how to move your mouth, knowing exactly which sound you are trying to produce can help involve other parts of your brain in your efforts to make the right sound.
- To give information to help you produce the individual sounds - The symbols of the phonemic chart include some easy to understand information about what kind of sounds they are, for example the two symbols that represent the separate parts of each diphthong and the two dots after a long sound. Seeing this written down can help you remember it, and the symbols can also help the teacher explain your pronunciation mistakes quickly and clearly.
- To show the system behind English sounds - As well as showing long sounds and diphthongs, the phonemic chart also groups together words that have similar sounds and so makes it easier to see the similarities and differences. For example, pairs of voiced and unvoiced sounds are next to each other in the chart.
- To stop you thinking about the spelling when you are listening - As well as making reading and writing difficult, the irregular spelling of English can also cause problems with listening, for example by making it difficult to recognize a word when you first hear it. Learning the phonemics for every word as well as the spelling can help reduce this problem.
- To improve your listening comprehension - All pronunciation work that is important for listening comprehension, such as the sound changes in rapid speech mentioned above, are easier to study if you know the phonemic script.
- To make everyone the same level - Even students who have very similar language levels in speaking and grammar knowledge can have very different accents when they speak. Teaching the phonemic script allows the teacher to go back to the pronunciation basics that the students with more problems need while teaching all the students something new.
- Because it is difficult to learn on your own - Because learning the phonemic script involves not just getting to know the symbols but also making sure you can say the right sound for each one, lots of help by a teacher is usually needed.
- To help logical thinkers - People who are naturally good at pronouncing another language include musical people and others who do hobbies that involve carefully controlling their voices and other parts of their body. The mathematical/logical people who find grammar study easier usually need a bit more help with pronunciation, and learning the phonemic script can especially help these kinds of learners and mean they can catch up with the rest of the class.
Bad reasons why your teacher might make you learn the phonemic script
Hopefully the reasons above have convinced you that learning the phonemic script is a good thing, but as with most things in life there is a small chance that your teacher might be doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. If all the reasons above are not relevant to you and you think one of the reasons below is true for your class, you might want to ask your teacher if you could spend less class time on phonemics.
- To practice it themselves - Even native speakers find the "code" of the phonemic script hard to learn, and just like for you, for the teacher the best way to learn is by using it in class. This doesn't have to be a bad thing if you are learning something at the same time, but might mean that it is used too much. If so, you might want to ask your teacher or the school manager if some of the phonemics work could be given for homework instead.
- To show off - Once your teacher has learnt the phonemic script, they might enjoy showing they can use it so much that some of the times they do so your pronunciation could be corrected in quicker and easier ways. The best way of showing your teacher that they don't have to use it so much is to learn the phonemic script so well that your teacher can see you don't need any more practice.
- To fill time - This is probably not the reason why your teacher uses phonemics, as there are much easier ways of filling classroom time! If you think this is the case, the best way of making it finish quicker is to show that you know phonemics very well already. | <urn:uuid:ecebce03-ac3e-4083-9b33-4ae7ec15527b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.usingenglish.com/articles/why-does-my-teacher-make-me-learn-phonemic-script.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959468 | 1,627 | 3.21875 | 3 |
location: Val Marie, SK, Canada
best viewing hours: 9:00am – 8:00pm
time zone: Central Time
Bison are the largest indigenous land mammal in North America. Considered a keystone species, these wooly herbivores helped shaped the ecology of the Great Plains today. Though 80% of Canada's native prairie has been lost, Grasslands National Park represents the most intact example of what remains with a flourishing herd of nearly 200 bison that freely roam their native prairie.
Grasslands National Park preserves a mixed-grass ecosystem of over 70 different species of grass and over 50 different species of wildflowers. Grasslands is the only place in Canada where you can see the Black-tailed Prairie Dog and the Black-footed Ferret and Eastern Yellow-bellied Racers in their native habitat.
This live cam comes to you via explore.org, the philanthropic media organization and division of the Annenberg Foundation. It is part of a collection of more than a hundred HD cams around the world established by Charles Annenberg to help people connect with nature and fall in love with the world again. To see more live cams visit, explore.org. | <urn:uuid:86f67ed6-752e-4611-b75e-a746bd8ff1d7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.ustream.tv/explorePlainsBisonCam2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90548 | 247 | 2.8125 | 3 |
First Nations Studies is an interdisciplinary degree program that reflects the holistic world view of the indigenous people of Turtle Island (North America), providing a non-western approach to teaching and learning within the academy. First Nations Studies is committed to the study of First Nations culture, philosophy, history, language, and the social, economic, and political status of First Nations people and their communities. The program is designed to preserve and promote the sovereign identity of the indigenous people of North America, with an emphasis on the nations of the western Great Lakes. First Nations Studies incorporates the teaching and learning approaches of tribal people, offering students a new way to learn within the academy. The program places emphasis on the indigenous oral tradition as preserved and shared by tribal Elders. Students take part in oral traditional learning experiences within the university classroom and, also, in tribal communities learning from tribal people. The Oneida Language Project is central to the program offering beginning and advanced courses in Oneida language in conjunction with the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin's language revitalization efforts.
Objectives and Student Outcomes
The learning objectives and student outcomes for First Nations Studies at UW Green Bay reflect the Standards for Instruction, Teacher Qualifications, and Course Content created and passed by the UW System American Indian Studies Consortium. These standards are included in Attachment E. In our description here, we acknowledge our colleagues in the American Indian Studies program at UW Eau Claire for providing us a model and for allowing us to draw upon their work. Our academic objectives and student outcomes are the following:
To present First Nations knowledge from an indigenous perspective, placing emphasis on the oral tradition, Elder epistemology, and oral scholars. Thus, information and knowledge reflect traditional (pre-contact) tribal protocols, whereby stories, images, objects, and artifacts are treated respectfully and not simply used for the convenience of students and faculty.
To teach First Nations Studies core knowledge while reflecting a holistic tribal world view, a world view which includes the concept of sacred or spiritual practice. First Nations Studies core knowledge is organized into Four Pillars of Learning. Courses in FNS reflect the Four Pillars: History (precontact, contact, contemporary periods), Sovereignty, Laws and Policies, Indigenous Philosophy and Intellectual Traditions.
To maintain and promote tribal oral knowledge in the traditional way of learning and interacting by working in tribal communities in the time-honored way of providing service through the use of skills and knowledge including acceptable research, scholarship, and useful publications.
To build and support collaborative relationships between tribal communities with particular emphasis on the nations in northeastern Wisconsin - Oneida, Menominee, and Mohican Nations.
To provide students with oral traditional teaching and learning opportunities in the classroom and within a tribal setting.
To provide suitable instruction, information and process to students and instructors of students in other disciplines in an effort to fulfill the requirements of Act 31.
Oral Tradition & Elder Knowledge
- Students will work with Elders in a tribal setting.
- Students will demonstrate oral traditional learning, listening, and remembering skills.
- Students will demonstrate the tribal values of respect, reciprocity, relationship, and responsibility.
- Students will take part in and demonstrate an understanding of Elder epistemology.
- Students will demonstrate protocols for learning and working in a tribal setting.
- Students will take part in participatory learning and will discuss the form and function of this traditional teaching/learning approach.
History - Precontact, Contact, Contemporary Eras
- Students will demonstrate an understanding of First Nations history in each of the three eras – precontact, contact, and contemporary.
- Students will demonstrate an in-depth developed historical awareness of the history of one nation in Wisconsin.
- Students will draw upon the oral tradition in the study of history.
- Students will use electronic and written sources in their study of history.
- Students will identify the political, economic, and social status of First Nations in each of the three historical eras.
- Students will define and understand precontact tribal sovereignty.
- Students will explain the erosion and persistence of tribal sovereignty after contact.
- Students will explain the federal trust relationship in the context of treaty-making.
- Students will demonstrate an understanding of ways to promote and protect tribal sovereignty.
- Students will understand and demonstrate personal sovereignty.
Laws and Policies
- Students will understand and explain the major formal (congressional acts, court cases) and informal policies that make up the body of First Nations law.
- Students will provide a critical analysis of the major formal and informal policies in #1 above.
- Students will understand the powers and limitations of contemporary tribal governments.
- Students will use electronic and written materials in their examination of laws and policies.
Indigenous Philosophy and Intellectual Traditions
- Students will demonstrate an understanding of Elder epistemology in the oral tradition.
- Students will learn in a tribal community setting.
- Students will demonstrate an understanding of First Nations philosophical teachings.
- Students will demonstrate an awareness of American Indian historical and contemporary intellectuals.
- Students will demonstrate an understanding of First Nations values and their expression in a cultural context.
- Students will explain internalized oppression and approaches to decolonization.
- Students will identify the major language families on Turtle Island and explain how languages change over time.
- Students will understand the importance of language and cultural revitalization efforts.
- Students will demonstrate some acquisition of a First Nations language.
- Students will engage in language acquisition in a tribal setting. | <urn:uuid:5c3fa6d1-67ad-43cf-891f-929e3224f10a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.uwgb.edu/fns/program/learning-outcomes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.888856 | 1,122 | 2.734375 | 3 |
The share of older people in the population is growing faster than that of any other age group, both as a result of longer lives and a lower birth rate. But the effect of population ageing on health and healthcare is far from straightforward. Figure 1 plots life expectancy against health expenditure for 30 OECD countries in 1970 and 2005. The positive correlation is evident, although it is less distinctive at high levels of healthcare expenditure. In fact, some studies already find that age does not explain healthcare expenditures when distance to death, income, or life expectancy is controlled for (Zweifel et al. 1999; Hall and Jones 2007; Shang and Goldman 2007). More generally, expected cumulative health expenditure for healthy elderly individuals are similar to those for less healthy individuals of all ages. This evidence suggests the existence of a “red herring”.
Figure 1. Per capita health expenditure and life-expectancy in OECD countries
Source: OECD Health Data 2008
What if ageing takes place simultaneously with improvements in health status?
Inevitably, any attempt to measure the impact of ageing on healthcare use and expenditure requires some assumptions on health and life expectancy of future cohorts. For instance, if longevity results from improvements in health status and lower (or rather depressed) mortality, then the effect of ageing on health expenditure will be overestimated. The latter can also be due to improvements in medical technology. Indeed, we show that the advancement of medical technology for the treatment of individuals older than 55 years has contributed between 17.7% (Spain) and 38.3% (Switzerland) to the increase of men’s life expectancy between 1950 and 1975. In the last quarter of the past century, the gains in life-years of older men contributed between 60% (Germany) and 72% (UK) to the total increase in life expectancy (Breyer et al 2010).
Table 1 displays the gains in life expectancy by gender between 1980 and 2000 (Breyer et al. 2010). Importantly, it shows that the largest single contributor to higher life expectancy is the reduction in mortality from heart disease and stroke. The latter added between one and three years to life expectancy, with higher gains for men than for women and in the 1990s as compared to the 1980s. The large life-year gains of the very old are to a great extent due to advancements in treating heart attacks and strokes. This highlights the importance of health treatment and new technologies in the development of life expectancy.
Table 1. Gain in life expectancy in years by death causes, men, 1980-2000
Sources: European Mortality Database, WHO (Germany, Spain), federal offices of statistics (Germany and Switzerland)
In addition to the compression of mortality, a second important way ageing can improve health status is by reducing the onset of disability in old age (compression of morbidity). That is, cumulative lifetime disability arguably declines if primary prevention measures postpone the onset of chronic illness (Fries 1980). However, as we report in Breyer et al. (2010), evidence on this is mixed and reveals declines in disability rates among elderly people only in Denmark, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, and the US. In contrast, Belgium, Japan, and Sweden report an increasing disability rate, while Australia and Canada report a stable rate.
So is there a red herring?
Evidence suggests that neglecting time to death in the regression model leads to a15% overestimation of the Medicare expenditure increase (Stearns and Norton 2004), 10% in the Netherlands (Polder et al. 2006) and 20% in Germany (Breyer and Felder 2006). However, even though the red herring effect exists, ageing seems to explain only 0.5%-0.7% of annual health expenditure growth (Steinmann et al. 2007). On the whole, technological progress in medicine is the most important factor in explaining the growth of healthcare expenditure, although we also find that the rise in longevity leads to further demand for life-prolonging medical care. Moreover, as ever more people reach a very high age (beyond 85), the percentage requiring long-term care in their last years of life increases. On the whole, there is thus a small positive effect of ageing on per-capita health expenditure, which several studies estimate to be in the order of an annual growth rate of 1.5%.
What are the policy implications?
The fixation of policymakers on ageing seems to suggest that higher healthcare expenditure is inevitable, in fact diverting attention from the real causes of growth of the healthcare sector. These include failures in insurance markets, technological progress in medicine combined with a secular rise in income, and distorted incentives in reimbursing both patients and doctors. Blaming population ageing distracts from the decisions that really ought to be made, such as devising appropriate incentives for curbing excessive provision of publicly financed healthcare and evaluating the social value of new medical technologies.
Breyer, F, and S Felder (2006), “Life Expectancy and Health Care Expenditures: A new Calculation for Germany using the Costs of Dying”, Health Policy, 75(2):178-186.
Breyer, F, J Costa-Font, and S Felder (2010), “Ageing, health, and health care”, Oxford Review of Economic Policy.
Hall, RE, and CI Jones (2007), “The Value of Life and the Rise in Health Spending”, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 122(1):39-72.
Polder, JJ, JJ Barendregt, and H van Oers (2006), “Health care costs in the last year of life--the Dutch experience”, Social Science and Medicine, 63(7):1720-1731.
Steinmann, L, H Telser, and P Zweifel (2007), “Aging and Future Health Care Expenditure: a Consistent Approach”, Forum for Health Economics & Policy, 10(2):1-30.
Zweifel P, S Felder, and M Meier (1999), “Ageing of Population and Health Care Expenditure: A Red Herring?”, Health Economics, 8(6):485-496. | <urn:uuid:37cbc544-1f3b-4810-b88a-7ae0d94f2d7c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.voxeu.org/article/does-ageing-really-affect-health-expenditures-if-so-why | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928739 | 1,285 | 3.328125 | 3 |
February 24, 2009
DNA evidence is in, newly discovered species of fish dubbed H. psychedelica
“Psychedelica” seems the perfect name for a species of fish that is a wild swirl of tan and peach zebra stripes and behaves in ways contrary to its brethren. So says University of Washington’s Ted Pietsch, who is the first to describe the new species in the scientific literature and thus the one to select the name.
Psychedelica is perhaps even more apt given the cockamamie way the fish swim, some with so little control they look intoxicated and should be cited for DUI.
Members of Histiophryne psychedelica, or H. psychedelica, don’t so much swim as hop. Each time they strike the seafloor they use their fins to push off and they expel water from tiny gill openings on their sides to jet themselves forward. With tails curled tightly to one side –which surely limits their ability to steer — they look like inflated rubber balls bouncing hither and thither.
While other frogfish and similar species are known to jet themselves up off the bottom before they begin swimming, none have been observed hopping. It’s just one of the behaviors of H. psychedelica never observed in any other fish, says Pietsch, UW professor of aquatic and fishery sciences and curator of fishes at the UW Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. He’s the lead author of a paper about the new species that’s now online at Copeia, the journal of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists. His work is funded by the National Science Foundation.
It was little more than a year ago that the fish with rare, forward-facing eyes like humans and a secretive nature was the subject of worldwide news coverage after having been observed in the busy harbor of Ambon Island, Indonesia. An adult fish was observed in January 2008 by Toby Fadirsyair, a guide, and Buck and Fitrie Randolph, two of the co-owners of Maluku Divers, which is based in Ambon. They and co-owners Andy and Kerry Shorten eventually found Pietsch to help them identify the fish. Since the first sighting divers have observed a number of adults and juveniles, now that they know what to look for.
Adults of H. psychedelica are fist-sized with gelatinous bodies covered with thick folds of skin that protect them from sharp-edged corals as they haunt tiny nooks and crannies of the harbor reef. Fins on either side of their bodies have, as with other frogfish, evolved to be leg-like, and members of H. psychedelica actually prefer crawling to swimming.
The species has a flattened face with eyes directed forward. It’s something Pietsch, with 40 years of experience studying and classifying fishes, has never seen before in frogfish. It causes him to speculate that the species may have binocular vision, that is, vision that overlaps in front, like it does in humans. Most fish, with eyes on either side of their head, don’t have vision that overlaps; instead they see different things with each eye.
DNA work revealed that H. psychedelica joins two other species in the genus Histiophryne, though the other two are very drably colored in comparison. The genus is but one of about a dozen in the family Antennariidae, known as frogfish in most places in the world. The frogfish are, in turn, part of the larger order of Lophiiformes, or anglerfish. Pietsch is the world’s foremost anglerfish authority and, when sent a photo last year of the newfound fish, he said he’d stake his reputation that it was an anglerfish.
He was right. But what an unusual member it turned out to be.
Compared to other anglerfish, members of H. psychedelica have no lures. Most anglerfish have lures growing out of their foreheads. The other anglerfish sit right out in the open on the seafloor or coral reefs, often adapting their coloring so their bodies are camouflaged, but the lures are meant to be noticed so the fish wave, wiggle and sometimes blink the lures on and off in order to attract pray, Pietsch says.
Instead of all that showiness, members of H. psychedelica are shy and secretive, probably one of the reasons they weren’t previously spotted. When a member of H. psychedelica is uncovered by divers it usually seeks a new place to hide within 10 or 15 minutes.
And while other anglerfish change their coloring depending on the environment, the new species appears to maintain its wild striping no matter the surroundings.
The coloring led co-author David Hall, a wildlife photographer and owner of seaphotos.com, to speculate that the fish is mimicking corals. Indeed, Hall produced photos for the new scientific paper showing corals the animals may be mimicking.
The other co-author, Rachel Arnold, who is a UW master’s student in aquatic and fishery sciences, did the DNA work on the new species. Arnold, who dove in Ambon Harbor last year, said the striping of each fish is distinctive, “like a fingerprint of patterning on their body so from whatever angle you look, you can tell individuals apart.”
The scientists found, however, that the vivid colors faded in a matter of days once a specimen was preserved in ethanol. The flesh of the preserved specimen looks white, but with a microscope one can still see the striping, Pietsch discovered.
This got him thinking about two specimens sent to him in 1992 that he’d kept as part of the UW’s fish collection. The Dallas Aquarium had sent him two frogfish, found in a shipment of live fishes from Bali that they said had unusual pigment patterns. The staff had nicknamed them “paisley frogfish.” But the photograph Pietsch was sent was of poor quality and the preserved specimens Pietsch received were white, so he didn’t give them much thought.
Pietsch retrieved the old specimens from the collection, put them under a microscope and found the striping distinctive to H. psychedelica. He’d had two specimen of a new species of fish for 17 years, but didn’t know it.
For more information:
Pietsch, 206 543-8923, 206 543-3816, [email protected]
Note restricting use of images: Magazines with circulation greater than 250,000 may not use still images by David Hall without first contacting him at [email protected]. Photo credit required. | <urn:uuid:257eec83-c771-45b2-9bdd-0b0cf2d52bc6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.washington.edu/news/2009/02/24/dna-evidence-is-in-newly-discovered-species-of-fish-dubbed-h-psychedelica/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963876 | 1,419 | 3.1875 | 3 |
Facts about this animal
The Lion is an unmistakable, large and powerfully built cat with a uniform coat and a black tuft at the end of the tail and a mane (males). The head-body length is 140-250 cm with a shoulder height of 80-110 cm. The weight is 150-250 kg in males and 120-185 kg in females. The lioness is notably smaller and lighter than the male and maneless. Lions have a broad face with a relatively long muzzle.
The face of the male is framed by a yellow, brown, or almost black mane. The ears are short, rounded and with black marks on the basal part on the backside. The fore limbs are more powerfully built than the hind limbs. The coat is short and uniform. The colour is varying from ochraceous silvery-grey to dark ochre-brown. The young are marked with ochraceous rosette-like spots mainly on the belly and legs. The coat is woolly and they are maneless.
Did you know?
that, if a young male lion fights off an older lion and takes over his pride, he will immediately kill all the cubs in the pride? This forces the lionesses to go back into season and they soon mate with him and have his cubs.
|Name (Scientific)||Panthera leo|
|CITES Status||Panthera leo - all African populations: Appendix II. Panthera leo persica: Appendix I|
|CMS Status||Not listed|
Photo Copyright by
|Range||Africa, India (Gir forest)|
|Habitat||Savannas and forests|
|Wild population||African lion:30,000 to 100,000 (1996) (Red List IUCN 2011)|
|Zoo population||Panthera leo:1138 reported to ISIS (2005) Panthera leo persica: 106 reported to ISIS (2005)|
In the Zoo
How this animal should be transported
Transport crates should be sufficiently large to meet legal requirements, sufficiently strong to prevent escape or damage to the crate and animal, and have an adequate number of handles. Basic design should allow free flow of air through multiple sides of the container. A double door design on each end of the crate should be used. The "inner" door on each end should have bars to contain the animal, and the "outer" door should consist of a thin panel of expanded metal that provides safety for the handlers. The doors on each end of the crate should travel vertically to facilitate animal transfer and contain a secure locking system. The crate should drain well, and absorbent bedding should be used to prevent the animal from being exposed to or lying in urine or excreta. The crate should be of a size that allows easy lifting, transport and movement through doorways.
The shipment should be organised in a way to minimise stress. The animal should have access to its transport crate for 2 weeks before shipment, preferably being fed within it. If an extended trip is anticipated, water and eventually food should be provided while the animal is in transit. Ideally one of the animal's keepers should accompany it during transport, providing for its care and helping it adjust to the new environment.
For air transport, Container Note 72 of the IATA Live Animals Regulations should be followed.
Find this animal on ZooLex
Photo Copyright by
Why do zoos keep this animal
The lion, King of the animals, is one of the most charismatic species kept by zoos. Apart from serving as a model for art classes and being of great educational value for biology teachers, it is a top ambassador species for the ecosystems it inhabits, and many of which have become threatened.
The Asian lion, surviving only in a small part of India, is critically endangered. Therefore an International Studbook was set up in 1971 under the WAZA umbrella and there are regional conservation breeding programmes operated by AZA and EAZA. AZA and ARAZPA have also programmes for maintaining self-sustained African lion populations in their zoos. | <urn:uuid:236f6b32-6a3d-47dc-ac8d-7647c138cbb3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.waza.org/en/zoo/pick-a-picture/panthera-leo | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906756 | 858 | 3.25 | 3 |
The NINO3.4 index is one of several El Niņo/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) indicators based on sea surface temperatures.
NINO3.4 is the average sea surface temperature anomaly in the region bounded by 5°N to 5°S, from 170°W to 120°W. This region has large variability on El Niņo time scales, and is close to the region where changes in local sea-surface temperature are important for shifting the large region of rainfall typically located in the far western Pacific.
An El Niņo or La Niņa event is identified if the 5-month running-average of the NINO3.4 index exceeds +0.4°C for El Niņo or -0.4°C for La Niņa for at least 6 consecutive months.
Interest-free loans for up to two years are among extra flood assistance detailed for Tasmanian farmers and businesses.
Almost three weeks after the devastating floods in north-west Tasmania, there is still no road access for the small community of Lorinna.
From southwest WA to the eastern seaboard, overnight temperatures plummeted well below average on Sunday morning. | <urn:uuid:ba614880-ff7b-4b53-ac78-57648dc5f35b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.weatherzone.com.au/agriculture/?lt=wzstate&lc=was&c=nino34&rc=nino34&p=week | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901809 | 250 | 2.71875 | 3 |
It is possible that the main title of the report Cushing Syndrome is not the name you expected. Please check the synonyms listing to find the alternate name(s) and disorder subdivision(s) covered by this report.
- endogenous Cushing syndrome
- exogenous Cushing syndrome
Cushing syndrome is a rare endocrine disorder characterized by a variety of symptoms and physical abnormalities that occur due to excessive amounts of the hormone cortisol, a type of glucocorticoid. Glucocorticoids are a class of steroid hormones that are important in the regulation of the metabolism of glucose and also modulate the response to stress. Cushing syndrome most commonly affects adults between the ages of 25 to 40. It can be caused by prolonged exposure to elevated levels of glucocorticoids produced within the body (endogenous) or introduced from outside the body (exogenous). Symptoms can include upper body obesity, a rounded face, thin purple streaks (purple striae) which occur on the skin, increased fat around the neck, and slender arms and legs. Children with Cushing syndrome are typically obese with slowed growth rates.
In 1912, Harvey Cushing described a patient with hypercorticism but assumed it to be a polyglandular disorder. The cause was disputed for almost 40 years. Cushing disease, which is pituitary adrenocorticotropin hormone (ACTH) dependent Cushing syndrome, was first described by Dr. Cushing in 1932. Though pituitary surgery was introduced in the early 20th century, it was not until 1933 that neurosurgery was performed on the first patient with Cushing disease.
National Adrenal Diseases Foundation
505 Northern Bloulevard
Great Neck, NY 11021
Cushing's Support and Research Foundation, Inc.
60 Robbins Rd
Plymouth, MA 02360
NIH/National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive & Kidney Diseases
Office of Communications & Public Liaison
Bldg 31, Rm 9A06
31 Center Drive, MSC 2560
Bethesda, MD 20892-2560
NIH/National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
31 Center Dr
Building 31, Room 2A32
Bethesda, MD 20892
Genetic and Rare Diseases (GARD) Information Center
PO Box 8126
Gaithersburg, MD 20898-8126
Autoimmune Information Network, Inc.
PO Box 4121
Brick, NJ 08723
European Society for Immunodeficiencies
1-3 rue de Chantepoulet
Geneva, CH 1211 | <urn:uuid:02b227a8-c4df-41ce-ba64-49603748a23d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/cushings-syndrome | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.793093 | 540 | 3.03125 | 3 |
Although every child is different, you may find it helpful to understand some patterns of Down syndrome as your child grows. It also helps to know that most people who have Down syndrome can flourish and live healthy, happy, and productive lives.
Many of the challenges for people with Down syndrome are related to intellectual disability and health problems. Problems may come up at different ages.
Your baby may reach growth and development milestones later than other children do. These may include rolling over, sitting, standing, walking, and talking.
In this age group, health problems and developmental disabilities can lead to behavior problems. For example, a child may develop oppositional defiant disorder in part because he or she does not communicate well or understand others' expectations.
Puberty starts at about the same ages for teens with Down syndrome as for other teens.
They may face social difficulties and vulnerabilities, such as abuse, injury, and other types of harm. They may also have a hard time handling strong emotions and feelings. Sometimes these struggles can lead to mental health problems, especially depression.
Men with Down syndrome most often are sterile and cannot father children. Many women with Down syndrome can have children, and they usually have early menopause. | <urn:uuid:501cb04f-fe76-447a-bbec-4602744f9761> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.webmd.com/children/tc/down-syndrome-what-happens | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965544 | 246 | 3.390625 | 3 |
Facts and Events
Æthelheard (meaning roughly "Noble Stern"), also spelled Ethelheard or Æþelheard, was King of Wessex from 726 to 740. There is an unreliable record of Æthelheard having been the brother-in-law of his predecessor, Ine, but his ancestry is unknown, perhaps making him the first King of Wessex not to be descended from Cynric by blood.
