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Why JAMStack hosting is not a solution
Interest in JAMstack is growing and many developers believe that the JAMstack approach to web development, which is in many ways faster, more secure and more stable than the traditional stack, represents the future of the web. But it also has many disadvantages and problems.
In the following article I will explain what a JAMstack is, why it was created and which advantages and disadvantages it has, especially in combination with a classic CMS like WordPress.
Definition: What does JAMstack mean anyway?
The term JAMstack was coined by Mathias Biilmann Christensen, the co-founder of Netlify, to describe "more modern" approaches to web development as opposed to the well-known LAMP stack. JAMstack refers to the serverless, database-less stack consisting of Javascript, APIs and markup.
The stack formerly known as static was rebranded by Matt Biilmann as JAMStack, because the term static no longer really describes what a modern static website can do, which can also be very dynamic thanks to modern Javascript and CSS functions.
How did it come about that an alternative to the LAMP stack was sought?
Until about 1999, most websites consisted of simple HTML, a few images and CSS. All quite simple and manageable, the so-called static websites. These were delivered quickly and were also very secure, because no dynamic code was executed on the server, the web server simply sent the browser the finished HTML file that was on the server and that was it.
However, changes to static pages were relatively uncomfortable. Most web developers modified the HTML source code in a text editor and transferred the modified file to the web server via FTP. It was virtually impossible for a customer without technical understanding to maintain a website, and the simultaneous work of several people on one and the same page was out of the question!
The first dynamic functions were made possible via the so-called Common Gateway Interface, CGI for short, in the Apache web server, which had been in work since 1993. So my first websites sent filled out contact forms via sendmail using a small PERL script. With the appearance of PHP this kind of dynamic websites spread and soon web content management systems were created, which still run on the LAMP stack, i.e. Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. Instead of Apache, the more modern NGINX is often used and instead of MySQL, a MariaDB can also be used.
Without appropriate precautions, however, in this type of setup every page request triggers a cascade of file and database accesses as well as PHP functions, which made the generation of the website slower and slower. To get this problem under control, caches were implemented at various levels of the stack, from hard disk caches, database caches, object caches and full page caches to CDNs and the local browser cache, as much as possible is stored so that the same information can be delivered again more quickly. Modern WordPress hosting is more and more complex in operation due to the many caches and due to the necessary invalidation of the caches in some cases not so much faster, but saves CPU time on the host system.
The bigger problem of the current LAMP stack is in my opinion the software security: Almost daily security patches, updates or 0-day exploits for WordPress plugins, themes or even the core are released. A permanent update becomes more and more complex and can rarely be automated and without subsequent functional checks in critical infrastructure.
Finally, scaling dynamic pages is also a big challenge: If you are running a website and there are load peaks or even a Ddos attack, it is definitely a challenge to keep the website up and running quickly or at all. Actually, you should be happy about large traffic increases and not be afraid that the website will come to a standstill because of it.
So let's take a closer look at the JAMstack. Does it solve the problems of the LAMP stack?
Indeed, static page generators solve many of these problems, but create some new problems! JAMstack is basically nothing more than the combination of Javascript, APIs and markup like HTML and CSS. This eliminates the need for a dynamic server-side programming language like PHP, Perl, Python or Ruby. So you don't really need a (classic) server anymore. Of course, the files have to be made available somewhere for the users, but in JAMStack this is simply done on a PushCDN and thus distributed worldwide and very similar to every potential visitor.
Speed: Every page is already pre-rendered in the CDN, which makes the delivery really fast! The PHP doesn't have to process anything, no database has to be queried, no CPU has to do any computing and no RAM can overflow!
Security: Without a page-generating processing server there is automatically more security! Because there are no more vulnerable applications of the LAMP architecture. Where normally everything has to be patched continuously, from database and operating system of the server to PHP and CMS to plugins and themes. These patches simply do not exist in the world of JAMstack, because JAMstack is 100% database-free.
Scalability: If you only need to deploy static assets that do not require server-side processing, you can scale them almost infinitely over a worldwide CDN. Since this consumes far fewer resources such as compute time, power and cooling, serverless hosting is better for the environment.
Cheaper: There are many free or inexpensive services available for hosting static websites. These costs can of course add up if you have a lot of traffic, but the bottom line is that the costs are much lower than with traditional hosting!
That sounds too good to be true! Are there also disadvantages?
Oh, yes, there is. Static site generators often require the use of the command line or have to be operated via cumbersome APIs without GUI. Although there are now some CMS that you can connect to a static site generator, they are much more limited than what a WordPress for example has to offer.
After every change on the website the whole website has to be regenerated and pushed to the CDN. This can even take several hours for complex websites, which makes frequent publishing or quick changes impossible. That means: If you make a change on a page, you have to republish your whole page and wait until it is finished before you can make another change! This also prevents parallel work by multiple authors.
If you think the LAMP stack is complicated, don't even try the JAMStack. The combination of headless CMS, static site generator and front end with client-side dynamization via APIs is extremely complex to develop. It is very difficult to find developers with the necessary skills. In addition, there is currently a very limited plugin and theme ecosystem. In contrast to WordPress, where there are more than 50,000 plugins and millions of themes and fantastic theme builders like Elementor.
To get an idea of the complexity of the JAMStack, just have a look at the tutorial Migrate Your WordPress Site to the Jamstack at Netlify
If you want to try out the advantages of the JAMStack and still don't want to miss the comfort of a WordPress installation, you currently have three options:
1. WordPress as headless CMS with Gatsby
If you still want to use WordPress as a headless CMS, you should have a look at the new project: Gatsby WordPress Themes. You can save a lot of time by simply using a ready-made Gatsby theme based on popular WordPress themes.
This approach makes it much easier to use WordPress as a headless CMS in JAMStack to manage your site and use Gatsby to implement a React frontend. There are not many themes available yet, but I can still change that.
Theoretically you could also install the Gatsby blog (a pre-built JAMstack website) on Cosmic JS and then use an importer to import the existing WordPress posts and then make the website available via Netlify. You can find instructions here. But you will lose a lot of functionality and there is no way back to WordPress!
2. WordPress with a WordPress Static Site Generator Plugin
There are two WordPress plugins that can help you to create a static version of your page. Better said there were, because Simply Static and WP2Static are both no longer developed. But in case of WP2Static there is at least one active community and support in a forum on _URL_
3. WordPress as a static site generator on a serverless hosting at strattic
Currently the easiest way to benefit from both WordPress and the JAMstack is to use a platform like strattic, which turns your WordPress page into a static page and puts it on a serverless architecture.
The great thing about this platform is that you use your WordPress page as usual and then click a button to upload a static version of your page (HTML, CSS, Javascript) to a CDN, which pre-renders the static page and delivers it super fast everywhere. This approach makes it really easy to switch to the JAMStack, but unfortunately even this approach has its disadvantages:
Currently, strattic does not offer Ajax functionality, nor the possibility to run logins, comments or something like member sites, not to mention e-commerce and online store with WooCommerce.
My conclusion
JAMstack's approach offers really exciting new ways to bring websites to the web that are fast, secure, and scalable, but what good is that if you can't use your beloved CMS, WordPress, or have to do without important features?
My conclusion is therefore: The JAMStack is technically quite interesting, but for current WordPress users it is unfortunately not (yet) suitable for practical use!
Let's see how existing JAMstack solutions for WordPress like stattic or the Gatsby Themes develop and maybe we will be able to use the advantages of WordPress as well as the JAMstack


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Book Review: Building Web Reputation Systems by Farmer & Glass
By Eric Goldman
Building Web Reputation Systems by F. Randall Farmer & Bryce Glass (O'Reilly 2010) [affiliate link]
As you may know, for the past couple of years, I have been researching how we regulate reputation systems. My most recent recap of my progress-to-date. As part of researching other disciplines' approaches to reputation systems, I was pleasantly surprised to find this book, which discusses web reputation systems from a technical/product development standpoint. I'm not aware of other books directly on point, so that alone makes the book noteworthy. [If you know of analogous books that I should look at, I'd be grateful for the references.]
The word "reputation" is a complex and nuanced word. This book defines reputation as "information used to make a value judgment about an object or a person." Notice how this definition treats reputation as actionable information (i.e., making a "judgment"). I favor that approach; my work also uses an actionable definition of reputation.
Their definition equally treats both objects and people as having "reputation," and this does not work. In general, people are dynamic, i.e., they can change behavior; while content is static, i.e., an item of content does not change its character unless subsequently edited. This single definition of "reputation" created significant tension throughout the book. Recognizing this, the authors often bifurcated the discussion to separately address the process of establishing a person's "reputation" (which they confusingly called "karma"). However, the book primarily focuses on grading and sorting content items, especially user-generated content, and I personally would not describe content items as having a "reputation." As a result, I think the book is mistitled. It principally addresses content filtering, not "reputation" as I use the term.
Although this analytical tension pervades the book, the book nevertheless contained a lot of useful insights about both content filtering and establishing user trustworthiness. The authors have a lot of experience building filtering systems for different websites, so the book is packed with the kind of first-hand observations that only an insider can offer. There's no substitute for the voice of experience when designing Web 2.0 UGC systems, and this book provides an easy and accessible way to learn some tips and tricks.
The book emphasizes the authors' contributions to the reputation system at Yahoo Answers, and rightly so. Yahoo Answers has emerged into a bona fide success story and recently trumpeted its billionth answer. In my opinion, the book's high point is Chapter 10, a case study of how Yahoo Answers developed a new filtering and reputation system that helped turbocharge the Yahoo Answers community.
Although the book doesn't say this directly, two key lessons from Yahoo Answers' evolution are:
1) UGC websites should let users vote on content, but not all user votes should be weighted equally.
2) UGC websites do not need to publish all user-supplied content items in an equally prominent manner. Perhaps some content should be obscure/hard-to-find until other users validate it.
The book pitches these conclusions as novel, but they seemed fairly intuitive to me. We implemented a very similar system embodying these two points back in 2000-01 at Epinions. Epinions allowed users to grade each others' content; we weighted votes differentially based on users' credibility; and we displayed ungraded and poorly graded content only to registered users (a small fraction of our readers). The fact that the authors "discovered" these conclusions at Yahoo Answers shows the dire need for books like this to help websites implement best UGC management practices without reinventing the wheel.
The fact that the authors didn't acknowledge the Epinions precedent (and other systems like it) highlights another weakness of the book. There is a deep academic literature addressing the book's topics (especially on content filtering and user incentive systems), but the book barely acknowledges this literature. For example, several times the authors cite Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational for descriptions of human psychology and foibles. That's a perfectly credible citation, but it should be one of many literature citations, not the only citation. Instead of dipping into the rich academic literature, the book almost exclusively relies on the authors' experience-based impressions. These impressions are a valuable information source that makes the book worth reading. However, because those impressions aren't tempered with more rigorous academic findings, it's not clear to me at all that the authors' conclusions represent true best practices…or even state-of-the-art.
Because of its many structural flaws, this edition will not become a classic. Nevertheless, I have enthusiastically recommended the book to several UGC start-ups because the book provides a good repository of high-value experience-based perspectives that are not readily available elsewhere. Even if the book's recommendations are debatable, it's a debate worth having.

