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Every time I make fajitas, I cut into bell and chili peppers and notice how hollow they are. I always think to myself: what is the gas inside this pepper, and how does it get there?
Perhaps Capsicum peppers are porous. I did a little kitchen experiment to try to find out. (I'm afraid I don't know much about biology, so this "experiment" is likely to be flawed in at least one basic way, but I figured I should at least try to figure it out myself before asking.) Here's what I did:
I filled a small container with water and submerged an uncut Anaheim pepper. It was quite buoyant! I put the lid on the container so it would stay submerged. It didn't seem to become any less buoyant, and its interior didn't seem to fill up with water. No bubbles emerged from the pepper, as least as far as I could tell.
So air doesn't seem to easily pass in or out of the pepper. And of course they don't grow around air, so how does the gas get in?
Here are my guesses:
- The fruit is porous to air, but the holes are small enough that, in my experiment, they were sealed by the surface tension of the water.
- The fully isn't porous to air when fully grown, but it is porous to air while it's still developing.
- The fruit does some amount of photosynthesis, and the air is waste oxygen. | <urn:uuid:b7eb9fbe-ee20-411d-a6bb-eea815c06d6c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/7728/what-is-the-gas-inside-a-capsicum-pepper-and-how-does-it-get-there | 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 | 0.988026 | 304 | 3.328125 | 3 |
What are the ethical implications of using live animals in art?
In 1974, Joseph Beuys caged himself with a live coyote for a performance piece called I Like America and America Likes Me. The artist spent a week living with the coyote, eventually learning how to co-exist with the animal. His intention was to highlight the strained relationship between the coyote and European settlers in America, and its representation of the damage done to the continent and native cultures.
In 1993, Damien Hirst presented In and Out of Love, filling a gallery with hundreds of live tropical butterflies hatching from white canvases, feeding on sugar syrup, mating, laying eggs and dying, to illustrate the brevity of life and the inevitability of death. Years later, the artist had a tiger shark killed to be used in his work, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.
In 2003, the graffiti artist Banksy painted live animals from head to hoof in an exhibit called Turf War, causing an animal activist to chain herself to railings surrounding a decorated cow, despite the animal’s conditions being approved by the RSPCA (The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals).
In 2007, artistic freedom and expression was challenged in an exhibition by artist Huang Yong Ping, entitled Theatre of the World at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Lizards, scorpions, tarantulas, and insects were exhibited in conditions deemed improper for the animals by the SPCA, an organization whose mission is to advance the well-being of animals. The artist decided to remove the animals from the exhibit in protest, in order to maintain the integrity of the artwork.
As much as these works outraged animal rights activists, perhaps no other exhibition has caused as much controversy over the ethical use of live animals in art as Exposición No.1. A show of work by Guillermo Vargas, a Costa Rican artist also known as “Habacuc,” took place on August 16, 2007 at Galería Códice in Managua, Nicaragua. Written in dog food on a gallery wall was the statement, “Eres lo que lees,” meaning, “You are what you read.” The center of attention was a sickly-looking street dog tied to a metal cable bolted to the wall with a short rope. The animal was supposedly captured in the alleys of Managua by some children who were paid by the artist. According to hundreds of blogs and news articles circulating on the Internet, the artist intended for the dog to starve to death during the course of the exhibition. Vargas intended to raise awareness of the public’s hypocrisy by comparing what happened to this dog to a burglar named Natividad Canda Mayrena, who was mauled to death by two rottweilers in Costa Rica while the police and onlookers watched.
The outrage that ensued over the Internet and via mass media outlets culminated in a petition that was signed by over four million people worldwide, calling for the artist to be boycotted from the Central American Biennial Honduras 2008 and for criminal charges to be filed against him. Filled with outrage, I signed the petition as well. Later I read that Vargas also signed the petition, claiming that an artist always signs his work. This seemed curious to me, so I decided to investigate the facts behind the exhibition and was surprised by what I learned.
It helped that I could read in Spanish, as I soon discovered that not one blog or news source that covered the exhibition could confirm whether the dog actually died. The outlets were getting their information from the same source, a blog published by a friend of the artist, called “El Perrito Vive,”or “The Dog Lives.”
Throughout my research, it became clear that this work was part of an Internet art project. Exposición No 1 is one component of a larger work of art called Eres lo que lees, which employs misinformation and manipulates mass media via the Internet. One of the aims of this project was to demonstrate the hypocrisy in real world and art world ethics. Take a dog off the streets and put it into a gallery and it becomes an ethical phenomenon, while stray dogs and most real human suffering are ignored or given minimal attention.
Another purpose was to incite a reaction, making the spectator, like the dog, an unwilling participant in the work. This illustrates how easily we can be manipulated into believing what news outlets want us to. The title, “You Are What You Read,” illustrates this point very well. If one artist can manipulate over four million people around the world, imagine the ability that governments, corporations, and religious entities have to do the same.
According to the gallery owner, the dog was in the gallery for nine hours a week, and was well-fed with dog food supplied by Habacuc. One night after being fed by the night watchmen, the dog escaped by passing through the iron gate at the main entrance. In an interview, the artist clearly states that the dog died in the artwork, but he never said that the dog died in real life. Ambiguity was his intention.
The use of live animals in art has raised many ethical questions regarding what art is and what art should be. Should live animals be used as art objects at all? An art object may have aesthetic value regardless of whether it is ethical or not, but an artist should be held accountable if it can be proved that his or her actions deliberately caused inhumane suffering. Through the image of a starving dog, Guillermo Vargas’s artwork Eres lo que lees opens our minds to the hypocrisy of real world and art world ethics, and the lack of attention given to both human and animal suffering.David Yanez an Ecuadorian-born artist who lives and works in New York City, NY. | <urn:uuid:f7ad4715-1088-445c-aaa6-855bc7584f83> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blog.art21.org/2010/03/04/you-are-what-you-read/comment-page-1/ | 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 | 0.971268 | 1,219 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Modified Food Starch is made by physically, enzymatically or chemically altering starch to change its inherent properties. In this instance, modified does not necessarily mean genetically modified, however some modified starches are likely made from genetically modified ingredients. Modified starches are typically used in foods for the same reasons as conventional starches—thickening, stabilizing or emulsifying. Some of the properties gained by changing the original starch can include the ability to stand different temperatures (excessive heat, freezing, etc), increase the shelf life of the desired property (for example, it will keep thickening the sauce for a longer time than its conventional counterpart), alter their thickening ability and shorten the thickening time (for example a modified starch may thicken a sauce much faster than its conventional counterpart).
The most common types of modified food starch are made from corn, wheat, potato and tapioca. Typically labels will list the source from which the starch was modified as Modified Corn Starch, however unless it is derived from one of the top eight allergens (in this case wheat), it is not required by law to be listed this way. Most modified starches are gluten free, except for those that use wheat starch as a base. There is some controversy about whether modified wheat starch really does contain gluten, however. Our opinion? Why risk it?
Modified starches are often used in foods that promote themselves as “instant” and in foods that might need a certain temperature to thicken (during cooking or freezing). Think of gravy packets, instant puddings, and those meals that come in a box and require a minimum amount of cooking or simply need boiling water. These days you can find modified starch in almost every processed food. Check the ingredient lists- it’s there.
We hope this helps clear up a little label confusion for you. If you have any more label mysteries that you’d like us to solve, tell us in the comments. | <urn:uuid:e68e94c0-0de4-4449-b99d-4d70d7519952> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blog.bobsredmill.com/featured-articles/modified-food-starch-demystified/?pfstyle=wp | 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 | 0.95839 | 403 | 3.53125 | 4 |
This premise may seem logical and reasonable. The day anyone decides to have a child they give up the right to be a bad example. As a matter of fact, my opinion is that the day you start down the road to parenthood you relinquish all rights to selfishness and generally bad behavior. This includes how you take care of yourself.
The axiom of “Do as I say, not as I do”, never works. If you smoke cigarettes, there is a greater chance that you will raise a smoker. If you drink to excess, do not be surprised if your child develops problems with alcohol as well. Finally, if you fail to pay attention to your health, weight and nutrition you will probably have children that follow in your footsteps. Our responsibilities in this area are not limited to the days following the birth of our children, however.
A recent study determined that exposing human embryos to high levels of saturated fat can actually harm the development of a child in utero. The study went on to suggest that women should strive to achieve a healthy weight prior to having children. The study focused on embryos from cattle but the implications from the study appeared to translate to human eggs as well. Eggs exposed to high levels of fatty acids had fewer cells, altered genes and altered metabolic activity. The scientists also believed the study provided some insight as to why obese women may have trouble conceiving in the first place.
Obese and overweight women have a tendency to metabolize more of the fat they store. The fatty acids that are subsequently stored in the ovaries have been shown to be toxic to eggs. Therefore, just like drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes during pregnancy can have serious health implications to an unborn child, being severely overweight and failing to eat properly can likewise produce adverse effects.
A child doesn’t get a vote on who their parents will be. They don’t get to choose the body in which they are conceived. Therefore, the responsibility falls on the parent to do right by their children and make good choices, not only for their own health, but for the health of their children now and into the future. | <urn:uuid:14e9ff2a-081a-42e8-9760-9c3c83abdd4f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blog.cleansebenefits.com/?cat=240 | 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 | 0.969063 | 432 | 2.59375 | 3 |
A person who walks an extra 3 flights of stairs every day starting when they are age 25 burns the equivalent of over 40 pounds of body fat by the time they are age 65.
Here’s the math:
3 flights of stairs = 10 calories burned (average person). This is also about 3/10 a mile for the average person. Note: Factors vary based on body weight and speed of movement.
So, the average person would burn an extra 10 calories every day, 365 days per year which is a total of 3650 extra calories per year; 146,000 extra calories over a course of 40 years.
There are 3500 calories in one pound of body fat. 146,000 calories / 3500 calories per 1 pound of body fat = 41.70 pounds of fat!
What can you do to burn an extra 10 calories every day? | <urn:uuid:ece2475a-69d5-4964-910b-a25e5162d595> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blog.ideafit.com/blogs/jonathan-glick/ihfa-quick-tip-three-extra-flights-of-stairs-each-day | 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 | 0.89038 | 176 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Now is a great time to develop better habits for your canine companion.
Just like in humans, obesity is rampant in America’s pet population. When dogs
carry too much weight they place an extra strain on all their organs, and they
can be at an increased risk for diabetes, arthritis, high blood pressure and
pancreatitis. Unsurprisingly, excess weight gain can interfere with a pet’s
quality of life and actually shorten their life span.
Fortunately, dogs respond very well to simple weight-loss programs. By
increasing your pet’s exercise and reducing the amount of calories he or she
eats, you can help reduce your pet’s weight and the risk of health problems
associated with obesity.
But how do you determine whether or not your dog is overweight? And, if your
dog is overweight, what can you do about it? In this short video, Dr. Sarah
shows you how to learn if your dog is carrying too much weight, and gives advice
on how to help your dog shed unwanted pounds. | <urn:uuid:257defd3-ebb7-4783-8050-2bef7c66a5a6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blog.lifesabundance.com/?tag=/obesity&realname=20018585 | 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 | 0.933902 | 221 | 2.703125 | 3 |
In our last post, we talked about the dangers of aversive training – how our dogs might learn something other than what we are trying to teach.
We can run into the same problem with snake avoidance training:
The trainer takes the dog towards snake, then shocks the dog (well I don’t know how exactly it’s done, I can’t bring myself to watch the videos).
How do we know that this teaches the dog to avoid rattlesnakes? Maybe this works or:
– The dog might learn to be afraid of anyone who looks like the person who makes the shock
– The dog might learn to be afraid of the cage that the snake was in (if the snake was in a cage)
– The dog might learn to only be afraid of indoor snakes
– The dog might learn to only be afraid of the particular snake in the training class and not all snakes
– The dog might learn to be afraid of anything that sounds like a hissing or rattling snake
– The dog might become of afraid of tables or purses because one of those was nearby and visible while the dog was being shocked.
The list is endless
To read more about the dangers of snake avoidance training – click here
Email questions or comments to [email protected]
Replies might be shared on this blog but names will be changed or left out.
For more training tips, please see Puddin’s Training Tips
For more pet articles, check out SAPAWS
For info on public appearances (human only), see Pet Education | <urn:uuid:9b5e1e8c-2797-46db-8cd5-f80ba1127978> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blog.mysanantonio.com/latrenda/2013/04/snake-avoidance-training-part-iv/ | 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 | 0.946717 | 326 | 2.6875 | 3 |
By Terry Trucco
In observation of Earth Day (and Month), we pause for a quick pulse check on how New York City hotels are doing on the green front.
This month the city’s largest hotel, the 1,981-room New York Hilton, took a big stride towards energy efficiency. As befits a big hotel, the gesture is grand. On view is the hotel’s new green roof occupying 16,000 square feet atop a fifth floor setback. The garden, consisting of a vast array of sedum harvested at an upstate farm, isn’t open to guests. But it offers a glimpse of nature for hotel guests on the 53rd Street side of the building who happen to gaze down from their windows.
More important, the plants are on board to do what roots and foliage do naturally – absorb airborne pollutants, deflect solar radiation and reduce the thermal load. The predicted result: less carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere and less energy required to keep the building cool.
In addition, the hotel is installing a Cogeneration System, which should be running at full tilt this summer. The environmentally friendly system powered by natural gas will provide more than 50 percent of the hotel’s electrical power and more than 40 percent of steam for heating and hot water.
At 1,750 kW, Hilton’s Cogeneration system will be the largest at a New York City hotel, the
hotel says. The goal: to reduce the hotel’s carbon footprint by more than 30 percent, the equivalent of removing more than 6,000 mid-size cars from the road.
Though much of the progress towards energy efficiency is on view at newer hotels, where it is easier and less costly to implement changes from the ground up, older hotels, like the 49-year-old Hilton, are hardly in the dust.
At the 86-year-old Intercontinental New York Barclay, 100 percent of the energy comes from clean, renewable wind power. Last summer the hotel installed a lavish roof garden, complete with four beehives, to supply greens for the kitchen and cut back on the carbon dioxide released sent into the atmosphere.
And in Chelsea, the Desmond Tutu Center, a 60-room hotel housed in a landmarked 19th-century building uses a geothermal system to heat and cool the rooms.
Among newer properties, the three-year-old Crosby Street Hotel is at the top of the heap with greendom’s highest accolade, Gold LEED Certification for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. | <urn:uuid:1628040b-0847-4192-9d2e-e24308ad2812> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blog.overnightnewyork.com/going-greener-cultivating-a-green-roof-at-the-new-york-hilton/ | 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 | 0.920409 | 529 | 2.890625 | 3 |
By Hamish Johnston
Particle physics blogs are buzzing about an innocuous-looking bump in data taken by the CDF experiment at Fermilab in Chicago – and the possibility that it could be evidence for a new particle.
The unexplained signal was spotted in a study of W and Z boson pairs that are created when protons and antiprotons collide in Fermilab’s Tevatron collider. It appears at about 120–160 GeV /C2 in the distribution of jets that are produced in the collisions. The bump has a statistical significance of “three-sigma”, which means that there is a one in 370 chance that the bump is not real.
While that might sound convincing to you and me, particle physicists don’t accept a new result until it has been established at five-sigma – about one in two million chance of not being real. Another problem is that CDF’s sister experiment D0 doesn’t see the bump. Rumours are also circulating that ATLAS at CERN has not seen it.
But if the bump is real, what could it be?
Theoretical physicists are now hard at work trying to explain the bump, and at least one paper – with the intriguing title Technicolor at the Tevatron – has already been posted on the arXiv preprint server. No doubt many more will follow.
What are other physicists saying?
In his blog, Tommaso Dorigo sketches out three possible ways that the bump could be an artefact of how the experiment was done or the data were analyzed. But if the bump is real, he thinks that it could be evidence for a new particle – but not a Higgs boson.
Adam Falkowski seems to agree. “It is not a Higgs; anything Higgsish with 150 GeV mass would prefer decaying to a pair of W bosons rather than to two light jets,” he writes in his blog.
But what about a “non-standard Higgs”? Flip Tanedo explores that possibility in this blog entry.
The story has also captured the imagination of veteran science writer Dennis Overbye in an here. | <urn:uuid:d320bde0-f7ee-4cb6-9d4f-ff987ad263e9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blog.physicsworld.com/2011/04/07/has-new-physics-been-found-at/ | 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 | 0.968208 | 459 | 2.9375 | 3 |
From the desk
of Colleen Wilson,
Conservator at the
Royal BC Museum
Through human history, bones have found many uses. Bone meal has long been a staple slow-release fertilizer – ground skeletal material providing the necessary phosphorus for healthy plant growth. Bone china uses up to 50% bone ash to achieve its high levels of whiteness and translucency. Before the widespread availability of metals and, more recently plastics, bone provided a ready source of workable material more finely grained than wood and more resistant to moisture: bone needles, scrapers, combs, buttons, handles for cutlery and tools were created by our resourceful ancestors.
|Partially cleaned bone strut of a folding fan. |
The distinctive pattern of blood vessels is clear.
Conservator Lisa Bengston
recording the condition
of archaeological artifacts
Removed from its damp origin, relieved of its original purpose of holding flesh upright, bone is very susceptible to changes in humidity. Heat or dryness will cause artifacts made of bone to crack and split; once acclimatized, however, they will warp and split if they become wet. Light can raise the temperature as well as causing fading and deterioration. In the museum this means that light sources as well as illumination levels must be carefully chosen; exhibit cases are monitored, and in some instances, buffered with silica gel to maintain a constant level of humidity. To preserve bone artifacts at home, keep them out of direct sunlight and away from the heat of a fireplace or spotlight.
Like ivory, bone is very absorbent. Coloured storage materials can stain bone, as can sulphur containing substances like rubber and wool. Acid-free tissue is an ideal wrap and cushion; excessive acidity can harm the calcium carbonate of which bones are composed, and any fibrous material, including batting or fabric, can catch and tear rough or irregular surfaces. Oils absorbed from handling contribute to a tendency to yellow with age. After many years bone artifacts develop a natural yellowish-brown patina which should be preserved. Light dusting with a soft brush is the safest method of cleaning, though sometimes surface soil can be removed with a barely dampened swab.
My old bones are pretty fragile, but with the help of some stainless steel screws, will soon be as good as new (I am willing to let the patina take care of itself). The bone artifacts will receive much less invasive brass mounts; stainless steel is expensive and not so easily shaped and welded. Look for the new archaeology exhibit on the third floor. It will be ready this Spring and will include many carefully preserved examples of our ancestors’ ingenuity.
|A fractured olecranon is no laughing matter| | <urn:uuid:eeb48c35-6d4d-4343-9663-899ae14bdb2e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blog.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/2012/01/what-bones-know.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 | 0.942203 | 559 | 3.390625 | 3 |
In the 1950s, “too cheap to meter” was the tag line for then-nascent atomic energy. That promise, which Bill Gates now calls a “fantastic vaccine,” has thus far been more of an intractable virus.
Last week Mr. Gates revived the “nuclear is cheap” message to promote his TerraPower nuke startup venture. He also came off decidedly pessimistic about the world’s prospects for combating climate change.
The nuclear industry has long touted “cheap” alongside “clean” in its bid against renewable energy to supply electricity to a power-hungry world. It has also argued loudly against subsidies for renewables, and claimed that nuclear is the only way to slow global warming.
Gates has joined that chorus, stating that he’s skeptical that the world can dramatically cut greenhouse-gas emissions in less than 75 years, and suggesting that wind and solar subsidies should be conditional upon commercializing energy storage technologies first.
To make the “cheap and clean” argument, you have to ignore some significant externalities. A big problem with “cheap” nuclear power has been the cost — construction budget overruns, bailouts, storing spent rods, site clean-up, and human lives. The caveat with “clean” (low-carbon) nuclear power is its multigenerational legacy of radioactive waste.
The traveling wave reactor technology revealed in 2008 as the core of TerraPower’s development is a half-century-old breeder-reactor technology that could run on some of the waste stream from nuclear fuel production. A TWR has been computer-modeled, but never built.
If Gates and his TerraPower partner Nathan Myhrvold want to change the world with nuclear energy, they need to overcome several major issues, and quickly, before the widely imagined nuclear renaissance completely loses steam:
Developed nations, the ones the world is most comfortable with having radioactive materials, have for the most part stopped building nuclear power plants. Emerging nations, even if they can afford to experiment with this new technology, will need to handle the radioactive fuel and waste, including the eventual decommissioning of plants themselves. Convincing populations of a TWR plant’s safety will be a significant hurdle.
Even before Fukushima, John Rowe, chief executive of nuclear power heavyweight Exelon, said in a Politico interview that “except with massive subsidies, there’s really nothing one can do to make a whole lot of nuclear plants economic right now.” The company bought a major renewable energy firm and started moving into wind power.
See also: “Bill Gates: ‘Cheap energy is like a fantastic vaccine’” GeekWire, March 23, 2012 | <urn:uuid:c645e74c-ea7d-409b-ba68-80a6a9d0efea> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blog.seattlepi.com/energy/2012/03/26/nuclear-energy-like-a-fantastic-vaccine/ | 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 | 0.949734 | 578 | 2.5625 | 3 |
14 January 2016
This is part of a new series of posts that highlight the importance of Earth and space science data and its contributions to society. Posts in this series showcase data facilities and data scientists; explain how Earth and space science data is collected, managed and used; explore what this data tells us about the planet; and delve into the challenges and issues involved in managing and using data. This series is intended to demystify Earth and space science data, and share how this data shapes our understanding of the world.
By Rebecca Fowler
John Bates is Principal Scientist for Remote Sensing at the National Centers for Environmental Information of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service (NOAA/NESDIS). His research interests focus on the use of operational and research satellite data to study the global water cycle and studying interactions of the ocean and atmosphere. Bates is Chair of the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites-Coordination Group for Meteorological Satellites Joint Working Group on Climate and serves on the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Board of Directors.
Here Bates reflects on his experience with data management and how he became an advocate for Earth and space science data management activities.
As an observationalist who has worked with digital satellite data for 35 years, I’ve learned that data management isn’t optional; it’s essential to being successful in science.
My first experience with digital satellite data was through the Man computer Interactive Data Access System (McIDAS), which I was introduced to when I began graduate school at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1980. McIDAS was, and still is, a cutting edge blend of science-technology-data management. My experience with McIDAS put me on a career track where this principle and trifecta of innovation played a central role, and remain key to my getting science done.
Another key lesson in data management came from my postdoctoral work at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, where we had a satellite direct readout site. Commercial packages to process the direct readout data were expensive and did not process the satellite temperature and moisture vertical profile data. Fortunately, the satellite group under Professor Bill Smith at the University of Wisconsin-Madison had developed a processing package they freely distributed. This was decades before the term ‘freeware’ became popular and researchers using the package openly shared tips on using it. Thus, a second career-guiding principle on data management was forged; be open, generous, and transparent in the use of software and data.
These principles guided my career and led me to become a strong advocate for the AGU initiatives on data. I’m proud that in September 2014, the AGU Board of Directors approved two initiatives to help the Earth and space sciences community address the growing challenges accompanying the increasing size and complexity of data. These initiatives are: Data Science Credentialing, the development of a continuing education and professional certification program to help scientists in their careers and to meet growing responsibilities and requirements around data science.The second is the Data Management Maturity Model (DMM): the development and implementation of a data management maturity model to assess process maturity against best practices, and to identify opportunities in organizational data management processes. Each of these initiatives has been organized within AGU as an Editorial Board and both Boards held kick-off meetings in 2015.
What can you do to become a better data manager or data scientist? Become more informed about the needs for data management in peer-reviewed publications by studying and adopting the principles in the statement of commitment by the Coalition on Publishing Data in the Earth and Space Sciences (COPDESS). Work with colleagues on data-related issues and expand your horizons by joining the AGU Earth and Space Science Informatics (ESSI) focus group or the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP).
Finally, keep reading this blog and watch for an announcement from AGU later in 2016 on developing individual data science skills through continuing education and professional development, and improving organizational practices, through data management processes and COPDESS.
— Rebecca Fowler is a science communicator and the Director of Communications and Outreach at the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) | <urn:uuid:7e3aa0ce-b129-4451-b7ec-c63d1bbe73f8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blogs.agu.org/geospace/2016/01/14/data-management-isnt-optional-its-essential-to-being-successful/ | 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 | 0.924343 | 869 | 2.734375 | 3 |
If blogs could have mascots, the Loom’s would be the Emerald Cockroach Wasp (Ampulex compressa). Back in 2006, I first wrote about the grisly sophistication of this insect, which turns cockroaches into zombie hosts to be devoured by their offspring. Since then I’ve blogged from time to time about new research on this parasite’s parasite. Last year I sang the praises of the Emerald Cockroach Wasp on the NPR show Radiolab, and, to my surprise, brought some peace of mind to a very scared kid.
Scientists still don’t understand the wasp very well, though, and so I decided last night to see if anyone had discovered something new about it recently. It turns out Ram Gal and Frederic Libersat, two scientists at Ben Gurion University in Israel, just published a paper in which they reveal one of the secrets to zombification. In effect, they identified the seat of the cockroach soul.
Before I describe the new results, let me just refresh your memory about what the Emerald Cockroach Wasp actually does.
Like many parasites, the Emerald Cockroach Wasp manipulates its host’s behavior for its own benefit. As I explain in Parasite Rex, parasites make their hosts do lots of different things (get them into the body of their next host, act as a bodyguard, or build them a shelter to name a few examples). The Emerald Cockroach Wasp needs a live, tame cockroach to feed its babies.
When the female wasp is ready to lay her eggs, she seeks out a cockroach. Landing on the prospective host, she delivers two precise stings.
The first she delivers to the roach’s mid-section, causing its front legs buckle. The brief paralysis caused by the first sting gives the wasp the luxury of time to deliver a more precise sting to the head. The wasp slips her stinger through the roach’s exoskeleton and directly into its brain.
She injects another venom that robs the cockroach of the ability to start walking on its own. The wasp takes hold of one of the roach’s antennae and leads it, like a dog on a leash, to its doom: the wasp’s burrow. The roach creeps obediently inside and sits there quietly as the wasp lays her egg on its underside. The wasp leaves the burrow, sealing the opening behind her.
The egg hatches, and the larva chews a hole in the side of the roach. In it goes. The larva grows inside the roach, devouring the organs of its host, for about eight days. It is then ready to form a pupa inside the roach. After four more weeks, the wasp grows to an adult. It breaks out of its pupa, and out of the roach as well. Only then does the zombie cockroach die.
The zombifying sting has long fascinated scientists. It does not paralyze the roach. It does not put it to sleep. If the zombie roach is frightened, it jumps in the air like a normal roach, but then it fails to run away. What does the wasp understand about the nervous system that we do not?
The cockroach brain is not a brain like ours–a single solid lump of neurons like the one in our head. It’s actually a group of linked clusters of neurons, called the cerebral ganglia. Some studies have suggested that one of those clusters, called the sub-esophageal ganglia (SEG), boosts the signals required for an insect to start walking. So Gal and Libersat decided to see how wasps would behave if the roaches they stung were missing the SEG.
Normally, the wasps only spends about 15 seconds inserting its stinger into the cockroach’s head. But when Gal and Liberset destroyed the SEG in roaches, the wasps were flummoxed. They spent over three minutes poking and prodding inside the cockroach’s head. By contrast, when the scientists cut the nerve running from the SEG to the roach’s body (marked here as NC), the wasps didn’t spend any extra time delivering the sting. It thus appears that the wasps zero in on the SEG to zombify their host.
Gal and Libersat took a closer look at the SEG of zombified cockroaches. Using an electrode, they measured the activity of the SEG. They discovered that the neurons in the SEG became quiet. They spontaneoulsy fired half as often as the neurons in the SEG of normal cockroaches. And a puff of air on the antennae of the zombified roaches–which usually triggers a roar of activity in the SEG so that the insect can escape–produced only half the normal activity in the neurons.
To cap off the experiment, Gal and Libersat then pretended to be wasps. They injected wasp venom directly into the SEG of healthy cockroaches. The injection zombified the roaches. The insects barely moved on their own, and they hardly budged in response to a terrifying puff of air. Gal and Libersat could only zombify the cockroaches with a shot to the SEG, however. If they injected the venom into a neighboring cluster of neurons (marked here as SupEG), the roaches flitted about as if nothing had happened.
While this study does a good job of pinpointing the place where the wasps perform their neurosurgery, it does not close the book. The SEG is actually a complicated maze of neurons. Gal and Libersat are now investigated exactly where in the SEG the wasp sends its stinger, and what precisely its venom does to those particular neurons. The Emerald Cockroach Wasp will no doubt make yet another visit to the Loom in years to come, because it has more to teach us.
Links to this Post
- Earthquakes, librarian sex, brains, Madonna. Daily Dave #19 | Dave Hodgkinson Music Photography | April 21, 2010
- How to Make a Zombie Cockroach « Tons and Tons | April 21, 2010
- Bumper photography issue, boobquake, wasps, Palin DD #20 | Dave Hodgkinson Music Photography | April 22, 2010
- Friday finds « STEVENHARTSITE | April 23, 2010
- A Wasp Finds the Seat of the Cockroach Soul | Penumbra Conundrum | July 16, 2010
- I have it on good authority my voice makes its cable TV premiere tonight | The Loom | Discover Magazine | August 16, 2010
- A Parasitic Wasp that Injects It’s Venom Into a Cockroach’s Brain in Order to Control It | July 12, 2011
- A Parasitic Wasp that Injects Its Venom Into a Cockroach’s Brain in Order to Control It | l Ψ l Bajan Sun Entertainment | July 13, 2011
- Parasite Turns Wasps into Wandering, Would-Be Royalty « industrystoryline | October 21, 2011 | <urn:uuid:71b9061a-294d-47d8-a39b-a5511860d8b3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2010/04/20/a-wasp-finds-the-seat-of-the-cockroach-soul/ | 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 | 0.942281 | 1,520 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Ternary Logic and Digital Computing
Martin Becker will give a talk at YAPC::Europe 2012 described as
Ternary or three-valued logic is a logic in which there are three truth values indicating true, false and some third value, often used to denote uncertainty or indefiniteness. A three-valued information unit is called a trit.
It would be technically feasible to build digital systems based on trits, using memory units with three distinct states (flip-flap-flops) and logic circuitry with three distinct input/output levels, like positive, negative and zero voltage.
This talk explores basic operations and other important properties for a hypothetical ternary computer, as implemented in the Perl library Math-Logic-Ternary. It turns out that ternary logic gives rise to uniqe features such as a very simple and symmetric numeral system. | <urn:uuid:afb75e58-6de4-4675-b3b7-8c34bba50fd1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blogs.perl.org/users/yapceurope_2012/2012/07/ternary-logic-and-digital-computing.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 | 0.919918 | 184 | 3.5 | 4 |
There is a tremendous success story in Sub-Saharan Africa that has only barely been recognized. Infant and under-5 mortality has plummeted in many countries in the region in recent years.
The under-5 mortality (U5MR) measure captures the number of children per 1000 live births who die before their 5th birthday. One of the Millennium Development Goals is a two-thirds decline in U5MR between 1990 and 2015, which would require an annual decline of 4.4 percent per year.
In the 20 countries for which recent data is available, 12 show rates of decline above this “MDG rate.” In particular, Senegal, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, and Ghana have experienced extremely large drops at a rate of more than 6 percent per year. This does not necessarily indicate that any particular country will meet the MDG. But it does tell us that the African Renaissance is bringing tangible benefits to the continent’s citizens. Because of this miracle, hundreds of thousands of parents will be spared the agony of the loss of a child.
The acceleration in the decline of child mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa was evident in a 2010 Lancet article, but that article was completed before much of the recent data showing the most dramatic declines was available.
One of us (Ritva) used to work on post-conflict Uganda in the 1990s analyzing household survey data on under-5 mortality. The figures were 200 per 1000 live births and even higher. Uganda has witnessed a huge improvement in survival of under 5 year-olds—today Uganda is at 90. In Ethiopia, the second most populous country in Africa, U5MR fell from 123 to 88 between 2005 and 2010. Its 35,000 health extension workers have brought basic preventive and curative health packages to the rural population en masse. Case control studies have shown significant expansion of coverage of malaria interventions (artemisinin-based combination therapy and insecticide-treated bednets) and improvement in sanitation.
In a recent co-authored working paper, one of us (Gabriel) explores what may have driven part of this decline in Kenya, which had the fastest rate of infant (under age 1) mortality, with a drop of 7.6 percent per year between recent Demographic and Health Surveys. A decomposition analysis suggests that the huge increase in ownership of insecticide-treated bednets (ITNs) played a substantial role, by reducing malaria deaths. The paper applies some statistical machinery to the question, but the basic logic is simple.
The infant mortality decline took place chiefly in malaria high-risk zones and was entirely confined to postneonatal mortality (deaths after the 1st month.) Postneonatal mortality is much higher in malaria high-risk zones and much lower among households that own an ITN in malaria high-risk zones (both unconditionally and controlling for a wide variety of other factors). ITN ownership skyrocketed in Kenya between 2003 and 2008, going from 8 to 60 percent of households nationally and reaching 75 percent of households in high-risk zones. Malaria is known not to have any substantial effect on neonatal mortality (deaths during the 1st month), and neonatal mortality does not vary across malaria risk zones and has remained constant over time in Kenya. This collection of facts suggests that ITNs played an important role in the decline of infant mortality in Kenya. This conclusion is also compatible with the findings of small-scale experimental and panel studies on the effects of ITNs on malaria prevalence and mortality.
In the Kenya decomposition analysis, the growth in ITN ownership explains just over half of the infant mortality decline. That still leaves a large chunk of the drop not explained by the factors we have analyzed. In future work, we will examine the broader story of infant and under-5 mortality declines across many countries in the region, which allow us to consider the role of country-wide factors like the broad improvement in living standards that have come with renewed economic growth. | <urn:uuid:6e371ec0-beb0-4ef5-9af9-d9170cdd0d10> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/africas-success-story-infant-mortality?cid=EXT_WBBlogSocialShare_D_EXT | 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 | 0.954552 | 809 | 2.953125 | 3 |
A few months ago, I journeyed to Lao Cai, a predominantly ethnic minority area in Vietnam’s Northern Mountains, to supervise a pilot survey. One older man I encountered—typical of many we saw—was a subsistence farmer with minimal education who spoke only his native language and had barely ventured beyond his village.
Members of ethnic minority groups make up 15 percent of the country’s population but account for 70 percent of the extreme poor (measured using a national extreme poverty line). During Vietnam’s two decades of rapid growth, members of ethnic minority groups in the country have experienced overall improvements in their standards of living, but their gains have lagged behind those of the Kinh majority.
Why is ethnic minority poverty persistent? This has been the subject of numerous studies, including a 2009 study on ethnicity and development in Vietnam as well as a chapter in our more recent Vietnam Poverty Assessment. This is also one piece of the research my team is currently pursuing.
I have been struck by how much the situation of ethnic minorities in Vietnam resembles that of indigenous people a world away, in Mexico, where I lived for a year while working on my dissertation. In both countries, the groups are highly diverse, make up similar fractions of the country’s population, and face similar challenges. Indeed, the best comparative global study (by Gillette Hall and Harry Patrinos) I’ve seen on the issue finds surprisingly common profiles of indigenous/ethnic minorities around the world.
My list of inter-related factors behind high poverty of ethnic minorities in Vietnam would include:
- Geographical isolation and limited market access,
- Social exclusion, culture, and language,
- Limited access to quality land,
- Low rates of out-migration, and
- Low levels of education.
Similar factors would apply to indigenous groups in many countries.
I am optimistic that at least some of the underlying causes of ethnic minority poverty are becoming less important over time. Education levels have risen for recent generations of ethnic minority children. This means more are learning the Vietnamese language, which will enable them to connect via markets and migration with the country’s broader prosperity.
I saw signs of this on my trip to Lao Cai: Although the older man I described earlier has very limited connections beyond his village, his children who are in their 20s spoke fluent Vietnamese and have travelled widely for work. I expect that as this generational shift continues and networks for ethnic minorities spread, we will see increasing numbers leaving the family farm to seek and find opportunity elsewhere.
A couple weeks ago I went on a tour with my team to four universities across Vietnam to present the Vietnam Poverty Assessment. Our talks generated lively discussions, and we polled participating students and faculty via SMS for their views on the best way to reduce ethnic minority poverty. My colleague Ngoc Nguyen ran the poll off her laptop using the open source software FrontlineSMS. Improving access to markets and offering free education were the most popular responses, and many offered their own free text “other” responses.
Thinking about ethnic minority / indigenous poverty in Vietnam or in your own country, how would you have responded to this poll? Please share your ideas with us in comments. | <urn:uuid:b415e35a-fe3a-4d0c-8cd4-c163e59fbd0d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blogs.worldbank.org/eastasiapacific/comment/1661 | 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 | 0.961264 | 663 | 3.125 | 3 |
Despite their exotic looks, Hawk-moths and their caterpillars don't have particularly fancy tastes. Most of their food plants are commonly found in gardens.
This year’s Moth Night, the UK’s annual celebration of moths and moth recording, stars some of the largest, fastest and most colourful insects, the hawk-moths.
New study reveals that street lights alter the activity of moths
A better future for the Large Blue
Butterfly Conservation Ambassador and gardening writer Kate Bradbury explains why and how to plant a pot for pollinators.
Butterfly Conservation President Sir David Attenborough celebrates his 90th birthday
You might not associate a garden rockery with butterflies and moths but actually the hot and dry microhabitat, with well-drained soil, can offer conditions suitable for some great nectar plants.
Richard Fox will help guide you through the pitfalls and make sure you’re all right with the whites.
One of our most rapidly declining species is 'on the wing' in April. Neil Hulme, Fritillaries For The Future Project Officer introduces the Pearl-bordered Fritillary .
iRecord Butterflies, is a new free app, available for iOS and Android devices.
With springtime garden butterflies expected to emerge over the coming weeks, it is the perfect time to get involved with the Garden Butterfly Survey.
The large, flat, flower heads, which give Umbellifers their name (think umberella), sit atop tall stems, providing excellent perches for butterflies and moths in need of nectar.
Dr Martin Warren charts his career as Butterfly Conservation Chief Executive
Can conservation efforts save the UK's most threatened butterfly from extinction?
Matt Doogue is a man on a mission: to introduce wildflowers to barren work spaces and support the wildlife that so desperately need our help.
Roger Hooper is a member of Butterfly Conservation's Cornwall Branch - here he is talking about the butterflies you can see across the county and how some species are actually doing really well...
How do our fragile butterflies survive the frosty days of February?
Plant the right pollinator-friendly seeds now and you could also benefit. The Secret gardener introduces some plants that provide nectar for butterflies and moths and are also suitable to cut for flower arranging.
Witch Hazel is one of few January flowering shrubs. It will provide nectar when little else is available and its star-like blooms add a bright burst of colour in a pale winter landscape.
The Secret Gardener suggests a potted Christmas tree that can go out in the garden after the festivities are over, and provide a meal for moths.
Dr Martin Warren explains why Neonicotinoid pesticides should be banned
Good news at last for one of the UK's most threatened butterflies
David Newman is a university student and supporter of Butterfly Conservation. His latest project involved working with a landscape architect business and he wanted to find out their views on helping butterflies...
An update on young attitudes towards nature by Apithanny Bourne - the Youth Engagement Officer for East Scotland Branch.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that muted autumn moths are dull - they are actually masters of disguise!
Cheerful sedums are a delightful addition to an autumn garden. Their bright pink flowers and succulent green, grey or purple leaves light up the flowerbeds.
Adult butterflies and moths are increasingly scarce now that autumn has taken hold, but there are still plenty of caterpillars to spot.
We reveal 2015's winners.
Moth Night 2015 might be over, but there are still plenty of moths to see and you don't need a traditional moth trap to attract them - take a look at this recipe for moths... | <urn:uuid:f2eef614-2258-4fc7-9d69-01c527dcb3a7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://butterfly-conservation.org/3114/news-blog.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 | 0.93211 | 780 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Collecting History Online
Why Collect History Online?
hink for a moment of the outpouring of thoughts and emotions in thousands of blogs on September 11, 2001, or the breaking news on the home pages of myriad newspaper websites. A large percentage of this initial set of historical sources, unlike paper diaries or print versions, will likely be gone if we look for them in ten years. Blogs disappear regularly as their owners lose interest or move their contents to other systems or sites. Similarly, unlike the pages of their physical editions, newspaper websites change very rapidly (almost minute by minute on September 11) and have no real fixity. Had “Dewey Defeats Truman” been splashed across Chicagotribune.com rather than the paper Chicago Daily Tribune, it would have taken just a few keystrokes by the newspaper’s editors to erase the famous blunder instantly and forever. As we describe here, we felt an obligation to save the rich personal record of blogs in our September 11 Digital Archive so future historians could understand the perspectives of thousands of ordinary people from around the world. Through even swifter action, the Library of Congress, the Internet Archive, WebArchivist.org, and the Pew Internet and American Life Project were able to save thousands of online media portrayals of that day’s events. Had they decided months later to save these web pages, instead of within mere hours, many already would have vanished into the digital ether. Collecting history online may not always be this urgent, but these examples show the critical need for historians to find the most effective ways of using this new technology to supplement the historical record on paper, as we did in the twentieth century with tape recorders and video cameras.
This is particularly true because we can use the Internet for more than just gathering the history that was made online, or “born digital.” The Internet also allows us to reach diverse audiences and to ask those audiences to send us historical materials that originated offline, or at least off the web. They can “upload” to us their digital or scanned photos, their sound recordings, or their lab notes. They can use a computer keyboard or microphone to transmit to us their recollections of earlier events and experiences, especially ones for which there are no or few records.
Unfortunately, using the web to gather historical materials is harder than using the web as a one-way distribution system. It can involve more technical hurdles than a simple history website; legal and ethical concerns, such as invasion of privacy and the ownership of contributed materials; and skills, like the marketing techniques we discussed in Chapter 5, that are unfamiliar to most historians. In addition, collecting online elicits concerns about the quality of submissions: given the slippery character of digital materials, how can we ensure that what we get is authentic, or that historical narratives we receive really are from the people they say they are? How can we ensure that a mischievous teenager isn’t posing as an important historical subject? Moreover, some historians arguenot without meritthat online collecting excludes those older, less educated, or less well-to-do subjects who may not have access to the necessary technology. They also worry that the nature of such collections will inevitably be shallow, less useful for research, and harder to preserve.
Some of these worries are relatively easy to address. In our experience, for instance, teenagers are generally too busy downloading music to play games with historians and archivists online. But other concerns are not as easily answered. Collections created on the web through the submissions of scattered (and occasionally anonymous) contributors do have a very different character from traditional archives, for which provenance and selection criteria assume a greater role. Online collections tend to be less organized and more capricious in what they cover.
They also can be far larger, more diverse, and more inclusive than traditional archives. Indeed, perhaps the most profound benefit of online collecting is an unparalleled opportunity to allow more varied perspectives to be included in the historical record than ever before. Networked information technology can allow ordinary people and marginalized constituencies not only a larger presence in an online archive, but also a more important role in the dialogue of history. “There are about ten to fifteen million people’s voices evident on the Web,” Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, has said. “The Net is a people’s medium: the good, the bad and the ugly. The interesting, the picayune, and the profane. It’s all there.”2
Furthermore, in contrast to traditional oral history, online collecting is a far more economical way to reach out to historical subjects. For example, because subjects write their own narratives, we avoid one of the most daunting costs of oral history, transcription. Consequently, although live individual interviews are often quite thorough and invaluable resources, online initiatives to collect personal histories can capture a far greater number of them at lower cost, while at the same time acquiring associated digital materials (such as photographs) just as cheaply. Of course, even if highly successful in the future, online collecting will not mean the end of traditional ways of gathering recent history, including what will surely remain the gold standard, oral history. As oral historian Linda Shopes observes, newer technological methods will have a hard time competing with many aspects of the oral historian’s craft: “the cultivation of rapport and . . . lengthy, in-depth narratives through intense face to face contact; the use of subtle paralinguistic cues as an aid to moving the conversation along; the talent of responding to a particular comment, in the moment, with the breakthrough question, the probe that gets underneath a narrator’s words.”3 Using the Internet will likely supplement or complement older, more time-consuming and costly methods such as this.
Despite the pitfalls and insecurities about online collecting, it has become a burgeoning practice. Recently, for example, the British Library, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Museum of London, and several other British museums and archives have pooled their resources to display and collect stories of immigration to the U.K. in a project called Moving Here. Thus far, the project has posted almost 500 stories and artifactsmainly digitized versions of existing archive records but also new materials acquired via the siteranging from a documentary video on Caribbean life to the reflections of recent African immigrants. The British Broadcasting Corporation’s two-year online project to gather the stories of Britain’s World War II veterans and survivors of the London Blitz, entitled WW2 People’s War, has been even more successful, with over a thousand narratives gathered through the BBC’s website after only eight months, including dozens of harrowing accounts of D-Day.4
In the United States, the National Park Foundation, the National Park Service, and the Ford Motor Company are using the Internet to collect first-hand narratives of life during wartime for a planned Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California. So far, more than six thousand former home front workers have contributed stories. National Geographic’s Remembering Pearl Harbor site has received over a thousand entries in their “Memory Book.” Over five hundred people have recorded their personal stories and artifacts of the civil rights movement on a site co-sponsored by the AARP, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and the Library of Congress. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has taken a pioneering role in encouraging more than two dozen online collecting projects (including our own) in the recent history of science and technology, arguing that this history is growing much faster than our ability to gather it through more conventional means. Though there remains a healthy skepticism in the oral history community about the usefulness and reliability of narratives collected online, several new projects by major oral history centers (such as at Texas Tech University) show that they, too, are noticing the benefits of online collecting. Even Columbia Universitythe home of the nation’s first oral history programis encouraging alumni to join in writing “Columbia’s history” by contributing stories online.5
3 Linda Shopes, “The Internet and Collecting the History of the Present” (paper presented at September 11 as History: Collecting Today for Tomorrow, Washington, D.C., 10 September 2003). For more on this “rapport” and the way rich historical accounts arise during the live interaction of interviewer and interviewee, see Alessandro Portelli, The Battle of Valle Giulia: Oral History and the Art of Dialogue (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997) and Michael Frisch, A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991). It may also be worth comparing (or supplementing) the practical advice of this chapter with the offline advice of Donald A. Ritchie in Doing Oral History (Oxford University Press, 2003), and Judith Moyer, “Step-by-Step Guide to Oral History,” ↪link 6.3.
5 National Park Foundation, “Rosie the Riveter Stories,” Ford Motor Company Sponsored Programs, ↪link 6.5a; National Geographic, Remembering Pearl Harbor, ↪link 6.5b; Voices of Civil Rights, ↪link 6.5c; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, “History of Science and Technology,” ↪link 6.5d; C250 Perspectives: Write Columbia’s History, ↪link 6.5e; The Vietnam Project: The Oral History ProjectHow to Participate, ↪link 6.5f. | <urn:uuid:fb0eb5c6-afd7-489b-8966-fcd834503da1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/collecting/1.php | 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 | 0.933474 | 2,001 | 2.921875 | 3 |
As much as American Egyptomania involved archaeology, science, and history, it also involved religion, scripture, and the Bible. And while this might be most clearly seen in the role of the Old Testament in the history of Egyptomania – Pharaoh and Moses, Hebrew bondage and the Promised Land – it can also be seen in the remarkable power of the concept of hieroglyphics. Originally and most famously associated with the field of linguistics – and with the French scholar Jean-Francois Champollion’s deciphering of the Rosetta Stone in the 1820s – the term “hieroplyphics” was also used in a less literal way, as a metaphor: a hieroglyph could be any ostensibly indecipherable code or truth which lay in wait for a gifted codebreaker to reveal its meaning to the world. And, in the context of Christianity and religious studies, this concept of a hidden or disguised truth waiting to be revealed had its own metaphorical power and found a powerful ally.
This was especially the case since Egyptology was widely seen to pose a threat to Christianity, along just these lines of ultimate “truth:” Egyptologists had dated ancient Egyptian ruins to a time before that calculated by some scholars of the Bible, and so, for some, this chronological controversy threatened to undermine the rest of the aurthority of the Bible as well. So the term “hieroglyphic” came to stand in not only for the concept of a hidden truth revealed only to those who knew had the proper key to its translation, but also for the war between the competing absolute truths of science and religion.
This selection emerged out of these controversies. Its author, Guillaume Caspar Lencroy Oegger, was a French Catholic priest and former Vicar who originally published Le Vrai Messie in 1829; portions of it appeared in English translation in America in 1835, and this version dates from 1842. Oegger and his text have a place in American literary history due to their influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson and American Transcendentalism; Oegger was a follower of the Swedish philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg, whose views on language and nature had a massive impact on nineteenth-century American philosophy. And while Oegger’s transcendentalist views might have placed him on the fringes of nineteenth-century Catholicism, they placed him squarely inside the mainstream of American Egyptomania.
THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS,
ACCORDING TO THE PRINCIPLES OF THE LANGUAGE OF NATURE.
BY G. OEGGER,
Former First Vicar of the Cathedral of Paris.
A LITTLE PHILOSOPHY CARRIES US AWAY FROM CHRISTIANITY, MUCH PHILOSOPHY
BRINGS US BACK TO IT.
PUBLISHED BY E.P PEABODY
No. 169 Washington Street | <urn:uuid:37c9a5ab-325f-416c-b291-c4041d99c445> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://chnm.gmu.edu/egyptomania/scholarship.php?function=detail&articleid=43 | 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 | 0.956532 | 610 | 3.359375 | 3 |
Located in the heart of Central America, Honduras’ rich geological formations, gold mineralization and a stable, democratic government with an open approach to mining development, make it an ideal location for Clavo Rico to begin its mining operations.
Access and infrastructure to the mines are excellent with transportation, communication and support services readily available in nearby Choluteca.
In June, 2000, Honduras, along with Guatemala and El Salvador, signed a free trade agreement with Mexico as a measure to stimulate the economy.
With land use fees as low as $1500 a year for a large mine, and a nominal 1% municipal tax, Honduras has created an ideal environment for foreign companies.
A Brief History of Honduras
During the first millennium AD, western Honduras sat at the southeastern edge of the great Mayan civilization. The ruins at Copan attest to the advanced state of development of the country’s population at the time. The large number of gold artifacts found in European museums demonstrate the abundance of gold located by the Mayans. The real conquest of Honduras began in 1524 and was characterized by bitter struggles among rivals representing Spanish power centers. Large population centers grew around gold mining areas, including Comayagua, Gracias, and Tegucigalpa, the country’s capital. By the end of the colonial period, Honduras was an important supplier of foodstuffs and livestock to El Salvador and Guatemala
In 1821, the country gained independence from Spain and, for the next century, conservative and liberal factions fought regional wars to control the republic. Over the past several decades, political control has vacillated back and forth between liberal and conservative parties, with any unrest caused mainly by the political instability in countries neighboring Honduras.
Honduras is a member of the United Nations and the Organization of American States (OAS). Executive power in the country is vested in a president, who is elected by direct and universal vote for a four-year term. The president appoints a Cabinet to assist him. Honduras is also divided into 18 departments, which are subdivided into municipalities. Each department is administered by a governor, who is appointed by the president. Municipalities are governed by elected councils.
In 1998, shortly after hurricane Mitch, the Honduras Legislature passed a new mining law, the “Ley General de Mineria” with the intention of attracting foreign capital to further develop its mineral resources.
In 2009, Mel Zelaya, the sitting President, attempted to stage a coup by illegally trying to gain power to amend the constitution and stay in office for life. He was trying to forge a government much like Hugo Chavez, his idol. Fortunately, the freedom loving people of Honduras were not willing to give up. The President`s actions were declared illegal twice by the Supreme Court of Honduras and when he ignored them, the military intervened and exiled President Mel Zelaya to Costa Rica. The military immediately ceded power to the next in command under Honduran law, the leader of the Congress, Mr. Robert Micheletti. He was sworn in as the new President and declared that the scheduled free elections in November, 2009 would go forward as planned. The elections were held and won by Porfino Lobo Sosa, who believed strongly in foreign investment and actively encouraged the congress to pass a new mining law to give certainty to foreign investors to help drive new investment in Honduras. Today Honduras, under President Juan Orlando Hernández, continues to act favorably to foreign investment in the mining industry. In fact in March 2014 Honduras sent a delegation to PDAC, one of the largest mining expos in the world, to participate in discussions about sustainably expanding their mining sector.
The mining industry in Honduras will continue to grow and be revitalized. In the meantime, the Company is focusing its efforts on establishing good relationships with the local governments and in running a safe mining, responsible, and profitable operation. | <urn:uuid:8443296c-1847-4710-a554-149bd8deccf3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://clavorico.com/the-country/ | 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 | 0.963924 | 795 | 3.328125 | 3 |
Published on April 3rd, 2013 | by Guest Contributor3
Mid-Level Carbon Price Could Result In 100% Renewable Energy
April 3rd, 2013 by Guest Contributor
A carbon price of between $50 and $100 per tonne would make Australia’s coal- and gas-fired electricity less economical than renewable electricity, according to a new study out of the University of New South Wales.
A peer-reviewed paper being published by a research group at the UNSW has found that, by increasing the carbon price to a ‘medium’ level, all fossil-fuelled power stations in Australia’s National Electricity Market could be phased out and replaced economically and reliably with commercially available renewable energy technologies.
To reach their conclusions, UNSW researchers Ben Elliston, Iain MacGill and Mark Diesendorf performed thousands of computer simulations using hourly data on electricity demand and matched this with hourly input from solar and wind power for the year 2010.
The simulations compared the optimal economics of a 100 per cent renewable electricity system with that of a hypothetical new replacement conventional system based on the more efficient coal and gas-fired power stations than are in use today in Australia. The researchers used the conservative technology costs projected to 2030 by the Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics.
“We found that the minimum 2030 costs of the reliable renewable energy system were achieved with a large contribution from wind power: from 46 to 59 per cent of annual electricity generation,” said PhD candidate and lead author, Ben Elliston.
“Solar photovoltaic and concentrated solar thermal electricity with thermal storage were equal second in their contributions to annual electricity generation, typically 15-20 per cent each. Existing hydro and gas turbines burning biofuels made small but vital contributions by filling gaps in wind and solar generation.”
Associate Professor Mark Diesendorf said the comparison of the renewable system with the so-called ‘efficient’ system of coal and gas-fired power stations was made to get a feeling for the relative costs involved, but added that any such fossil-fuelled system was “completely unacceptable” in terms of greenhouse gas emissions – producing only 19 per cent less emissions than Australia’s existing fossil-fuelled system.
Subsidies to the Australian fossil fuel industry – believed to be of the order of $10 billion per year across the entire industry – were also ignored in the study’s costings.
“Despite the fact that most of the electricity generation in our scenarios comes from the fluctuating sources wind and solar PV, the least-cost renewable energy systems as a whole were just as reliable as conventional systems,” Dr Diesendorf said.
“There is no need for any inflexible base-load power stations. We can balance fluctuating renewable energy sources with flexible power stations, such as hydro, gas turbines and concentrated solar thermal power with thermal storage.”
Keep up to date with all the hottest cleantech news by subscribing to our (free) cleantech newsletter, or keep an eye on sector-specific news by getting our (also free) solar energy newsletter, electric vehicle newsletter, or wind energy newsletter. | <urn:uuid:f1678fc4-c0fb-413c-947d-430357769c09> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://cleantechnica.com/2013/04/03/mid-level-carbon-price-could-result-in-100-renewable-energy/ | 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 | 0.941388 | 662 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Of the one billion people that defecate in the open in the world, 638 million are found in India alone. In Badasilonia, a Nirmal Gram village, in Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh, we inspected the toilet of Punna bai. The toilet or “latrine” as it is called, had only the four walls of the outer structure. On the opposite side of the road, we visited the house of the sarpanch. His toilet was completely and properly built and had an additional twin room for bathing. He also had a water storage tank close to the toilet.
Although a Nirmal Gram village, there were only a few such incomplete superstructures in Badasilonia. However, Punna Bai was emphatic that she wanted a toilet. "What mistake have I done, why has my toilet not been built properly?” was her lament. “It would have been a big convenience, especially at night”. We could see that the hand pump was about 200 m downstream and the village women lug water three times a day carrying 15 litres balanced on their heads for every trip for their drinking and cooking needs. A toilet would have needed another trip. Yet, Punna Bai was willing to do this to bring water for her toilet.
On a tour of Jhabua and Ratlam, we took time off to look at the state of "toilets" in several villages -- Badasilonia, Khamripada, Ichathuni, Nepal, Jamli -- and spoke to women of the villages. In most villages, only the outer shell was constructed. In Jamli, a village that was clearly better off and had pucca houses, there had been no water supply for the past 2 months. Yet, the women said that they bought water from a tanker at Rs. 2/litre for their toilets, because that was a necessity. In Khamripada, the men folk came forward to talk to us about toilets. In this village of 180 households has only 20 households have been provided with latrines. They were vary happy with the idea of toilets near their huts and wanted toilets for everyone. In Ichathuni village in Ratlam district, another Nirmal Gram village, villagers don't use their toilets. A panchayat official contemptuously said that despite all the facilities and all the awareness programmes, villagers will never "correct" their behaviour. According to him, Ichathuni was completely covered in terms of sanitation, but he blamed the villagers for not using the toilets.
Compare this with the village of Didakhedi, a village in Sehore made up of largely SCs and OBCs, where Samarthan, an NGO had catalysed the community to come together and build an overhead storage tank, a piped water supply and latrines for every household. In Mahukheda, the Public Health Engineering Department had provided piped water supply and toilets for every household. The PHED had taken one step ahead and also undertaken water harvesting to ensure a sustainable supply of water.
The Total Sanitation Campaign was launched on October 2, 1999, with the aim of providing every rural household with a latrine. As of today, official statistics say that 67% of households have been provided with toilets. But if the "Nirmal Grams" that we visited are any indication, the actual coverage would be far less.
Will Punna Bai get her “latrine” and when? If you look at the national policies outlines by the government, seemingly we have dream policies. There is everything to catalyse the change – provisions for education, awareness creation, capacity building, access to hardware and new technologies and even allowing for community choices in design. Total sanitation coverage therefore, need not be a dream. Policies are in place; schemes for funding software and hardware are in place.
So, why can’t we do it? Gandhiji said, “Conservation of national sanitation is Swaraj work and it may not be postponed for a single day on any consideration whatsoever”. Is sanitation right on top in the pecking order of priorities? Gone are the days when the excuse was that villagers did not want to use the toilets. Today, villagers welcome the idea of having access to a clean, private toilet that is close to their homes. So, why can’t we give them toilets? How do we bride the divide between central policies and implementation at village level?
Also, what of toilet technologies? In the long run, the current soak-pit based systems, when they are improperly built, have the potential to contaminate the groundwater resources. In addition to arsenic and fluoride, we will have the additional problem of bacteriological contamination of groundwater, which was traditionally the best source of drinking water. The current water-based technology begs the question, “Where is the water?” We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes we have already made in the cities creating shortages and pollution of water. Just sanitation coverage is not enough; we need to work towards sustainable sanitation that calls for innovations in non-water based technologies.
Changing sanitation practices means more than constructing superstructures, it means more than changing behaviour; it means more than changing mindsets; it requires bringing about a civilisational change. It means we have to brace ourselves for the long haul, longer than March 2012, the official deadline for total sanitation coverage. | <urn:uuid:4e070594-6f91-40ce-9dd9-3348e3a4d8c8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://cseindia.org/node/1899 | 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 | 0.975201 | 1,120 | 2.71875 | 3 |
and Plot Summary by Michael J. Cummings...©
Faulkner’s Jigsaw Puzzle
Sound and the Fury, the past frequently intrudes upon the present in
the minds of three central characters who each narrate part of the novel.
This intrusion is not unusual; it happens to every man and woman from time
to time. For example, when you listen to a sermon in a church or a lecture
in a classroom–or when you are jogging or making a bed–a memory from yesterday,
a year ago, or 20 years ago may suddenly seize your attention. A sound,
a sight, a taste, or a smell may have triggered that memory. Or the memory
may simply have sprung up, unbidden.
most of this Faulkner novel, the past frequently intrudes upon the here
and now, barging into a character’s present thoughts without warning. Often,
the memories occur without heed to chronological sequence. A memory from
1910 might walk into the first paragraph on a page and a memory from 1898
into the third paragraph, with present thoughts occupying the second paragraph.
But even when the present is in control, it may veer from one present thought
to an unrelated present thought. Consequently, the events in the novel
become like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle dumped onto a table. However,
as the novel progresses, information slowly emerges that enables the reader
to match one piece with another until a picture forms, an impressionistic
rendering of the decline and fall of a southern family whose roots extend
back many generations. It is not easy, though, to assemble the puzzle.
One of the purposes of this study guide is to give readers essential information
ahead of time so that they may more quickly grasp and better appreciate
events in the novel occur according to relevance and significance, not
time sequence. The novel consists of four chapters. The first is entitled
“April Seventh, 1928"; the second, “June Second, 1910"; the third, “April
Sixth, 1928"; and the fourth, “April Eighth, 1928.” Male members of a declining
and dysfunctional southern family, the Compsons, narrate the first three
chapters in first-person point of view, and the author presents the fourth
chapter in omniscient, third-person point of view.
Chapter 1 Narration
1 takes place on Saturday, April 7, 1928, the day before Easter, but flashes
back frequently to previous years. The narrator of this chapter is Benjy
Compson, who was born in 1895. He is feeble-minded. He cannot speak, read,
or write. His retardation is so severe that he even confuses the past with
the present. A memory from long ago may occur to him as a present experience.
For example, in response to a triggering sensation–a sound, a sight, or
a smell–he might wait by the gate in front of his house for his sister
to come home from school even though his sister long ago moved away from
his house. In presenting Benjy’s narration, Faulkner uses phrases that
attempt to express the surreal and irrational workings of Benjy’s mind.
In one passage, Benjy says, “I could smell the clothes flapping.” In others,
Benjy hears the grass “rattling” or sees the wind “shining.” One problem
Benjy’s narration poses–besides the confusing rat-a-tat of disjointed thoughts–is
that it taxes plausibility and verisimilitude. A character incapable of
speaking or writing cannot tell a story–unless, of course, the author invades
the mind of this character and tells what he sees. Faulkner does so. Consequently,
Chapter 1 is really a narrative oddity: a kind of ventriloquism in which
the author speaks for the narrator.
Chapter 2 Narration
2 takes place on June 2, 1910. It also flashes back to previous years.
The narrator is Quentin, the oldest Compson child, who was born in 1891.
He is intelligent and articulate. However, because he is severely distraught,
he frequently narrates in fitful, spasmodic bursts, jumping from one thought
to another. Some paragraphs in this chapter contain no periods, commas,
Chapter 3 Narration
3 takes place on Good Friday, April 6, 1928. The narrator is Jason Lycurgus
Compson IV, who was born in 1894. This chapter is straightforward and easy
Chapter 4 Narration
4 takes place on Easter Sunday, April 8, 1928. The narrator is the author.
This chapter is relatively easy to understand.
Chapters 1, 3, and 4, the settings are in northern Mississippi in the fictional
locales of Jefferson, Yoknapatawpha County, and the nearby town of Mottson.
The main characters, the Compsons, live on a rundown Jefferson estate that
includes the ancestral home, stables, a kitchen garden, and a cabin to
house a family of black servants. At one time, the estate was considerably
larger, but the Compsons sold a large parcel of land to meet financial
obligations. Over the years, the Compsons have kept horses and milking
cows. In Chapter 2, the setting is in and around Cambridge, Massachusetts,
site of Harvard University. The action takes place on the following days:
April 7, 1928 (Chapter 1); June 2, 1910 (Chapter 2); April 6, 1928 (Chapter
3); April 8, 1928 (Chapter 4). There are frequent flashbacks to years in
the first two decades of the 20th Century and one flashback to a scene
Mix and Race Relations
fictional Yoknapatawpha County, blacks outnumber whites by approximately
three to two. In the first three decades of the 20th Century, Mississippi
whites–as well as whites elsewhere in the
United States–treated blacks almost as sub-humans.
The word "nigger" or "niggers" occurs more than 70 times in The Sound
and the Fury to reflect the attitude of whites toward blacks in the
early part of the century.
There is no clearly defined protagonist in the novel, although the family
itself at least partly fits the classical definition of tragic protagonist:
person of exalted status (the Compsons descended from moneyed aristocrats)
with a character flaw (the Compsons have many flaws) that causes him or
her to err and fall to ruin. However, the typical tragic protagonist–such
as Oedipus in Sophocles's Oedipus Rex–experiences a moment when
he recognizes and acknowledges his mistakes. The Compsons do not experience
such a moment–unless, in Quentin's case, one maintains that his decision
to commit suicide is an acknowledgment that something has gone wrong with
his life. Some critics identify Benjy, a mute imbecile, as the main
character because he witnesses and objectively reports on key episodes
in the novel and because the title refers specifically
to him. However, in terms of which character most affects the other characters,
Caddy Compson could be regarded as the main character. Benjy and Quentin
Compson love her and think constantly about her. Jason Compson despises
her and blames her for his failure to get a job he coveted. Caddy's illegitimate
daughter takes after her in some ways and plays a major role in events
in the second half of the novel. Oddly, though, Caddy appears only in flashback
The changing times, the influence of the past, the characters' own shortcomings
Jason Richmond Lycurgus
Compson III: An attorney and native of Jefferson, Mississippi. He is
the father of the four Compson children and husband of Caroline Bascomb
Compson. He espouses the ideals of the Old South aristocrats but in practice
is a cynic who believes in nothing. An alcoholic, he spends most of his
time with a decanter of whiskey rather than law books. His home, once a
fine mansion with expansive grounds, is in disrepair. He sold most of his
land to a golf club in order to pay for a year of his son, Quentin's, education
at Harvard and for his daughter, Caddy's, wedding. Much of his money also
goes for whiskey and everyday bills. He exhibits little real love for his
children. However, his views on Old South traditions greatly influence
Quentin, who takes them seriously. At the same time, his deep cynicism
about the world also influences Quentin. Jason Compson III dies in 1912.
Caroline Bascomb Compson:
Mother, in name only, of the four Compson children. She whines constantly
about the burdens imposed on her by her children, especially Benjy, who
is retarded. She spends much of her time in bed nursing imaginary illnesses
while the servants do the household chores and supervise the children when
they are growing up. The only child with she finds no fault is Jason IV.
She believes he takes after her side of the family, the Bascombs.
Candace (Caddy) Compson:
The only female Compson child. In her youth, she is a spirited, adventurous
child who frequently looks after Benjy and gives him the love his mother
denies him. Because she herself receives no love from her parents, she
seeks it from boys at an early age. After she becomes pregnant, she marries.
When her husband discovers that her child is not his, he divorces her.
Consequently, the family disowns Caddy and declares that her name is anathema
in the household. However, the family agrees to accept and rear her child,
and Caddy sends money to support her. Caddy, the second-oldest Compson
child, was born in 1892.
Benjamin (Benjy) Compson:The
youngest of the Compson children and the narrator of Chapter 1. His brother
Jason calls him Ben and sometimes refers to him as thegelding
because Benjy was castrated in his teen years. Benjy was baptized Maury,
the name of his mother's brother. In 1900, however, when Benjy was five,
his mother ordered his name changed to Benjamin after the family
discovered that he was severely retarded. Mrs. Compson wanted to avoid
bringing shame on her side of the family, the Bascombs. Benjy cannot speak,
read, or write. He was born in 1895 and is 33 when he narrates Chapter
1. Benjy appears to have been modeled on a character in another Faulkner
work, "The Kingdom of God," published in 1925.
Oldest of the Compson children and narrator of Chapter 2. He is intelligent,
sensitive, and idealistic. While growing up, he idolized and loved his
sister Caddy and was deeply disturbed when she started to become promiscuous
and eventually became pregnant. He confronted and fought the boy he suspected
of impregnating her. Through his teen, he continues to love her intensely
but never attempts to become intimate with her. After she marries and divorces,
he thinks of her often and wishes they could be alone together and live
and love platonically. Quentin was born in 1891.
Jason Compson IV:
Spiteful, selfish, brusque Compson child who narrates Chapter 3. Although
his mother favors him over her other children, he does not favor anyone
but himself. He is the only remaining male Compson child capable of marrying
and having children–Quentin has committed
suicide and Benjy has been castrated–but he
remains single, for he looks down on women in general. He is a racist and
anti-Semite. Jason was born in 1894.
grandmother of the Compson children. She dies in 1898.
Maury Bascomb: Brother
of Mrs. Compson and uncle of the Compson children. He lives on the Compson
estate as a freeloader and has an affair with a neighbor woman, Mrs. Patterson.
Mrs. Patterson: Neighbor
who has an affair with Maury Bascomb.
Mr. Patterson: Husband
of Mrs. Patterson. After discovering the affair between his wife and Maury
Bascomb, he thrashes Maury.
Dalton Ames: Young
man believed to have impregnated Caddy Compson. Caddy rejects him after
he thrashes her brother, Quentin, in a fight.
Sydney Herbert Head:
Harvard graduate and banker whom Caddy meets in French Lick, Indiana, and
marries after she becomes pregnant. He promises to give Jason Compson IV
a job. Not long after marrying Caddy, he divorces her after discovering
that her child is not his own and does not give Jason the promised job.
Jason, embittered, blames Caddy for this development.
Miss Quentin: Daughter
of Caddy and probably Dalton Ames. Caddy sends her to live at the Compson
home after her divorce from Mr. Head. Jason IV dislikes her and keeps for
himself the money Caddy sends for child support. Caddy, in turn, despises
Jason and eventually runs away with an employee of the carnival at Mottson.
Dilsey Gibson: Black
cook in the Compson household who helps to look after the Compson children
while rearing her own children, Versh (male), Frony (female), and T.P.
(male). Wise, practical, and morally upright, she is a rational and stabilizing
force in the Compson household. She and her family reside in a cabin on
the Compson property.
Roskus Gibson: Husband
of Dilsey who suffers from rheumatism.
Versh, T.P: Sons
of Dilsey Gibson. They help to look after Benjy.
Frony: Daughter of
Dilsey Gibson. She marries in 1910 and gives birth to a male child, Luster.
Luster: Son of Frony
and grandson of Dilsey Gibson. Luster, though less than half the age of
Benjy, is charged with looking after Benjy from time to time. Throughout
the novel, there are references to Luster's looking for a lost quarter,
or asking people around him for a quarter, so he can buy a ticket to a
traveling tent show.
Shreve, Spoade, Gerald
Bland: Harvard students who are friends of Quentin.
Mrs. Bland: Gerald
Charlie: One of Miss
Man With the Red Tie:
Pitchman from the traveling tent show with whom Miss Quentin runs away.
woman whom Jason sees to satisfy his lust.
Earl: Operator of
the farm-supply store where Jason works.
Job: Black employee
of the store.
Minister from St. Louis who preaches a sermon at Dilsey Gibson's church
on Easter Sunday.
Sheriff: Law officer
whom Jason asks to track Miss Quentin after she takes money from Jason's
metal box and runs away. The sheriff refuses the request, apparently aware
that the money she took was her own.
Little Italian Girl:
Immigrant girl Quentin tries to help on the day he commits suicide.
Julio: Brother of
the Italian girl.
Anse: Law officer
who arrests Quentin after Julio accuses him of attempting to kidnap his
The Squire: Court
official before whom Anse takes Quentin.
Jeweler: He shows
Quentin timepieces in his store.
Clerk at Hardware Store:
Clerk who sells Quentin two six-pound flatirons with which to weight himself
down when he jumps into the river to drown himself.
Work and Year of Publication
Sound and the Fury is a psychological novel about the dissolution of
a family with roots in the aristocratic Old South. It was published in
New York on October 7, 1929, by Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith.
Michael J. Cummings...©
is Saturday, April 7, 1928–Benjy Compson’s birthday. Benjy is a retarded
33-year-old who cannot speak and has no sense of time. He requires constant
supervision whether he is in the house or on the grounds of his family's
property. It has always been that way.
family–an Old South aristocratic clan with roots dating back to pre-Civil
War days–lives in northern Mississippi’s Yoknapatawpha County. Unlike the
Compsons of previous generations, the Compsons of 1928 are in financial
decline, although they continue to maintain household servants and a modicum
is outside on the Compson property, next to a golf course, watching through
a fence as players hit the ball. Keeping an eye on him is Luster, the 14-year-old
grandson of the family cook, Dilsey Gibson. Dilsey is the matriarch of
a black family that has long been attached to the Compson homestead. When
Benjy was younger, Dilsey’s two sons, Versh and T.P., frequently watched
over Benjy when he was outside. On this April day, that job has fallen
to Luster, the son of Dilsey’s daughter, Frony. While Benjy watches the
golfers, Luster searches for a quarter he lost in the grass. He plans to
use it to go to a traveling tent show, where there is a man who can play
a saw like a banjo. At one time, the Compsons owned the land occupied by
the golf course–land that they referred to as “Benjy’s pasture” because
it was one of his favorite places on the Compson estate–but they sold it
to alleviate financial difficulties.
Benjy and Luster crawl through a hole in the fence, Benjy snags his clothes
on a nail, reminding him of a Christmas long ago when his clothes caught
on the same nail and his sister, Caddy (Candace), came to his aid. Caddy
was the only member of the Compson family who paid attention to Benjy when
he was growing up. When a golfer says, “Here, caddie,” the latter word
triggers another memory of Caddy, one in which Benjy is outside with Versh
at the front gate of the Compson house. There, they meet Caddy coming back
from school. She smells like leaves, Benjy thinks. (He associates the smell
of leaves with purity and innocence.) She scolds Versh for not making Benjy
put his hands in his pockets against the cold, but Versh had already told
Benjy to do so.
mind shifts back to the present for a moment, as he and Luster come out
to the other side of the fence. Then Benjy returns to the past. His memories
are disjointed, sometimes focusing on one moment from one year, sometimes
on another from another year. In between, his mind idles in the present.
Because of his retardation, he lacks full awareness of chronology, freely
merging and mingling past and present. Gradually, however, he reveals bits
and pieces of himself and others around him. For example, whenever he thinks
of Caddy, he moans out of sadness. (Caddy is gone from the household, but
he still looks for her.) When she was young, she was a free spirit who
did not wait long to explore sexuality. She became pregnant, married, had
her child, and eventually divorced after her husband discovered that the
child was not his own.
Luster continues to search for his lost quarter, Benjy recalls a time when
he and his mother ride in a surrey driven by T.P. to a cemetery where his
father and brother Quentin are interred. Mrs. Compson does not trust T.P.'s
driving and wonders why Dilsey's husband, Roskus is not driving. Following
is the scene, which is significant because of what it reveals about Dilsey
as a steadying influence.
"Where's Roskus." she [Mrs. Compson] said.
"Roskus cant lift his arms, today." Dilsey said. "T.P. can drive all right."
"I'm afraid to." Mother said. "It seems to me you all could furnish me
with a driver for the carriage once a week. It's little enough I ask, Lord
"You know just as well as me that Roskus got the rheumatism too bad to
do more than he have to, Miss Cahline." Dilsey said. "You come on and get
in, now. T.P. can drive you just as good as Roskus."
"I'm afraid to." Mother said. "With the baby." Dilsey went up the steps.
"You calling that thing a baby." she said. She took Mother's arm. "A man
big as T.P. Come on, now, if you going."
"I'm afraid to." Mother said. They came down the steps and Dilsey helped
Mother in. "Perhaps it'll be the best thing, for all of us." Mother said.
"Aint you shamed, talking that way." Dilsey said. "Dont you know it'll
take more than a eighteen year old nigger to make Queenie run away. She
older than him and Benjy put together. And dont you start no projecking
with Queenie, you hear me. T.P. If you dont drive to suit Miss Cahline,
I going to put Roskus on you. He aint too tied up to do that."
"Yessum." T.P. said.
"I just know something will happen." Mother said. "Stop, Benjamin.
"Give him a flower to hold." Dilsey said. "That what he wanting." She reached
her hand in.
time to time, Benjy recalls moments when he and Caddy carry letters from
their Uncle Maury Bascomb (Mrs. Compson's brother) to a neighbor, Mrs.
Patterson, with whom Uncle Maury is having an affair. (Uncle Maury lives
with the Compsons, taking advantage of their money and his sister's goodwill.)
One day, Mr. Patterson intercepts a letter when Benjy alone arrives at
the fence of the Patterson property with the letter. Here is the scene:
|Mr. Patterson was chopping
in the green flowers. He stopped chopping and looked at me. Mrs. Patterson
came across the garden, running. When I saw her eyes I began to cry. You
idiot, Mrs Patterson said, I told him never to send you alone again. Give
it to me. Quick. Mr Patterson came fast, with the hoe. Mrs Patterson leaned
across the fence, reaching her hand. She was trying to climb the fence.
Give it to me, she said, Give it to me. Mr Patterson climbed the fence.
He took the letter. Mrs Patterson's dress was caught on the fence. I saw
her eyes again and I ran down the hill.
also relives a time when Caddy is seven and gets her dress wet in a creek
(referred to in the novel as the branch) while she, Benjy, then
about 3 or 4, and their brothers Jason, 5, and Quentin, 8, are playing.
Here is the scene:
the children is Versh, Dilsey’s son. After they are called for supper,
Versh says Mrs. Compson will whip Caddy for soiling her dress. Caddy orders
Versh to unbutton the dress in the back so she can take it off and let
it dry. Quentin, dismayed, orders Versh not to do her bidding. (Quentin,
the reader learns later in the novel, is extremely protective of Caddy’s
virtue; for her to remove her dress is to unduly expose herself to the
world.) Caddy ignores Quentin and again tells Versh to undo the buttons
or she will “tell Dilsey what you did yesterday.” Versh unbuttons the dress.
After Caddy takes it off, revealing muddied underwear, Quentin slaps her,
and she splashes water on him. A water battle ensues.
Benjy and Quentin, though very young, sense that the wet dress and underwear,
as well as Caddy’s exposure of herself, signal the beginning of reckless
behavior in her life. (Quentin later on becomes preoccupied with the image
of her muddy underwear, turning it into a symbol of the promiscuity that
would result in her pregnancy.) Moreover, both boys, as well as Caddy,
well know that Mrs. Compson–concerned about untoward behavior in so proper
a family–will likely react harshly, as Versh observed. As for Jason? He
is off by himself, seemingly unconcerned. (His isolation from other family
members at this time foreshadows his isolation from them later on. Jason
dislikes his siblings. In fact, he finds fault with everyone. In his eyes,
only he is an acceptable human being.) As
Benjy continues to shift back and forth between present and past, he recalls
Caddy's wedding, when he and T.P. get tipsy on champagne after T.P. mistakes
it for sarsaparilla (which T.P. calls sassprilluh).
sense of foreboding occurs in Benjy's narration when he recalls (several
times) hearing Roskus say,"Taint no luck on this place," indicating that
Roskus knows that doom awaits the family. Shortly thereafter, Benjy remembers
a time when he hears that Caddy's name is never again to be mentioned in
the Compson household (because of her promiscuous behavior that brings
shame on the family). His memories take a turn for the dark side when he
remembers the death of his grandmother in 1898 and the death of his father
In one of his memories,
Benjy recalls a time when Caddy's boyfriend, Charlie, makes advances toward
Caddy. Benjy cries and pulls at Caddy's dress. Here is the scene as Benjy
Caddy said. "It's just Charlie. Dont you know Charlie."
his nigger." Charlie said. "What do they let him run around loose for."
Benjy." Caddy said. "Go away, Charlie. He doesn't like you." Charlie went
away and I hushed. I pulled at Caddy's dress.
Benjy." Caddy said. "Aren't you going to let me stay here and talk to Charlie
that nigger." Charlie said. He came back. I cried louder and pulled at
away, Charlie." Caddy said. Charlie came and put his hands on Caddy and
I cried more. I cried loud.
no." Caddy said. "No. No."
cant talk." Charlie said. "Caddy."
you crazy." Caddy said. She began to breathe fast. "He can see. Dont. Dont."
Caddy fought. They both breathed fast. ......."Please.
"lease." Caddy whispered.
him away." Charlie said.
will." Caddy said. "Let me go."
you send him away." Charlie said.
Caddy said. "Let me go." Charlie went away. "Hush." Caddy said. "He's gone."
I hushed. I could hear her and feel her chest going.
have to take him to the house." she said. She took my hand. "I'm coming."
Charlie said. "Call the nigger."
Caddy said. "I'll come back. Come on, Benjy."
Charlie whispered, loud. We went on. "You better come back. Are you coming
back." Caddy and I were running. ......."Caddy."
Charlie said. We ran out into the moonlight, toward the kitchen.
and I ran. We ran up the kitchen steps, onto the porch, and Caddy knelt
down in the dark and held me. I could hear her and feel her chest. "I wont."
she said. "I wont anymore, ever. Benjy. Benjy.' Then she was crying, and
I cried, and we held each other. "Hush." She said. "Hush. I wont anymore.
So I hushed and Caddy got up and we went into the kitchen and turned the
light on and Caddy took the kitchen soap and washed her mouth at the sink,
hard. Caddy smelled like trees.
Benjy recalls the smell of perfume on Caddy in 1905 (a smell he associates
with sexual wile), he returns to 1928, when Caddy's illegitimate daughter,
Miss Quentin, dallies with a man with a red tie on the grounds of the Compson
home. He is a pitchman from the traveling tent show that Luster wants to
see. Benjy annoys Miss Quentin (who is named after Benjy's brother Quentin)
by approaching her when she is entertaining her beau. Unlike her mother,
she cannot tolerate the presence of Benjy.
another scene, Benjy wants to wait at the gate of the Compson home for
Caddy to return from school, not realizing that she has married and moved
out of the Compson home. He is with one of Dilsey's sons, T.P., who is
looking after Benjy, with Mrs. Compson nearby.
cant do no good looking through the gate, T.P. said. Miss Caddy done gone
long ways away. Done got married and left you. You cant do no good, holding
to the gate and crying. She cant hear you.
is it he wants, T.P. Mother said. Cant you play with him and keep him quiet.
want to go down yonder and look through the gate, T.P. said.
he cannot do it, Mother said. It's raining. You will just have to play
with him and keep him quiet. You, Benjamin.
nothing going to quiet him, T.P. said. He think if he down to the gate,
Miss Caddy come back. Nonsense, Mother said.
Benjy was in his teens, his family had him castrated after his brother
Jason and his father concluded that Benjy had attacked some girls. It was
a false conclusion. Here is the scene Benjy remembers:
[the front gate] was open when I touched it, and I held to it in the twilight.
I wasn't crying, and I tried to stop, watching the girls coming along in
the twilight. I wasn't crying.
cant get out. He wont hurt anybody, anyway. Come on."
scared to. I'm scared. I'm going to cross the street."
cant get out."
be a fraid cat. Come on."
came on in the twilight. I wasn't crying, and I held to the gate.
wont hurt you. I pass here every day. He just runs along the fence."
came on. I opened the gate and they stopped, turning. I was trying to say
[that I was looking for Caddy], and I caught her, trying to say, and she
screamed and I was trying to say and trying and the bright shapes began
to stop and I tried to get out. I tried to get it off of my face, but the
bright shapes were going again. They were going up the hill to where it
fell away and I tried to cry. But when I breathed in, I couldn't breathe
out again to cry, and I tried to keep from falling off the hill and I fell
off the hill into the bright, whirling shapes.
Benjy ends his reverie, he and Luster return to the house, where Dilsey
has a birthday cake waiting for Benjy in the kitchen. Luster blows out
the candles and cuts the cake while Dilsey is out of the room. Benjy sits
by the fireplace, watching the flames, as he and Luster eat cake. Fire
fascinates Benjy. When Dilsey returns, she notices Luster gorging on the
cake and reaching for another piece, then scolds him for eating too much
of it: "Reach it again, and I chop it right off with this here butcher
knife," she says. A moment later, she repeats her warning: "Reach hit [it]
one more time." Dilsey said. "Just reach it." Benjy then reaches into the
fireplace, burns his hand, and begins to cry. Quickly, Dilsey pours soda
on the burn and wraps a cloth around it. Mrs. Compson comes downstairs,
enters the room, and complains about Benjy's crying, saying, "How can I
lie there, with him bawling down here. Benjamin. Hush this minute." (Mrs.
Compson is almost always lying down, suffering from imaginary illnesses
and indulging in self-pity). Luster takes Benjy to another room, the library,
which triggers in Benjy another memory of Caddy, a pleasant one, followed
by a memory related to his name change when he was five years old. When
Benjy was born in 1895, he was baptized Maury, after his uncle.
However, in 1900, Mrs. Compson changed his name to Benjamin when she discovered
that he was retarded. (In the Bible, Benjamin was the youngest son of Jacob,
the Jewish patriarch. See Genesis, Chapters 42-45.) She did not wish to
bring shame on the Bascomb name. Caddy, however, out of respect for Benjy,
sometimes calls him Maury.
after the interception of the letter to Mrs. Patterson (referred to above),
Benjy recalls the following scene in which Uncle Maury nurses injuries
inflicted by an outraged Mr. Patterson. The scene also reveals information
about Mr. Compson's heavy drinking and Mrs. Compson's concern for the Bascomb
Maury was sick. His eye was sick, and his mouth. Versh took his supper
up to him on the tray.
says he's going to shoot the scoundrel." Father said. "I told him he'd
better not mention it to Patterson before hand." He drank.
who, Father." Quentin said. "What's Uncle Maury going to shoot him for."
he couldn't take a little joke." Father said.
Mother said. "How can you. You'd sit right there and see Maury shot down
in ambush, and laugh."
Maury'd better stay out of ambush." Father said.
who, Father." Quentin said. "Who's Uncle Maury going to shoot."
Father said. "I dont own a pistol." Mother began to cry. "If you begrudge
Maury your food, why aren't you man enough to say so to his face. To ridicule
him before the children, behind his back."
course I dont." Father said. "I admire Maury. He is invaluable to my own
sense of racial superiority. I wouldn't swap Maury for a matched team.
And do you know why, Quentin."
sir." Quentin said.
ego in arcadia I have forgotten the latin for hay." Father said. "There,
there." he said. "I was just joking." He drank and set the glass down and
went and put his hand on Mother's shoulder.
no joke." Mother said. "My people are every bit as well born as yours.
Just because Maury's health is bad.
course." Father said. "Bad health is the primary reason for all life. Created
by disease, within putrefaction, into decay. Versh."
Versh said behind my chair.
the decanter and fill it."
tell Dilsey to come and take Benjamin up to bed." Mother said.
1 ends when Benjy and his siblings go to bed. In the darkness, Benjy recalls
that "I could see the windows, where the trees were buzzing. Then the dark
began to go in smooth, bright shapes, like it always does, even when Caddy
says that I have been asleep."
chapter, narrated by Quentin Compson, begins between 7 and 8 a.m. on June
2, 1910. The place is Cambridge, Mass., where Quentin, attends Harvard
University. On this day, he decides to cut all classes so he can prepare
to commit suicide. After getting up, he goes to the dresser, picks up his
wristwatch, breaks the crystal, and twists off the hands. His father had
told him that time was meaningless when little wheels kept track of it.
when the clock stops does time come to life,” Quentin paraphrases his father
Quentin packs his belongings in a trunk and writes his home address on
it. Then he bathes, shaves, puts on a new suit, and places the trunk key
and two notes in an envelope addressed to his father. After mailing the
envelope, he has breakfast at Parker’s Restaurant and buys a fifty-cent
cigar. Out on the street, he lights it and takes a few puffs. At a streetcorner,
two bootblacks approach him for business. He gives one of them the cigar
and the other one a nickel. Afterward, he goes into a jeweler’s and asks
whether the clocks in the show window display the correct time. The jeweler
says no, because the clocks have not been set. Quentin then walks across
the street, to a hardware store, and buys two six-pound weights (flatirons)
that he will use to keep his body under the water after he jumps into the
begins to relive memories of Caddy, whom he has always deeply loved but
never touched intimately. She is like a beautiful statue, a work of art
to be admired and preserved. When Dalton Ames–presumably Ames–impregnated
her, Quentin fought Ames but got thrashed. However, Caddy came to Quentin’s
defense and condemned Ames. Quentin regrets that he was not able to protect
her virginity. He remembers the day when he told his father that he and
Caddy had committed incest, but his father knew that he was lying. At the
time, Quentin hoped his “confession” would so enrage his parents that they
would cast out him and Caddy. He and Caddy would be pariahs, but they would
Caddy ended up marrying Sydney Herbert Head, a banker she met in French
Lick, Indiana, to preserve the honor of the Compson name.
thoughts of Caddy swim through Quentin’s brain, so do his father’s nihilistic
ideas–in particular, that life has no meaning, except perhaps for momentary
pleasure and for maintaining the attitude of a gentleman, a Southern gentleman.
Caddy is out of reach, if time and life have no meaning, if the values
of the Old South–including modesty and chastity in women–are out of date,
why go on living?
recalls a time when he is riding a train home from Harvard. After it stops
in Virginia, he sees a black man on a mule and gives him a quarter. He
also again thinks of Caddy and of the automobile that Head buys her as
a present, and he recalls her wedding day at Jefferson on April 25, 1910.
At the time, Head had promised to give Jason a job in his bank in South
Bend, Ind., after Jason finished high school.
Quentin's thoughts return to June 2, 1910, he takes a train to a little
town outside Cambridge. After getting off, he takes a walk and attempts
to help a little Italian immigrant girl who speaks no English and has lost
her way. He addresses her as “sister” and, at a bakery, they buy some buns.
While trying to show her the way home, her brother, a boy named Julio,
comes upon them, pounces on Quentin, tussles with him, and accuses Quentin
of kidnapping his sister. With him is a man named Anse, who is wearing
a badge. Neighbors gather around as Anse arrests Quentin and takes him
to “the Squire.” However, on the way, they run into some of Quentin’s friends
from college–Spoade, Shreve, and Gerald Bland–who have a car. There are
girls with them, as well as Mrs. Bland.
the squire, his classmates vouch for him as an upright fellow, and the
squire ends up fining Quentin, then releasing him. Quentin laughs at the
irony of the situation. Here was a boy, Julio, coming to the aid of his
little sister, a boy willing to fight for her–something Quentin believes
he himself did not do to protect Caddy's virginity.
when Quentin returns to his room, he is still thinking of Caddy. The reader
learns later in the novel that he commits suicide by jumping off a bridge
Chapters 3 and 4
3, narrated by Jason Compson, takes place on April 6, 1928 (Good Friday),
and Chapter 4, narrated by the author, takes place on April 8, 1928 (Easter
17-year-old daughter, Miss Quentin, lives with Mrs. Compson, Jason, and
Benjy but does not get along with the family and exhibits the same sort
of promiscuity that Caddy did. Jason, now the head of the family, despises
Miss Quentin. He and his mother are both angry with her because she recently
skipped school–again. Jason hints that she does so to be with boys.
a bitch always a bitch,” Jason says of her. That is his attitude toward
virtually all women. (He decides not to marry but uses a woman in Memphis,
Lorraine, to satisfy his lust.) His mother worries that Miss Quentin's
behavior will reflect poorly on the family and notes that “I didn't even
know she had a report card. She told me last fall that they had quit using
them this year. And now for Professor Junkin to call me on the telephone
and tell me if she's absent one more time, she will have to leave school.”
she says Jason is the only one who never gave her trouble.
answers sarcastically, “I never had time to [give you trouble] . . . .
I never had time to go to Harvard or drink myself into the ground. I had
to work. But of course if you want me to follow her around and see what
she does, I can quit the store [farm-supply store in Jefferson, where he
works] and get a job where I can work at night. Then I can watch her during
the day and you can use Ben for the night shift.”
Compson pouts and cries, then reaffirms her confidence in Jason.
to Mrs. Compson, Jason keeps for himself the money Caddy sends for Miss
Quentin’s support. Mrs. Compson had earlier told him not to accept any
money from Caddy, a persona non grata in the household because of the disgrace
she brought on the family name. However, to circumvent this dictum, Jason
makes a copy of each money order Caddy sends, burns it in front of Mrs.
Compson, then keeps the original. Over the years, he has amassed thousands
of dollars in this way.
day, Quentin takes up with a man from the traveling tent show–a pitchman
who wears a conspicuous red tie. When Jason drives around on the streets
of Jefferson to find her (to pacify his mother and to maintain the good
Compson name), he spots a Ford coming toward him. It stops and turns around.
Jason sees the red tie. He also sees Quentin looking out a window. A chase
ensues. When Jason thinks he sees their car parked along a road–“they had
tried to hide it,” Jason says–he stops, gets out, and traipses through
a plowed field and heavy brush to reach it. Moments later, he hears a car
start. A horn blows several times. Jason returns to his car only to discover
that the tires have been deflated. The horn blows several more times, tauntingly,
as Miss Quentin and the man with the red tie speed off. At Ab Russell’s
place nearby, he gets up pump and inflates his tires, drives back into
town, and goes to a telegraph office to check on the stock market.
returns home and discovers that Quentin is also there. Dilsey, the black
cook, has heard Quentin’s version of the chase and says, “Quentin come
in a while ago and says you been follerin her around all evenin and den
Miss Cahline jumped on her. Whyn't you let her alone? Cant you live in
de same house wid yo own blood niece widout quoilin?"
meanwhile, is still pleading for a quarter to go to the tent show. Dilsey
tells him,”[If] you had wings you could fly to heaven. I dont want to hear
another word about dat show."
says he has two complimentary tickets to the show. When Luster asks for
one of them, Jason says he will sell it for a nickel. Luster has no money.
So, out of meanness, Jason opens the lid of the stove and throws the tickets
in. Dilsey says, “A big growed man like you. Git on outen my kitchen.”Meanwhile,
Dilsey ends up giving Luster a quarter for the show.
Quentin runs away for good after taking $7,000 from a metal box Jason keeps
in his closet to hoard money from Caddy. Jason goes to Mottson, the next
town where the tent show is scheduled to appear. However, he fails to track
down his quarry–and suffers a bang on the head when tussling with one of
the show’s employees. Later, he asks the sheriff to intervene. But the
sheriff, well aware of Jason’s devious ways, refuses to act.
Easter Sunday, Dilsey takes Benjy and Luster to a service at her church
and hears a rousing sermon preached by the Rev. Shegog, of St. Louis. It
is about beginnings and endings, and Dilsey realizes that she has been
witness to the ending of the Compson family–although Dilsey herself will
carry on, just as the risen Christ carried on. When she allows Luster to
drive the horse-drawn carriage home, Luster makes a wrong turn that sends
Benjy into a frenzy. Benjy reacts that way because, for some reason, he
cannot cope with any kind of deviation from the norm. Jason, who happens
to be nearby, scolds Luster and steers the carriage back in the right direction.
Love Gone Wrong
Sound and the Fury centers on the downfall of a family with roots in
the aristocratic Old South. The family falls to ruin for a variety of reasons,
but the main one appears to be the family's impaired or limited ability
to express and share normal love. Mr. Compson's love of whiskey and nihilism
command most of his attention, and Mrs. Compson's self-pity and inordinate
concern for the family's "good name" prevent her from being a loving, full-time
mother. Caddy fulfills that role for Benjy, and Dilsey does what she can
for him and the other Compson children while raising a family of her own.
In her own search for love, Caddy turns to promiscuity. In his search for
love, Quentin becomes fixated on Caddy with platonic incestual desire.
Jason loves no one but himself and money. Caddy's daughter, Miss Quentin,
reenacts her mother's promiscuity. Unlike Caddy, though, she has no time
for Benjy. Uncle Maury seeks love with another man's wife.
Time in Turmoil
has little or no sense of the passage of time. Even after Caddy has moved
out of the Compson household, he waits for her at the front gate to come
home from school. His mind lives in the past and the present as if they
were one. Quentin–enthralled with the culture
and values of the Old South Compsons–cannot
adjust to the present. He is, in a sense, an anachronism. His father, on
the other hand, exists in a kind of chronological limbo. He tells Quentin
that "clocks slay time." He also says that "time is dead as long as it
is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time
come to life." Faulkner appears to be making a sort of Einsteinian statement:
that time is not fixed. It is relative to the cosmic traveler, whether
he is in the Compson's surrey or on a trans-galactic spaceship piloted
by Benjy, with Luster in tow searching the heavens for his lost quarter.
rebels against Old South Compson propriety when she becomes intimate with
her male friends. Her brother Quentin rebels against time, twisting off
the hands of his wristwatch. Jason, filled with contemptus mundi, rebels
against Caddy, Quentin, Benjy, and his parents, regarding himself as the
only worthwhile member of the family. He also rejects women as "bitches"
and becomes a racist and anti-Semite. Mr. and Mrs. Compson rebel against
Compson family, a remnant of the Old South aristocratic way of life, is
in its death throes. Its money is dwindling, its ancestral home is decaying,
and its land holdings are shrinking. Prospects for a new generation of
aristocratic Compsons are virtually nonexistent. Benjy cannot marry, Jason
refuses to marry, and Quentin commits suicide. Caddy marries, but her husband
divorces her after discovering that another man, presumably Dalton Ames,
fathered the child she bears. This child, Miss Quentin, rejects the family
and runs off with a man from a traveling show.
Compson blames Benjy, Caddy, and others for the travails she faces. Jason
blames everyone–including his siblings, his parents, Miss Quentin, and
Dilsey–for his problems or failures. When in his car chasing Miss Quentin
and the man with the red tie, he even blames the government for not fixing
the roads, saying "Yet we spend money and spend money on roads and dam
if it isn't like trying to drive over a sheet of corrugated iron roofing.