When Ine abdicated and went to Rome in 726, he left behind no obvious heir, and according to Bede simply left his kingdom "to younger men". In the wake of his departure, the West Saxon throne was disputed between Æthelheard and a rival claimant, Oswald. Oswald may have had the better claim, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle calls him a descendant of the early king Ceawlin, but it was Æthelheard who prevailed. It is possible that his success was due to the support of Æthelbald of Mercia, since he seems to have been subject to Æthelbald afterward. However, Æthelheard's lack of independence does not seem to have prevented Æthelbald from taking considerable territory from Wessex in 733, including the royal manor of Somerton.
Æthelheard was succeeded by Cuthred, possibly a brother or other relative. | <urn:uuid:ebc44c9f-b471-48b5-8107-cab1d939447e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Person:%C3%86thelheard_of_Wessex_(1) | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985186 | 287 | 3.390625 | 3 |
Snowy owl numbers down this year
For whatever reason, snowy owls (Bubo scandiacus) seem a little scarce this winter. I know of only one seen in either Cass or Clay counties just before the new year and it hasn't been relocated. Not that our little corner of the northern prairie is a magnet for these giant owls, but we usually have a few more. There have been some winters in the recent past where a short trip down any direction on the Interstate highway would produce one or two sitting along fence posts.
Just what makes these magnificent predators appear common some winters yet scarce to absent in others is a mystery. The common operating theory points to food, or lack thereof. A crash in the highly cyclic life cycle of lemmings on the birds' breeding grounds, as the thought goes, forces the owls to abandon traditional areas and head south in search of suitable feeding areas (an adult bird can consume an estimated 1,600 lemmings in a single year). It seems logical and is probably part of the truth, along with weather and other related factors.
Only its yellow eyes betray the all-white adult male of this species. Females and immature birds sport varying degrees of dark barring or spotting but always on a backdrop of white. Their feet are completely feathered, an adaptation thought to be a "mitten" of sorts to help keep Arctic cold at bay.
Snowys nest in the very far north starting at the tree line and continuing well into the tundra. They are circumpolar, meaning Arctic areas of Asia and northern Europe support snowy owl populations as well. In fact, this bird was known long before the first explorers set foot on our continent. The species name, scandiacus, refers to Scandinavia. It was the famous Swedish naturalist, Carl Linnaeus, who first classified this species in 1758.
Its handsome and striking appearance may have prompted Novelist J.K. Rowling to cast a snowy owl as a messenger in the popular Harry Potter series, at least the movie versions. Plus it made an obvious impression on earlier peoples as evidenced by the appearance of snowy owls in ancient cave paintings in Europe.
Snowy owls are large, with wingspans approaching five feet, and weigh up to six pounds. This makes them the largest owl in North America, not by apparent size but by mass. With a body fit for hefty work, this owl can and will prey upon relatively large mammals, such as jackrabbits.
Every so often I hear a story about someone in town with a snowy owl sitting in their backyard tree. While I hesitate to use the word 'never,' these sightings are almost certainly not snowy owls. Snowys are exclusively open country birds, where they can be seen sitting for hours on a perch (such as a fence post) or even on the ground waiting for prey. It is extremely rare to find one sitting in a tree.
Instead, I think there are two possible explanations for the apparent misidentifications. First, there is an Arctic population of the much more common great horned owl that is sometimes present in our area during the winter months. These birds can appear to be very pale to near-white in color and commonly perch in trees. Then there is the issue of artificial light. If a yard light (or even car headlights) shines on a bird in the dark, the creature in question is "washed out" and can appear white.
So it's out in the open where you will find them. And, to the delight of animal observers, they are diurnal, meaning active during the daylight hours. Scan long reaches of snow-covered terrain for lumps, especially those looking like dirty snow. Eventually a snowy owl will be found. Although this winter it may be tough. | <urn:uuid:1c3a63ab-b0c2-4cdf-b163-aa3bd9c9d986> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.westfargopioneer.com/content/snowy-owl-numbers-down-year?qt-latest_trending_article_page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962634 | 782 | 3.140625 | 3 |
January 2000 — Oceanographers and climatologists have something in common with politicians and stock market analysts: They are all trying to get a grasp on a complex, ever-shifting system.
To gauge the ebb and flow of public opinion, politicians today are constantly polling constituents. To track fluctuating financial markets, analysts receive a continual flurry of global economic data and information on companies and markets. For oceanographers and climatologists, one of the most urgent goals is unraveling the ocean’s crucial role in shaping our climate. To predict climate changes or extreme weather events that may have potential societal impacts, scientists desperately need the same sort of detailed, ongoing information that politicians and economists have to investigate their systems.
Specifically, oceanographers require long-term measurements to understand processes and changes that occur in the oceans over seasons, years, decades, or longer. Among the important climate questions oceanographers seek to answer are these: How does the ocean store and transport vast amounts of heat and fresh water around the globe? How do the ocean and atmosphere exchange heat, fresh water, and momentum? How are changes in ocean temperatures and salinity, ocean circulation, and climate all interrelated? Are long-term changes in the oceans naturally occurring, or are they the result of human activities, such as the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere?
Today, the world’s oceans are sparsely observed. Oceanographers lack the means to gather the fundamental measurements they need to examine their system—putting scientists in the position of working on mysteries without many essential clues.
But a major effort is under way to establish a Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS)—a worldwide network that would collect the vast, far-flung, ever-changing data necessary to understand the processes by which the oceans help create climate conditions. GOOS would combine a variety of instrumentation. It would include satellite systems providing global coverage of the ocean surface, flotillas of oceanographic instruments drifting throughout the oceans, and autonomous ocean observatories moored at strategic sites in the ocean.
Fixed observatories moored at key geographic sites around the globe are unique in this mix of instrumentation because they can provide highly detailed observations of atmospheric processes just above the sea surface, as well as oceanographic measurements from the seafloor to the sea surface. Measurements collected at fixed sites over long time periods are particularly important for oceanographers trying to understand air-sea interactions, as well as relatively slow-evolving oceanic processes.
In the past, a network of ocean weather stations (OWSs) provided a treasure trove of data for oceanographers and played an essential role in early efforts to build initial understanding of how the ocean changed over time and how it responded to, and in turn influenced, atmospheric changes. Primarily to guide transocean- voyaging aircraft after World War II, the US and four other countries established 13 sites in the North Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans (labeled alphabetically, starting with “A”) that were constantly occupied by ships. Planes would check in with ships to receive a position and weather data. Ship crews used weather balloons to gather air temperature, humidity, pressure, and wind direction and speed, and, while on site, they also collected a wealth of oceanographic measurements.
Unfortunately, by the 1970s satellites began to provide jet aircraft with the positioning and weather information they needed. The original reasons for maintaining the OWSs disappeared, and the program ended in 1981. The last remaining active station, OWS M off Norway, will end ship-based observations in 2000, and with it, the last vestige of a valuable system to collect long-term oceanographic data will disappear.
To fill the void in the future, we envision that among critical GOOS components will be a combination of free-drifting, or “Lagrangian,” platforms (such as the Argo floats described in the Argo Armada article ), and fixed, or “Eulerian,” platforms, such as surface and subsurface moorings. (The names derive from two 18th century mathematicians, Euler and Lagrange, who originated alternative ways of measuring fluid flow—past a fixed point and between two points.)
Eulerian observatories are not new to ocean sciences. They have been, and remain, one of the major elements in developing theoretical understanding of the oceans. In the tropics—motivated by the need to improve our ability to predict El NiÑo events—we have already constructed a new network of Eulerian observatories to obtain surface wind and upper ocean temperature observations. In the 1980s, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Science Foundation, and international partners began to install the Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO) array of more than 70 surface moorings in the equatorial Pacific. Completed in 1994, it provided the observations that helped give us advance warning of the powerful El NiÑo of 1997-98. The goal now is to build on TAO and occupy more sites across the world’s ocean to create a network of Global Eulerian Observatories (GEO).
Such observatories come in two types. Since the 1960s, scientists have used subsurface moorings to observe ocean currents and water properties. These are instrumented cables, anchored to the seafloor and attached to buoyant floats, that reach upward toward, but not to, the sea surface. In contrast, surface moorings have surface floats with downward-hanging cables. Instruments along the submerged cables measure water temperature and salinity, and the speed and direction of currents. The surface floats additionally provide a platform for sensors that measure wind speed and direction, incoming shortwave radiation, incoming longwave radiation, relative humidity, air temperature, barometric pressure, and precipitation. The technology to make such meteorological observations, which was not even available until the 1970s, has improved significantly over the past 15 years, giving scientists the capacity to make highly reliable and accurate measurements.
Both types of mooring technologies have matured to the point where they can measure atmospheric and/or oceanic changes as frequently as once per minute and can take oceanographic measurements meter-by-meter in the water column. Both are now capable of sustained operation for long time periods.
Sensors on surface buoys now perform reliably for periods of six to 12 months. Data are both transmitted via satellite and recorded on board. A recent deployment of surface buoys in the Arabian Sea showed that they can perform well in severe environments. And it also demonstrated their ability to collect detailed measurements of previously undetected air-sea processes. Incorporating these previously overlooked processes into numerical weather prediction models will produce significantly more accurate forecasts.
Unlike surface moorings, which are exposed to winds, salt spray, surface wave motion, fouling by marine growth, and disturbances by vandals, subsurface moorings are subject to less stressful conditions and now routinely collect information for periods of up to two years without servicing. In the past 30 years WHOI alone has deployed almost 1,000 subsurface moorings in all parts of the world’s oceans. Information gathered from them has been used to begin to understand how the oceans change over space and time—with an emphasis on time scales of less than a year or so. In some parts of the ocean, such as the northwest North Atlantic, we have made enough measurements to be able to construct a three-dimensional “picture” of the ocean’s mean circulation and to estimate the speed and volume of waters transported by important currents.
For subsurface moorings, a new class of observing system is approaching operational status: moored profiling instruments. These devices, fitted with a suite of oceanographic sensors, move vertically along conventional mooring cables, returning measurements of water properties and ocean currents at very closely spaced intervals throughout the water column. Using one mobile set of sensors versus many stationary, separate sensors not only reduces costs, it also removes the need to calibrate many different sensors to make sure their measurements are of comparable quality.
In each deployment, these instruments can make approximately 200 top-to-bottom ocean profiles— akin to those obtained from ships. Second-generation instruments may double this capacity. The addition of a bottom pressure sensor would grant the capacity to monitor fluctuations that are not dependent on depth (such as a tidal current, which has the same magnitude and direction throughout the water column), as well as fluctuations that do vary with depth (such as internal waves, moving beneath the surface and within the ocean, whose speed and direction may vary at different depths). The instruments can make such fine-scale observations of current velocities that scientists will be able to detect internal wave motions, as well as other flows that occur only infrequently. They will also be able to detect subtle variations in eddies— smaller-scale, episodically occurring currents that move contrary to main currents.
With these tools available, the international focus is now on identifying the strategically best GEO sites to investigate one or more of the four important scientific objectives listed below.
At strategic sites, moored buoys can directly measure ocean currents flowing at the surface or down into the ocean’s interior. These currents redistribute heat and fresh water around the globe. In particular, the ocean and atmosphere help maintain the planet’s thermostatic balance by absorbing heat in the sun-drenched tropics and moving it toward Earth’s poles. Cooler (and denser) waters sink and flow back equatorward.
The details of these processes are not yet fully understood, yet they are the underpinnings of our climate system. We need, for example, long-term Eulerian observatories to measure the dense overflows of cold Norwegian Sea waters as they move south through the Denmark Straits and Faroe Bank Channel. We also need moored stations to measure variations in the poleward transport of warm water in currents, such as the Gulf Stream, that hug the western boundaries of continents.
In some locations in the world ocean, surface waters become colder or saltier (and therefore denser) than surrounding waters and actually sink and flow into the ocean’s interior—a process known as water mass formation or transformation. This happens when the atmosphere cools the waters or where evaporation or sea ice formation leaves salt behind. Winds can also push surface waters together, and these convergent flows force surface waters downward.
Like a hand pushing down in a bathtub, the downward flow of waters from the surface to the interior of the ocean provides the propulsion to redistribute heat and fresh water throughout the ocean and around the world. In this way, the oceans can absorb heat from the atmosphere in the tropics, for example, and release it back to the atmosphere over the North Atlantic decades to hundreds of years later. Moored ocean observatories in key sites of water mass formation and/or transformation could observe the slow variations in the process—documenting the depth to which cold water sinks and chronicling changes in ocean heat and fresh water content over time.
Meteorological data obtained above the sea surface would provide accurate measurements of the heat and fresh water exchanged between the ocean and atmosphere. Deployed in regions where surface waters sink, these would help quantify the rate at which water mass transformation occurs. In other sites, these measurements would provide high-quality, accurate reference data to check, verify, and calibrate meteorological measurements taken by Volunteer Observing Ships (VOSs) and by satellites. They would also gather the actual data that provide reality checks for computer models that forecast weather and climate.
Oceanographers believe that heat can be moved north and south not only by currents, but also by smaller, more-difficult- to-discern eddies within the oceans. With their ability to make frequent, detailed measurements of water velocities and properties throughout the water column, moorings can detect and document the presence and dynamics of eddies around the world. This will give us our first glimpse into understanding how eddies influence ocean transports of heat and fresh water. It will also provide initial data that can serve as benchmarks for developing numerical models of ocean dynamics—which in the future will be run on computers sufficiently powerful to include finer-scale dynamics such as eddy variations.
Today deep-sea currents have been observed over periods of more than two years at only a few locations. The longest available record is about 10 years. But new cost-effective subsurface moorings being developed by Nelson Hogg at WHOI are expected to permit moorings to last more than five years, with the capability for frequent data transmission back to the lab. GEO sites equipped with these new subsurface moorings could start to obtain the first global picture of longterm internal variability of the oceans.
We acknowledge NOAA, NSF, and the Office of Naval Research for continuing support for the development of the technologies needed to make global ocean observations and for the research to improve understanding of the ocean and its impacts. | <urn:uuid:ae4668c4-1102-4059-91df-cd16020e1191> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?id=2428 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936755 | 2,680 | 3.921875 | 4 |
Investigators are trying to figure out why Elizabeth Smart wasn't able to escape during the nine months she was held captive.
Search teams ventured within yards of where she was temporarily held captive, and though she says she could hear people calling her name, she never responded to the calls.
Local psychologists say Smart may have suffered from Stockholm Syndrome. It's a coping mechanism that causes a person to bond with her kidnapper. Stockholm Syndrome is the same phenomenon that causes battered women to return to their abusers.
The victim may feel sorry for her captor or even develop loving feelings for that person.
Psychologists say whether or not Smart suffers from Stockholm Syndrome, it is likely she will suffer from some form of Post Traumatic Stress, and it may take several months for Smart and her family to cope with the kidnapping.
wilx.com: Extended Web Coverage
- The Stockholm syndrome is a psychological state in which the victims of a kidnapping, or persons detained against their free will - prisoners - develop a relationship with their captor(s).
- This solidarity can sometimes become a real complicity, with prisoners actually helping the captors to achieve their goals or to escape police.
- The syndrome has been named this way after the famous bank robbery of Kreditbanken in Norrmalmstorg, Stockholm which lasted from Aug. 23 to Aug. 28, 1973.
- In the Kreditbanken case, the victims kept on defending their captors even after their six days physical detention was over.
- Famous cases regarded airplane hostages and kidnapped people, such as Patricia Hearst, who after having been a hostage of a politically engaged military organisation (the Symbionese Liberation Army, or SLA), joined it several months after she was freed.
- The syndrome can explain what happens in hostage-taking situations, but can also be used to understand the behavior of battered spouses, members of religious cults, Holocaust victims, or even household pets.
Source: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome (The Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia Web site) contributed to this report. | <urn:uuid:f9aee8a4-4fc6-40ae-8724-9b48de670b40> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.wilx.com/news/headlines/255351.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961424 | 430 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/3/2012 (1551 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Barring forest fires or other natural disasters, urban dwellers in Winnipeg will soon suffer another season of city sanctioned open-air fire pits.
The World Health Organization states: "The largest contributors to urban outdoor air pollution include amongst other the burning of biomass and coal."
Environment Canada recognizes smoke from burning wood as the greatest single source of particulate matter in the country.
Furthermore, all levels of government, health organizations, including the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, recognize wood smoke and its pollutants as major health hazards.
A representative from the Manitoba Lung Association suggested "closing windows and doors." By the time your eyes tear and the toxins invade your lungs the exercise is rather futile.
Wood smoke is more than a nuisance; it remains chemically active in the body 40 times longer than cigarette smoke. It is a severe health hazard and a preventable burden to our health care system.
Those who would argue about our clean air are not living downwind or next door to a wood-burning fire pit or fireplace.
If the smoke from a fire pit interferes with the enjoyment of your property, and your right to breathe, you can try dialling 311 and reporting the incident as a nuisance under the Neighbourhood Liveability Bylaw. From experience, however, calling 311 is often waste of time.
Wood smoke causes more damage to the environment and health than photo radar, red light cameras, and the operation of noisy snow sleds within the city. I have yet to hear or see a snowmobile travelling across my lawn at the break of dawn or twilight.
Yet I suffer smoke from open air burning and recreational fire pits entering my residence, and affecting my health. Open-air burning and smoke from recreational fire pits within the city need as much attention and consideration as mosquito fogging and the use of garden insecticide.
Be a good neighbour. If smoke from your fire bothers your neighbours, damages their property, or otherwise causes a nuisance, you must immediately put it out. | <urn:uuid:6997503a-06ae-4cac-86f0-2065de19c528> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/outdoor-firepits-take-a-heavy-toll-144559565.html?device=mobile | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927088 | 437 | 2.578125 | 3 |
22 August 2001. Reviewed August 2002. Updated 24
reliable figures but the Philippines democracy
and economy ruined and possibly thousands
colonises the Philippine archipelago during the
16th Century, naming the islands after King
Philip II and establishing Manila (on the
northern island of Luzon) as the capital in
1571. The indigenous population is converted to
Roman Catholicism, although Muslim Filipinos in
the south and upland tribes in the north resist
any challenge to their traditional religious
United States takes control of the archipelago
following the 1898 Spanish-American War
independence activists wage a guerrilla war
against the new colonialists. The rebels are
brought under control and political reforms
introduced as the country prepares for
self-governing Commonwealth of the Philippines
is established in 1935. Full independence is
scheduled for introduction after a further 10
years, but the timetable is interrupted by the
Japanese occupation of the country during the
Second World War. Independence is finally
achieved on 4 July 1946, though as the date
would imply, the US retains significant
on 11 September 1917 in Sarrat in the llocos
Norte Province at the northwestern tip of Luzon.
Both his parents are teachers. After completing
his schooling, Marcos enrols to study law at the
University of the Philippines.
- In April Marcos is arrested in connection with
the 1933 murder of a political rival of his
father and has to complete his law degree while
in custody. He stands trial in September and is
and found guilty.
- Marcos appeals his conviction for murder,
representing himself before the Philippine
Supreme Court. The appeal is upheld and the
conviction overturned. Marcos then becomes a
trial lawyer in Manilla.
- During the Second World War, Marcos serves as
an officer in the Philippine armed forces. After
the war he claims to have led a guerrilla unit,
the Maharlikas, against the Japanese. It is
later revealed that he played little or no part
in anti-Japanese activities during the war.
- Marcos returns to Manila to resume his law
practice, becoming an assistant to the
Philippines president in 1947.
- Standing as a Liberal Party candidate, Marcos
is elected as a representative for his home
province to the Philippine Parliament, becoming
the youngest member ever to join the House. He
successfully stands for reelection in 1953. It
is reported that he uses his political influence
for personal enrichment and quickly becomes a
- Marcos marries Imelda Romualdez on 1 May.
- He is again reelected to the House of
Representatives. In 1959 he shifts from the
lower house to the Senate, topping the election
and becoming the opposition leader in
- Marcos drops plans to stand as the Liberal
Party candidate for the presidency on the
understanding that his nomination will be
supported in 1965. In the meantime he is made
head of the Liberal Party. In 1963 he is elected
- When the Liberals refuse to honour the 1961
agreement, Marcos switches his allegiance to the
Nationalista Party. In November he is nominated
as the party's candidate for the presidential
election of the following year.
- Marcos is elected president in November,
promising improved living conditions for average
Filipinos and land reform. While the first is
achieved through an ambitious program of public
works, the latter is never seriously tackled. He
helps found the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN), established in 1967.
- Marcos wins a second four-year term as
president. He is the first president to be
reelected in the short history of the Philippine
democracy. However, growth slows and quality of
life begins to deteriorate. Violence and crime
begin to become everyday occurrences. The
Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) starts
to make inroads in the provinces, with its
military wing, the New People's Army (NPA)
spreading across the archipelago.
southern island of Mindanao, Muslim
secessionists organise under the banner of the
Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF). In August
Marcos launches major military campaigns against
the NPA and MNLF.
- Social unrest continues to build. Student
demonstrators attempt to storm the Malacanang
Palace, the presidential mansion, on 30 January.
Manila and other large cities are rocked by
random bombings. Marcos blames leftists and
suspends habeas corpus in August 1971, a prelude
to martial law.
- At a constitutional convention opposition
delegates introduce a provision to prevent
Marcos from remaining as head of state or
government once his second term as president has
expired. Marcos succeeds in having the ban
overturned the following year.
- Using the excuse of an alleged assassination
attempt against Defence Minister Juan Ponce
Enrile, Marcos declares martial law on 21
September, promising to eliminate poverty and
injustice and create a "new society". It is
later revealed that the assassination attempt
had been staged by the military.
figures (including Benigno 'Ninoy' Aquino),
journalists, student and labour activists and
criminals are arrested and detained at military
compounds run by the army and the police.
Newspapers are closed and the mass media tightly
controlled. Demonstrations, strikes and boycotts
are outlawed. Marcos assumes absolute
legislative power. The constitution, which
permits presidents only two terms in office, is
- A new constitution allowing Marcos to stay in
office indefinitely and to rule by decree is
introduced. The result is confirmed by a
fraudulent referendum enabling him to continue
as president until the end of martial law and to
arbitrarily appoint all government officials,
including members of the judiciary. Imelda
Marcos is made governor of Manila and minister
of human settlements and ecology.
initially brings stability and an economic
turnaround but with the costs of reduced social
freedoms and increasing corruption. Limited land
reforms are introduced but prove ineffective.
Manufacturing and business enterprises are
nationalised or handed to Marcos's cronies or
relatives. Profits are siphoned off for personal
enrichment and mismanagement is rife.
forces are politicised. Officers from Marcos's
home province are promoted to high rank. A
childhood friend of Marcos becomes
chief-of-staff of the armed forces and head of
the internal security network. Officers are
appointed to manage several corporations and the
military is ordered to take control of all
public utilities and the media. The size of the
army is also increased, with numbers swelling
from about 58,000 in 1971 to 142,000 in 1983.
has virtually unlimited powers to search, arrest
and detain civilians without reason and without
recourse to legal representation. Military
tribunals are set up throughout the country to
try and sentence detainees. The civilian courts
are striped of their power and autonomy, and the
Philippine police force is placed under military
control. It is estimated that more than 60,000
people are arrested between 1972 and 1977.
prisoners are routinely tortured by the
military. "Disappearances" and murders of
suspected political activists are common, with
over 500 cases being recorded for the period
1975-80. Meanwhile, inflation and unemployment
rise while already low living standards drop.
of the regime and the stagnating economy causes
may Filipinos to turn to the communists for
protection and support.
- The constitution is amended further to allow
Marcos to continue to rule by degree even after
the lifting of martial law.
- Benigno Aquino, leader of the Philippines
democratic opposition, is tried by a military
court, found guilty of subversion and sentenced
to death. The sentence, however, is never
- Aquino, who is ill, is released in May to
receive medical treatment in the US. He will
remain in the US, becoming a leader of the
opposition in exile.
- Marcos proclaims the end of martial law on 17
January. He wins an overwhelming majority in a
presidential election held in June, but the vote
is rigged and is boycotted by the main
- After three years in exile, Aquino decides to
return to the Philippines and help end the
Marcos regime. However, minutes after his
arrival at Manilla airport on 21 August he is
shot in the head and killed. The lone assassin
is shot on the spot.
the assassin is a communist, but a subsequent
government commission of inquiry finds that the
military had conspired in Aquino's death.
However, the finding is rejected and those
accused of the conspiracy are allowed to go
funeral procession draws hundreds of thousands
of mourners. It is the largest demonstration in
the history of the Philippines and marks the
beginning of the 'People's Power' movement led
by Aquino's widow, Corazon Cojuangco Aquino.
domestic economy grinds to a halt and then
begins to contract. But while the salaries of
Filipinos are, in real terms, half as much as
they were in 1956, the share of the national
income held by the wealthiest 10th of the
country has increased from 27% to 37%.
standards decline further the business community
begins to speak out against the Marcos regime.
The NPA gains further ground in rural areas. In
the cities and towns Communist Party influence
continues to spread.
- In November Marcos announces that an election
for president will be held on 7 February of the
following year. Corazon Aquino announces that
she will stand as a candidate.
- The election is held on schedule but the
results are contested, with the opposition and
Roman Catholic Church claiming widespread fraud
and intimidation. Marcos is proclaimed the
official winner on 15 February, sparking a
rebellion by Defence Minister Enrile, armed
forces vice chief-of-staff Fidel Ramos, and the
commander of the Philippine police, who also
believe that the vote has been rigged.
Marcos to resign, the rebels receive the backing
of the church and the support of the people. The
armed forces either join the rebellion or,
faced-off by massive crowds gathered around the
rebel's camp, decline to intervene.
On 25 February
the Marcoses run, abandoning the presidential
palace and flying to Hawaii in the US. Their
20-year regime is at its end. As the Marcoses
flee, Corazon Aquino is sworn in as president,
riding in on the massive wave of 'People's
arrives in Hawaii he is said to be carrying
suitcases containing jewels, 24 gold bricks and
certificates for billions of dollars of gold
bullion. His Swiss bank accounts are estimated
to contain between US$3 billion and US$35
billion stolen from his country. The
Philippine's foreign debt is about US$28
government acts quickly to recover deposits in
the Marcoses' Swiss accounts. A formal request
for assistance is sent to the Swiss Federal
Police on 7 April. However, it takes 18 years
for the US$624 million that is discovered to be
returned to the Philippines Treasury.
To this day,
the existence and whereabouts of the rest of the
Marcos billions remains unconfirmed despite
detailed investigations by the US Senate.
- It is reported that Marcos is conspiring from
his base in Hawaii to launch an armed invasion
of the Philippines and again seize power.
- Marcos is indicted by a federal grand jury in
New York in the US for offences including mail
fraud, fraudulent misappropriation of property
and obstruction of justice.
- He dies of a heart attack on 28 September
while in exile in Honolulu, Hawaii, and before
- In March Imelda Marcos is brought to trial by
the federal grand jury in New York but in July
is acquitted on all counts. She faces further
trials in the Philippines for the
misappropriation of public funds but is able to
avoid conviction. Meanwhile, on 28 September a
special court in the Philippines convicts 16
Filipino military personnel of murdering Aquino
and his "assassin".