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


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14.6 percent of the variance in principles correlated with student academic achievement. The individual principles included: intellectual freedom (the single most important factor within that factor), followed by legal practices, curriculum-supportive collection, and program assessment. (Farmer 2006)
Thus, based on this study, for library media programs to optimize the correlation with student academic achievement, the following conditions should be in place: develop, implement and assess a strong library media program in collaboration with the school community; have a solid collection that supports the curriculum; provide optimal access, including flexible scheduling; plan and teach in collaboration with classroom teachers; obtain concrete administrative support; and participate actively in learning communities. (Farmer 2006)
… [H]aving an accessible high-quality collection correlates positively with reading comprehension and vocabulary, but it is not sufficient for overall academic achievement as measured by API scores. For that latter to occur, teaching and administrative principles also need to be implemented. (Farmer 2006)
Collaborative planning and instruction accounted for 17.7 percent of the variance in principles correlated with student academic achievement. The individual principles included: collaborative planning (the single most important factor within that factor), modeling effective teaching, integration of information literacy, facilities for learning, program planning assessment of student academic achievement, administrative support, and communication about the program. (Farmer 2006)

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


In this article we will walk through working with an already created People Flow. First, we will talk through adding people to a People Flow and then about how to add and editing the steps of the flow.
There are a number of ways to add people to people flows.
 1. From within the People Flow itself
 2. From a person's profile
 3. Using Mass Manage, a form, or another People Flow
From within the People Flow
To add people to a People Flow from within a particular flow, you first need to click into a particular step of the flow.
This will take you to a screen such as the one below. To add a person, simply press the 'Add Person to This Step' button and search for their name.
From their Profile
To add someone to a People Flow from within their profile, simply click 'Add to People Flow' in the blue sidebar.
This will bring up an 'Add to people flow' window. Simply select the flow you want to add them to.
Then simply the step, or steps you want to add them to, and assign an administrator.
Using Mass Manage, Forms or other People Flow steps
To add an individual or a group of people to a flow using the Mass Manage or Forms features, simply select the option of 'Add to People Flow' in the first action dropdown. Select the People Flow you want to add them to, and then assign which step and administrator.
That's it! Just follow the directions above and you will be able to add people into an already created People Flow.
Adding/Editing a new People Flow Step
To add a step to a People Flow from within the flow, press the 'Add Step' button.
Editing an existing People Flow step
To edit an existing People Flow step, simply select 'Edit' next to the step.
Both of these options bring up the same window. From this window you can edit a number of settings.
Some of the more important areas to pay attention to:
Due Date
This setting changes when a person is 'due' to be completed from the step. For instance, you may want someone to be processed immediately when added to a step, or the step might require that they are processed a set number of days after being added. There are a number of settings available – most of them are relative to the date they were added to the people flow step.
Hide Pending
This setting changes when people due within the flow will appear on the assigned administrator's dashboard, relative to when the person is due. For instance, if 'John Bubble' is due to be actioned on the 15th of March, and the 'Hide Pending' setting is set to 4 days, John won't appear on the dashboard until the 11th of March.
This setting changes if you want an email to be sent to the administrators of the People Flow step when someone is added to the step. If this option is selected and a person is added to the People Flow step without being assigned to an administrator, an email will be sent out to all administrators. If they have been assigned to an administrator, only the assigned administrator will receive the email.
These settings allow you to define the People Flow actions that are to be made upon completion of a step. You can choose from a range of actions, allowing you to change people's information, people categories, groups etc.
The 'Automated' setting for actions allows you to define whether you want the action to be applied to every person that goes through the step.
If you have any questions on any of these processes, please feel free to reach out to us directly at and we will be able to help you from there :)
Did this answer your question?


Dictionary.com Word FAQs
When should I use continuously as opposed to continually?
Continual means frequently recurring or intermittent. Continuous means occurring without interruption or unceasing. Continuous refers to actions which are uninterrupted: The upstairs neighbor played his stereo continuously from 6:00 PM to 3:30 AM. Continual actions, however, need not be uninterrupted, only repeated: My mother continually urges me to do my homework. / Rivers flow continuously, but the telephone is more likely to ring continually. A related mistake is to use continuous for something that happens at regular intervals. There are other adjectives that mean 'occurring repeatedly over a long period of time': "constant" (implying persistence, steadiness), "ceaseless" and "incessant" (referring to uninterrupted activity), "eternal" (lasting forever), "interminable" (seemingly endless, wearisome), "perennial" (going on year after year, with self-renewal), and "perpetual" (implying both duration and steadiness). So, try to remember to use -al for something which is either always going on or recurs at short intervals and never comes to an end, and -ous for something in which no break occurs between the beginning and the end.
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Yes on Amendment 66: The right choice for Colorado schools
This fall, voters have the chance to make an investment in Colorado's future that will help us rebound from the more than $1 billion in recent state cuts to K-12 schools and will make Colorado a leader in public education reform.
If Amendment 66 passes, schools can provide smaller class sizes, more one-on-one attention to every student and ensure districts have the flexibility to restore funding for things like art and music classes, sports programs and transportation.
Additionally, Amendment 66 provides money for classroom technology, longer school days and school years and early education in the form of full-day kindergarten for everyone who wants it. Importantly, it will eliminate the Colorado Preschool Program waiting list, giving more than 25,000 at-risk children a chance to enroll in preschool. It will help create a more level playing field for rural schools — a significant point for districts like Steamboat and South Routt. It will put effective educators into our classrooms, give principals more control over their budgets and requires state reports on how the system is stacking up.
Our state has passed significant education reforms during the past five years but have lacked the funding to be properly implemented. Amendment 66 will help pay to more thoroughly implement some of these notable reforms, including setting statewide standards for what students need to know at every grade level, holding schools and districts responsible for student achievement, ensuring all students have highly effective teachers and requiring every child to be reading at grade level by the third grade.
Every school district in the state will see an increase in funding under Amendment 66. What that means is our students will have access to a quality education.
If Amendment 66 passes, Steamboat Springs School District will receive about $1,507,500 more in funding and South Routt School District will receive an additional $330,300. Additionally, special education funding for Northwest Board of Cooperative Educational Services would increase by about $386,000 every year, allowing these districts to free up local dollars that have been spent on this federal requirement so that the additional money can benefit all students.
Putting our kids on the path to success is not a course of action that should be limited by where they happen to live.
Lastly, voters need to know the truth about what they'll pay and where the money will go. Amendment 66 provides every Coloradan the ability to know where their dollars are going.
Under the two-step income-tax rate increases called for in Amendment 66, the average Colorado taxpayer would pay an additional $133 per year, or about $2.50 per week. And new money raised under Amendment 66 is constitutionally required to go to classroom and programmatic improvements and is locked in the State Education Achievement Fund so it can't be used for other purposes.
Opponents of the measure aren't focused on what it will do for students and for our economy. Instead, they are pushing out misleading information and arguments. Their points are easily refuted. See for yourself at
Ultimately, Colorado voters are being asked to answer a fundamental question with Amendment 66: What kind of state do we want to leave for the next generation?
My answer is that we must be committed to creating and leaving them a better Colorado.
Join me in demonstrating that commitment by voting "yes" on Amendment 66.
Sue Birch is executive director of the Department of Health Care Policy and Finance.
Stan Zuber 1 year, 11 months ago
How will more money "put effective teachers in the classroom"? How will more money " ensure all students have highly effective teachers"? I thought that would be a highly effective administrators job, and something that should have been going on for years. It has been mentioned that it will increase accountability. How will more money do that? You don't buy accountability. Read the Commentary by Bill Keller "An Industry of Mediocrity" in the Oct 24, Pilot. I do not mind supporting education and believe that the majority of teachers are effective. Throwing more money at some of the problems is not going to fix it.
PJ Howe 1 year, 11 months ago
I went to High School in the Denver area in the 80's. We had one principal and one vice principal. My niece graduated from the same school 2 years ago. With 40 more kids in her class, they had an Executive Director, one principal and 7 (SEVEN) vice principals, all of whom I'm sure make well into 6 figures, not including benefits. I say we all vote for 66!!! By golly, we need to have more administrators to take care of all that extra money coming in. Yes on 66! Let's feed the bureaucracy until we have an 'effective' administrator for every 5 students!
George Hresko 1 year, 11 months ago
Sue-I've read the link. Everywhere the 'explanation' says 'can' I would prefer that it say 'will'. For example, instead of can add 1000 teachers, will add. There appears to be little assurance what actually will happen if 66 becomes law, other than that our taxes will increase, and apparently for Steamboat Springs School District, as pointed out above, the net increase is roughly $5 million annually! I would appreciate it if you would tell us, here in Routt County, how much more than the $133 that you are quoting the average family will be paying, that we will be passing over. It appears to me that it is as much as $1,000 per family here.
Kevin Nerney 1 year, 11 months ago
I've go an idea. Lets vote yes on "66" and pay more taxes. Lets vote to build a new police station so we can pay more taxes to pay for it. Lets vote to build more bike trails so we can pay more taxes. Lets sign up for Obozocare so we can pay more taxes (er premiums). Lets start a new program that collects my paycheck and sends me what if anything is leftover.
Harvey Lyon 1 year, 11 months ago
You know, I just got thru running the numbers. Pretty much the same Counties/School Districts that have been declared indigent and need rescue in their educational system by the Democratic Party in Amendment 66 are the same Counties and School Districts that were selected by the same Democratic Party to have their electricity rates raised by a minimum of 2% per year over the normal increase in electric rates to support renewable energy (Sb 252).
Go figure, $500 more per year (minimum) for power with no improvements in distribution or reliability versus $400 more per student. Folks in those Counties must have seperate checking accounts and different for power and one for education.
And the fact that electric money flows to a Democratic District that makes wind turbines is not mentioned. And the fact that additional taxes for schools has to pass thru Denver with sticky fingersand no legal controls is not mentioned.
Does anybody really truly believe in this crap?
I guess Diane Mitsch Bush does but I do have to wonder on her motivations.
Charles Rollman 1 year, 11 months ago
Here are the stats on Amendment 66 as I see them:
The Colorado income tax receipts for 2012 were about $5B. Amendment 66 increases them by $1B. This is a 20% increase in the state income tax.
There are 2,000,000 households in Colorado according to the US Census. Divide this number into $1B and you get an average of $500 tax increase per household. There will be a lot of people who pay well over the commonly quoted $133 household number.
The income tax rate for those earning under 75K will increase by 0.37% from 4.63% to 5.00%. This is an increase of 0.37/4.63 or 8%. If you paid a dollar last year, this year you'll pay $1.08.
The incremental income tax rate for those earning over 75K (which probably includes a lot of two income households) goes from 4.63% to 5.9%. This is a gargantuan increase of 1.27/5.9 = 27%. If you paid a dollar last year, you'll now pay $1.27.
This huge tax increase benefits only one sector of government: education. There are no funds going to infrastructure and no funds going to storm water mitigation.
Amendment 66 is too big, too imbalanced, and too poorly constrained. My wife and I voted NO!
Scott Wedel 1 year, 11 months ago
I think the SB schools which are committed to high levels of academic performance would put the money to the most effective use they are currently unable to fund.
The trouble is that it is pretty clear that poor schools are not the result of a lack of money or that more money fixes poor schools.
Why does Hayden consistently have such poor high school math proficiency scores? No one has claimed that they know the problem, but they lack the money to address it. A few years ago, some of their teachers went to the school board and said they believed the relative lack of instructional days is a big problem. Not only are their high school students receiving a chunk fewer days of instruction than SB, their lesson plans require more instructional days than in their school schedule. But for an assortment of local political reasons, the school board left things as is.
More money will not fix troubled school districts like Hayden. There is nothing in this tax increase that reforms any failing school.
mark hartless 1 year, 11 months ago
Yes, there are many people who DO "truly believe in this crap".
The "program" you facitiously proposed is already in place