I'd like to know how a man could be expected to keep up with even a wheelbarrow."
Quentin blames himself for
not protecting Caddy.
strongest and wisest character in the novel is the Compsons' black cook,
Dilsey Gibson, who is at the bottom of the segregated Old South society.
But though she lacks social status, authority, education, and money, she
possesses what really matters in life: love, common sense, wisdom, faith,
perseverance, and strength. She is stronger by far than any of the Compsons
and able to cope effectively amid the turmoil of Compson dysfunction.
Gibson, Dilsey's husband, is a doomsayer, familiar figure in literature.
This character type has appeared in literary works since ancient times.
Perhaps the most famous fictional prophet of doom is the soothsayer in
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. He warns Caesar to "Beware
the Ides of March" (Act II, Scene I, Line 19), then repeats his warning.
Roskus frequently speaks these words: "Taint no luck on this place." Sometimes,
he accompanies his "prophecy" with an explanation, as in the following
two examples–the first referring to Benjy's name change and the second
referring to Mrs. Compson's proscription against ever again mentioning
Caddy's name in the Compson household:
"They aint no luck on this place." Roskus said. "I seen it at first but
when they changed his name I knowed it."
"That's what I tell you." Roskus said. "They aint no luck going be on no
place where one of they own chillen's name aint never spoke."
and again, Luster bemoans the loss of the quarter he planned to use to
see the traveling tent show. However, he persists in trying to find it
and, when it does not turn up, persists in asking others to supply a quarter.
Paragraphs 1 and 3 of Chapter 1 focus in part on the lost quarter. Thereafter,
there are more than 20 references in the novel to the quarter that Luster
needs. "Wish I could go [to the show]," Luster says again and again. He
tells Dilsey, "Ef I jes had a quarter, I could go to dat show." Dilsey
replies, "En ef you had wings you could fly to heaven. I dont want to hear
another word about dat show." However, Luster persists. Eventually, Dilsey
says, "I'll git you a quarter fum Frony tonight and you kin go tomorrow
night. Hush up, now." Luster has a goal, a simple one: He wants to go to
the show to see a man play a saw like a banjo. In this respect, at least,
he is superior to the Compsons, who seldom speak of goals or visions for
the future. Mr. Compson is content with the carpe diem of whiskey. Mrs.
Compson is content with lying in bed and courting sympathy. Caddy Compson
and her daughter, Miss Quentin, seek the sexual balm of now. Jason Compson
did have a goal–to work in Sydney Herbert
Head's bank–but after the job falls through,
he does not set a new goal. Rather, he occupies himself with getting even
with Caddy, whom he blames for the loss of the job because of her premarital
promiscuity and pregnancy. In other words, the past takes control of him.
scholars liken Benjy to Christ for the following reasons: He is 33 (the
same age as Christ when he died), he suffers mockery and other unjust treatment,
and his story (omitting flashbacks) unfolds on Easter weekend. In addition,
Benjy lives outside of time–as if in an eternal celestial
realm–because he has no grasp of the difference between past and present.
When a memory occurs to him, it as if it is taking place in the present.
Moreover, most of the other characters in the novel want little or nothing
to do with him, as if to say that in the world of 1928 people no longer
accept Christ or his message. Finally, Benjy knows intuitively when
Caddy sins and gets upset whenever anyone else strays from the "right path,"
as Luster does when he takes a wrong turn while driving Benjy home in the
surrey from the Easter service. After Luster turns left instead of right
at the Confederate monument in the town square, Benjy cries out. The omniscient
narrator says, "Bellow on bellow, his voice mounted, with scarce interval
for breath. There was more than astonishment in it, it was horror; shock;
agony eyeless, tongueless; just sound, and Luster's eyes backrolling for
a white instant. 'Gret God,' he said."
Sound and the Fury moves from beginning to end without a single, unforgettable,
climactic moment that alters the course of the novel. One gets the feeling
while reading the novel that the climax occurred in the distant past, before
Chapter 1. What the novel concentrates on is the outcome of that long-ago
climactic moment–an outcome centering on dissolution, decline, decomposition,
decay. In other words, The Sound and the Fury is one long denouement.
However, Miss Quentin stages a climax of sorts near the end of the novel
when she steals thousands of dollars from a metal box Jason keeps, money
that rightfully belongs to her. She then runs off with a pitchman from
the traveling show. Jason gives chase but fails to catch the fugitives.
Need help with Shakespeare? Click
here for Study Guides on the Complete Works
sometimes uses the stream-of-consciousness technique in the first three
chapters. In stream of consciousness, a term coined by American
psychologist William James (1842-1910), an author portrays a character’s
continuing “stream” of thoughts as they occur, regardless of whether they
make sense or whether the next thought in a sequence relates to the previous
thought. Generally, a stream-of-consciousness passage appears without punctuation
so that the flowing thoughts continue without interruption. The following
stream-of-consciousness passage from Chapter 2 presents the thoughts of
Quentin as he recalls bits and pieces of statements made by his mother:
what have I done to have
been given children like these Benjamin was punishment enough and now for
her to have no more regard for me her own mother I've suffered for her
dreamed and planned and sacrificed I went down into the valley yet never
since she opened her eyes has she given me one unselfish thought at times
I look at her I wonder if she can be my child except Jason he has never
given me one moment's sorrow since I first held him in my arms I knew then
that he was to be my joy and my salvation I thought that Benjamin was punishment
enough for any sins I have committed I thought he was my punishment for
putting aside my pride and marrying a man who held himself above me I dont
complain I loved him above all of them because of it because my duty though
Jason pulling at my heart all the while but I see now that I have not suffered
enough I see now that I must pay for your sins as well as mine what have
you done what sins have your high and mighty people visited upon me but
you'll take up for them you always have found excuses for your own blood
only Jason can do wrong because he is more Bascomb than Compson while your
own daughter my little daughter my baby girl she is she is no better than
that when I was a girl I was unfortunate I was only a Bascomb I was taught
that there is no halfway ground that a woman is either a lady or not but
I never dreamed when I held her in my arms that any daughter of mine could
let herself dont you know I can look at her eyes and tell you may think
she'd tell you but she doesn't tell things she is secretive you dont know
her I know things she's done that I'd die before I'd have you know that's
it go on criticise Jason accuse me of setting him to watch her as if it
were a crime while your own daughter can I know you dont love him that
you wish to believe faults against him you never have yes ridicule him
as you always have Maury you cannot hurt me any more than your children
already have and then I'll be gone and Jason with no one to love him shield
him from this I look at him every day dreading to see this Compson blood
beginning to show in him at last with his sister slipping out to see what
do you call it then have you ever laid eyes on him will you even let me
try to find out who he is it's not for myself I couldn't bear to see him
it's for your sake to protect you but who can fight against bad blood you
wont let me try we are to sit back with our hands folded while she not
only drags your name in the dirt but corrupts the very air your children
breathe Jason you must let me go away I cannot stand it let me have Jason
and you keep the others they're not my flesh and blood like he is strangers
nothing of mine and I am afraid of them I can take Jason and go where we
are not known I'll go down on my knees and pray for the absolution of my
sins that he may escape this curse try to forget that the others ever were
exhibits considerable versatility in his writing style in the The Sound
and the Fury. On the one hand, he presents the thought patterns and
modes of expression of three dissimilar narrators–the
first an imbecile, the second a sensitive college student, and the third
a redneck racist. On the other, he presents his own observations as the
omniscient narrator of Chapter 4. In addition, he writes dialogue in the
Southern black idiom. Striking imagery characterizes the narration, including
Benjy's. Following are examples:
Then I saw Caddy, with flowers
in her hair, and a long veil like shining wind.–Benjy.
grass was buzzing in the moonlight where my shadow
walked on the grass–Benjy. (Here,
Benjy turns the grass into chirping crickets. The shadow becomes the Shakespearean
symbol of futile life.)
I quit moving around and
went to the window and drew the curtains aside and watched them running
for chapel, the same ones fighting the same heaving coat-sleeves, the same
books and flapping collars flushing past like debris on a flood.–Quentin.
I could hear the Great
American Gelding [Benjy] snoring away like
a planing mill.–Jason.
pair of jaybirds came up from nowhere, whirled
up on the blast like gaudy scraps of
cloth or paper and lodged in the mulberries, where they swung
tilt and recover.–Omniscient
Along its quiet length white
people in bright clumps moved churchward, under the windy bells,
walking now and then in the random and tentative sun.–Omniscient
was like a worn small rock whelmed by the successive waves
of his voice.–Omniscient narrator describing
the preacher, the Rev. Shegog. (Metaphor: The rise and fall of the minister's
voice resembles the sound of ocean waves.)
Study Questions and Essay
Which character in the novel
do you most admire? Which character do you least admire? Explain your answers.
In what ways does the presence
of Benjy help to define other characters in the novel?
To what extent do Southern culture
and traditions affect the attitudes of the Compsons?
When she was growing up, Caddy
was spirited, with a mind of her own. However, she married Sydney Herbert
Head to preserve the "good name" of her family. Had Caddy lost her spirit?
Was she a broken woman?
Do any of the Compsons set goals
for the themselves?
Write an essay explaining whether
the treatment of blacks in the novel accurately reflects the treatment
of blacks in general in the early decades of the 19th Century.
Write an essay explaining whether
the attitude toward women in the novel accurately reflects society's attitude
toward women in the early decades of the 19th Century.
Sounds, smells, sights, people,
and places trigger memories in Benjy, Quentin, and Jason. Write a short
narrative or descriptive essay on a memory that an object (or sound, smell,
or sight) in your home or on your property triggers in you.
Write an essay focusing on the
internal and external conflicts that the Compson children face.
derived the title from words spoken by Macbeth, the murderous title character
of Shakespeare's great play. After Macbeth's enemies–full of righteous
wrath–close in on him, Macbeth expresses despair and utter resignation
upon realizing that all his hopes and dreams have come to naught as mere
shadows of past promise. Macbeth says:
Life's but a walking shadow,
a poor player
That struts and frets his
hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more;
it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of
sound and fury,
(Act V, Scene V, Lines 17-21)
Macbeth's conclusion that
life is nothing more than a tale told by an idiot sums up the Faulkner
novel. Benjy, of course, is the idiot. | <urn:uuid:0170f8a3-f8d1-421a-a644-9e7e84627180> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides4/Sound.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 | 0.962539 | 14,006 | 3.15625 | 3 |
(Editor's Note: This article was originally published on December 2, 2009. Your comments are welcome, but please be aware that authors of previously published articles may not be able to respond to your questions.)
The genus is named after a Czech priest and botanist Georg Josef Kamel who travelled in Asia. The most commonly grown plants are varieties of Camellia japonica, as well as the williamsonii varieties which tend to shed their spent blooms and therefore don't require dead-heading. The plants have shiny, dark green leathery leaves and the flowers are fairly large and appear in late winter and early spring. Sasanqua varieties will grow in more sheltered areas or under glass and have scented flowers. The camellia has been cultivated for centuries, and the stunning Higo types were only allowed to be grown by Samurai and other higher classes in Japan.
The first thing to do when deciding where to plant your camellia is to ask yourself if you can provide suitable growing conditions for the plant. They need acid soil (that is one with a PH of 6.0 - 6.5), similar to the requirements of rhododrendrons and azaleas. The cannot tolerate lime in the soil. They also require a bit of shelter and like a semi shaded spot away from hot sun. Another consideration is that the morning sun shining on a plant in a frost pocket can damage or destroy the flowerbuds. Mulching the plants with compost in spring can also help to prevent dryness around the roots in summer which can also be a cause of bud drop. Camellias are hardy in US zones 6-9 and are most widely grown in the south of the USA.
Avoid planting your shrub near old walls as these can leach lime from the mortar into the surrounding soil. If you cannot provide acid soil conditions then you could consider growing a camellia in a large container as they will do well in this situation as long as they are watered well (use rainwater if possible) and fed in spring using an appropriate plant food for ericaceous plants. They are fairly slow growing plants so they can be grown in containers for a considerable time. Little pruning is required. Using the plants this way means you can move them to a prominent position near the house when they are flowering and then move them again to make way for showier plants in summer.
You can have camellia flowers in your garden from late autumn until late spring if you choose your varieties carefully. There are over 3000 varieties of C japonica so you have plenty to choose from! Most garden centres stock the plants and you should be able to pick up a 3 litre plant for a reasonable cost. There are specialist online stockists too if you're looking for a particular variety.
Camellia flowers are classified much like roses, in terms of the structure and appearance of the blossoms. There are singles, doubles, semi-doubles, anemones, peony forms (aka informal double), rose form doubles, formal doubles and Higo forms, the latter being single with many flared stamens showing. Colours tend to be in the red, white and pink range, with some flowers exhibiting two colours or splashes of colour.
The shrubs lend themselves superbly to a partially shaded woodland aspect, and in this situation can reach huge proportions which are a magnificent sight in late winter and early spring when they are covered with blooms. Some of the photos in this article were taken by my sister at Howick Hall in Northumberland which is renowned for its 'Silverwood' woodland garden which was started in the 1930s.
Camellias were my mother's favourite plants, and my sister Ann (Galanthophile) now has several of Mam's plants in her own garden which are a fitting memorial to her.
Many thanks to Galanthophile and Growin for the use of their photographs in this article. All other photos are my own. | <urn:uuid:4feb64e7-f09c-4311-ba72-1388f7725efb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/2729/ | 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 | 0.967097 | 819 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Author Laura Ingalls Wilder was born on February 7th, 1867. Her “Little House” book series about life in America’s heartland of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Kansas and South Dakota gives young readers the chance to compare and contrast growing up then and now.
Here are a few comparisons to ponder: Unlike the spacious country homes of today, Wilder’s first home was called a dugout – a 300-foot square area that had bare earth walls, a wooden roof and a ceiling made of sod. These were the pioneer homes in the Midwest.
Wilder traveled the American frontier in a covered wagon. Wonder what she’d she think of today’s S-U-Vs! Her family overcomes scarlet fever but it leaves her sister, Mary, blind. Scarlet fever was once a serious childhood illness but, now, is successfully treatable with antibiotics.
At 65, Wilder wrote her first book, “Little House in the Big Woods.” In total, she describes her life’s journey in 8 books and provides modern-day readers a glimpse at a world where coffee was brewed at home on the stove and not at a Starbucks!
Visit www.notablebiographies.com for more information on this influential author.
Content provided by Oakland University | <urn:uuid:fe6666a5-166f-4fb7-a04f-c8c5d268a9a1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2012/02/10/remembering-little-house-author-wilder/ | 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 | 0.959966 | 272 | 3.1875 | 3 |
Pronunciation: (līt'lē), [key]
1. with little weight, force, intensity, etc.; gently: to press lightly on a door bell.
2. to only a small amount or degree; slightly: lightly fried eggs.
3. nimbly; quickly: to leap lightly aside.
4. with a lack of concern; indifferently; slightly: to think lightly of one's achievements.
5. cheerfully; without complaining: to take bad news lightly.
6. without due consideration or reason (often used negatively): an offer not to be refused lightly.
7. easily; without trouble or effort: Lightly come, lightly go.
8. frivolously; flippantly: to behave lightly.
9. airily; buoyantly: flags floating lightly.
Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Copyright © 1997, by Random House, Inc., on Infoplease. | <urn:uuid:952ea8be-e4a3-4904-8fae-3ef92907f5d8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://dictionary.infoplease.com/lightly | 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 | 0.873012 | 195 | 2.53125 | 3 |
A practical application of the new technique is applied to European-African history:
We estimate that the European-African divergence occurred 55 kya and that gene flow continued until 13 kya. About 5.8% of European genetic material is derived from a ghost population that diverged 420 kya from the ancestors of modern humans. The out-of-Africa bottleneck period, where the European effective population size is only 1,530, lasts until 5.9 kya.The authors use the "old" 2.5x10-8 mutation derived from a paleontological calibration of the human-chimp split, which renders their calculations comparable to many past papers on human demographic history, but at odds with many of the newer rates that are approximately twice slower. There is lingering controversy about the appropriateness of different rates.
The authors estimate that perhaps a 1.75x increase in their estimates will be effected if the slower rates are used; this is not 2x as one might expect from a 2x slower rate, because their age estimates depend on both the mutation rate (for which there is controversy) and the recombination rate. By applying the 1.75x correction factor, we may obtain a time for European-African split at 96 thousand years and a continuation of gene flow between Europeans and Africans down to 23 thousand years.
I suppose that things might be complicated by the occurrence of Amerindian-like admixture in some West Eurasians in the past, as well as the occurrence of intra-African admixture (which I've called "Palaeoafrican") in the ancestry of Yoruba, both of which do not appear to be modeled here: the former might have infused an "African-less" component of ancestry at a time when the authors suggest that there was continuing gene flow between West Eurasia and African; the latter would inflate the effective population size of the Yoruba and make the appear earlier diverged from non-Africans.
In any case, this is a useful addition to our understanding of human history and may tie in to some of my arguments about Eurasian back-migration into Africa (although the authors consider bidrectional gene flow in their model). The lack of non-M,N mitochondria in non-Africans makes the post-OoA gene flow from Africa->Eurasia difficult to stomach, while the opposing migration of Y-haplogroup E bearers into Africa (as I have suggested) seems too instantaneous to account for the authors' evidence for protracted gene flow.
PLoS Genet 9(6): e1003521. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1003521
Inferring Demographic History from a Spectrum of Shared Haplotype Lengths
Kelley Harris, Rasmus Nielsen
There has been much recent excitement about the use of genetics to elucidate ancestral history and demography. Whole genome data from humans and other species are revealing complex stories of divergence and admixture that were left undiscovered by previous smaller data sets. A central challenge is to estimate the timing of past admixture and divergence events, for example the time at which Neanderthals exchanged genetic material with humans and the time at which modern humans left Africa. Here, we present a method for using sequence data to jointly estimate the timing and magnitude of past admixture events, along with population divergence times and changes in effective population size. We infer demography from a collection of pairwise sequence alignments by summarizing their length distribution of tracts of identity by state (IBS) and maximizing an analytic composite likelihood derived from a Markovian coalescent approximation. Recent gene flow between populations leaves behind long tracts of identity by descent (IBD), and these tracts give our method power by influencing the distribution of shared IBS tracts. In simulated data, we accurately infer the timing and strength of admixture events, population size changes, and divergence times over a variety of ancient and recent time scales. Using the same technique, we analyze deeply sequenced trio parents from the 1000 Genomes project. The data show evidence of extensive gene flow between Africa and Europe after the time of divergence as well as substructure and gene flow among ancestral hominids. In particular, we infer that recent African-European gene flow and ancient ghost admixture into Europe are both necessary to explain the spectrum of IBS sharing in the trios, rejecting simpler models that contain less population structure. | <urn:uuid:02afdfbf-3f51-4e22-92eb-4457b8a04e99> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2013/06/demographic-history-from-distribution.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 | 0.935354 | 907 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Date of Completion
Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron, a famous piece of Italian literature written during the early Renaissance period, has created much debate among critics about its ambiguous position as a feminist, or anti-feminist piece of literature. This study seeks to explore this popular debate by examining Dioneo, one of the ten narrators Boccaccio creates for this collection. Dioneo is commonly referred to as the main voice of Boccaccio, or as the leader of the narrators. His character provides some of the most feminine stories within the Decameron as well as the most mysogynistic tale. Dioneo acts as a transgressor throughout the piece of literature and is afforded special privleges by Boccaccio's other narrators. Therefore an in-depth exploration of the character of Dioneo leads one to better understand Boccaccio's collection. In fact, Giovanni Boccaccio uses the Decameron to explore women's status in society without choosing to advocate directly for social change. In order to best understand this assertion the character of Dioneo must be explored.
Williams, Caitlin E., "THE VOICE OF DIONEO: WOMEN IN GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO'S DECAMERON" (2007). Honors Scholar Theses. Paper 24. | <urn:uuid:4db4f529-a9be-4c59-867e-21ea2d023bce> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://digitalcommons.uconn.edu/srhonors_theses/24/ | 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 | 0.906473 | 277 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Researchers at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom recently discovered a novel material that could be used by sophisticated technologies to fight global warming. The study was funded in part by an European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant worth EUR 2.5 million, awarded to Professor Martin Schröder for the COORDSPACE ('Chemistry of coordination space: extraction, storage, activation and catalysis') project, under the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). The results, recently presented in the journal Nature Chemistry, demonstrate that this material, called NOTT-300, could substitute for carbon dioxide (CO2) absorption.
The new material, which is porous in nature, can help cut fossil fuel emissions through a low-cost and more efficient capture of polluting gases like CO2 and sulphur dioxide (SO2). NOTT-300, said the researchers, can lead to the development of a low-carbon economy, generating energy through low-carbon sources and methods.
'Our novel material has potential for applications in carbon capture technologies to reduce CO2 emissions and therefore contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,' said research leader Professor Martin Schröder of the University of Nottingham. 'It offers the opportunity for the development of an "easy on/easy off" capture system that carries fewer economic and environmental penalties than existing technologies. It could also find application in gas separation processes where the removal of CO2 or acidic gases such as SO2 is required.'
According to the researchers, their findings could help us understand how to solve the problem of greenhouse gases. 'It is widely accepted that it is imperative that the CO2 footprint of human activity is reduced in order to limit the negative effects of global climate change,' Professor Schröder said. 'There are powerful drivers to develop efficient strategies to remove CO2 using alternative materials that simultaneously have high adsorption capacity, high selectivity for CO2 and high rates of regeneration at an economically viable cost.'
The researchers found that NOTT-300 covers all these criteria. Thanks to its properties, NOTT-300 could boost environmental and chemical sustainability. With regard to cost, this material is synthesised from relatively simple and inexpensive organic materials. The only solvent is water.
'The material shows high uptake of CO2 and SO2,' the Nottingham researcher said. 'In the case of SO2, this is the highest reported for the class of materials to date. It is also selective for these gases, with other gases — such as hydrogen, methane, nitrogen, oxygen — showing no or very little adsorption into the pores.'
Additionally,the team found that the material facilitates the release of absorbed gas molecules through pressure loss, and it has high chemical stability to all common organic solvents. NOTT-300 is also stable in water and resistant to high temperatures, up to 400 °C.
Researchers at the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and the Diamond Light Source in the United Kingdom, as well as from Peking University in China, contributed to this study.
To restrict search results to articles in the Information Centre, i.e. this site, use this search box rather than the one at the top of the page.
After searching, you can expand the results to include the whole Research and Innovation web site, or another section of it, or all Europa, afterwards without searching again.
Please note that new content may take a few days to be indexed by the search engine and therefore to appear in the results. | <urn:uuid:4b4876cc-c7a7-4fa2-92f9-f9f96922eb62> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://ec.europa.eu/research/infocentre/article_en.cfm?artid=27715 | 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 | 0.929922 | 712 | 3.609375 | 4 |
It's a consequence of the recession:
* The poverty rate in 2009 was the highest since 1994, but was 8.1 percentage points lower than the poverty rate in 1959, the first year for which poverty estimates are available. The number of people in poverty in 2009 is the largest number in the 51 years for which poverty estimates are available.
* In 2009, the family poverty rate and the number of families in poverty were 11.1 percent and 8.8 million, respectively, up from 10.3 percent and 8.1 million in 2008.
* The poverty rate and the number in poverty increased across all types of families: married-couple families (5.8 percent and 3.4 million in 2009 from 5.5 percent and 3.3 million in 2008); female-householder-with-no-husband-present families (29.9 percent and 4.4 million in 2009 from 28.7 percent and 4.2 million in 2008) and for male-householder-no-wife-present families (16.9 percent and 942,000 in 2009 from 13.8 percent and 723,000 in 2008).
The above link has much more information about individual incomes, household incomes and the number of Americans without health insurance. For even more information, go here (pdf) | <urn:uuid:19c6e553-60dc-437d-a987-6574918628de> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/2010/09/poverty-is-up-in-us.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 | 0.940579 | 268 | 2.546875 | 3 |
New treatments hold out hope for breast cancer patients
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- It's a nightmare that plagues millions of women -- a diagnosis of breast cancer.
The fear isn't misplaced. Breast cancer affects more women than any other cancer except skin cancer, and kills more than any cancer but lung cancer.
Still, doctors are making some strides in detecting and treating this devastating disease.
"The average size of a breast cancer would be the size of a golf ball back in the 60s," said Dr. LaMar McGinnis, senior medical adviser for the American Cancer Society. "Today the average size is grape size."
Early detection is one of the keys to surviving breast cancer.
| ON CNN|
Watch CNN USA Friday at 11a.m. EST to hear from women who have survived breast cancer -- including Dr. Jerri Nielsen
, who was airlifted from the South Pole for treatment of the disease
Read a first hand account of dealing with breast cancer from CNN Moscow Bureau Chief Jill Dougherty
Mammography, an x-ray of the breast, is the most common tool for finding breast tumors. A radiologist examines the x-ray for irregularities.
"You're looking for asymmetry, that is, one side looking different from the other side," explained radiologist Dr. Jay Coffsky, Chief of Staff at DeKalb Medical Center in Atlanta, Georgia.
But by the time a cancerous tumor has been found in a mammogram, it's already been growing for three to five years.
New technology -- still not widely used and very expensive -- takes a digital picture of the breast. Doctors can then zoom in on one area or change the contrast to improve the image.
Other machines go a step farther, "reading" the picture and pointing out worrisome areas for radiologists to study more closely.
Targeting the tumor
Progress is also being made in treating breast cancer with less invasive strategies.
Currently, most women with breast cancer have to undergo some type of surgery, ranging from a lumpectomy, which removes the tumor and some surrounding tissue, to a mastectomy, in which the entire breast and some lymph nodes are removed. Most women with breast cancer also are treated with chemotherapy, radiation or hormone therapy.
Newer treatments seek to target the cancer more specifically -- killing the tumor but sparing surrounding tissue.
Some drugs under study now are designed to switch off the cancer molecules, in essence telling them not to grow. Others are anti-angiogenesis drugs that cut off the blood supply that allows a tumor to grow.
Another technique being researched involves beaming microwaves into the tumor to shrink it.
Preventing breast cancer in the first place is another avenue of research.
Although all women have some risk of developing breast cancer, women with a family history of the disease are considered at high risk. Scientists are studying drugs like tamoxifen and raloxifene to see if high-risk women might benefit from taking the medications while they're still healthy.
CNN Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen contributed to this report.
Hormone replacement may influence mammography accuracy
January 9, 2001
New hope for breast cancer sufferers
October 20, 2000
Study links early birth control pills to breast cancer risk for some women
October 10, 2000
New technique may improve breast cancer detection and surgery options
September 27, 2000
American Cancer Society Breast Cancer Resource Center
Breast Cancer Information from the National Cancer Institute
American Society of Clinical Oncologists
Department of Defense Breast Cancer Decision Guide
Breast Cancer Information from the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation
The Digital Breast Clinic
Note: Pages will open in a new browser window
External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive. | <urn:uuid:ed0dde7a-2f17-4674-803e-8b5278654c22> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://edition.cnn.com/2001/HEALTH/cancer/01/26/breast.cancer/index.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 | 0.932897 | 774 | 2.71875 | 3 |
If you need some equitable access to education for all learners, then this edu-good info is actually for you! It focuses on some tech-knowledge-y that all educators who create multimedia projects and/or who conduct research with their students could surely use.
So here it is: When you need the answers to life’s burning questions or more along the educational lines, such as information for a presentation or report, you and your students most likely default to one of the most robust resources that currently exists: The Internet, or more specifically, Google. Because of the continuous evolution of mobile technology, it’s simple to use, fast and in most cases, accurate.
And here’s the part where the infamous “but” word enters the equation…
Yep, there’s no doubt that we have a wealth resources at our fingertips; however, the real question becomes: Is snagging this stuff for our own purposes legal? What constitutes fair usage of various form of media?
Open Educational Resources (OER) to the rescue. By taking a look at the infographic shown below, teachers and students can become more aware of how to locate images, documents and videos that can be edited, remixed and shared without copyright restrictions. Check. It. Out!
Props to the Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning for creating and sharing this helpful visual.
Use the infographic as a how-to guide to search for openly licensed educational resources that can be used in conjunction with digital projects and presentations. Having this knowledge should help to avoid having the copyright police banging at your door! | <urn:uuid:34b59423-9683-4007-af11-872df1c96d47> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://edutech4teachers.edublogs.org/ | 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 | 0.92142 | 330 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Here are some websites I've found useful, but there are many, many more out there-- anyone is welcome to send me suggestions for updating this list!
E-mail me at: [email protected]
Open University: Spanish Language-- A very thorough collection of free Spanish language-learning and teaching websites, including some of the following. Thanks, Ms Ward and Abby!
Spanish Grammar Exercises (Colby)-- Really extraordinarily well done self-check grammar exercises, covering all the verb tenses and other topics, too.
Spanish Language Exercises (Ursinus)-- Also very well done set of self-check grammar exercises, covering a wide range of basic topics. Click on menus at the left to go to explanations and exercise links will be to the left.
Al Corriente- Spanish Internet Guide-- This site has very nice reading selections, with pre-reading and comprehension exercises, very good for intermediate students, or for anyone interested in exploring the cultural topics they cover.
Gramática Castellana-- This site is all in Spanish, very good for advanced students. Has a good page on accent rules: Reglas de acentuación en español
WWW Virtual Library-- Latin American Studies-- This site contains links to sites having to do with Latin America, including newspapers, magazines, sites about cooking, culture, history, you name it, not all in Spanish.
Enciclonet-- This site has current-interest articles on its home page as well as a substantial encyclopedia with information on historical, geographical and cultural topics.
¡EspañOlé!-- an online resource for students and teachers, with links to all kinds of cultural and educational materials for Spanish.
Centro Virtual Cervantes-- A cultural site maintained by the Instituto Cervantes, one of Spain's most important cultural organizations. Site has cultural articles, language practice, and reference material.
iWorld, La Revista de Internet-- Internet magazine on technology and business, all in Spanish.
Noticias de Ciencia y Tecnología-- The latest news from the world of science, all in Spanish.
El País-- One of Madrid's daily newspapers. Of special interest are the cartoons-viñetas on the Opinión page, and their frequent in-depth Tema sections developing particular themes. You can also try El Mundo, another important Spanish newspaper.
El Nuevo Día Interactivo-- News from San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Or you could go to news from just about any other Spanish-speaking country, through the WWW Virtual Library-- Latin American Studies site, listed above. For many news organizations in big cities, you can link to live radio and tv broadcasts through their websites.
El Chiste del día-- The joke of the day, in Spanish.
ELFENOMENO.COM-- Dedicated to El Señor de los Anillos, The Lord of the Rings. Has great cartoons by clicking on the "Fenómenos" section and then the "Humor" link in the menu at the left, and don't miss the jokes by categories there too!
BEM magazine online-- One of the best Spanish science fiction magazines now only online. Has news in many categories (science, science fiction, organizations, films...), and other features, including science fiction stories written in Spanish.
El Museo del Prado-- The Prado Museum in Madrid, with a great virtual tour under "visitas."
El Centro de Arte Reina Sofia-- Spain's national museum of modern art, where Picasso's "Guernica" is displayed. Has a virtual tour by clicking on "la colección" and then through "acceso" to a tour by floors, rooms and artists.
The Great Buildings Collection-- not just for Hispanic architecture, but you can search by country, city, or architect. Has photos for most buildings, and good reference bibliographies.
Frases CÚlebres-- a collection of famous quotes in Spanish.
return to Dr. Small's home page | <urn:uuid:7fa957ab-0bf0-44c0-b77e-8c9971e2b4ee> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://employees.oneonta.edu/smalle/links.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 | 0.875897 | 862 | 2.765625 | 3 |
In the olden days of teletype terminals, terminals were away from computers and were connected to them through serial cables. The terminals could be configured by sending a series of bytes. All the capabilities (such as moving the cursor to a new location, erasing part of the screen, scrolling the screen, changing modes etc.) of terminals could be accessed through these series of bytes. These control seeuqnces are usually called escape sequences, because they start with an escape(0x1B) character. Even today, with proper emulation, we can send escape sequences to the emulator and achieve the same effect on a terminal window.
Suppose you wanted to print a line in color. Try typing this on your console.
echo "^[[0;31;40mIn Color"
The first character is an escape character, which looks like two characters ^ and [. To be able to print it, you have to press CTRL+V and then the ESC key. All the others are normal printable characters. You should be able to see the string "In Color" in red. It stays that way and to revert back to the original mode type this.
Now, what do these magic characters mean? Difficult to comprehend? They might even be different for different terminals. So the designers of UNIX invented a mechanism named termcap. It is a file that lists all the capabilities of a particular terminal, along with the escape sequences needed to achieve a particular effect. In the later years, this was replaced by terminfo. Without delving too much into details, this mechanism allows application programs to query the terminfo database and obtain the control characters to be sent to a terminal or terminal emulator.
You might be wondering, what the import of all this technical gibberish is. In the above scenario, every application program is supposed to query the terminfo and perform the necessary stuff (sending control characters etc.). It soon became difficult to manage this complexity and this gave birth to 'CURSES'. Curses is a pun on the name "cursor optimization". The Curses library forms a wrapper over working with raw terminal codes, and provides highly flexible and efficient API (Application Programming Interface). It provides functions to move the cursor, create windows, produce colors, play with mouse etc. The application programs need not worry about the underlying terminal capabilities.
So what is NCURSES? NCURSES is a clone of the original System V Release 4.0 (SVr4) curses. It is a freely distributable library, fully compatible with older version of curses. In short, it is a library of functions that manages an application's display on character-cell terminals. In the remainder of the document, the terms curses and ncurses are used interchangeably.
NCURSES not only creates a wrapper over terminal capabilities, but also gives a robust framework to create nice looking UI (User Interface)s in text mode. It provides functions to create windows etc. Its sister libraries panel, menu and form provide an extension to the basic curses library. These libraries usually come along with curses. One can create applications that contain multiple windows, menus, panels and forms. Windows can be managed independently, can provide 'scrollability' and even can be hidden.
Menus provide the user with an easy command selection option. Forms allow the creation of easy-to-use data entry and display windows. Panels extend the capabilities of ncurses to deal with overlapping and stacked windows.
These are just some of the basic things we can do with ncurses. As we move along, We will see all the capabilities of these libraries.
All right, now that you know what you can do with ncurses, you must be rearing to get started. NCURSES is usually shipped with your installation. In case you don't have the library or want to compile it on your own, read on.
Compiling the package
Read the README and INSTALL files for details on to how to install it. It usually involves the following operations.
tar zxvf ncurses<version>.tar.gz # unzip and untar the archive cd ncurses<version> # cd to the directory ./configure # configure the build according to your # environment make # make it su root # become root make install # install it
Using the RPM
NCURSES RPM can be found and downloaded from http://rpmfind.net . The RPM can be installed with the following command after becoming root.
rpm -i <downloaded rpm>
This document is intended to be a "All in One" guide for programming with ncurses and its sister libraries. We graduate from a simple "Hello World" program to more complex form manipulation. No prior experience in ncurses is assumed. The writing is informal, but a lot of detail is provided for each of the examples.
All the programs in the document are available in zipped form here. Unzip and untar it. The directory structure looks like this.
ncurses | |----> JustForFun -- just for fun programs |----> basics -- basic programs |----> demo -- output files go into this directory after make | | | |----> exe -- exe files of all example programs |----> forms -- programs related to form library |----> menus -- programs related to menus library |----> panels -- programs related to panels library |----> perl -- perl equivalents of the examples (contributed | by Anuradha Ratnaweera) |----> Makefile -- the top level Makefile |----> README -- the top level README file. contains instructions |----> COPYING -- copyright notice
The individual directories contain the following files.
Description of files in each directory -------------------------------------- JustForFun | |----> hanoi.c -- The Towers of Hanoi Solver |----> life.c -- The Game of Life demo |----> magic.c -- An Odd Order Magic Square builder |----> queens.c -- The famous N-Queens Solver |----> shuffle.c -- A fun game, if you have time to kill |----> tt.c -- A very trivial typing tutor basics | |----> acs_vars.c -- ACS_ variables example |----> hello_world.c -- Simple "Hello World" Program |----> init_func_example.c -- Initialization functions example |----> key_code.c -- Shows the scan code of the key pressed |----> mouse_menu.c -- A menu accessible by mouse |----> other_border.c -- Shows usage of other border functions apa | -- rt from box() |----> printw_example.c -- A very simple printw() example |----> scanw_example.c -- A very simple getstr() example |----> simple_attr.c -- A program that can print a c file with | -- comments in attribute |----> simple_color.c -- A simple example demonstrating colors |----> simple_key.c -- A menu accessible with keyboard UP, DOWN | -- arrows |----> temp_leave.c -- Demonstrates temporarily leaving curses mode |----> win_border.c -- Shows Creation of windows and borders |----> with_chgat.c -- chgat() usage example forms | |----> form_attrib.c -- Usage of field attributes |----> form_options.c -- Usage of field options |----> form_simple.c -- A simple form example |----> form_win.c -- Demo of windows associated with forms menus | |----> menu_attrib.c -- Usage of menu attributes |----> menu_item_data.c -- Usage of item_name() etc.. functions |----> menu_multi_column.c -- Creates multi columnar menus |----> menu_scroll.c -- Demonstrates scrolling capability of menus |----> menu_simple.c -- A simple menu accessed by arrow keys |----> menu_toggle.c -- Creates multi valued menus and explains | -- REQ_TOGGLE_ITEM |----> menu_userptr.c -- Usage of user pointer |----> menu_win.c -- Demo of windows associated with menus panels | |----> panel_browse.c -- Panel browsing through tab. Usage of user | -- pointer |----> panel_hide.c -- Hiding and Un hiding of panels |----> panel_resize.c -- Moving and resizing of panels |----> panel_simple.c -- A simple panel example perl |----> 01-10.pl -- Perl equivalents of first ten example programs
There is a top level Makefile included in the main directory. It builds all the files and puts the ready-to-use exes in demo/exe directory. You can also do selective make by going into the corresponding directory. Each directory contains a README file explaining the purpose of each c file in the directory.
For every example, I have included path name for the file relative to the examples directory.
If you prefer browsing individual programs, point your browser to http://tldp.org/HOWTO/NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO/ncurses_programs/
All the programs are released under the same license that is used by ncurses (MIT-style). This gives you the ability to do pretty much anything other than claiming them as yours. Feel free to use them in your programs as appropriate.
This howto is also availabe in various other formats on the tldp.org site. Here are the links to other formats of this document.
If above links are broken or if you want to experiment with sgml read on.
Get both the source and the tar,gzipped programs, available at http://cvsview.tldp.org/index.cgi/LDP/howto/docbook/ NCURSES-HOWTO/NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO.sgml http://cvsview.tldp.org/index.cgi/LDP/howto/docbook/ NCURSES-HOWTO/ncurses_programs.tar.gz Unzip ncurses_programs.tar.gz with tar zxvf ncurses_programs.tar.gz Use jade to create various formats. For example if you just want to create the multiple html files, you would use jade -t sgml -i html -d <path to docbook html stylesheet> NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO.sgml to get pdf, first create a single html file of the HOWTO with jade -t sgml -i html -d <path to docbook html stylesheet> -V nochunks NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO.sgml > NCURSES-ONE-BIG-FILE.html then use htmldoc to get pdf file with htmldoc --size universal -t pdf --firstpage p1 -f <output file name.pdf> NCURSES-ONE-BIG-FILE.html for ps, you would use htmldoc --size universal -t ps --firstpage p1 -f <output file name.ps> NCURSES-ONE-BIG-FILE.html
I thank Sharath and Emre Akbas for helping me with few sections. The introduction was initially written by sharath. I rewrote it with few excerpts taken from his initial work. Emre helped in writing printw and scanw sections.
Perl equivalents of the example programs are contributed by Anuradha Ratnaweera.
Then comes Ravi Parimi, my dearest friend, who has been on this project before even one line was written. He constantly bombarded me with suggestions and patiently reviewed the whole text. He also checked each program on Linux and Solaris.
This is the wish list, in the order of priority. If you have a wish or you want to work on completing the wish, mail me.
Add examples to last parts of forms section.
Prepare a Demo showing all the programs and allow the user to browse through description of each program. Let the user compile and see the program in action. A dialog based interface is preferred.
Add debug info. _tracef, _tracemouse stuff.
Accessing termcap, terminfo using functions provided by ncurses package.
Working on two terminals simultaneously.
Add more stuff to miscellaneous section.
Copyright © 2001 by Pradeep Padala.
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, distribute with modifications, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE ABOVE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
Except as contained in this notice, the name(s) of the above copyright holders shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written authorization. | <urn:uuid:456a0e12-b34e-49e1-a6ef-b2cab01b0ec6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/NCURSES-Programming-HOWTO/intro.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 | 0.832 | 2,933 | 3.625 | 4 |
|This article does not cite its references or sources. You can help WikiFur by references.|
For specifics, check the and talk page. Consult the Furry Book of Style for editing help.
Spotted skunks are distinctive from striped skunks in three ways. First, their fur pattern is different, having 'blotches' along the whole of their body. Second, they are notably smaller than striped skunks. Third, when spraying, striped skunks will stamp in a circle then look over their hips, while spotted skunks will perform a 'handstand' and look over their tails. This 'handstand' has given the skunks a reputation for being graceful.
In real life, spotted skunks are divided into two main species: the Eastern spotted skunk (spilogale putoris), and the Western spotted skunk (spilogale gracilis). (A third species, the Channel Islands Spotted Skunk, is alternatively declared a subspecies of the western spotted skunk, and its own species.) These species are incompatible due to subtle differences in skeletal structure; these differences arose relatively quickly due to temporal isolation (the Eastern spotted skunk mates in the spring, the Western, in the fall). These differences are rarely mentioned in furry circles. | <urn:uuid:4f83c1ac-815a-46c0-b369-5168bc765af3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://en.wikifur.com/wiki/Spotted_Skunk | 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 | 0.932843 | 264 | 3.15625 | 3 |
Campaign finance reform
Table of contents
First attempts at reform
Money has been associated with elections since the inception of the electoral process in the United States. Out of four million citizens during the Revolution, only 800,000 white male property owners were enfranchised. When George Washington ran for the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1758, his election managers provided just under 1/2 gallon of alcoholic beverages per voter at a treat for Freeholders on election day. In 1777 James Madison lost a race for the Virginia legislature, which he claimed was due to his refusal to provide alcohol. Aaron Burr persuaded the New York state assembly to create an anti-Federalist state bank for the purpose of helping citizens buy land in order to gain votes.
By the time of the presidential election of 1828, twenty two of the twenty four states chose presidential electors through the popular vote and most had abandoned the property requirement. Some politicians had been known to buy votes and pay repeat voters. In 1823 the price of a vote in New York City was $5 and for repeat voters, went as high as $30.
In order to gain votes from the recently enfranchised, common white man, Andrew Jackson started an early campaign in 1825 with a reelection committee that enabled support from a network of partisan newspapers across the nation. After his election, Jackson began a political patronage system that rewarded political party operatives, which had a profound effect on future elections. Eventually, appointees were expected to contribute portions of their pay back to the political machine. During the Jacksonian era, some of the first attempts were made by corporations to influence politicians. Jackson claimed that his charter battle against the Second Bank of the United States was one of the great struggles between democracy and the money power.
Simeon Cameron in the 1850's through 1870's was responsible for the "Pennsylvania Idea" of applying the wealth of corporations to help maintain Republican control of the legislature, to include regularly purchasing votes and other vehicles of power. Political machines across the country used squeeze or strike bills to force corporate interests into paying for the defeat of the measures. U.S. Senators of the time were elected not by popular vote, but by state legislatures, whose votes could sometimes be bought. Exposed bribery occurred in Colorado, Kansas, Montana and West Virginia.
Abraham Lincoln's attempt to finance his own 1858 Senate run bankrupted him, even though he had arranged a number of $500 expense accounts from wealthy donors. However, he was able to regain enough money in his law practice to purchase an Illinois newspaper to support him in the presidential election of 1860, for which he gained the financial support of businessmen in Philadelphia and New York City.
After the Civil War, parties increasingly relied on wealthy individuals who had become rich from the war industry, such as Jay Cooke, the Vanderbilts and the Astors. The first federal campaign finance law, passed in 1867, was a Naval Appropriations Bill which prohibited government employees from soliciting contributions from Navy yard workers. As an aftermath of the aforementioned Jacksonian political patronage, a practice of political assessment required officeholders to return an assessed portion of their pay to the machine in order to secure the future of a position. This provoked passage of the Pendleton Act of 1873, extending the prohibition of political contributions to all civil service workers. However, this increased pressure to acquire funding from corporate and individual wealth.
In the campaign of 1872 a group of wealthy New York Democrats pledged $10,000 each to pay for the costs of promoting the election. One Ulysses S. Grant supporter alone contribute 1/4 of the total finances. One historian said that never before was a candidate under such a great obligation to men of wealth. Vote buying and voter coercion were common in this era. After more standardized ballots were introduced, these practices continued, applying methods such as carbon paper under ballots for proof of payment.
Boise Penrose mastered post-Pendleton Act corporate funding through extortionist tactics, such as squeeze bills. During his successful 1896 U.S. Senate campaign he raised 1/4 million dollars within 48 hours. He allegedly told supporters that they send him to Congress to enable them to make more money.
The wealthy Ohio industrialist, shipping magnet and political operative, Mark Hanna assessed banks 1/4 percent of their capital. Corporations were assessed in relation to their stake in the prosperity of the country. He was made chairman of the Republican National Committee after giving $100,000 out of pocket toward the 1896 nomination of William McKinley. He managed to make McKinley's run the prototype of the modern commercial advertising campaign, the most expensive up to post-WWI, issuing the President-to-be's image on buttons, billboards, posters, etc. Supporters explicitly recognized that they were paying for the service of managing the politics of their business interests.
Twentieth century Progressive advocates, muckraker journalists and political satirists made it clear to the general public that the policies of vote buying and excessive corporate and moneyed influence were abandoning the interests of millions of taxpayers. They advocated regulating antitrust laws, restricting corporate lobbying and campaign contributions, as well as greater citizen participation and control, including standardized secret ballots, strict voter registration and women's suffrage.
In his first term, President Theodore Roosevelt, following President McKinley's assassination of 1901, began trust-busting and anti corporate influence activities, but fearing defeat, turned to bankers and industrialists for support in what turned out to be his 1904 landslide campaign. Roosevelt was embarrassed by his corporate financing and was unable to clear a suspicion of a quid pro quo exchange with E.H. Harriman for what was an eventually unfulfilled ambassador nomination. There was a resulting national call for reform, but Roosevelt claimed that it was legitimate to accept large contributions if there were no implied obligation. However, in his 1905 message to Congress following the election, he proposed that "contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law." The proposal, however, included no restrictions on campaign contributions from the private individuals who owned and ran corporations. Roosevelt also called for public financing of federal candidates via their political parties. The movement for a national law to require disclosure of campaign expenditures, begun by the (citizen's lobbying group) National Publicity Law Association, was supported by Roosevelt, but delayed by Congress for a decade.
This first effort at wide-ranging reform resulted in the Tillman Act in 1907 which prohibited corporations and nationally chartered (interstate) banks from making direct financial contributions to federal candidates. However, weak enforcement mechanisms made the Act unenforceable. Disclosure requirements and spending limits for House and Senate candidates followed shortly thereafter. The first contribution limits were enacted in the Federal Corrupt Policies Act (1925). The Smith-Connally Act (1943) and Taft-Hartley Act (1947) extended the corporate ban to labor unions.
FECA and the Watergate amendments
Much of this legislation, however, was full of loopholes and went totally unenforced. Congress passed a comprehensive overhaul of campaign finance regulations in 1971 with the Federal Election Campaign Act (amended 1974) and Revenue Act. The legislation was wide-ranging, attempting to consolidate previous reforms and also enacting a variety of new measures, including the first steps towards public financing of presidential campaigns. Enforcement remained a challenge, though, thanks in part to the lack of a central agency for monitoring compliance.
Public outrage at the Watergate scandal resulted in amendments to FECA which finally resulted in real changes in campaign finance. New provisions included stricter and more comprehensive contribution and expenditure limits for campaigns and other committees, full public financing for presidential general election campaigns, and, for the first time, an independent agency — the Federal Election Commission — to inform campaign finance rules.
The new law was challenged, resulting in a landmark Supreme Court decision, Buckley v. Valeo. The decision upheld contribution limits, disclosure requirements, and voluntary public financing, while striking down most limits on expenditures.