- Marcos's embalmed body is returned to the
Philippines and placed on permanent display in a
mausoleum in his home town. Imelda Marcos
refuses to allow his body to be buried, saying
that despite the Philippine Government's
objections it should be interred at the
'Cemetery of Heroes' (Libingan Ng Mga Bayani) in
- The District Court of Hawaii finds that Marcos
was responsible for executions, disappearances
and torture during his rule and awards nearly
US$2 billion in damages to thousands of
surviving victims. The victims later agree to a
US$150 million settlement, but a court in the
Philippines blocks payment in 1999.
- In July the Philippine Supreme Court rules
that the US$624 million portion of the Marcos
fortune discovered in Swiss bank accounts must
be handed over to the Philippine Government. The
money is to be used to buy land for distribution
to poor farmers. The Marcos family immediately
appeal against the judgement.
fight over the Marcos millions is further
complicated in September when the District Court
of Hawaii places a global freeze order on the
Marcos assets. The Philippine Government lodges
an appeal against the freeze in a court in
On 18 November
the Philippine Supreme Court upholds its July
ruling and criticises the Hawaiian court for
overstepping its jurisdiction.
- On 25 March the international anticorruption
organisation Transparency International (TI)
places Marcos at second on a list of the world's
most corrupt political leaders of the past two
decades, surpassed only by former Indonesian
TI, Marcos is alleged to have embezzled between
US$5 billion and US$10 billion from the
judge in Hawaii orders that US$40 million held
by a finance company set up by Marcos be used to
start paying the victims of his regime who were
awarded damages in 1994. The finance company
appeals the ruling.
- In a nationwide poll held in July Filipinos
rate Marcos as the best of the country's last
five presidents. The former dictator even
out-polls his successor, the 'People's Power'
leader, Corazon Aquino.
- In September the Transparency International
estimate of the amount embezzled by Marcos is
quoted in a report by the Stolen Assets Recovery
Initiative, a joint venture of the World Bank
and the United Nations Office of Drugs and
the report, "The channels whereby the money was
allegedly stolen were diverse, including the
takeover of private companies; creation of
monopolies for sugar, coconuts, shipping,
construction, and the media; fraudulent
government loans; bribes from companies; and
skimming off foreign loans and raiding the
latter sums may he fanciful, the legacy of the
Marcos dictatorship is all too real - an economy
struggling just to pay the interest on its
foreign debt and a seriously compromised
democracy seemingly unable to shake off
entrenched corruption. Witness the debacle of
the Estrada presidency. It took Marcos 20 years
to pillage and wreck the Philippines.
Unfortunately it may take far longer for the
damage to be undone.
Links are to external sites.
Philippines - A Country Study
(Library of Congress Country Studies Series)
The Missing Marcos Billions
With Knowledge Comes Power
Start learning the
laws the country is said to hold
so we can stop the corruption by keeping one | <urn:uuid:ca7b570b-4333-4bc4-93e0-0e6d30a48212> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.worldwithoutend.info/social/articles/history/008-history-f_marcos.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933948 | 3,375 | 3.375 | 3 |
The African Zion Baptist Church, a center of worship for Malden’s black community, organized as a formal congregation in 1852, and the present building was built two decades later. Known then as the Kanawha Salines, Malden held West Virginia’s largest concentration of slaves, numbering more than 1,500 and tending the town’s booming saltworks. Gen. Lewis Ruffner gave the land, money, and materials for construction of the one-room church building. Services began there in 1872 and continued well into the 20th century. African Zion is the state’s oldest black Baptist church and is recognized as the mother church for all of West Virginia’s black Baptists.
Its most famous congregant was educator Booker T. Washington, who had come as a boy to the Kanawha Valley when freed from slavery. After graduation from Hampton Normal Institute in Virginia in 1876, Washington returned to live in Malden, teaching Sunday School at African Zion. Washington clerked and married his first wife, Fannie Smith, at the church in 1881 before leaving for Tuskegee. Until his death in 1915, Washington kept his membership in the church.
African Zion’s architectural style is typical for the Southern church: simple, unadorned, even spartan. Essentially unchanged since the 1870s, the wood-frame church is a rectangular, front gable design with two tall windows with segmental arch hoods on each side. A short steeple crowns the roof above the front door. Special ceremonies still occur in the sanctuary.
Today, the church is part of an African-American heritage nucleus in the middle of Malden. ‘‘Fresh Start Salt Village,’’ a replica of the postbellum salt-worker’s living conditions, features a reproduction of Washington’s cabin (the original sat approximately 50 yards to the northwest), a combination schoolhouse-church, and a museum. The African Zion Baptist Church was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
Read the National Register nomination.
This Article was written by Garrett C. Jeter
Last Revised on January 30, 2013
Bickley, Ancella R., ed. Our Mount Vernons: Historic Register Listings of Sites Significant to the Black History of West Virginia. Huntington: Carter G. Woodson Memorial Foundation & Drinko Academy, 1997.
Cohen, Stan & Richard Andre. Kanawha County Images. Charleston: Pictorial Histories Publishing Company & Kanawha County Bicentennial, 1987.
Comstock, Jim, ed. West Virginia Heritage Encyclopedia vol. 1. Richwood: Jim Comstock, 1976.
Cite This Article
Jeter, Garrett C. "African Zion Baptist Church." e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. 30 January 2013. Web. 26 June 2016. | <urn:uuid:779b436a-2c7d-49d0-ba9f-0386e1f664dc> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/24 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94368 | 594 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Finnish researchers have designed tiny nano-particles which can deliver a specific drug to cells of the inner ear. Once brought into position, this drug helps to repair damaged cells. As a result people with hearing loss have experienced a significant improvement of their condition.
In France, nanotechnology is used to help blind people with a new generation of artificial retinal prostheses. Scientists have created synthetic diamond crystals and implant them on the retina of the patient. The diamond can stimulate the retina and compensate the damaged photoreceptors. The results are impressive, as Serge Picaud from the Inserm Institut de la Vision in Paris points out: “A patient who was blind can now see letters and read small words. That’s pretty exceptional!”
youris.com provides its content to all media free of charge. We would appreciate if you could acknowledge youris.com as the source of the content. | <urn:uuid:4b1562bc-d64a-4e9e-8ed2-bd89ecb9b3b0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.youris.com/Health/Disabled/Regenerating_The_Ear_And_The_Eye.kl | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942222 | 189 | 3.265625 | 3 |
EXAMPLE: Criteria for Judging the Quality of Content Standards
The Council of Chief State School Officers is working with a number of organizations to consolidate criteria for evaluating content standards. The current draft of the document, Criteria for High Quality Standards: A Consensus and Consolidation, contains a discussion of six criteria and questions to guide users in analyzing their content standards. The following excerpt from the document lists the criteria and guiding questions.
Criterion 1. Standards should expect and support all students achieving to high levels.
Are all students given the opportunity to reach high standards?
Do the standards reflect high levels of achievement/knowledge in the disciplines?
Can students demonstrate achievement in a variety of ways?
Criterion 2. Content standards should reflect the strengths of the relevant academic disciplines.
Is each discipline covered adequately/completely/appropriately?
Are the standards linked across the disciplines (common language, common framework, cross references)?
Do the standards reflect knowledge of teaching and learning in the discipline?
Criterion 3. Content standards should be specific enough to clearly convey the important academic knowledge and skills that all students should learn, but broad enough to allow for multiple approaches to curriculum, instruction, course design, and assessment.
Do the standards allow districts to elaborate their own curriculum, teaching strategies, etc.?
Are the standards rich enough to create clear understandings of expected teaching and learning?
Can the standards be used for reporting, assessment, and accountability purposes?
Do the standards reflect a balance between knowledge and skills?
Criterion 4. In addition to content standards themselves, there should be a plan to implement the content standards, which would involve the development of performance standards, assessments, and accountability measures. In the interim, content standards should be illustrated by examples of student work that meet the content standards.
Does the State have a plan for involving its districts?
Does the State have a plan for moving from standards to their implementation in instructions practice?
Does the State have interim performance indicators?
Does the State have a process for insuring alignment?
EXAMPLE (Cont.): Criteria for Judging the Quality of Content Standard
Criterion 5. Content standards should be world class standards.
Have the standards been compared to the standards in other countries, other States, other districts, and to national standards?
Criterion 6. Content standards must be understandable and convincing to the lay public.
Are the standards clear, concise, and jargon-free?
Does the State provide for public discussion and opportunity for comment?
[Return to Standards] | <urn:uuid:f3cf49b3-4d2b-4309-9a8e-44340413cbd2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/guid/standardsassessment/crjudge.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.899648 | 519 | 3.265625 | 3 |
Lesson 8: Christmas versus the Birth of the Savior (Luke 2:1-21)Related Media
The birth of Jesus Christ as recorded in Luke 2 is a well-known account that is also commonly accompanied by its own set of fictional details, details that become part of the celebration and wonder that many grew up associating with this season. Because of this, we can sometimes lose sight of what God is trying to teach us through this important text. The good news proclaimed by the angels is what we would do well to carry with us, a message informing everyone that the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, in which full divinity was united with full humanity, is good news because it provides us peace with God. We hear in this statement a number of points to dwell on. Concerning the virgin birth, there is an urge to consider the humanity of the divine Christ who is able to identify with us. In reference to the “good news,” consideration is given to the fact that the birth of Jesus proclaims He is the focus of God’s sovereign plan of redemption. And finally, dwelling on the realization that through Christ we have the opportunity of peace with God, we are reminded of how Jesus’s coming to this earth is a proclamation of the salvation available to all.
Summary by Seth Kempf, Bethany Community Church Staff | <urn:uuid:25ae24b9-5818-4d58-ad93-48b61d8d4ae0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://bible.org/seriespage/lesson-8-christmas-versus-birth-savior-luke-21-21 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967921 | 275 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Written by Rossy Mendez
It can often be a daunting task to find University-related publications from the nineteenth century. Fortunately, a number are available in Princeton’s collections and online. You can search for these publications directly through the main library catalog or by using the finding aids site to search across the university’s special collections. You can limit your results by entering keywords such as “The College of New Jersey” and using date ranges.
The Princeton University Publications Collection (which dates from 1748-2012) contains a variety of publications written by students, from the informal social newsletter the Nassau Rake to the well-established Nassau Literary Magazine. The Princeton Tiger humor magazine, which started in the 1880s, is a significant part of the collection as some of its writers went on to literary careers. Lastly, this collection also contains articles and publications related to the university such as The Influence of Princeton on Higher Education in the South.
The university has a rich athletic tradition and the documentation of this history can be found in several collections at Mudd. The Athletic Programs Collection contains a number of programs from Princeton’s early athletic history including the famous Princeton-Yale football games near the turn of the century. The C. Bernard Shea Collection on Princeton University Athletics contains clippings and statistics of sports events starting in 1869. In addition to this collection, the Bric-a-Brac yearbooks available in Mudd’s reading room also provide insight into sports events.
Visual and Performing Arts
The arts have always played a major role in Princeton’s history. The Music Performance at Princeton Collection (1875-2007) includes programs and advertisements from musical clubs within the university as well as visiting performers. In addition, the General Princeton Theater Collection and the Triangle Club Records have a number of programs and playbills from early performances at the university, while the University Broadsheets Collection has advertisements of important events on campus.
Clippings and programs of the student orations related to Princeton’s commencement ceremonies can be found in the University Commencement Records and some in the College of New Jersey Pamphlets book, which has a selection of materials from the 1800s. These records provide information about the university’s traditions and practices and are a good way to learn more about the university involvement of a particular individual.
University Registries and Catalogs
A number of registries, yearbooks and catalog publications are available in our reference room. The Nassau Herald yearbook, which was first issued in 1864, contains biographical and academic information including names, field of study and place of residence. In addition to directory information it also provides information about the graduating class (photographs are also included after 1915). The Bric a Brac, an informal yearbook publication produced by the Junior class, documents the social aspects of the university including activities of various clubs and sports teams. Class reunion books include an up to date class directory, eulogies, quotes and other pieces of writing that allow insight into the post-graduation activities of alumni.
University catalogs dating from the early 1800s contain information about statistics, fees, coursework and other policies. Some of these catalogs can be accessed in our reading and reference rooms but some can also be found online (see below). There are a number of specialized catalogs like that of the Whig Society that record club activities and alumni.
In addition to the abundance of information available at Mudd, there are several of online resources that are worth mentioning. If you are a student or faculty member at Princeton you have access to digital versions of some of these publications through the databases available through the main library catalog. The Nassau Monthly, for example can be accessed through ProQuest and EBSCO databases. In addition to these, ProQuest Historical Newspapers, Gale News Vault and the Newspaper Archive contain a number of other 19th century publications. If you cannot access Princeton’s digital resources, there are a number of other online resources. The entire archive of the student newspaper The Daily Princetonian, is freely available online and covers events, student issues and local news. The archive contains newspaper clippings that date to as early as 1875. Users can conduct keyword searches as well as limit results using various parameters.
Google Books contains a number of publications that have been digitized by Princeton and other universities. Some examples include catalogs such as the Princeton College Bulletin from 1895 and class reunion books such as the Decennial record of the class of 1874. You can also conduct general searches online to determine if the material you need has been digitized. Here are some examples of available items: an essay written for the student publication, The Tattler; an 1897 essay in Scribner’s magazine written about undergraduate life at Princeton; and a speech given by Charles Fenton Mercer at the University Chapel in 1826.
The Internet Archive has also made available several early images of Princeton’s history through the photo sharing site, Flickr. These images derive from publications and the link to the entire publication is available at the Open Library.
Whether it is using our collections at the Mudd Library or conducting research online, finding information from the 19th century need not be a difficult task. You can visit our website to find more helpful tips on using our collections or contact us via email. | <urn:uuid:53a1c6e1-cb2d-438d-a463-a33ece2addce> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://blogs.princeton.edu/mudd/category/collections/page/3/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936852 | 1,100 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Structural Biochemistry/Nucleic Acid/RNA/RNA modification/RNA splicing
- 1 RNA Splicing
- 1.1 Discovery of RNA Splicing
- 1.2 Spliceosome
- 1.3 Pre-mRNA Slicing Process
- 1.4 Pre-mRNA Splicing: Constitutive vs Alternative
- 1.5 Alternative splicing can occur under cellular Stress
- 1.6 References
RNA splicing is a modification of an RNA that takes place during the transcription of the primary transcript to the mRNA. Splicing refers to introns being cut out or removed, and the remaining sequence (called exons) being attached. This modification occurs in the nucleus, before the RNA is moved to the cytoplasm.
Splicing happens in all the domains of life, but types of splicing differ immensely between the major divisions. Eukaryotes splice many protein-coding messenger RNAs and some non-coding RNAs. Prokaryotes, on the other hand, splice rarely, and when they do, it is mostly non-coding RNAs.
Discovery of RNA Splicing
RNA splicing was discovered by two scientists Phillp Allen Sharp and Richard J. Roberts and they were awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their achievement. The initial discovery of RNA splicing led to the resolution of an earlier paradox in which scientists had discovered RNA in the nucleus that was unusually long compared to the mRNA found in the cytoplasm of the cell. The strange nuclear RNA had a 5’ end containing a cap structure and a 3’ end that contained a polyadenosine [poly(A)] tract and these were similar structures found in the shorter mRNA found in the cytoplasm. The subsequent discovery of splicing explained how the small mRNA could have the same termini as the longer nuclear RNA. While the termini were the same, the lengths were different because introns had been removed from the middle of the strand. These introns, it was discovered, proved to be a problem for the cell because, for example, a nearly a quarter of all mutations in globin genes responsible for beta-thalassemia came from problems in splicing.
It became apparent through development of reactions that replicated RNA splicing that the splicing is done by a branch-shaped section of a lariat RNA and that such RNAs were integral to splicing. Later it was found that these small snRNAs compiled particles found in spliceosomes. Via an intermediatemade up of lariatRNA and the 5’ exon-RNA, the spliceosome was able to remove the intron.
In eukaryotes, genes are transcribed to messenger RNAs comprising both introns and exons. For the production of validated mRNAs, the introns are to be trimmed off and the exons attached back together by the spliceosome, the molecular tailor of the cell. The spliceosome has the ability to alter its snipping and stitching process in order to generate variation in mRNAs based on a single coil of pre-mRNA cloth. Alternative splicing is the process by which the spliceosome can develop multiple mRNA isoforms from a single bolt of pre-mRNA. Such alternative splicing has enhanced evolutionary possibilities in complex multicellular organisms without the addition of gene number.
The spliceosome is considered as one of the most complicated macromolecular machine in the eukaryotic cell. It is involved with hundreds of RNA and protein mechanisms, specifically with assembly and disassembling pathways. The main role for a spliceosome in eukaryotes is to develop messenger RNAs. Genes are transcribed as precursors to mRNAs, called pre-mRNA, and then the RNAs are generated by the snipping and stitching of intron and exon components. Introns are regions of the pre-mRNA that are cut by spliceosomes to serve as a suorce of non-coding RNAs. Exons code for proteins so they are usually wanted. Furthermore, a spliceosome can uniquely snip and stitch in ways that will create different types of mRNA, which as allowed evolution to allow organisms to increase in gene number and complexity. The reason why Spliceosome are considered one of the most complicated macromolecule machines in a cell is because they have the responsibility of properly recognizing and processing a large amount of sequences. For example, spliceosomes end up processing five small RNAs and up to 100 different polypeptides in budding yeast. To make things more complicated, humans even need to use a second splicing apparatus, the minor spliceosome. In studying these complex machinery, many barriers were in the way because of the limitations in vivo. However, novel approaches to researching splicing have developed, such as in vitro assembly and purification of active spliceosomes, microscopic visualizations of single spliceosomes, and more. The advantages of these methods are that they are more specific and allow the wider boundary of studying either hundreds or a single RNA molecule. One of the new methods involves using microarrays.
Using splicing-dependent microarrays allows researches to distinguish which features of the splicing cycle are universal or specific to pre-mRNAs. Groups of developed DNA arrays differentiate between spliced and unspliced RNAs and then are probed with cellular RNA to isolate even further. Analysis of the splicing response allowed the observation of how loss of activity in specific protein directly affected the splicing of individual pre-mRNA. Overall, the microarray has proved its importance of pre-mRNA identity by efficiently isolating the desired-protein.
Spliceosome analysis have often times brought up significant obstacles in gaining understanding of more detailed mechanisms. To overcome such difficulties, laboratory techniques have employed methods like in vitro, which involves observing single pre-mRNA molecules, and active spliceosome purification, which includes well- characterized enzymes and controlled conditions. Although each chemical approach are relatively distinct, each contribute a complementary and synergistic view that heighten the knowledge of splicing machinery.
The spliceosome is a complex macromolecular machine consisting of small nuclear riobonucleoprotein particles (snRNPs): U1, U2, U4, U5, and U6, as well as roughly 100 separate splicing factors. The snRNAs range in length from 107-210 nucleotides; the snRNAs link with proteins to make small ribonucleoprotein particles (snRNPs). The snRNP contains a single snRNA and multiple proteins.
Splicing is carried out in multi-megadalton complexes. This means that the spliceosome is made of several components in an ordered manner. First, U1 snRNP binds to the 5’ splice site (SS). At the same time, branchpoint bridgeing protein (BBP) and Mud 2 binds to the branch site. Then, U2 snRNP will displace the BBP/Mud 2 and bind to the branch site. Next, U4/U6.U5 tri-snRNP will also binds to the complex. Before splicing the RNA U1 and U4 will leave the complex and Prp19 will bind. After the splicing is completed, the spliceosome will undergo conformational change for the ligation process. After the ligation process, the components of the Spliceosome will degrade and be recycled. Therefore, each spliceosome is a single turnover enzyme
From all the new and developed techniques, it is not for certain that the spliceosome cycle in the body is far from simple, but rather an "extraordinary dynamic and flexible machine" The new technologies constantly bring new evidence of the detailed reversible, irreversible, kinetic, and mechanism interactions of the pre-mRNA substrate. There are still many things unknown about the spliceosome and its process. There is still limited structural information, which means many of its functional details are unavailable. Same with unknown kinetic understanding. However, the research of this dynamic machinery is still developing and continuing to discover new methods and information on its purpose.
Pre-mRNA Slicing Process
Splicing requires there to be three sequences in the introns. One end of the intron is the 5' splice site and the other end is the 3' splice site. At these sites are short consensus sequences. The sequence that exons are ordered in the mRNA usually correlates with the sequence in the corresponding DNA. The process is aided by spliceosomes, which are small RNA molecules that recognize the beginning of introns (usually GU) and the end (usually AG) and catalyze splicing at these sites. Changing a single nucleotide at these sites may prevent splicing to occur. There are also self-splicing introns. The third sequence important to splicing is located at the branch point. The branch point is where an adenine nucleotide lies from 18 to 40 nucleotides before the 3' splice site. The deletion or mutation of the adenine nucleotide at the branch point would prevent splicing. Splicing occurs in large structures called spliceosomes.
Before splicing takes place, an intron between exon 1 and exon 2. Pre-mRNA splices in two steps. In step one, the pre-mRNA is spliced at the 5' splice site, separating exon 1 from the intron. The 5' end of the intron then attaches to the branch point folding back on itself and forming a structure called a lariat. The folding back occurs by the guanine nucleotide in the 5' consensus sequence bonding with the adenine nucleotide at the branch point through transesterification. In step two a splice is made at the 3' splice site and the 3' end of exon 1 is attached to the 5' end of exon 2. The intron is separated as a lariat and becomes linear when the bond breaks at the branch point and is then degraded by nuclear enzymes. And finally, the mature mRNA consisting of only the exons spliced together are moved to the cytoplasm and translated.
It is important to note that the 5' cap greatly affects pre-mRNA processing and mRNA export and if it were ever to be removed, then it would be known as the first irreversible step in mRNA decay which will affect the entire gene expression.
Pre-mRNA Splicing: Constitutive vs Alternative
Constitutive splicing pertains to the way mRNA is spliced in exactly the same way, every time with the splicesome
Alternative splicing allows for different expression of genes through SR proteins, which select alternative sites for splicing, using different exons or expressing them in a different order. By choosing combinations of alternative splice sites, protein isoforms can be created that are structurally and functionally distinct. It is estimated that at least 75% of human genes undergo this mechanism.
Another alternative splicing uses multiple 3' cleavage sites. There are 2 or more potential site for cleavage in a pre-mRNA sequence. However, this may or may not produce different proteins.
Alternative splicing can occur under cellular Stress
Because alternative splicing can control gene expression, it is an important mechanism that a cell can use in response to certain stressful environmental and pathological cellular conditions such as heat, cold, UV-light, oxygen, ion balance, infections, inflammation, fever, etc.
Splicing factors can be enhancing (recognizing positive sequence elements) or silencing (recognizing negative sequence elements). These sequence elements can by exonic or intronic which determines whether they are included (exonic) or left out (intronic). The splicing enhancers are typically bound and activated by SR proteins. SR proteins are ‘serine/arginine-rich;’ they are a group of proteins that have been highly conserved throughout evolution that participate in both alternative and constitutive splicing. They are involved in regulating and selecting the splice sites.
Alternative or unconventional mRNA splicing can be part of adaptive stress responses in certain cell organelles, such as the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Moreover, abnormal mRNA splicing could also be related to cell apoptosis. Under stress conditions, unfolded proteins accumulate in the ER and form aggregates. These abnormal aglomerations engage a response process called unfolded protein response (UPR), which is triggered thanks to a few different stress sensors that reside in the ER. One of those sensors is inositol-requiring enzyme 1α (IRE1α), a type I transmembrane protein, which once activated, initiates the abnormal splicing of the mRNA that encodes the transcription factor X-box binding protein 1 (XBP1), leading to the translation of a more stable spliced form of XBP1 (XBP1s). XBP1s translocates to the nucleus, where it controls the upregulation of a subset of UPR-related genes linked to protein folding, quality control, ERAD and ER/Golgi biogenesis. Furthermore, prolonged ER stress leads to the inactivation of IRE1α signaling, which in turn is associated with the attenuation of XBP1 mRNA splicing, process that could sensitize cells to apoptosis.
In the heat-shock protein 47 (HSP47), the selection of the 5’ splice-site in the non-coding region of the pre-mRNA is performed more efficiently. In cold shock, alternative pre-mRNA splicing is induced in neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) which brings about a cryptic exon. Stress induced long-term neuronal hypersensitivity is associated with stress-induced alternative splicing of the pre-mRNA of neuronal acetylcholinesterase (ACHE).
Impact of Heat Shock Stress
Many types of stress, including heat shock, can immediately block many crucial metabolic processes such as DNA replication until recovery. Heat shock proteins (HSPs) help protect cells from injury and aid cell recovery and after heat shock conditions subside. The blocking of pre-mRNA splicing in heat-shocked proteins is well characterized. HSPs are not affected in their expression, however, because they do not contain any introns.
SRp38 is an SR protein, that when overexpressed, antagonizes the activity of SR protein SF2/ASF (splicing factor 2/alternative splicing factor). SRp38 is unique in that, when phosphorylated, it activates sequence-specific splicing that requires an as of yet unidentified cofactor. This activity stems from SRp38’s entry into a complex with U1 and pre-mRNA which strengthens the interaction of U1 and U2 with pre-mRNA. SRp38 is a strong splicing repressor when dephosphorylated after heat shock; after mild heat shock it is rephosphorylated, accompanying the return of splicing activity.
Nuclear stress bodies (nSBs) are proposed to control splicing activity under stress by bringing a set of splicing factors to the region where they bind to SATIII transcripts. The nSBs are the sites of accumulation of heat-shock factor 1 (HSF1) in human cells, and appear fleetingly after mild heat shock, chemical and hypertonic stresses. They are also the site of accumulation of pre-mRNA splicing factors (SF2/ASF, 9G8, SRp30c for the adenoviral E1A gene). The nSBs are assembled on regions of chromatin that consist of long satellite III (SatIII) DNA. After heat shock, chromatin reorganization occurs along with HSF1 transcription of SatIII RNAs. Recruitment of the SF2/ASF and SRp30c proteins requires the stress-induced SATIII transcripts. Reducing the transcription blocks the SR protein splicing factor recruitment.
Structural Insights into RNA Splicing
The study of introns and alternative splicing has lead to the additional classification for introns in both eukaryotes and prokaryotes. Two groups of introns have been discovered. The first group of introns, Group I, were the first self-splicing ribozymes to be discovered. Group II introns were later reported. The Group II intros have highly complex RNA structures and they also possess a unique diverse range of chemical reactivity. The Group II intros possess the capability to catalyze the 2'-5' bond formation, and the ability to retrotranspose onto DNA. Retrotranspositions onto DNA requires the help of intron-encoded proteins. Specific analysis of Group II's secondary structure revealed six structural domains. Domain V is the mos conserved phylogenetically (closely related among various groups of organisms). The lower helix of Domain V possess a catalytic triad that consists of nucleotides that is very similar to that of a spliceosome called U6 spliceosomal RNA. This has led to the belief that Group II introns share acommon ancestor with nuclear introns and the eukaryotic splliceosome. This has led to further meticulous study of Group II introns.