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UltisolArticle Free Pass
Ultisol, one of the 12 soil orders in the U.S. Soil Taxonomy. Ultisols are reddish, clay-rich, acidic soils that support a mixed forest vegetation prior to cultivation. They are naturally suitable for forestry, can be made agriculturally productive with the application of lime and fertilizers, and are stable materials for construction projects. Occupying just over 8 percent of the nonpolar continental land area on Earth, they are found in humid temperate or tropical regions, including the southeastern United States and China, and in the humid tropics in South America and Africa.
Ultisols are found in geologically old landscape settings. They are characterized by a humus-rich surface horizon (the uppermost layer), by a layer of clay that has migrated below the surface horizon, and by a nutrient content low in available calcium, magnesium, potassium, and sodium. The well-developed, extensively leached soil horizons are enriched in kaolin-group clay minerals and in metal oxides and appear as red or bleached layers.
Ultisols differ from Alfisols by their few mineral nutrients and high content of aluminum. They differ from Oxisols by the lack—or sometimes deep displacement—of a horizon enriched in aluminum and iron oxides and in kaolin clay minerals.
What made you want to look up "Ultisol"? Please share what surprised you most...


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Videoconferencing Exposes Students to New Worlds
Since 1939, The Ward Melville Heritage Organization (WMHO), a nonprofit education organization, has been preserving and interpreting historical and environmentally sensitive places in Stony Brook, on the north shore of Long Island, N.Y. A vital key to fulfilling that mission is its commitment to education. Until recently, WMHO's educational programs have been limited to on-site field trips for Long Island students. The organization's historical sites and 88-acre salt marsh wetlands preserve are the basis for six educational programs that serve some 12,000 students each year. There is no question that these programs are a big component of WMHO's success, but just as technology is transforming the traditional classroom, it also allows the organization to reach more students every year through its distance learning program. WMHO trustees realized that the success of the wetlands field trip could start to harm the preserve as the number of students increased each year. So, the question became how to bring the wetlands experience to more students without negatively impacting the salt marsh. At the same time, WMHO wanted the ability to teach students from locations beyond Long Island about the importance of salt marsh ecosystems.
The answer came in 1996 in the form of a TV commercial showing how a small school on an isolated island in the Chesapeake Bay was able to reach learning institutions miles away through Bell Atlantic videoconferencing equipment. With the help of the New York Institute of Technology, WMHO installed its own ISDN-based videoconferencing unit. The next step was to work with then partners at Stony Brook University's Marine Sciences Research Center to adapt WMHO's existing salt marsh ecology program to a distance learning format. One of the challenges in creating a viable videoconference using the on-site program as a model was streamlining the existing curriculum to meet the essential learning objectives in a 45-minute to 60-minute time period. Interactive techniques are incorporated to hold the attention of students and teachers in remote classrooms. The end result was the creation of a new distance learning program called 'Electronic Explorations: The Salt Marsh Ecosystem.'
The main focus of the distance learning curriculum is the food web of the salt marsh ecosystem. Concentrating on this subject enables WMHO to accomplish most of the same learning objectives outlined in the original on-site field trip. Students still learn how to explore an ecosystem, how to classify marine organisms and identify their functional roles in that ecosystem. Some of the ecological issues key to the continued health of West Meadow Creek are also discussed. The food web is used as a starting point to show animal adaptations, introduce invading species and discuss why it is important not to interfere with the balance of any ecosystem. By emphasizing this aspect of the program, WMHO can serve fourththrough ninth-graders, as well as address a variety of K-12 National Academy of Science Education standards and New York state's learning standards for mathematics, science and technology as they relate to the subject areas of ecology and marine biology.
To make these sessions interesting and entertaining, while giving students a sense of what a live visit to the salt marsh is like, WMHO has developed a variety of interactive components and preparation materials for the program. After booking a videoconference with the organization, and prior to the connection date, the distant classroom teacher receives a learning kit with a teacher's handbook and Windows CD-ROM. The handbook includes complete unit lesson plans for preand post-videoconference activities, introductory readings, black-line worksheet masters and a resource list. The CD-ROM adds interactive components to preand post-conference activities with a food web game, video and audio clips, maps, and a reference component with Internet and Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia access.
During the actual videoconference, a variety of peripherals and materials make the program interesting and instructive. The document camera - one of the most versatile tools - is used to show color slides of microscopic plankton, aerial photos of the wetlands preserve, surrounding land and waters, and detailed close-ups of small marine animals. Mounted in the classroom close to the video monitor, the main camera is indispensable for discussion and interactive games like 'Salt Marsh Jeopardy.' The most innovative piece of equipment is a custom-designed wireless camera and audio system that allow the naturalist to teach right from the water's edge. Set into a pair of eyeglasses, the camera combines the visual impact of the wetlands with a wireless audio system that keeps the naturalist and students in constant communication.
The Salt Marsh Ecosystem distance learning program allows students from across the country to share the wonders of the salt marsh. Most of the time the connection is point-to-point between the naturalist, the facilitator in the Marine Conservation Center and one distant class. The connection may be multipoint, with more than one school dialing in at the same time. WMHO has also set up connections involving classes on-site at the Marine Conservation Center interacting with classes in distant locations. One of the most interesting connections was a customized videoconference with a group of seniors from Perry Meridian High School in Indiana, who were studying water quality in fresh water environments. Their teacher wanted to enhance that unit with similar information about saltwater ecosystems and include a fourth-grade class that the seniors were mentoring at neighboring Abraham Lincoln Elementary. With the help of William Wise, the associate dean of the Marine Sciences Research Center at Stony Brook University in New York, the lesson was adapted and presented to both classes simultaneously through a multipoint connection.
Through 'Electronic Explorations,' students from California, Texas, Indiana, Michigan, Connecticut and beyond have experienced the wetlands of Long Island Sound without leaving their classroom. The distance learning program also reaches students in underserved communities throughout the Tri-State area. With the generous support of the Verizon Foundation, the program has been made available to students in the New York communities of Westbury and Far Rockaway.
Research on how videoconferencing impacts students has shown that it can heighten motivation, improve communication, expand students' connections with the outside world and increase depth of learning. The effectiveness of our program has been measured through evaluation sheets completed by students and teachers after each Salt Marsh Ecosystem connection. Teachers have said they find the program 'exciting and meaningful for students.' They have noted the effect on their students, commenting on the 'lively communication' between students and naturalists. Teachers also said their students have 'enjoyed seeing what they're learning about in the classroom first-hand.' Responses from students also indicate they are fully engaged in the learning process. They welcome the opportunity to engage with experts and visit an environment outside of their home region. The program also heightens curiosity about marine biology and ecology.
The future of distance learning at WMHO is very bright. Last fall, WMHO began offering an 'Electronic Explorations' series for adults on Long Island. WMHO is bringing programs from content providers such as theSmithsonian Environmental Research Center, the Ocean Institute and the Cincinnati Zoo into its facility to introduce videoconferencing to a population inexperienced with this technology. In the process, adults will be provided with lifelong learning experiences. In addition, this year WMHO will launch a new distance learning program called 'The First Long Islanders.' This videoconference will focus on the Native Americans who settled in Stony Brook before the Europeans set foot on these shores. WMHO's Marine Conservation Center broadcast location is next to a Native American site where an anthropological dig unearthed items 3,000 years old. But these distance learning programs are pieces of a much larger picture. WMHO is currently building an 8,800-square-foot Educational and Cultural Center equipped with videoconferencing units and telecommunications technology.
The Ward Melville Heritage Organization
Stony Brook, NY
This article originally appeared in the 03/01/2002 issue of THE Journal.