Hard and soft money
Campaign money in the U.S. system comes in two forms: "hard money" and "soft money". Hard money refers to donations made directly to political candidates. These must be declared with the name of the donor, which becomes public knowledge, and are limited by federal caps. Soft money refers to contributions made to political parties, and are largely uncapped. However, they cannot go directly into supporting a candidate, but rather into such elements as what are known as "issue" ads, which are advertisements for a candidate's positions or thinly veiled attacks on the opponent's positions. This is far different from the intended use of soft money, which was to fund "party building activities" such as get-out-the-vote efforts or voter registration drives.
Main article: soft money
However, this money was quickly used to fund advertisements. For example, a wealthy individual could give $5 million in soft money to the Democratic Party. The party could then spend this money on political ads. These ads could not tell you to "Vote for Smith", "Elect Smith", "Send Smith to Congress", "Vote Against Jones", "Defeat Jones", or anything of that sort. However, they could go something like this: "John Smith is an honest man who stands up for the people. Bill Jones is a chronic liar who's taken money from special interests and advocated cutting Social Security. Call Bill Jones and tell him how you feel about this." The use of the phrases "vote for", "elect", "defeat", etc. was ruled illegal in the 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision Buckley v. Valeo. The decision also held that limitations on donations to candidates were acceptable (to limit the "appearance of corruption"). On the other hand, the Court said, limitations on campaign spending were unconstitutional.
Campaign finance reform had been debated for years without any major changes to campaign finance laws. The Reform Party, founded by Ross Perot, made it a central issue in its platform, and when Perot ran for president in 1992 and 1996 he strongly argued for it. It again became a major issue in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, especially with candidates John McCain and Ralph Nader. Organizations in favor of campaign finance reform include Common Cause, Democracy 21, and Democracy Matters. Organizations directly challenging the Supreme Court's decision to equate spending money to influence elections with constitutionally-protected free speech, include ReclaimDemocracy.org, the National Voting Rights Institute, and U.S. PIRG.
Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002
In 2002, spurred by (amongst other things) the collapse of Enron, a major contributor to politicians at all levels of the U.S. system, reformers in the U.S. House of Representatives were able to pass the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), also called the McCain-Feingold bill after its chief sponsors, John McCain and Russ Feingold. The U.S. Senate then gained the requisite 60 votes to shut off debate (in fact, 68) and passed the House version of the bill 60–40 on March 20, 2002. It was signed into law by President Bush on March 27, 2002. He said, in part, "I believe that this legislation, although far from perfect, will improve the current financing system for Federal campaigns... Taken as a whole, this bill improves the current system of financing for Federal campaigns, and therefore I have signed it into law." The bill was the first overhaul of campaign finance laws since the post-Watergate scandal era.
The BCRA was a mixed bag for those who wanted to remove the money from politics. It eliminated all soft money donations to the national party committees--but it also doubled the contribution limit of hard money, from $1,000 to $2,000 per election. (The primary and general are considered separate elections.) In addition, the bill banned the use of corporate or union money to pay for broadcast advertising that identifies a federal candidate within 30 days of a primary or nominating convention, or 60 days of a general election. Any ads within those periods that identify a federal candidate must be paid for with regulated, hard money or with contributions exclusively made by individual donors.
This provision was challenged as unconstitutional by groups and individuals including the California State Democratic Party, the National Rifle Association, and Republican Senator Mitch McConnell (Kentucky), the Senate Majority Whip. After moving through lower courts, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a special session in September 2003. On Wednesday, December 10, 2003, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that upheld the key provisions of McCain-Feingold; the vote on the court was 5 to 4. Justices John Paul Stevens and Sandra Day O'Connor wrote the majority opinion; they were joined by David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer, and opposed by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Antonin Scalia.
However, this is only one battle in movement for campaign finance reform. Another route some groups are trying is public financing of campaigns. There are several ways of instituting public financing.
One method gives each candidate a certain, set amount of money. In order to qualify for this money, the candidates must have a minimum level of support in opinion polls. The candidates are not allowed to accept outside donations if they receive this money. This procedure is currently in place in races for the state legislature in Maine.
Another method allows the candidates to raise funds from private donors, but provides matching funds for the first chunk of donations. For instance, the government might "match" the first $250 of every donation by giving one dollar for the first $250 by any donor. A system like this is currently in place in the U.S. presidential primaries.
Supporters of public financing claim that it is the only way to truly get money out of politics. In addition, they claim that matching funds provide a necessary encouragement to raise money in small donations. Many critics say that such plans discriminate against smaller candidates, especially in systems with only two political parties. They also claim that government subsidization of political speech is contrary to the spirit of democracy and/or capitalism.
Opponents of public financing claim that public money has no place promoting the partisan political viewpoints of candidates for office. It has also faced criticism from minor parties, who often face restrictions on access to campaign subsidies that don't trouble major-party candidates.
Other opponents of public financing claim that public financing has already corrupted the political process, with big government advocates buying voters' votes with promises of increases in entitlement programs, welfare, and pork barrell spending. Any direct public financing should correct this imbalance by only financing candidates committed to trimming the size of government.
- Open Secrets, a directory describing the disclosed use of money in the U.S. elections.
- President Bush's statement on signing BCRA
- Washington Post Article about Supreme Court Decision | <urn:uuid:5ca8f6e8-b24d-462f-84fd-4bcdcd31e769> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://enc.slider.com/Enc/Campaign_finance_reform | 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 | 0.969325 | 3,058 | 3.6875 | 4 |
When used properly, PGP is capable of very high security; most informed observers believe that even government crypto agencies are incapable of cryptographically breaking PGP messages. But, like all cryptography, misunderstanding and confusion are common, and improperly used PGP can be (and will likely be) no more secure than other, poorly designed or implemented, crypto systems. Users must take the trouble to learn and to understand how to use PGP, lest the security it is capable of not be achieved. In most respects, this means 'read the documentation'. And pay attention. PGP is easier to use than many crypto systems, but neither it nor any other is foolproof.
PGP is most commonly used for e-mail, which had no built-in security as originally implemented (the SMIME attachement standard finally included confidentiality much later, but there were and remain concerns about the quality of protection specified). Plug-ins implementing PGP functionality are available for many popular e-mail applications (such as Microsoft's Outlook and Outlook Express programs, as well as Eudora, Evolution, and Mutt). Several are included with many PGP distributions.
PGP uses asymmetric encryption (originally RSA and several others in current versions) which have a public key and a private key. The recipient's public key is used encrypt a shared key[?] (or conventional key[?]) for a symmetric cypher algorithm (originally Zimmerman's Bass-O-Matic, but rather quickly IDEA and in current versions any of several others) to encrypt[?] a message. Many PGP users' public keys are available to all on the many PGP key servers[?] around the world which act as mirror sites for each other, and (after some inevitable and usually unimportant delays) all have the same content. The recipient of an encrypted message decyphers the symmetric algorithm session key using his private key, and uses the recovered session key to decypher the message itself. Two cyphers are useful due to the very considerable difference in operating speed between all asymmetric cyphers to date, and the better symmetric cyphers (which are much faster).
A similar strategy is (optionally) used to detect whether a message has been altered since it was completed (eg, during transmission), or (also optionally) whether it was actually sent by the person/entity claimed to be the sender. To do both, the sender uses PGP to 'sign' the message (this originally used the RSA algorithm, but more recent versions of PGP have added other asymmetric algorithms and signature protocols). PGP computes a message digest (= cryptographic hash value[?]) from the message, and then encyphers it using the signer's private key. The message recipient uses the signer's public key to decypher the hash value and compare it to the hash value the recipient computes independently from the decyphered message. If both hashes are identical it is certain (at least to a very high degree of confidence) that the message was not tampered with since it was encrypted (deliberately or accidentally). It is also certain (to that same high degree of confidence) that the sender must have had access to the private key matching the public key used to decypher else the message wouldn't have been decypherable at all. If that private key has not become known to anyone else, the sender must have been the person/entity who originally generated the key pair. If that private key has become known to someone else, anyone using that key can produce messages which will successfully pass PGP's tests. This is true for all crypto systems using asymmetric key algorithms, however; PGP is not in any sense specially vulnerable.
Both in encrypting and in verifying signatures, it is critical that the public key one uses to send messages to some person / entity actually does 'belong' to the intended receipient. Simply downloading a public key from somewhere is not sufficient assurance of that association. PGP includes provisions for distributing users' public keys in 'identity certificates' which are so constructed that all tampering with any bit in the certificate is readily detectable. But merely making keys, or any other part of the other information in a certificate, impossible to change (without detection, anyway) is also insufficient. It may prevent tampering after certificate creation, but does not prevent corruption before certificate creation. Users must also attempt to verify by some other means (for example, by meeting in person to exchange certificates) that the public key in a certificate actually does belong to the person/entity claiming it.
PGP includes a certificate 'vetting scheme' to assist with this; it has been called a 'Web of Trust'. PGP identity certificates (which include public keys and owner information) can be 'digitally signed' by other PGP users who, by that act, are 'endorsing' the association of that public key with the person / entity listed in the certificate as its owner. PGP includes a 'vote counting' scheme which can be used to determine which public key<-->owner association a user will be willing to trust. For instance, if three partially trusted endorsers have vouched for a certificate (and so its included public key), OR if one fully trusted endorser has done so, the association in that certificate will be trusted. The parameters are user adjustable, and can be completely bypassed if a PGP user wishes. The scheme is flexible, unlike most public key infrastructure designs, and leaves the trust decision in the hands of individual users. It is not perfect and requires both caution and intelligent supervision by users. Nearly all PKI designs are much less flexible and require users to follow the 'trust endorsement' of the PKI generated certificates. Intelligence is normally neither required nor allowed.
This care and caution about accepting a public key as correctly belonging to some other user is not unique to PGP. All public key / private key crypto systems have the same problem, and there is no known solution. PGP's scheme leaves the decision to the user (with or without PGP's endorsement arithmetic), essentially all other PKI schemes (all of the commercial PKI schemes!) do not.
The first version of PGP released by Zimmermann found its way onto the Internet. No license was required, there was no charge, and all the source code was included. As a result of that release, PGP found its way outside the US, and Zimmerman became the target of a multi year criminal investigation by the US Government for munitions export without approval. At that time, and still, crypto systems were a 'munition' within the meaning of US law and regulation -- rather like a bomb or an fighter jet or a machine gun. The investigation was finally closed without bringing charges. But in the meantime, PGP had acquired a considerable following around the world. Supporters included the 'free communications' activists who called themselves cypherpunks, and who provided both publicity and distribution.
After the success of the original PGP release, independent and (more or less) interoperable implementations of the PGP crypto system design were developed. Patent restrictions (the RSA algorithm was patented in the US, but not elsewhere; IDEA was patented internationally but non-commercial use was permittted) meant that US PGP versions operated under different legal rules than non US versions. In addition, the US government prohibited export of crypto systems of PGP's high quality; this is why Zimmerman was under criminal investigation for so long. All this produced forks in the original PGP software. Stale Schumacher in Norway supervised development of the most important independent PGP version. This version eventually came to be called PGPi, the i standing for "international". Having been developed, maintained, and distributed outside the USA, PGPi was not subject to US export controls nor to the US patent on the RSA algorithm. After the US export laws were relaxed in early 2000, and especially after the RSA patent expired in Sept 2000, PGP versions have largely reconverged back to one 'genetic line'.
Eventually an open source standard for 'PGP' was proposed, implemented and released (called OpenPGP[?]). It has become an Internet standard: OpenPGP, RFC 2440. It is semicompatible with late versions of PGP (additional protocols and algorithms, and new data formats, prevent complete compatibility). In addition, the Free Software Foundation developed its own, also somewhat compatible, version of PGP called GNU Privacy Guard, GPG. GPG was meant to comply with the OpenPGP standard and the most recent version does. It is available, with all source code, under the FSF's copyleft license GPL. Development was/is supported with funding from the German government.
After the criminal investigation was dropped, in 1996, Zimmerman and some associates founded PGP, Inc. to further develop PGP. It funded itself by selling a commercial version of the software, though the source code remained available and was supported. PGP, Inc. was acquired by Network Associates, Inc. in 1998 and Phil Zimmermann became a NAI employee. NAI produced several variants of PGP for assorted markets; only some of them continued to be available with source code or in versions without cost. In early 2001, Phil Zimmerman left NAI. In August 2002, NAI sold the rights to all versions of PGP -- except the command line version -- to a new company, PGP Corporation. Zimmerman now serves as special advisor and consultant to PGP Corp.
Because PGP Corp. is prevented by its arrangement with NAI from offering a command line version of PGP for some time, Zimmerman has cooperated with a Danish company, Veridis, to produce such a version. It's called Filecrypt[?] since the PGP name is controlled by PGP Corp and NAI. The story is at Zimmerman's Web site. Filecrypt, the base version of PGP from PGP Corp, and of course GPG, continue to be available in source code.
Because of the patent problem in the US, versions of PGP prior to v2.3 were deliberately made incompatible with later versions. Since the problem didn't exist outside the US, PGPi (and some other variants now lost in time) maintained compatibility with both early and later versions of PGP v2.x. MIT had complex relationships with the RSA patent holder (RSA Data Security) and was able to make arrangements to serve as a distribution point for 'patent permissible' open source versions of PGP to residents of the US and Canada. Elsewhere, others distributed various versions, with Stale's site (pgpi.org) eventually becoming first among many.
PGP Inc added several new algorithms, and a new data format or two, at PGP v5.0, just before it was acquired by NAI. NAI continued development, adding and changing while it controlled PGP, and PGPi more or less kept pace on a delayed basis. NAI released some PGP variants without the RSA algorithm, charging less than for the RSA licensed versions. Thus, some NAI PGP releases were compatible with earlier versions of PGP using RSA, and some are not. The situation became rather confused.
When the OpenPGP standard was adopted, it also included some differences from existing and older PGP versions, though there remained considerable 'backward' interoperability. Some of this was due to longstanding reluctance to specify commerically controlled algorithms (eg, RSA and IDEA) in open source projects. The Free Software Foundation's GnuPrivacyGuard (GPG) project is committed to implementing the OpenPGP standard and in its newest version is said to have done so. The MIT distribution site has not entirely kept up with new versions of PGP. At last look, it was several versions behind.
Filecrypt is said to be fully compatible with current versions of PGP from PGP Corp.
See the Frequently Asked Questions[?] files at pgpi.org for more details on the compatibility question. PGP compatibility intricacies are an excellent example of the damage commercial amibition without perspective, onerous patent licensing without good sense, and clueless government regulation can do. At present, it may perhaps be best to use a recent version of PGP from PGP Corp, or Veridis, or the most recent version of GPG. Compatibility problems will be reduced if not entirely eliminated by doing so; all are more (or less) backward compatible with assorted earlier versions of PGP from various sources. This will, unfortunately, require users to be somewhat aware of the compatibilty status of their correspondents. For instance, "Bob is using a current version of PGP, so I can tell my software to use any currently supported algorithm". "But Alice is still using PGP 2.6, and so she can't use anything other than RSA and IDEA, and I must use 2.6 compatible certificates". PGP has acquired version compatibility issues, just like all other software. | <urn:uuid:c3242ee9-5d82-4a44-9d43-dd20e556877e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://encyclopedia.kids.net.au/page/pr/Pretty_Good_Privacy | 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 | 0.958221 | 2,674 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Your example is flawed because "big" is limitless in English. While in many cases people might use "big" as a standard word and more fancy words like "gigantic" to describe something that's extremely big, ultimately big and gigantic are synonomous. Montana is called the Big Sky Country, and the sky is pretty freaking big. The tallest mountain in the world is a big mountain. The Nile is a big river. There's nothing inaccurate or needing improvement about calling a Tsunami a big wave. The reason only a few people understood you is that you were trying to express a sentiment that was inaccurate in relation to the word "big". You wanted to say that the word "big" was not enough and another word should be used instead but there is no other word that means anything bigger than "big".
When people want to convey the sentiment you seem to be reaching for, the most common expression that is logical for the language is "there are no words to describe it" or "there are no words" or just "no words".
You tried to say that "big" was inadequate and another word should be used instead, but few people understood you because logically there is no other word that means something bigger. If, instead, you had used the "there are no words" expression meaning big is inadequate and there is no word in English that properly describes the enormity of the Tsunami, that makes more sense and everyone should understand you clearly. | <urn:uuid:ba53a55c-90ee-4f54-b903-cda8fe6f3239> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/188117/whats-the-english-idiom-saying-to-describe-that-the-chosen-word-is-not-correct | 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 | 0.978102 | 299 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Water quality changes in an episodically flushed sub-tropical Australian estuary: a 50 year perspective
Eyre, BD 1997, 'Water quality changes in an episodically flushed sub-tropical Australian estuary: a 50 year perspective', Marine Chemistry, vol. 59, no. 1-2, pp. 177-187.
Marine Chemistry journal home page available at http://www.elsevier.com/wps/product/cws_home/503349
Publisher's version of article available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0304-4203(97)00070-4
Recent and historical data sets from the Richmond River estuary (New South Wales, Australia) were examined for possible impacts of changing land use patterns in the catchment and estuary floodplain on water quality over the last 50 years. Floodplain management practices, including further draining and disturbance of acid sulphate soils appear to have had no appreciable effect on the processes that control the degree of oxygen saturation in the estuary. Following runoff events phosphate and nitrate concentrations at a given salinity are respectively 2.5 and 3.0 times higher than 50 years ago, due to leaching from agricultural areas where fertilisers are applied. However, these concentrations quickly decrease after the runoff event due to rapid flushing of the system. Land use changes in the last 50 years appear to have had no impact on dry or low-flow phosphate and nitrate concentrations in the estuary, which are dominantly controlled by internal processes due to long water residence times. Particulate and bottom sediment phosphorus buffering apparently maintain dry season phosphate concentrations in the estuarine water column between about 0.30 and 0.80 ìM. Nitrate levels are quite low ( < 4.00 ìM) during the dry season, being regularly depleted by denitrification and/or phytoplankton blooms. Unlike poorly flushed estuaries, the episodically flushed Richmond River estuary shows no major signs of nutrient enrichment and associated eutrophication over time, despite increased loading of nutrients; most likely due to its low nutrient retention efficiency. | <urn:uuid:5d16105a-9064-4b52-8989-2262d0f538ef> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://epubs.scu.edu.au/esm_pubs/424/ | 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 | 0.912092 | 447 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Other available languages: none
Brussels, 3rd May 2006
(see also IP/06/560)
The most recent version of this MEMO is available at:
What is a cartel?
It is a secret agreement concluded between firms carrying out comparable activities with a view to restricting competition and gaining more effective control of the market. The agreement may take a wide variety of forms but often relates to sales prices or increases in such prices, restrictions on sales or production capacities, sharing out of markets or customers, and collusion on the other commercial conditions for the sale of products or services.
Why are cartels harmful to the economy?
Cartel members rely on restrictive agreements and do not supply new quality products or services at competitive prices. It is the customers who foot the bill. They may be consumers who finish up paying more for lower quality and narrower choice or they may be companies too. If it is other companies that suffer, this adversely affects the competitiveness of the economy.
What legal basis underpins the Commission’s action to combat cartels?
Article 81 of the Treaty establishing the European Community prohibits agreements and concerted practices between firms that distort competition within the Single Market. Fines of up to 10% of their worldwide turnover may be imposed on the guilty parties.
What happens to the proceeds from fines?
The amount of the fines is paid into the Community budget, helps to finance the European Union and, in the final analysis, reduces the tax burden on individuals.
Does the Commission have the last word?
All cartel decisions by the Commission may be appealed against before the Court of First Instance (CFI) and then before the Court of Justice of the European Communities in Luxembourg. They can, therefore, be closely scrutinised by these two courts, which are empowered to reduce or increase fines, where this is deemed appropriate.
What is the European Commission’s leniency programme?
It encourages firms to provide the Commission with insider information on cartels. The first firm to do so is granted total immunity from fines. Other firms that follow suit may be granted a reduction in the amount of the fine. This policy is very effective in uncovering cartels but does not prevent the Commission from conducting investigations on its own initiative. For further information, see IP/02/247 and MEMO/02/23.
What practical steps has the Commission taken to step up action against cartels?
Since June 2005 an entire directorate (Directorate F, with a staff of around 60) in the Competition Directorate-General has been involved exclusively in detecting and combating cartels.
What action is open to consumers who feel that have been victims of such illegal agreements?
Any firm or individual adversely affected by practices censured by the Commission, such as those set out in today's decision, may bring the matter before a court in a Member State of the European Union with a view to seeking compensation for damage suffered as a result of such practices. Fines imposed by the Commission are different from the damages awarded by national courts. While action for damages before a court also acts as a deterrent, its main purpose is to compensate victims of anti-competitive behaviour or to secure compensation for damage suffered. A Commission Green Paper on facilitating action for damages before courts in the Member States is due to be published in December 2005.
What are the ten largest fines imposed by the Commission in cartel cases?
1 Appeal lodged before the CFI.
2 Following decision by the CFI.
Fines imposed on cartels by the Commission in the last three years: | <urn:uuid:830c4460-bc11-4f9d-99ea-37a5f41826a6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-06-184_en.htm?locale=EN | 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 | 0.94973 | 719 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Fu*nic"u*lar (?), a. [Cf. F. funiculaire.]
Consisting of a small cord or fiber.
Dependent on the tension of a cord.
Pertaining to a funiculus; made up of, or resembling, a funiculus, or funiculi; as, a funicular ligament.
Funicular action Mech., the force or action exerted by a rope in drawing together the supports to which its ends are Fastened, when acted upon by forces applied in a direction transverse to the rope, as in the archer's bow. -- Funicular curve. Same as Catenary. -- Funicular machine Mech., an apparatus for illustrating certain principles in statics, consisting of a cord or chain attached at one end to a fixed point, and having the other passed over a pulley and sustaining a weight, while one or more other weights are suspended from the cord at points between the fixed support and the pulley. -- Funicular polygon Mech., the polygonal figure assumed by a cord fastened at its extremities, and sustaining weights at different points.
© Webster 1913. | <urn:uuid:7cb7aae8-7428-4089-8206-d6c01aed0e5f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://everything2.com/title/Funicular?showwidget=showCs243764 | 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 | 0.895614 | 239 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Many designs for electromagnets include a coil of the shape shown in Figure 1 wrapped around an iron mandrel with a rectangular cross section. The utility program Magwinder is used to define drive current elements for three dimension magnetic field calculations with the Field Precision Magnum program. In Magwinder, a coil box like Fig. 1 is constructed of four BAR type parts connected by four ELBOWR (elbow with a rectangular cross section) parts. The boxes must be rotated and translated from the their standard configurations to generate current in the correct position and direction, and the elbows must be shifted to the connecting positions. This involves some concentration and much busy work. Furthermore, the chances of error increase when there are multiple operations. In this article, I’ll describe resources that I created to automate the process and review the plotting capabilities in Magwinder to check the results.
Figure 1 defines the geometric parameters of the coil box:
- The coil cross section has width W1 in the x-y plane and W2 in z.
- The coil is approximated by N1 current filaments in the x-y plane and N2 filaments in z.
- The BAR models have length D1 in x and D2 in y.
- The ELBOWR models have inner radius R1 and outer radius R2 and extend 90°.
- I is the total current carried by the filaments.
In the standard position, the current flows in the x-y plane in the direction of positive θ (counterclockwise) when view from the +z direction. You can download the Magwinder sample input file coilbox_example.cdf which creates the structure for a specific set of parameters. The equations for the model parameters are listed as comment lines.
I have also set up the spreadsheet shown in Fig. 2. To use it, fill in the parameter values and then copy and paste the cells starting at GLOBAL as text into a MagWinder script (CDF). Here is a link for a file for the OpenOffice spreadhsheet (coil_box.ods). If you enjoy purchasing office software, here is a link to an Excel file (coil_box.xls).
Figure 3 shows the resulting assembly projected in the x-y plane. The plot illustrates the new Magwinder capability to display the polarity of current elements. They are represented as sperm cells swimming in the direction of the head. There are two ways to reverse the current direction.
- Use a negative coil current, I → -I.
- Rotate the COIL 90° about the x or y axis.
You can use the basic assembly multiple times in a Magwinder script. For example, Fig. 4 shows a quadrupole magnet. The standard text from the spreadsheet was pasted into four COIL sections, and then each coil was assigned a specific rotation and translation.
For more information on Magnum, please see http://www.fieldp.com/magnum.html. | <urn:uuid:1d421d75-9b71-4a5f-aab5-e694d97bf395> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://fieldp.com/myblog/2012/creating-a-coil-box-with-magwinder/ | 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 | 0.895133 | 625 | 2.609375 | 3 |
On This Day - 13 September 1914
Theatre definitions: Western Front comprises the Franco-German-Belgian front and any military action in Great Britain, Switzerland, Scandinavia and Holland. Eastern Front comprises the German-Russian, Austro-Russian and Austro-Romanian fronts. Southern Front comprises the Austro-Italian and Balkan (including Bulgaro-Romanian) fronts, and Dardanelles. Asiatic and Egyptian Theatres comprises Egypt, Tripoli, the Sudan, Asia Minor (including Transcaucasia), Arabia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Persia, Afghanistan, Turkestan, China, India, etc. Naval and Overseas Operations comprises operations on the seas (except where carried out in combination with troops on land) and in Colonial and Overseas theatres, America, etc. Political, etc. comprises political and internal events in all countries, including Notes, speeches, diplomatic, financial, economic and domestic matters. Source: Chronology of the War (1914-18, London; copyright expired)
Allies recover Soissons and force the passage of the Aisne there.
Amiens recovered by the French.
Germans begin to drive the Belgians back into Antwerp; Battle along line Aerschot-Malines.
East Prussia: Russians turn on their pursuers and defeat them at Sredniki near the Niemen.
Serbians and Austrians fighting in both Serbia and Syrmia.
Asiatic and Egyptian Theatres
Tsing-tau: Japanese capture the railway at Kiao-chau town.
Naval and Overseas Operations
Solomon Islands: Australian troops capture Bougainville.
"Hela", German cruiser, sunk by British submarine E-9.
Germany: Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg's reply to Mr. Asquith's Guildhall speech of Sept. 4 published. | <urn:uuid:eca720b2-c73f-4952-8ec7-30089a59207a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://firstworldwar.com/onthisday/1914_09_13.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 | 0.878167 | 399 | 3.234375 | 3 |
Primary Documents - President Woodrow Wilson's Inauguration Address, 4 March 1913
Reproduced below is the inauguration address of incoming President Woodrow Wilson, who won the Presidential election of November 1912. Wilson was subsequently re-elected as the President who kept America out of the First World War in November 1916. The U.S. was obliged however to enter the war five months later in the wake of Germany's new (and provocative) policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.
First Inaugural Address
President Woodrow Wilson
4 March 1913
There has been a change of government. It began two years ago, when the House of Representatives became Democratic by a decisive majority. It has now been completed. The Senate about to assemble will also be Democratic.
The offices of President and Vice-President have been put into the hands of Democrats. What does the change mean? That is the question that is uppermost in our minds to-day. That is the question I am going to try to answer, in order, if I may, to interpret the occasion.
It means much more than the mere success of a party. The success of a party means little except when the Nation is using that party for a large and definite purpose. No one can mistake the purpose for which the Nation now seeks to use the Democratic Party. It seeks to use it to interpret a change in its own plans and point of view.
Some old things with which we had grown familiar, and which had begun to creep into the very habit of our thought and of our lives, have altered their aspect as we have latterly looked critically upon them, with fresh, awakened eyes; have dropped their disguises and shown themselves alien and sinister.
Some new things, as we look frankly upon them, willing to comprehend their real character, have come to assume the aspect of things long believed in and familiar, stuff of our own convictions. We have been refreshed by a new insight into our own life.
We see that in many things that life is very great. It is incomparably great in its material aspects, in its body of wealth, in the diversity and sweep of its energy, in the industries which have been conceived and built up by the genius of individual men and the limitless enterprise of groups of men.
It is great, also, very great, in its moral force. Nowhere else in the world have noble men and women exhibited in more striking forms the beauty and the energy of sympathy and helpfulness and counsel in their efforts to rectify wrong, alleviate suffering, and set the weak in the way of strength and hope.
We have built up, moreover, a great system of government, which has stood through a long age as in many respects a model for those who seek to set liberty upon foundations that will endure against fortuitous change, against storm and accident. Our life contains every great thing, and contains it in rich abundance.
But the evil has come with the good, and much fine gold has been corroded. With riches has come inexcusable waste. We have squandered a great part of what we might have used, and have not stopped to conserve the exceeding bounty of nature, without which our genius for enterprise would have been worthless and impotent, scorning to be careful, shamefully prodigal as well as admirably efficient.
We have been proud of our industrial achievements, but we have not hitherto stopped thoughtfully enough to count the human cost, the cost of lives snuffed out, of energies overtaxed and broken, the fearful physical and spiritual cost to the men and women and children upon whom the dead weight and burden of it all has fallen pitilessly the years through.
The groans and agony of it all had not yet reached our ears, the solemn, moving undertone of our life, coming up out of the mines and factories, and out of every home where the struggle had its intimate and familiar seat. With the great Government went many deep secret things which we too long delayed to look into and scrutinize with candid, fearless eyes.
The great Government we loved has too often been made use of for private and selfish purposes, and those who used it had forgotten the people.
At last a vision has been vouchsafed us of our life as a whole. We see the bad with the good, the debased and decadent with the sound and vital. With this vision we approach new affairs. Our duty is to cleanse, to reconsider, to restore, to correct the evil without impairing the good, to purify and humanize every process of our common life without weakening or sentimentalizing it.
There has been something crude and heartless and unfeeling in our haste to succeed and be great. Our thought has been "Let every man look out for himself, let every generation look out for itself," while we reared giant machinery which made it impossible that any but those who stood at the levers of control should have a chance to look out for themselves.
We had not forgotten our morals. We remembered well enough that we had set up a policy which was meant to serve the humblest as well as the most powerful, with an eye single to the standards of justice and fair play, and remembered it with pride. But we were very heedless and in a hurry to be great.
We have come now to the sober second thought. The scales of heedlessness have fallen from our eyes. We have made up our minds to square every process of our national life again with the standards we so proudly set up at the beginning and have always carried at our hearts. Our work is a work of restoration.
We have itemized with some degree of particularity the things that ought to be altered and here are some of the chief items: A tariff which cuts us off from our proper part in the commerce of the world, violates the just principles of taxation, and makes the Government a facile instrument in the hand of private interests; a banking and currency system based upon the necessity of the Government to sell its bonds fifty years ago and perfectly adapted to concentrating cash and restricting credits; an industrial system which, take it on all its sides, financial as well as administrative, holds capital in leading strings, restricts the liberties and limits the opportunities of labour, and exploits without renewing or conserving the natural resources of the country; a body of agricultural activities never yet given the efficiency of great business undertakings or served as it should be through the instrumentality of science taken directly to the farm, or afforded the facilities of credit best suited to its practical needs; watercourses undeveloped, waste places unreclaimed, forests untended, fast disappearing without plan or prospect of renewal, unregarded waste heaps at every mine.
We have studied as perhaps no other nation has the most effective means of production, but we have not studied cost or economy as we should either as organizers of industry, as statesmen, or as individuals.
Nor have we studied and perfected the means by which government may be put at the service of humanity, in safeguarding the health of the Nation, the health of its men and its women and its children, as well as their rights in the struggle for existence.
This is no sentimental duty. The firm basis of government is justice, not pity. These are matters of justice. There can be no equality or opportunity, the first essential of justice in the body politic, if men and women and children be not shielded in their lives, their very vitality, from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they can not alter, control, or singly cope with.
Society must see to it that it does not itself crush or weaken or damage its own constituent parts. The first duty of law is to keep sound the society it serves. Sanitary laws, pure food laws, and laws determining conditions of labour which individuals are powerless to determine for themselves are intimate parts of the very business of justice and legal efficiency.
These are some of the things we ought to do, and not leave the others undone, the old-fashioned, never-to-be-neglected, fundamental safeguarding of property and of individual right. This is the high enterprise of the new day: To lift everything that concerns our life as a Nation to the light that shines from the hearthfire of every man's conscience and vision of the right.
It is inconceivable that we should do this as partisans; it is inconceivable we should do it in ignorance of the facts as they are or in blind haste. We shall restore, not destroy. We shall deal with our economic system as it is and as it may be modified, not as it might be if we had a clean sheet of paper to write upon; and step by step we shall make it what it should be, in the spirit of those who question their own wisdom and seek counsel and knowledge, not shallow self-satisfaction or the excitement of excursions whither they can not tell. Justice, and only justice, shall always be our motto.
And yet it will be no cool process of mere science. The Nation has been deeply stirred, stirred by a solemn passion, stirred by the knowledge of wrong, of ideals lost, of government too often debauched and made an instrument of evil.
The feelings with which we face this new age of right and opportunity sweep across our heartstrings like some air out of God's own presence, where justice and mercy are reconciled and the judge and the brother are one. We know our task to be no mere task of politics but a task which shall search us through and through, whether we be able to understand our time and the need of our people, whether we be indeed their spokesmen and interpreters, whether we have the pure heart to comprehend and the rectified will to choose our high course of action.
This is not a day of triumph; it is a day of dedication. Here muster, not the forces of party, but the forces of humanity. Men's hearts wait upon us; men's lives hang in the balance; men's hopes call upon us to say what we will do.
Who shall live up to the great trust? Who dares fail to try? I summon all honest men, all patriotic, all forward-looking men, to my side. God helping me, I will not fail them, if they will but counsel and sustain me!
A "red cap" was a British military policeman.
- Did you know? | <urn:uuid:53a74411-8674-46cf-b4e2-5d29a78c9ab7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://firstworldwar.com/source/wilson1913inauguration.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 | 0.972157 | 2,144 | 2.96875 | 3 |
The Costco Effect: Why Does the Wholesaler Cause Inflation?
There’s a lot of data showing that Walmart causes prices to decline when it enters a local market (see here, here and here). Why then, according to a new study, does Costco have the opposite effect, and cause competitors to raise their prices? The answer boils down to the complex ways that stores choose to compete against each other, and shows that not all big box retailers are created equal. Here’s the abstract:
Prior research shows grocery stores reduce prices to compete with Walmart Supercenters. This study finds evidence that the competitive effects of two other big box retailers – Costco and Walmart-owned Sam’s Club – are quite different. Using city-level panel grocery price data matched with a unique data set on Walmart and warehouse club locations, we find that Costco entry is associated with higher grocery prices at incumbent retailers, and that the effect is strongest in cities with small populations and high grocery store densities. This is consistent with incumbents competing with Costco along non-price dimensions such as product quality or quality of the shopping experience. We find no evidence that Sam’s Club entry affects grocery stores’ prices, consistent with Sam’s Club’s focus on small businesses instead of consumers.
The study’s authors, Charles J. Courtemanche and Art Carden have looked at big-box retailers before. Their 2010 paper, “Supersizing Supercenters? The Impact of Wal-Mart Supercenters on Body Mass Index and Obesity,” showed that each additional Walmart Supercenter per 100,000 people increases the obesity rate by 2.3 percentage points. They concluded that the proliferation of Walmart Supercenters may explain 10.5% of the rise in the obesity rate since the 1980s. (On a side note, if you haven’t already, check out this flow map depicting the growth of Walmarts and Sam’s Clubs.)
Their new study shows that a Costco store increases competitors’ grocery prices by 1.4% in the short run and 2.7% in the long run; whereas previous research shows that a new Walmart generally reduces prices by 1% to 1.7% in the short-term, and by about four times as much in the long run. This demonstrates just how nuanced the economics of strategic behavior really are. While incumbent grocers try to match Walmart on price, they figure it’s simply not worth it to go toe-to-toe with a warehouse club like Costco. While Walmart has made its stores more physically appealing over the years, Costco’s remain drab and utilitarian: pallets of bulk items sitting on concrete floors remains the dominant aesthetic. As a result, the only competitive advantage incumbent grocers see worth pursuing is on experience and convenience, choosing, as the authors point out, to cede “price-sensitive consumers who are willing to drive longer distances for a less pleasant shopping experience in order to obtain deep discounts.” By focusing on less-price sensitive customers, incumbents are able to sneak in some price hikes without affecting sales.
The Costco effect is strongest on fruits, vegetables, meats and drinks, with the biggest price increase on lettuce.
[HT: Stephen Gandel] | <urn:uuid:9a44444b-b22d-4a5e-9e8d-522ba912fd4c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://freakonomics.com/2011/07/25/the-costco-effect-why-does-the-wholesaler-cause-inflation/ | 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 | 0.937379 | 676 | 2.65625 | 3 |
If you’ve heard any history of the California desert at all, you’ve likely heard of the Owens Valley Water War.
Here’s the canonical version of that War: The Owens Valley is watered by runoff from the immense snowfall from the Sierra Nevada to its west, much of which runs into the Owens River when it melts. The Owens Valley is an endorrheic basin: it has no outflow. The Owens River never reaches the ocean. Instead, it flows into Owens Lake, in the valley’s lowest point at its south end.
Late in the 19th Century a thriving network of agricultural communities was developing due to the river’s water, growing a vibrant local economy along with their crops. Enter the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, led by engineer William Mulholland. DWP quietly bought up water rights throughout the Owens Valley in a series of deceptive land deals, then built a 223-mile aqueduct to bring Owens River water to Los Angeles. The aqueduct was finished in 1913 — 100 years ago this November — and farms started going out of business in the decade after. Owens Valley farmers dynamited parts of the aqueduct in 1924, but the rebellion was short-lived. Owens Lake, which had been a rich habitat for waterfowl, dried up and is now the single largest point source of particulate matter pollution in the U.S.
As canonical histories go, it’s pretty accurate. Or at least more accurate than the version a lot of people have in their heads due to the film Chinatown, which was based on the Owens Valley story. But it’s a woefully incomplete history nonetheless. The history of the Owens Valley didn’t start in the late 19th Century. Before the first European settlers arrived there were people living in the Owens Valley for thousands of years. The Owens Valley Paiute took advantage of the relatively well-watered landscape by gathering seeds, hunting the Valley’s abundant game, and — though this hardly ever gets mentioned in any of the formal histories — diverting the water of the Owens River and its tributaries to irrigate their crops.
Journalist Jenna Cavelle wants to correct the canonical history to include the Owens Valley Paiute, who are still very much alive and shaping the valley:
This film documents the history of Paiute Native Americans who constructed 60 miles of intricate irrigation systems in Owens Valley for millennia long before LA secured its largest source of water through modern engineering a century ago. After the Indian War of 1863, surviving Paiute returned to the Valley from the Eastern Sierra and White Mountains to find their ancient waterworks taken over by white settlers. Today, over 150-years later, the Paiute continue to fight to save their waterworks, which are remnant in the Owens Valley landscape, along with water rights the city of LA never granted. PAYA (“water” in Paiute) stands to recover both Paiute history and water rights by increasing awareness through the powerful medium of documentary film.
She’s working to put together a set of resources, centering around a documentary film, before the last remaining Paiute elders who have some tenuous personal knowledge of their ancestors’ irrigation systems aren’t around to document anymore. Here’s Cavelle’s Kickstarter trailer:
She’s halfway to her goal with half her fundraising period left. This project combines history, the California desert environment, and social justice, so you won’t be surprised that I really want to see it happen. I’m scratching together a few bucks to throw Cavelle’s way: maybe you’ll want to as well. | <urn:uuid:9a9c16c1-d6aa-409b-8d68-300ecfaca8f1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/21/jenna-cavelle-wants-to-correct-chinatown/comment-page-1/?ak_action=force_mobile | 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 | 0.96055 | 765 | 3.34375 | 3 |
- Berries, seeds, raisins, apples
- Popped popcorn
- Fabric strips
- Find a tree about your size in your yard (Christmas type trees work well).
- String the popcorn, berries, seeds, raisins, and apple pieces onto a thread. This is done by threading a needle with a two-foot long thread, tying a knot at the bottom, then putting the needle through the foods one at a time.
- The two-foot-long threads can be tied together once they have the food on them.
- Go out to the tree and loop the food thread around the branches.
- Many birds will be attracted to your feeder tree.
- In springtime, hang colored string, fabric pieces, and yarns on the tree and watch the birds snatch them up to build their nests. You may even be able to walk around the neighborhood and spot your thread in nests!
From 365 Smart After-School Activities by Sheila Ellison & Judith Gray. Copyright © 2005 by Sheila Ellison & Judith Gray. All rights reserved. Used by arrangement with Sourcebooks, Inc.
Buy the book at www.amazon.com. | <urn:uuid:d2ef0a0f-9f71-487f-94fb-23616069f547> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://fun.familyeducation.com/activity/birds/39473.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 | 0.924705 | 241 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Wildcrafting for Beginners article by famous herbalist Howie Brounstein.
Among the species on the UpS list are Ligusticum porteri (Osha) and Lomatium dissectum, both of which grow in much of the interior and mountain West. Both are important medicinals that are difficult to cultivate. Other plants may be used to substitute for these in many cases.
American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius) is one of the early poster children for overharvesting. Remember Daniel Boone? He made his family’s fortune not as a trapper, but by using native folks to dig up ginseng root and sell it. American ginseng remains one of the largest herbal commodities nationally and internationally. In the process, the plant has been severely overharvested, and extirpated in some areas.
Wild American ginseng is listed as at risk by United Plant Savers. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) lists American ginseng in appendix II: “species that are not necessarily now threatened with extinction but that may become so unless trade is closely controlled.”
Some jurisdictions restrict harvest to protect what’s left. For instance, Kentucky’s Daniel Boone National Forest requires would-be wildcrafters to get annual permits and not exceed one pound of fresh, 5-year-old roots per year. This is based on findings by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees most threatened and endangered species.
Increasingly, supplies of American ginseng are being cultivated rather than taken from the wild. The plant has very specific growing requirements and often isn’t easy to cultivate. Veteran herbsman Richo Cech details ginseng-cultivation needs in an article published on the UpS website.
Organizations, schools and individual herbalists offer guidelines to help prevent overharvest.
Planting the Future by Rosemary Gladstar and a host of other herbalists. | <urn:uuid:803cc742-f5be-47d1-9280-65ad1abe5473> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://gardenmedicine.com/learn/wildcrafting/ | 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 | 0.937735 | 430 | 3.078125 | 3 |
OSLO, March 7 (Reuters) – Canadian glaciers that are the world’s third biggest store of ice after Antarctica and Greenland seem headed for an irreversible melt that will push up sea levels, scientists said on Thursday.
About 20 percent of the ice in glaciers, on islands such as Ellesmere or Devon off northern Canada, could vanish by the end of the 21st century in a melt that would add 3.5 cm (1.4 inch) to global sea levels, they said.
Governments are trying to understand every likely centimetre of sea level rise caused by global warming to plan how to protect cities from New York to Shanghai or low-lying coasts from Ghana to Bangladesh.
“We believe that the mass loss is irreversible in the foreseeable future” assuming continued climate change, the scientists, based in the Netherlands and the United States, wrote in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Lead author Jan Lenaerts of the University of Utrecht told Reuters that the trend seemed unstoppable because a thaw of white glaciers would expose dark-coloured tundra that would soak up more of the sun’s heat and further accelerate the melt.
A total melt of the glaciers would take several centuries. Climate change is warming the Arctic faster than the global average.
Most past estimates of Canada’s glaciers, based on less precise data of their size and melt rates, pointed to a smaller contribution to sea level rise of perhaps 2 cm this century, Lenaerts said.
The U.N. panel of climate scientists has projected that world sea levels will rise by between 18 and 59 cm this century, or more if a thaw of vast ice sheets in Antarctica or Greenland accelerates.
ALASKA TO PATAGONIA
Canada’s glaciers are little studied and often lumped into the panel’s estimates with ice in Alaska, Patagonia, Russia and Svalbard off north Norway.
“These glaciers are a significant part of the whole equation and of future sea level rise,” said David Vaughan, head of the ice2sea programme for studying global warming based at the British Antarctic Survey in England.
“We can’t afford to ignore them,” he told Reuters. Vaughan was not among the authors of Thursday’s study.
“Most attention goes out to Greenland and Antarctica which is understandable because they are the two largest ice bodies in the world,” said Michiel van den Broeke, a co-author of the study at Utrecht University.
“We want to show that the Canadian ice caps should be included in the calculations,” he said in a statement.
The experts used satellite data of the extent of Canadian glaciers over the past decade to work out a model to project their decline.
The projection of a 20 percent loss of volume was based on a scenario in which world temperatures would rise by 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 F) this century and by 8 Celsius (14.4 F) in the Canadian Arctic, well within most U.N. scenarios. (Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
(c) 2013 Thomson Reuters, Click For Restrictions | <urn:uuid:df3e621a-54bf-4622-8bf8-3794d02e9ee7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://gcaptain.com/canadian-glaciers-face-irreversible-melt-study-shows/ | 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 | 0.943921 | 659 | 3.296875 | 3 |
One ticket to Pluto, please! Seems there's an ocean there just waiting to be discovered, surfed or lounged about. Don't worry about my well-being though—I'll be packing a sweater.
Scientists with more know-how of how the Universe works than do I conclude this slushy sea could exist in spite of Pluto's frosty -230 degree Celsius temps because of the dwarf planet's internal heat.
Now Guillaume Robuchon and Francis Nimmo at the University of California, Santa Cruz, say there is a good chance it does. They calculate that an ocean depends on two things: the amount of radioactive potassium in Pluto's rocky core, and the sloshiness of the ice that covers it.
Density measurements suggest a rocky core fills 40 per cent of the dwarf planet's volume. If the core contains potassium at a concentration of 75 parts per billion, its decay could produce enough heat to melt some of the overlying ice, which is made of a mixture of nitrogen and water. | <urn:uuid:29d15e45-4836-4df1-9565-8ced70f27362> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://gizmodo.com/5841479/the-solar-systems-newest-beach-spot-is-an-icy-one?tag=planets | 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 | 0.913202 | 211 | 3.28125 | 3 |
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Sustainable buildings: Does the OECD practice what it preaches?
Today we’re publishing the last in a series of three articles by Liisa-Maija Harju, Environmental Coordinator in the OECD Operations Service on the OECD’s environmental performance.
Did you know that the Eiffel Tour is going green? The planned €25 million investments will improve the landmark’s energy performance by 30%. The Eiffel Tour will start to generate its own electricity and hot water by the end of 2013. Solar panels and small, vertical wind and hydraulically-powered turbines will be installed 57 metres above the ground. Ninety-five per cent of the new lighting will be of LED-type that has a longer lifespan and consumes less energy than conventional eco light-bulbs.
Small, individual investments like this are needed because the building sector contributes up to 30% to annual global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and consumes up to 40% of all world energy, according to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Not to mention that the big clock is ticking: the World Meteorological Organization announced that the amount of GHGs in the atmosphere reached a new record high in 2011.
See full Article: http://oecdinsights.org/2013/03/27/sustainable-buildings-does-the-oecd-practice-what-it-preaches/ | <urn:uuid:9b60f1ff-6738-4c10-88b6-85d75004f668> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://governancefocus.blogspot.com/2013/05/sustainable-buildings-does-oecd.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 | 0.890847 | 302 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Anyone who has recently been to any sizeable Chinese city can attest that the pace of building construction in China is simply astounding. By some accounts, China is adding some 2 billion square meters of construction area per year, accounting for nearly half the world’s total. These superlative statistics coincide with the largest scale of rural-to-urban migration in human history being experienced in China (we’ve talked about this phenomena previously here and here).
Construction boom? Perhaps more like construction doom! By some metrics, buildings are the biggest culprits of greenhouse gas emissions in our environment. Just think of all the kinds of basic materials that goes into a building—glass, steel, cement, paint—the manufacture, processing and transportation of which are energy and water-intensive. And that’s just in the construction phase. Once the building is in use, think of heating, cooling, lighting and mobility (escalators and lifts) needs! All that energy use implies the burning of massive amounts of fossil fuels and emissions of carbon.
Who will save China now?
Enter the Dragon. The Green Dragon Media Project, that is. The Green Dragon Media Project web portal is an in-depth online multimedia project that provides an analytical framework to understanding the forces at play in the Chinese construction industry, and what can be done to introduce best practices in green building design to China. The portal, a compendium to a 35-minute film on greening the Chinese construction industry (below’s a teaser!), presents a remarkable collection of video interview clips, and explores in quite a bit of detail the incentives and disincentives facing the construction industry, government, legal system, and the public with respect to residential and commercial development.
One recurring observation throughout the portal is the disjunct between the edicts of the central government and the level of enforcement of such edicts at the provincial, municipal and local levels. This has spurred the GDMP team to create, for their next film project, and instructional film on green buildings specifically targeting provincial mayors. Because much of the local economic development agenda is determined at the provincial level, educating and informing local leadership must be seen as an effective lever to effecting a green shift.
Among the things that should be pitched to the mayors is the economic benefits that will stem from a range of green jobs and technologies related to energy efficiency (roofing, insulation, advanced heating and cooling systems), water efficiency (efficient plumbing, micro-irrigation) and sustainable building materials (recycled carpeting, eco-friendly paints, sustainable timber).