Study of Group II Introns
Group II introns have been further classified into thre main structural elements based on their RNA secondary sturcture. The three groups are IIA, IIB, and IIC. Analysis by reverse transcriptases have shown that group IIC introns are the most primal and simplistic lineage of the Group II introns. The secondary structure of lineage IIC is much simple than that of IIA and IIB. Beucase the Group IIC are much smaller and simplistic, they are much more preferred by study of crystallization. Oceanobacillus iheyensis was the first organism to have its Group II intron successfully crystallized and examined via x-ray diffraction. Group IIC is also significantly different from Group IIA and IIB by the fact that the nucleophile used during the first step of the splicing is a water molecule. Group IIA and IIB use a 2'-OH nucleophile from the adenosine in Domain VI. Because Group IIC uses a water molecule the introns released are linear molecules, while Groups IIA and IIB introns will be released as a lariat branched species. The use of the Group IIC intron has further suggest that the active site is composed of the bulge and catalytic triad of Domain V, mentioned above. It has been shown that these regions are influenced by the binding of catalytic metal ions, i.e. magnesium. This meatal ion interaction is very common in protein in order to influence shape, i.e. Fe hemoglobin. The ion helps modulate the eclectrostatic environment at the core of the intron or protein. The metal ion interaction can also make or breack the phosphodiester linkages in the DNA and RNA polymerases.
Possible Splicing Errors
Although the rate of splicing errors is very low, it does happen occasionally due to several distinct possibilities. A splicing error will most likely result in a mutation of a splice site and could compound into losing the function of the particular site. An exposure of a premature stop codon or a misplace/misinserted exon or intron could all lead to a mutation. A mutation from variations in the splice location which could cause a wrong amino acid to be interpreted. A misinterpreted amino acid could result in reducing specificity. All mutations could result in wrongly constructed proteins, which can be life threatening, i.e. cickle cell anemia or cystic fombrosis. Fortunately many splicing errors can be safeguarded by Nonsense-mediated mRNA decay.
Nonsense mediated decay is the cellular mechanism of mRNA that exists to detect incorrectly spliced information, and to prevent the expression of incorrect proteins. After transcription the mRNA will reassemble with ribonucleoprotein. Nonsense mediated decay is initiated by exon junction comples that are cut out from the genetic information during the mRNA processing. Exon junction complexes located past a nonsense codon act as tags for the mRNA ribonucleoprotein, RNP. The RNP is able to recognize disorganizantion and wrong splicing from the pressence of these exons that were supposed to be cut out.The nonsense mediated decay will transport the excon tagged misinformation set out the nucleus and into the cytosol where the misinformation RNA is degraded.
Cellular stress and RNA splicing. Biamonti G, Caceres JF. Trends Biochem Sci. 2009 Mar;34(3):146-53. Epub 2009 Feb 7.
Aaron A. Hoskins, Melissa J. Moore, The spliceosome: A Flexible, Reversible Macromolecular Machine, Trends in Biochemical Sciences, Volume 37, Issue 5, May 2012. <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0968000412000345>
Sharp, Phillip A. "The Discovery of Split Genes and RNA Splicing." Trends in Biochemical Sciences 30.6 (2005): 279-81.
Woehlbier, U., Hetz, C. Modulating stress responses by the UPRosome: A matter of life and death. Trends in Biochemical Sciences, June 2011, Vol. 36, No. 6. | <urn:uuid:b6016ea4-2c44-4b8c-a439-6e8a40079ff1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Structural_Biochemistry/Nucleic_Acid/RNA/RNA_modification/RNA_splicing | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943427 | 4,492 | 3.765625 | 4 |
Africanized honeybees are called "killer bees" because they
aggressively attack in great numbers, leading to massive stinging incidents.
The large amount of venom injected by many bees at one time can cause
The venom of the Africanized honeybee is no more likely to cause an
allergic reaction or toxic reaction than that of the European honeybee.
But the European honeybee is not as aggressive.
Africanized honeybees were introduced into Brazil from Africa in
1956 and have gradually spread north. These bees entered the United States in
south Texas and are now present in Arizona and California. The bees are
expected to continue moving northward. But they do not survive well in
William H. Blahd, Jr., MD, FACEP - Emergency Medicine & H. Michael O'Connor, MD - Emergency Medicine
The Health Encyclopedia contains general health information. Not all treatments or services described are covered benefits for Kaiser Permanente members or offered as services by Kaiser Permanente. For a list of covered benefits, please refer to your Evidence of Coverage or Summary Plan Description. For recommended treatments, please consult with your health care provider. | <urn:uuid:eefd0979-330f-4859-b9d1-ffe52a6c218d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://healthy.kaiserpermanente.org/static/health-encyclopedia/en-us/kb/not4/7547/not47547.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937526 | 237 | 3.40625 | 3 |
Science Educator Workshops
We offer teachers an array of opportunities for continuing education in the teaching of science to pre-k, elementary, and early middle school students. Workshops are offered at your school upon request for groups of 10 to 30 teachers at a time. Call the Center at 713.667.6550 to find out how to bring one of our fantastic Science Educator Workshops to your school campus!
All workshops come with a Curriculum/Activity Guide.
Mileage Fee: We charge round trip mileage from the Nature Discovery Center to your school, based on Google maps distance x $0.56/mile, to cover transportation costs for workshops.
Space & Other Requirements: We will need a space with tables and chairs for teachers, an open space for activities and games, and some basic school supplies like paper, pencils, pens, markers or crayons, tape, etc. for the teachers to use. The teachers or school provide their own lunch or snacks as needed.
Cancellation: One month cancellation notice required.
2015-2016 Teacher Workshops Offered (Dates TBA)
Aquatic WILD (6 hours)
Aquatic WILD is an invitation to explore and understand the fascinating world of aquatic habitats. Learn how to teach young people about aquatic wildlife using fun, hands-on educational activities. Workshop participants sample activities and receive a curriculum guide for grades K-8. Activities are integrated with core subject curricula and aligned to TEKS.
Growing Up WILD (4 hours)
Growing Up WILD is an early childhood education program that builds on children’s sense of wonder about nature and invites them to explore wildlife and the world around them. Through a wide range of activities and experiences, Growing Up WILD provides an early foundation for developing positive impressions about the natural world and lifelong social and academic skills.
Nature At Your Doorstep (4 or 6 hours)
Do you want to get your elementary students engaged in science? This workshop provides the skill and experience necessary to incorporate a variety of field studies into your K-6 curriculum. Each study is structured using the scientific method and incorporates math and language arts. Participants receive a copy of the book Nature at Your Doorstep.
Nature Detectives (4 hours)Introduce your pre-school or kindergarten children to the wonders of nature in their world. Includes tips and techniques for outdoor explorations with your students. Participants will receive a teacher's manual of activities that can be used as an entire science curriculum or integrated into your own!
Project Learning Tree: Environmental Experiences for Early Childhood (3 hours)
This 2011 Teacher’s Choice Award winning program was developed for preschool educators and early childhood specialists teaching children ages 3 to 6. It includes over 130 experiences that engage children in outdoor play and exploration. Topics include exploring nature with five senses, meeting neighborhood trees, experiencing trees through the seasons, and more. An accompanying music CD features songs from children's musician Billy B. Brennan that encourages children to sing, dance, and
Project Learning Tree (K-8) (6 hours)
Participants learn to use the environment as a focus while incorporating nature and science in their curriculum. PLT emphasizes hands-on activities to stimulate student interest in language arts, social studies, science, math and more. Texas PLT Sponsors: Texas Forestry Assoc. & Texas Forest Service
Project WILD (6 hours)
An interdisciplinary, supplementary, environmental education program for teachers and other educators wishing to incorporate nature and science in their teaching. The workshop provides everything necessary to use this K-12 curriculum, which teaches how to think, not what to think
WET in the City (6 hours)
WET in the City is a national urban education program focusing on water resources. Participants receive a curriculum and activity guide, which includes hands-on activities for K-12 grade students. it explores such topics as water conservation, drinking water, water economics, the water cycle, and aquatic wildlife.
Program Participants Say ...
“Very good! I will definitely use these lessons in a classroom. Thumbs up!!”
“… a very hands-on and exciting way to educate.”
“I will definitely recommend this workshop to all educators regardless of their content areas. These lessons would incorporate much more than science.”
For More Information
Call 713.667.6550 and ask for Henry Owen, our Director and Science Educator Workshop Coordinator.
|Last Updated on Wednesday, March 23, 2016 12:11 PM| | <urn:uuid:ef655b30-ba1f-4239-b4c1-686f1a4c3099> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://ndc.memberclicks.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=127 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924556 | 937 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Welcome! From the Wright State University chapter of the N.A.A.C.P (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). We are the LARGEST And the OLDEST, The BADDEST And the BOLDEST, The MOST LOVED And the MOST HATED, The MOST FEARED And REVERED, The MOST CUSSED And DISCUSSED Civil Rights Organization in America!
Founded Feb. 12. 1909, the NAACP is the nation's oldest, largest and most widely recognized grassroots–based civil rights organization. Its more than half-million members and supporters throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities, conducting voter mobilization and monitoring equal opportunity in the public and private sectors.
The mission of the NAACP Youth & College Division shall be to inform youth of the problems affecting African Americans and other racial and ethnic minorities; to advance the economic, education, social and political status of African Americans and other racial and ethnic minorities and their harmonious cooperation with other peoples; to stimulate an appreciation of the African Diaspora and other people of color’s contribution to civilization; and to develop an intelligent, militant effective youth leadership.
Please attach the organization's constitution.
135 Oelman Hall
Administrative Specialist, Articulation & Transfer, Curriculum & Instruction | <urn:uuid:a10a487c-0ea2-4800-aabf-31bb2cf2a249> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://orgsync.com/1343/chapter | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.863766 | 283 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Edited 4 Sep. search on “edit”.
Take a cube. If you cut it along a few edges, you could lay it out flat. To restore the cube, we identify certain edges with each other. Similarly for a tetrehedron, or a theoretical soccer ball (with flat faces), or any polyhedron. For studying surfaces by looking at polyhedra (i.e. picewise linear structure), it is convenient to use only triangular faces (2D simplices) rather than arbitrary polygonal faces. The analog of our cut and flattened cube is called a triangulation. As before, we want to identify certain edges with each other.
In particular, the following
is offered as a triangulation of a torus (with the top & bottom edges identified, and the left & right, as we’ve seen before).
Why are there so many triangles? I have wondered that since the first time I saw it.
“Surely fewer would suffice,” I thought. Compared to the simple square which we use to generate a torus, that triangulation looks unnecessarily complicated.
Yes, it is, but not by much. It is true that fewer would suffice, but not a whole lot fewer.
I could hand you the answer and be done with it. But I had fun chasing this down and saw many things along the way. It was a fine little gambol through the park.
On second thought, this post is getting way too long, so I’d better hand you the answer and save the cultural remarks for another post.
Back up a moment. What exactly is the question?
I’m going to answer several questions.
- Why are there so many triangles in a triangulation of a torus?
- Is there a minimum number of triangles required in a triangulation of a torus?
- If so, what is it?
- Is there a minimum number of triangles required in a triangulation of any given surface?
- If so, is there a formula?
- If so, how do we derive it?
As I said quite a while ago, I wanted to get more comfortable with simplicial complexes; this took me into a bunch of algebraic topology books. While I was wandering and wondering, I came across this, in Rotman (Intro Algebraic Topology) p. 133, speaking of our picture: “This triangulation of the torus has 18 triangles…. It is known that the minimum number of triangles in a triangulation of the torus is 14 (see [Massey (1967), p. 34, Exercise 2] for an inequality implying this result.”
As I said, that triangulation is not much larger (18 triangles) than it needs to be (14 triangles), but it is way larger than I would have expected.
Come, Watson, the hounds are afoot.
Massey (Algebraic Topology, Introduction, p. 34 or A Basic Course… p. 31), exercise 2 is: “For any triangulation of a compact surface, show that”
1) 3 f = 2 e
where f, e, v are the numbers of triangles (= number of faces), edges, and vertices. (That appears to say there is a minimum number of triangles required for any triangulation of a given surface, including the torus, and we have a formula. Unfortunately, it does not quite stand by itself.)
You might want to scribble these down, with the numbers 1-3. For example, I’m generally going to refer to “Massey’s (3)” rather than display the inequality over and over again.
Ok. What’s the minimum number of triangles in a triangulation of the torus? We need the definition of the Euler characteristic
and we need to know that the Euler characteristic of the torus (T) is 0: .
While we’re at it, the Euler characteristic of the sphere is 2, of the projective plane is 1, and of the Klein bottle is 0. Yes, the Klein bottle and the torus have the same Euler characteristic. More on that in another post.
Now, Massey’s (3) implies that
For the minimum v = 7 we would have
3 f = 2 e = 42, so f = 14.
That’s what Rotman told us. So there must be at least 14 triangles in a triangulation of the torus.
Now let’s start getting Massey’s formulae.
The first thing I did was observe that once we have the definition of , we can combine it with (1) to get (2).
So what about (1)?
Massey gives us the crucial property of a triangulation. Since a triangulation is homeomorphic to a surface, every point on it – including points on the “outside” edges, must be homeomorphic to a 2D disk. That means that the “outside” edges must be identified with other edges so that each of the “outside” edges is an edge of exactly two triangles (or two faces in general). Of course this also holds for the “interior” edges, which by construction are edges of exactly two triangles.
To put it another way, there cannot actually be any “outside” edges; they must all be interior.
That is, a triangulation is characterized by the fact that every edge is an edge of exactly two triangles. The formulae not withstanding, that may be the most important fact in this post. There is, however, another fact almost as important (later).
I like the way Firby & Gardiner do the next step. Suppose that what we have is a 2D complex – which may contain general polygons rather than just triangles – homeomorphic to a surface. That is, it may have faces with more than 3 sides. Instead of saying that every edge is the edge of exactly two triangles, we say that every edge is an edge of exactly two polygons.
We try to count the edges by counting faces. Let denote the number of faces with i edges. ( is the number of triangles, is the number of quadrilaterals, etc.) Then the weighted sum of faces
counts the number of edges associtaed with each face, but it counts them exactly twice because each edge is the edge of exactly two faces – that’s crucial. We have, then
If, now, there are only triangles , we get
i.e. Massey’s first equation
One down. and as I said, this equation and gives us the second equation (just eliminate f):
Two down, one to go.
Firby & Gardiner eventually state a theorem and a conjecture due to Heawood. The theorem is that if M is a compact surface with euler characteristic , then any map on M can be colored in no more than
colors. ( denotes the floor function, the largest integer less than or equal to x.) Note that the hypothesis of the theorem excludes the sphere ; and note that the number of colors required for a map on the sphere is the same for a finite rectangle in the plane. That is, Heawood did not prove the 4-color theorem.
The number h is called the Heawood number of the surface; the number of colors which suffice to color all maps on a surface is called the chromatic number of the surface.
And the number of vertices is bounded by the expression whose floor is the Heawood number. Hmm. This could be promising.
Heawood’s theorem says that if the Euler characteristic , then the chromatic number of a compact surface is its Heawood number.
Heawood’s conjecture was that the theorem was true for any : that the Heawood number is equal to the chromatic number for any compact surface. It is false, but just barely.
It turns out that there is exactly one exception to the conjecture: for the Klein bottle, the chromatic number is 6 while the Heawood number is 7. (The Heawood number for the sphere is 4; for the projective plane 6; and for the torus it’s the same as for the Klein bottle, 7, because they have the same , namely 0.)
The previous paragraph is correct. But my distinction between the Heawood conjecture and the Heawood theorem makes no sense. How can the theorem include when the counterexample is for ? The simplest correction might seem to be that the theorem is for , but even that isn’t right. (I think that correct would be the theorem as stated, but for orientable surfaces only.)
I based my summary on Firby & Gardiner, but I misread them. Upon review, I believe – they didn’t put it this way – that they said the theorem was that the chromatic number is less than or equal to the Heawood number for strictly less than zero; the conjecture, as I read them, is two generalizations: remove the restriction on , and replace the inequality by equality (chromatic number equal to Heawood number).
Unfortunately, I think their distinction is wrong, too. Now, I’m arguing about the history of mathematics, not the mathematics. I believe (Biggs et al.) that the theorem which Heawood stated in 1890 was: chromatic number equals Heawood number for orientable surfaces with . I’m not sure he proved it all, but I think that’s what he thought he was proving.
The Heawood theorem, as I see it, asserts that the chromatic number is equal to the Heawood number for orientable surfaces with . The conjecture would generalize that to all and to non-orientable surfaces. The Klein bottle, being non-orientable, is an exception – the only exception – to the conjecture, not to the theorem.
So the Heawood conjecture implied that the 4-color theorem was true (for the sphere, hence for the plane).
Back to Massey. The Heawood number occurs in map coloring…. but how do I get from it to vertices? Turns out I don’t. (Although I’m sure there’s a connection; I probably needed to read a couple of proofs.)
Fulton (Algebraic Topology First Course) gave me the last clue, on p. 115, problem 8.9. “Show that, for any triangulation of a sphere with g handles:”
1) 2 e = 3 f
I needed to have seen that
for a sphere with g handles, but I had. We’re looking at a special case of Massey’s (3).
Even though Fulton has asked for a special case, can we do the general case? No problem: the key is Fulton’s inequality (2).
Can we get Massey’s (3) from Fulton’s (2)? (You may very well have recognized (2) and said, “Oh, yeah!” Not me. My focus was on whether I could use Fulton’s (2) to get Massey’s (3)).
Piece of cake. Really. Consider it done.
Famous last words. It’s a piece of cake up to a point, and then it begins to look like cardboard instead of food. We’ll come to this. For now, assume we can get Massey’s (3) from Fulton’s (2).
Only then did I ask: can I prove Fulton’s (2)? I don’t know about you, but once I looked at (2) in its own right, it was crystal clear. This is the number of distinct pairs of v objects without repetition. Given a pile of vertices, v in number, choose one of them (v possible choices), choose a second one (v-1 choices), and divide by two because order is irrelevant.
That’s the maximum number of edges I can draw using v vertices, when loops and multiple edges are not allowed (the ends of an edge must be distinct, and no more than one edge may join two given vertices). I need not, however, draw all possible edges: the actual number e of edges is bounded above by the maximum number of edges, hence , so we have Fulton’s (2). QED.
So Massey’s inequality is far easier to obtain than any of the arguments concerning the Heawood number and map colorings. The Heawood number per se was interesting but apparently irrelevant.
So I thought. Then I figured I really ought to write out the derivation.
I learn so much when I look at the gory details.
From and , we get
From that and , we get
NOTE that the quadratic is always a parabola opening upward. It is negative between its two real zeroes, if they exist. So what we’ve actually shown is that the number of vertices must lie outside the two roots of that quadratic.
For the torus, , so we get . That quadratic has zeroes at v = 0 and v = 7, and we’re not going to allow negative numbers of vertices, so we assert that v must be 7 or more for a triangulation of a torus. That, we saw, required 14 triangles.
What about a sphere? , so we get . That quadratic has zeroes at 3 and 4…. Both are perfectly fine positive numbers, and in fact no positive integer is excluded by the quadratic bound.
As the dealer says in poker, “No help.” That quadratic inequality would not let us rule out 3 vertices or 2 or even 1. Something else must do that. My piece of cake is beginning to taste like cardboard.
Let’s recall Massey’s (1)
1) 3 f = 2 e
For both e and f to be positive integers, that equation requires a minimum of f = 2 and e = 3. OK, we can rule out 1 or 2 edges.
Is there something wrong with 3 edges?
Yes. Turns out there’s another fact we need.
Well, when we define a simplicial complex – which I know haven’t done – or when we imagine gluing triangles together, there are some obvious cases which we want to exclude. We don’t want one triangle partly inside another, and we also don’t want to share edges among too many triangles.
(I don’t know about your neighborhood, but in mine, houses are offset: i share a back fence with two neighbors, not one. We don’t want to allow that with triangulations.)
What your book says – whatever book you have – if it says this at all, is that if two triangles intersect at all, they intersect in either a vertex or an edge. The example they invariably draw shows 2 triangles having part of an edge in common. That’s a no-no.
But it’s also a no-no to have more than one edge in common. At least, I think so. I have not seen anyone emphasize that “an edge” excludes multiple edges, but it had better.
We know how to make a square into something homeomorphic to a sphere: glue the right edge to the top edge, and the left edge to the bottom edge. Fine, now imagine that we first put one diagonal inside that square, and then glue it that same way. What we get is still homeomorphic to a sphere; it looks like two triangles glued together on all three edges. It’s just not a triangulation because the two triangles do not intersect in an edge, but in 3 edges.
In short, the quadratic bound merely says that any integer number of vertices would work for a sphere, but 3 is too few to make a triangulation at all. Then the quadratic bound assures us that 4 should be allowed.
I should probably exhibit one such for both the sphere, but I’ll pass. I hope 4 vertices works, and i’ll leave it at that.
- Why are there so many triangles in a triangulation of a torus? Because there can’t be any “outside” edges.
- Is there a minimum number of triangles required in a triangulation of a torus? Yes.
- If so, what is it? 14.
- Is there a minimum number of triangles required in a triangulation of any given compact surface? Yes.
- If so, is there a formula? Sort of: no less than 4, and no less than the larger root of a particular quadratic.
- If so, how do we derive it? Done. | <urn:uuid:34460be1-c76c-414b-92bf-3315c2ebb136> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://rip94550.wordpress.com/2008/08/12/triangulations-of-surfaces-minimum-number-of-triangles/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941039 | 3,610 | 3.296875 | 3 |
WHAT is SPOTS?
SPOTS (Sun Protection Outreach Teaching by Students) is an educational outreach program in which medical students and masters in public health students will be teaching adolescents about the early detection and prevention of skin cancer. SPOTS is an award winning program and received two Gold Triangle Awards from the American Academy of Dermatology in 2009. The main funding for SPOTS comes from the Melonoma Hope Network.
WHY we developed SPOTS?
- There has been a notable increase in the incidence of melanoma in children over the past 20 years, particularly adolescents
- It is the only cancer whose incidence continues to increase at 3-4% annually
- Melanoma is the primary cancer killer of young women ages 25-30 years
WHAT are the main goals of SPOTS?
- Sun protection programs for teens in the US are few in number and not comprehensive
- There is not much research data on school-based sun protection programs particularly for adolescents
- This is the age when experimental behaviors (risk taking) are high and lifelong behavior patterns are adopted
- This is the age group that spends the most time in the sun and tanning beds.
- To increase adolescents’ knowledge about, attitudes toward, and intentions to engage in sun protective behaviors.
- To educate adolescents about early detection and prevention of skin cancer.
- Promote outreach education in the community by students training in the medical field (physicians, nurses, physician assistants, public health).
*What has been studied is the inadequacy and inconsistency of the use of sun protective behaviors in the US and the dire need for improvement. | <urn:uuid:73f73aff-ec70-4c75-a3e1-cf8561b530bb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://sites.google.com/a/slu.edu/slusom-dermatology-spots/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94812 | 332 | 3.40625 | 3 |
Texas was rated #1 for best American roads in 2005 and 2006 but it seems that roads are rated on purely on automobile-centric views (i.e., Poor mileage, deficient bridges, fatalities, and congestion). Complete Streets however takes a more holistic approach to road creation.
What are Complete Streets?
Complete Streets wants to make roads safer for all forms of transportation, revitalize economies by being more accessible, raise real-estate by providing nicer roads, and to change the psychology of the roads away automobile-centrism. Between 2000 and 2009 47,000 pedestrians were killed in the United States or essentially 5,200 per year. 13% of all traffic fatalities are pedestrians with minorities and elderly at disproportionally high rates, but if more roads were Complete Streets that number could be greatly reduced.
So what is Texas doing?
Some Complete Streets can already be seen in the Lone Star State as San Antonio rolls out its new transportation plan that allows for a more flexible construction of roads to fit the needs of the area, is turning to more green ways to dispose of storm water, and will hopefully revitalize the area. The actual Resolution can be found Here.
Austin has made its own strides in increasing pedestrian and cyclist accessibility with Resolution No. 020418-40.
Texas as a whole is almost keeping stride with San Antonio and Austin as TxDOT recently adopted more pedestrian friendly standards and Senate Bill 513 and House Bill 1105 are in the state legislature calling for the state to adopt even stronger “Complete Streets’” standards. This would include amending TxDOT’s policies to allow local authorities to have more sway in road design and construction. Bike Texas is currently trying to get the bills passed in 2013 session, if you’re interested in helping pass the bills with Bike Texas shoot an email at [email protected]. They also provide a list of representatives who voted for or against the bill on their site.
How are Complete Streets made?
Complete Streets doesn’t just advocate making new roads; fiscally it makes more sense to add in bike lanes whenever the roads are being redone or fixed. Everything from sidewalks, to bike lanes, to turning lanes can be added to make a street more complete. If you want to get involved you can plug in to complete streets directly, lobby your city council to pass a complete streets resolution as San Antonio and Austin have done, or even partake in “guerilla-complete streets as “Better-Block Project” did in Dallas in the videos below.
Want to know more information? Below are some cool links!
-Keegan Taylor, Beyond Coal Intern | <urn:uuid:639af66a-1fc6-4983-937a-61d75b655980> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://texasgreenreport.wordpress.com/tag/bike-texas/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951847 | 551 | 2.625 | 3 |
You should have a working knowledge of the following terms:
- absorptive nutrition
- coenocytic hyphae
- gametangium (pl. gametangia)
- haustorium (pl. haustoria)
- hypha (pl. hyphae)
- mycelium (pl. mycelia)
- mycorrhiza (pl. mycorrhizae)
- septum (pl. septa)
- septate hyphae
- zygosporangium (pl. zygosporangia)
Introduction and Goals
This tutorial will cover the vast and variable Kingdom Fungi, and its sizable impact on the environment. Fungi (fungus, sing.), like bacteria, are most commonly decomposers, assisting in the essential task of recycling nutrients in ecosystems. The majority of all plant species depend on symbiotic fungi for enhanced water and nutrient absorption. Other species have been exploited by humans for centuries for the production of bread, beer, wine, cheese, and edible fruitbodies (mushrooms). Antibiotic-producing fungi (e.g., Pennicillium chysogenum) have changed the face of modern medicine, saving millions of lives. Conversely, other species cause economically important and often devastating diseases to plants and animals (humans included). Fungal-induced plant disease epidemics have had dramatic historical influences, resulting in starvation, war, and human migration. Fungi are also responsible for the rots that damage timber, agricultural products, and human-made structures. Yet some fungi produce conspicuous fruiting bodies and are the source of endless fascination.