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> Plant resource >
Benefits of plants
Plant care tips
Benefits of Trees
Quick facts on the benefits of trees
Counteracting Environmental Stress
Acid rain and plants
The Financial Benefits of Green Spaces
The financial benefits of green spaces
Indoor Plants for Cleaner Air
Avoid Sick Building Syndrome.
Lawn and Turf Benefits
A natural air-conditioner and noise filter.
Xeriscaping, not Zeroscaping
A perfect garden watered only by nature.
The Environmental Benefits of Green Spaces
The environmental benefits of green spaces


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About the Metamorphic Technique®
UPDATED JUNE 2017
We get a sense of the Metamorphic Technique® by looking at how life expresses itself in nature. How does an acorn know how to grow into an oak tree or a caterpillar into a butterfly? The acorn and the caterpillar hold this knowledge deep within themselves. There is an intelligence and power at work that facilitates the potential of both the acorn and the caterpillar to transform them into new life forms. In the same way, the form of life that we ourselves currently experience can also express itself in different ways and even more enriching forms.
In the case of the acorn or caterpillar, life simply reveals itself in different forms. However, as well as transformation expressing itself at the physical level, there is also the potential for it to occur at the emotional or consciousness level. In other words a 'change of heart or a change of mind' can also naturally occur whereby we suddenly find ourselves in a much more fulfilling relationship with our life and the world at large.
In the practice of the Metamorphic Technique® the practitioner uses a light, non-invasive touch on specific areas of the feet, hands and head while at the same time providing a space free from direction towards a particular outcome. In this regard, the founder, Gaston Saint-Pierre, defined the Metamorphic Technique® as simply being a practice of detachment. The practitioner does not look to address specific symptoms or problems, nor do they impose their will or seek to direct the recipient's life in any way. An environment may then emerge in which it is acknowledged that the power and intelligence, already inherent in the person, is the best guiding factor for the unique life of the person.
Practitioners cannot predict or guarantee what will happen after a session because this depends on the uniqueness of each person's own life. People may feel energised or relaxed or both, however practitioners have absolutely no expectation of there being any right or wrong way for people to feel after a session.
The Metamorphic Technique® is suitable for everyone, regardless of age, circumstance or life situation.
Practitioners make no claims for the Technique, however it is a fact that many people who have sessions have reported an array of different benefits. In some cases people report changes that are immediately noticeable, while in others they are more subtle. They can range from general feelings of having more energy and confidence to improvements in physical, mental or emotional health, releasing of old habits or gradually letting go of past hurts. People will sometimes report significant changes in the way they feel about and think about themselves; they may even report a growing sense of purpose and inner strength. It seems people may be unconsciously drawn to the Metamorphic Technique® and the Metamorphic Association in order to create more of what they need in their lives as individuals, and discover new ways they can be of help to the organisations and groups they are part of. Some people have described it like 'coming home to themselves'.
It is entirely up to each person to determine the number and frequency of sessions received. Some people are happy to have just one session, while others have sessions every so often or when they feel the need.
Metamorphic Technique® is gentle, easy to learn and, since no special abilities or background is needed, it is accessible to everyone. The practice is very simple to learn and to use. Workshops are available to explore the technique or to deepen your understanding of it. Some want to use it just with family and friends and others wish to train to be practitioners.
Gaston Saint-Pierre founded the Metamorphic Technique® in the late 1970's. He had long held a passionate interest in the question of transformation, and also had a deep curiosity about why transformation cannot, it appears, be intentionally 'caused'. When he encountered the Prenatal Therapy work of Robert St. John, this proved to be the final trigger to the emergence of the practice he named the Metamorphic Technique®. He founded the Metamorphic Association in 1979 and this became a registered educational charity in 1984.


by Tresca Weinstein
"2: Dialogue with Lucinda," performed Thursday and Friday at EMPAC, comprises Beutler's remakes of two seminal Childs works, created in the 1970s when Childs was a member of the highly influential Judson Dance Theater. Both pieces are exercises in minimalism, with a limited set of movements repeated and rearranged in myriad variations.
Watching Beutler's five dancers embody these precise compositions with crystal clarity is like listening to Pachelbel's Canon, or watching waves rise and fall. Rather than fading, the loveliness of each slightly different combination of elements increases with every iteration.
"Radial Courses" begins with four dancers (Cristiana Ruggieri, Hillary Blake Firestone, Aimar Perez Gali and Javier Vaquero Ollero) walking briskly in a circle around the stage, their matched strides seemingly full of determination. In the next 18 minutes, they continue walking in a circle and, as they go, the patterns of movement morph both suddenly and subtly.
First the dancers add a skip-like step, then quick turns that set them heading in opposite directions as they continue to trace the same path. They break away in pairs and eventually spread out singly around the stage before coming together again. There's a purity and crispness to their every motion, a simplicity that belies the dancers' perfectly timed conjunctions.
Beutler's most obvious addition to the piece is a short spoken section in which Firestone takes a break from circling to explicate the action onstage; it adds little and is thankfully brief. (One fun tidbit: Firestone informs us that Childs visited Beutler's studio in the Netherlands during rehearsals, and told the group she chose the title of the piece because it sounded better than "Running in Circles.")
Dancer Marjolein Vogels is the focal point of the tightly structured "Interior Drama," which shuffles and recombines a half dozen movements among the five dancers. As they float through gentle pirouettes, walk backwards in curving lines and sweep their feet in prance-like kicks, the dancers appear both loose-limbed and in absolute control. "Interior Drama" was originally performed in silence; Beutler has added an electronic score, created specifically for the work by Gary Shepherd, that complements the architecture of the dance while taking its own journey through dark and light moods.
Beutler's recreation is both an homage and an exploration of the fundamentals of choreography. In covering Childs' greatest hits, she reminds us that less can be so much more.
Tresca Weinstein is a frequent contributor to the Times Union.
Where: EMPAC, 110 8th St., Troy
When: 7 p.m. Thursday
Program: "Radial Courses," "Interior Drama"
Length: 50 minutes, one intermission
Repeats: 7 p.m. Friday
Also: Beutler's "1: Songs" at 9 p.m. Friday
Tickets: $15 for one show; $25 for both
Info: _PHONE_ or
Categories: Dance, Reviews
Tresca Weinstein
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Have you ever wonderedthat there are dinosaurs that thrived in the whole world but non in India? Then let me tell you-There are some fearsome and powerful dinosaurs ( not only herbivores, Carnivores too!) that thrived in India. One of them is the Rajasaurus, Raja means Rex/King and Saurus means Reptiles/Lizards, technically it's king lizard. It was one of the largest carnivorous dinosaur found in India! It was about 25 to 30 feet (7.6 to 9 meters) long, and about 8 feet (2.4 meters) tall. It fed upon carnivorous dinosaurs like Compsosuchus and Pradhania, and some herbivorous dinosaurs such as Kotasaurus, Isisaurus and Barapasaurus.
Rajasaurs had a real tough timedealing with some dinosaurs such as Orthogoniosaurus, Dahalokely and Indosuchus for food and territory. There were some dinosaurs like Dravidosaurusthe true relative of Stegosaurus and also the Brachypodosaurus-the Indian Ankylosaurus,which could take the head out of the Rajasaurus in just one swipe.