Here at The Green Leap Forward, we’ll track the companies and technologies that are making this green construction revolution happen. One Beijing-based startup seeking to make its mark in the green building industry is Qidi Daring Energy Technology Co. Qidi provides comprehensive consulting services, providing advisory services on all aspects of the green building life cycle, including green building design, energy efficiency, energy audits, indoor air quality, and on green building standards such as the U.S. LEED system and China’s green building evaluation standards.
I end this post with one thought—there is too much talk about green buildings that leave out the bigger picture of smart urban design. A building, after all exists within the context of a neighborhood, town or a city. What’s the point of a construction boom in green buildings if no thought is given to curbing sprawl, promoting the use of mass urban transit, or maintaining a certain amount of green space? It is said that the greenest building is the one never built. Obviously that is not practical, so the question is how can we deploy the greenest technologies and methods not only build our buildings, but also arrange and structure them amongst other buildings and urban structures to create a holistically sustainable built environment? | <urn:uuid:1b9eb2ec-607d-4cbd-9f44-be089ae82894> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://greenleapforward.com/2008/04/08/china%E2%80%99s-construction-boomdoom/ | 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 | 0.934669 | 781 | 2.609375 | 3 |
If you have ever seen capoeira, you have undoubtedly heard the music of a berimbau. If you are not familiar, Capoeira is a Brazilian art form that melds martial arts, acrobatics, and music. This graceful fighting form is often accompanied by the sounds of a berimbau, a single-stringed musical instrument comprised of a gourd, a wooden bow, and a steel string.
[Ivan Monsão] and [Paulo Libonati] have constructed what is considered to be the first robotic berimbau in existence, capable of playing music without any human interaction. The robot strikes the berimbau’s metal string, mechanically muting the gourd when appropriate, and even shakes the caxixi (a rattle) in time with the music.
The builder claims that the berimbau learns songs by “listening” and repeating rather than having songs pre-programmed into the system. We can’t see any evidence of that functionality from the video, though we’d love to see the learning process in action.
While we try to find our VHS copy of “Only the Strong”, be sure to take a look at the following video of the berimbau playing itself. | <urn:uuid:c97b3680-0ea0-4009-8ff5-6138e43b905a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://hackaday.com/tag/berimbau/ | 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 | 0.93359 | 268 | 2.84375 | 3 |
A Rapid Assessment of Cooking Fuel Needs in Post Quake Haiti
By Bryan Schaaf on Tuesday, March 23, 2010.
see more topics in:
It is no secret that the environmental degradation caused by Haiti's over-reliance on wood fuels negatively impacts the country's ability to feed itself, to prevent disasters, and to protect the health and nutritional status of its children. After the earthquake, many people are now finding themselves more reliant than ever on wood charcoal, while having less money with which to pay for it. Securing access to alternative, inexpensive fuel sources is key to Haiti's future. Yet no one agency owns this issue. To address the need for increased attention, resources, and coordination, the Women's Refugee Commission and the World Food Program carried out a joint assessment of cooking needs in post earthquake Haiti, attached and copied below.
A Rapid Assessment on Cooking Fuel Needs in Post Quake Haiti by Women’s Refugee Commission & World Food Programme
In 2009, the InterAgency Standing Committee Task Force on Safe Access to Firewood and alternative Energy in Humanitarian Settings (IASC Task Force SAFE), cochaired by the Women’s Refugee Commission (working under the authority of InterAction), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), produced a roadmap for coordinated humanitarian response to challenges associated with the collection, supply and use of cooking fuel—including identifying the key fuelrelated activities that each of eight key humanitarian response sectors must undertake in emergency preparedness, acute emergency and protracted response phases.
Even before the earthquake struck Haiti on January 12, 2010, the demand for cooking fuel had put the country in a precarious environmental situation. More than 70 percent of the population was reliant on charcoal and firewood to cook its food, and with less than two percent of Haiti’s forest cover remaining, this practice was unsustainable. The earthquake only exacerbated fuelrelated problems, with hundreds of thousands of people now dependent on food rations that must be cooked in order to be edible, living in densely packed camps with severe fire and health risks and with greatly reduced economic possibilities—and thus even more difficulty purchasing charcoal or other fuels.
Following the earthquake, the Women’s Refugee Commission and WFP quickly agreed that the situation called for the implementation of SAFE guidance in the early stages of disaster response. In February, a team from both agencies undertook the first rapid needs assessment on SAFE to understand the situation on the ground and to develop a set of recommendations for the humanitarian response. More specifically, the purpose of the mission was to understand the following:
1) How the population is currently cooking their food, how the fuel/cooking device is being sourced and how long the fuel source will continue to be sustainable;
2) The immediate protection and health concerns associated with fuel shortages, use of inappropriate materials as cooking fuel and collection constraints;
3) The feasibility of existing fuel related proposals, including transport and infrastructure, cultural adaptability and cost; and
4) Existing capacities and efforts.
The guidance consists of a Matrix on Agency Roles and Responsibilities for Ensuring a Coordinated Multi-Sectoral Fuel Strategy in Humanitarian Settings and Decision Tree Diagrams on Factors Affecting Choice of Fuel Strategy in Humanitarian
The team consisted of Catherine Bellamy, Policy Officer (WFP) and Erin Patrick, Senior Program Officer – Fuel and Firewood Initiative (Women’s Refugee Commission). The Women’s Refugee Commission was hosted in Haiti by the International Rescue Committee (IRC). Rapid Assessment of Cooking Fuel Needs in post-Earthquake Haiti. The mission team met with UN agencies, clusters and local partners, and undertook several site visits, including in a range of urban settlements and rural areas. The mission concluded that cooking fuel is an issue of major concern throughout the country, both with regard to the immediate cooking needs of earthquake affected populations as well as the long-term challenge of Haiti’s environmental sustainability and recovery. The assessment also generated a set of concrete recommendations for humanitarian and development actors, Haitian government and civil society and current and potential donors to the humanitarian response to address cooking needs in Haiti. In addition, the assessment reflects a set of lessons that can be applied to the wider humanitarian system on SAFE.
The need for sustainable cooking practices has long been a challenge in Haiti. The vast majority of the country relies on wood or wood products as cooking fuel: firewood is used almost exclusively in rural areas, and most of the urban population uses charcoal. Charcoal making is a key livelihoods activity that manages to persevere despite the country’s severely depressed economy. Charcoal manufacture and use have also greatly contributed to environmental degradation and problems in agricultural productivity. The risk in the coming weeks and months is that the population will not have means to cook their food, and the production of charcoal and use of firewood as cooking fuel will undermine future recovery efforts.
The assessment concluded that the earthquake has created additional constraints on safe access to appropriate cooking fuel for many Haitians, including the following key concerns:
1) Many people have lost their stoves and have been forced to burn debris or trees in Port-au-Prince.
2) Crowded settlements leave little space for cooking—posing health and safety risks.
3) The minority of the population that was previously using gas or electricity has now switched to using charcoal or firewood.
4) While the cost of charcoal is now only slightly above pre-earthquake costs, it has become increasingly unaffordable to many that have lost their assets and employment.
5) In cities outside Port-au-Prince, households receiving displaced family members and friends are struggling with the cost of cooking for more people.
6) As the rural areas receive more displaced people, firewood consumption is also increasing—as more people need to cook and more people produce charcoal (to sell in urban areas) as a coping mechanism.
7) As a result of the increasing demand for firewood, women must walk farther afield to find sufficient quantities of firewood for consumption, which poses protection risks.
8) Tarpaulins have yet to reach many of the urban settlements. With the rainy season starting, the need to keep fuel dry will make cooking even more of a challenge.
Based on the findings of the assessment mission, the Women’s Refugee Commission and WFP are recommending a coordinated, multi-sectoral fuel strategy to address the immediate, Rapid Assessment of Cooking Fuel Needs in post-Earthquake Haiti medium and longer term energy needs in Haiti—which is summarized here and is fully elaborated in the report.
Coordination: While humanitarian organizations recognize the importance of cooking fuel needs, many interviewees agreed that a mechanism is required to ensure that the issue is effectively addressed, appropriate projects implemented and that safe access to alternative energy is prioritized within humanitarian response. Two possibilities for accomplishing this goal are the establishment of a “FuelCap” staff position to advocate for and coordinate fuel-related activities across agencies and clusters (based on the successful model of the “GenCap”) and the establishment of a sub-cluster working group that brings together the key actors on food, shelter and camp management to operationalize a common fuel strategy. Based on the multisectoral nature of fuel and energy and the track record of poorly coordinated fuel-related initiatives, the lead agencies should strongly consider including funding for either a “FuelCap”position or a sub-cluster coordinator within appeals for their fuel-related activities.
Immediate response In Port-au-Prince, in their capacities as cluster leads for Food Aid, Camp Management and Camp Coordination (CCCM), Shelter and Non-Food Items and Early Recovery, respectively, WFP, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the UN Development Program (UNDP), with additional guidance and technical support on environmental management from the UN Environment Program (UNEP), should quickly scale-up distribution of fuel-saving stoves and fuel (pellets, briquettes, ethanol) at the institutional and household levels. This requires a dual-track approach: importation of stoves and fuel while the local capacity production is strengthened.
With the onset of the rainy season, small kitchens for the distribution of hot meals and the distribution of stockpiled meals ready to eat (MREs) should be utilized; and innovative technologies—ethanol disks, for example—should be pre-positioned and piloted. While smaller cities and rural areas require more localized rapid assessments, WFP, IOM, IFRC, UNDP and UNEP should work together as cluster leads to scale up any existing efforts and capacities in fuel-efficient stoves.
Medium to long term response: In the medium to longer term, humanitarian and development agencies should consider working with the government to promote alternative forms of fuel (liquid petroleum gas (LPG), ethanol and biomass) with the development of alternative livelihoods opportunities in rural areas for populations that are currently dependent on charcoal production—including the production of environmentally friendly fuel technologies. By addressing cooking fuel needs in the earliest stages of disaster response, the international humanitarian system can help to mitigate the potential environmental, health and protection threats associated with the cooking requirements of beneficiaries in Haiti. However, strategic and rapid investment in effective coordination mechanisms and on a range of activities is urgently required.
PRIORITIES FOR FUNDING:
Cooking fuel is a multi-sectoral issue that cannot be effectively addressed by a single agency or cluster acting alone. Fuel response (of the lack thereof) has implications for the protection, environment, shelter/non-food items (NFI), health and early recovery clusters, among others. Coordination, therefore, is a key challenge. Key recommendations:
1) Immediately deploy a “FuelCap” staff person to coordinate cross-cluster fuel-related activities, ensuring that the IASC Task Force SAFE guidance is implemented.
2) Pilot test and pre-position fuel supply/supplies to cover needs during the rainy/hurricane season.
3) Distribute fuel-saving stoves to affected households in both Port-au-Prince and outside of the capital (host families, etc.) in order to reduce overall charcoal consumption.
4) Conduct a more detailed assessment of alternatives to the “wood transformation activities” that comprised nearly one-fifth of the rural economy before the earthquake, to begin the process of rural livelihoods diversification and set the stage for sustainable recovery.
Several attempts were underway prior to the earthquake by the World Bank, UNDP and others to begin to address fuel-related concerns as a part of the overall development process for Haiti. A key constraint to fuel-switching was the population’s general lack of capital: even though cleaner, more sustainable fuels such as LPG did indeed prove to be cheaper in the long run, the relatively large amount of money needed up front to purchase the necessary supplies (e.g., an LPG canister; burner) was often prohibitive. Research was also conducted into the possibility of developing Haiti’s own ethanol production capacity—both to generate a domestic energy source as well as to promote livelihoods opportunities in rural areas. The current humanitarian response presents an opportunity to kick-start these types of initiatives and eventually to transition them into the long-term development activities originally intended.
The strategy below was developed with this guiding principle in mind. Recognizing both the immediate needs and the pre-existing concerns regarding the sustainability of charcoal and firewood as the primary sources of cooking fuel in Haiti, as well as recognizing the severe current logistical constraints affecting the immediate humanitarian response to the earthquake, the Women’s Refugee Commission and the WFP are recommending a three-phase approach in three distinct regions/types of settlements: (1) Port-au-Prince (PaP); (2) Host families (urban/periurban settings outside PaP); and (3) Rural areas (also including host families)
Goals: Likely to remain charcoal in immediate term, but goal should be to switch to more sustainable, healthier, less costly fuel in medium to long term. Options meriting further consideration include LPG, ethanol and biomass/waste briquettes Likely to remain charcoal at least through medium term; focus should be on reducing consumption via fuel efficient stoves/cooking techniques and manufacture of biomass/waste briquettes
Charcoal/woodfuel activities are a main source of rural income; thus the focus should be to develop a range of alternative livelihood opportunities, including engaging rural populations in the manufacture of alternative fuels/energy technologies over the long term.
1) Pilot fuel distribution (solid ethanol disks) in 1-2 camps
2) Promote small wet kitchens where possible to reduce overall fuel needs
3) Pre-position fuel supply (such as ethanol disks) and MREs for rainy/hurricane season
4) Distribute fuel-efficient stoves and fuel (possibly pellets; other biomass) in institutional settings
5) Distribute fuel-efficient stoves at the household level; consider distribution of fuel for the most vulnerable populations
6) Provide fuel (including charcoal only if more sustainable options are not immediately available) in addition to food rations to reduce burden on hosts
7) Consider providing fuel-efficient stoves as a one-off distribution
8) Conduct detailed assessment to better examine response options, including previous attempts at fuel-saving alternatives and livelihoods diversification options
9) Consider development and promotion of fuel-efficient stoves, such as “récho mirak”
(beginning once immediate survival needs have been met; ideally before the onset of the Hurricane season)
1) Consider distributing LPG equipment (stoves/burners/ cylinders) and initial stock of fuel as families begin rebuilding
2) Consider (as was underway before quake) supporting expansion of domestic ethanol production capacity
3) If domestic ethanol production deemed feasible over long term, begin short-term importation of ethanol/stoves
4) Build local capacity to manufacture/sell improved stoves (e.g., récho mirak, fuel efficient wood-burning stoves; gasifiers)
5) Build local capacity to manufacture/sell alternative fuels/improved stoves
6) Consider (as was underway before quake) supporting expansion of domestic ethanol production capacity
7) If domestic ethanol production deemed feasible over long term, begin process of identifying crops, farmers, production facilities, etc.
(no definitive start or end point; long term is meant to encompass the transition from relief to development)
1) As household economies stabilize, gradually reduce any outright distribution or subsidies on LPG/ethanol while incentivizing continued supply via tax structures, support for producers, etc.
2) Include cooking fuel needs/sources in shelter rebuilding process (e.g., location of distribution points)
3) Engage former small‐scale urban charcoal sellers in ethanol/LPG/ biomass cooperatives
4) Engage rural communities in domestic ethanol, biomass/waste briquette and improved stove production as livelihoods options
5) Work with Government, partners on development of other livelihood strategies to reduce reliance on charcoal making and distribution as primary sources of income
With the onset of the rainy season and continued challenges to the humanitarian system to provide a full response package to the entire affected population, the humanitarian system should also consider contingency plans, including MREs, small wet kitchens and piloting other technologies, such as ethanol disks, to meet the immediate cooking fuel needs of the affected populations. When asking beneficiaries how they planned to cook in the rain, some said that they would share cooking space with neighbors or those that have tarpaulin. Others mentioned buying hot food (it is daily practice for many in Port-au-Prince to buy their breakfast, and buying other meals is not uncommon), and still others indicated that there would be no possibility to cook—between the expense of charcoal and the inability to keep an area dry for cooking.
The ultimate goal of any fuel response must be to ensure that a cross-sectoral strategy (including Shelter/NFI; CCCM; Food Aid; Environment; Livelihoods/Early Recovery and Health, at the least) is developed for fuel-related interventions over the short, medium and long term, and that all related interventions are consistent with this strategy. Developing and implementing a cooking fuel strategy in a cross-sectoral manner will result in less expensive, more efficient, more appropriate and more sustainable (both environmentally and economically) interventions over the long term. The most relevant “home” for addressing fuel-related interventions in the immediate current response in Haiti would be in the Shelter/NFI; CCCM; Food Aid and/or Early Recovery Cluster(s).
1) All four clusters should create a sub-cluster or working group to address cooking fuel needs and concerns, as these will only increase as food distributions become more regular; as families exhaust any saving they have to purchase fuel; and as the rainy season approaches.
2) In addition, a “FuelCap” staff should be deployed to Haiti to work across the clusters to develop and coordinate the implementation of a comprehensive and multi-sectoral fuel strategy.
3) As the lead agency for environment in the Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) process, UNEP should work with the UN system and its partners to ensure that fuel needs are sufficiently and appropriately addressed in the PDNA and recovery process.
4) The ICVA/InterAction NGO coordination cell should be requested to serve as a liaison between any NGOs planning to undertake fuel-related interventions as the respective cluster lead(s), to ensure coordination of all fuel-related interventions and avoid possible unsafe, inefficient or otherwise ad hoc fuel initiatives.
INSTITUTIONS & SMALL/MEDIUM ENTERPRISES:
Institutions—including schools, hospitals and clinics—are large users of fuel and represent a possibility of achieving relatively large fuel savings for relatively little cost in terms of time and money. At the very least, institutions should be supported to install fuel-saving stoves as part of “Wet kitchens” are mobile kitchen units that can prepare and cook food for large numbers of people at once. In many cases, such stoves may be able to be produced domestically (at least over the longer term) and thus present livelihood opportunities as well. Bakeries, street vendors and laundries represented a major component of fuel use prior to the earthquake.
One of the main constraints identified by owners of these enterprises that prevented them from investing in more efficient fuels and energy technologies (e.g., LPG or ethanol, both of which are less expensive than charcoal over the long term), was the amount of capital needed for a fuel switch. Such vendors could now be supported as a part of the relief process with LPG or ethanol stoves, burners, etc., to accelerate fuel-switching and thus reduce total charcoal consumption over the longer term. WFP has so far taken the lead in this area, partnering with WorldStove to plan for distribution of innovative fuel-saving biomass stoves in school feeding programs.
The key goal of the Task Force was to develop guidance for the humanitarian system as a whole, recognizing the multi-sectoral nature of the issue—in other words, the need for safe access to appropriate cooking fuel touches on protection concerns (women are at risk as they collect fuel); environmental concerns (deforestation); health concerns (indoor air pollution); shelter (timber and firewood are often in competition) and other humanitarian response sectors. In 2009, the Task Force launched its guidance documents for the humanitarian system:
1) A Matrix on Agency Roles and Responsibilities for Ensuring a Coordinated, Multi-Sectoral Fuel Strategy in Humanitarian Settings—identifying the key fuel-related activities that each of eight key humanitarian response sectors must undertake in emergency preparedness, acute emergency and protracted response phases; and
2) Decision Tree Diagrams on the Factors Affecting Choice of Fuel Strategy in Humanitarian Settings—recognizing that there is no single fuel or energy technology that will be equally appropriate in all settings, the Decision Tree assists practitioners in assessing the relevant concerns in each unique setting, guiding the creation of a fuel strategy relevant to that specific context.
Since the summer of 2009, the Women’s Refugee Commission and WFP have been working together to undertake feasibility studies on the implementation on the SAFE guidance in two settings: North Darfur and Uganda. The resulting pilot projects—addressing specific protection, food, nutrition, livelihoods, environment, health and shelter concerns in each setting—were launched in early 2010, in part to provide humanitarian partners and donors with empirical evidence regarding the cross-sectoral benefits of “SAFE” interventions. WFP is considering additional global sites (including Haiti, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Kenya) for undertaking similar SAFE pilot projects. Immediately following the Haiti earthquake, and encouraged by the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), WFP and the Women’s Refugee Commission began bilateral conversations and reaching out to partners regarding cooking fuel needs and challenges in the country, particularly given that the majority of the population’s pre-earthquake reliance on charcoal had long been noted (by the World Bank, USAID, UNDP and others) as being unsustainable. Given the urgency and scale of the humanitarian response in Haiti, information regarding availability and access to cooking fuel—and the associated risks—was difficult to obtain, it was agreed by all that a rapid fuel needs assessment was urgently needed.
Prior to the assessment, the Women’s Refugee Commission expanded a draft version of its “rapid assessment tool” for cooking fuel (available at www.fuelnetwork.org) and prepared it for use in Haiti. The mission team then undertook a preliminary review of pre-earthquake household energy assessments, strategies and projects in Haiti for background and comparison purposes.
1) Meetings were held with key UN, Cluster and NGO stakeholders: Shelter; Camp Coordination and Camp Management (CCCM); Protection and Gender-Based Violence Clusters; WFP and NGO staff (including the International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) Emergency Market Mapping and Analysis team leader); and USAID/OFDA Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) team members (8-11 February);
2) Household-level and focus group interviews were conducted with a total of approximately 40 persons in five diverse types of settings that are broadly representative of the different ways in which earthquake affected populations are living:
3) Approximately six household-level interviews were conducted with approximately 12 women in Villambetta settlement in the Tabarre quartier of Port-au-Prince—a medium-sized, relatively dispersed settlement that, at the time of the interviews, had not yet been reached by humanitarian distributions (9 February).
4) Approximately 15 household-level interviews were conducted with approximately 20 persons in Place Boyer settlement in Port-au-Prince—a large, densely packed settlement that was being reached by humanitarian distributions (food, water and shelter materials) at the time of the interviews (11 February).
5) Approximately two household interviews of host families were conducted in Saint Marc town, a non-affected small city two hours outside of Port-au-Prince (10 February).
6) One group interview with displaced families and camp managers of a collective settlement for displaced persons was conducted in Saint Marc town (10 February).
7) A focus group was conducted with 20 (male and female) members of a rural community near the border with the Dominican Republic in the southeast of the country (approximate population 25,000) (12 February).
AVERAGE PRICES OF COOKING FUELS PRE AND POSTEARTHQUAKE: These figures are based only on interviews with fuel users and sellers during the mission, not actual market observation). Please refer to the PDF file for a comparison of fuel costs prior to and after the earthquake. Since the mission was concluded, the Emergency Food Security Assessment (EFSA) team has suggested that actual daily charcoal expenditures are lower than estimated here. However, this may be because due to insufficient food, fuel and cash many families are now able to cook only one meal per day rather than the two to three meals customarily cooked per day before the earthquake.
DISTRIBUTIONS AND HUMANITARIAN PRIORITIES
Cooking fuel is recognized by all relevant clusters/agencies as a key issue. However, there are no specific fuel-related interventions yet being undertaken. According to many interviewees, this is because there is no "advocate" for fuel within the current system (this precise phraseology was used by more than one interviewee on separate occasions). Because of logistical constraints (including physically getting materials into the country) as well as production constraints, the current response can only focus on identified priorities. For the Shelter/NFI cluster, these are, in order: plastic sheeting, water and sanitation (WASH) materials, hygiene kits and kitchen sets. Cooking fuel was discussed as a potential priority, but was ultimately dismissed as being less important. It is unclear even among Shelter cluster staff precisely why it was not deemed a priority; it appears to be a combination of the following: Lack of knowledge regarding options and lack of experience/expertise in addressing fuel-related concerns (in other words, the Shelter cluster is used to distributing shelter materials and the supply chain, procedures and expertise on plastic sheeting, for example, are already there—this is not the case for cooking fuel);
1) A belief that beneficiaries would be able to find/buy some form of cooking fuel themselves (including a belief that, in some cases, cooking fuel could be more easily found/purchased than other forms of assistance could be);
2) Lack of advocacy; and
3) Logistical constraints (physically bringing in and then distributing both stoves and cooking fuel would be a major challenge).
The kitchen sets that are being prioritized as a key NFI (though it is recognized that not nearly enough have yet been distributed) include pots and utensils. WFP is distributing rice and has reached approximately 5.5 million beneficiaries in total as of mid-March (3.7 million through the two surge operations). In addition, 1,539.3 metric tons of meals ready to eat (MREs) are currently in the pipeline in preparation for the rainy and hurricane seasons. Thus, the food itself, the pots in which to cook the food and the utensils with which to eat the food are being distributed. However, the middle piece of the “edibility equation”—how to turn the distributed dry rice that should be cooked in the distributed pot into something that can actually be eaten with the distributed utensils—is entirely missing. Several separate humanitarian staff interviewed indicated that it would not be possible to focus on any additional needs—including cooking fuel—for at least six months. However, the rainy season begins in March, and the hurricane season begins in June, which will further strain resources and response capacity, as well as severely restrict the use of charcoal, firewood and other biomass-based cooking fuels in non-water resistant shelters. Preparedness for the rainy and hurricane seasons is critical.
HOUSEHOLD NEEDS, CHALLENGES AND CONCERNS:
As noted above, several different types of “settlements” were visited during the mission; each with slightly different findings/concerns regarding cooking and cooking fuel.
Protection concerns: While prior to the earthquake men were somewhat involved in the collection and/or preparation of food for the household, it appears that the burden has shifted more onto women since the earthquake. Moreover, the responsibility of finding spices, beans, condiments and cooking fuel has become more of a challenge for women. In addition to relying on family and communal support and food aid, women are at risk of resorting to negative coping strategies—including selling part of their rations and/or their coupons, skipping meals and exchanging sex for basic and survival needs. In the rural areas, the protection risks are increasing as the distance between settlements and available firewood for cooking becomes greater.
Livelihoods concerns: Many women in Port-au-Prince have lost their livelihoods and assets. Those who may have used “higher status” fuels such as LPG and kerosene before the earthquake have lost both the stoves (a rather sizeable capital investment in the case of LPG) as well as the income that allowed them to purchase these fuels. As noted above, approximately 40 percent of daily income from Cash for Work programs is being spent on charcoal. In the rural areas, “wood transformation activities,” which include felling trees, charcoal manufacture, charcoal wholesaling, distribution and sale, made up nearly one‐fifth of the total economy. There is no indication that demand for charcoal has dropped since the earthquake—if anything, it is likely to have increased due to the larger percentage of the urban population now using charcoal rather than gas fuels (according to a recent WFP survey, use of gas fuels in urban areas has declined nearly 10 percent since the earthquake). However, as noted above, any process of reducing overall charcoal consumption and/or replacing it with a cheaper, cleaner, more sustainable option will need to include effortsto diversify the livelihoods options for the rural populations that are otherwise dependent on its manufacture and sale.
Environmental concerns: The minority of the population that was previously using gas or electricity has now switched to using charcoal or firewood—contributing to even more environmental degradation. Moreover, the main coping strategy of increasingly burdened rural populations is charcoal production. Both of these facts combine to create an even more perilous situation for the less than two percent of remaining forest cover in Haiti. Moreover, continued felling of trees and lack of reforestation activities lead to soil erosion and landslides, decrease agricultural possibilities and further threaten food security.
Camp Management concerns: Many of the settlements are very densely packed, with large numbers of people living in close proximity under bedsheets, plastic sheeting, tarpaulins and other flammable materials. The use of many types of cooking fuels in these conditions poses a serious fire and safety risk.
FOCUS GROUP FINDINGS
Villambetta, Tabarre, Port-au-Prince: This settlement is in one of the newer areas of Port-au-Prince, in the northwestern part of the city. At the time of the visit, 3,000 individuals/500 households were living in Villambetta under the most basic of shelters (made primarily of salvaged bedsheets and scraps of cloth, some salvaged corrugated iron sheets and cardboard boxes). The land on which the settlement was built is privately owned; according to the self appointed “camp manager”; the landowner’s home had also been destroyed. The settlement itself is surrounded by an open field with some scrub bushes and small trees; the land is hilly, dry and rocky. “Shelters” within the settlement are close together, but compared with some other settlements observed nearer to the center of Port-au-Prince, they are fairly dispersed.
At the time interviews were conducted on 9 February (nearly one month after the earthquake occurred), residents of the settlement were yet to receive much organized assistance. During the team’s visit, the U.S. military dropped off boxes of meals ready to eat (MREs), which caused a mass rush to the camp entrance and eventually a small riot over the empty cardboard boxes. The MREs were pop tarts, salt and dried pasta meals. There was one nearly empty water container, but the water therein was not potable (it was meant for bathing and washing clothes). The International Rescue Committee (IRC) was in the process of establishing an office in the settlement to address environmental health (primarily water and sanitation) needs, but at the time of the visit this office was not yet operational. No plastic sheeting or other new shelter materials were observed, nor were any latrines. At the time of the interviews, no residents of the Villambetta settlement had received food rations (beyond scattered MREs) or any ration coupons.
When asked what fuel is used for cooking, nearly all of the women interviewed indicated that since they lost everything in the earthquake and had not received any food rations, they were struggling to cook. A few households (perhaps a total of two to three out of approximately 100 total households observed) were seen cooking or had the remnants of a cooking fire near their shelter. One man was seen roasting nuts over a charcoal fire (using a traditional metal charcoal stove); he indicated he would try to sell them. Apart from the nut-seller, nearly all of these households had used firewood. When asked from where the firewood was sourced, all indicated they had collected it from the empty field just on the edge of the settlement. There were some scrub bushes and small trees in this field; however, it is clear they would not last long were the entire settlement to rely on them for woodfuel needs.
The families who were collecting firewood said they needed to do it every day. As long as the wood was available, one woman indicated she would rather receive only food than food and fuel—“I can find firewood. I cannot find rice.” No protection concerns related to the collection of this firewood were mentioned; it was stated that either men or women would collect the firewood and cook, depending on who was available. One of the women interviewed in Villambetta said she had occasionally purchased “plats chauds” (meals cooked on the street; typically rice and sauce) when she had been able to find enough money; otherwise, she did not cook or eat. A small plate cost approximately 50 gourdes (USD 1.43); a larger plate costs between 75‐ 100 gourdes (USD 2.14–2.86) [before the earthquake, a large plate cost between 60 and 75 gourdes (USD 1.71–2.14)].
Most of the women interviewed in Villambetta had used a combination of LPG or kerosene AND charcoal prior to the earthquake, and typically cooked indoors. Most preferred the gas fuel and mentioned few safety concerns (only one woman said she thought charcoal was safer) because it cooked quickly and was easier to use. However, many respondents indicated that they would sometimes use charcoal because it was less expensive when cooking large meals/slow‐cooking foods (in other words, some woman believed that the relative cost of the total amount of‐cooking foods seemed less than the relative cost of the equivalent amount of LPG needed to cook the same food. This belief was not borne out by pre0earthquake studies by the World Bank Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP), however). charcoal needed to cook slow
Other uses for charcoal (prior to the earthquake) included heating water and ridding the house of mosquitoes. Prior to the earthquake, most women interviewed had engaged in petty street commerce such as selling candies or vegetables, as their main livelihoods activity. One woman interviewed (Nadine, the same woman who mentioned she was buying plats chauds when possible) was a cook in a private household and cooked street meals twice per week (boiled bananas and some meat dishes) prior to the earthquake. Nadine used kerosene in her own home, charcoal on the street and LPG in the private home. Three interviewees were engaged in commerce in the settlement; as noted, one was roasting nuts on a charcoal stove; another was selling cooking oil and vegetables (a bottle of cooking oil sells for 300 gourdes (USD 8.57) now—prior to the earthquake it was 65 gourdes (USD 1.86); and the third was selling charcoal (she had purchased the bag for 500 gourdes (USD 14.29) at the main market in Carrefour).
Host families, Saint Marc town, Artibonite: Two families receiving family members and friends were interviewed in Saint Marc town, a medium-sized city (160,000 residents according to 2003 census) about two hours up the coast from Port-au-Prince, in Artibonite region. Saint Marc itself was not affected by the earthquake, but has received an estimated 40,000 new arrivals (a 25 percent population increase). The new arrivals are living primarily with host families as the Government of Haiti and humanitarian agencies are actively discouraging the creation of camps. Nonetheless, there are approximately 13 collective settlements in the greater Saint Marc region, with a total population of just over 1,000 persons (none of these figures are yet confirmed; they were received by WFP/Saint Marc and are only “working numbers”). In many cases, the new arrivals are in fact from Saint Marc originally but had moved to Port-au-Prince to seek work or other opportunities. Many new arrivals come at night by bus.
The only UN agencies operational in the region are WFP, IOM and MINUSTAH (the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti). WFP is distributing rations to camps and “centres ’acceuil” (welcome centers) but not yet to host families as they are still working to obtain accurate numbers and locations (host families had not yet been included as a target group in the agency’s Emergency Operation (EMOP)). In addition, WFP is providing food to a U.S.based church NGO that is cooking two meals per day for 2,000 persons out of 20 centers. Exit strategies are a concern for both WFP and the church group.
There is a large potential to use Food for Work programs, especially in institutions, over the medium to longer term in Saint Marc. WFP’s school feeding and Mother and Child Health programs are ongoing; the schools use large charcoal stoves and the community is responsible for supplying the charcoal.
Two families were interviewed. The first family is hosting six people (the family size is now 13), including one pregnant woman and a five month old baby. Both before and after the earthquake, the woman interviewed used only charcoal for cooking. Before the earthquake, a bag of charcoal cost 350-400 gourdes (USD 10—11.43); now, it costs 400—450 gourdes (USD 11.43 - 12.86). The same amount of charcoal is available in the markets as before the earthquake. However, one bag of charcoal used to last her one week; now, it lasts only three days. She cooks two times per day on a traditional “récho métal” with three chambers; typically rice, spaghetti, beans, vegetables and meat. The beans take the longest time to cook (approximately two hours). The only fuel saving technique she uses is to douse the charcoal once she finishes cooking, in order to reuse it later. She sells vegetables and other foods as her main livelihoods activity, but business has decreased since the earthquake because her own capital has been exhausted.
The second family is hosting 16 people (to make a family size now of 25 persons); some family and some friends. Before the earthquake, the woman interviewed used LPG, kerosene and charcoal for cooking—typically kerosene (“gaz blanc”) in the morning for quick and easy light meals, because it is a small stove and easier to use just that for uncomplicated meals; and LPG (“gaz propane”) at other times, on a four-burner stove. The LPG was preferred because of the flexibility of cooking on the fourburner stove. Charcoal was used to supplement the gas fuels—however, there were sometimes problems with the supply of charcoal, especially in the rainy season (the charcoal comes to Saint Marc on donkeys or sometimes in cars from the plateau and mountains; rural people make it and bring it into the town—especially if brought on donkeys, it is easy to see why this might be difficult in the rainy season). One 25 kg bottle of LPG lasted two weeks and cost 650 gourdes (USD 18.57); 5 liters of kerosene—it is unclear how long this would last—cost 150 gourdes (USD 4.29); and average weekly charcoal expenditure was 1,000 gourdes (USD 28.57).
Since the earthquake, the woman interviewed said that she now uses only charcoal, because the pot needed to cook for so many people is too large to fit on the LPG or kerosene stoves. The amount of charcoal that used to last for one week now lasts for three ays. Now, 3 kg of charcoal costs 130 gourdes (USD 3.71), whereas it used to cost 100 gurdes (USD 2.86). Cooking oil, as another example, used to cost 200 gourdes per container (USD 5.71); it now costs 250 gourdes (USD 7.14).
Centre d’acceuil, Saint Marc town, Artibonite: This collective settlement is run by a local community-based organization (CBO) called “Visionnaires de Haiti,” which is a socio-political, cultural organization bringing together various smaller CBOs, focused especially on youth. The center hosts approximately 150 persons in an abandoned, half-finished hotel that was temporarily “donated” to Visionnaires de Haiti by the family of the deceased owner. Visionnaires de Haiti sends buses to Port-au-Prince to collect those displaced by the earthquake and bring them to the settlement. One woman interviewed came with her three children on the bus from Port-au-Prince. She is not from Artibonite, nor does she have family in the region, but she had no place else to go. She worked as a petty street vendor in Port-au-Prince and would like to do so in Saint Marc to earn some money, but she does not have any capital to invest. She is entirely dependent on the center and assists with the communal cooking (see below).
The displaced families live in the hotel “rooms” and cook together in a collective kitchen (each household is responsible for helping with the cooking). Meals are cooked once per day (they cannot cook more frequently because they do not have enough food or fuel to do so) and consist of rice and beans, and sometimes sardine based sauce if it can be found They are cooked on a traditional charcoal stove with no fuel-saving modifications, using charcoal donated by the local radio station owner (half a bag per day is used). Cooking is done indoors, though since construction of the center was not completed, there is significant ventilation. Visionnaires de Haiti also received some food and non‐food items from IOM; some town residents have been making plats chauds for the center’s residents.
Place Boyer settlement, Port-au-Prince: This settlement is a former park in the middle of Pétionville neighborhood in Port-au-Prince. It is a much more “urban” setting than Villambetta (surrounded by busy streets and markets, whereas Villambetta is surrounded primarily by open fields) and the settlement itself is much more densely populated. The settlement hosts 4,000 persons, most of whom have received their ration coupons and exchanged them for rice—some families received a half bag of rice; others received a whole bag. It is unclear how the amounts were determined as it appeared that some larger families received less, whereas smaller families in some cases had received more. It appeared as though both WFP and USAID had been distributing rice near the settlement. Plastic tarps had also been distributed, covering both many individual households as well as some common areas of the settlement; one water bladder was in place but only provided non-potable water. Some water bottles had been distributed. It had rained lightly on the morning of the visit and the ground was muddy and slick. Most households did not have any sort of “flooring” and it was clear that any more rain than the drizzle that had fallen would have caused severe problems.
Approximately 15 households and one charcoal seller were interviewed. The charcoal seller was also a charcoal seller before the earthquake. Nearly all families interviewed said they had used both charcoal and kerosene before the earthquake, preferring kerosene but having to also use charcoal because kerosene was more expensive (some charcoal supply problems during the rainy season were also mentioned by residents of Place Boyer). Kerosene cost 130 gourdes (USD 3.71) per gallon before the earthquake; a kerosene stove cost 600 gourdes (USD 17.14) and lasted approximately one year. One marmite of charcoal cost 20 gourdes (USD 0.57) before the earthquake and now costs 25 gourdes (USD 0.71). From interviews it appears the price of kerosene has increased much more than the price of charcoal, but it is unclear yet by how much or why this is the case. All interviewees were using charcoal to cook the rice they had been given; all had to purchase the fuel.
Other main purchasing priorities included food items (primarily beans and spices) and laundry soap. In order to earn the money for such purchases, the women interviewed either worked themselves, relied on other family members who were working and/or received remittances. Whereas they typically cooked two to three times per day before the earthquake, they are now cooking once per day or even less, since they do not have the means to cook more (“moyens”—when asked to expand on this, nearly all interviewees stated they did were not receiving enough food and did not have enough money to purchase the remaining food nor the fuel with which to cook it).
The charcoal seller interviewed in Place Boyer was purchasing her large charcoal bags from the same wholesaler as she did before the earthquake; she said there had not been any problems with supply. The cost is now 700 gourdes (USD 20) per bag; it was 600 gourdes (USD 17.14) before the earthquake. She sells a marmite for 20 gourdes (USD 0.57; it should be noted that this price is 5 gourdes lower than the average post-earthquake price and matches the estimated pre-earthquake price. It is not clear if this was indeed the actual selling price; or what she told the interviewer to avoid being seen as taking advantage of the earthquake to raise her prices).
Rural town in the southeast, near the Dominican Republic border: A focus group consisting of 20 men and women was conducted in a town that was home to approximately 25,000 residents prior to the earthquake. The town had since received a large influx of family members from Port-au-Prince (no estimate of precisely how many new arrivals was available, though three-fourths of those interviewed were hosting additional family members and friends). While many of those interviewed had been involved in the informal sector (mostly trade) in the city, most hoped to participate in the farming season. Apparently land was not an issue of immediate concern, but the seeds are. The earthquake had also destroyed the water reserve, meaning that women have to walk two to three hours for water collection (and it was mentioned that there is violence/conflict over the water at the source). Without water, the respondents said that livestock and agriculture are at high risk of death or failure. Not unsurprisingly, charcoal production has ramped up, despite the fact that production is often illegal, as the main coping mechanism. As in many other similar circumstances, charcoal is sold for income but firewood is used, over an open fire, at the household level. Women have to walk, often in small groups, for one to two hours to gather firewood on a daily basis. Men are primarily responsible for making the charcoal, while women are responsible for selling it. The Government was encouraging the use of LPG, but production capacity and cost remain prohibitive.
Women's Refugee Commission
122 East 42nd StreetNew York, NY 10168
World Food Programme
Via C.G.Viola 68Parco dei Medici 00148
Rome – Italy
powered by Drupal | <urn:uuid:2c14a7bf-f59a-48fb-93b7-b75203cd19cb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://haitiinnovation.org/en/2010/03/23/rapid-assessment-cooking-fuel-needs-post-quake-haiti | 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 | 0.962983 | 9,984 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Jee (Univ. of California, Davis), J. Hughes (Rutgers Univ.), F. Menanteau (Rutgers Univ. & Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), C. Sifon (Leiden Obs.), R. Mandelbum (Carnegie Mellon Univ.), L. Barrientos (Univ. Catolica de Chile), and K. Ng (Univ. of California, Davis)
La Batalla de El Gordo
The largely-empty Universe can be a crowded place sometimes. Entire clusters of galaxies, whizzing by each other through the dark alleyways of space, will sometimes smash together, and, surprisingly, a superior force may be driven out from the center of the engagement. That seems to be what's happening in the case of "El Gordo", an object formed as one large galaxy cluster collides with a smaller one. El Gordo is an astounding object - it is the most massive, the hottest, brightest in X-rays of any known galaxy cluster at its distance or beyond. The image above, a composite optical image by HST and an X-ray image by Chandra, details the "dark" and "light" side of the ferocious battle between the two clusters of galaxies in El Gordo. Analysis of the HST optical image shows distinct warping of background galaxies by the gravitating mass of El Gordo. This distortion, caused by gravitational lensing, can be used to derive the spatial distribution of "dark matter" in the cluster. The distribution of dark matter is shown in blue in the image above. The X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, shown in pink, reveals the spatial distribution of "normal" matter (the familiar type of stuff made of protons, neutrons and electrons). The Chandra and Hubble images show that, as in the case of the "Bullet Cluster", the dark matter is distributed outside the X-ray emitting "normal" matter. Astronomers believe this indicates that pressure produced by the collision in El Gordo caused the "normal" matter to slow down near the center of the collision; the "dark matter was not slowed down by the collision to the same degree, showing that dark matter interacts only via gravity.
Published: May 5, 2014
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Page Author: Dr. Michael F. Corcoran
Last modified Monday, 12-May-2014 10:17:50 EDT | <urn:uuid:f26c3f30-74be-4825-94c4-0eb582903833> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/objects/heapow/archive/large_scale_structure/elgordo_chandra.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 | 0.862366 | 584 | 3.171875 | 3 |
If you've ever placed a plant clipping into a glass of water in the hopes that it will develop roots, you've practiced in a form of hydroponics. Hydroponics is a branch of agriculture where plants are grown without the use of soil. The nutrients that the plants normally derive from the soil are simply dissolved into water instead, and depending on the type of hydroponic system used, the plant's roots are suspended in, flooded with or misted with the nutrient solution so that the plant can derive the elements it needs for growth.
The term hydroponics originates from the ancient Greek "hydros," meaning water, and "ponos," meaning work. It can sometimes be mistakenly referred to as aquaculture, or aquiculture, but these terms are really more appropriately used for other branches of science that have nothing to do with gardening.
As the population of our planet soars and arable land available for crop production declines, hydroponics will offer us a lifeline of sorts and allow us to produce crops in greenhouses or in multilevel buildings dedicated to agriculture. Already, where the cost of land is at a premium, crops are being produced underground, on rooftops and in greenhouses using hydroponic methods.
Perhaps you'd like to start a garden so that you can grow your own vegetables, but you don't have the space in your yard, or you're overwhelmed by pests and insects. This article will arm you with the knowledge you need to successfully set up a hydroponics garden in your home and provide suggestions of plants that will grow readily without a big investment. | <urn:uuid:0d3b69a6-316e-4bdb-a8a2-5416fcc2ffd4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://home.howstuffworks.com/lawn-garden/professional-landscaping/alternative-methods/hydroponics.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 | 0.956829 | 329 | 3.484375 | 3 |
****Deciding what you want****
There are many kinds of panpipes, panflutes etc.
Generally, they can be divided into two traditional categories, straight, and curved.
1) Straight style includes traditional South American (Andean) pan pipes, (siku, rondador, zampona etc.)
These are much easier to make, and harder to play than curved ones. They are usually more primitive than the good curved ones, but quite appropriate for South American music.
2) The curved ones match the turning of the head, allowing faster, more accurate and more comfortable technique, and they are stronger. However, they are harder to make and therefore cost more. Romanian style pan flutes are almost always made with the bamboo scraped, to remove the natural "enamel". This is to give a smoother, creamier, more consistent appearance, and it does not affect the sound, however, it does make them more expensive, because of the labour involved.
Below are some straight panpipes and a curved one on the right.
South American panpipes tend to have narrower tubes and less change in diameter than the Romanian style (on right). This helps give them their special windy quality, emphasizing the overtones of a tube, by softening the fundamental (main) tone. Such a pan flute may have very windy low notes.
Note: ALL traditional Romanian/European-style pan flutes have tubes with varying diameters which go from wide to narrow, as you go up the scale! This is to maintain the volume/length ratio of the tube and produce the best consistent tone quality. Too thin low tubes tend to have very weak and windy fundamental tones (the main note), and too thick high tubes tend to get unstable and also too windy. The pan flute is the only hand-held instrument that can do this with. (the organ is another non-hand-held) Such pan flutes normally have at least 20 tubes. You can make a pan flute with all tubes the same, but then it is NOT a Romanian-style pan flute. Such pan flutes take more work for the player to maintain consistent tone. Tube cross-sectional area, therefore, should vary on any pan flute of more than about 10 or 12 tubes!
Most South American ones are straight and made of a lightweight cane. They can be single row, or double row. The double row often has pipes for the accidentals, (sharps and flats), like a piano keyboard, requiring jumping from row to row to play all the notes. They can have anywhere from about 8 up to 25 or more tubes. You may have to re-tune these, as they can be sold as souvenirs more than for playing. Watch for cracked tubes! You can test by covering a tube with your mouth and blowing into it while listening for leaks. You can feel a pressure build-up in this test if there are no leaks. Cost for these can be from $10 - $50 or so. Often they are available in specialty stores selling South American items. Be careful that the blowing edge is smooth, or you can hurt your lip.
Visit this site for more info:
A nicely finished edge of a good curved panflute. Note that the tubes are not just "rounded side to rounded side", but have been flattened to fit together closely. They are glued, not tied together, too.
Notice the curves and the diameters on fine pan flutes.
NOTE: You can play South American music on a curved Romanian/European panflute, but it would be very difficult to play much classical or Romanian or fast popular music on a South American one. Of course, each music requires a different style: vibrato, tonguing etc. Romanian style pan flutes are tuned in a regular "diatonic" scale, but by tilting and angling the lips and instrument, you can play a full chromatic scale.
* How Much? For a decent 22 tubed panflute you can pay from $150 (minimum) up to $1500 or so, depending on the store, the maker, the decoration etc. A few hundred should get you a very good one. $1500 should get you a masterpiece! A 29 tubed one can more than double that, as the large tubes are harder to find and take more work.
* Are all good panflutes bamboo? No. There are very good ones made from drilled wood, but again, the quality is variable. Be sure that there are smooth variations in the diameters of tubes, inside and outside. Still, the "best" panflutes are mostly made from hard bamboo. It is also possible to make a decent panflute out of plastic, or brass, or glass, or other materials, each with its own sound and its own challenges.
* Are they tuned with corks? Some yes, some no. If the bottom has a base, it will be very difficult to change the tuning if there are corks. Panflutes tuned with wax (the traditional and probably best way) can be retuned fairly quickly. Some unusual pan flutes have sliding plugs in the bottom to change keys. These are fairly rare, and there are good ones and bad ones...! Take a look at this maker's tunable pan flutes. Panex
* What musical key should it be tuned to? Traditional panflutes are tuned in G major, and some books are written for that tuning. However, C major is the other logical choice for most people, and perhaps best for people not playing traditional Romanian music.
*Are the long tubes on the player's right or left? With Romanian-style, they are usually on the right. Some makers, (such as Kevin Budd) make them both ways. If you already play piano or harmonica, you will already think of low notes as being on the left.
* Does a panflute need to have a base? No. Having a base, (bottom, front and back and ends) will make it stronger and give some area for decoration, but there are very good panflutes with only a bottom piece, and some (less attractive) open on the bottom too.
* What else should I look for? Consistent construction, (no tubes that are very different than the others) a knowledgeable maker or seller who can respond to your questions.
* Any warnings? Beware of stores that sell many instruments...they may not know much about anything. Very few people know much about pan flutes...especially if they are self-taught. Ask questions! Try it if possible! Some "experts" may really be flute players who think they therefore can easily play a panflute...they can't. I say this since I was a flute player for many years! I also played trumpet for some years, and playing trumpet can actually help more with focus and lip control than flute playing.