Figure 1. (Click image to enlarge)
By the end of this tutorial you should have a fundamental understanding of:
- The roles and importance of fungi in the biosphere
- Basic fungal nutrition
- Basic morphological diversity within the kingdom
- Basic reproductive features of fungi
Figure. 2(Click image to enlarge)
Basic Biology and Morphology
Although there are now more than 100,000 described species of fungi, mycologists (scientists who study fungi) estimate that there are probably more than 1.5 million species. The kingdom is comprised of four major phyla or divisions:
The categorization of fungi is based on life cycle features. In some cases, a complete sexual life cycle has not been observed and some mycologists use a fifth phylum (Imperfecta or Deuteromycota) as a repository for these species. However, as scientists apply molecular techniques to understand fungal relationships, the artificial nature of this fifth phylum is becoming apparent and it is falling into disfavor. Hence, this tutorial will concentrate on the four phyla listed above.
Although originally grouped with plants, modern molecular systematists now think the lineage that gave rise to modern fungi arose before plants (possibly one billion years ago). Protists are related to fungi, with a possible link in the Chytridiomycota.
Figure. 3 (Click image to enlarge) |
All fungi are heterotrophic, and many are important and rather prolific decomposers, recycling organic carbon trapped mostly in plant cell walls as lignin and cellulose. A major distinguishing feature of the kingdom is *absorptive nutrition*. Food sources are digested externally, then absorbed into their cells. They produce copious amounts of organic acids to acidify their local environment, followed by powerful digestive enzymes to break down their food source. Fungi are almost unlimited in what they can digest. Everything from trees to human skin (e.g., athlete's foot) are subject to fungal decay. Fungi are also distinguished by their filamentous vegetative structures, *hyphae* (hypha, sing.; somewhat different structurally from the hyphae of the oomycota discussed in the tutorial coverying the oomyctes), and the presence of chitin as a primary cell wall polymer. A group or mass of hyphae (mycelium) may be visible to the naked eye as a white or gray fuzz on moldy bread or on a decaying tree. Extensive networks of mycelium give fungi a tremendous amount of surface area in a small space, making them ideally adapted to their absorptive mode of nutrition. Cellular specialization is somewhat limited in the kingdom. As depicted in this figure on the right, hyphae can be characterized as having cells clearly delimited by structures called *septa* (septate hyphae), or the absence of septa (coenocytic hyphae).
Figure. 4 (Click image to enlarge)
Many fungal plant parasites invade host tissue with specialized structures (haustoria) that are used to absorb the cellular contents of their hosts.
Members of the kingdom Fungi produce spores. Although they are mostly nonmotile (some members of the Chytridiomycota produce flagellated spores), spores (produced by the thousands or millions) can be dispersed by water and/or wind great distances to another available substrate or host. Spores are an important taxonomic character and, as expected, come in a myriad of shapes and sizes. Spores can be mitotically or meiotically produced, affording the organism flexibility to reproduce and proliferate over a variety of environmental conditions where sexual recombination may not be feasible.
Fungi play many roles in the biosphere. As you have already learned, they are important decomposers as well as plant and human pathogens. They also engage in extremely important symbiotic relationships with plants and algae. Mycorrhizae are an intimate association (symbiosis) between plant roots and fungal hyphae. The vast majority are mutualistic, with the plant or tree benefiting with increased water and nutrient uptake and the fungus obtaining carbon from the roots.
Symbioses with lichens are also common. Specific fungal species (usually Ascomycetes) grow in concert with these photosynthetic algae. The fungus gains carbon and provides moisture to the algae in a controlled parasitic relationship. Technically, it's not a mutualistic relationship since the alga can live on its own and is consumed by the fungus; however, it is a unique relationship since lichens can grow in extremely harsh climates (e.g., the arctic tundra and bare rocks). Click here to see some spectacular images of fructicose and foliose lichens and here to see some crustose rock lichens.
Basic Biological and Reproductive Features
Fungi exhibit several different types of life cycles. This generalized diagram on the right depicts the typical sequence of events in the life cycles of fungi. Focus on the "mycelium" box for a starting point for both the sexual and asexual life cycles. Note, many species can produce asexual spores in specialized spore-producing structures. This allows the organism to clone itself while, often times, producing huge numbers of asexual spores. The hyphae of many species are haploid during the majority of their life cycles. Many fungi spend a good portion of their life in the asexual mode. The transition to the sexual mode can be triggered by certain conditions (e.g., light, temperature, moisture, availability of a sexually compatible partner, and limited nutrient availability).
Figure. 5. (Click image to enlarge)
The sexual stage is characterized by several features that are unique to the kingdom Fungi. Most fungal mating types are morphologically indistinguishable, and so, they are not referred to as male or female. Rather, they are simply referred to as "+" or "-" to let one know they are different (and hence, sexually compatible). In the case of sexual reproduction, compatible mating types fuse in a process that involves plasmogamy (fusion of cell membranes). This fusion produces a dikaryon (a mycelium with two genetically distinct nuclei), which can divide in the growing mycelium for a prolonged period. The prolonged dikaryotic stage is a feature unique to fungi. It is thought that the dikaryotic state provides the organism with genetic flexibility in a competitive environment while, at the same time, conferring it with many of the same advantages as a diploid because it possesses a complementary set of chromosomes. The dikaryotic state can last for months, or even years, while the fungus continues to grow and proliferate in its environment.
Another unique feature of the dikaryon is that paired nuclei (n+n) can, and often times do, migrate freely through the mycelium. Some cells may contain two or more pairs, and some (particularly actively growing hyphal tips), even more. When environmental conditions are suitable, the two haploid nuclei fuse (karyogamy) to form a highly transient diploid state. Meiosis follows, almost immediately, in a specialized spore-producing structure, and genetically distinct haploid spores are produced.
Features of Hyphal Growth
Hyphal growth occurs at the tip. As was mentioned, these actively growing areas are often characterized by the presence of multiple pairs of nuclei and a large number of vesicles moving toward the hyphal tip. Click hyphal growth to view a short film on the process of hyphal growth. Note the massive amounts of cytoplasmic streaming and the movement of vesicles along arrays of microtubules toward the actively growing tip. Near the end of the movie, also note the appearance of a nucleus.
Fungal Diversity and the Phylum Chytridiomycota
Modern fungal systematists have divided the fungal kingdom into four major phyla. We will start with what is thought to be the ancestral phylum of the kingdom, Chytridiomycota. Chytrids (members of the phylum) are mostly aquatic, which is why they are often called "water fungi." This phylum has only recently been determined to belong to Kingdom Fungi, therefore, not all textbooks include it in this kingdom. Biologically, they are mostly saprobes (introduced here- decomposers that absorb nutrients from dead organic matter), but some species are parasites of aquatic invertebrates, plants, and protists. They are also characterized as having absorptive nutrition and they can have septate or coenocytic mycelium, or be unicellular. Morphologically, they are important because some members possess flagellated spores. Until recently, systematists believed that the absence of flagellated cells was required for placement in the fungal kingdom. Molecular data have shown that chytrids are indeed members of the fungal kingdom. Ultrastructural and biochemical data (e.g., chitinous cell walls) support this designation as well. The molecular data also support the theory that they are the most primitive group in the kingdom; they retain the ancestral character of having flagellated cells similar to their protistan ancestors.
Figure.6 (Click image to enlarge)
Of the roughly 600 described species in the phylum Zygomycota, most are terrestrial and exist as saprobes in soil or on decaying plant material. Several species are important because they form mycorrhizae with forest plants and trees.
Many common bread molds (e.g., Rhizopus stolonifer) are zygomycetes. Morphologically, they have coenocytic hyphae, with septa formed only in association with reproductive structures. The phylum gets it name from the production of the zygosporangium. This figure on the right illustrates the events in the life cycle of a zygomycete. Concentrate on the top portion of the diagram. As you have learned, two different haploid mating types are often required for sexual reproduction in the fungi. First, gametangia begin to form on dissimilar hyphae (step 1). The gametangia then fuse (step 2) to form the dikaryotic state (step 3). The dikaryotic zygosporangium then develops (step 4). The zygosporangium develops a rough and thickened cell wall, which renders it resistant to harsh "over-wintering" conditions. When conditions become favorable for zygospore germination, compatible ("+" and "- " mating types) nuclei fuse and a diploid is briefly formed (step 5). Meiosis immediately follows and millions of haploid zygospores are formed (step 6). The zygosporangium germinates and releases the aforementioned spores and the cycle begins again (step 7). The asexual stage alternates between mycelial growth and asexual spore production (as shown in bottom part of figure).
Figure. 7(Click image to enlarge)
This tutorial introduced the fungi. Fungi have an important saprophytic role in the biosphere. You might not find the subject of decomposition pleasant, but without the fungi (and other decomposers) a good proportion of nutrients would remain tied up in dead organisms and never get recycled back into the biosphere.
Fungi obtain their nutrition by secreting various hydrolytic enzymes into their environment. They then absorb the resulting monomeric units. This mode of nutrition is known as absorptive nutrition and is intimately related to the role that these organisms play in degrading organic matter.
The basic aspects of fungal life cycles were also introduced. Not all fungi have a sexual mode of reproduction, but when they do, the haploid state is the most prominent. An important feature that fungi demonstrate is the presence of a dikaryotic state, in which two haploid nuclei exist in the same cell. When these nuclei fuse, the resulting diploid nucleus undergoes meiosis very soon afterward to give rise to haploid spores. Thus, the diploid state (as defined by the presence of a true diploid nucleus) is very transient.
The hypha is the prominent cell type in the fungal kingdom. Hyphae can exhibit tremendous growth rates via tip growth, whereby new cellular material is continuously being added to the growing tip of the extending cell. Hyphae of fungi and oomycetes are analogous structures that look the same but have different wall properties. (Fungal walls are composed of chitin, whereas the walls of oomycetes are made of cellulose.)
We also examined two fungal phyla, the Chytridomycota (thought to represent the most ancestral state) and the Zygomycota (a common bread mold). Be sure you understand the life cycle of a zygomycete, and in the next tutorial you will learn how this life cycle distinguishes this phylum from others in the fungal kingdom. | <urn:uuid:92b758cc-f4ca-4784-87e7-e63679e78968> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://wikispaces.psu.edu/display/110Master/Fungi+I+-+Evolution+and+Diversity,+Phyla+Chytridiomycota+and+Zygomycota | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91992 | 3,085 | 3.59375 | 4 |
Population Statistics and a Young Earth
Both sides of the creation/evolution debate are locked in a heated battle over the truth about human origins, the age of the Universe, and the ultimate Cause of all things. Interestingly, while this debate rages and arguments are flying from both sides of the issue, there is reasonable evidence available which sidesteps much of the seeming complexity of this conflict and helps to illuminate the truth on the matter of human origins. This evidence comes from the realm of population statistics. What is the reasonable conclusion that should be drawn from the evidence in this area?
There is no question that both viewpoints—biblical and evolutionary—require a commencement point for mankind to begin propagation of the species. The biblical (i.e., Flood) model asserts that God started the process, creating both Adam and Eve—one male and one female—approximately 6,000 years ago. From them, the human race was established and ultimately exterminated in the global Flood of Noah’s day (Genesis 6-9), with the exception of Noah and his family. After the Flood, Noah’s three sons and their wives commenced the repopulation of the human species (Genesis 9:19).
The evolutionary model claims that the first “man” of the genus Homo emerged around two to three million years ago (cf. Corballis, 2002, p. 183; Johanson, 2001; “The Emergence…,” 2011; University of Utah, 2005; Walker, 2002). It has always been intriguing that the evolutionary side of the aisle appears to be quiet about the fact that at the commencement of the human species, both male and female human beings had to evolve simultaneously, in the same geographic area, and while both were alive, in order for the human species to propagate itself—not just one male or one female, and not two males or two females. Further, these male and female human bodies also had to contain the fully functional reproductive components that would be necessary to replicate humanity. In The Masterpiece of Nature: The Evolution and Genetics of Sexuality, Graham Bell discusses this quandary, stating that:
Sex is the queen of problems in evolutionary biology. Perhaps no other natural phenomenon has aroused so much interest; certainly none has sowed as much confusion. The insights of Darwin and Mendel, which have illuminated so many mysteries, have so far failed to shed more than a dim and wavering light on the central mystery of sexuality, emphasizing its obscurity by its very isolation (1982, p. 19).
Evolutionist Philip Kitcher admitted, “Despite some ingenious suggestions by orthodox Darwinians, there is no convincing Darwinian history for the emergence of sexual reproduction” (1982, p. 54). Evolutionist Mark Ridley noted that “[s]ex is a puzzle that has not yet been solved; no one knows why it exists” (2001, p. 111). Julie Schecter said that “sex remains a mystery to researchers, to say nothing of the rest of the population. Why sex?” (1984, 34:680). [See Thompson and Harrub, 2002 for an in depth discussion on the origin of genders and sexuality.]
Besides the problem raised for evolutionists by the origin of sexual reproduction, more problems exist that evolutionists appear to be quite reticent about. For instance, the patriarch and matriarch of the human race, having miraculously emerged in the same time period of history with each other, also had to be able to find each other on planet Earth without first starving, without being eaten by the ferocious animals that evolutionary images of early man portray, and without getting too old to replicate. And still further, just because there is another human being near you, does that mean you will be attracted to him/her? The male and female had to decide that they liked each other and do something about it before dying. And even further, the baby and mother had to survive the ordeal of child birth in those allegedly primitive circumstances. If the emergence of one human being from a non-human being seems ludicrous due to its contradiction of the Law of Biogenesis, surely this realization makes the evolutionary proposition beyond preposterous.
POPULATION STATISTICS AND THE EVOLUTIONARY MODEL
However, for the sake of argument, let us grant the atheistic evolutionist several miraculous feats—two living, opposite-sex human beings, with the necessary sexual components to propagate the species, in the same region on Earth, safe guarded from their primitive environment, with a desire for each other, and young enough to replicate. Even granting all of these significant but unrealistic assumptions, the evolutionist is left with statistical obstacles. Consider the mathematics for this argument.
Let us suppose that couples throughout history have had an average of (2 × c) children (i.e., c boys plus c girls). Starting with two humans, this would make the population after the first generation, Pn = 2+2 ∙ c. Then, the children, marrying each other, had another (2 ∙ c) children per couple. As illustrated in Scientific Studies in Special Creation (Lammerts, 1971), continuing this progression results in the following equation, where n is the number of generations for which the calculation is done.
After multiplying both sides of Equation (1) by c, subtracting the resulting equation from Equation (1), grouping, and dividing both sides by (c - 1), the following equation results:
This gives the total population after n generations, without any deaths. Assuming each person lives an average of d generations, the number of deceased people by the final generation (i.e., the (n - d)th generation) can be calculated using Equation (3):
Therefore, the total population after n generations, accounting for death, can be calculated by subtracting the population of the (n - d)th generation from the population calculated in Equation (2), resulting in the following:
If each couple has only two children (i.e., c = 1), the population will remain constant, and if each couple has fewer than two children on average (i.e., c < 1), the population will decrease (Lammerts, pp. 198-205). [See also Morris and Morris, 1996 and Wysong, 1976 for more information on the derivation of the above equations.]
The actual value of the constants (c, d, and n) are unknown, since the world’s population has not been known with any certainty until the last few hundred years. They also would almost certainly have fluctuated at different times in history based on the state of technology, lifespans (especially considering the long lifespans in the generations immediately following the Flood and the shorter lifespans preceding the current state of medical knowledge), and fluctuating offspring production rates. However, this approach allows for the use of long-term averages to get a rough estimate of what the world’s population should look like over time.
Being very conservative, accounting for periods of famine, disease, war, natural calamity, etc., let us assume that c = 1.2. Thus, each couple throughout history has had, on average, at least two children, and many times three or more children were born. Also, let us assume that each person has lived, on average, one and a third generations (i.e., d = 1.3). This means that each person died having seen some, though not all, of their grandchildren. Again, this estimate is likely very conservative, especially since effective birth control methods are a relatively recent innovation. However, these conservative estimates certainly take into account the long periods of time in history when people lived shorter lives and had fewer children. Let us further assign a reasonable estimate of a “generation” to be 38 years. This means that each couple has had all of their children by age 38. All of these numbers could easily and fairly be increased, but doing so would do even further damage to the evolutionist’s case.
Using these conservative estimates, if human beings have been on the planet producing offspring for one million years, over 26,000 generations have passed. There are currently about seven billion people on earth—6.9x109 (“U.S. & World Population…,” 2011). However, according to Equation (4), there should be over 102,000 people on the Earth today if propagation commenced one million years ago. That is a one, followed by 2,000 zeros. In order to try to fathom that number, consider the following analogy. The known Universe is thought to be 28 billion light years in diameter (Powell, 2006; Tully, 2000). That is the equivalent of over 1070 cubic miles of volume. If tiny, three foot humans, modeled as cylinders with five inch radii (i.e., very narrow shoulders), were crammed into the Universe like sardines, 1082 people might fit (if they have not eaten in awhile). That leaves enough people to fill up 101,918 (minus one) additional Universes that are the size of this one! And what’s worse, if c, d, or n are increased, as they legitimately could be, the problem is further amplified. Consider also that these numbers are based on a starting point of one million years ago. Evolutionists claim that humans have been on the Earth for two to three million years. To make their plight even worse, the evolutionary community digs its own grave significantly deeper by speculating that the original Adam and Eve were actually Adam, Eve, and about 10,000 other people (Hawks, et al., 2000). Even if 10,000 such miracles were accomplished in the same period of time in human history, one can easily imagine how many more people would result in a given period of time if 5,000 couples initially began bearing children instead of one couple. Where, pray tell, are all of the imaginary people that should be in existence if evolution is the true history of humanity?
The evolutionary community certainly has trouble adjusting the numbers to allow for this preposterous scenario. However, they must be able to come up with a reasonable explanation in order to maintain their position. If evolution is true, it must be assumed that there were times when the human population remained constant for very long periods of time or decreased to the point of extinction at different times in history (cf. Weiss, 1984; Hawks, et al., 2000). Such speculation is a leap into the dark without sufficient, verifiable evidence. [NOTE: Incidentally, such speculation is in contradiction with uniformitarian principles, which are fundamental to evolutionary dating techniques. If the Earth has not progressed in a constant, uniform fashion as macroevolution suggests, then old ages based on those uniformitarian assumptions cannot be assigned to the Earth. It seems that the evolutionary community wants to “have their cake and eat it, too.”] History grants us no world population estimates based on census’s until the last 200 years. Before that, according to population statisticians’ estimates, the average annual population growth was estimated to be relatively constant, ranging between 0.03-0.15% from 1750 A.D. to 10,000 B.C. (“Historical Estimates of World Population,” 2010) [NOTE: World populations are estimated at this later date based on the assumption that the theory of evolution is true. Such a time frame would be pre-Creation, according to the Bible, and is rejected by the author.] Likely due to medical breakthroughs and technological advancement, the annual population growth has since jumped to about 2%. Note that even the irreligious community recognizes the likelihood of significant population growth on average over time throughout history and makes its estimates accordingly. The evolutionary position, in order to exist at all, must stand in contradiction to this fact. The evidence, as well as common sense, cannot be denied. If growth is the norm as the evidence indicates, evolution is impossible. The evidence conveyed by population statistics simply does not support the evolutionary model.
POPULATION STATISTICS AND THE CREATION MODEL
What about the creation model? Is it supported by the evidence from population statistics? The biblical position asserts that after the Flood, repopulation of the Earth commenced, starting with six people (i.e., Shem, Ham, Japheth, and their wives), instead of two (or 10,000). Using the aforementioned procedure, the following equation can be derived for calculation of the projected population for any given time, starting with six people:
If we assume, based on biblical genealogies, that the Flood took place roughly 4,300 years ago (cf. Bass, 2003), using the same c andd as above, as well as a generation of 38 years, then 113 generations have passed since the global Flood of Noah’s day. Based on these numbers, the approximate projected population for today can be calculated. According to the calculations, there should be approximately seven billion people on Earth—6.7x109. This is strikingly close to the current population as recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau—6.9x109.
What does the evidence indicate? Is the evolutionary model a plausible explanation for man’s existence? The evidence from the field of population statistics says, “Certainly not.” Even granting very conservative numbers in the calculation of projected populations, it is the biblical model that is in keeping with the numerical evidence provided by the world’s population. The evidence supports a young age for the Earth and mankind. One would have to be dishonest to examine such concrete evidence and dismiss it out of hand. Yet, this attitude pervades much of the scientific community today. The same people who proclaim that they, unlike theists, are the ones who examine the evidence without bias, only drawing those conclusions that are warranted by the evidence, are the very ones who turn against the evidence when it does not suit their purpose and agenda. Philosopher David Hume once said that no man turns against reason until reason turns against him (as quoted in Warren, 1982, p. 4). That certainly sums up the mentality of many in the scientific community. Why not choose to go with the reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from the evidence? The Earth is young. Evolution cannot explain human existence. The biblical model can…and does.
Bass, Alden (2003), “Which Came First, the Pyramids or the Flood?” Reason & Revelation, 23:97-103, November, http://www.apologeticspress.org/pub_rar/23_11/0311.pdf.
Bell, Graham (1982), The Masterpiece of Nature: The Evolution and Genetics of Sexuality (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press).
Corballis, Michael C. (2002), From Hand to Mouth: The Origins of Language (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
“The Emergence of Modern Humans” (2011), Dolan DNA Learning Center, http://www.geneticorigins.org/pv92/intro.html.
Hawks, John, Keith Hunley, Sang-Hee Lee, and Milford Wolpoff (2000), “Population Bottlenecks and Pleistocene Human Evolution,” Molecular Biology and Evolution, 17:2-22.
“Historical Estimates of World Population” (2010), U.S. Census Bureau, http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldhis.html.
Johanson, Donald C. (2001), “Origins of Modern Humans: Multiregional or Out of Africa?” American Institute of Biological Sciences, http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/johanson.html.
Kitcher, Philip (1982), Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Lammerts, Walter, ed. (1971), Scientific Studies in Special Creation (Philadelphia, PA: Presbyterian and Reformed).
Morris, Henry M. and John D. Morris (1996), The Creation Trilogy—Science & Creation (Green Forest, AR: Master Books).
Powell, Richard (2006), “The Size of the Universe,” An Atlas of the Universe, http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/universe.html.
Ridley, Mark (2001), The Cooperative Gene (New York: The Free Press).
Schecter, Julie (1984), “How Did Sex Come About?” Bioscience, December.
Thompson, Bert and Brad Harrub (2002), “The Origin of Gender and Sexual Reproduction [Part I],” Reason & Revelation, 22:73-79, http://www.apologeticspress.org/pub_rar/22_10/0210.pdf.
Tully, Brent (2000), “How Big is the Universe?” NOVA Online, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/universe/howbig.html.
University of Utah (2005), “The Oldest Homo Sapiens: Fossils Push Human Emergence Back to 195,000 Years Ago,” Science Daily, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/050223122209.htm.
“U.S. & World Population Clocks” (2011), U.S. Census Bureau, http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html.
Walker, Matthew (2002), “What Does the Archaeology Record Tell Us About the Lifestyles of the Early Hominids?” New Archaeology, http://www.newarchaeology.com/articles/earlyhom.php.
Warren, Thomas B. (1982), Logic & the Bible (Ramer, TN: National Christian Press).
Weiss, K.M. (1984), “On the Number of Members of the Genus Homo Who Have Ever Lived, and Some Evolutionary Implications,” Human Biology, December, 56:637-49.
Wysong, R.L. (1976), The Creation/Evolution Controversy (East Lansing, MI: Inquiry Press). | <urn:uuid:28822207-de07-4614-980c-b31f7239a1c7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=9&article=3840&topic=62 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937968 | 3,808 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Skip to Content
View Additional Content In This Section
Semen is a thick, cloudy, white substance that contains sperm and
other fluids. Semen is released, or ejaculated, from the penis during a man's
sexual climax (orgasm).
The amount of semen ejaculated varies from between a few drops to
about 1 tsp (4.9 mL) and
usually contains between 40 million and 600 million sperm.
Current as of:
May 22, 2015
E. Gregory Thompson, MD - Internal Medicine & Christopher G. Wood, MD, FACS - Urology, Oncology
To learn more about Healthwise, visit Healthwise.org.
© 1995-2015 Healthwise, Incorporated. Healthwise, Healthwise for every health decision, and the Healthwise logo are trademarks of Healthwise, Incorporated. | <urn:uuid:d76ef925-8159-43ff-baef-a64f94eea265> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.asante.org/app/healthwise/document.aspx?navigationNode=/1/42/1/&id=sts14465 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.877244 | 174 | 2.53125 | 3 |
In Graham Swift's novel, Wish You Were Here, the Luxton family twice loses their dairy herds to mass slaughter in the wake of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) and Foot and Mouth Disease
(FMD) outbreaks. Two very distinct and separate diseases, BSE and FMD, when they surface in agriculture, can be utterly devastating to farmers and national economies.
BSE is more commonly known as "Mad Cow Disease" and is a fatal neurodegenerative disease that attacks cows specifically. It causes the brain and spinal cord of affected animals to suffer a spongy deterioration, so called because of the formation of tiny sponge-like holes in the brain tissue. The United Kingdom has been most extremely impacted by BSE where it was first identified by a laboratory in November 1986.
Some scientists believe that, in rare instances, humans can develop a degenerative neurological disorder with similar symptoms to BSE, known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), by eating food contaminated ... | <urn:uuid:124605cf-b241-4098-999c-fbc6bb430c47> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/btb/index.cfm/book_number/2696/wish-you-were-here | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954268 | 214 | 3.21875 | 3 |
Find over 200 print-friendly fact sheets about heart disease and related health topics.
Osteoarthritis is a condition in which the cartilage that protects and cushions
the joints breaks down over time. Eventually, the bones—formerly separated by
the cartilage—rub against each other, resulting in damage to the tissue and
underlying bone and causing painful joint symptoms.
is common in the joints of the toes. It is most often found in the joint where
the big toe joins the foot. It is also common in the smaller joints of the
April 8, 2011
Anne C. Poinier, MD - Internal Medicine & Stanford M. Shoor, MD - Rheumatology
To learn more visit Healthwise.org
© 1995-2012 Healthwise, Incorporated. Healthwise, Healthwise for every health decision, and the Healthwise logo are trademarks of Healthwise, Incorporated. | <urn:uuid:b1fcbc50-f1bb-4e1a-b9c1-3dc55146650f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.cardiosmart.org/healthwise/zm24/95/zm2495 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.895521 | 189 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Most Christian churches teach that the Fall was a tragedy, that if Adam and Eve had not partaken of the forbidden fruit, they and all their posterity could now be living in immortal bliss in the Garden of Eden. But truth revealed to latter-day prophets teaches that the Fall was not a tragedy—without it Adam and Eve would have had no posterity. Thus, the Fall was a necessary step in Heavenly Father’s plan to bring about the eternal happiness of His children.
No Death, No Posterity, No Progress
“If Adam had not transgressed,” Lehi taught his son Jacob, “he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the garden of Eden. …
“And they would have had no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin.
“But behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things.
“Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy” (2 Ne. 2:22–25).
After Adam and Eve partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, their eyes were opened, and Eve expressed gladness at the opportunity their transgression made possible: “Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient” (Moses 5:11).