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Thermal Cycler Temperature Accuracy – A Comparison of Different Models
Application Note Nov 14, 2018
Thermal cycler temperature accuracy may be a critical factor in the success or failure of a PCR reaction. Temperature accuracy is particularly important during annealing temperature optimization, which requires both accuracy and consistency in the thermal cycler.
Download this application note to learn about:
- Thermal cycler temperature performance across different models
- Thermal cycler temperature performance against manufacturers' published specifications
- Temperature accuracy measurements in isothermal, VeriFlex™, and gradient mode


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The amplifiers of X-Sensors are suitable for the universal signal conditioning of strain gauges sensors. They are therefore suitable for amplifying the mV-sensor signal of any force and strain sensors and load cells. Thanks to the compact inline housing, the installation of the amplifier can be carried out directly at the measuring point to save space.
Due to the control input for an automatic zero point adjustment, the amplifier should be used in cyclic applications. Cyclic applications describe recurring, fast force cycles, such as they can be found in presses. Here it is important that a zero point adjustment is made at regular intervals to prevent drifting of the measuring signal.
Zero point adjustment
The zero point adjustment at these amplifiers are carried out by a digital zero adjustment mechanism. The zero point adjustment is not stored permanently, it is lost after a power off. It provides a non-volatile, stable zero point independent of cycle times. Therefore, it is qualified for all dynamic applications and can be used in all kind applications which require a periodical zero point reset, triggered by a digital input.
The reset input does trigger a zero point adjustment by the PLC. It is available with an "Active Low" and "Active High" Logic.


Vietnam cat meat trade revealed: Pets stolen, drowned, bludgeoned and boiled as appetite grows for animal flesh
More than a million cats are killed in Vietnam for their meat every year in a secretive, brutal and growing trade that risks spreading diseases to humans, an undercover investigation has found.
Pets and strays are stolen from the streets and even from people's homes, trafficked across the country without food or water, and slaughtered in unsanitary and agonising ways, according to campaigners.
Thieves have even clashed violently with cat owners, and in some cases have been reportedly killed in brawls.
The animals may be drowned, bludgeoned with a hammer, boiled alive or electrocuted, investigators for the Four Paws animal welfare organisation said. Their findings are based on months' worth of surveillance of holding areas, traffickers and restaurants, and speaking to traders.
A live cat is sold for around £5 a kg, and 1kg of raw meat costs £6.50. Restaurants offer dishes prepared with cat meat for about £5, the research found.
Black cats are worth even more: traders sell them alive for £6.50 a kg, and their meat can fetch £16.50 a kg.
Four Paws and the UK-based Change For Animals Foundation, which collaborated on the research, say cat meat dishes, known as "Little Tiger", are growing in popularity despite increasing pet ownership in Vietnam.
In January, a ban on slaughtering cats was scrapped, leading to a surge in demand for cat meat. It is especially popular in the north but is spreading south, as far as Ho Chi Minh City, the investigation found.
Earlier this year The Independent revealed how sales of dog and cat meat had risen in Vietnam and Cambodia since the outbreak of the coronavirus, because people believe it has "warming" properties that head off flu viruses.
Some restaurants buy animals directly from thieves and slaughter them on site, but most buy from wholesalers or slaughterhouses, according to the researchers. They believe the coastal tourist resorts of Da Nang and Hoi An in central Vietnam are hot spots for cat thefts.
"At the wholesalers we discovered many cats with collars — a clear sign that they were pets. During our research, we also met many pet owners who were desperately looking for their stolen cats," said Katherine Polak, a Four Paws expert and vet in Southeast Asia.
"Authorities usually turn a blind eye because they are often involved in the trade, either profiting from bribes or are consumers themselves."
Lola Webber, co-founder of Change For Animals Foundation, said: "In holding areas, wholesalers keep cats crammed into cages for days until they have enough to cover transport costs.
"Over hundreds of kilometres the cats are transported without water, food and sufficient ventilation to slaughterhouses scattered throughout Vietnam. Some wholesalers even use luggage compartments on regular passenger buses for the trafficking."
Up to 200 cats have been seen in cages on buses.
Many cats die of exhaustion, heat stroke, dehydration or injuries caused by their capture and transportation. After they are inhumanely killed, their fur is removed and the skin burned, before the carcasses are gutted and frozen.
Slaughterhouses are a perfect breeding ground for new diseases to emerge that could infect humans, with potentially catastrophic results, the campaigners say.
"Practices used in the cat meat trade could also potentially lead to the outbreak of zoonotic diseases, as we have seen with Covid-19, due to insanitary conditions, brutal and unhygienic treatment of animals, multi-species transport, holding and slaughtering facilities, and cross-border transportation and handling," said Dr Polak.
She said younger generations consider cat meat an exotic delicacy, but for older people, consumption is usually linked to customs, superstition and the lunar calendar. "Some locals are convinced that eating cat meat repels bad luck. Others eat it, especially from black cats, because they believe it has healing effects, although there is no scientific evidence for this."
The investigations identified northerly Hanoi and the Thai Binh province, with high numbers of restaurants, as popular places for eating the meat.
"We also know that many cats, often pre-killed and frozen, are coming in from Southern China as the cat population is decimated in Hanoi due to the trade," Dr Polak said.
"While the consumption of dog meat in Asia is increasingly being discussed in public, the equally brutal cat meat trade is still relatively unknown."
Two months ago a couple accused of poisoning dozens of pet dogs and cats with cyanide so that they could be butchered were arrested and charged with theft.
Four Paws and Change For Animals are calling on the Vietnamese government to reinstate the ban and strengthen laws to stop pet thefts.
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Nick Morris traces photonic processes in the electronics manufacturing industry
In 1974 the Intel 8080 chip held a few thousand transistors, while the smallest feature on the chip was about 6µm across. Thirty years later, the latest Pentium processor holds more than 100 million transistors – the smallest component is almost 100 times smaller than on the 8080. Photonics materials processing has enabled these advances.
Electronics manufacturing process contains a number of steps, each of which has spawned its own supporting industry. Different manufacturers use different methods, and it would be impossible to discuss all possibilities and permutations. Instead, let us trace the process of semiconductor fabrication to see how photonics is being used at various steps.


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History of Bothin Marsh
Bothin Marsh once extended from the Marin Headlands into the Mill Valley foothills, but like many bayside marshes and wetland areas, it has weathered through its share of threats through the years.
1800s: Bothin Marsh named after original owner Henry Bothin
1970: Developer KSW Properties fills in and builds on portions of the extensive marsh
1975: Trust for Public Land purchases remaining marsh area
1981: Marin County Parks and Open Space District formally acquires the marsh and easement across the old railroad tracks
Photo: Diana Clock
Bothin Marsh is a beautiful marsh over 100 acres in size on the north end of Richardson Bay alongside a well-traveled section of the Bay Trail. This Marin County Open Space District Preserve is a mix of tidal wetlands, sloughs and Bay that provides habitat for hundreds of native bird and wildlife species, including the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse and California clapper rail. It's also a resting stop for over 400 species of migratory birds traveling on the Pacific Flyway. The Bothin Marsh Preserve includes tidal wetlands in the north end of Richardson Bay.
Photo: Diana Clock
Save The Bay Restores Bothin Marsh
In comparison to some of Save The Bay's restoration sites, Bothin Marsh is a relatively healthy marsh. Yet to ensure that this historic wetland is preserved in perpetuity, the Marin County Parks and Open Space District (MCPOSD) and Save The Bay are partnering to control invasive plants, and create upland habitat for endangered wildlife.
Goals of this restoration project include:
- Provide refuge for wildlife by planting native wetland plants such as monkey flower and gumplant
- Create a natural buffer of native wetland plants between the heavily-used trails and the marsh to encourage people and dogs to stay on the trail and out of the sensitive wetland area
- Eradicate invasive iceplant to allow for growth of native plants
- Monitor plant growth and map invasive plant species for future removal


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Twice Exceptional Guide
This ODE publication helps parents and educators of gifted students with disabilities recognize, understand and meet their needs, enabling these twice-exceptional children to reach their highest potential. The guide provides examples of challenging and appropriate instructional strategies and interventions and includes case studies of twice-exceptional students that illustrate how educators can meet their dual needs.
Twice Exceptional Guide (PDF)
Gifted Students with Autism
The Belin-Blank Center at the University of Iowa has released an updated guide for working with students with Asperger Syndrome called the Paradox of Giftedness and Autism.
Click here to view the publication.