Beware of sound samples that have a lot of reverb, vibrato, and short notes. You can only tell an instrument's sound with no reverb, no vibrato and good long tones.
* Do I need several panflutes to play in different keys? Not unless you are doing a lot of playing in unusual keys. A good player can can play in several keys at least. This is a big challenge with the instrument, but worth it!
Do tubes split or crack? Rarely. If you oil the inside of the tubes once or twice a year, (almond oil) the pan flute should last many years. Keep it away from sudden changes in temperature or humidity and especially extreme dryness. Badly damaged tubes CAN be replaced. Don't sit on it, or leave it in a hot car on a sunny day!
*How do you do vibrato on a pan flute? South American style is throat or stomach tremelo. It varies (mainly) the volume but not the pitch. See this little picture for Romanian style vibrato. It sounds more like a singer, and varies the pitch, or frequency too. The hand holding the short tubes does the rhythmical movement, after a tilting/angling shift.
* How do you make a panflute? This is far too complicated to explain easily. The best resource is to look in the "panflute_world" message base. See my main page for the link, or go to "www.yahoo.com" and search for the name. Also look at David Pighills' fine page:DP
Send e-mail to KEVIN BUDD (English or en espanol ou en francais)
Click on this address: | <urn:uuid:902bad91-8b6d-4388-96b2-76a23b2a22f4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://home.ica.net/~kbudd/howtobuy.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 | 0.962557 | 1,799 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Variable Frequency Control is a system for controlling the rotational speed of an AC electric motor by controlling the frequency. You need system for controlling the power of a heating element.Jack the dripper wrote:New to this site. Real new like 5 minutes ago. maybe this isn't the place for this question............ Why wouldn't it be possible to control a heating element with a Variable Frequency Control?
Heating element is a resistive circuit. Power of a resistive circuit depends on the potential difference and resistance of heating element and does not depend on frequency. The change of frequency will not change power of heating.
How to change a power?
In resistive circuits , electrical power is calculated using Joule's law:
P = V x I, where
P is the electric power,
V the potential difference,
and I the electric current.
We can combine Joule's law with Ohm's law (V = RхI) to produce alternative expressions for the dissipated power:
P = V^2/R,
where R = constant - it is the electrical resistance of our heating element.
The change of potential difference will change power of heating.
Otherwise, P = I^2 x R
The change of current will change power of heating.
But the change of frequency will not change power of heating. | <urn:uuid:cc4f6206-f46c-474a-a51b-b6c231023a5f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3342&p=6808209&hilit=triac+control | 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 | 0.909415 | 277 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Home garden design
The Lawn, in Light & Shadow
Garden Gates and their Planting
Paths and Border Planting
The Bird Garden
Garden Pools and Ponds
The Rose Garden
Bulbs and Kindred Plants
Rock garden design
Apples suitable for fruit growing
Botany of cultivated fruit plants
Cherry tree information
Cherry tree pruning
Distance to plant fruit trees
Flowering plum trees
Free tree planting tips
Fruit orchard planting and laying out<
Fruit tree planting
Fruit tree pollination
Fruit tree pruning
Growing grape vines
Growing peach trees
How to determine age of trees
How to prune apple tree
How to prune pear tree
Peach tree growing regions
Pear trees and planting
Planting fruit trees
Plum fruit growing
Pruning fruit trees
Pruning grape vines
Pruning peach tree
Pruning wounds-their making and treatment
Type of pears suitable for growing
Types of grapes
Types of sour Cherry trees
When to prune trees
Coniferous Evergreen Shrubs and Trees
Flower Names and Pictures Guide
Flowers by Color
Annual Flowers and Plants
Winter protection of Plants
Planting Trees and Shrubs
Wild Field and Garden Flowers
Planting a vegetable garden
Garden Planting Schedule
Garden Stones Game
Plant and Flower Garden Dictionary
Useful garden sites
Home garden design > Fruit growing > Fruit orchard planting and laying out
Fruit orchard planting and laying out
There are numerous methods of laying out and staking land preparatory to fruit orchard planting. One of the most convenient and efficient on small areas, which are comparatively level and set by the rectangular system, is the wire, method. Stakes are set along two sides of the orchard beginning at the desired distance from the fence, usually 15 to 25 feet, and then at intervals equal to the distance the rows are to be apart.
In setting these stakes, care should be taken to begin at the same end for both rows and to have the distance between stakes exact. A wire sufficiently long to reach across the field is then stretched between the corresponding stakes on opposite sides. Normal wire wire may be used.
Fine wire or other markers should be fastened on the wire to mark the proper distance between the trees. The wire should also be provided with loops or rings at the end so that it may be kept well stretched. Small stakes are set at the points indicated by the markers, and the wire then moved over to the next stake at each end ready to make the second row.
While designed for the rectangular system, this method can also be used in the hexagonal system by having the first marker of the even numbered rows come half way between the first two trees of the preceding row, and by having the distance between the rows as shown in the following table:
Distance Between Rows in the Hexagonal System
Distance between trees | Approximate distance between row
20 feet ............................. 17 feet, 4 inches.
25 feet ............................. 21 feet, 8 inches.
30 feet ............................. 26 feet.
33 feet ............................. 28 feet, 7 inches.
35 feet ............................. 30 feet, 4 inches.
40 feet ............................. 34 feet, 8 inches.
A method very commonly used in setting an orchard by the rectangular system is the "lining-in" method. Stakes are set on both sides and ends of the area to be planted. Lath serve the purpose very well. The first stake should be the proper distance from the fence, and the others at intervals equal to the distance between the rows.
Two rows of stakes are run through the center of the area at right angles to each other, care being taken not to have them come on the line of he row, which is easily done by starting between two of the stakes at the end. These stakes should be in line with the stakes running parallel to them.
The man setting trees now has two stakes in each direction by which to line-in his trees. By this method all intermediate stakes and the planting board may be dispensed with. | <urn:uuid:efb33a80-5d21-419d-8e21-bc4557db8e37> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://homegardendesign.info/fruitorchardplantingandlayingout.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 | 0.883808 | 866 | 3.15625 | 3 |
Holly trees are members of the genus Ilex that are often propagated using stem cuttings taken during late summer or fall. Stem cuttings are a method of tree propagation that uses cuttings taken from recently or still growing wood to produce a new tree. Growing from stem cuttings is a time and space intensive process that needs a dedicated indoor growing area for several months.
Select a parent plant to provide a stem cutting. The ideal candidate for propagation is a healthy adult holly plant that has recently finished its annual growth cycle. Plan on taking your cuttings during midsummer or early fall to promote quick root growth.
Select an outer branch of the holly tree that is free of damage or disease and locate a shoot near the tip that is 6 to 8 inches long. Grasp the shoot at its base and separate it from the stem of the branch, pulling gently from the tip of the branch toward the trunk of the tree. Sever the shoot from the tree so that there is a small heel of wood from the stem still attached to the severed shoot.
Strip any leaves from around the base of the stem cutting, leaving the lower half of the cutting bare. Make 1-inch incisions in the bark of the stem cutting around its base to promote root growth. Measure rooting hormone into a container according to the manufacturer's directions and dip the stem cuttings in rooting hormone to cover the incisions you made.
Mix the sand, peat and perlite in equal measures until you have enough growing medium to fill your plant pot. Insert the stem cutting into the growing medium so that the bottom third of the cutting is buried.
Water the stem cutting lightly to ensure that the soil remains moist while the stem cutting is establishing new roots. Mist the cuttings lightly with the spray bottle several times a day to prevent water loss through the remaining leaves while the cutting is taking root.
Keep the stem cutting in indirect sunlight and a well-drained pot until the cutting has grown large enough to transplant to another pot. Allow your holly tree to grow as large as your pots and indoor growing area permits before transplanting your new holly tree into the yard. This will ensure that your tree grows to a healthy size before it goes in the ground.
Things You Will Need
- Rooting hormone
- Plant pots
- Coarse sand
- Spray bottle
- If you are reusing pots, sterilize them before planting your stem cuttings to ensure they are not harboring any harmful soilborne organisms.
- Only use containers that will drain rapidly and avoid overwatering the cuttings. Insert your finger down into the soil alongside the cutting to check if your cutting needs water. If the soil feels dry, add water until the soil is uniformly moist.
- Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images | <urn:uuid:82d4835e-4754-4efd-8c91-a2ba12559f1e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://homeguides.sfgate.com/propagate-holly-trees-22126.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 | 0.94784 | 582 | 3.46875 | 3 |
Finding liquid around the base of your toilet is never pleasant, especially if you have small children in the home. It may be a relief discovering the puddle is only water, but determining the water source and how to repair it could be challenging. A rocking toilet and rusted closet bolts can result in water puddles on the floor. This can signal damage to one or more of your closet bolts. Replace both closet bolts, even if only one shows signs of damage. Replace all bolts, gaskets and washers when reassembling the toilet to avoid additional water leaks.
Spread old towels or a blanket on the floor. Remove the tank lid and place it on the towels or blanket to avoid damaging it.
Reach behind and beneath the toilet to turn off the valve supplying water to the tank. Turn the valve handle clockwise until it stops.
Flush the toilet to drain the tank. Use old towels to soak up the water left in the tank.
Trace the supply line from the valve to the bottom of the toilet tank. Loosen the bolt connecting the supply to the tank, using an adjustable wrench or pliers.
Look inside the empty tank to find the two tank bolts. These bolts hold the tank to the toilet bowl. Fit an adjustable wrench to the nuts beneath the tank. Use a heavy-duty slotted screwdriver to loosen and remove the bolts. Lift the tank off the bowl and carefully set it onto the towels or blankets.
Pop the toilet bolt caps off each side of the bowl base near the floor. Toilet bolt caps cover the ends of the bolts and nuts that stick up from the flange.
Remove the nuts from the toilet bolts. Lift the tank from the floor and move it to the old towels or blanket. Spread old newspapers over the towels to avoid an additional mess as the remains of the wax ring may stick to the bottom of the bowl.
Scrape the old wax ring from the floor flange with a putty knife to access the closet bolts. Some wax rings come with a polyethylene flange that installs into the floor's waste opening. Remove this flange form the floor opening, if applicable.
Remove the nuts and washers holding the original closet bolts in the flange. Slide the bolts along the slots in the flange to the keyhole opening. Lift the bolts from the flange. Alternatively, if your flange does not have keyhole openings in the slots, loosen the bolts holding the flange to the floor until you can tilt the closet bolt heads from the slots in the flange.
Insert new closet bolts into the flange. Slide the bolts to the location of the original closet bolts. Secure the bolts with new noncorrosive washers and nuts.
Install a new wax ring onto the flange around the floor opening. Lift the toilet bowl and set it into place over the ring and closet bolts. Clean any wax ring remains from the bottom of the bowl before resetting the bowl onto the bolts and flange.
Thread new noncorrosive washers and bolts onto the new closet bolts. Tighten the nuts with the adjustable wrench. Cover the ends of the bolts with the bolt caps.
Install a new rubber tank-to-bowl gasket in the toilet bowl’s water inlet. Lift the tank and place it back onto the toilet bowl.
Thread new rubber gaskets onto new tank bolts. Insert the bolts into the tank bolt openings and through the bolt openings in the bowl. Install new noncorrosive washers and nuts onto the tank bolts. Tighten the nuts to secure the tank to the bowl.
Reattach the supply line to the bottom of the tank. Turn on the water supply to the tank. Replace the tank lid.
Things You Will Need
- Old towels or blankets
- Adjustable wrench or pliers
- Slotted screwdriver
- Old newspapers
- Putty knife
- Noncorrosive washers and nuts
- Wax ring
- Rubber tank-to-bowl gasket
- Toilet tank bolt set
- Stockbyte/Stockbyte/Getty Images | <urn:uuid:c5d053e0-154b-4da8-810c-0e06e5cc50af> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://homeguides.sfgate.com/replace-old-toilet-closet-bolt-33460.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 | 0.863747 | 846 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Homeschooling on a Shoestring
Spotlight On: Language Arts
• “Homeschooling on a Shoestring Budget” HSLDA Homeschooling Toddlers thru Tweens
• “What Does It Cost to Homeschool?”
• “Navigating the Used Curriculum Route” by Vicki Bentley, Practical Homeschooling magazine
• “What Should I Be Teaching?”
• “Where Do You Start? Placement Tests and Other Orientation Tools” Includes reading assessments.
• Use multi-level curriculum. Use grade-specific materials for each child for skills subjects such as language arts and math, then use multi-level materials for content-area subjects such as science, social studies, character/Bible, art, health, etc, working with all of your children together, to economize on time and money! (See the earlier newsletters in this series for more suggested multi-level curriculum ideas.)
• “Five Must-Have, No-Cost Resources for Homeschooling” by Terri Johnson
• Search for free homeschool + subject
“A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. The tongue of the wise commends knowledge, but the mouth of the fool gushes folly.”
(Proverbs 15:1–2, KJV, emphasis added)
“I will not allow before my eyes any shameful thing … .”
(Psalm 101:3, The Complete Jewish Bible)
“Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out.”
(Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, Archbishop of York, Prince-Bishop of Durham)
A few language arts resources:
• “Write Now” by Cathy Duffy (originally printed in Practical Homeschooling No. 4, 1993)
• “How to Run a Super Story Contest for Your Group” by Linda Burklin (from Practical Homeschooling No. 60)
• Sounds Like Learning! Audio CD from Discovery Toys (preschool, primary)
• Mathematical Reasoning through Verbal Analysis series from Critical Thinking Press
• Think-It-Through tiles team children with a series of progressive booklets and an ingenious system of double-sided tiles that actively engage students in the lessons and supplement their studies. Each booklet features 24 pages of math or reading challenges of increasing difficulty. Sets range from preschool through elementary. For example, the three-booklet Unlocking Word Power set is appropriate from age 7 years through elementary school and covers synonyms, antonyms, usage, word meanings, homophones, sentence and paragraph structure, and spelling.
• Timberdoodle language arts resources
• Learning English with the Bible
• Comprehensive Composition, Natural Speller, and Critical Conditioning guides from Kathryn Stout’s Design-a-Study series; for all ages
• Movies as Literature by Kathryn Stout
• Learning with the Movies by Beth Holland
• Many homeschool online groups have subject-specific content. For example, the Workboxes Yahoo group highlights ideas for English, language arts, and/or literature on Wednesdays.
• Composition tutoring programs such as The Writing Well or Write at Home
• Curriculum Resources listing at HSLDA’s Homeschooling Toddlers thru Tweens
• Book lists for preschool through high school—Reading Roadmaps (Center for Literary Education & Exodus Books)
• Learning Language Arts Through Literature is a fully integrated language arts program that teaches grammar, reading, spelling, vocabulary, writing mechanics, creative writing, thinking skills and more, using real books.
• Queen Homeschool’s Language Lessons series is a gentle approach to language skills, a la Charlotte Mason. You’ll find picture study, narration, copywork, dictation, poetry appreciation and instruction, creative writing, grammar instruction, and more, depending upon the level; 180 daily lessons in each volume make these books a simple introduction to the Charlotte Mason style!
• For free downloads and tips on using English from the Roots Up, check out Cynthia Albright’s website.
• Another list of suggested classic kids books for preschool through grade 8.
• Beginning Poetry and Bookbinding, The Word Artist by Susan Kemmerer
• Webinar: Classical Writing Primers - Preparing Young Students for Writing by Kathy Weitz.
Latin for Young Children, Latin for grades two through five.
• Learn Grammar with songs
By Vicki Bentley
HSLDA Early Years Coordinator
A few months ago, we introduced this series on homeschooling “on the cheap” with our Spotlight on Social Studies, followed by Science on a Dime and Math on a Budget. This month, we’ll wrap up the series with a quick review for newer readers, and then some inexpensive, fun, multi-level ideas for language arts!
While the average cost is roughly $500 a year per child, this figure usually goes down with subsequent children, since resources can be shared, membership costs are not multiplied, etc. During the four years that we were without a full-time income, I was able to homeschool seven children at a time for less than $100 total in a year, once I had accumulated a few non-consumable resources.
It is possible to homeschool with just a Bible and a library card, but most of us will buy at least a few things. You’ll want to invest in your core curriculum materials first, then add other items as your budget allows. (See sidebar for more ideas.)
How to Save on Textbooks and Other Curricular Materials
- Use multi-level, language-based study materials such as Prairie Primer (based on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series of nine books), Five in a Row (based on Caldecott- and Newbery-Award-winning books), Wisdom Words, or Sonlight materials.
- Borrow or rent books—check with your local support group.
- Use a curriculum guide such as Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach, a Bible, and library resources.
- Purchase used books. Some sources include used curriculum shops, exhibit halls, library sales, support group sales, online swap boards (and of course, the HSLDA Curriculum Market!).
- Combine a framework such as Language Arts at Home with your Bible, children’s classics, and an online grammar guide such as KISS Grammar.
- Provide educational “wish lists” to family members for gift-giving occasions.
- Use your state’s standards of learning as a guide to check out appropriate library books. (Search for Standards of Learning + Your State. You are not required to use these standards, but it can give you a starting point.)
- Use World Book’s typical course of study with library books.
- Use a major textbook publisher’s language arts scope and sequence.
- Use What Your Child Needs to Know When or The Checklist (or Teaching Children by Diane Lopez) as a guide to what to teach, then use library books or living books. (Are you sensing a pattern here that includes library and card?)
- Search online for free homeschool ____ (spelling, handwriting, grammar, composition, vocabulary …).
- Laminate your books and answer keys with clear ContactTM paper for durability.
What is Included in “Language Arts”?
Language arts encompasses various subjects involved in communicating in your native language, such as:
- phonics/reading instruction
- reading/literature comprehension
- listening skills (sometimes called auding)
- study skills
Language arts study is a skills-based subject (as is math); most content is covered sequentially. For example, a child progresses from letter sounds to words, then to sentences, which are the building blocks of paragraphs. It is realistic to expect a child to write a cohesive report only after he can organize his thoughts into paragraph, which may not happen until third grade.
Most children cover only some facets of language arts at any given time, depending on maturity and skills. For example, a very young child who is just learning to read will generally focus on decoding the words, but cannot easily comprehend what he is reading. A primary student might focus on spelling, while an older elementary student who has mastered most spelling rules might concentrate on vocabulary instead.
Everyday Activities for Language Arts for Lean Budgets
Because language arts is a sequential, skills-based subject, most of us will use a textbook or organized teaching approach of some sort to teach it. However, the most effective learning—or at least reinforcement of concepts—often takes place in the context of everyday living or family activities, and many are free or very inexpensive:
- Read-alouds for all ages. Don’t quit reading aloud when your children learn to read on their own—it is still a valuable family activity! Hearing good literature read aloud encourages in children a love for language, builds vocabulary, motivates them to read, and encourages them to use their imagination. They have a much higher receptive vocabulary than reading vocabulary, so it’s okay to read books aloud that are well above their reading level, and stop to let them narrate back to you or to dramatize what you've read. Leave time for discussion and enjoy the experience!
- Brain teasers and puzzles help build logic and thinking skills as well as spatial reasoning.
- Jigsaw puzzles teach visual discrimination, a pre-reading skill, as well as other spatial skills.
- Read the Bible to not only learn God’s instruction and His character, but to appreciate the loveliness of Scripture, the poetry of the Psalms, and the patterns, imagery, and application of other literary terms throughout the various books.
- Cook together, letting your child read the recipes. Check out Single-Serve Recipes by Joyce Herzog.
- Do you feel guilty building an occasional household catch-up day into your lesson plans? Putting the Legos away, sorting the Matchbox cars, tidying the colored pencils vs. the markers, reorganizing the linen closet or sorting the pantry, and other such tasks are classification and organization—valuable language arts, science, and math skills!
- Collections can also encourage organization and classification skills, and can provide opportunities to teach alphabetical order.
- Play language games such as Scrabble, Guggenheim, Taboo, The Play’s the Thing, Scattergories, Balderdash, MadLibs, etc. Click here for more information on using games in your homeschool.
- Keep handy a few reference books such as a dictionary, thesaurus, and grammar or usage guide.
- Do you have a tape recorder or video camera? Language Arts is about communication—not just the written word, but also oral communication. If your child is more interested in video than book work, a taped interview or video report could substitute for a written project.
- The computer offers word processing, desktop publishing, and research opportunities, as well as online sites with “word of the day” emails, etc.
- Toss a sheet or tablecloth over a tension rod in a doorway, add some dollar store or lunch bag hand puppets, and you have a puppet theater to encourage your children to write skits, develop characters, etc.
- Read Shakespeare and other plays. Let your kids write their own!
- Set up reading and writing stations.
- Encourage your child to write to a penpal to build letter-writing skills. No cousins or grandparents? The children of missionaries (or the missionaries themselves) would probably enjoy news from home.
- An online search for student essay contest or student writing contest can motivate your children to write for an audience outside the home.
- Start a book report club in your local group or community.
- Visit a book signing at your local bookstore to show your child that authors are simply real people who shared their thoughts on paper. (Of course, use your discretion—the child may then want to read the book!)
- Many of the language arts catalogs you collect at the homeschool convention contain book lists, many even by categories or reading level—these can provide a great starting point to select books at the library.
- One of my girls learned to read when I gave her a spiral notebook with some magazines, child-size scissors, and gluesticks. By cutting out things that make a B sound and gluing them onto the B page, then cutting out M words and gluing them onto the M page, and so on, she learned to listen for sounds in words.
- Debate develops listening skills, writing proficiency, research skills, speech composition and delivery, and more. Capitalize on the logic stage of the average middle school student!
- Explore other alphabets such as the military alphabet, Morse code, or sign language finger-spelling.
Comments/Suggestions | Disclaimer | Advertising | <urn:uuid:54af2301-d7ae-407c-9160-329ebf34f486> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://hslda.org/earlyyears/Shoestring_Language_Arts.asp | 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 | 0.915886 | 2,726 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Washington D.C. council member Tommy Wells has introduced legislation to help pay rent for “low-income and very-low income seniors.” The Housing Assistance Program for Unsubsidized Seniors Act of 2013 would provide assistance to D.C. residents over the age of 65 whose rental payments exceed 35 percent of their income.
Because of the rising costs of living and the rising costs of health care, District seniors are more and more frequently confronted by homelessness. It is unacceptable that they are being forced to choose between paying for medicine and food or paying their rent.
Too many longtime District residents have been forced to move away from the city they’ve helped build or worse fallen into homelessness. It is time for the District to step up and provide the preventative assistance necessary to ensure our seniors do not end up homeless.
Recently, the National Health Care for the Homeless Council (NHCHC) reported that “strong demographic trends, economic insecurity and lack of affordable senior living have contributed to increased housing instability among seniors.
A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 26 percent of the senior citizens who live in the nation’s capital, about 25,000 men and women, live at or below the poverty level.
A 2011 study by the Homeless Research Institute of the National Alliance to End Homelessness estimated that the number of homeless senior citizens will increase by 33 percent in 2020 (44,172 in 2010 to 58,772 in 2020) and will double from the current number by the year 2050, with 95,000 older people expected to be living without stable housing.
According to AARP:
A great contributor to this phenomenon is the fact that the baby boomer generation is now hitting 65. Already, about 45 million Americans are considered senior citizens and according to U.S. Census projections, that number is expected to grow to 60 million, topping off at 90 million by the year 2050. These numbers mean that added services such as housing, health care and nutrition will greatly be needed.
The NHCHC reports that the age composition of the homeless population has shifted significantly over the past two decades, with the median age of single adults increasing from 35 years in 1990 to 50 years in 2010. Still, the majority of unstably housed adults over 50 are between 50 and 64 years old, with only 5 percent age 65 and over.
While a number of safety net programs exist for the elderly, those between ages 50 and 64 often fall through the cracks, despite having similar physical health to those much older, due to daily stress, poor nutrition and poor living conditions.
The D.C. council members who proposed and have expressed support for the rent-assistance measure believe the number of homeless senior citizens can be reduced if they are given assistance through this program and another proposed effort proposed to exempt senior citizens who are long-time residents of the District and earn less than $60,000 from paying property taxes. | <urn:uuid:cd4b3546-af0d-44b5-ad0f-d633130c475a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://humaneexposures.com/blog/d-c-proposed-bill-would-help-pay-rent-for-low-income-and-very-low-income-seniors.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 | 0.959311 | 597 | 2.609375 | 3 |
When I teach how to identify a verb, I rely on my automotive trouble-shooting technique.
I begin with questions (as shown in a chart), such as, does the verb have this particular characteristic? If Yes then it must be this; if No, then it must be that.
For instance, in early lessons to distinguish between present active and present passive, I use this chart
By lesson 16, we initially ask, does the verb have an augment (visible ε or lengthened vowel)? If yes, it is a past tense, if no, it is present or future.
Then on the future side, we ask if it has a σ before the personal endings? If yes, it is future, if no, it is present
By lesson 19, we are considering aorists (asking about stem change), and aorist & future passives (asking about θη).
These lessons can be found at
John Barach, Sr | <urn:uuid:70c98c8f-a191-41ad-8bb9-85f83489f3b5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://ibiblio.org/bgreek/forum/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=183&p=707 | 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 | 0.897041 | 202 | 3.65625 | 4 |
CNN cited the American Immigration Council's recent report ...
The DREAM Act: A Resource Page
The plight of the DREAM Act students encapsulates many facets of today's immigration crisis. Caught in a system where there is little, if any, means for legalizing their status, smart, hard-working kids face an uncertain future because of their inability to continue their education, work, or join the military. The loss of potential, productivity, and hope for these individuals is also a loss for this country. The United States is missing out on talented workers and entrepreneurs, and is losing vital tax revenues and other economic contributions. While fixing this particular problem will hardly resolve the need for comprehensive immigration reform, it will unlock the door to the American dream for thousands of young people each year.
Deferred Action for DREAMers:
- Read our Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Resource Page (Updated August 2013)
Basic Facts on DREAM Act:
- Read our Guide to S.744, which contains the strongest ever DREAM Act.
- Read A Comparison of the DREAM Act, Sen. Rubio's Proposal and Other Proposals for Undocumented Youth (June 2012)
- Read the 2011 DREAM Act Bill (May 2011)
- Read Basic Facts on the DREAM Act (May 2011)
- Read Dispelling DREAM Act Myths (November 2010)
- Watch Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) re-introduce the DREAM Act
Support for DREAM Act:
- 100 Law Professors Urge White House to Grant Administrative Relief to DREAMers (May 2012)
- Senior Department of Homeland Security Officials Support the DREAM Act (December 2010)
- State Lawmakers from Critical States Speak Out in Favor of DREAM Act (December 2010)
- Scholars Unite Behind DREAM Act (December 2010)
Economic Benefits of the DREAM Act:
- Read Economic Benefits of Granting Deferred Action to Unauthorized Immigrants Brought to U.S. as Youth (June 2012)
- Read Investing in the American DREAM (December 2010)
- Read The DREAM Act: Creating Economic Opportunities (November 2010)
- Read The DREAM Act in Arizona: An Economic Perspective (September 2010)
- Read Wasted Talent and Broken Dreams: The Lost Potential of Undocumented Students (October 2007)
Tuition Equity Legislation:
- State Bills on Access to Education for Immigrants (National Immigration Law Center 2012)
- States Continue to Propose Tuition Equity for Undocumented Immigrants (March 2012)
- Tuition Equity Bills Continue to Build Momentum in State Legislatures (February 2012)
- Governor Jerry Brown Signs Immigration Bills that Help, Not Hurt, California’s Economy (October 2011)
- Tuition Equity Legislation for Undocumented Students Picks Up Speed (April 2011)
Related Articles and Blog Posts:
You can read all of our DREAM Act publications here.
Published On: Thu, Sep 16, 2010
Read Our Blog
Read the latest in immigration news at ImmigrationImpact.com, with new articles published every weekday.
Text FACTS to 51555 to get the latest posts sent right to your phone. | <urn:uuid:845c0a13-ba9c-455c-aa5e-035a87ece716> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://immigrationpolicy.org/just-facts/dream-act-resource-page | 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 | 0.903306 | 667 | 2.65625 | 3 |
1st part of 3
The Arab version of the tragic fate of Arab refugees who fled from British Mandatory Palestine before and during the 1948 war, and from Israel immediately after the war, has so thoroughly dominated the thinking of even well-educated historians, commentators, journalists and politicians, that it is almost a given that the creation of the State of Israel caused the flight of almost a million hapless, helpless and hopeless Arab refugees.
This assertion, although viscerally engaging and all but canonized by the anti-Israel left (including the Arab-dominated UN) which makes it the core of its narratives of the
Origins of the Problem
The details of the process whereby the approximately 725,000 Arab residents of British Mandatory Palestine in Cis-Jordan achieved refugee status and endured brutal oppression and unmitigated suffering at the hands of their host Arab countries are described in Part II below ("the Eight Stages of Creation"). The bottom line itself is very straightforward and simple:
The State of Israel was created in a peaceful and legal process by the United Nations. The UN partition plan (resolution #181, November 29, 1947) created two states: the State of Israel for the Jews, and the State of Palestine for the Arabs.
The Arab refugees were people who fled because of the war that the Arab states started. The rulers of eight Arab countries whose populations vastly outnumbered the Jews initiated the war with simultaneous invasions of the newly created State of Israel on three fronts. Nascent
Had there been no Arab aggression, no war, no invasion by Arab armies whose intent was avowedly genocidal, not only would there have been no Arab refugees, but there would have been a state of
It should be completely obvious to any reasonable and fair-minded observer of this history, therefore, that it was not the creation of the State of Israel that caused the Arab refugee problem, nor was it Israel that obstructed its solution.
On the contrary, the Arab refugee problem was the direct result of the aggression of the Arab states, and their refusal after failing to obliterate
The Jewish Refugees
There were other refugees from the Arab-Israeli conflict that everyone on the Arab side of the argument chooses conveniently to forget. Between 1949 and 1954 about 800,000 Jews were forced to flee from the Arab and Muslim lands where they had lived for hundreds and even thousands of years – from Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan and Iran. These Jews were peaceful citizens of their Arab countries and in no way a hostile population. Nonetheless, they were forced at gun-point to flee with nothing but the clothes on their backs. The only reason for their expulsion was revenge against the Jewish citizenry of Arab countries for the shame of the Arab defeat in their war of aggression.
Most of these Jewish refugees came to
Some observers have suggested that this turn of events could be understood as a "population exchange" – Arabs fled to Arab countries as Jews fled to the Jewish country, both as a result of the 1948 war, both under conditions which their side regards as forced evacuations. On the other hand, no one on the Arab side has suggested the obvious: if Jewish refugees were resettled on land vacated by fleeing Arabs, why not resettle Arab refugees on the lands of Jews who were forced to flee the Arab countries. One reason no one has suggested this is that no Arab state with the exception of
The property and belongings of the Jewish refugees, confiscated by the Arab governments, has been conservatively estimated at about $2.5 billion in 1948 dollars. Invest that money at a modest 6.5% over 57 years and you have today a sum of $80 billion, which the Arab and Muslim governments of the lands from which the Jews were expelled could apply to the benefit of the Arab refugees. That sum is quite sufficient for reparations to Arab refugees. There is no way of accurately assessing the value of Arab property left in
The Arab Refugee Problem
Another irony must be considered in the context of the refugee issue.
The fate of the Arab refugees has been the diametric opposite of this obvious positive solution to their problem. Arab leadership has purposely kept their Palestinian brethren in the equivalent of concentration camps, maintained at a subsistence level, with their misery perpetuated by Machiavellian rulers to be used as a propaganda weapon against
This brutal repression of Arab refugees by their Arab host countries is especially significant when one recalls that during the many wars of the 20th century, tens of millions of refugees were created in Europe and
All such refugee issues have been resolved, except the 725,000 who fled
Senior Fatah Central Committee member Sakher Habash succinctly explained the reason for the calculated refusal of the Arab rulers including the Palestinian rulers to help the Palestinian refugees to return to normal lives. During a 1998 lecture at Shechem's
In other words, war, terrorism, diplomatic isolation of Israel, world-wide PR campaigns to demonize Israel…..all may fail (and most have, so far); but as long as this last trump card is still alive, hope for the destruction of Israel still pulses in the hearts of Arab revanchists.
In reality, Palestinians who fled
Of course the present Palestinian claim of a "Right of Return" is accompanied by the claim that there are not 725,000 refugees (minus those who have died in the interim) but 5 million. This number serves many political agendas but from the point of view of international law later generations born into a refugee population that has been resettled and living in exile do not have the legal status of refugees. That means that legal refugee status today applies only to those few surviving Arabs who fled in 1948, among whom most are advanced in age.
A Summary of The Salient Facts
The protracted Arab refugee crisis is an artificial crisis maintained for 57 years by Arab rulers in order to exploit their own people's suffering -- to create a "poster child" for Palestinian victim-hood; a staging ground for anti-Israel propaganda; a training center for Arab terrorists; and a trump card for the anti-Israel jihad (per Sakher Habash) if/when all else (war, terrorism, international diplomacy) fails.
"Haq el-Auda," the "law of return," for Palestinian Arabs to their own homes and farms and orchards that have been part of
Sixty years ago there were nearly a million Jews in the Arab states of the
The Arab rulers caused the Arab refugee problem in 1948 by their war of aggression against the infant state of Israel, a legal creation of the United Nations; the Arab rulers have since maintained the Arab refugee population and denied it any possibility of normal life in Arab countries in order to use the suffering they themselves have caused it as a weapon in their unending war against Israel.
During all these decades the refugee camps and their Arab exploiters have been funded by billions of dollars from the United Nations, the
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors. | <urn:uuid:0c33ccb2-3371-4870-9330-3d17b2c19b7d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://israelagainstterror.blogspot.co.il/2008_03_23_archive.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 | 0.968758 | 1,419 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Monday, May 7, 2007
I have returned from the depths of grading furiously so that our 3rd years can graduate. This note does a great job of summarizing why the depths may get deeper than we expect -- the reasons -- with a note of humility about extrapolating long-term trends from this analysis.
Observations of the
climate system are crucial to establish actual climatic trends,
whereas climate models are used to project how quantities like global
mean air tem- perature and sea level may be expected to respond to
anthropogenic perturbations of the Earth's radiation budget. We
compiled the most recent observed climate trends for carbon dioxide
concentration, global mean air tempera- ture, and global sea level,
and we compare these trends to previous model projections as sum-
marized in the 2001 assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) (1). The IPCC scenarios and
projections start in the year 1990, which is also the base year of the
Kyoto protocol, in which almost all industrialized nations accepted a
binding commitment to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Although
published in 2001, these model projections are essentially independent
from the observed climate data since 1990: Climate models are
physics-based models developed over many years that are not
"tuned" to reproduce
the most recent temperatures, and global sea-level data were not yet
available at the time. The data now available raise concerns that the
climate system, in particular sea level, may be responding more
quickly than climate
models indicate. Carbon dioxide concentration follows the projections almost exactly, bearing in
mind that the measurements shown from Mauna Loa (Hawaii) have a slight positive offset due to the slightly higher CO2 concentration in the Northern Hemisphere compared with the global mean. The level of agreement is partly coincidental, a result of compensating errors in industrial emissions [based on the IS92a scenario (1)]and carbon sinks in the projections.
The global mean surface temperature increase (land and ocean combined) in both the
NASA GISS data set and the Hadley Centre/Climatic Research Unit data set is 0.33°C for the 16 years since 1990, which is in the upper part of the range projected by the IPCC. Given the relatively short 16-year time period considered, it will be difficult to establish the reasons for this relatively rapid warming, although there are only a few likely possibilities. The first candidate reason is intrinsic variability within the climate system. A second candidate is climate forcings other than CO2: Although the con-
centration of other greenhouse gases has risen more slowly than assumed in the IPCC scenarios, an aerosol cooling smaller than expected is a possible cause of the extra warming. A third candidate is an underestimation of the climate sensitivity to CO2 (i.e., model error). The dashed scenarios shown are for a medium climate sensi-
tivity of 3°C for a doubling of CO2 concentration, whereas the gray band surrounding the scenarios shows the effect of uncertainty in climate sensitivity spanning a range from 1.7° to 4.2°C.
Since 1990 the observed sea level has been rising faster than the rise projected by models, as shown both by a reconstruction using primarily tide gauge data (2) and, since 1993, by satellite altimeter data (3) (both series are correctedfor glacial isostatic adjustment). The satellite data show a linear trend of 3.3 ± 0.4 mm/year
level is 25% faster than the rate of rise in any 20-year period in the preceding 115 years. Again, we caution that the time interval of overlap is short, so that internal decadal climate variability could cause much of the discrepancy; it would
be premature to conclude that sea level will continue to follow this "upper limit" line in future.
The largest contributions to the rapid rise come from ocean thermal expansion (4) and the melting from nonpolar glaciers as a result of the warming mentioned above. Although the ice sheet contribution has been small, observations are indicating that it is rapidly increasing, with contributions both from Greenland and Antarctica [e.g., (5)].
Overall, these observational data underscore the concerns about global climate change. Previous projections, as summarized by IPCC, have not exaggerated but may in some respects even have underestimated the change, in particular for sea level.
References and Notes
1. IPCC, Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis
(Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2001).
2. J. A. Church, N. J. White, Geophys. Res. Lett. 33, L01602
3. A. Cazenave, R. S. Nerem, Rev. Geophys. 42, 20 (2004).
4. J. K. Willis, D. Roemmich, B. Cornuelle, J. Geophys. Res.
109, C12036 10.1029/2003JC002260 (2004).
5. A. Cazenave, Science 314, 1250 (2006); published
online 18 October 2006 (10.1126/science.1133325). | <urn:uuid:3857ed4e-36b5-4941-a343-6a2d34bbd779> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/environmental_law/2007/05/return_from_the.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 | 0.890615 | 1,081 | 2.671875 | 3 |
The latest Global Burden of Disease (GBD) report, a global initiative involving a network of international health bodies and the World Health Organisation has shown outdoor air pollution as one of the top 10 killers in the world. In South Asia, it is ranked as the sixth most dangerous killer, now three places behind indoor air pollution, which is the second highest killer in the region. The GBD tracks deaths and illnesses from all causes across the world. As two-thirds of the death burden from outdoor air pollution occurs in developing Asia including India, it is important to understand the health implications from this risk factor, which is scary as it makes everyone, rich and poor vulnerable. India cannot afford to enhance health risk at a time when much of its economic growth and motorization are yet to happen.
Delhi as a city has its own story to tell. It is ranked as one of the most polluted cities in India and Asia. It implemented many measures including the largest natural gas vehicle programme, relocation of polluting industries, converting two out of three power plants to natural gas, improved emissions standards, put a ban on open burning etc. But the problem has not gone away. Air pollution remains a major health risk factor. In view of this Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) is carrying out a perception survey of citizens of Delhi to know and understand their perception of the problem of air pollution and health impact. A number of health conditions are associated with air pollution today including cancer, respiratory and cardiac conditions, eye conditions, hyper tension, diabetes, vitamin absorption, etc. But for the purpose of this survey we are focusing only on the respiratory conditions – one of the most dominant impacts of air pollution – that people can easily track and understand. Please take out time to answer the following questions. | <urn:uuid:a091bc55-634f-4074-af24-0b8b3c68a9b9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://mailto:[email protected]/node/4798 | 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 | 0.958814 | 360 | 3.296875 | 3 |
History of the MHS
On 24 January 1791, the Rev. Jeremy Belknap invited nine like-minded Bostonians to join him in creating what they would call simply, "The Historical Society," now the Massachusetts Historical Society, the oldest organization in the United States devoted to collecting materials for the study of American history.
As he envisioned it, the society would become a repository and a publisher collecting, preserving,and disseminating resources for the study of American history. Through their pledges of family papers, books, and artifacts from their personal collections, the founding members made the Society the nation's first historical repository by the end of their initial meeting. With the appearance of their first title at the start of 1792, they also made the MHS the nation's first institution of any description to publish in its field.
In the absence of any other American historical repositories in the 1790s, the MHS took on a broadly national role, one still apparent in both its collections and its publications. As other historical institutions were founded elsewhere, including the New-York Historical Society in 1804 and the American Antiquarian Society in 1812, the Society started to direct special attention to Boston, Massachusetts, and New England. The continuing legacy of its early years as the nation's only repository of American history, however, is a program of collections and activities of national and international importance.
The Society Today
The MHS is an invaluable resource for the study of American history, life, and culture. Its collections tell the story of America through over twelve million documents, artifacts, and national treasures, including the personal papers of three presidents—John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. Since 1791, the Society has nurtured and spread knowledge and the appreciation of American history by preserving and enriching its collections, providing tools and services to support research, and cultivating scholarship. The MHS is committed to the principle that knowledge of our nation’s past is fundamental to its future. We desire to reach a broad audience and to illustrate for them the importance of history in understanding change and continuity in our world.
Over the past decade, the MHS has made great strides in making its resources available to a wider public. This has been greatly enhanced by the use of technology, especially through an improved website. ABIGAIL, the Society's online catalog, and collection guides open the collections to all, and digitization efforts have made increasing amounts of material available to researchers. Library visitation is growing because of the on-line presence of the MHS and an increase in the number of research fellowships offered. A new endowed acquisitions fund has made it possible to add to collections at a time when purchasing items has become more competitive.
Public programs and exhibitions play a central role in reaching the public and dispensing knowledge. The MHS offers a full roster of engaging programs including talks by established and emerging historians, history makers, and public leaders on topics that range from current events to the lives of individuals who shaped our country. Exhibitions highlight the Society's collections or important themes and events, attracting a growing audience.
The Society's education initiatives, designed to enhance the teaching of history to school-age audiences, have grown substantially. Annually, the MHS provides workshops to over five hundred teachers from across the country focused on the use of primary documents to enrich the classroom experience. Teacher fellows use the MHS collections to develop new lesson plans that are added to our increasing catalog of online educational resources available to educators everywhere. The MHS is now the state sponsor of Massachusetts History Day, which engages over a thousand students statewide each year. These efforts are augmented by a number of on-site student programs.
Through its activities, the MHS has built a national and international network of scholars who work in the fields in which we focus. The MHS has added fellowships and seminars and presented much-praised conferences. Publications are attractive and include exhibition catalogs to further knowledge of MHS collections. The Adams Papers documentary edition has increased its output in addition to producing several popular works and providing increased digital access to unpublished materials and online tools.
By expanding the range of MHS activities to embrace public programs and exhibitions, the organization has been building a community of Members who share an interest in history, enjoy the social as well as the intellectual attraction of events at the MHS, spread the word through friends and family, and build public support for history and for the MHS.
The MHS collections and the community of scholars, researchers, teachers, and writers we serve provide the foundation for the Society’s educational and public history programs. By building interest in and support for American history, these programs directly serve the MHS mission in themselves, but they also strengthen the Society as an organization dedicated to continuing to preserve and expand its collections and other research activities. After a decade of transformation and growth the Society finds itself poised to become an even greater influence in shaping the future of our nation. | <urn:uuid:6d648e5c-af20-49e4-89af-a7b7f80e00f0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://masshist.org/2012/about/history | 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 | 0.962083 | 1,009 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Decimal Numbers and Significant Figures
Date: 03/14/2007 at 02:13:28 From: Peter Subject: Correct 0.099 to 1 significant figure. Correct 0.099 to 1 significant figure. Which one of the following is the answer, 0.1 or 0.10? Why?
Date: 03/14/2007 at 06:32:58 From: Doctor Rick Subject: Re: Correct 0.099 to 1 significant figure. Hi, Peter. Both answers are the same number, of course. The only difference is in the number of significant figures. When we write a trailing zero to the right of the decimal point, we are implicitly asserting that the zero is significant. Therefore 0.10 has 2 significant figures (1 and 0), contrary to the instructions, and the correct answer is 0.1 instead. - Doctor Rick, The Math Forum http://mathforum.org/dr.math/
Date: 03/14/2007 at 19:23:54 From: Peter Subject: Correct 0.099 to 1 significant figure. There is another question that comes with this problem. I just want to know whether my procedures of determining the significant figures are correct? Take the number 0.01499 as an example. "1" is the first significant figure, "4" is the second, the first "9" is the 3rd significant figure. So if I am asked to correct 0.01499 to 3 significant figures, then I'll focus on the 4th significant figure, that is the last digit "9". As it is greater than 5, I add 1 to the 3rd significant figure. In this way, I obtain the answer 0.0150, which has 3 significant figures. But if I apply this algorithm to correct the number 0.099 to 1 significant figure, then I obtain the answer 0.010 instead of 0.01. Are there any errors in my algorithm? Looking forward to your reply!
Date: 03/15/2007 at 04:48:00 From: Doctor Rick Subject: Re: Correct 0.099 to 1 significant figure. Hi, Peter. The procedure for rounding is independent of how you write the answer. To round 0.01499 to three significant figures, yes, you start by keeping the three most significant figures, namely 0.0149; then you examine the next figure (the second 9) to decide whether to add 1 to the least significant place you kept. You do have to add 1, so you get 0.0149 + 0.0001 = 0.015. THEN you can look at the number you have and write it with three significant figures: 0.0150. To round 0.099 to one significant figure, you start by keeping the one most significant figure, namely 0.09; then you look at the next figure (the second 9) to decide whether to add 1 or not. You do need to add 1, so you get 0.09 + 0.01 = 0.1. THEN you write this number with one significant figure ... 0.1. That's it. - Doctor Rick, The Math Forum http://mathforum.org/dr.math/
Date: 03/15/2007 at 07:20:20 From: Peter Subject: Thank you (Correct 0.099 to 1 significant figure.) Dear Doctor Rick, thank you very much for your help. Your explanation is very clear. I think I have cleared up all the problems on this topic now. Once again, thanks.
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© 1994-2015 The Math Forum | <urn:uuid:d28e0444-4c65-4738-9cba-d25ddbba007c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/70646.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 | 0.898813 | 747 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Girls seem to tolerate more genetic mutations than boys do before showing symptoms of disorder
THURSDAY, Feb. 27, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- A new DNA study begins to explain why girls are less likely than boys to have an autism spectrum disorder.
It turns out that girls tend not to develop autism when only mild genetic abnormalities exist, the researchers said. But when they are diagnosed with the disorder, they are more likely to have more extreme genetic mutations than boys who show the same symptoms.
"Girls tolerate neurodevelopmental mutations more than boys do. This is really what the study shows," said study author Sebastien Jacquemont, an assistant professor of genetic medicine at the University Hospital of Lausanne, in Switzerland.
"To push a girl over the threshold for autism or any of these neurodevelopmental disorders, it takes more of these mutations," Jacquemont added. "It's about resilience to genetic insult."
The dilemma is that the researchers don't really know why this is so. "It's more of an observation at a molecular level," Jacquemont noted.
In the study, the Swiss researchers collaborated with scientists from the University of Washington School of Medicine to analyze about 16,000 DNA samples and sequencing data sets from people with neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorders.
The investigators also analyzed genetic data from almost 800 families affected by autism for the study, which was released online Feb. 27 in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
The researchers analyzed copy-number variants (CNVs), which are individual variations in the number of copies of a particular gene. They also looked at single-nucleotide variants (SNVs), which are DNA sequence variations affecting a single nucleotide. Nucleotides are the basic building blocks of DNA.
The study found that females diagnosed with any neurodevelopmental disorder, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and intellectual disability, had more harmful CNVs than males who were diagnosed with the same disorder. Females with autism also had more harmful SNVs than males with the condition.
"There's a well-known disparity when it comes to developmental disorders between boys and girls, and it's been puzzling," Jacquemont said. "And there have been quite a bit of papers trying to investigate this bias that we've seen in the clinic."
The study authors pointed out that autism affects four boys for every one girl. The ratio increases to seven-to-one when looking at high-functioning autism cases.
It's an interesting study, said Dr. Andrew Adesman, chief of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Children's Medical Center of New York.
"It's not an easy study to read, but certainly the take-away suggests it tries to lend further support to the assumption that the ratio of males to females [who have autism] is affected by genetic vulnerabilities -- that it has a genetic underpinning," Adesman said.
What do the findings mean for parents and patients?
Adesman said there are no immediate benefits, but the knowledge can help direct future research.
"This isn't going to lead to a breakthrough in treatment, but from a clinical standpoint it may help researchers and academics understand why it is that developmental disorders seem to be more common in boys than girls," he noted.
The new research also reinforces that genetic differences -- or vulnerabilities -- aren't limited to sex chromosomes, Adesman added.
"The presumption has been, 'Well gee, boys have a Y chromosome and girls don't, so are there problems with the Y chromosome that explain it?'" Adesman noted.
"The bottom line is that there are a lot of different genetic abnormalities and atypicalities that result in developmental disorders in children and adults," Adesman explained. "Women seem to be a little more resilient in terms of being able to have minor abnormalities without having a developmental problem."
Jacquemont agreed that the team's discovery opens the door for new avenues of study.