Partaking of the fruit brought mortality, with its many opportunities to choose between good and evil, and enabled Adam and Eve to bear children. Thus the Fall opened the door for Heavenly Father’s children to come into the world, obtain physical bodies, and participate in “the great plan of happiness” (Alma 42:8). “Therefore this life became a probationary state,” a time to learn and grow, to repent and overcome weakness, “a time to prepare to meet God” (Alma 12:24).
Transgression, Not Sin
President Joseph Fielding Smith (1876–1972) said: “I never speak of the part Eve took in this fall as a sin, nor do I accuse Adam of a sin. … This was a transgression of the law, but not a sin … for it was something that Adam and Eve had to do!” 1
Regarding this distinction, Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles observed: “This suggested contrast between a sin and a transgression reminds us of the careful wording in the second article of faith: ‘We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression’ (emphasis added). It also echoes a familiar distinction in the law. Some acts, like murder, are crimes because they are inherently wrong. Other acts, like operating without a license, are crimes only because they are legally prohibited. Under these distinctions, the act that produced the Fall was not a sin—inherently wrong—but a transgression—wrong because it was formally prohibited. These words are not always used to denote something different, but this distinction seems meaningful in the circumstances of the Fall.” 2
Even though Adam and Eve had not sinned, because of their transgression they had to face certain consequences, two of which were spiritual death and physical death. Physical death came to Adam and Eve at the end of their earthly lives, but spiritual death occurred as they were cast out of the Garden of Eden, being cut off from the presence of God (see Alma 42:9).
The result of our first parents’ transgression, explained President Smith, “was banishment from the presence of God and bringing … physical death into the world. The majority … [of Christians] maintain that every child born into this world is tainted with ‘original sin,’ or partakes of Adam’s transgression in his birth. The second Article of Faith contradicts this foolish and erroneous doctrine.” 3 All descendants of Adam and Eve inherit certain effects from the Fall, but because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ we are held accountable only for our own sins. Children who die before the age of accountability are “alive in Christ” (Moro. 8:12) and have no need of repentance or baptism (see Moro. 8:8–11).
Commandments in the Garden
The Lord gave Adam and Eve commandments in the Garden of Eden, two of which were to multiply and replenish the earth (see Gen. 1:28) and to not partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (see Gen. 2:17). These two commandments were designed to place Adam and Eve in a position where they had to make a choice. President Smith taught: “The Lord said to Adam that if he wished to remain as he was in the garden, then he was not to eat the fruit, but if he desired to eat it and partake of death he was at liberty to do so.” 4 Faced with this dilemma, Adam and Eve chose death—both physical and spiritual—which opened the door for themselves and their posterity to gain knowledge and experience and to participate in the Father’s plan of happiness leading to eternal life. | <urn:uuid:f8fd2993-01d6-4e48-ad6d-2b0bdf5ccdf3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.lds.org/liahona/2006/06/the-fulness-of-the-gospel-the-fall-of-adam-and-eve?lang=eng | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975653 | 1,135 | 2.75 | 3 |
For the Strength of the Hills
1. For the strength of the hills we bless thee,
Our God, our fathers' God;
Thou hast made thy children mighty
By the touch of the mountain sod.
Thou hast led thy chosen Israel
To freedom's last abode;
For the strength of the hills we bless thee,
Our God, our fathers' God.
2. At the hands of foul oppressors
We've borne and suffered long;
Thou hast been our help in weakness,
And thy pow'r hath made us strong.
Amid ruthless foes outnumbered
In weariness we trod;
3. Thou hast led us here in safety
Where the mountain bulwark stands
As the guardian of the loved ones
Thou hast brought from many lands.
For the rock and for the river,
The valley's fertile sod,
4. We are watchers of a beacon
Whose light must never die;
We are guardians of an altar
'Midst the silence of the sky.
Here the rocks yield founts of courage,
Struck forth as by thy rod;
Text: Felicia D. Hemans, 1793-1835; adapted by Edward L. Sloan, 1830-1874
Music: Evan Stephens, 1854-1930 | <urn:uuid:acb363ef-0ff6-4c63-8557-7f0665791e40> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.lds.org/music/text/hymns/for-the-strength-of-the-hills?lang=eng&country=nz | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.802127 | 276 | 2.859375 | 3 |
The pterodactyl Kryptodrakon progenitor lived 163 million years ago
Illustration courtesy of Brian Andres
Deep beneath an ash bed in an area of northwest China famed for its mud-filled “dinosaur death pits” that snared all sorts of prehistoric creatures, researchers have unearthed the oldest pterodactyl fossil ever discovered.
Named Kryptodrakon progenitor, or “hidden serpent first-born” for its discovery near the filming site for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the ancient flying reptile lived about 163 million years ago. The new find pushes the fossil record for this type of pterosaur back more than five million years to the boundary between the middle and late Jurassic period. | <urn:uuid:cf61b963-0dc0-4739-bf47-3268056507fd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.sciencenews.org/article/%E2%80%98hidden-dragon%E2%80%99-fossil-oldest-flying-reptile?mode=archive&context=188541 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.863538 | 156 | 3.328125 | 3 |
Building good credit for college students and recent graduates
Credit is one of the major building blocks of a healthy financial future. Stated most simply, credit is the lending of money with a premium, known as interest, to be repaid over a designated period of time, usually in monthly installments. It is a truism that getting credit helps one to build a credit history because creditworthiness is the measure of one’s consistency in paying back lenders.
Credit on College Campuses
Borrowing against a line of credit has become like a rite of passage in America, and yet another marker of the transition from adolescence into adulthood. It is no surprise then that one usually begins to build credit after high school graduation, usually in the form of credit cards. In fact, discussions regarding college students and credit center mainly on credit cards as they have become a main staple of credit in young adult life.
It is not difficult for college students to begin building credit as credit card companies are more than eager to approve student credit card applications in hopes of students becoming lifetime card holders. Some credit card companies will have ambassadors on college campuses ready to sign up students on the spot, and there are usually numerous credit card applications available in college bookstores. According to College Parents of America, a 2009 study of college students and credit cards found the following:
- About 84 percent of undergraduate college students had at least one credit card.
- Approximately 50 percent of cardholders had four or more credit cards.
- The average college student’s credit card balance was $3,173.
- About 40 percent of college students reported charging items knowing that they could not afford to pay for them.
- Approximately 60 percent of college students stated they were surprised about the amount of their credit card debt.
The best practice for building to credit is to be wise about amount spending, pay off credit card balances as quickly as possible, and stay current with monthly payments. Observance of these points will bring about a good credit score and a healthy credit future.
Having credit generates a credit report that is a snapshot of one’s financial picture and includes present and past credit accounts and their status (such as current or delinquent). A credit score is calculated based on a credit report. Credit scores are also called FICO scores after the company – the Fair Isaac Corporation – that developed the most widely used credit calculation model. Nerd Wallet, which specializes in credit topics, describes credit score ranges as follows:
- Less than 630: This range is considered low, which means that it may be difficult to obtain credit, and when credit is obtained, higher interest rates will apply.
- 630 to 689: This is an average range of credit. One reason for being in this category is having credit cards with balances that are close to the maximum line of credit.
- 690 to 719: This is a good credit range and provides opportunities for low Interest rates and many borrowing options.
- 720 to 850: This is an excellent range of credit and includes the highest scores possible. Creditors are keen on working with people on this level and will offer fringe benefits, like travel award miles on credit cards, to attract customers.
Creditors report a person’s accounts and status on these accounts to three main reporting agencies: Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. It is a good practice to request and review all three reports after first year credit is established and at least each year thereafter. Credit scores are like financial report cards, and it’s important to be aware of your marks and make sure they are correct.
As the credit score calculation methods are fixed, in the event a consumer disagrees with their credit score, they will need to review their credit reports to determine if there are any errors. Consumers can work with the credit scoring agencies to fix their credit report, which will result in a new, correct score being generated.
Factors Used to Calculate a Credit Score
An understanding of how credit scores are calculated provides guidance on how to responsibly use credit. According to My FICO, the following weighted factors are considered in the calculation of credit scores:
- Payment history: 35 percent
- Amount of debt owed: 30 percent
- Length of credit: 15 percent
- Types of credit consumed: 10 percent
- New credit: 10 percent
The factors underlying credit scores help to demystify the process of building credit for college students. Since student loan repayments are deferred until after graduation, many students may not realize that these loans are helping them to build their credit. As student loans can work out to be a positive from a credit-building perspective, it is important for students to avoid downgrading their credit scores through irresponsible use of credit cards.
TIME Magazine, reporting on credit card literacy on college campuses, found that only 10 percent of students paid their balance in full each month and many were largely in the dark on basic terms of their credit cards, such as the interest rate, late fee, or over-the-limit fees. TIME noted the irony of the findings because it would be expected that students who had the ability to succeed in college-level coursework would also have the ability to manage their finances, but such did not appear to be the case. Further, citing a National Foundation for Credit Counseling survey of adults on the topic of credit, TIME noted an unsettling finding: 56 percent of adults surveyed advised that they wish they could improve their credit score while only 5 percent communicated any interest in understanding their credit score. An understanding of how the credit scoring system works is integral to developing a healthy relationship with credit and an important starting place for college students who are just beginning to build their credit profile.
According to MSN Money, there is no need for students to fear credit, despite some warnings in the media about the burdens of credit card debt on college students. It is noted that in addition to applying for a student credit card, if a student’s parent has good credit then it may be a good idea to be added as an authorized user, which is a relatively easy process that will not involve a credit check. Further, in this way, students and parents can work together to ensure the student uses the shared credit card wisely which will help the student build his credit profile responsibly. Since college does not include personal finances in the core curriculum, it is important for students to look to their parents and reliable informational resources to learn how to successfully build and manage their credit.
There are also ways to build a strong credit profile without borrowing credit, such as opening checking and savings bank accounts. A modest opening deposit is not a hindrance as banks are welcoming of students who they are hoping will bank with them for their entire lifetimes. Speak with local banks to learn about student checking and savings accounts that usually carry low or no fees compared to traditional accounts. A further way to establish credit without borrowing is not to move residences too frequently. Remaining in the same residence is a good indication of stability, although creditors, employers, landlords and other persons reviewing your credit report with understand if you changed residences during college.
After establishing credit, an important step to keeping good credit is to take an inventory of all lines of credit, make a chart of all outstanding balances, and create a plan to pay off amounts owed. If this advice seems difficult to incorporate into your personal finances, consider changing your spending habits going forward and devise a viable long-term plan for paying down your balances to avoid graduating from college with debt. After the initial grace period for student loans (usually six months) expires, repayment will be required and may seem more onerous if you are carrying a credit card balance. Although college can last four or more years, it is advisable to keep post-graduation financial goals in mind and not compromise them by getting into debt that becomes hard to manage.
Good credit management habits developed in college will carry forward and provide an advantage when students face loan management after graduation. Even before the student loan grace period expires, US News advises students to take the following steps to embark on a successful repayment plan:
- Make a list of all federal and private student loan lenders.
- Research the possibility of consolidating federal loans (private student loans are not consolidated with federal loans) in order to receive more favorable repayment terms and interest rates.
- Both federal and private student loan companies offer different repayment plans; find out the eligibility requirements for each plan and the associated monthly repayment amount.
- If you are employed, make a full budget based on earnings and cost of living, and determine which payment plan you can afford.
- If you are not employed, contact the federal and any private student loan companies directly to inquire about deferment or forbearance options (which will suspend your repayment responsibilities until your circumstances change or the approved period of deferment or forbearance expires).
- For federal loans, research the Income-Based Repayment Program, a federally approved program that caps monthly student loan repayments for qualifying students.
Why Good Credit Is Important
Starting and maintaining a strong credit profile is a helpful way to create a wide range of lifestyle options and open doors to future opportunities. According to the credit reporting agency Experian, good credit may not only be desirable but necessary to:
- Obtain a home mortgage
- Lease a car
- Qualify for employment as employers may require job applicants to submit to credit checks
- Be selected for a rental lease on a residence
- Be eligible for bank loans to start a business or expand on one
It is clear that credit scores are increasingly becoming an indication of more than just suitability for credit and gaining an even stronger foothold in the marketplace. For this reason, it is particularly important for college students who are at the start of the credit-building process to take precautions to protect their credit scores and use their lines of credit responsibly in order to procure all the benefits and privileges good credit provides.
SimpleTuition is dedicated to providing students with free resources to help them develop a sound financial future, including a strong credit profile. The advice, tips and interactive tools available here can help students to develop solid financial skills applicable not only to college planning, but also to budgeting and credit management. We believe that the earlier students learn to be financially savvy, the greater the likelihood that they will be financially secure and professionally successful in the future. | <urn:uuid:48649d9b-daf3-4f94-9a2b-dc5876413d33> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.simpletuition.com/college-finances/building-good-credit-for-college-students-and-recent-graduates/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969823 | 2,109 | 2.890625 | 3 |
The composition of the Universe
The chemical composition of the Universe and the physical nature of its constituent matter are topics that have occupied scientists for centuries. From its privileged position above the Earth’s atmosphere Hubble has been able to contribute significantly to this area of research.
All over the Universe stars work as giant reprocessing plants taking light chemical elements and transforming them into heavier ones. The original, so-called primordial, composition of the Universe is studied in such fine detail because it is one of the keys to our understanding of processes in the very early Universe.
Helium in the early Universe
Shortly after the First Servicing Mission successfully corrected the spherical aberration in Hubble’s mirror a team led by European astronomer Peter Jakobsen investigated the nature of the gaseous matter that fills the vast volume of intergalactic space. By observing ultraviolet light from a distant quasar, which would otherwise have been absorbed by the Earth’s atmosphere, they found the long-sought signature of helium in the early Universe. This was an important piece of supporting evidence for the Big Bang theory. It also confirmed scientists’ expectation that, in the very early Universe, matter not yet locked up in stars and galaxies was nearly completely ionised (the atoms were stripped of their electrons). This was an important step forward for cosmology.
|The Cosmic Origins Spectrograph is designed to study the composition and large-scale structure of the Universe|
This investigation of helium in the early Universe is one of many ways that Hubble has used distant quasars as lighthouses. As light from the quasars passes through the intervening intergalactic matter, the light signal is changed in such a way as to reveal the composition of the gas.
The results have filled in important pieces of the puzzle of the total composition of the Universe now and in the past.
During the servicing mission in 2009, astronauts installed a new instrument dedicated to studying this field. The Cosmic Origins Spectrograph is designed to break up ultraviolet light from faraway quasars into its component wavelengths, and study how intervening matter absorbs certain wavelengths more than others. This reveals the fingerprints of different elements, telling us more about their abundances at various locations in the Universe.
Today astronomers believe that around one quarter of the mass-energy of the Universe consists of dark matter. This is a substance quite different from the normal matter that makes up atoms and the familiar world around us. Hubble has played an important part in work intended to establish the amount of dark matter in the Universe and to determine where it is and how it behaves.
The riddle of what the ghostly dark matter is made of is still far from solved, but Hubble’s incredibly sharp observations of gravitational lenses have provided stepping stones for future work in this area.
Dark matter only interacts with gravity, which means it neither reflects, emits or obstructs light (or indeed any other type of electromagnetic radiation). Because of this, it cannot be observed directly. However, Hubble studies of how clusters of galaxies bend the light that passes through them lets astronomers deduce where the hidden mass lies. This means that they are able to make maps of where the dark matter lies in a cluster.
|This Hubble/Chandra/VLT composite shows how dark matter (in blue) and hot gas (in pink) are located far apart from each other during a cluster collision.|
One of Hubble’s big breakthroughs in this area is the discovery of how dark matter behaves when clusters collide with each other. Studies of a number of these clusters have shown that the location of dark matter (as deduced from gravitational lensing with Hubble) does not match the distribution of hot gas (as spotted in X-rays by observatories such as ESA’s XMM-Newton or NASA’s Chandra). This strongly supports theories about dark matter: we expect hot gases to slow down as they hit each other and the pressure increases. Dark matter, on the other hand, should not experience friction or pressure, so we would expect it to pass through the collision relatively unhindered. Hubble and Chandra observations have indeed confirmed that this is the case.
A 3D map of the dark matter distribution in the Universe
In 2007 an international team of astronomers used Hubble to create the first three-dimensional map of the large-scale distribution of dark matter in the Universe. It was constructed by measuring the shapes of half a million galaxies observed by Hubble. The light of these galaxies traveled — until it reached Hubble — down a path interrupted by clumps of dark matter which deformed the appearance of the galaxies. Astronomers used the observed distortion of the galaxies shapes to reconstruct their original shape and could therefore also calculate the distribution of dark matter in between.
This map showed that normal matter, largely in the form of galaxies, accumulates along the densest concentrations of dark matter. The created map stretches halfway back to the beginning of the Universe and shows how dark matter grew increasingly clumpy as it collapsed under gravity. Mapping dark matter distribution down to even smaller scales is fundamental for our understanding of how galaxies grew and clustered over billions of years. Tracing the growth of clustering in dark matter may eventually also shed light on dark energy.
More intriguing still than dark matter is dark energy. Hubble studies of the expansion rate of the Universe have found that the expansion is actually speeding up. Astronomers have explained this using the theory of dark energy, that pushes the Universe apart ever faster, against the pull of gravity.
As Einstein's famous equation, E=mc2 tells us, energy and mass are interchangeable. Studies of the rate of expansion of the cosmos suggests that dark energy is by far the largest part of the Universe’s mass-energy content, far outweighing both normal matter and dark matter: it seems that dark energy makes almost 70% of the known Universe.
While astronomers have been able to take steps along the path to understanding how dark energy works and what it does, its true nature is still a mystery.
The page on "measuring the age and size of the Universe" also has information on dark energy and how it relates to the expansion of the cosmos.
Related videos and images
- Animation of dark matter filaments (artist's impression)
- Hubblecast episode 05: Hubble finds a ring of dark matter
- Graphic: the history of the Universe
Related news releases
- Hubble tracks down a galaxy cluster's dark matter (2003)
- Stellar survivor from 1572AD supports supernova theory (2004)
- First 3D map of the Universe's dark matter scaffolding (2007)
- Hubble finds ring of dark matter (2007)
- Clash of clusters provides new dark matter clue (2008)
- Hubble finds that dark matter interacts with itself even less than previously thought (2015)
- Dark Matter filaments studied in 3D for the first time (2015) | <urn:uuid:a88afaa8-10a6-4328-8d24-07a579a78e39> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.spacetelescope.org/science/composition_of_universe/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939285 | 1,412 | 3.84375 | 4 |
Congratulations on your purchase of a Maxbotix LV-EZ1 ultrasonic rangefinder. This unique sensor uses sound pulses to detect the range of nearby objects, opening all kinds of possibilities for your project.
Like a bat, the EZ1 sends out pulses of ultrasonic sound (at a frequency of 41KHz, higher than humans can hear), and listens for the reflection of the sound off nearby objects. By recording the time between the initial pulse and when the reflection is heard, the distance to the object can be determined. Sound travels at about 1126 feet per second (or 343 meters per second), so for an object 10 feet away from the sensor, the round-trip time would be 20 feet / 1126 feet per second = 0.0178 seconds or 17.8ms. The EZ1 does some clever signal processing to filter out false data to give the best possible range estimate.
Because the EZ1 uses sound to sense nearby objects, it is subject to real-world acoustics and may not work well in every situation, such as extremely noisy environments. It works best for detecting large, solid objects such as walls that provide a strong reflection. Small objects may not reflect enough sound for the sensor to pick up, and soft objects may absorb the sound rather than reflecting it back to the sensor. Oblique surfaces may cause glancing bounces to objects further away, giving erroneous readings. The Maxbotix FAQ has information on obtaining the best readings from the device.
The EZ1 has a range of 6" to 254" (6.45 meters) with 1" resolution. Objects closer than 6" will be reported as 6" away (but beware of glancing bounces to further objects). If no object is detected within the sensor's range, the output will stay at the maximum range.
Be aware that the sound pulse spreads out as it leaves the sensor, so it's more like a flashlight than a laser beam. See the documentation for diagrams on beamwidth and the sizes of objects that can be sensed reliably. Other ultrasonic sensors in the same area may interfere with each other; see the Maxbotix website for ideas on how to coordinate multiple sensors.
The EZ1 requires a power supply from 2.5V to 5.5V. The current requirement is only 3mA., which is easily supplied by an Arduino or other microcontroller with a built-in voltage regulator. Although the sensor will work at 3.3V, a 5V supply will provide the best output power for long-range operation.
The EZ1 has a header area with seven holes. You can solder a header to this area, or solder wires directly to the device. The signals are labeled in the copper on the back side of the board. A full description of the signals is available in the datasheet.
The EZ1 can provide range data in a number of different ways, which makes it easy to interface to almost any project. The available outputs are serial (see the datasheet for format), analog, and pulse-width modulation (PWM). The simplest interface is the analog output, which generates a voltage that is proportional to the distance to the object. The voltage output will be half of the positive supply voltage (VCC) at maximum EZ1 range (254 inches). If you're using an Arduino, an ADC value of 512 will equal full range (254 inches) on the sensor.
To connect the EZ1 to a microcontroller, you only need three connections: +5V, GND, and AN (analog out). If you're using an Arduino, connect the +5V and GND to the respective pins on the Arduino, and connect AN to an analog input (0, for example). The following sketch will read the sensor and print the range in inches. Note that the output may show inaccuracies based on the above limitations (object size, shape and material, ambient noise, etc.).
We hope this sensor is a valuable addition to your projects. If you have any questions or problems (or want to show us your project!) you can always contact us at [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:1f1567a2-5e76-4838-91bc-571d2410b824> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/263 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.886077 | 853 | 2.71875 | 3 |
KEMAH, TEXAS. Kemah is on State Highway 146 and Farm Road 518 in a half-moon pocket on Galveston Bay twenty-five miles northwest of Galveston in northeastern Galveston County. The community was established on the Texas and New Orleans Railroad about 1898 and called Evergreen; it was also known as Shell Siding in the period when the railroad hauled shell from the area. It was renamed Kemah, an Indian word meaning "facing the winds," for its position on the bay in 1907, when the post office opened, because the former name was already in use by another community. By 1914 Kemah had a population of 200, four hay producers, farm homes, summer homes belonging to residents of Galveston and Houston, and several fishing camps. During the Great Depression the population dropped to 100. In 1936 state highway maps showed a church, a school, several businesses, and multiple dwellings at the townsite. World War II brought growth to a population of 550 by 1943. This number held steady until 1965, during which time the town had a maximum of thirty businesses serving primarily the oil and ship-building industries. By then Kemah had incorporated and become part of the Clear Creek Consolidated Independent School District. Thereafter, it reached a high of 2,000 residents and forty-three businesses in 1970, then began to decline. In 1972 the population was 1,144, and in 1988 Kemah had 1,591 residents and sixty-six businesses. Once considered a shrimping town, Kemah continues to celebrate an annual August Blessing of the Fleet. In 1990 the population was 1,094. By 2000 the population had more than doubled reaching 2,330.
Image Use Disclaimer
All copyrighted materials included within the Handbook of Texas Online are in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 related to Copyright and “Fair Use” for Non-Profit educational institutions, which permits the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA), to utilize copyrighted materials to further scholarship, education, and inform the public. The TSHA makes every effort to conform to the principles of fair use and to comply with copyright law.
For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.Handbook of Texas Online, Diana J. Kleiner, "Kemah, TX," accessed June 26, 2016, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hjk01.
Uploaded on June 15, 2010. Published by the Texas State Historical Association. | <urn:uuid:88b47c17-0f7b-472a-bc09-a5695bcdc21c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hjk01 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96282 | 589 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to all subscribers of the Windows to the Universe Educator Newsletter! We hope you have all enjoyed a relaxing holiday break, and are storing up energy for when school starts up again soon.
Greetings to everyone we had a chance to meet this past fall at NSTA Area conferences in Louisville, Atlanta, and Phoenix, as well as new subscribers from the Science Teachers Association of New York conference in Rochester and the AGU-NESTA GIFT workshop in San Francisco! We look forward to seeing those of you who can make it to our workshops in April in San Antonio - please see a list of our NSTA events below. Note also that our mobile version is now live - please enjoy!
Finally, just a reminder to those of you who are Windows to the Universe Educator Members - be sure to login to the website to get free access to all the formatted activities, worksheets, and PowerPoints available to you as members. Non-members can access html versions of these resources on the website at no charge, or download individual formatted resources for a small fee in the Teacher Resources/Activities section.
Students often mistakenly believe that the seasons are caused by variations in Earth's distance from the Sun. Earth's axial tilt is, of course, the real reason for our seasons. The Earth does, however, travel around the Sun in an elliptical orbit which brings it closer to and further away from our neighborhood celestial furnace during the course of each year. Astronomers call the point of closest approach "perihelion", and the most distant point "aphelion". These words come from Greek roots: "helios" is Sun, "peri" means near, and "apo" means away from.
Earth passes through perihelion in early January each year, so it is closest to the Sun in the depths of the Northern Hemisphere's winter. In 2013, Earth will pass through perihelion on January 1 at 11pm CST (January 2, 05 UT). Earth is about 3% further from the Sun at aphelion (in early July) than at perihelion. Earth's orbit is very nearly circular, so its aphelion and perihelion distances are not much different from one another. Some bodies have orbits which are much more elongated; astronomers say such orbits have a large "eccentricity". Pluto, for instance, is about 66% further from the Sun at aphelion than it is at perihelion.
Check out these pages on Windows to the Universe to learn more about elliptical orbits, perihelion & aphelion, and eccentricity:
The first meteor shower of the New Year peaks on January 3rd, in the wee hours of the night just before dawn. A waning gibbous moon does not provide a completely dark sky for this year's show, which can otherwise challenge the Perseids and Geminids in numbers (the Quadrantids can produce over 60 meteors per hour in a dark sky).
The Quadrantids are a shower with an interesting history; they are named after a now defunct constellation, and, like the Geminids, the source of these meteors is a mysterious object that may be an asteroid or an extinct comet. Look for the Quadrantids on the morning of January 3rd; to learn more about them, click here.
The mobile version of Windows to the Universe is live! We hope the new site will make it more convenient for you to plan your lessons or explore Earth and space science while on the road.
Please note that, depending on your phone, some Java and Flash games might not work. If you notice any problems other than that, please let us know. Do not forget to tell us your phone model and the page where you noticed the problem. Thanks! We appreciate your feedback!
Scientists have unveiled an unprecedented look at our planet at night. A global composite image, constructed using cloud-free night images from a new NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite, shows the glow of natural and human-built phenomena across the planet in greater detail than ever before.
NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft studying Mercury has provided compelling support for the long-held hypothesis that the planet harbors abundant water ice and other frozen volatile materials within its permanently shadowed polar craters.
MESSENGER's onboard instruments have been studying Mercury since March 2011. Scientists are seeing clearly for the first time a chapter in the story of how the inner planets, including Earth, acquired their water and some of the chemical building blocks for life.
Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, seems to be an unlikely place to find ice. However, the tilt of Mercury's rotational axis is less than 1 degree, and as a result, there are pockets at the planet's poles that never see sunlight. The new observations from MESSENGER support the idea that ice is the major constituent of Mercury's north polar deposits. These measurements also reveal ice is exposed at the surface in the coldest areas, but buried beneath unusually dark material across most of the deposits. This dark material is believed to be a mix of complex organic compounds delivered to Mercury by the impacts of comets and asteroids.