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Stilt houses in southern Ca Mau help cope with climate change
CA MAU — Residents are building stilt houses to adapt to rising sea levels in southernmost Ca Mau Province's Ngoc Hien District.
Chairman of the district People's Committee Nguyen Truong Giang said the province was below sea level and its 254-km coastline and 800km of river and canal lengths were the most threatened by climate change in the country.
"In the last five years, the sea level has risen higher and higher in this district, and only the old style houses with stilts were unaffected by the problem," Giang said.
Stilt houses suited the conditions and also the tight economics in Ngoc Hien District where the rate of poor households ranked as one of the highest in the country, Giang said.
A stilt house cost VND20-50 million (US$950-1,900) and stands on 1-1.5m piles made from mangrove timber. It helps people avoid the moisture of coastal salt water, especially at high tide.
Tran Van Phung, in Dat Mui Village, said such houses cost less because timber from mangrove trees was cheap and the homes did not have much furniture, such as beds, chairs and tables.
The houses lasted about 10 years and could withstand 1-m sea levels, said Phung adding in the past, traditional houses went under 20cm of water.
In the last five years, Ngoc Hien authorities had helped 1,200 poor households build the houses. Most offices, companies and residential houses were also built on stilts.
However, Giang warned that stilt houses could only adapt to rises in sea level, not strong storms. The district banned people from building their houses near the sea and encouraged those who had houses there to move to safer areas.
Along coastal rivers there were thousands of vulnerable households facing high tides regularly.
Apart from stilt houses, Ngoc Hien District was asking for money to build sea dykes to mitigate further climate change impacts. — VNS


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Mark Hart helps high school teens understand HOW and WHY the words of the Mass are changing. Mark compares the "dynamic equivalent" and the "formal equivalent" of how we translate words from Latin to English, and then explains the elaborate process used to create the new Roman Missal. Finally, Mark challenges teenagers to rediscover the meaning behind the words we pray at Mass each week.
For more information go to IsMassChanging.org. For an overview all the videos you can download go here on CatholicYouthMinistry.com


Tag Archives: Vesta
Deities were common deception on the reverse of the Roman coins. These were used if an emperor wished to be associated with attributes of the particular gods and goddess. More often gods were used rather than goddesses. For example, if the emperor wanted to appear peaceful he could depict 'Minerva Pacifiera' as the 'Bringer of peace'. Furthermore, the deities were depicted by the Emperors so they can use the image to suggest the gods approved of and support their reign or associate themselves with the divine as Julius Caesar did with his depiction of Goddesses Venus Continue reading Divinity: Goddesses on the Roman coins II
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Step 1: Design the actuator you have always wanted.
Step 2: Enter the specifications
You will have to manipulate the gap height parameter to find the gap height that gives the best flux density (least power) while not exceeding whatever spatial limitations you might have. As you play with this, you will not that the equations break if you choose this parameter unusually low or high.
Step 3: Machine the stator and bobbin
A couple of tips on this step. Machining a deep pocket in Iron (or soft steel) for the stator is a pain. As a alternative, you may machine a cylinder and a disc. Place the cylinder on a hot plate and the disc in ice water. After the cylinder is at 500 oF and the disc at 30 oF, slam them together using an arbor press (exciting). The bobbin should be made out of aluminum or plastic. Be careful while assembling the magnet and flux puck into the stator cup. It is recommended to machine a guide for the magnet and puck so as to avoid losing digits.
Step 4: Wind bobbin
Wind the magnet wire onto the bobbin. With either a lathe or a bobbin winding machine. Try to keep relatively constant tension on the wire as you wind the coil.
Wrap electrical tape around the finished windings or pot in epoxy.


Minolta's Early 35mm Rangefinders Gave Leica a Run For Its Money
The second model of the Minolta-35, launched in 1953.
All Photos © John Wade
But go back to the 1940s/1950s and you'll discover a prestigious range of Minolta 35mm rangefinder cameras that rivaled and, some would argue, bettered the Leicas of the time.
Quick pause for an explanation for those unfamiliar with rangefinder cameras. The term refers to a model whose viewfinder, or sometimes a separate eyepiece, incorporates a system of mirrors that interact as the lens is focused to identify the correct camera-to-subject distance, as an aid to accurate focusing in non-reflex cameras.
It was Leitz that popularized the style in a 35mm camera with the introduction of the Leica II in 1932. However, by 1947, when the first Minolta-35 camera was launched, the Leica IIIf was on the market.
Side by side, the first version of the Minolta-35 Model II and the Leica IIIf.
Model I And Model II
There were two basic models of the Minolta-35 rangefinder, and some variations within them. Apart from minor cosmetic changes, the variations in the Minolta Model I camera chiefly concerned the image size. Leica had previously set a standard of 24x36mm, which was followed by most 35mm camera manufacturers. But the Model I, progressing through six variations, began with a 24x32mm image, moved to 24x33mm and then on to 24x34mm. The company eventually adopted the more traditional 24x36mm format with the launch of the Model II in 1953, of which there were two versions with very minor cosmetic variations.
We are going to compare the first version of the Model II with its contemporary, the Leica IIIf. There were some manufacturers who unashamedly made complete Leica copies. The Minolta-35 was not a Leica copy as such, but it did show strong influences from its German rival.
The Minolta (above) and Leica (below) exhibit very similar top plates.
Minolta Vs. Leica
At 5.25 inches, the Minolta was the same length as the Leica, but stood a quarter of an inch higher. Comparing the top plates of the two cameras, you can see the obvious influences: film wind knobs, shutter releases, shutter speed dials, rangefinder housings, and rewind knobs were all in similar positions. The Minolta's shutter release, however, was raised slightly above the wind knob and speed dial on either side, making the camera easier to use than the Leica, whose release button fell below the height of the other controls.
The Leica won out on its top shutter speed of 1/1000 sec, against the Minolta's 1/500 sec. On both cameras, speeds from the fastest to the slowest practical for hand holding the camera were set on the top plate dial. Then,with that dial at its slowest setting, another knob on the front of the body was used to set slower speeds down to one full second.
On each camera, the speed dial revolved as the film was wound, and the speeds could not be accurately set until the film was fully wound and the dial reached its maximum rotation.
Film loading from the rear was easy with the Minolta, compared to the base loading of the Leica.
The Minolta beat the Leica in having a delayed action control right from the earliest model in 1947, which the Leica wouldn't see until a late version of the IIIf in 1954. The Minolta also had a longer rangefinder base (the distance between the two rangefinder windows), making it more accurate. The visual aspect of the rangefinder, which involved turning the focus control until two images coincided, was conveniently combined with the Minolta viewfinder; the Leica used separate windows for viewing and rangefinding.
The Leica had a collapsible lens that had to be pulled out at the end of a short tube before exposure, and if the photographer forgot to do that, the picture was ruined. The Minolta used a fixed lens that was always positioned ready for shooting.
The Minolta also beat the Leica for film loading. Right from the start, Leica had featured a system in which the film was threaded from the cassette to a take-up spool outside the camera, and then the two pushed up into the body by way of a removable base plate. The operation was fiddly at best and prone to problems if the film did not attach correctly to the take-up spool. By comparison, the Minolta simply used a back that swung open, which made loading the film far easier and much more conventional.
The Minolta with its 135mm telephoto lens and viewfinder fitted.
Identical Lens Mounts
Maybe the most important feature shared by the two cameras was the lens mounts, which were identical. The Minolta therefore accepted, and could be used with, then current Leica lenses, of which there was a large range, covering focal lengths from wide-angle to telephoto. The range of Rokkor lenses, made for the Minolta, was a lot more modest: 45mm f/2.8, 50mm f/2, 85mm f/2.8, 110mm f/5.6, and 135mm f/4.
When extra lenses were used on any rangefinder camera, they needed to be combined with separate accessory viewfinders. This was the case with both the Minolta and the Leica cameras. However, longer focal lengths, unavailable in Minolta's Rokkor range, were often likely to be used on the Leica with a Visoflex, an attachment that screwed into the body, incorporated an eye-level or waist-level viewfinder, and effectively turned the camera into a single lens reflex.
Using Leica lenses, the Visoflex could also be used on the Minolta, although, when screwed into place, it was fouled slightly by the delayed action lever and slow speed shutter dial. As this prevented the device from being screwed completely into the body it would have been okay for close-up work, but might have affected infinity focusing.
So who won out in the end—the German Leica, or the Japanese Minolta? The Minolta certainly won on price. In 1953, a Model II with an f/2.8 lens cost $150, against a Leica IIIf with an f/2 lens at $348. For some features and ease of use, the Minolta might also have had the edge. For lens range, the Leica won hands down. Then, there's the durability factor. Find a Leica IIIf today and there's a good chance the shutter is still working. A Minolta-35 with a working shutter today is a little less likely.
A Leica Visoflex with Leitz Telyt 20cm lens transforms the Minolta into a single lens reflex.
Expect to pay around $300 to $450 for a Minolta Model I, more for the earliest models, and $175 to $250 for a Model II.


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Handouts is a paperless student/teacher platform for tablet-centered classrooms. With this app teachers can create handouts to distribute to students by taking a picture of a paper activity sheet or importing digital files they've already made. Teachers can select which handouts they want to distribute and send them to the whole class or individual students.
Once students are sent handouts they can open them on their tablet and use their finger or a stylus to complete the activity. After they've finished, students can turn in their work straight to their teachers. Teachers can grade student work from within the app and send feedback for kids to review. With Handouts teachers can even select certain pieces of student work to put in a digital portfolio.
Visit Handouts' website to learn more about this workflow solution for iPad and Android tablets!
cross posted at classtechtips.com
Monica Burns is a fifth grade teacher in a 1:1 iPad classroom. Visit her website at classtechtips.com for creative education technology tips and technology lesson plans aligned to the Common Core Standards.