The findings provide ideas "for deciphering the issue further," said Jacquemont. "One study that might be helpful would be trying to understand what are the symptoms that appear a lot faster in males than females. There are a lot of alleys that could be explored."
The U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke has more about autism (http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/autism/autism.htm ).
SOURCES: Sebastien Jacquemont, M.D., assistant professor, genetic medicine, University Hospital of Lausanne, Switzerland; Andrew Adesman, M.D., chief, developmental and behavioral pediatrics, Steven & Alexandra Cohen Children's Medical Center of New York, New Hyde Park, N.Y.; Feb. 27, 2014, American Journal of Human Genetics, online | <urn:uuid:8cb7b762-4be3-4135-89df-9189eac9ed25> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://medtropolis.com/your-health/?/news/NRCN685295/Un-estudio-gen%C3%A9tico-aporta-pistas-de-por-qu%C3%A9-hay-m%C3%A1s-varones-autistas/sp | 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 | 0.951609 | 1,003 | 3.3125 | 3 |
Instructor: Peter Testa
Team: Mehrzad Rafeei,Somayyeh Ramezani, Amir Hbibabadi
Fall Studio 2011, Sci-Arc
The project is based on the intricacies of knots in weaving and understanding of motion path of robots in creation of each knot.
The challenge in robotic weaving is creating the knot by using 6 axis robots. Knots are the basic motion of weaving that ties materials together and create different pattern and texture. The challenge of knot creation has been resolved by designing an end arm tool which gives us the opportunity to turn around the string without any limitation in the number of rotation. This creates different textures according to the design pattern. | <urn:uuid:b1aa2678-9524-4a57-9d1b-46e247f108b2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://mehrzad.pholiox.com/knitting-with-robots-intricacies/ | 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 | 0.91647 | 145 | 2.75 | 3 |
Template:Hog and Pork Production/req
- Visit five or more farms and name and describe two to five breeds of hogs found on the farms visited.
- Confer with meat market men and from their instruction draw a diagram of a hog, and mark and name the parts for butcher classification and sale of pork products.
- Explain the different users of hog products for both commerce and food.
- Salt at least 2 pounds of pork or smoke 2 pounds of ham, and explain method.
- Describe life history of one breed of hog observed at fair stock show or on farm.
- Write out a balanced ration for fattening hogs, and give reasons for its preparation.
- Explain fully symptoms of hog cholera and preventative measures used.
- Name the different kinds of food rations needed for hogs from weaning time to market.
- Comply with the 4-H Club or Home Project Requirements in the Pig Club.
| The official source for the information shown in this article or section is:|
Handbook for Boys, 1948 Edition | <urn:uuid:1d95310b-4709-48ea-84a7-fb66e7141af4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://meritbadge.org/wiki/index.php?title=Template:Hog_and_Pork_Production/req&oldid=42367 | 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 | 0.84801 | 224 | 3.765625 | 4 |
Neurostimulation uses light electrical currents to activate or modulate neurons. Physicians and medical researchers have successfully used the approach for more than 40 years, and now are able to use neurostimulation to treat chronic migraine pain. For migraine sufferers who have not found relief with prescription migraine medications or other treatments, neurostimulation can be a long-term solution.
WHAT IS NEUROSTIMULATION
“Neuro” is Greek for “nerve.” Neurostimulation is the practice of applying gentle stimulation to nerves that have been identified as sending strong, frequent pain signals. When stimulated, the nerves stop communicating the pain signal. The theory of neurostimulation, published in 1965, proposed that nerve fibers provide information from two types of stimuli: one is pain, and the other is a combination of touch, pressure or vibration.
This theory of neurostimulation was confirmed in a surgical procedure in 1971, and has been used heavily to treat a wide range of symptoms since over the last 40 years. It has been successfully used to treat a variety of medical conditions, including spinal injuries, back pain and epilepsy.
The first recorded use of neurostimulation actually dates back to 46 A.D. when Roman Emperor Claudius’ physician used currents from a torpedo fish to treat headaches.
HOW NEUROSTIMULATION TREATS MIGRAINE PAIN
The modern use of neurostimulation to treat migraine pain began with implanted spinal cord stimulators in cases where conservative treatments or corrective surgery have not been able to provide relief from back or neck pain. In these cases, a physician implants a small battery under the skin. The battery is connected to thin wires that are placed under the skin to stimulate the nerves in the spinal cord that are sending debilitating pain signals.
The physicians that were using spinal cord stimulators noticed that the neurostimulation was helping to treat migraine pain, too. MTCA’s Dr. Kelly Will and three other physicians began clinical research specifically to determine whether strategic placement of the wires, at the base of the head and in the forehead, could effectively treat chronic migraine pain. They found that approximately 80% of patients with chronic migraine respond to neurostimulation, and for those patients, the implanted neurostimulator has typically reduced between 80% and 100% of their chronic migraine pain. Their research was published in the International Headache Society’s 2010 issue of Cephalalgia, titled “Combined occipital and supraorbital neurostimulation for the treatment of chronic migraine headaches: initial experience.”
THE OMEGA MIGRAINE PROCEDURE
MTCA partner physicians are experienced in the Omega migraine procedure, which uses an implanted neurostimulator to stimulate the supraorbital and/or occipital nerves, in order to stop chronic migraine pain. Read about the Omega procedure including typical experience, risks and benefits, and patient testimonials.
MTCA partner physicians provide a range of medical procedures to treat chronic migraine pain. To determine whether you are a candidate for a medical procedure and to speak to a pain specialist, call (855) 300-6822 or fill out the contact form on this page. | <urn:uuid:3fa66683-3cf8-49dc-915b-38fb3ae12b69> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://migrainecenters.com/migraine-pain/treatment-options/neurostimulation/ | 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 | 0.924901 | 654 | 2.984375 | 3 |
'Clean air' is a concept that resonates with Akeelia Adams-Smith, a mother of two living in the north side of St. Louis, MO. She and her children suffer from asthma and symptoms that are often triggered by poor air quality. Akeelia has started following recommendations to ensure that her family has healthy air quality within their living space, and is now taking action to reduce outdoor pollution.
Akeelia is one of many concerned African American parents in her community. According to a study by the St. Louis Regional Health Commission, black children in north St. Louis are approximately seven times more likely to visit the emergency room for asthma than white children.
Akeelia and others shared their stories during the Clean Air Health Fair on April 27 to raise awareness around the issue of air quality. The event was hosted by Mt. Carmel Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis with support from the National Climate Action Plan, and the Heartland Regional Health Equity Council under the National Partnership for Action to End Health Disparities, led by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health. The fair, which was attended by public officials, advocacy groups, academics and local faith leaders, was designed to raise awareness about climate change and how it will impact the health of St. Louis residents, with special attention to air quality.
Speakers included EPA's Region 7 Administrator, Karl Brooks, who highlighted the link between the changing climate and poor environmental conditions, such as reduced air quality. Spurred by the commitment that President Obama made during his second inauguration to minimize the health impacts of climate change, Mr. Brooks emphasized a renewed commitment by the EPA and other federal agencies.
Other speakers included Rev. Earl Nance Jr. of Mt. Carmel Missionary Baptist Church, Dr. Roger Lewis of St. Louis University, St. Louis County Assessor Jake Zimmerman and Akeelia Adams-Smith. Whether from a faith-based organization, academia, public service or the community, the speakers united under the common goal of promoting scientific literacy and minimizing the impacts of climate change and poor air quality.
The remarks of each speaker were extremely encouraging, conveying broad and scientifically complex topics in a way that was relevant to the specific needs of the community. Moreover, the active engagement of the attendees with speakers and organizers represented the type of dialogue that gathers people from all walks of life to address the multi-faceted causes of health disparities.
Several organizations and partnerships committed to addressing climate change and asthma in the St. Louis area participated in the event. Through handouts, trivia and conversations, community members and church attendees received facts on climate change and air quality. More importantly, they received resources and information on steps they can take to minimize their energy consumption and protect their health and the health of their loved ones. Among the resources provided were mattress covers, water bottles, guidelines for home weatherization, example emergency plans for extreme heat and weather events, and instructions on checking air quality and minimizing asthma triggers.
The organizations providing helpful information at the fair included:
Get involved with environmental awareness initiatives in your community! Find out more about this issue on the Healthy People 2020 website or the Environmental Protection Agency's Environmental Justice webpage.
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Tyler White is a recent MPH graduate of St. Louis University's School of Public Health with a concentration in environmental health. This summer Tyler is working at the Office of Minority Health as a research fellow for the National Partnership for Action to End Health Disparities. | <urn:uuid:78ddb249-f54b-4a17-b1ce-e05c78f9f4c8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/npa/blog/BlogPost.aspx?BlogID=2626 | 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 | 0.962331 | 772 | 2.671875 | 3 |
General Electric is promoting a feel-good collection of videos these days.
Called “Focus Forward,” it promises “short films, big ideas.” Each of these mini-docs triumphantly chronicles an innovative idea, like Daniel Nocera’s. This Harvard chemist has pioneered the artificial leaf, an invention that generates energy more or less the way a tree does. Light strikes a container of water and out bubbles hydrogen, an energy source.
The three-minute film about his idea blazes with shafts of light spangling off leaves, and its soundtrack clocks more crescendos per minute than a high-school cello recital. There are many low-angle shots of a towering Mr. Nocera telling us that his device will one day be in people’s homes, pumping out energy.
“Close your eyes,” the colossus says, and “think about your house being its own power station.”
Here’s the thing: Such artificial-leaf optimism could also be found a year ago in a Los Angeles Times article that held the artificial leaf “could create enough clean fuel to power a home for a day in developing countries.” And the year before that, in The New Yorker, where Mr. Nocera said the artificial leaf would “turn a home into ‘a self-sufficient power station.’ ” Or go back one more year, to the pages of The New York Times, where Mr. Nocera said, “Our goal is to make each home its own power station.”
So, all right already. Where’s my power station?
Prowl the edges of contemporary invention, and you experience a lot of this frustration. A scientist announces a breakthrough in, say, battery technology or algae biofuel, and the talk ramps up quickly to full-throttle utopian, tapping into a frontier dream that’s so alluring to Americans: energy from light, self-sustaining, untethered from the grid.
But there always seems to be an obstacle between the big idea and self-sufficiency. Sometimes, it’s the idea itself — a technological bug that seems fixable turns out to be weird and inscrutable. (Consider the jet pack with its cascade of problems: fuel, weight, the preposterously unaerodynamic design of the human body.) But in this case, the technology is sound, say researchers including David Tiede of the Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago.
Mr. Nocera’s idea is based on photosynthesis. When light bombards your average leaf, it splits water in the leaf into oxygen, which we breathe, and then binds the hydrogen with carbon dioxide to ultimately make carbohydrates, its food — which, depending on what new diet book is trending, is sometimes food for us, too.
Mr. Nocera’s leaf mimics this process. A vessel of water is exposed to light. A silicon strip coated in catalysts breaks down the water molecule such that on one side oxygen bubbles up, and, on the other, hydrogen, which can be used as a fuel. “You can drop it in a glass of water and hold it up to a window,” he said. “You won’t need heavy engineering.”
Maybe the problem is danger? Hearing about that stored hydrogen, I had a one-word question: Hindenburg? That wasn’t the gas burning, Mr. Nocera said, plunging into this notorious dispute: “All the hydrogen was gone immediately. What you were watching was the shellac on the Hindenburg burn.”
In fact, he says, his idea is as safe as that of another project on which he has worked, the development of a flow battery that relies on liquids to store energy on a large scale, That system, he said, "is based on water, so if there was a catastrophe we’d just need a mop.”
The leaf and its technology have been replicated many times, at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of Wisconsin and Free University Berlin, so technological obstacles in creating cheap, reliable, nonpolluting energy aren’t the problem. In fact, the issue isn’t the invention at all — it’s how to use it.
“If I give you a canister of hydrogen that we got from the artificial leaf, you can’t use it right away,” Mr. Nocera said. To do so, you need a fuel cell, which can turn hydrogen into electricity.
There are efforts to begin incorporating such energy technology into daily life. A number of auto companies have developed hydrogen-powered cars, such as the Honda FCX Clarity and the Mercedes F-Cell. But this is merely the beginning of a much larger change that’s needed.
Discovering a brilliant way to efficiently generate hydrogen is hard enough. Then there’s everything that comes after, such as getting consumers accustomed to what’s needed for it to work, such as fuel cells — which convert hydrogen into usable electricity.
This is comparable to what Elon Musk struggles with in selling Tesla’s electric cars. He has to persuade the public not only to buy a new kind of car, but all that goes with it: the infrastructure of batteries, charging stations, high-voltage home plugs and new kinds of auto mechanics.
“Whenever you make something that’s two steps removed from an infrastructure, that’s the big problem you have going to market: You have to change an entire infrastructure,” Mr. Nocera said. “If we had fuel cells in your house and your car, then everybody would be trying to implement the artificial leaf right now.”
The other obstacle is the marketplace. Only a few years ago, he said, “the magic number was $3 ‘gas gallon equivalent.’ ” In other words, could he produce the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline and keep costs around $3? Even as he closed in on that number, the old fossil-fuel industry pulled the rug out from under him with a surge in cheap natural-gas extraction, driven by hydraulic fracturing or fracking. Seemingly overnight, the magic number became “a buck fifty,” he said.
But therein lies a glimmer of hope. Hydrogen can be produced by fracking, although it comes at a cost of carbon pollution. Still, widespread fracking might lead to widespread hydrogen use. In fact, the United States Senate revived a Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Caucus in 2012. “Fracking could drive the establishment of an infrastructure for using hydrogen at the home,” Mr. Nocera said. “And then the next thing everybody might say is, yeah, but that hydrogen is making CO2. Then the artificial leaf would show up. So it’s kind of weird. Fracking is killing me right now, but in the long run it could be an asset.”
In brief, the perfect fuel exists. What doesn’t exist is everything between this new fuel and, say, your electric coffee bean grinder. “And this is my ultimate vision and I believe it will happen sometime,” Mr. Nocera said, unable to resist. “Your house will be its own gas station.”
An article last Sunday about the artificial leaf, which uses sunlight and water to generate hydrogen as energy, omitted the context for a comment by Daniel Nocera, a Harvard chemist who has long worked on its development. When Mr. Nocera said, “My system is based on water, so if there was a catastrophe we’d just need a mop,” he was referring to another project on which he has worked, the development of a flow battery that relies on liquids to store energy on a large scale; he was not describing the artificial leaf. | <urn:uuid:9f3fce10-6562-4a85-9426-95646bbffe98> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/technology/the-artificial-leaf-is-here-again.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 | 0.958574 | 1,671 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Implementing green standards at Montessori Academy has been a great opportunity to reduce current environmental impact, but more importantly, to shape the behavior of future generations in respecting and honoring the world they must sustain and protect.
As certified by the City of Batavia Environmental Commission, Montessori Academy has been recognized as showing a continued commitment to conservation and sustainability.
A recent solar energy installation has provided a great education opportunity for Montessori Academy students. In cooperation with Independence Renewable Energy, the annual "Solarbration" includes a tour of a model solar home and fun in the sun crafts and activities.
Some of the requirements set by the Green Business Certification Program include:
- Reducing solid waste disposal and promoting recycling.
- Efficiently using energy and water.
- Purchasing products that are less harmful to human health and the environment.
- Minimizing pollution contributions to the Fox Valley Watershed.
- Helping improve indoor air quality and reducing outdoor smog formation.
- Educating customers, employees and other businesses about green business practices.
Some additional activities specific to Montessori Academy include a composting program, a commitment to using recycled and earth friendly products, HVAC and office energy efficiency and many more. | <urn:uuid:b5607866-af4b-4ab1-afa9-77e58e9d4a18> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://montessoribatavia.com/green-initiatives/ | 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 | 0.925819 | 256 | 2.703125 | 3 |
People everywhere have much in common. Stereotypes are often based on our own weaknesses and fears.
Listening First Aid
The role of the listener is to allow individuals who own the problem to begin to hear themselves and become equipped to solve their own challenges.
Talking with Employees
We can reduce stress, and resolve challenges through effective dialogue. Such a conversation entails as much listening as talking.
Communicating with Workers in Spanish: Learning another language
Although it is not an easy task, there are benefits from learning another language. Here are some tips on learning in a fun but effective way. Language Learning Apps - Learn Spanish
Smartphone Apps make learning Spanish (or English) easier than ever.
Helping Colleagues Cope With Grief, Billikopf, Pelzer
Answers to difficult questions surrounding how we treat the death of an employee's family member, and assumptions we ought to avoid.
Suicide Prevention, Geraldine Warner
Learning how to recognize symptoms of depression and knowing what to say to a person who is threatening suicide.
Funerals: A Consumer Guide, Federal Trade Commission
A guide to make important decisions about funerals that may save you or your employees much money and grief.
|Conflict & Mediation
Handling Differences Productively
Misunderstanding and dissent grow their ugly heads when our solution is not the same as theirs, but there are positive ways to resolve differences.
Sexual Harassment Complaints, Hamilton, Edwards, Thompson, Mlynek, Lopez, Wright
Different perspectives on how to deal with sexual harassment complaints when the victim wants to keep matters private.
Defuse Impending Violence!, Larry Chavez
Dealing with impending cases of workplace violence or escalation. The importance of treating individuals with dignity and listening carefully.
Domestic Violence & the Workplace
What should be done with domestic violence begins to affect the work environment?
Finding ways to go behond the common ways of dealing with differences in opinion, and instead attempting to find the elegant solution.
New tool available to resolve labor disputes, Melissa Hansen
Washington State labor mediation program.
Agricultural Labor Disputes Mediation, Brent Searle
Oregon State labor mediation program.
Mandatory mediation in collective bargaining, Martin, Mason
Agricultural Labor Relations Act and the role of mediation in moving forward with cases that have not been resolved.
- Pre-caucusing and premediation
The pre-caucus (or premediation) as a mediation tool for interpersonal conflict.
Values & Divisiveness, Billikopf, Gary Lear
- How often do we censor our own speech when perhaps we should speak out? Has the politically correct thought become ethical absolutism?
|Employee Selection & Discipline
Can you trust the selection interview?
Case study brings to light the effectiveness of the selection interview in contrast to the practical test or job sample.
Good Discrimination in Hiring at a Dairy
The hiring of individuals based on skills, talents and abilities.
Productivity, Excellence, and Giftedness
Inherent tallent vs. practice, effort and attitude.
Classy Ads: Creative Recruitment Practices Meg Gaige
Creative ads can increase interest in the jobs you offer.
Firing with Dignity
The role dignity plays in terminating an employee.
Sample Termination Agreement
Termination agreements, where legal, can result in win-win outcomes in contrast to traditional termination approaches.
|Supervision, Delegation & Empowerment
The Accommodating Syndrome
When youth grow up in subcultures where succeeding is simply not fashionable, they brind these negative traits to the workplace.
Make Meetings Matter, Kim Watson
Conducting meetings where positive things happen.
Scout Clout, B. J. Burnham / Rene Featherstone
Growers can train field workers to monitor for pests while engaged in other duties.
Abuse of authority
Stanley Milgram's research on obedience and abuse of authority teaches us important management lessons.
Effective Piece-Rate Design
Details on how to design a piece-rate pay system using sustainable labor management practices. This paper summarizes many of the articles below related to piece rate.
Egg on your face: Object lesson on improving quality control
Moving from hourly to piece rate and maintaining quality. Object lesson to improve quality. Paid piece rate break period.
Hourly Pay plus Piece-Rate Bonus
Workers who earn an hourly rate plus a piece-rate bonus end up earning less per effort as productivity increases.
Creative compensation, Sarah L. Fogleman
It's important to give a lot of consideration to your business's compensation structure because it ultimately reflects how employees are valued.
Do financial incentives for dairy workers pay off?, Eric McMullin
Somatic cell count (SCC) incentives can increase worker pay and dairy profitability: a case study.
Computer technology takes to the field, Ray Sotero
Electronic documentation of employee performance.
Planning for Family Harmony, Verlyn De Wit
Wills and the importance on not burrying your head in the sand. Avoiding dealing with issues today will spell dissaster for your children tomorrow.
Succession on Farms, M.R. Hastings
Factors that affect the successful transfer of farms to the next genearation.
Three Types Of Founders—And Their Dark Sides, Peter Davis
Positive and negative traits of greatly successful founders.
Grooming Your Successors: Notes On Handing Over The Farm, Lorne Owen
Keeping the farm in the family for several generations requires good planning, management skills, communication, and some luck.
Keeping The Family Farm Healthy, Amy Lyman
Family and business interactions at the farm can be made easier and more effective.
Technological Transfer Groups: The Chilean Model, Carlos Altmann Moran
Farm enterprises that share technical and other types of information can become stronger producers.
Why and How to Read a Bull or Cow, Jack Albright
Farm safety related to handling bulls and bovines in general.
Best practices conference: Employment Practices that Combat Exploitation of Migrants.
For labor management policies to be effective and sustainable, they must benefit both the farm enterprise and employees in the long run.
The World of Ideas, Daniel A. Sumner
Even more than agricultural goods, ideas flow readily, if not freely, across international boundaries.
Agricultural Labor Management
Gregorio Billikopf Encina
University of California
18 February 2014 | <urn:uuid:342b7d4d-21a5-4ce3-865c-bd07a0aadc30> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://nature.berkeley.edu/ucce50/ag-labor/7article/articles.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 | 0.875731 | 1,344 | 2.84375 | 3 |
The ultimate goal of invasive species management is to restore functioning native ecosystems on park lands. Restoration strategies can vary from one time plantings to long term continued maintenance. Restoration activities may include planting native seedlings, fencing off nesting areas from predators, soil stabilization, and restoring historic fire and flood regimes. Restoration activities require long term planning and dedicated support from park staff and visitors. To learn more about restoration activities on park lands, click here.
Where Do Invasives Species Come From?
Invasive species are introduced to parks through a variety of intentional and unintentional avenues. Many invasive species were introduced prior to the establishment of parks. Park lands include old homesteads and mining sites from early European settlers. Settlers often brought with them plants or animals from their previous homes. Occasionally these plants or animals got loose and spread across the landscape. Many introductions of invasive plants have resulted from garden plantings of ornamental species, such as toadflax and periwinkle. Some species, such as tamarisk and red cedar, were introduced through restoration efforts, to reduce soil erosion. Today, the majority of invasive species are introduced unintentionally. Introductions can result from essentially every person, pet, or vehicle coming in and out of a park. Common sources are infested construction materials such as gravel, wood, mulch and fill, contaminated vehicles such as equipment and passenger vehicles, personal gear such as boots, wetsuits, and tools, and wind and water born seed materials. Given the variety of pathways through which invasive species can enter a park, invasive species management affects all aspects of park operations. | <urn:uuid:a21085fd-57ed-4795-8742-a80b52c3b6b4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://nature.nps.gov/biology/invasivespecies/Restoration.cfm | 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 | 0.958251 | 324 | 3.921875 | 4 |
Second State Capitol
The first Nebraska state capitol, built in Lincoln in 1868 and 1869, was replaced by a second less than twenty years later. Because the first capitol was built so hurriedly and with poor materials, it soon fell into disrepair. A replacement was needed. A second state capitol was begun in 1879 and completed in stages over the next ten years. Upon completion, some criticism of the new structure and the building contractor, W. H. B. Stout, was heard. Defects included a crack in the south wall of the east wing caused by the breaking of an arch over an old sandpit.
The Nebraska State Journal of Lincoln on January 8, 1889, defended the new state capitol: "The JOURNAL happened to hear a good many remarks of strangers and citizens who have been passing through the Nebraska state capitol building since the convening of the legislature, and the general expression is that it is the largest and best finished building for the money it cost, that they have ever seen. . . . THE JOURNAL has before it a calendar furnished by Humphrey Bros. that has plates of all the capitol buildings of the United States and invites the people who think Nebraska has a scrub building to take a look at these plates. We guarantee the assertion that the judgment of nine out of ten of our readers would be that the proportions of our capitol are as harmonious and the building as beautiful and symmetrical as any other of the forty or so buildings portrayed.
"As to its solidity and workmanship there can be no question by anybody who has examined it. Of course we shall hear the 'crack in the east wing' expatiated upon until the fault has been remedied, but whoever is to blame for that it is not the contractor. It occurs over a spot where a deep excavation had been made in 1868 to dig sand for the old capitol. The sand pit had been filled up for years and forgotten but the fact of its existence had been discovered, and the architect and superintendent ordered an arch to be constructed over the spot in the foundations. This was done. After the wing was finished it proved that the span of this arch had not been long enough, as one side of it settled, making a crack in the walls. A few hundred dollars will repair this injury, and it is the grossest injustice on the part of two-for-a-cent correspondents to hold the contractor, who does not pretend to be an architect, responsible for the accident. THE JOURNAL does not believe that there is a handsomer, stauncher or better building in the country for the money."
The second state capitol building proved to be too small almost as soon as it was finished. When the third capitol was built, the second was left in place and the new one begun around it. After this stage was completed, the old capitol was gradually torn down, and the center of the new building rose in its place. It was completed in 1932.
Return to Timeline Index | <urn:uuid:58ae3370-22d7-4fc8-a8f9-0f08c06f834a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://nebraskahistory.org/publish/publicat/timeline/capitol_second.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 | 0.984687 | 628 | 3.03125 | 3 |
MOE-organised Gifted Education Programme (GEP) has ceased with the introduction of the of Integrated Programmes (IP) schools in 2004, and the establishment of the NUS High School of Math and Science in 2005.
These schools cater to the learning needs of GEP and other high-ability students through school-based programmes.
The Minister for Education, Dr Ng Eng Hen stated this in his written Parliamentary reply to MP Dr Fatimah Lateef's queries on the plans for the GEP in secondary schools.
Dr Lateef also asked how successful schools have been with the GEP students in terms of promoting their greater interaction with mainstream students by intermingling them for non-core subjects such as physical education, art and music at Primary 4 and 5 levels.
Below are Dr Ng's replies to these questions, in full:
Dr Ng Eng Hen:
The Gifted Education Programme is one of many ways we have to discover talent and take it as far as possible. At the primary level, GEP pupils are placed in separate classes in designated schools and stretched and challenged through a differentiated curriculum.
Although the programme was working well, the intermingling initiative was introduced in 2007 to achieve a better balance between stretching the potential of the pupils and integrating them with other pupils. Apart from participation in CCAs and joint Community Involvement Projects, GEP and other pupils also attend the same classes in subjects like PE, Music and Art. This will enable GEP pupils and their non-GEP peers to maintain regular contact and develop closer bonds with their schoolmates through meaningful shared experiences.
All 9 GEP schools have provided positive feedback on the intermingling initiative.
Both pupils and parents have found intermingling beneficial.
With GEP and mainstream pupils spending more curriculum time together, engaging in hands-on activities as well as exchange of ideas and personal experiences, pupils have developed meaningful friendships. For example, as pupils are in mixed PE classes, they had to form mixed teams to represent the classes in competitions at the School Sports Day, and this has been invaluable in building team work.
Schools have also made it a point to organize pupils in mixed groups for school camps, outings and Community Involvement Programme (CIP) projects. This also provides opportunities for both groups to have a better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, and learn to appreciate each other's talents.
We are encouraged by the positive feedback, and will continue with our efforts to promote intermingling of GEP and mainstream pupils.
At the secondary level, GEP classes used to be organised by MOE. These were hosted in selected schools. Since the introduction of Integrated Programmes (IP) schools in 2004 and the establishment of NUS High School of Math and Science in 2005, MOE-organised GEP has ceased as such schools could cater to the learning needs of GEP and other high-ability students through school-based programmes.
The small number of GEP pupils who prefer the 'O' Level track may enrol in schools like Anglo-Chinese School (Independent), Catholic High School, Methodist Girls' School, Singapore Chinese Girls' School, and St Joseph's Institution, which offer school-based talent development programmes.
MOE, with its rich experience of running the GEP, now plays a major role in providing training for IP and specialised school teachers and the sharing of resources and expertise in educating the intellectually able.
Gifted education remains an integral part of Singapore's education system, and will continue to evolve to cater to students who are intellectually gifted and talented to ensure they reach their maximum potential. MOE will continue to play a key role in supporting schools to deliver school-based gifted education programmes. What we aim to achieve is a diversity of such programmes. | <urn:uuid:0c19ec78-1414-48e8-998a-3775ce13a1ee> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://news.asiaone.com/News/Education/Story/A1Story20090915-167932.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 | 0.971364 | 771 | 2.640625 | 3 |
A woman believed to be the last native speaker of the Eyak language in the north-western US state of Alaska has died at the age of 89.
Ms Jones dedicated much of her life to preserving the Eyak language
Marie Smith Jones was a champion of indigenous rights and conservation. She died at her home in Anchorage.
She helped the University of Alaska compile an Eyak dictionary, so that future generations would have the chance to resurrect it.
Nearly 20 other native Alaskan languages are at risk of disappearing.
Ms Jones is described by her family as a tiny chain smoking woman who was fiercely independent, says the BBC's Peter Bowes in Los Angeles.
"To the best of our knowledge, she was the last full-blooded Eyak alive," her daughter Bernice Galloway told the Associated Press news agency.
"She was a woman who faced incredible adversity in her life and overcame it. She was about as tenacious as you can get."
She believed passionately in preserving the Eyak language and wanted a written record of it to be kept so for future generations, our correspondent adds.
The Eyak ancestral homeland runs along almost 500km (300 miles) of the Gulf of Alaska.
With her husband, a white Oregon fisherman, Ms Jones had nine children, seven of whom are still alive.
But none of them learned Eyak because they grew up at a time when it was considered wrong to speak anything but English, her daughter said.
According to Michael Krauss, a linguist and professor with whom she worked, "she was very much alone as the last speaker of Eyak" for the last 15 years.
"She understood as only someone in her unique position could, what it meant to be the last of her kind," Mr Krauss said.
"It's the first, but probably not the last, at the rate things are going, of the Alaska Native languages to go extinct. She understood what was at stake and its significance, and bore that tragic mantle with grace and dignity." | <urn:uuid:8d092cbd-318a-4bff-b934-fbeb9806d3d9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7206411.stm | 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 | 0.983481 | 415 | 2.8125 | 3 |
By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News
"I see this as the great-grandparent of futuristic robots like R2-D2 and C-3PO," enthuses Dan Rey, from the Canadian Space Agency.
"This is a very major step forward where now we have a robot that can do human-scale tasks in the harsh conditions of space."
Rey is talking about the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator; and if that name doesn't really trip off the tongue then simply call this robot Dextre. It sounds almost human.
The two-armed machine was a passenger on shuttle Endeavour when the orbiter blasted off from Florida to the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday.
Unlike R2D2 or C-3PO, it didn't get to sit up front with the astronauts, of course. Dextre rode in the back, in the payload bay, strapped down to a pallet.
Its 3.5m-long limbs were detached and set to one side; its "hands", too, had been removed for flight.
One of the main mission goals of Endeavour's crew will now be to unload Dextre on to the orbiting platform and re-assemble the robot.
"You can think of Dextre as an external handyman," Dr Rey tells BBC News. "Despite its tremendous size, Dextre is the very first space robot able to do delicate motions.
"It will take the 'vital organs' of the space station and when they are defective, change them out. So if it's a failed unit, it replaces it with a spare."
Electronics boxes, computers, batteries - if they break down, Dextre will be called upon to go and replace them. If an external scientific payload needs moving, Dextre is the robot the station's astronauts will command to do it.
SPECIAL PURPOSE DEXTEROUS MANIPULATOR (DEXTRE)
Dextre is remotely operated from inside the ISS or from the ground
The robot has seven joints in its arms for maximum movement
During operations, one arm holds onto the ISS while the other works
This maintains stability and ensures the arms do not hit each other
Dextre will install and remove small payloads such as batteries
The 1.5-tonne, aluminium-titanium structure has seven joints making up its shoulder, elbow and wrist. This gives it the freedom of movement to get into any position.
On the ends of the arms are Dextre's hands, or Orbital Replacement Unit/Tool Changeout Mechanisms.
Each hand consists of parallel retractable jaws, which are used to grip objects. Dextre also has a tool kit and is equipped with lights and video equipment.
"Probably the most important thing in Dextre is what we call the force moment sensor," explains Richard Rembala from MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates, the renowned Canadian robotics company that has led the development of Dextre.
"The sensor is located at the wrist on each arm, and this sensor really gives Dextre a sense of touch. As it's grabbing boxes, it can actually measure how hard it's pushing, how hard it's twisting.
"This means it can limit the forces applied to structures so it doesn't break them."
The ISS has a lot systems that use "plug and play" drawers for ease of maintenance; pull the old one out and push the new one in.
These boxes slide on guide rails; and just as with the chest of drawers at home, it can be difficult sometimes to align everything up. So, ISS boxes need to be handled with care or they will jam.
Dextre's sensors tell it how to make subtle adjustments to the orientation of boxes so they slide in smoothly.
Canadarm2 picks Dextre up by the head and moves it to its work site
Dextre is the final part in a three-component system that the Canadians have built to service the exterior of the space station.
The Canadarm2 was installed on the orbiting platform in 2001. It is essentially a larger, more capable arm than the one currently used in the space shuttle's payload bay.
In 2002, it got a Mobile Base System - a trolley that can carry the Canadarm2 along rails running the length of the station.
Dextre is the last addition. The two-armed robot will be picked up by its "head" by Canadarm2 and taken to wherever a job needs doing; the whole system running up and down the trolley track.
The robot can do its jobs either on the end of Canadarm2, or be put down in a static position.
Dextre will be operated remotely by astronauts from inside the space station. The intention is that Dextre takes over some of the duties previously done by humans on spacewalks, also known as extravehicular activity (EVA).
"The astronauts will have a choice: do they want to do the task with the robot or do they want to do an EVA?" says Dan Rey.
"With Dextre, we're hoping that most of the maintenance work on the outside of the space station will actually be done remotely from the ground, allowing the astronauts to do more science in laboratories like Columbus."
Dextre is prepared at the Kennedy Space Center prior to flight
Robotic servicing is likely to play a key role in the future of space exploration.
When the US space agency (Nasa) imposed strict flight rules for its space shuttles following the Columbia accident, it seemed only a robot mission could carry out the vital final servicing mission needed to keep the Hubble Space Telescope functioning.
MDA and the Canadian Space Agency investigated whether Dextre technology could be sent up to the telescope to repair its broken systems and install its last experimental camera.
And although that will not now happen because Nasa has decided it will allow a shuttle to visit Hubble after all, the concept work is being taken forward. It is likely that robots will soon get to sit up front with the humans.
"I believe Dextre is a stepping stone for robotic support of an exploration vehicle that will be going to Mars, that will need servicing during the six-month journey to get to the Red Planet," Dr Rey told BBC News.
"Although Dextre works in a zero-g environment, the lessons we learn with it we will apply on the Moon or on Mars, for co-operative robotics with astronauts." | <urn:uuid:41cd976f-0e01-4ffd-8cea-7f057fe29225> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7293953.stm | 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 | 0.942964 | 1,354 | 3.265625 | 3 |
Nerval's Lobster writes "Cray has unveiled a XC30 supercomputer capable of high-performance computing workloads of more than 100 petaflops. Originally code-named 'Cascade,' the system relies on Intel Xeon processors and Aries interconnect chipset technology, paired with Cray's integrated software environment. Cray touts the XC30's ability to utilize a wide variety of processor types; future versions of the platform will apparently feature Intel Xeon Phi and Nvidia Tesla GPUs based on the Kepler GPU computing architecture. Cray leveraged its work with DARPA's High Productivity Computing Systems program in order to design and build the XC30. Cray's XC30 isn't the only supercomputer aiming for that 100-petaflop crown. China's Guangzhou Supercomputing Center recently announced the development of a Tianhe-2 supercomputer theoretically capable of 100 petaflops, but that system isn't due to launch until 2015. Cray also faces significant competition in the realm of super-computer makers: it only built 5.4 percent of the systems on the Top500 list, compared to IBM with 42.6 percent and Hewlett-Packard with 27.6 percent."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. | <urn:uuid:d6082a2b-fced-452f-94bc-18d3d317a0b2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://news.debuntu.org/content/41813-cray-unveils-xc30-supercomputer | 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 | 0.9009 | 260 | 2.703125 | 3 |
To create their new genome-editing technique, the researchers modified a set of bacterial proteins that normally defend against viral invaders. Using this system, scientists can alter several genome sites simultaneously and can achieve much greater control over where new genes are inserted, says Feng Zhang, an assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT and leader of the research team.
The new system is much more user-friendly than prior gene modification methods, Zhang says. Making use of naturally occurring bacterial protein-RNA systems that recognize and snip viral DNA, the researchers can create DNA-editing complexes that include a nuclease called Cas9 bound to short RNA sequences. These sequences are designed to target specific locations in the genome; when they encounter a match, Cas9 cuts the DNA.
This approach can be used either to disrupt the function of a gene or to replace it with a new one. To replace the gene, the researchers must also add a DNA template for the new gene, which would be copied into the genome after the DNA is cut.
Each of the RNA segments can target a different sequence. “That’s the beauty of this — you can easily program a nuclease to target one or more positions in the genome,” Zhang says.
The method is also very precise — if there is a single base-pair difference between the RNA targeting sequence and the genome sequence, Cas9 is not activated. This is not the case for zinc fingers or TALEN. The new system also appears to be more efficient than TALEN, and much less expensive.
The new system “is a significant advancement in the field of genome editing and, in its first iteration, already appears comparable in efficiency to what zinc finger nucleases and TALENs have to offer,” says Aron Geurts, an associate professor of physiology at the Medical College of Wisconsin. “Deciphering the ever-increasing data emerging on genetic variation as it relates to human health and disease will require this type of scalable and precise genome editing in model systems.”
If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator or StumbleUpon. Thanks | <urn:uuid:6defeda5-7e59-4039-9ea5-1cb88a94cf2c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/01/new-method-allows-scientists-to-insert.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 | 0.938824 | 446 | 3.1875 | 3 |
Air-gaps are the ultimate insulator and have been applied to advanced semiconductor chips from IBM and Panasonic, but now the Semiconductor Research Corp. claims to have adapted the technique for use with printed circuit boards. Look for air-gaps developed at SRC member Georgia Tech in a new breed of ultra-low capacitance PCB interconnects within three years. RColinJohnson @NextGenLog
Sacrificial organic polycarbonate (grey) is patterned using traditional photolithography atop the copper wires (orange), then evaporated away after the PC boards assembly (bottom).
The holy grail of low-k dielectrics—air-gap interconnections—will migrate from chip-level to board-level, according to the Semiconductor Research Corp. (SRC), a technology research consortium based in Research Triangle Park, N.C. Ultra-low capacitance air-gaps on printed circuit boards—along with new solder-less copper connections—will allow higher frequency operation while simultaneously lowering power requirements, according to SRC's Focus Center research program and the Georgia Institute of Technology...Now any SRC member has access to air-gaps...including #AMD, #IBM, #Intel, Texas Instruments (#TI), #Freescale and Global Foundries...
Full Text: http://bit.ly/NextGenLog-cFIE | <urn:uuid:d26487e4-522a-4af1-a629-33e274e873a0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://nextgenlog.blogspot.com/2010/08/research-consortium-touts-airgap-for-pc.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 | 0.911026 | 285 | 3.375 | 3 |
All CD Heaven stores were given the same number of a popular CD to
sell for £24. In their two week sale each store reduces the
price of the CD by 25% ... How many CDs did the store sell at. . . .
If a sum invested gains 10% each year how long before it has
doubled its value?
Tim and Beth both have a string of flags. Use the percentages to
find out who has the most flags.
Your school has been left a million pounds in the will of an ex-
pupil. What model of investment and spending would you use in order
to ensure the best return on the money?
This package is designed around work on percentages which is
outlined in the KS3 Mathematics Framework. One NRICH game and one
problem have been identified to support the work on percentages in
each. . . .
A political commentator summed up an election result. Given that
there were just four candidates and that the figures quoted were
exact find the number of votes polled for each candidate.
For teachers. Yet more school maths from long ago-interest and
When Charlie retires, he's looking forward to the quiet life, whereas Alison wants a busy and exciting retirement. Can you advise them on where they should go?
Can you match the cards and figure out whether the tabloid headlines can be trusted?
There are two sets of numbers. The second is the result of the
first after an increase by a constant percentage. How can you find
that percentage if one set of numbers is in code?
Problem one was solved by 70% of the pupils. Problem 2 was solved
by 60% of them. Every pupil solved at least one of the problems.
Nine pupils solved both problems. How many pupils took the exam?