For more information about the Mercury mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/messenger
Scientists using NASA satellite data and climate models have projected that drier conditions will likely cause increased fire activity across the United States in coming decades. They used climate projections to examine how the length and strength of fire seasons are expected to change under future climate conditions, and their results suggest more fire seasons that are longer and stronger across all regions of the U.S. in the next 30-50 years.
Through August of this year, the U.S. burned area topped 2.5 million hectares (6.17 million acres). As the U.S. land area burned by fire each year has increased significantly in the past 25 years, so too have carbon dioxide emissions, which is something many scientists are concerned about.
For images and additional information on this research, visit:
The first day of winter has come and with it -- wind! A howling wind has ushered winter in to the mid-Atlantic. When you think of windy places, Chicago comes to mind or Manhattan with the skyscrapers creating 'wind tunnels', but not the generally the mid-Atlantic!
So what causes wind? It's a question students at any grade level might ask you. The simple answer is that wind is caused by differences in atmospheric pressure. Air flows from an area of high pressure to an area of lower pressure, and this movement is what we feel as wind. Usually, the differences in pressure are caused by differences in how the sun's energy is absorbed. Here's an example: in a coastal region, land usually heats up more quickly than the ocean when the sun is shining on them. As the air above the land warms, it begins to rise, and as it does that, the air pressure at the surface drops. There is now a pressure difference between the air over the ocean and the air over the coast -- the pressure over the sea is higher, and air will flow from over the sea to over the land. This creates what we know as a sea breeze -- a cool wind coming from off the ocean.
Antarctica is consistently the windiest place on Earth. It is not unusual to have average wind speeds of 25 mph (40.2 kph). Other places in Antarctica are even windier and that makes for obviously harsh living conditions. At the Princess Elisabeth research station in Antarctica, average wind speeds are 53 mph (85.3 kph) and can gust up to 200 mph (321.9 kph). But residents are putting that wind to good use! This research station has recently installed eight wind turbines and is now the first zero emission facility in Antarctica. What a great alternative to diesel generators used more prominently in Antarctica.
Geology is the study of the Earth, and many features and processes that we see on Earth occur on other planets as well. Our geology section provides extensive information about minerals, rocks and the rock cycle, Earth's layers and moving plates, fossils and Earth history, as well as information about careers in geoscience. Our Teacher Resources section includes numerous classroom activities on topics in Geology and Geography for you to try in your classroom. Enjoy your geologic explorations on Windows to the Universe!
We have many classroom activities on our web site. Once on the Classroom Activity page, use the top button bar to choose Beginner, Intermediate or Advanced classroom activities.
One of my students' favorite activities when I was teaching Earth science was the Dante's Peak Movie Review. In the activity, students pretend to be expert volcanologists writing a movie review of Dante's Peak for a local newspaper. Students get to review and demonstrate their knowledge of volcanoes and you get to bring writing into your science classroom. A win-win situation!
Thursday, April 11, 2013
8:00am-2:30pm NESTA Board of Directors Meeting, Independence Room, Grand Hyatt Hotel
Friday, April 12, 2013
9:30am Geology Share-a-Thon, Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, Ballroom A
11:00am NESTA Ocean and Atmosphere Share-a-Thon, Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, Ballroom A
12:30pm NESTA Earth System Science Share-a-Thon, Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, Ballroom A
2:00pm Climate Change Classroom Toolkit, Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, Ballroom A
3:30pm Let's Get Well Grounded!, Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, Ballroom A
6:30-8:00pm NESTA Friends of Earth and Space Science Reception, Lone Star D, Grand Hyatt Hotel
Saturday, April 13, 2013
8:00am Activities in Earth System Science, Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, Ballroom A
9:30am Exploring Planetary Science and Astronomy - What Would Galileo Do?, Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, Ballroom A
11:00am NESTA Space Science Share-a-Thon, Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, Ballroom A
12:30pm NESTA Advances in Earth and Space Science Lunchtime Lecture by Dr. Mark Nielsen, Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, Ballroom A
2:00pm Our Changing Planet, Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, Ballroom A
3:30pm NESTA Rock and Mineral Raffle, Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, Ballroom A
5:00pm NESTA Annual Membership Meeting, Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, Ballroom A
Are you looking for resources and support to help you bring the best to your students? Are you concerned about the state of Earth and space science education today? Now is the time to join the National Earth Science Teachers Association! Membership benefits are many and include receiving The Earth Scientist (a quarterly journal), full voting privileges, access to members-only areas of the NESTA web site and the monthly e-mail newsletter that shares new resources, opportunities, alerts, and upcoming events. There are also many special NESTA events at professional meetings. Plug into this supportive network. Cost is low! Join today!
Windows to the Universe also provides these other membership and partnership opportunities:
Classroom activities are a great way to engage students in their science learning. The Teacher Resources section on Windows to the Universe includes over 100 K-12 science activities for you to use with your students. Topics range from geology, water, atmospheric science, climate change, life, ecology, environmental science, space weather and magnetism, to science literacy and art. HTML versions of the activities, worksheets, and supplementary materials are all freely available, as are PPT shows that you can use with your students.
Windows to the Universe Educator Members have free access to all downloadable PDF activities, worksheets, supplementary materials and PowerPoints (a $230 value!), in addition to other benefits and services for Earth and space science teachers. If you are not a Windows to the Universe Educator Member, you can purchase individual PDF-formatted student worksheets, classroom activity descriptions, and supplementary materials (including downloadable PowerPoints) in our online store.
If you'd like to save time collecting and prepping classroom materials, we offer several classroom activity kits for purchase: Glaciers: Then and Now, Traveling Nitrogen Game, CO2: How Much Do You Spew?, and Feeling the Heat - Part 2. Most activity kits are available in a variety of sizes to fit your classroom needs.
We've added a bunch of new educational DVDs from TASA Graphics to the Windows to the Universe online store. New additions include:
These are in addition to our previous offerings from TASA graphics:
We also offer quality DVDs on climate change and astronomy:
As always, Windows to the Universe Educator Members get a 10% discount on all purchases from the online store - and this is on top of publisher discounts!
Table of Contents
Earth at Perihelion
Mobile Site is Live!
Earth at Night
Ice on Mercury
What Causes Wind?
Browse Geology Sect
Dante's Peak Review
NESTA in San Antonio
Join NESTA and W2U!
Girls in STEM
Edward C. Roy Award
AMS DataStreme Proj
Talk to Astronauts!
Toshiba Am Grants
Green Schools Conf
Bob the Bunny
Solar Max Coming!
Spot Space Station
Climate Fact Sheets
Big Ideas Videos
Announcements from Partners
Information about Opportunities with Stipends, Honorariums, or Awards for Teachers/students
NASA is offering high school junior girls from across the United States an opportunity to jump-start their future by participating in the Women In STEM High School (WISH) Aerospace Scholars program for 2013.
Registration is now open for the 20th annual NASA Great Moonbuggy Race, which challenges high school, college and university students around the world to build and race fast, lightweight "moonbuggies" of their own design.
NASA and the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Worcester, MA, are seeking teams to compete in this year's robot technology demonstration competition, which offers as much as $1.5 million in prize money. The registration deadline is approaching - January 7.
The competition is planned for June 2013 in Worcester, Mass., and will attract competitors from industry and academia nationwide. For more information about the Sample Return Robot Challenge and WPI, visit http://challenge.wpi.edu
The American Geosciences Institute (AGI) is accepting nominations for the Edward C. Roy Award for Excellence in Earth Science Teaching. Given annually, this award is presented to one full-time K-8 teacher in the U.S. or U.K. whose excellence and innovation in the classroom elevates students’ understanding of the Earth and its many processes.
NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate is accepting scholarship applications from graduate and undergraduate students for the 2013-2014 academic year. The application deadline is Jan. 14, 2013.
NASA expects to award 20 undergraduate and five graduate scholarships to students in an aeronautical engineering program or related field. Undergraduate students who have at least two years of study remaining will receive up to $15,000 per year for two years and the opportunity to receive a $10,000 stipend by interning at a NASA research center during the summer.
The American Meteorological Society’s DataStreme Project is an expenses-paid, professional development program for in-service K-12 teachers. Graduate-level courses in meteorology, oceanography, and climate science are offered each fall and spring semester by Local Implementation Teams (LITs) across the country. Teachers construct a Plan of Action for educational peer-training following course completion.
Please contact your nearest LIT leader to register. The spring 2013 course offering begins in mid-January. For more information on DataStreme, go to www.ametsoc.org/amsedu and follow the links to course pages for the list of LIT leaders. DataStreme receives support from NOAA, NASA, and NSF.
College students - get your school to participate in a friendly competition to see who can recycle the most on campus. EPA's Wastewise is a co-sponsor. The registration deadline is January 17. Check out the RecyleMania tournament today!
NASA is offering opportunities for schools and educational groups to speak with astronauts aboard the International Space Station to learn about living and working in space. Crewmembers will be available for question and answer sessions in 2013.
Nominate a teacher! The Presidential Innovation Award for Environmental Educators recognizes outstanding K-12 teachers who employ innovative approaches to environmental education. Two teachers from each EPA region will be selected to receive the award. 2012-13 nominations are due January 31.
Teacher awardees will receive a commemorative plaque and an award of $2,000 to be used to further the recipient's professional development in environmental education. The teacher's local education agency will also receive an award of $2,000 to fund environmental education activities and programs of the teacher.
Meet the 2011-12 winners: http://www.epa.gov/education/teacheraward/winners.html
The Toshiba/NSTA ExploraVision is a science competition that encourages students of all grade levels to imagine what technology might be like in the future. Teacher sponsors lead groups of students in researching and developing a project idea. Regional winners will receive a Toshiba product, national finalists will win a trip to Washington, D.C., and overall winners will receive U.S. EE Savings Bonds worth $10,000 at maturity for first place and $5,000 at maturity for second place. The entry deadline is January 31, 2013.
The Volvo Adventure, in partnership with the United Nations Environment Program, is an educational program that rewards environmental activities and the decision-makers of the future. To enter, you form a team of 2 to 5 members (ages 13 to 16), perform an environmental project in your local community, and submit the project online. The competition deadline is January 31, 2013.
Projects are judged and the best projects are selected for an all-expense-paid trip to Göteborg, Sweden, where teams can win the following prizes: 1st place = $10,000, 2nd place = $6,000 and 3rd place = $4,000.
Wanted: Classroom Innovators! Toshiba America Foundation is currently accepting applications from teachers who are passionate about making science and mathematics more engaging for their students.
Do you teach 6-12 science or math? Do you have a wish list of instructional equipment that will make learning more exciting for your students? If the answer is yes to these questions, Toshiba America Foundation would like to hear from you.
Grade 6-12 applications for $5,000 or less are accepted on a rolling basis, throughout the calendar year. Grant requests of more than $5,000 are reviewed twice a year (the next semiannual deadline is February 1st!).
The Green Schools National Conference examines environmental literacy, energy efficiency, healthier food, eco-friendly purchasing and more. The 3rd annual Green Schools National Conference, set for Feb. 22-24, 2013, in West Palm Beach, FL, is sponsored by the Green Schools National Network (GSNN) and is focused on "developing healthy and sustainable schools across America." Regular registration is now through February 1st.
The Green Schools National Network advances the national green and healthy schools movement by connecting like-minded and passionate education, non-profit, corporate and public sector individuals and organizations.
Bob the Bunny's environmental competition is aimed at young adventurers aged 10-12 years old.
To enter, you form a team of 1 to 3 members, identify a local environmental issue and create a cartoon strip illustrating the issue and actions that you might take to solve the problem. Submissions should be sent in by February 28, 2013.
The International Children’s Painting Competition on the Environment is organized every year by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Japan-based Foundation for Global Peace and Environment (FGPE), Bayer and the Nikon Corporation.
It has been held since 1991 and has received more than 3 million entries from children in over 150 countries.
The theme of the 22nd painting competition will be “Water: The Source of Life” and children will have until February 29, 2013, to submit their entries.
The American Meteorological Society has partnered with Second Nature, administrator of the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment, to implement the AMS Climate Studies course at 100 minority-serving institutions over a 5-year period. As part of this NSF-supported Diversity Project, AMS is recruiting 25 MSI faculty for the Course Implementation Workshop (May 19-24, 2013). Faculty will be trained to offer the climate course and will receive presentations from top-level NASA, NOAA, and university scientists. The AMS Climate Studies course was developed and pilot tested with NASA support.
Applications for the May 2013 workshop must be received by March 15, 2013. The workshop is expenses-paid and the AMS Climate Studies license fee is waived for the first two years the course is offered. For more information, please visit www.ametsoc.org/amsedu/online/climateinfo/diversity.html.
Environmental Education Week 2013 will be held April 14-20, and will explore how technology can enhance environmental learning both inside and outside the classroom. This year's official theme is Greening STEM: Taking Technology Outdoors.
As part of Taking Technology Outdoors, EE Week will highlight the growing opportunity to engage today's students in learning about the environment with new technologies that enable scientific research and develop 21st century skills, including creativity, innovation, communication and collaboration.
Get a jump-start by accessing the top 10 Apps for taking technology outdoors.
Are you an Outstanding Earth Science Teacher? Do you know one?
The National Association of Geoscience Teachers annually presents OEST awards for "exceptional contributions to the stimulation of interest in the Earth Sciences at the pre-college level." Any teacher or other K-12 educator who covers a significant amount of earth science content with their students is eligible. Ten national finalists are selected, one from each NAGT regional section. Some sections also recognize state winners.
Individuals may apply themselves or nominate a colleague for the award. To nominate a teacher for this award, please complete the online nomination form and upload any supporting documentation. You can find information on which section you live in by checking out the Sections Page.
In 1859, the largest recorded coronal mass ejection (CME) from the sun, known as the Carrington Event, disrupted what little electrical technology was used at the time. Back then, that meant the temporary disruption of the telegraph system. Today, without an effective warning mechanism in place, a solar storm of that magnitude could wreak havoc on our technology-dependent world. And with the solar maximum predicted to occur later this year, scientists and policymakers are scrambling to prepare us for when the next big solar storm hits.
For more than 35 years, scientists from the Antarctic Search for Meteorites (ANSMET) program have been scouring glacial landscapes in search of meteorites. Since 1976, teams of physicists, meteorite specialists, and mountaineers have recovered thousands of untouched specimens from meteoroids, the moon and even Mars. Despite subzero temperatures and razor-sharp winds, scientists are lining up for the chance to experience the ultimate hunt for alien objects.
June Lockhart, William Shatner and Wil Wheaton are the latest entertainment icons featured in new public service announcements that highlight how some of NASA's outstanding accomplishments in space have improved our life on Earth.
Spanning generations of silver screen and television portrayals of humanity's exploration of space, the accomplished actors talk about how science fiction has become science fact, resulting in new commercial products and services that are tangible returns on investments in space technology. Much of the technology we rely on daily was developed by NASA for space exploration and then adapted or enhanced for use here on Earth. This includes many technologies used in schools, homes, cars, computers and American industry.
If you teach about fossils, consider participating in the Mastodon Matrix Project. The Project uses citizen volunteers to analyze actual samples of the matrix (dirt) from a site where a 14,000-year-old mastodon was excavated in New York. Your students will learn the process of science and will work like a paleontologist on real research material.
To join the project, you must sign up and pay an $18 participation fee. You will be sent a one-kilogram bag of matrix, enough for about 20-25 students to explore with simple tools. It is possible to find shells, bones, hair, pieces of plants, and rocks from the time when the mastodons lived and roamed the Earth. The matrix and discoveries are then sent back to the Paleontological Research Institution, where they will be cataloged and further analyzed by paleontologists to help scientists form a true picture of the ecology and environment of the late Pleistocene.
To learn more about the project, go to http://www.museumoftheearth.org/research.php?page=Mastodon_Research/Mast_Matrix
The Young Meteorologist Program (YMP) is an innovative, fun, and informational online game designed to help students learn to prepare for weather-related disasters. YMP was created by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the non-profit organizations American Meteorological Society (AMS) and PLAN!T NOW as a free resource that can be utilized in classrooms to help students comprehend complex natural phenomena, and learn actions they can take to keep themselves and their families safe.
Weather inspires curiosity and awe, and impacts every American. The AMS is distributing this online game to its vast network of U.S. K-12 science teachers, ensuring this resource reaches thousands of AMS-trained science teachers and their students. Educators can use this activity to supplement general Earth science lessons at their schools. There is an expanded section for educators available on the Young Meteorologist website that includes lesson plans, related math activities, videos and discussion pieces ideal for helping teach about weather.
YMP is set up as a five-module game covering natural disasters including hurricanes, lightning, flooding, tornadoes and winter storms. Using new media, students follow Owlie, a young owl led by two meteorologists, and Girdie, a wise bird who challenges common misconceptions people have about weather events. The game is filled with clever rhymes, familiar games, and some math to reinforce safety messages, and is best suited for middle school-aged students. The entire game takes 1-2 hours to complete, ending with a certificate of completion to share with family and friends.
NASA announced a new service to help people see the International Space Station when it passes overhead. "Spot the Station" will send an email or text message to those who sign up for the service a few hours before they will be able to see the space station.
Did you know that Earth Gauge produces in-depth fact sheets every few months that cover a variety of climate topics? The fact sheets, including images and links, cover topics like Arctic amplification feedbacks and links to midlatitude weather (written in December 2012), heliophysics (written in November 2012), wildfires in the West (written in September 2012), Earth's cloud feedback, polar climate trends, drought in North American, paleoclimate and the ocean ecosystem.
Check out these fact sheets and others at Earth Gauge Climate Fact Sheets. You won't be disappointed!
AGI now offers award-winning videos and other electronic resources to help students, educators, and others explore the “big ideas” of Earth science all year long. AGI’s Big Ideas videos recently won three prestigious awards: Digital Video (DV) Winner in Education, DV Winner in Nature/Wildlife, and Videographer Award of Excellence.
The source of this material is Windows to the Universe, at http://windows2universe.org/ from the National Earth Science Teachers Association (NESTA). The Website was developed in part with the support of UCAR and NCAR, where it resided from 2000 - 2010. © 2010 National Earth Science Teachers Association. Windows to the Universe® is a registered trademark of NESTA. All Rights Reserved. Site policies and disclaimer. | <urn:uuid:0c69eb92-bcac-4523-a0c7-5b9f7d9515c5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.windows2universe.org/newsletters/1_2013.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933678 | 5,946 | 2.796875 | 3 |
This article was published in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 1, (MUP), 1966
John Easty (flourished 1786-1793), marine, was a private soldier in the marines for ten years and ten months, beginning at latest in January 1784. He probably served in France and Spain before being sent to New South Wales as one of the marine detachment in the First Fleet. Easty was appointed to Captain-Lieutenant Meredith's company on 4 November 1787. He carried out the normal duties of a marine, committed the typical military crimes of his kind, and endured as a matter of course the hardships and punishments, including a flogging in March 1788 for bringing a female convict into the camp. In December 1790 he was a member of two punitive expeditions sent against the Aboriginals around Botany Bay. Easty returned to England in December 1792 with the last detachment of marines to leave Sydney and rejoined his division at Portsmouth on 24 May 1793. On 15 September 1794 he entered the service of Waddington & Smith, grocers, in London; he was still employed there in November 1796 when he petitioned the Admiralty for compensation for short rations supplied in New South Wales.
Easty's chief importance lies in his diary which covers the period from November 1786 to May 1793. This is a rare contemporary account of the first settlement in New South Wales as seen by the ordinary soldier, although some of it was hearsay and some was written long after the event. Easty was an experienced and competent marine but had very little formal education. He was compassionate and sentimental, unimaginative, with an uncomplicated patriotism and a soldierly pride in his corps. His religion was a simple Protestantism with Evangelical leanings. He was unmarried while in New South Wales but had relatives in England.
G. D. Richardson, 'Easty, John (?–?)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/easty-john-2017/text2477, published first in hardcopy 1966, accessed online 29 June 2016.
This article was first published in hardcopy in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 1, (MUP), 1966 | <urn:uuid:9bbf2c67-9754-4b85-805d-e8a81fb78684> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/easty-john-2017 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397636.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00150-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979138 | 474 | 2.921875 | 3 |
This article was published in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 4, (MUP), 1972
This is a shared entry with Samuel Elyard
William Elyard (1804-1865), public servant, and Samuel Elyard (1817-1910), public servant and landscape painter, were the eldest and fourth sons of William Elyard, a half-pay naval surgeon, and his wife Sarah, née Gilbert. Compelled by his health and finances to emigrate to New South Wales, William senior arrived with his family on 18 December 1821, as surgeon-superintendent on the convict ship John Bull. William junior was born on 23 May 1804 at Rochester and educated in England. On 6 February 1822 he was appointed temporary clerk in the colonial secretary's office and became second clerk on 1 October. In February 1841 when Thomas Harington resigned, Elyard was already doing much of the executive work of the office. His promotion to chief clerk, when the assistant secretaryship was abolished in the name of economy, was a recognition of the existing state of affairs rather than a fundamental change. Elyard was an important junior link in the Macleay-Darling administrative revolution. On 26 June 1856, as a result of the change to responsible government he was appointed under-secretary. His long service in the colonial secretary's office provided administrative continuity at a critical transitionary time.
Elyard died unmarried and in office on 20 March 1865 and was buried at St Peter's Anglican Church, Cook's River. His funeral cortège, which 'extended the entire length of William-street', was a tribute to 'the importance of his services'. He left most of his estate, consisting of land at Balmain and on the Shoalhaven, to his brother Alfred, but made provision for the children of his late brother Arthur.
Samuel was born on 9 May 1817 on the Isle of Wight. He was educated at Mr Gilchrist's school and the Australian College where he showed talent at portrait painting. He then studied under Conrad Martens and taught drawing. He sought secure employment and on 16 April 1837 was appointed an extra clerk in the colonial secretary's office. On 1 January 1846 he was promoted to second clerk, from which position he was retired on 18 August 1868 with a pension. From his twenties, when he studied under John Skinner Prout, he specialized in landscape painting in water-colours and oils: he 'always painted his studies directly from nature in colours, and of a large size'. He exhibited in Sydney in 1847 and 1857 and in Paris in 1867. Some of his works are in the Dixson galleries, Sydney. Interested in photography, he himself printed and published facsimiles of his work as Scenery of Shoalhaven (Nowra, 1892).
In the 1840s Samuel became mentally disturbed and his brother arranged frequent leave in the country. On 10 April 1849, while delirious from drugs, he went through a form of marriage with Angelina Mary Hughes Hallett, née Scott, an alleged prostitute. He later repudiated the marriage on the ground of his insanity and accused her of blackmail. He published many pamphlets to vindicate himself and, at the same time, to convert the Jews to Protestantism. In mid-1857 he started a journal, the Salem Standard, and imported a press with Hebrew type. He suffered from prophetic and royal delusions, but moderated after his retirement and became an Anglican lay preacher and a justice of the peace. He died at Nowra on 23 October 1910.
M. J. Saclier, 'Elyard, William (1804–1865)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/elyard-william-3482/text5333, published first in hardcopy 1972, accessed online 29 June 2016.
This article was first published in hardcopy in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 4, (MUP), 1972 | <urn:uuid:f9d20fe4-15c4-4bf6-930c-34391879040a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/elyard-william-3482 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397636.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00150-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985209 | 843 | 2.65625 | 3 |
The Huff-Daland Duster was designed in 1925 for a new method of controlling agricultural insect pests, aerial crop dusting. The Huff-Daland Manufacturing Company modified its sturdy Petrel military biplane with a large hopper for chemicals and spraying equipment and established the nation's first aerial dusting business, Huff-Daland Duster Company of Macon, Georgia and later, Monroe, Louisiana.
C.E. Woolman took over the company in 1928 and renamed it Delta Air Service (forerunner of Delta Air Lines) to reflect the addition of mail and passenger service in Travel Airs. The remains of two of the original 18 Dusters stayed in storage until 1967 when Delta Air Lines selected one of them for restoration. Its registration number is unknown.
Gift of Delta Airlines
Steel tube fuselage with wood wings, all fabric covered, biplane.
- Country of Origin
- United States of America
- Huff Daland Manufacturing Company
- Steel tube and fabric cover
- Wingspan: 10.1 m (33 ft 3 in)
- Length: 7 m (23 ft 1 in)
- Height: 2.5 m (8 ft 4 in)
- Weight, empty: 643.2 kg (1,420 lb)
- Weight, gross: 1,021 kg (2,255 lb)
- Top speed: 180 km/h (112 mph)
- Engine: Wright Whirlwind J-4, 200 hp
The Museum's Huff-Daland Duster is one of eighteen airplanes that were specifically designed by Huff-Daland to perform aerial crop dusting. In addition, the Huff-Daland Duster was the first aircraft to be used by the forerunner of the international airline Delta Air Lines.
Dr. B.R. Coad, a government entomologist, conceived the idea that dusting the cotton industry's nemesis, the boll weevil, would be more efficient if it could be done from the air rather than from mule-drawn wagons. Initial trials with Curtiss Jenny biplanes convinced him that researchers were on the right track, but also highlighted the need for an aircraft specially designed for crop dusting. The Huff-Daland Manufacturing Company of Ogdensburg, New York received the contract to design and produce the Duster biplane which was completed in 1925. It was a derivative of a Huff-Daland military/commercial design, called the Petrel 5, which was used by the U.S. Navy both in landplane and seaplane versions. Fairchild Aerial Survey Company also used it for aerial photography.
The Huff-Daland Duster was a fabric-covered, cantilever-winged biplane that was structurally designed so that it had none of the wing brace wires that were common of the biplane designs of that era. The fuselage and tail surfaces were made of welded steel tubing and the wings were single-piece units made of spruce and mahogany. The entire airplane, except for the area behind the engine, was fabric covered. The wing struts and landing gear were made of streamlined steel tubing. The landing gear was a conventional double-tripod split-axle type with 26x4 wire wheels and used Oleo struts for absorbing the landing loads. The dust hopper carried 800 pounds of calcium arsenate. Although some documentation says the Petrel 5's 200 hp Wright J-4 Whirlwind air-cooled 9-cylinder radial was replaced with a 400 hp Liberty 12 engine for the Duster, Delta officials said that their Dusters flew with the J-4B.
In 1923, C .E. Woolman, an agricultural engineer and research assistant with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, joined the Huff-Daland Duster Company, located in Macon, Georgia, a subsidiary of Huff-Daland Manufacturing and the first company devoted to dusting operations. Three years later the Huff-Daland Duster Company relocated to Monroe, Louisiana. Because of the seasonal nature of the crop dusting business, Woolman began to operate in Peru in 1926 during the North American off-season, dusting more than 50,000 acres in Peruvian valleys in 1927. He expanded their business during 1928 by carrying passengers and freight in a Fairchild FC-2 and other aircraft, in association with Peruvian Airways Corporation, however the chronically unstable South American political climate caused him to abandon crop dusting and sell out this portion of the air service business.