Flow Sculpting
Microfluidic channel flow sculpting via pillar programming
The ability to control the shape of a flow in a passive microfluidic device enables potential applications in cytometry, chemical reaction control, particle separations, and complex material fabrication in the microscale of the so-called "Lab on a chip". Recent work has demonstrated the concept of sculpting fluid streams in a microchannel using a set of pillars or other structures that individually deform inertial fluid flow in a predictable pre-computed manner. These individual pillars are then placed in a defined sequence within the channel to yield the composition of the individual flow deformations – and ultimately complex user defined flow shapes. In this way, an elegant mathematical operation can yield the final flow shape for a sequence without experiment or additional CFD numerical simulation. Hence, the name "pillar programming".
Figure 1: Pillar Programming
Collaboration with UCLA's biomicrofluidics laboratory (_URL_) has yielded an open-source, GPU based version of the pillar programming software, "uFlow". uFlow runs on most modern consumer grade GPUs, and relieves the end-user of the computationally difficult Navier-Stokes solutions that form the basis of uFlow's dataset. uFlow's simulations have been experimentally validated for complex fluid structures, demonstrating the variety of possible fluid shaping transformations for a single inlet condition. uFlow is freely available at _URL_
We have recently developed an open-source utility for solving the inverse problem in pillar programming. That is, given a fluid flow shape, what is the pillar sequence and inlet design that will produce such a shape? Our utility uses a customizable genetic algorithm to determine optimal pillar sequence and inlet flow design for a given fluid flow shape. Flowsculpt currently runs on Windows, Linux, and OS X operating systems, with minimal dependencies, and is freely available here:
Flowsculpt repository
Features of Flowsculpt include:
 - No proprietary dependencies
 - Thread parallel execution
 - Free or fixed inlet configuration (i.e., allow the GA to design the inlet, or enforce a particular inlet design)
 - Export microfluidic device designs to uFlow
 1. H. Amini, E. Sollier, M. Masaeli, Y. Xie, B. Ganapathysubramanian, H. A. Stone, D. Di Carlo, Engineering fluid flow using sequenced microstructures, 2013, 4 (May), _PHONE_.
 2. D. Stoecklein, C-Y. Wu, K. Owsley, Y. Xie, D. Di Carlo, B. Ganapathysubramanian, Micropillar sequence designs for fundamental inertial flow transformations, Lab on a Chip, 2014, 14 (21), 4197-4204.
 3. K. G. Lore, D. Stoecklein, M. Davies, B. Ganapathysubramanian, S. Sarkar, Hierarchical feature extraction for efficient design of microfluidic flow patterns, JMLR: Workshop and Conference Proceedings 44 (2015).
 4. D. Stoecklein, C-Y. Wu, D. Kim, D. Di Carlo, B. Ganapathysubramanian, Optimization of micropillar sequences for fluid flow sculpting, Physics of Fluids, 2016, 28 (1), 53-65.
 5. D. Stoecklein, M. Davies, N. Wubshet, J. Le, B. Ganapathysubramanian, Automated design for microfluid flow sculpting: multi-resolution approaches, efficient encoding, and GPU implementation, ASME Journal of Fluids Engineering, 2016, doi: 10.1151/_PHONE_


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Several sources state that the computational or time complexity of square rooting is the same as that of multiplication (or division). See for example:
 - Jean-Michel Muller, "Elementary Functions: Algorithms and Implementation" (Birkhäuser, Boston, USA, 2006, 2nd edn.) on p.93 where the Newton-Raphson method is considered. It is stated that "...the complexity of square root evaluation or division is the same as that of multiplication..."
 - H. Alt, "Square rooting is as difficult as multiplication", Computing, 1979, 21, (3), pp.221-232. It is stated on p.231 "...that we have shown that square rooting is of the same complexity as the other arithmetical operations mentioned. The proof can be extended to higher roots, as well."
Although there are several different approaches to implement computation of the elementary operations (+,-,x,/) it is therefore possible to implement square rooting such that the complexity is equivalent to an implementation of multiplication (a single multiplication of 2 real numbers).
What does "the proof can be extended to higher roots" mean? Is it possible to implement the calculation of the nth root with complexity equivalent to a single multiplication or to the multiplication of $n$ real numbers? If not, what is the complexity of calculating the nth root of a real number?
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How are your real numbers represented? Without specifying this, it's rather unclear... – Dima Pasechnik Jun 13 '12 at 10:04
Say single precision floating point real numbers – aslan Jun 13 '12 at 10:09
In the paper of H. Alt, big O notation is used, which is only an asymptotic complexity bound, and it does not mean that the operations are equivalent. In the analysis of high-level algorithms (the book of Jean-Michel Muller), the complexity of multiplication and square root evaluation is assumed the same for simplicity. In real computation, a square root evaluation is about 5 times more expensive than a multiplication. – Stanislav Jun 13 '12 at 10:17
If you are interested in the floating point instruction latencies in real processors, see "Intel 64 and IA-32 Architectures Optimization Reference Manual" (Appendix C) – Stanislav Jun 13 '12 at 10:20
2 Answers 2
up vote 10 down vote accepted
First, note that the asymptotic complexity of arithmetic operations stated in the common literature concerns operations on numbers with arbitrary precision, and the running time is expressed as a function of the desired number of digits. From the standpoint of asymptotic complexity it makes no sense to ask for operations with constant precision (e.g., single floats, as you mentioned in the comments): there are only $O(1)$ such numbers, hence the operation can be evaluated in time $O(1)$ (e.g., by a look-up table).
Let me thus denote the desired precision as $m$ (since you use the customary $n$ for something else). The result you quote is that $\sqrt a$ can be computed in time $O(M(m))$, where $M(m)$ is any function (satisfying some mild regularity conditions) such that multiplication of two $m$-bit integers can be performed in time $M(m)$. (The currently known asymptotically fastest multiplication algorithm has $M(m)=m\log m\,2^{O(\log^*m)}$.) The algorithm uses Newton iteration $x\mapsto x-\frac{x^2-a}{2x}$. This iteration has a quadratic rate of convergence, hence $O(\log m)$ iterations suffice, and each step takes $O(1)$ multiplications and divisions, leading to the estimate $O(M(m)\log m)$ on the total running time. The extra factor of $\log m$ can be removed by the following observation: since the number of correct digits is roughly doubled by each iteration, we do not have to perform all operations with precision $m$, it suffices to use precision sufficient to accomodate the correct digits. Thus only the last iteration is performed with precision $m$, the last but one has precision $m/2$, the one before that $m/4$, and so on. Then the running time is $O(M(m)+M(m/2)+M(m/4)+\cdots)$. Since $M$ is essentially linear, this is can be bounded by a geometric series, whose sum is $O(M(m))$. (Note by the way that the fact that division can be done in time $O(M(m))$ also uses a similar Newton iteration argument.)
Now, what about $n$th roots in general? You can use Newton iteration again, as Denis suggests. The analysis is similar to the square root case, but since each step takes $O(\log n)$ multiplications, you get a bound $O(M(m)\log n)$. Note that if $n$ is given in binary, $\log n$ is the length of the input, hence this is an algorithm with worse than a quadratic running time. Another approach is to compute $\sqrt[n]a$ as $\exp((\log a)/n)$. Using binary splitting, the Taylor series for $\exp$ and $\log$ can be evaluated in time $O(M(m)(\log m)^2)$; using algorithms based on the arithmetic-geometric mean this can be reduced to $O(M(m)\log m)$, leading to $n$th root computation with the same time bound. This also has an extra $\log$ factor, but it is independent of $n$. I don't know how to compute $\sqrt[n]a$ in time $O(M(m))$, and I am somewhat skeptical that such a thing is known. It might well be that the comment in Alt's paper is only intended to cover the case of constant $n$.
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+1.but the $m$ in $M(m)$ is very annoying,could we get it's upper bound by the polynomial or the function to solve? – XL _at_China Jul 31 at 22:06
I can't make heads or tails of your comment. Any bound has to involve $m$, as it is the length of the output, and the bound is already polynomial (almost linear) as given. – Emil Jeřábek Aug 1 at 9:41
okay,let me try to get it – XL _at_China Aug 1 at 11:34
The Newton-Raphson algorithm uses, for computation of $A^{1/p}$, the sequence $u_0=A$, $u_{n+1}=u_n-\frac {u_n^p-A}{pu_n^{p-1}}$, whose speed of convergence, always quadratic, is essentially independent of $p$ (and $A$). So, mostly, it asks for $\ln p$ multiplications and 1 division at each step.
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text: The Marine and Environmental Science Camp held its first annual recycle regatta. After learning about buoyancy and ship design, the campers made sailboats out of recycled material. They were given a number of materials to choose from, including: aluminum cans, plastic milk jugs, newspaper, egg cartons, paper towel rolls, tin foil, juice boxes, glass bottles, cardboard boxes, and much more. After construction, the marine and environmental science campers were able to race their sailboats in the FIT fluid mechanics wave tank. Campers designed many types of boats and had lots of fun in the process!


_USER_ {452, title = {P-Lingua 2.0: A software framework for cell-like P systems}, journal = {International Journal of Computers, Communications and Control}, volume = {IV}, year = {2009}, month = {09/2009}, pages = {234-243}, publisher = {Agora University Editing House - CCC Publications}, address = {Oradea, Romania}, abstract = {P-Lingua is a programming language for membrane computing. It was first presented in Edinburgh, during the Ninth Workshop on Membrane Computing (WMC9). In this paper, the models, simulators and formats included in P-Lingua in version 2.0 are explained. We focus on the stochastic model, associatedsimulators and updated features. Finally, we present one of the first applications based on P-Lingua: a tool for describing and simulating ecosystems. }, keywords = {Membrane computing, P systems, P-Lingua, Programming languages, software development}, issn = {_PHONE_}, url = {_URL_ author = {Manuel Garc{\'\i}a-Quismondo and Rosa Guti{\'e}rrez-Escudero and Miguel A. Mart{\'\i}nez-del-Amor and Enrique F. Orejuela-Pinedo and Ignacio P{\'e}rez-Hurtado} }


text:
Tools such as the flight simulator pave the way for a natural, effective way to learn physical skills. The physical world is indeed complex, but we understand it well enough to build complex physical simulations. The world we live in is social as well as physical, so to teach social skills in a similarly effective way, we need to build social simulators. Unfortunately, the social world in which we live is not all that well understood. This is unfortunate because the main province of education is learning how to function in the social world of humans. This is what history is about, this is what literature is about, this is what psychology, economics, foreign languages, and nearly every subject except science is all about. In fact, much of science is about this, too.
The Need for Coaches
Where am I in the content of the book?