If the base of a rectangle is increased by 10% and the area is
unchanged, by what percentage (exactly) is the width decreased by ? | <urn:uuid:c88900bb-033a-4e56-8d59-f649c3435edf> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://nrich.maths.org/public/leg.php?code=25&cl=3&cldcmpid=849 | 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 | 0.95779 | 406 | 2.875 | 3 |
Topics covered: Differentials; chain rule
Instructor: Prof. Denis Auroux
Lecture Notes - Week 5 Summary (PDF)
The following content is provided under a Creative Commons license. Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare continue to offer high quality educational resources for free. To make a donation or to view additional materials from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare at ocw.mit.edu. So far we have learned about partial derivatives and how to use them to find minima and maxima of functions of two variables or several variables. And now we are going to try to study, in more detail, how functions of several variables behave, how to compete their variations. How to estimate the variation in arbitrary directions. And so for that we are going to need some more tools actually to study this things. More tools to study functions. Today's topic is going to be differentials. And, just to motivate that, let me remind you about one trick that you probably know from single variable calculus, namely implicit differentiation. Let's say that you have a function y equals f of x then you would sometimes write dy equals f prime of x times dx. And then maybe you would -- We use implicit differentiation to actually relate infinitesimal changes in y with infinitesimal changes in x. And one thing we can do with that, for example, is actually figure out the rate of change dy by dx, but also the reciprocal dx by dy. And so, for example, let's say that we have y equals inverse sin(x). Then we can write x equals sin(y). And, from there, we can actually find out what is the derivative of this function if we didn't know the answer already by writing dx equals cosine y dy. That tells us that dy over dx is going to be one over cosine y. And now cosine for relation to sine is basically one over square root of one minus x^2. And that is how you find the formula for the derivative of the inverse sine function. A formula that you probably already knew, but that is one way to derive it. Now we are going to use also these kinds of notations, dx, dy and so on, but use them for functions of several variables. And, of course, we will have to learn what the rules of manipulation are and what we can do with them. The actual name of that is the total differential, as opposed to the partial derivatives. The total differential includes all of the various causes that can change -- Sorry. All the contributions that can cause the value of your function f to change. Namely, let's say that you have a function maybe of three variables, x, y, z, then you would write df equals f sub x dx plus f sub y dy plus f sub z dz. Maybe, just to remind you of the other notation, partial f over partial x dx plus partial f over partial y dy plus partial f over partial z dz. Now, what is this object? What are the things on either side of this equality? Well, they are called differentials. And they are not numbers, they are not vectors, they are not matrices, they are a different kind of object. These things have their own rules of manipulations, and we have to learn what we can do with them. So how do we think about them? First of all, how do we not think about them? Here is an important thing to know. Important. df is not the same thing as delta f. That is meant to be a number. It is going to be a number once you have a small variation of x, a small variation of y, a small variation of z. These are numbers. Delta x, delta y and delta z are actual numbers, and this becomes a number. This guy actually is not a number. You cannot give it a particular value. All you can do with a differential is express it in terms of other differentials. In fact, this dx, dy and dz, well, they are mostly symbols out there. But if you want to think about them, they are the differentials of x, y and z. In fact, you can think of these differentials as placeholders where you will put other things. Of course, they represent, you know, there is this idea of changes in x, y, z and f. One way that one could explain it, and I don't really like it, is to say they represent infinitesimal changes. Another way to say it, and I think that is probably closer to the truth, is that these things are somehow placeholders to put values and get a tangent approximation. For example, if I do replace these symbols by delta x, delta y and delta z numbers then I will actually get a numerical quantity. And that will be an approximation formula for delta. It will be the linear approximation, a tangent plane approximation. What we can do -- Well, let me start first with maybe something even before that. The first thing that it does is it can encode how changes in x, y, z affect the value of f. I would say that is the most general answer to what is this formula, what are these differentials. It is a relation between x, y, z and f. And this is a placeholder for small variations, delta x, delta y and delta z to get an approximation formula. Which is delta f is approximately equal to fx delta x fy delta y fz delta z. It is getting cramped, but I am sure you know what is going on here. And observe how this one is actually equal while that one is approximately equal. So they are really not the same. Another thing that the notation suggests we can do, and they claim we can do, is divide everything by some variable that everybody depends on. Say, for example, that x, y and z actually depend on some parameter t then they will vary, at a certain rate, dx over dt, dy over dt, dz over dt. And what the differential will tell us then is the rate of change of f as a function of t, when you plug in these values of x, y, z, you will get df over dt by dividing everything by dt in here. The first thing we can do is divide by something like dt to get infinitesimal rate of change. Well, let me just say rate of change. df over dt equals f sub x dx over dt plus f sub y dy over dt plus f sub z dz over dt. And that corresponds to the situation where x is a function of t, y is a function of t and z is a function of t. That means you can plug in these values into f to get, well, the value of f will depend on t, and then you can find the rate of change with t of a value of f. These are the basic rules. And this is known as the chain rule. It is one instance of a chain rule, which tells you when you have a function that depends on something, and that something in turn depends on something else, how to find the rate of change of a function on the new variable in terms of the derivatives of a function and also the dependence between the various variables. Any questions so far? No. OK. A word of warming, in particular, about what I said up here. It is kind of unfortunate, but the textbook actually has a serious mistake on that. I mean they do have a couple of formulas where they mix a d with a delta, and I warn you not to do that, please. I mean there are d's and there are delta's, and basically they don't live in the same world. They don't see each other. The textbook is lying to you. Let's see. The first and the second claims, I don't really need to justify because the first one is just stating some general principle, but I am not making a precise mathematical claim. The second one, well, we know the approximation formula already, so I don't need to justify it for you. But, on the other hand, this formula here, I mean, you probably have a right to expect some reason for why this works. Why is this valid? After all, I first told you we have these new mysterious objects. And then I am telling you we can do that, but I kind of pulled it out of my hat. I mean I don't have a hat. Why is this valid? How can I get to this? Here is a first attempt of justifying how to get there. Let's see. Well, we said df is f sub x dx plus f sub y dy plus f sub z dz. But we know if x is a function of t then dx is x prime of t dt, dy is y prime of t dt, dz is z prime of t dt. If we plug these into that formula, we will get that df is f sub x times x prime t dt plus f sub y y prime of t dt plus f sub z z prime of t dt. And now I have a relation between df and dt. See, I got df equals sometimes times dt. That means the rate of change of f with respect to t should be that coefficient. If I divide by dt then I get the chain rule. That kind of works, but that shouldn't be completely satisfactory. Let's say that you are a true skeptic and you don't believe in differentials yet then it is maybe not very good that I actually used more of these differential notations in deriving the answer. That is actually not how it is proved. The way in which you prove the chain rule is not this way because we shouldn't have too much trust in differentials just yet. I mean at the end of today's lecture, yes, probably we should believe in them, but so far we should be a little bit reluctant to believe these kind of strange objects telling us weird things. Here is a better way to think about it. One thing that we have trust in so far are approximation formulas. We should have trust in them. We should believe that if we change x a little bit, if we change y a little bit then we are actually going to get a change in f that is approximately given by these guys. And this is true for any changes in x, y, z, but in particular let's look at the changes that we get if we just take these formulas as function of time and change time a little bit by delta t. We will actually use the changes in x, y, z in a small time delta t. Let's divide everybody by delta t. Here I am just dividing numbers so I am not actually playing any tricks on you. I mean we don't really know what it means to divide differentials, but dividing numbers is something we know. And now, if I take delta t very small, this guy tends to the derivative, df over dt. Remember, the definition of df over dt is the limit of this ratio when the time interval delta t tends to zero. That means if I choose smaller and smaller values of delta t then these ratios of numbers will actually tend to some value, and that value is the derivative. Similarly, here delta x over delta t, when delta t is really small, will tend to the derivative dx/dt. And similarly for the others. That means, in particular, we take the limit as delta t tends to zero and we get df over dt on one side and on the other side we get f sub x dx over dt plus f sub y dy over dt plus f sub z dz over dt. And the approximation becomes better and better. Remember when we write approximately equal that means it is not quite the same, but if we take smaller variations then actually we will end up with values that are closer and closer. When we take the limit, as delta t tends to zero, eventually we get an equality. I mean mathematicians have more complicated words to justify this statement. I will spare them for now, and you will see them when you take analysis if you go in that direction. Any questions so far? No. OK. Let's check this with an example. Let's say that we really don't have any faith in these things so let's try to do it. Let's say I give you a function that is x ^2 y z. And let's say that maybe x will be t, y will be e^t and z will be sin(t). What does the chain rule say? Well, the chain rule tells us that dw/dt is, we start with partial w over partial x, well, what is that? That is 2xy, and maybe I should point out that this is w sub x, times dx over dt plus -- Well, w sub y is x squared times dy over dt plus w sub z, which is going to be just one, dz over dt. And so now let's plug in the actual values of these things. x is t and y is e^t, so that will be 2t e to the t, dx over dt is one plus x squared is t squared, dy over dt is e over t, plus dz over dt is cosine t. At the end of calculation we get 2t e to the t plus t squared e to the t plus cosine t. That is what the chain rule tells us. How else could we find that? Well, we could just plug in values of x, y and z, x plus w is a function of t, and take its derivative. Let's do that just for verification. It should be exactly the same answer. And, in fact, in this case, the two calculations are roughly equal in complication. But say that your function of x, y, z was much more complicated than that, or maybe you actually didn't know a formula for it, you only knew its partial derivatives, then you would need to use the chain rule. So, sometimes plugging in values is easier but not always. Let's just check quickly. The other method would be to substitute. W as a function of t. Remember w was x^2y z. x was t, so you get t squared, y is e to the t, plus z was sine t. dw over dt, we know how to take the derivative using single variable calculus. Well, we should know. If we don't know then we should take a look at 18.01 again. The product rule that will be derivative of t squared is 2t times e to the t plus t squared time the derivative of e to the t is e to the t plus cosine t. And that is the same answer as over there. I ended up writing, you know, maybe I wrote slightly more here, but actually the amount of calculations really was pretty much the same. Any questions about that? Yes? What kind of object is w? Well, you can think of w as just another variable that is given as a function of x, y and z, for example. You would have a function of x, y, z defined by this formula, and I call it w. I call its value w so that I can substitute t instead of x, y, z. Well, let's think of w as a function of three variables. And then, when I plug in the dependents of these three variables on t, then it becomes just a function of t. I mean, really, my w here is pretty much what I called f before. There is no major difference between the two. Any other questions? No. OK. Let's see. Here is an application of what we have seen. Let's say that you want to understand actually all these rules about taking derivatives in single variable calculus. What I showed you at the beginning, and then erased, basically justifies how to take the derivative of a reciprocal function. And for that you didn't need multivariable calculus. But let's try to justify the product rule, for example, for the derivative. An application of this actually is to justify the product and quotient rules. Let's think, for example, of a function of two variables, u and v, that is just the product uv. And let's say that u and v are actually functions of one variable t. Then, well, d of uv over dt is given by the chain rule applied to f. This is df over dt. So df over dt should be f sub q du over dt plus f sub v plus dv over dt. But now what is the partial of f with respect to u? It is v. That is v du over dt. And partial of f with respect to v is going to be just u, dv over dt. So you get back the usual product rule. That is a slightly complicated way of deriving it, but that is a valid way of understanding how to take the derivative of a product by thinking of the product first as a function of variables, which are u and v. And then say, oh, but u and v were actually functions of a variable t. And then you do the differentiation in two stages using the chain rule. Similarly, you can do the quotient rule just for practice. If I give you the function g equals u of v. Right now I am thinking of it as a function of two variables, u and v. U and v themselves are actually going to be functions of t. Then, well, dg over dt is going to be partial g, partial u. How much is that? How much is partial g, partial u? One over v times du over dt plus -- Well, next we need to have partial g over partial v. Well, what is the derivative of this with respect to v? Here we need to know how to differentiate the inverse. It is minus u over v squared times dv over dt. And that is actually the usual quotient rule just written in a slightly different way. I mean, just in case you really want to see it, if you clear denominators for v squared then you will see basically u prime times v minus v prime times u. Now let's go to something even more crazy. I claim we can do chain rules with more variables. Let's say that I have a quantity. Let's call it w for now. Let's say I have quantity w as a function of say variables x and y. And so in the previous setup x and y depended on some parameters t. But, actually, let's now look at the case where x and y themselves are functions of several variables. Let's say of two more variables. Let's call them u and v. I am going to stay with these abstract letters, but if it bothers you, if it sounds completely unmotivated think about it maybe in terms of something you might now. Say, polar coordinates. Let's say that I have a function but is defined in terms of the polar coordinate variables on theta. And then I know I want to switch to usual coordinates x and y. Or, the other way around, I have a function of x and y and I want to express it in terms of the polar coordinates r and theta. Then I would want to know maybe how the derivatives, with respect to the various sets of variables, related to each other. One way I could do it is, of course, to say now if I plug the formula for x and the formula for y into the formula for f then w becomes a function of u and v, and it can try to take partial derivatives. If I have explicit formulas, well, that could work. But maybe the formulas are complicated. Typically, if I switch between rectangular and polar coordinates, there might be inverse trig, there might be maybe arctangent to express the polar angle in terms of x and y. And when I don't really want to actually substitute arctangents everywhere, maybe I would rather deal with the derivatives. How do I do that? The question is what are partial w over partial u and partial w over partial v in terms of, let's see, what do we need to know to understand that? Well, probably we should know how w depends on x and y. If we don't know that then we are probably toast. Partial w over partial x, partial w over partial y should be required. What else should we know? Well, it would probably help to know how x and y depend on u and v. If we don't know that then we don't really know how to do it. We need also x sub u, x sub v, y sub u, y sub v. We have a lot of partials in there. Well, let's see how we can do that. Let's start by writing dw. We know that dw is partial f, well, I don't know why I have two names, w and f. I mean w and f are really the same thing here, but let's say f sub x dx plus f sub y dy. So far that is our new friend, the differential. Now what do we want to do with it? Well, we would like to get rid of dx and dy because we like to express things in terms of, you know, the question we are asking ourselves is let's say that I change u a little bit, how does w change? Of course, what happens, if I change u a little bit, is y and y will change. How do they change? Well, that is given to me by the differential. dx is going to be, well, I can use the differential again. Well, x is a function of u and v. That will be x sub u times du plus x sub v times dv. That is, again, taking the differential of a function of two variables. Does that make sense? And then we have the other guy, f sub y times, what is dy? Well, similarly dy is y sub u du plus y sub v dv. And now we have a relation between dw and du and dv. We are expressing how w reacts to changes in u and v, which was our goal. Now, let's actually collect terms so that we see it a bit better. It is going to be f sub x times x sub u times f sub y times y sub u du plus f sub x, x sub v plus f sub y y sub v dv. Now we have dw equals something du plus something dv. Well, the coefficient here has to be partial f over partial u. What else could it be? That's the rate of change of w with respect to u if I forget what happens when I change v. That is the definition of a partial. Similarly, this one has to be partial f over partial v. That is because it is the rate of change with respect to v, if I keep u constant, so that these guys are completely ignored. Now you see how the total differential accounts for, somehow, all the partial derivatives that come as coefficients of the individual variables in these expressions. Let me maybe rewrite these formulas in a more visible way and then re-explain them to you. Here is the chain rule for this situation, with two intermediate variables and two variables that you express these in terms of. In our setting, we get partial f over partial u equals partial f over partial x time partial x over partial u plus partial f over partial y times partial y over partial u. And the other one, the same thing with v instead of u, partial f over partial x times partial x over partial v plus partial f over partial u partial y over partial v. I have to explain various things about these formulas because they look complicated. And, actually, they are not that complicated. A couple of things to know. The first thing, how do we remember a formula like that? Well, that is easy. We want to know how f depends on u. Well, what does f depend on? It depends on x and y. So we will put partial f over partial x and partial f over partial y. Now, x and y, why are they here? Well, they are here because they actually depend on u as well. How does x depend on u? Well, the answer is partial x over partial u. How does y depend on u? The answer is partial y over partial u. See, the structure of this formula is simple. To find the partial of f with respect to some new variable you use the partials with respect to the variables that f was initially defined in terms of x and y. And you multiply them by the partials of x and y in terms of the new variable that you want to look at, v here, and you sum these things together. That is the structure of the formula. Why does it work? Well, let me explain it to you in a slightly different language. This asks us how does f change if I change u a little bit? Well, why would f change if u changes a little bit? Well, it would change because f actually depends on x and y and x and y depend on u. If I change u, how quickly does x change? Well, the answer is partial x over partial u. And now, if I change x at this rate, how does that have to change? Well, the answer is partial f over partial x times this guy. Well, at the same time, y is also changing. How fast is y changing if I change u? Well, at the rate of partial y over partial u. But now if I change this how does f change? Well, the rate of change is partial f over partial y. The product is the effect of how you change it, changing u, and therefore changing f. Now, what happens in real life, if I change u a little bit? Well, both x and y change at the same time. So how does f change? Well, it is the sum of the two effects. Does that make sense? Good. Of course, if f depends on more variables then you just have more terms in here. OK. Here is another thing that may be a little bit confusing. What is tempting? Well, what is tempting here would be to simplify these formulas by removing these partial x's. Let's simplify by partial x. Let's simplify by partial y. We get partial f over partial u equals partial f over partial u plus partial f over partial u. Something is not working properly. Why doesn't it work? The answer is precisely because these are partial derivatives. These are not total derivatives. And so you cannot simplify them in that way. And that is actually the reason why we use this curly d rather than a straight d. It is to remind us, beware, there are these simplifications that we can do with straight d's that are not legal here. Somehow, when you have a partial derivative, you must resist the urge of simplifying things. No simplifications in here. That is the simplest formula you can get. Any questions at this point? No. Yes? When would you use this and what does it describe? Well, it is basically when you have a function given in terms of a certain set of variables because maybe there is a simply expression in terms of those variables. But ultimately what you care about is not those variables, z and y, but another set of variables, here u and v. So x and y are giving you a nice formula for f, but actually the relevant variables for your problem are u and v. And you know x and y are related to u and v. So, of course, what you could do is plug the formulas the way that we did substituting. But maybe that will give you very complicated expressions. And maybe it is actually easier to just work with the derivates. The important claim here is basically we don't need to know the actual formulas. All we need to know are the rate of changes. If we know all these rates of change then we know how to take these derivatives without actually having to plug in values. Yes? Yes, you could certain do the same things in terms of t. If x and y were functions of t instead of being functions of u and v then it would be the same thing. And you would have the same formulas that I had, well, over there I still have it. Why does that one have straight d's? Well, the answer is I could put curly d's if I wanted, but I end up with a function of a single variable. If you have a single variable then the partial, with respect to that variable, is the same thing as the usual derivative. We don't actually need to worry about curly in that case. But that one is indeed special case of this one where instead of x and y depending on two variables, u and v, they depend on a single variable t. Now, of course, you can call variables any name you want. It doesn't matter. This is just a slight generalization of that. Well, not quite because here I also had a z. See, I am trying to just confuse you by giving you functions that depend on various numbers of variables. If you have a function of 30 variables, things work the same way, just longer, and you are going to run out of letters in the alphabet before the end. Any other questions? No. What? Yes? If u and v themselves depended on another variable then you would continue with your chain rules. Maybe you would know to express partial x over partial u in terms using that chain rule. Sorry. If u and v are dependent on yet another variable then you could get the derivative with respect to that using first the chain rule to pass from u v to that new variable, and then you would plug in these formulas for partials of f with respect to u and v. In fact, if you have several substitutions to do, you can always arrange to use one chain rule at a time. You just have to do them in sequence. That's why we don't actually learn that, but you can just do it be repeating the process. I mean, probably at that stage, the easiest to not get confused actually is to manipulate differentials because that is probably easier. Yes? Curly f does not exist. That's easy. Curly f makes no sense by itself. It doesn't exist alone. What exists is only curly df over curly d some variable. And then that accounts only for the rate of change with respect to that variable leaving the others fixed, while straight df is somehow a total variation of f. It accounts for all of the partial derivatives and their combined effects. OK. Any more questions? No. Let me just finish up very quickly by telling you again one example where completely you might want to do this. You have a function that you want to switch between rectangular and polar coordinates. To make things a little bit concrete. If you have polar coordinates that means in the plane, instead of using x and y, you will use coordinates r, distance to the origin, and theta, the angles from the x-axis. The change of variables for that is x equals r cosine theta and y equals r sine theta. And so that means if you have a function f that depends on x and y, in fact, you can plug these in as a function of r and theta. Then you can ask yourself, well, what is partial f over partial r? And that is going to be, well, you want to take partial f over partial x times partial x partial r plus partial f over partial y times partial y over partial r. That will end up being actually f sub x times cosine theta plus f sub y times sine theta. And you can do the same thing to find partial f, partial theta. And so you can express derivatives either in terms of x, y or in terms of r and theta with simple relations between them. And the one last thing I should say. On Thursday we will learn about more tricks we can play with variations of functions. And one that is important, because you need to know it actually to do the p-set, is the gradient vector. The gradient vector is simply a vector. You use this downward pointing triangle as the notation for the gradient. It is simply is a vector whose components are the partial derivatives of a function. I mean, in a way, you can think of a differential as a way to package partial derivatives together into some weird object. Well, the gradient is also a way to package partials together. We will see on Thursday what it is good for, but some of the problems on the p-set use it.
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Learn more at Get Started with MIT OpenCourseWare | <urn:uuid:b43f8854-9417-443f-b96c-e9436409a1b1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-02-multivariable-calculus-fall-2007/video-lectures/lecture-11-chain-rule/ | 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 | 0.954711 | 6,939 | 4.03125 | 4 |
Even as the UK government looks to encourage kids to learn practical technological skills like programming, its security services have begun spreading worrying misinformation that could lead parents to intervene in their child's development: that interest in computing and electronics can lead to a life of 'cyber crime.'
Even as the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport pledges £10 million to turn Manchester into the UK's official Internet of Things (IoT) demonstrator city, the National Crime Agency - formerly known as the Serious Organised Crime Agency - has issued a document warning parents, carers, and other adults to keep an eye out for an eye-popping list of warning signs of cyber crime which could threaten all the work the government has been doing to encourage an increased focus on technical proficiency in school children.
According to the National Crime Agency, the following questions if answered in the positive raise the possibility that "a young person is at risk of getting involved in cyber crime:"
- Is your child spending all of their time online?
- Are they interested in coding? Do they have independent learning material on computing?
- Do they have irregular sleeping patterns?
- Do they get an income from their online activities, do you know why and how?
- Are they resistant when asked what they do online?
- Do they use the full data allowance on the home broadband?
- Have they become more socially isolated?
If a young person is showing some of these signs try and have a conversation with them about their online activities. This will allow you to assess their computer knowledge proficiency so you can understand what they are doing, explain the consequences of cyber crime and help them make the right choices. | <urn:uuid:cb7d274b-6123-4784-8827-99d73a4fbf26> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://oomlout.co.uk/blogs/news/79367233-national-crime-agency-lists-daft-cyber-crime-warning-signs | 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 | 0.963578 | 341 | 3.03125 | 3 |
The Sacraments of the Orthodox Church, like the Church Herself, can be said to possess a double character, for they are at the same time inward and outward, visible and invisible. They combine in themselves both an outward visible sign with an inward spiritual grace. For example, in the Holy Eucharist, we eat the Body and Blood of Christ, although visibly they appear to be bread and wine. Likewise, in Holy Baptism there is an outward washing with water, but simultaneously an inward cleansing of sins. Thus, we often speak of the Sacraments as being mysteries, for, in the sense outlined above, what we see is not what we believe.
In most of the Sacraments, the Holy Church takes things that are material, e.g., bread, wine, water, and oil, and make them vehicles of the Holy Spirit, in imitation of our Lord's Incarnation, when, as the Second Person of the Trinity, He took material flesh and made it a vehicle of the Holy Spirit. We also note here another characteristic of the Sacraments, in that they are personal. That is, the grace of God is given to every Christian individually. Therefore, in most of the Sacraments, the Priest pronounces the Christian name of each person as the Sacrament is administered. Thus, for example, at the Holy Eucharist, when giving Holy Communion, the Priest says, the Servant (or Handmaid) of God [Name] partakes....
Customarily, in the Orthodox Church we speak of Seven Sacraments, although we must note that this was not fixed until about the 17th Century. The Fathers themselves disagreed as to the actual number some said two, some six, some ten, and there were even those who said seven, but differed among themselves as to what constituted that seven. Many other sacramental acts, such as the Blessing of Waters at Theophany, the Monastic Tonsure, the Burial Service, and the Blessing of Any Object, for example, possess the same criteria as the earlier definition of sacrament. In any case, the number seven has no absolute dogmatic significance in our Orthodox theology, but is used only for teaching convenience.
The Sacraments, as they are traditionally numbered, are:
1. Holy Baptism
Excerpt taken from "These Truths We Hold - The Holy Orthodox Church: Her Life and Teachings". Compiled and Edited by A Monk of St. Tikhon's Monastery. Copyright 1986 by the St. Tikhon's Seminary Press, South Canaan, Pennsylvania 18459.
To order a copy of "These Truths We Hold" visit the St. Tikhon's Orthodox Seminary Bookstore. | <urn:uuid:ec4361d2-bd9d-4b4e-ad38-86e71be583cf> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://orthodoxyinamerica.org/article.php?id=35 | 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 | 0.957405 | 560 | 2.796875 | 3 |
The Delta Queen is an American sternwheel steamboat turned U.S. National Historic Landmark. It is 285 feet long, 58 feet wide, and draws 11.5 feet. The boat weighs 1,650 tons, with a capacity of 176 passengers. Its cross-compounded steam engines generate 2,000 indicated horsepower powering a stern-mounted paddlewheel. The hull, first two decks and steam engines were ordered in 1924. The Delta Queen and her sister boat Delta King were shipped in pieces to Stockton, California two years later. There the California Transportation Company assembled the two vessels for regular service between San Francisco and Sacramento, and excursions to Stockton, on the San Joaquin River. At the time, they were the most lavish and expensive sternwheel passenger boats ever made. However, they were decommissioned after a highway was built connecting Sacramento and San Francisco in 1940.
Then, they were purchased by Isbrandtsen Steamship Lines for service out of New Orleans. During World War II, the two vessels were requisitioned by the U.S. Navy for duty in the San Francisco Bay. Over fifty years or so, The Delta Queen changed ownership a number of times. Betty Blake, president of the steamship line, lobbied for a presidential exemption to the law prohibiting the operation of overnight passenger vessels with wooden superstructures. This battle was won in 1971.
She recreated historic steamboat races during the Kentucky Derby Festival in the Great Steamboat Race against the Belle of Louisville on the Ohio River. Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter have all sailed on the Delta Queen. Majestic America Line recently took ownership of the Queen. At the end of 2008, she ceased all operations allegedly due to a temporary exemption from SOLAS being thrown out in a recent Congressional decision. Without the exemption, the Queen cannot operate legally. In response, Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, and 15 other members submitted a motion to the Scottish Parliament in an effort to preserve the ship. In the United States, a “Save the Delta Queen” campaign was created. Majestic America Line not only announced the Delta Queen would not operate in 2009 but added the ship and all its assets were up for sale.
Under a lease, Harry Phillips, a Chattanooga businessman, docked the vessel at Coolidge Park Landing in Chattanooga North Shores. The Queen was turned in to a floating boutique hotel. On June 5, 2009, The Delta Queen Hotel officially opened for overnight guests. However, will her permanent guest approve of the new accommodations?
Mary B. Greene played an important role in the Delta Queen’s history. She was one of the founders of the Delta Queen Steamboat Company as well as the first female ship captain. She loved the Queen and took excellent care of her. Ma Greene, as she was known as, worked to keep the ship family friendly and definitely did not approve of the sale of alcohol. She didn’t allow a drop of it on her ship. In 1949, Ma Greene passed away. Most employees tried to adhere to her wishes. However, a group decided to set up a saloon on the Queen. Minutes after the first cocktail was served, A barge wrecked in to the ship, completely destroying the saloon. Ironically, the barge was called Captain Mary B, named after Ma Greene. Many associate this accident as Greene’s displeasure with the saloon. An apparition of a lady believed to be Ma Greene has been seen wandering the steamboat. Many say she is friendly but remains to keep a close eye on her beloved Delta Queen. | <urn:uuid:3bbb1ad8-1335-45a1-87f4-c2f20efaa581> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://paranormalstories.blogspot.com/2009/11/delta-queen.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 | 0.97541 | 737 | 3.015625 | 3 |
cross-platform launch command
a guest Oct 25th, 2012 299 Never
- import os
- import subprocess
- import sys
- def launch(program):
- Run program as if it had been double-clicked in Finder, Explorer,
- Nautilus, etc. On OS X, the program should be a .app bundle, not a
- UNIX executable. When used with a URL, a non-executable file, etc.,
- the behavior is implementation-defined.
- Returns something false (0 or None) on success; returns something
- True (e.g., an error code from open or xdg-open) or throws on failure.
- However, note that in some cases the command may succeed without
- actually launching the targeted program."""
- if sys.platform == 'darwin':
- ret = subprocess.call(['open', program])
- elif sys.platform.startswith('win'):
- ret = os.startfile(os.path.normpath(program))
- ret = subprocess.call(['xdg-open', program])
- return ret
RAW Paste Data | <urn:uuid:8b4e7ddf-bc3d-4d3d-9aa9-b98ed005138c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://pastebin.com/XVp46f7X | 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 | 0.687749 | 252 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Figure. No caption available.
If you or a loved one is over 80 years old, you should pay special heed to your blood pressure readings, a new study finds.
About three-quarters of people over the age of 80 have high blood pressure, known medically as hypertension, and — especially in women — it is likely to be poorly controlled, leaving them at serious risk for a stroke.
The very elderly are among the fastest growing segments of the U.S. population and they are at highest risk for high blood pressure, which increases as a person ages. Even for individuals free of high blood pressure at age 65, the remaining lifetime risk of developing the condition is approximately 90 percent.
Donald Lloyd-Jones, M.D., assistant professor of Preventative Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Ill., led the study, which found that fewer than 10 percent had blood pressure in the “normal” range (less than 120 systolic over 80 diastolic, or 120/80). Those categorized as having high blood pressure had blood pressure of greater than 140/90.
The study examined data from almost 5,300 (2,300 men and approximately 3,000 women) participants of the long-running Framingham Study. The study found that only 38 percent of men and 23 percent of women had their blood pressure controlled to recommended levels of less than 140/90.
Most research on high blood pressure has been limited to people younger than 75, and there is little information regarding current patterns of treatment and control of high blood pressure among those 80 and older.
“We must make identification, treatment, and, when possible, the control of hypertension in this group a national priority,” says Dr. Lloyd. (Journal of the American Medical Association, July 27, 2005 www.ama-assn.org )
A prescription nasal spray commonly used by adults for migraine headache relief appears to be effective and safe for young people ages 12 to17, a new study finds.
The multicenter study, led by Paul Winner, D.O., director of the Palm Beach Headache Center in Florida, compared the results in 248 adolescents who were treated with a placebo (a saline solution) or with zolmitriptan (Zomig) 5 mg nasal spray. The youngsters were initially given the saline solution. The remaining 171 who still had moderate to severe pain were treated again either with the saline solution or with zolmitriptan nasal spray. By study design, neither the physicians nor the participants knew when the placebo nasal spray or when zolmitriptan was used. The study found that:
* One hour after taking zolmitriptan nasal spray, 28 percent were pain-free and 51 percent could resume normal activities.
* One hour after using the placebo nasal spray, 10 percent were pain-free and 38 percent resumed normal activities.
* Two hours after treatment, 39 percent who used zolmitriptan nasal spray were pain-free, compared to 19 percent who used the placebo spray.
None of the participants experienced serious adverse side effects. A small number did experience adverse side effects, such as a bad or metallic taste in the mouth.
Eight to 12 million American children and adolescents – more than 1 in 10 – get migraine headaches, according to the American Headache Society. The Food and Drug Administration has approved prescription drugs to treat migraines in adults, but not for adolescents.
“This is the first study to help us evaluate the effectiveness of using this medication in children, who have no prescription alternatives when over-the-counter drugs don't work for them,” says Dr. Winner.
The research was supported by a grant from AstraZeneca, which makes zolmitriptan. (American Headache Society 47th Annual Meeting, 2005).
Men with epilepsy frequently experience sexual problems, including reduced sexual desire and impotence. These problems appear to be linked to antiepileptic medications, so researchers are trying to determine which drugs have less of an adverse impact.
A new study, led by Andrew G. Herzog, M.D., director of the Harvard Neuroendocrine Unit at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Mass., looked at three antiepileptic medications, and found that one is less likely to affect testosterone, the hormone in men that is crucial to sexual function.
The research involved 85 men with epilepsy: 25 were taking carbamazepine (Tegretol); 25 were on phenytoin (Dilantin); 25 were on lamotrigine (Lamictal); and 10 had not taken antiepileptic medication for the past six months. Sexual function questionnaire scores and serum hormone levels were compared among the four groups of men with epilepsy and 25 normal controls (men who did not have epilepsy).
The study found that lamotrigine is less likely to inhibit the amount of testosterone in the body than are carbamazepine and phenytoin. This is because carbamazepine and phenytoin produce enzymes that prevent some of the testosterone from being used.
“This investigation shows substantial and statistically significant differences in the effects of various antiepileptic drugs on sexual interest and function as well as biologically available testosterone levels,” Dr. Herzog says.
He notes, however, that although lamotrigine fares better than the older enzyme-inducing antiepileptic drugs, comparisons with some of the newer drugs, such levetiracetam (Keppra) and zonisamide (Zonegran) need to be done.
American Academy of Neurology Foundation
The Brain Matterswww.thebrainmatters.org
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
TTY: (301) 468-5981
American Epilepsy Society
American Council for Headache Education
(800) 255-ACHE (255-2243)
National Headache Foundation
(888) NHF-5552 (643-5552)
National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute
(301) 592 8573
TTY: 240 629 3255
American Stroke Association
(888) 4-STROKE, (888) 478-7653
National Stroke Association | <urn:uuid:93545c36-5205-4b28-9742-d6818dd3f813> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://patients.aan.com/resources/neurologynow/index.cfm?event=home.showArticle&id=ovid.com%3A%2Fbib%2Fovftdb%2F01222928-200501030-00011 | 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 | 0.929545 | 1,296 | 2.65625 | 3 |
By Dr. Brian McDonough
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – This week is National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week, and several organizations are asking that families with young children get their homes tested for lead.
If your house or apartment building was built or painted before 1978 , the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say you might want to get your home tested for dust from lead-based paints.
This is particularly important in a city like Philadelphia, where many of the homes are older, and have been painted with lead-based paint.
Lead paint is a hazard in 38 million homes nationwide.
According to the CDC, childhood lead poisoning is the most preventable environmental disease among young children. | <urn:uuid:3c6c2051-158b-4d47-9558-03863ee048fc> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2012/10/22/organizations-urge-parents-to-protect-children-from-lead-poisoning/ | 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 | 0.967174 | 149 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Mosaic of Jupiter's southern hemisphere between -25 and -80 degrees (south) latitude. In time sequence three, taken 10 hours after sequence one, the limb is visible near the bottom right part of the mosaic.
Jupiter's atmospheric circulation is dominated by alternating eastward and westward jets from equatorial to polar latitudes. The direction and speed of these jets in part determine the brightness and texture of the clouds seen in this mosaic. Also visible are several other common Jovian cloud features, including two large vortices, bright spots, dark spots, interacting vortices, and turbulent chaotic systems. The north-south dimension of each of the two vortices in the center of the mosaic is about 3500 kilometers. The right oval is rotating counterclockwise, like other anticyclonic bright vortices in Jupiter's atmosphere. The left vortex is a cyclonic (clockwise) vortex. The differences between them (their brightness, their symmetry, and their behavior) are clues to how Jupiter's atmosphere works. The cloud features visible at 756 nanometers (near-infrared light) are at an atmospheric pressure level of about 1 bar.
North is at the top. The images are projected onto a sphere, with features being foreshortened towards the south and east. The smallest resolved features are tens of kilometers in size. These images were taken on May 7, 1997, at a range of 1.5 million kilometers by the Solid State Imaging system on NASA's Galileo spacecraft.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC.
This image and other images and data received from Galileo are posted on the World Wide Web, on the Galileo mission home page at URL http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov. Background information and educational context for the images can be found at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/sepo. | <urn:uuid:579e7d35-bb36-4655-8b85-d935cd2dd190> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01229 | 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 | 0.915919 | 405 | 3.90625 | 4 |
The 2002 Winter Olympics are hosted by Salt Lake City at several venues within the city, in nearby cities, and within the adjacent Wasatch Mountains. This image pair provides a stereoscopic map view of north central Utah that includes all of these Olympic sites. In the south, next to Utah Lake, Provo hosts the ice hockey competition. In the north, northeast of the Great Salt Lake, Ogden hosts curling and the nearby Snowbasin ski area hosts the downhill events. In between, southeast of the Great Salt Lake, Salt Lake City hosts the Olympic Village and the various skating events. Further east, across the Wasatch Mountains, the Park City ski resort hosts the bobsled, ski jumping, and snowboarding events. The Winter Olympics are always hosted in mountainous terrain. This view shows the dramatic landscape that makes the Salt Lake City region a world-class center for winter sports.
This stereoscopic image was generated by draping a Landsat satellite image over a Shuttle Radar Topography Mission digital elevation model. Two differing perspectives were then calculated, one for each eye. They can be seen in 3-D by viewing the left image with the right eye and the right image with the left eye (cross-eyed viewing or by downloading and printing the image pair and viewing them with a stereoscope. When stereoscopically merged, the result is a vertically exaggerated view of Earth's surface in its full three dimensions.
Landsat has been providing visible and infrared views of the Earth since 1972. SRTM elevation data matches the 30-meter (98-foot) resolution of most Landsat images and will substantially help in analyzing the large and growing Landsat image archive, managed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
Elevation data used in this image was acquired by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, launched on Feb. 11, 2000. SRTM used the same radar instrument that comprised the Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) that flew twice on the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1994. SRTM was designed to collect 3-D measurements of the Earth's surface. To collect the 3-D data, engineers added a 60-meter (approximately 200-foot) mast, installed additional C-band and X-band antennas, and improved tracking and navigation devices. The mission is a cooperative project between NASA, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) of the U.S. Department of Defense and the German and Italian space agencies. It is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Earth Science Enterprise, Washington, D.C.
Size: 222 x 93.8 kilometers (138 x 58.2 miles)
Location: 40.0 to 42.0 deg. North lat., 111.25 to 112.25.0 deg. West lon.(exactly)
Orientation: North at top
Image Data: Landsat Bands 3, 2, 1 as red, green, blue, respectively.
Original Data Resolution: SRTM 1 arcsecond (30 meters or 98 feet), Thematic Mapper 30 meters (98 feet)
Date Acquired: February 2000 (SRTM), 1990s (Landsat 5 image mosaic) | <urn:uuid:37f19b58-9023-4a48-adf7-c101ec172124> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA03344 | 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 | 0.916977 | 695 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Newton's Laws of Motion are also very present in the game of soccer.
Newton's First Law of Motion states that an object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force; an object at rest will stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. This is very evident when the ball is in the air. The ball would stay in the air forever if it weren't for gravity and drag. Gravity pulls the ball down toward the Earth and drag, the friction of air acting in the opposite direction of the ball, slows the ball down. Another example of this is evident when a ball is sliding across a field and then slows down and stops. Now at first the ball was at rest on the ground, not moving. Once the force acted on it, (a big burly soccer dude), the ball is set into motion where Newton's Laws take over. The friction of the ground causes the ball to slow to a stop and also air resistance opposes the ball and brings it to a stop. Newton's Second Law states that the
acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the net force acting on it and inversely proportional to its mass. This can be very easily be stated using the equation: F=ma. In this case F is the net force, m is the mass of the object, and a is the
acceleration of the object. This can be seen when you kick the ball, the more force you use to move the ball the greater the acceleration of the ball.
Newton's Third Law of Motion states that for every action there is a an equal and opposite reaction. Just like if you start hollering at the referee during a game, he's going to yell back and make you go sit your butt down. Every time you go to kick the ball this law comes into effect. You may not realize this because we are so massive compared to the ball that we do not realize that the ball actually pushes back on our foot as we push against it. | <urn:uuid:90268be7-17a6-4c2c-b722-064148f32955> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://physicsofsoccer.homestead.com/newton.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 | 0.958002 | 410 | 3.515625 | 4 |
I love project-based learning. Why? Because my students do. Some of my favourite PBL adventures are the Biology 30 projects due at semester’s end. These aren’t the only projects we pursue throughout the semester; we also work on a number of digital creations. However, these tend to be the most intricate and hands-on.
For the past week, my students have been sharing their projects. They don’t give their presentation at the front of the room (although that’s an important skill to learn too). Instead, we sit in a circle and share. I’ve found doing it this way creates more interaction among my students than the “stand and deliver” in front of an audience.
The topic for this particular biology activity was body systems. My students were to create a project on any system in the body. It’s a really broad topic, I know. I do that on purpose. Over the past two months in class, we’ve studied 5 different systems, but students aren’t limited solely to those. Often students are interested in things we don’t have time to explore in class. This project allows them to do so and reinforces the big idea that the best inquiry begins with high interest.
One of my students created a Monopoly-type board game based on the nervous system. Each of the different properties represented a different aspect. The Community Chest & Chance cards also contained many facts about the system, in addition to the usual penalties or rewards.
But the best part of his presentation, to me, was when he stated: “I really enjoyed doing this. It was a lot of fun — a ton of work, but a lot of fun.” And that’s why I love project-based learning. It allows my students to really focus on, and learn deeply about, things they’re interested in — which often causes them to work hard, enjoy the process of learning, and gain a great deal of satisfaction once they are finished.
Another student researched and created a model of the knee. She has knee problems, and as an athlete, she experiences the real pain of these problems quite frequently. During her presentation, she showed the parts of the knee affected, informed the class how these problems affect her, and described possible treatments and surgical options. It took her hours to create the knee from Plasticine. This is the second reason I love PBL; it often becomes personal, allowing students to understand more about themselves or others they are close to.
A third student created two cakes (shown below) — each depicting a brain state. The cake with large portions of yellow illustrates the activity in a healthy, functioning brain. The brain that is predominantly blue shows the functionality of a brain struggling with depression. Wow. I was shocked to see the difference.
This particular student chose this topic because her family has been deeply and painfully affected by depression. She wanted to understand it better and her project research and inquiry was meaningful to her far beyond the basic knowledge she acquired.
We also learned about hip replacements. The father of one of my students is a doctor. She was curious about how hip replacements work, and through his contacts he was able to procure the authentic implants that are used in a hip replacement. How many people actually get to see what those look like? Which is the final reason I love PBL – I learn a ton from my students, and it allows my students to experience the reality that they have new knowledge to offer to those around them. The PBL classroom allows students to learn from each other, as well as me.
My student created a playdough version of the pelvis & hip bones to show how hip replacements fit. During her presentation, she spared none of the gory details of the surgical process. Trust me, it was readily apparent by the looks on my students’ faces who might be successful at pursuing a medical career and who will likely steer clear of it. The intricate detail of the process was truly amazing. During these presentations I’m often surprised by the amount of complex learning that occurs and the enthusiasm my students have towards it.
While some teachers may wonder about the merits of PBL, I’m sold. My students have learned much more in an inquiry classroom than others did when we had a traditional one. PBL allows them to have a say in what they learn and how they present their knowledge. Every semester I’m impressed by the hard work and energy my students pour into their projects.
It’s not enough for students to learn a bunch of disconnected facts. They need to be able to synthesis them into a comprehensive whole and create something from what they’ve learned. Often they’ll connect them to their lives in ways we could never have imagined.
I love PBL and so do my students. It really makes school worthwhile.
Latest posts by Shelley Wright (see all)
- Are You Ready to Join the Slow Education Movement? - August 26, 2014
- Academic Teaching Doesn't Prepare Students for Life - November 7, 2013
- Start with Why: The power of student-driven learning - June 21, 2013 | <urn:uuid:41902bd3-d4e3-4332-a478-933d8d77dcea> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://plpnetwork.com/2012/04/06/why-i-love-project-based-learning/ | 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 | 0.97619 | 1,077 | 2.75 | 3 |
Back to the Future: Bringing the Practice of Tuning Historical Temperaments into the 21st century by Returning to True Historical Methodology
Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if one could convert a previously realized temperament of an organ into measures and lines, or in reverse, apply the measures and lines to an organ? Wouldn’t the pure harmony be thereby clearly conveyed? Of what use are all the measures and lines if the musical intervals aren’t arranged according to them? Surely they can convince the intellect and the eye as to the necessary conditions, but without strings, pipes, and song, they are of little help.
- G. A. Sorge, Zuverlässige Anweisung, Claviere und Orgeln behörig zu temperiren und zu stimmen, 1758
Tuning a keyboard instrument consists of two steps:
1. Tempering a central octave which serves as a references for all the other notes (historically this was often done in the tenor octave octave beginning either from tenor c or middle c).
2. Tuning all the other notes/registers to the notes of the temperament octave.
Of these two, the second represents the largest amount the work. The good news is that this kind of tuning is very easy to do since it only involves octaves and unisons. The bad news is that there is no way to do this except by ear; no machine or technology of any kind can make this task any easier. The only way to master this task is to practice, practice, practice.
Step 1, however, is another story. Many people consider this to be the most difficult and challenging part of tuning, but this largely due to a stubborn adherence among modern tuners to an anachronistic methodology originally developed during the 19th century to tune equal temperament. When we realize the true nature of historical methodology, there is really only good news; this part of the tuning process is the fastest and easiest to perform, ultimately requiring no skill other than the simplest of the two already needed for accomplishment of Step 2: tuning unisons.
How should we tune the temperament octave?
Many professional tuners and musicians from the “Historically-Informed Performance Practice” movement think that the best way to set a temperament is “by ear”, a concept which almost always means manipulating the sizes of the tempered fifths and thirds by counting the beats they make in a certain amount of time. These beats are then either compared to the beats of other fifths or thirds or are controlled by referring to a list of correct beat rates for each interval for the temperament in question. Most books on the practical application of historical temperaments published in the last 50 years provide either a list of beat speeds or methods for determining the proportional speeds among various intervals. This manner of tempering is often asserted to be the best for two reasons:
1. Ostensibly, this is the way that tuners and musicians worked in during the times of the widespread use of unequal temperaments (approximately from the early 16th century to the end of the 18th century).
2. Ostensibly, it is the best way to become familiar with all the subtle differences between the fifths and thirds in all the different tonalities for any given temperament, which will help the musician decide which temperament is best for any given literature.
Unfortunately, neither of these assertions stands up to close scrutiny. Some years ago, I, too, thought much along the same lines, but the more direct experience I had the original sources, the more I doubted the validity of these modern assumptions. Now that I have read over 140 original works on organ, harpsichord and piano construction and maintenance, tuning and temperament, and musical acoustics written between 1511 and 1890 (mostly in German), I have changed my thinking completely.
While a few sparse references to beat speed or beat proportion between intervals can be found in the historical sources (I know of four cases in the entire body of literature before c.1800), there is no evidence whatsoever to support the idea that musicians or tuners regularly worked in the modern manner until the middle of the 19th century – long after the general abandonment of unequal temperaments! In fact, there is much evidence to the contrary, such as statements from 19th century writers that this method was “new” and that the organ tuners of previous times did not know how to make any practical use of the observation that tempered intervals produced beats. Rather than being the common historical practice for setting unequal temperaments, the method of counting and comparing beats was developed during the first half of the 19th century specifically in order to resolve the difficulty of setting a perfectly equal temperament. Having become the default method for tuning keyboard instruments, naturally when the “early music” movement began in earnest in the middle of the 20th century, tuners automatically applied it to the tuning of historical unequal temperaments as well, completely unawares that this was foreign to the historical situation.
Mersenne mentioned the possibility of using beats to judge the size of tempered intervals, but no one seems to have applied the technique to an entire temperament until Robert Smith published his lengthy and obtuse (Thomas Young’s evaluation!) treatise Harmonics in 1754, in which he gave the beat rates of all fifths for various forms of regular meantone (by the way, Smith’s title should not be misunderstood as referring to harmonics as we understand them today, of which he seems to have been completely unaware; he meant “Harmony”). This work seems to have been completely ignored, however, not only in England, but more importantly, on the continent, especially in Germany, where I have not found a single reference to it. The modern practice of precision beat counting really begins with the works of Heinrich Scheibler, who first published a book in 1834 called Der physikalische und musikalische Tonmesser (The Physical and Musical Measurement of Tone). His theories were then further expounded and somewhat simplified by J. J. Loehr in his Ueber die Scheibler’sche Erfindung überhaupt und dessen Pianoforte- und Orgel-Stimmung insbesondere (On Scheibler’s discovery in general and his pianoforte and organ tuning in particular – 1836), which was also published in translation in England in 1853. More importantly, in 1842, under the tittle Die Scheibler’sche Stimm-Methode leicht faßlich erklärt und auf eine neue Art angewendet (Scheibler’s Tuning Method easily and simply explained and applied in a new manner), the famous theorist of organ design, J. G. Töpfer, published for the first time in history a simple method for calculating the beat rates from the two known frequencies of any kind of tempered fifth, fourth, third or sixth.
As to the assertion that learning the complex and difficult skill of perceiving, counting and comparing the beats of specific fifths or thirds played in isolation has anything to do with learning the musical characteristics of the various temperaments, this has always been highly debatable. In real music, individual fifths or thirds almost never sound in isolation and in close position. The actual overall musical effect of any tempered interval depends upon the distribution of all of the notes of the harmony in which it occurs, the registers in which they are played, the sound of the instrument, the registration (especially important on the organ), the musical context and the amount of time the ear has to evaluate the quality of the harmony. This complex process simply cannot be equated with counting the number of beats made by two isolated notes on a single 8′ stop in the middle register.
A true appreciation for the advantages and disadvantages of any given temperament can only be learned through broad experience with many different musical works on an instrument correctly and precisely tuned in the different temperaments. The best way to prepare oneself for this long journey of musical exploration is to understand both the theoretical foundations of temperaments and the true historical development of different approaches at different times and in different places.
True historical tuning methodology
…hierzu aber gehöret Cirkel und Maasstab, denn mit dem Stimmhammer allein würde es schwer halten, solche accurat heraus zu bringen, denn das Gehör kan leicht betrügen, und betrogen werden.
[in regards to adjusting the sizes of the fifths on a monochord for a near-equal circulating temperament]…for this it is proper [to use] a compass and a ruler [i.e. the tools for calculating monochord lengths with geometry], for with a tuning hammer alone, it is difficult to achieve the required accuracy, since the ear can so easily mislead, and itself be mislead.
- G. A. Sorge, Zuverlässige Anweisung, Claviere und Orgeln behörig zu temperiren und zu stimmen, 1758
If musicians of the past did not tune the temperament by counting beats, how then did they do it? The evidence from the historical literature indicates three methods:
1. By ear, but only more or less. Many original tuning instruction merely state that the fifths or thirds should be modified by vague amounts: “as much as the ear will bear”, “a little sharp”, “rather piquant”, “almost pure”, “slightly larger than pure”, etc etc.
2. Using a monochord. From the end of the 17th century onwards, texts on the topic of temperaments inevitably included a list of lengths which could be marked upon a monochord, and the use of a monochord during the actual process of tuning a stringed keyboard is mentioned in a number of texts.
3. Using a “tuning pipe”, an organ pipe with a sliding stopper with the position of each note marked upon the slider (Sorge says this is better than a monochord for tuning an organ, and Adlung claims such a pipe was recommended to him by J. S. Bach!).
In other words, two out of three of the true historical methods involve the application of technological devices which produce each note of the temperament octave with its correct tuning, notes which the tuner then copies onto the instrument by tuning unisons (examples here and here). Thus…
If the use of an external “tone generator” represents the actual historical method which was considered as being the most accurate, the most trustworthy and the easiest in the 17th and 18th centuries, why on earth should we reject it in favor of a difficult anachronistic practice from the middle of the 19th century?!!
Nowadays it easier and cheaper than ever before to acquire and employ a technological device. Applications can be purchased for less than 3€ for both the Apple iPhone and Android mobile phones which can be used as tone generators for the twelve notes in place of the historic solutions of a monochord or a tuning flute. These applications can be programmed with whatever temperaments one wishes to use and then adjusted to any pitch level. They allow the musician to quickly and correctly tune the temperament in the same time it takes to tune twelve unisons, a fraction of the time required to perform the same task by the laborious and difficult task of counting and comparing beats, even for an experienced professional tuner. Secondly, they allow the instrument to be tuned perfectly and consistently time after time, a critical consideration for recording sessions. Another very important advantage is that small deviations in the general pitch level can be easily realized (a few cents higher or lower) in order to find the most comfortable pitch for the wind instruments, or to employ various “tricks of the trade”, such as tuning the organ a few Hz too low and the harpsichord a few Hz too high, knowing that during the concert, with the heat generated by the stage lights and the audience, the pitch of the organ will rise and that of the harpsichord will fall. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the student can easily experiment with a large number of real historical temperaments. Even professional tuners who work by ear usually limit themselves to only 3 or 4 temperaments they have learned to tune, and they are often loath to try others simply because of the effort required in learning a new series of beat speeds/proportions. Additonally, far too often the temperaments they know are those which have the simplest structures, such as Werckmeister III or Vallotti, temperaments which were most likely used very little if at all in ancient times. In fact, I would dare to say that this dogmatic adherence to the false notion that counting beats is somehow historical has probably done more harm than good to the early music movement by propagating the use of a very small number of simplistic temperaments of little or no real historical value! Luckily, for the young generation of musicians, a simple and economic alternative is readily available! | <urn:uuid:2f205be1-f81f-4f62-9fd2-b6b905026a3b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://polettipiano.com/wordpress/?page_id=381 | 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 | 0.937361 | 2,750 | 3.171875 | 3 |
“Leave your wallet at home!” This could be the slogan for the bartering and swapping markets that have flooded several cities in Europe over the past few years. Moving beyond the traditional market idea, swapping markets are advocates of an ‘exchange — without-money’ process which has recently gained popularity in the light of global economic recession.
Historically, bartering systems have been developed as parallel to monetary ones, while the exchange of goods and services replaced money as the principal medium. Without however being able to replace an entire economy, bartering has occasionally substituted for actual trading especially at times of monetary crisis. Further, the basic principle of ‘one-to-one’ informal bartering has been established through the decades as a means to make use of excessive stock in goods or put into use one’s capacities in return for another’s.
As rapid globalization processes have set in motion a series of scalar transformations in economy, barter markets and swapping activities seem to provide alternate ways for local economies to maintain their balance. Most of the people involved in bartering highlight the major contribution of the ‘exchange-act’ in raising awareness over our normal consumption habits and the value of things. At the same time, the main idea behind swapping is the contribution of goods, or even people’s skills and services. Through the exchange part, people are presented with the opportunity to put back into circulation unused items, but also their own personal resources and assert, in this way, a certain degree of control over their personal economies.
Barter markets seem to appear mainly in city centres or as complementary to neighbourhood flea markets. While these kind of local activities introduce new ways for enhancing community cohesion and organizing local economies, what is interesting in many occasions is the flexible and fluid character of such public space interventions. The transformations happening in public spaces are part and parcel of the same ‘exchange’ act of goods and skills, as they become inextricably linked to the very process of bartering. Based mainly on used materials and low cost infrastructure, DIY market benches and kiosks hold a prominent role in transforming empty squares and lots into neighbourhood meeting points and vibrant spaces.
Moving forward, as globalization trends proceed to redefine the materiality of public space, bartering has taken over not only the physical spaces of city centres but also the virtual public domains. During the past few years, several websites and peer-to-peer collaborative communities have popped up promoting swapping activities across distant locales with low or no cost included. As the use of internet-bartering transcends the local scale, people are able to connect to distant others, create communication bridges and exchange info on organizational matters and meeting points. Hence, skills and goods can be made available simultaneously in various places, a factor that adds to the flexible character of relevant projects.
A recent example of a free exchange platform between artists and the public has organized bartering exhibits in several cities around the world. Launched in November 2009 by London-based curators Lauren Jones and Alix Janta, Art Barter re-examines our current system of exchange, encouraging the trade of art for goods and services, not money. As Susanne Mehr of Dossier Journal explains:
“In a time when art and the artist have become commodities, appraised by their monetary value, investment strategies and instrumental objectives, Art Barter asks: What is a piece of art worth? A year of psychotherapy or piano lessons? A lifelong supply of milk, cheese and eggs? A trip to the Bahamas? An exhibition… a kidney? At Art Barter, you can buy art with anything, except money. As Tracey Emin, who bartered one of her works for 30 hours of French tuition, explains, it cuts out the middle man… it is looking at the work, rather than the artist.”
Click here to check out Art Barter’s ongoing project in Madrid, Spain! | <urn:uuid:22d37263-be3b-4b79-95a9-eebd7bed5e15> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://popupcity.net/swapping-is-contagious/ | 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 | 0.949018 | 815 | 3.015625 | 3 |
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