Woolman returned to the U.S. in 1928 and found the Huff-Daland Duster Company in financial difficulty. Huff-Daland Airplanes, then part of Keystone Aircraft, wanted to divest itself of Huff-Daland Duster so Woolman took it over, and, with the help of some Monroe investors, founded a new company, Delta Air Service, headquartered there. Woolman became senior Vice President and General Manager and planned to carry passengers and freight as well as continuing in the crop dusting business. They inaugurated their passenger and mail service with a route between Dallas and Jackson, Mississippi, flying six-passenger Travel Air 6000s. Thus began what was eventually to become Delta Air Lines. Woolman became president of Delta in 1945 and was appointed Chairman of the Board in 1965. The Dusters remained in service as dusters until they were replaced by Stearman C3Bs.
Two original Huff-Daland Dusters were stored for many years at Monroe, but in 1963, they were removed from storage and brought to Delta's facilities in Atlanta, Georgia. Beginning in 1967, parts of one of the airplanes were restored to original condition by volunteer Delta Air Line personnel as a tribute to their founder C. E. Woolman. Although the fourteen original aircraft registration numbers are recorded, it was not possible to determine this particular aircraft's identity. A Wright Whirlwind J4B engine from the Museum's collection was installed on the aircraft along with a propeller.
In a formal ceremony on January 18, 1968, Delta dignitaries officially donated the airplane to NASM. It was displayed in the Smithsonian's Arts and Industries Building for about six months before being earmarked for storage. The airplane was subsequently loaned back to Delta Airlines in the late 1970s for display in their own museum in Atlanta, Georgia. The airplane was temporarily displayed at the Louisiana World Exhibition from May to November 1984 and then was again temporarily relocated during 1997 at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport for their 50th Anniversary celebration. It then returned to Delta's Museum in Atlanta before finally being returned to NASM for display at the Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles Airport in Chantilly, Virginia. | <urn:uuid:770938db-aad0-47b4-81bd-a1ad3f9cc7fa> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://airandspace.si.edu/collections/artifact.cfm?id=A19680235000&active=A19680235000&file=A19680235000cp14.JPG&name=Huff-Daland%20Duster | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397636.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00150-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965248 | 1,391 | 3.203125 | 3 |
ALEX Learning Assets
Title: SUMmarize It
Digital Tool: Summarizing-YouTube Video
Digital Tool Description: The video will be used to introduce summarizing a text to students. The video will combine music, text, and images to engage the students and enhance the learning standard.
Title: Illustrating Favorite Events with Doodle Splash
Digital Tool: Doodle Splash
Digital Tool Description: Doodle Splash teaches students to visualize what they are reading and to create graphic symbols to help them develop as readers. Doodle Splash interactive allows students to make connections between their visual designs and the text. (Description provided by Doodle Splash) | <urn:uuid:78b1dd0f-2ce6-4a97-9b56-5797041b8166> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://alex.state.al.us/learningassets2.php?std_id=55095 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397636.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00150-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.823179 | 126 | 2.734375 | 3 |
A. Case study
A. Case study
A 2-year-old boy was referred because of lactose intolerance. Even though the patient was referred with a specific diagnosis, the same detailed clinical history as is done at any first consultation was taken. This included anthropometry, a medical history and a dietary history, including recent dietary changes and ensuring dietary adequacy. The patient's mother was also questioned about her son's bowel patterns (including recent changes, consistency and frequency), as well as all the symptoms experienced. The patient presented with chronic diarrhoea and flatulence.
Because lactose intolerance fitted into the picture, a lactose-free diet was introduced, as requested by the doctor. But the diarrhoea did not subside. On the follow-up visit, it was established that the diet was followed strictly at home as well as at the playschool, which the patient had started attending the previous week. It was noted that the symptoms were now more severe over weekends than during the week.
Could this be a food allergy? No immediate reactions to food were experienced, so it was unlikely, but delayed reactions to food should always be considered as a possibility. Tests for allergy were done, but were negative. (This topic will be discussed further in a future newsletter.) The presence of flatulence in addition to diarrhoea indicated that intolerance was a more likely cause.
The mother was asked to complete a food-and-symptom diary while her son still followed the lactose-free diet. At the next visit the diary was scrutinised, and there appeared to be a difference between the amount of fruit juice (mostly apple juice) intake at the playschool and at home. The mother saw fruit juice as a healthy and convenient beverage to offer her son whenever he asked for something to drink. Because apple juice is sweet-tasting, her son liked it. A win-win situation?
What do we know about allergies and fruit juice? Most commercially available fruit juices are manufactured with aseptic heat packaging, a process through which most allergens will be denaturated, except for lipid transfer protein, which occur in apples and other fruit. Thus, an allergy is unlikely. What about intolerance? Apple juice has one of the highest fructose contents among fruit juices and can cause gastro-intestinal (GI) symptoms such as flatulence and diarrhoea, especially in young children, due to malabsorption of fructose. Malabsorption has been found in children with intakes of as little as 15ml fruit juice/kg body weight. So, a case of fructose intolerance?
When fructose was excluded from the diet and lactose reintroduced, the diarrhoea disappeared immediately. Fructose intolerance was diagnosed, and it was then left up to the mother to determine what level of fructose (in diluted form) her son could tolerate.
B. Diagnostic testing
Pathophysiologic causes of acute diarrhoea (e.g., Giardia lamblia infection, antibiotic use) are different from those of chronic diarrhoea (e.g., lactose or fructose intolerance).3 Before embarking on expensive and time-consuming evaluations, a thorough diet history and brief restriction of fruit juice intake may be warranted.4
If tolerated, juices with equivalent
fructose-glucose concentrations and low sorbitol concentrations
or no sorbitol may be a good substitute for juices containing
sorbitol and high concentrations of fructose along with low concentrations
of glucose (see below).7 Juices,
because of the relatively high sugar/volume load, are best introduced
after a reasonable fruit intake has been established. Because
fruit intake is reduced with such a diet, vitamin supplementation
might be necessary.
If tolerated, juices with equivalent fructose-glucose concentrations and low sorbitol concentrations or no sorbitol may be a good substitute for juices containing sorbitol and high concentrations of fructose along with low concentrations of glucose (see below).7 Juices, because of the relatively high sugar/volume load, are best introduced after a reasonable fruit intake has been established. Because fruit intake is reduced with such a diet, vitamin supplementation might be necessary.
D. More information
This type of fructose intolerance is not to be confused with hereditary fructose intolerance (dicussed below).
How is fructose (mal)absorbed?
It should be noted, however, that a study has shown that freshly pressed and unprocessed ("cloudy") apple juice did not influence stool frequency and consistency, compared with normal, enzymatically processed ("clear") apple juice, which significantly promoted diarrhoea. It was suggested that, in addition to fructose, the increased availability of non-absorbable monosaccharides and oligosaccharides as a result of the enzymatic processing of apple pulp is an important aetiological factor in apple juice-induced chronic non-specific diarrhoea (see below).10 It should be noted that not all countries use this method of processing fruit juice.
It can therefore be said that a combination of high fructose intake, a high ratio of fructose to glucose, and an individual's relative inability to absorb fructose all contribute to incomplete absorption and loose stools.1
Sorbitol is a sugar alcohol that also naturally occurs in fruits (and is added to other foods, but not to fruit juice, during commercial processing). Sorbitol is absorbed via passive diffusion at slow rates, resulting in much of the ingested sorbitol being unabsorbed. This is a further possible cause of loose stools, although the quantity of sorbitol in fruits is generally less than that of fructose. 1,6,11
It has also been shown that chilled fluids stimulate colonic propulsion and the urge to defecate. This may play a role in diarrhoea, as fruit juice is usually given chilled.4
Other GI symptoms may be
In infants, the main clinical feature of intolerance is the passage of watery stools with an acidic pH, often passed with flatus. Volume is variable and roughly proportional to the amount of malabsorbed carbohydrate that has been ingested.13 The intestinal transit in young infants is rapid in any case. Watery stools can thus be passed very frequently. Undigested or unabsorbed sugars, because of their osmotic effect, attract water into the intestine, where they are dissolved into a fluid that distends the gut wall. Increased peristalsis causes the passage of frequent fluid stools. This can quickly cause dehydration and metabolic acidosis. In older children and adults, the capacity to salvage carbohydrates from the large intestine is better developed. Adults with intolerance are thus more likely to complain of abdominal discomfort, borborygmi (rumblings) and flatulence and possibly less likely to have acute, watery diarrhoea.6
Non-GIT effects related
to fructose intolerance:
In isolated studies, fructose malabsorption has been associated with early signs of mental depression and low serum tryptophan concentration. Following a fructose- and sorbitol-reduced diet has been shown to improve mood and early signs of depression.15
It has been suggested that increases in crying and fussing duration may be an important clinical indicator of carbohydrate malabsorption in infants and that infant colic may be a important factor affecting carbohydrate malabsorption from fruit juices containing sorbitol and a high fructose-to-glucose ratio.16
Other dietary causes of
*Although high fat intake is sometimes implicated as a cause or aggravation of diarrhoea, low fat intake has also been implicated; the suspected mechanism being associated with fat's role in gastric emptying and alteration in intestinal motility (mouth-to-anus transit time).18
# For more information: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Omim/dispmim?222700
What level of fructose is
In another study, fructose absorption was studied by the breath hydrogen test in 114 healthy children aged 0.1-6 years. These were given either 2 g/kg or 1 g/kg of fructose. All 57 children given 2 g/kg had peak breath hydrogen excretions > or = 20 ppm. At 1 g/kg, only 25/57 (44%) showed incomplete absorption. The percentage incompletely absorbing fructose and the peak breath hydrogen value were significantly higher in children aged 1-3 years. Interestingly, this age distribution correlates with that of toddlers' diarrhoea.22 | <urn:uuid:d27fc5d3-a499-4475-8db0-e84bf49ebc45> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://allergyadvisor.com/educational/sept2002.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397636.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00150-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953959 | 1,743 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Physics and computer games have a long, beautiful friendship, starting with Spacewar! in 1962, its play based on spacecraft maneuvering in the gravitational field of a star. Many modern games have extensive physics engines to create realistic play. (Your mileage may vary in terms of "realism"—I'm looking at you, entire Mario franchise!) For an explicit merging of realistic physics and classic arcade game play, it's hard to beat Plasma Pong, Steve Taylor's 2007 browser-based game that was named by Wired as one of the best independent titles.
Plasma Pong, alas, suffered an early death via a cease-and-desist from Atari, which owns the PONG™ trademark. However, Australian developer Anirudh Joshi revamped the title and changed its name to Fluid Ping-Pong, giving it an HTML5 flourish along the way. While PONG™ had very simple physics—just a ball bouncing back and forth, with no need to model forces—Fluid Ping-Pong uses a real-time fluid dynamics engine, with code and concepts from Jos Stam, Oliver Hunt, and RJ Marsan. The extra dynamics are evident from the name: the ball moves in a somewhat viscous fluid. In addition to moving the paddles PONG™-style, players can send jets into the ambient fluid, or "suck" the fluid back.
Because the gameplay is based on real fluid dynamics, the motion of the ball can be unpredictable, at least on the level of human reaction times. Having two players (one AI in my case—I haven't tested the two-player mode) means there could be two competing streams of fluid colliding, with turbulence at the boundary. While it's realistic and based on modeling of the fluids using the Navier-Stokes equation, anyone who has used a ping-pong gun knows how erratically the ball can move even in fairly still air.
I found the gameplay fun but frustrating, worth more than a few minutes of enjoyably wasted time. More interesting to me is the intersection between the real science of fluid dynamics and video games—and why a realistic mix may not always be desirable. | <urn:uuid:c49c190a-28de-448d-8c53-1415cafc1c60> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/09/pong-gets-a-physics-boost-by-way-of-html5/?comments=1&post=23280688 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397636.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00150-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949498 | 447 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History
(INAH - Conaculta) found, at the peak of Pyramid of the Sun, the biggest Huehueteotl (Old God or God of Fire) sculpture in Teotihuacan, Estado de Mexico; they also found two complete green stone stelae and a fragment of another one, which must have decorated the temple that crowned this construction 1,500 years ago.
Archaeologist Alejandro Sarabia whom, together with his colleague, PhD Saburo Sagiyuma from the Provincial University of Aichi (Japan), has been developing since 2005 the Pyramid of the Sun Project, informed that the pieces where found inside a well that possibly dates back to the end of the V century or the beginning of the VI century of our era.
The temple, which existed at the peak of the pyramid, was destroyed by Teotihuacans people during this period, but some architectonic elements much like the stelae where left in place. Sarabia and his team consider that the well was excavated in pre Hispanic times in order to recover the main offering of the construction. This was an act that demystified the construction; also, ancient Teotihuacans spread the main offering in other public buildings of the ancient city.
Archaeologist Nelly Zoe Nuñez Rendon, another investigator of the Pyramid of the Sun Project, who is responsible for the excavations at the top of the construction, said that the excavations initial objective was to locate the last movement of the bodies.
This spectacular discovery, together with the 1906 finding of a brazier and various sculptural symbols from the sacred ceremony of New Fire above the semi platform, could indicate that the Pyramid of the Sun was a scenario for cults dedicated to fire and the end of calendar cycles.
All the stelea are smooth. The first one 2.56 meters [8.38 feet] long and 955 kilos [2105.41 pounds] (the biggest green stone monolith of the 20 that have been registered in Teotiuacan), was found 4.30 meters deep; the second one 1.40 meters [4.59 feet] long and 300 kilos [661.3 pounds], was discovered in the first week of last December, close to the end of the 2012 season of exploration.
Said season of archaeological exploration, carried out from June to December 2012, was performed in order to clear doubts about the construction system and the actual date of the great pyramid which measures 214.6 meters [704.06 feet], 215.2 meters [706.03 feet], 215.7 meters [707.67 feet] and 210.5 meters [690.61 feet] at the base in the north, east, south and west sides respectively.
Its worth mentioning that between 2008 and 2010, using a 116 meters [380.57 feet] long tunnel excavated between 1919 and 1931, INAH investigators located, with strategic wells, three previous structures to the Pyramid of the Sun, and two rich material deposits, one of these being the consecration offering of the building that dates back to the end of the I century of the beginning of the II.
In this space detailed archaeologist Alejandro Sarabia they registered over 200 thousand materials: shells, snail shells, slate (the biggest ones in Teotihuacan) and pyrite discs, eleven Tlaloc pots, a green stone mask, 40 gray obsidian objects (projectile tips, knives and anthropomorphic figurines), the osseous remains of a jaguar, a dog and an eagle. Basically, this was what a dedication offering was composed of.
The 2012 season of the project was also focused on other spaces of the pyramid, such as its base, close to the northeastern corner, to define the place of contact between the construction plaza and the wall that surrounds the building. Also, they excavated two small stairs from the first body, the point of this being to find evidence of the original decoration, which they did, in the form of a sculpture, remains of a slope and its original board, all of which came from the V century of our era. | <urn:uuid:eccbf95e-58ec-4104-92d0-b4ae5010b903> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://artdaily.com/news/60734/Archaeologists-find-large-sculpture-of-Huehuet-otl--God-of-Fire--atop-the-Pyramid-of-the-Sun | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397636.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00150-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9568 | 865 | 2.953125 | 3 |
It’s a beautiful thing when two completely different celestial objects pair up. Seen side by side, we can appreciate the unique qualities of each by contrast with the other. Two fine examples stand out this week.
Comet Lemmon, which has been chugging across the sky for months, pulled up alongside the rich star cluster NGC 7789 this week. The cluster is sandbox of pinpoint stars tucked off to one side of the W of Cassiopeia. I’ve been watching the scene the past two nights through the telescope. Last night both comet and cluster shared the same field of view.
Compared to the pointillistic stellar swarm, the comet looked ghostly and ethereal. And to think that one of these belongs to our solar system and the other resides on the far edge of the galaxy at a whopping 7,600 light years from Earth … well, it simply jazzes the brain cells. What can I say?
Then there’s composition to consider. Comets and the sun are made of virtually the same materials – hydrogen (frozen H2O in a comet’s case) and a dusting of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, silicon and on and on. Yet comets are cold, relatively uncompressed dust. Not the sun. Put enough dust in one place and gravity will eventually crush it into a sphere hot enough to start its innards burning. A star is born. Interstellar dust left by earlier stellar generations is their common bond.
Tomorrow morning we’ll see another auspicious duo. The waning lunar crescent rises at dawn below the Seven Sisters star cluster. Also known as the Pleiades (PLEE-uh-deez), the dipper-shaped group is more closely associated with the winter sky than the summer. In July it re-emerges during morning twilight, stalks the wee hours in August and looks down on earthlings from overhead on December evenings.
You can watch both moon and sisters with the naked eye, but binoculars will enhance the view. Next to the cluster, will the tweezers moon look closer to home than ever before? Take a look and see what you think. | <urn:uuid:16c9630d-fa23-4583-8f6d-4d4261457d08> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://astrobob.areavoices.com/2013/07/03/delicious-comet-lemmon-cluster-pairing-moon-greets-7-sisters-at-dawn/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397636.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00150-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933293 | 446 | 3.1875 | 3 |
One of the ways that we attempt to deal with this difference is by using functioning labels, as in that person is high-functioning or low-functioning. Some people object to this use of labels but in general, it helps to give you an idea of what type of autism we are talking about. I find it helps to remember that a person is not limited to being the label but rather is capable of functioning better (or worse) depending on the exact situation that we are talking about.
The important thing is that people who are high-functioning are very different from ones who are low-functioning and need very different things.
It is my opinion that there are more children at the lower functioning side than the higher functioning side, and data from the CDC seems to bear this out. According to the CDC, approximately 41% of children with autism have an IQ less than 70 which means that 41% of children with autism have an intellectual disability in addition to autism. Also according to the CDC, about 40% of children with autism do not talk at all. There are other statistics available from a variety of sources, but as they are equally depressing, I am not going to point them out. In general, children with an intellectual disability or who can't talk would be considered lower-functioning.
On the flip side you have adults with autism who are just slightly socially quirky and like to claim that autism gives them special intellectual gifts. They also like to diagnosis important historical figures with autism and pretend it was their autism that made them important. Or they like to serve on governmental committees and pontificate about what people with autism need.
To give a more concrete example, below is the difference between low and high functioning.
From Astroturf, I mean "The Thinking Person's Guide to Autism" where "informed decisions are made with love", we have an adult talking about his Aspergers -
When I was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome in 2003 at the age of 25, I had already pretty much given up hope of ever finding and getting a job that was right for me. All I had to show for my job skills was a high school diploma with a lousy grade average, and a few exams which I barely passed when I tried studying to become a school teacher and when I tried getting a bachelor degree in English at the university, neither of which I finished.You can read the rest at the link above. It is pretty standard stuff from someone who didn't find out until they had a form of autism until later in life and whose main issues are social.
On the other side, we have this piece from the Center for Autism & Related Disorders (CARD), that talks about attempting to teach children how to deal with an unknown question -
In a recent study, Ingvarsson and Hollobaugh effectively taught four children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) to use the phrase “I don’t know, please tell me” in response to unknown questions. ...
Two of the participants quickly learned the verbal response and were able to generalize the response across various questions. The other two participants required implementation of individualized behavioral techniques in order to learn and generalize the response.You are reading it right, there are children with autism who don't know what to do when asked an unknown question and have to be taught (and those are the ones that can talk). Some researchers have figured out a way to teach children who would otherwise have no response to an unknown question what to do. If you are unfamiliar with ABA and how it is used to teach children with autism, let me just say that this is a little bit of a feat.
The thing that jumps out at me is the difference between these two scenarios. One one hand, we have someone who was able to function well enough to graduate high school and make an attempt at college but needed assistance finding and holding a job (which is, sadly, a common problem for a lot of high school graduates in this country). But on the other hand we have children who don't know how to respond to a simple question and need to be taught a canned response.
Both would have autism but both are extremely different from each other.
And yet, one of these groups feels the need to speak on the behalf of the other and say what they do and don't need. One of these groups feels they have the right to challenge what parents are attempting to do to help their children.
So the next time you read something about autism, just remember - we aren't all talking about the same autism. Your form of autism and what you need might be quite different than what my children need. | <urn:uuid:5de65e72-90bf-4a7e-bd9d-b457a8bf7c22> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://autismjabberwocky.blogspot.com/2010/07/autism-spectrum-dichotomy.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397636.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00150-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981291 | 954 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Using molecular modeling and large-scale molecular dynamic simulation, Beckman researchers have constructed an atomic model of an immature retrovirus.
The researchers from the Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group published their work in the journal Structure. (Free access until September 23 with this link)
Retroviruses, such as HIV, are tricky to treat. They go through a multistage process to produce infectious particles. The viruses that are released from infected cells are initially in an immature state and are composed of an RNA genome surrounded by a coat of protein. Upon their release, the viruses undergo a maturation process that rearranges the viral proteins and activates the conversion of the RNA genome into DNA through a process called reverse transcription. The viral DNA then invades the host cell’s genome. The infected cell is programmed to release multiple copies of the immature virus into the host’s bloodstream. These newly released viruses must in turn mature before they can infect other cells.
Not only do retroviruses cause life-long infections, but also in the complex process of reverse-transcribing RNA into DNA, many mutations can occur, making the retrovirus even more difficult to target.
One strategy for preventing the spread of a retrovirus is to lock the viral particles in their immature, non-infectious state. Unfortunately, the complexity and size of the viral particle―an irregular and incomplete hexagonal shell of close to 100 nanometers in size―have prevented the experimental determination of the atomic-level structure of the particle.
A number of studies have examined the structure of the Rous sarcoma virus (RSV), which affects birds and provides a good model for other retroviruses, but none have been able to provide a high-resolution look at the immature stage of the virus.
Over a period of two years, researchers have been performing calculations and simulations in order to reveal the structural features of the virus. With the help of the Titan supercomputer at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility in Tennessee and the Blue Waters supercomputer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at Illinois, the researchers were the first to provide the atomic-level structural model of the immature retroviral lattice of RSV. A five-microsecond simulation describing the motion of half a million atoms involves a hefty calculation that took five days using 30 percent of the Titan supercomputer, more than 5,000 computing nodes—each node is equivalent to a high-end workstation.
“We have had a pretty good understanding of the mature infectious particle at a level where we can make specific predictions about the local chemical interactions between the protein subunits in the virus,” said Rebecca Craven, professor of microbiology and immunology and at Penn State University and one of the study’s authors. “But the field was really lacking similar high-resolution knowledge about the immature virus. This new model is the first to give us an atomic-level look at the immature state. With that knowledge we can try to understand the precise molecular mechanisms of virus maturation and help to elucidate how drugs can be designed to interfere with that.”
According to Boon Chong Goh, a graduate student in physics at Illinois and lead author on the study, a six-helix bundle domain located on the inside surface of the immature protein shell could be a key to understanding and blocking the virus.
“Recent advances in cryo-electron tomography allow us to model the majority of the immature retroviral lattice, except the six-helix bundle domain,” said Goh. “Experimentalists do not have a clear view of that domain because of its high flexibility. And that’s where we come in. Using advanced computational techniques and supercomputers, we modeled and refined an all-atom model of the six-helix bundle.
The researchers believe that the six-helix bundle is amphipathic, a chemical property that possesses an affinity for both water and fat, and that it is enclosed by a ring of salt bridges, contributing to the stability of the bundle.
“HIV is a close relative to RSV, and HIV is also known to have this domain, which has been a drug target for years. A drug named Bevirimat (BVM) was developed to target the six-helix bundle of immature HIV, but it did not pass the clinical trials,” said Goh.
“The experience with BVM did show that inhibitors that target the six helix bundle domain can be very powerful HIV anti-retroviral drugs by preventing virus maturation,” said Craven.
“The main idea is that you have two forms of the virus: the immature and the mature,” said Juan Perilla, postdoctoral researcher and co-first author of the study. “The immature is not infectious, so the idea is that ultimately you want to prevent it from becoming the mature form. The problem is that BVM targets the six-helix bundle domain, but no one really knows the structure of the immature lattice in HIV. There are a few models, but they are not high resolution, so we decided to work in this direction and we picked RSV because it’s a good model to study the virus. Our next step is to go to HIV.”
“This result is an example of where computational methodology is really complementing medical lab experiments,” said Klaus Schulten, director of the TCBG and professor of physics.
According to Schulten, computational experiments can help provide solutions to complex problems in the laboratory.
“The living world is made of molecules and you need to know this world. Sometimes you just do it through trial and error in a chemical research lab and you see that a newly designed drug molecule has a certain effect that often you only understand later. But then there is, of course, a more systematic way of resolving the molecular world, namely the computational way taken in our RSV study, and one can derive medical treatments from the knowledge reached computationally,” Schulten explained. “This will be done more and more often.”
The group has already begun the process of studying the immature HIV virus on the Blue Waters supercomputer located at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at Illinois. | <urn:uuid:b5021b58-83b7-4866-aa04-cb1331a9a555> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://beckman.illinois.edu/news/2015/08/immature-retrovirus-structure | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397636.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00150-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943127 | 1,313 | 3.515625 | 4 |
Learning About Taste to Make Us Healthier
Obesity is one of the biggest health problems facing this nation. Since taste is a major determinant of whether we eat something or not, the study of taste is crucial to understanding what people choose to eat and why. What Professor Patricia Di Lorenzo is learning from taste studies can lead to a change in people’s eating habits.
In a Binghamton University laboratory, behavioral neuroscience professor Patricia Di Lorenzo has taken a first step toward understanding how we make decisions about food by studying how the brain encodes information about taste.
Her research focuses on how nerve cells in the brainstem convey information about what tastes are present on the tongue. These cells receive information directly from the nerves that stimulate taste buds and represent the earliest stage of central processing of taste information.
To understand these cells, Di Lorenzo pursues two related research strategies.
The first records and analyzes neuronal responses to taste stimuli bathed over the tongue. The second plays these recorded responses back to the brainstem.
From her experiments, she has found that individual neurons in the brainstem can discriminate among different taste qualities (sweet, sour, salty and bitter) by using spike timing, known as temporal coding. Much like a Morse code communicates the alphabet, temporal coding works when taste nerves send a certain number of electrical spikes in a certain pattern to the brainstem, where neurons interpret taste qualities based on that pattern.
Interestingly, when two taste stimuli evoke the same taste quality, such as two sugars or two salts, neurons use temporal coding to differentiate between them. And when mixtures of two taste qualities are presented, the resulting temporal code is a combination of the temporal codes for each of the components.
However, Di Lorenzo’s most intriguing finding is that when playing a recorded temporal spike pattern back to the brainstem, the brain will interpret the pattern of electrical pulses as having a taste. So, even though a subject might be licking water, the brain will perceive the taste of sugar, salt, sour or bitter.
This ability to influence the central processing of taste has major implications for how we treat common diseases like obesity, diabetes, bulimia and anorexia. | <urn:uuid:ddc893a0-1ba5-4993-a6d2-9d35c5b866bc> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://binghamton.edu/psychology/features/dilorenzo.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397636.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00150-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902316 | 444 | 3.734375 | 4 |
Subsets and Splits
No saved queries yet
Save your SQL queries to embed, download, and access them later. Queries will appear here once saved.