Kent County Median Household Income
Kent County
Change Location...
Household income in Kent County—not to be confused with an individual's income—is defined by the Census Bureau as the sum of income generated by all the people over 15 years old who occupy a housing unit, such as a house or an apartment. A family is a type of household. A person living alone in a housing unit is also a household. In addition, households may be composed of unrelated people living together, like partners or roommates.
Every year, the Census Bureau contacts over 3.5 million households across the country to participate in the American Community Survey (ACS). For locations with populations under 60,000, the ACS is only available in 5-year estimates, rather than single-year periods. The 5-year estimates provide greater geographical granularity but a less granular time period.
How does median household income of Kent County compare to Delaware and the United States?
How does household income vary within Kent County, Delaware?
Note: Hover over each census tract in Kent County to see its median income.
How does household income vary by household size in Kent County, Delaware?
How does household income vary by the householder's age in Kent County, Delaware?
A householder is a person in whose name a housing unit is owned, being bought, or rented.
How does household income relate to home ownership in Kent County, Delaware?
Tenure refers to whether a housing unit is owner-occupied or renter-occupied.
About the Data
- Median Household Income by Household Size: Table B19019
- Median Household Income by Age of Householder: Table B19049
- Household Income by Tenure: Table B25119


As a colorist 1, I know how deeply colors affect nature…. and vice versa.
Color is light.
If color did not exist, would anything?
In our world much of color exists because nature knows the eyes are watching.
Eyes designed to discern and judge by color – inherently, deeply, superficially.
Flowers, birds, insects, people… learn.
And nature learns back.
Jail Cells Painted Pink to Calm Aggressive Inmates
COLORIST (colourist)
an artist or designer who uses color in a special or skillful way
Here are some general perceptions on color as they relate to the human condition, taught at RISD2 in the 70s:
2. Gracia Melansen was an art professor at the Rhode Island School of Design from _PHONE_.


For Motorcycle
hit-air airbag system
hit-air airbag system
Testing Institution
Japan Automobile Research Institute (JARI)
World-famous JARI was established in April 1969 to engage in general research on automobiles. They do test-research, consultation, joint study etc. related to automobiles and have been expanding into a wider field of industrial activity.
Outline of the Test
This study was conducted to evaluate the performances of airbag jackets developed for the crash protection of motorcycle riders. The items of evaluation were: the rider protection performance against impact for the airbag jacket to fully inflate. A biofidelic dummy capable of measuring impacts on the human body was employed. Impacts were applied by a 23kg-mass impactor to the dummy fitted with an airbag jacket, and the impacts on the neck and chest of the dummy were measured in order to evaluate the rider protection performances of various airbag jackets.
Impact Test on Airbag Jackets
In the neck impact test the target impact speed was set at 5.6 m/s (20 km/h). The dummy was set in the targeted impact position so that the upper end of the impactor's impact face would come as close as possible to but not in contact with the rear lower end of the helmet, while the vertical centerline of the impactor would overlap with that of the dummy. The airbag jacket was manually inflated before each test round.
Neck Impact Test
Table 1 Results of neck impact test
Airbag jacket
Impact speed
Neck shear
Neck tension force (N)
Neck flexion
bending moment (Nm)
POLICE 5.6 -_PHONE_ 87
FRANCE 5.6 -_PHONE_ 49
NW 5.6 -_PHONE_ 58
Race Model
5.6 -_PHONE_ 59
MC2 5.6 -_PHONE_ 72
MLV 5.6 -_PHONE_ 59
Table 1 shows the results of the neck impact test. The test results were evaluated according to the injury criteria provided in the US FMVSS 208 on occupant crash protection.
The criteria adopted in the neck impact test were: fore-and-aft shear 3,100 N, vertical tension force 4,170 N, and forward flexion bending moment 190 Nm. It was found that except for the 4,330 N tension force recorded in N-10 test round, all the test results clearly satisfied the neck injury criteria.
While injury criteria provided in various regulations are judged in relation to maximum values, there are proposals to adopt the duration of a generated force as an additional criterion whereby the values of a generated force are judged in relation to the duration of the same force.Figure 2 shows the protection standard values of neck shear; similarly, Figure 3 shows the protection standard values of neck tension force. In both of the graphs, the measurement results are plotted in relation to the duration of neck shear or neck tension force. It was found that the measured shear and tension force values in all but SKV test rounds fell in the "small possibility of serious injury" zone. Therefore, it can be deduced that if a rider is to receive an impact equivalent with the impacts applied in this study (by a 23 kg mass at a 20 km/h impact speed), the rider will be able to reduce the severity of neck injury to less than serious injury by wearing an airbag jacket.


text:
Systèmes de savoirs locaux et autochtones
[Disponible en anglais uniquement]
The intersectoral Local and Indigenous Knowledge Systems (LINKS) initiative integrates local and indigenous knowledge, practice and worldviews into sustainable development and resource management processes. Its aim is to ensure that small island communities, and in particular indigenous knowledge holders, both men and women, and elders and youth, are active partners in defining development targets, priorities and means. The place of indigenous knowledge in many small-island cultures underscores the importance of this dimension in considering the issue of 'national and regional enabling environments'.
Activities include a pilot exercise to reinforce indigenous knowledge transmission in Solomon Island classrooms. Conducted in villages in Marovo Lagoon in collaboration with the Ministry of Education (September 2005), this pilot serves to develop guidelines for classroom use of a sourcebook (published in October 2005) that is wholly based on local ecological knowledge, entitled 'Reef and Rainforest: An Environmental Encyclopedia of Marovo Lagoon, Solomon Islands'. To further this work, LINKS is also developing an extrabudgetary project in Palau, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to empower indigenous knowledge holders in biodiversity governance and reinforce the long-term viability and transmission of indigenous knowledge relevant for biodiversity conservation.
An interactive CD-ROM entitled 'The Canoe Is the People: Indigenous Navigation in the Pacific' was launched at the UNESCO General Conference in the presence of the Fiji Minister of Education and with the support of New Zealand, Australia, Fiji and Palau (October 2005). A Pacific launch was held at the thirteenth Consultation of the Pacific Heads of Education in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea (November 2005). Waikato University (New Zealand) has proposed to assist with the development of a Maori language version. The draft Learning Resource Pack for 'The Canoe Is the People' CD-ROM has been distributed for review by the Curriculum Development Units of Fiji, New Zealand and Palau.
A project is currently underway in the south-western Indian Ocean (Mauritius, Rodrigues and Réunion) on the creative blending of women's medicinal knowledge, anchored in the local flora and shaped by the diverse cultural traditions of India, China, Madagascar, East Africa and Europe.
The book 'Water and Indigenous Peoples', underlining the importance of indigenous water management and rights, was formally launched at the fourth World Water Forum in Mexico in March 2006.
In the present (2006-2007) biennium, intersectoral action seeks to enhance linkages between cultural and biological diversity with the aim of strengthening the knowledge base among policyand decision-makers in SIDS, on the interdependence of cultural and biological diversity and on cultural practices favouring local-level sustainable use of biodiversity.
In a similar vein, ongoing work on the vulnerability of SIDS to disasters includes reinforcing education for natural disaster preparedness and mitigation, drawing on endogenous capacities as well as promoting the role of local and indigenous knowledge in community-level disaster preparedness. In addition, as part of the Organization's contribution to the Hyogo Framework for Action, a 'Coalition on Education' is taking the lead in integrating disaster reduction education into school programmes and in making school buildings safer, in the context of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014) and the preservation of cultural monuments and sites from disaster risk, including World Heritage sites. Further information is accessible through the UNESCO website on Natural Disasters Reduction.


text:
Sean was so happy with making the giraffe as our first track out project, that we repeated the activity with S for Snake as the subject.
Materials we used:
- Foam board – red for the tongue
- Champagne Cork for the head
- White paper for the teeth
- Wood stick (picked up from Lowes, then cut at various sizes)
- Bottle caps (6)
- Two eyes (picked up from AC Moore or any craft store)
- Super Glue or Wood Glue (for the teeth and eyes)
- Drill a hole in approx. center of the Champagne Cork, wood and Bottle tops.
- Tie a knot at the end of the string (big enough to make sure the string does not slip through). You may need to melt the end depending on what type of string you use.
- Wrap the other end of the string with a small piece of duck tape – try to get a slightly narrow end at the tip – it makes it easier to thread through.
- Sean was able to thread the string through the pieces easily enough (with assistance). Start with the bottle caps for the tail (it rattles 🙂 ), then the wood pieces and finish with the champagne cork.
- Tie another knot on the string, but you will want to bend the snake to make sure you tie it loose enough. If needed melt the end of the string on this end as well.
- Cut a strip of the red foam and double it up to cut the tongue shape. Take of the backing and press the tongue pieces together with the string in the middle (like a sandwich).
- Glue on the eyes and teeth.
- Use paint, crayons, markers or paper to decorate the pieces of wood.
Here was his journal entry, his picture, the word snake he sounded out and wrote and his story.
"Snakes curl around whatever it finds and squeezes it. The snake opens its mouth and swallows whatever it finds. His body is then very big."
Now to come up with the next one….I think we will do "Caves" or "B for Bats" based on our trip to the blue mountains.