Saturday, February 28, 2009
Local food: success is 100% possible
This is a guest post from Tim, a city planner from sunny Moncton, NB. Tim has spent some time looking into the viability of local, small scale agriculture, and has come up with some results that give us every reason to be optimistic regarding our ability to feed ourselves through our individual and neighborhood-scale efforts, even as the systems of large-scale, industrial agriculture and food delivery unravel due to a combination of high input costs, epic droughts brought on by accelerating climate change, and a shortage of credit caused by the financial collapse. The remaining challenge is start doing it quickly enough: this summer, that is.
"Russian households (inclusive of both urban and rural) collectively grow 92% of country's potatoes on their garden-plots, the size of which is typically 600 square meters [0.15 acres] for urban households, and typically no more than 2500 square meters [0.62 acres] for rural households," tells me Dr. Leonid Sharashkin, whose dissertation, "THE SOCIOECONOMIC AND CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE OF FOOD GARDENING IN THE VLADIMIR REGION OF RUSSIA" contains a wealth of specifics, based on original field research as well as Russian government data. For instance, he writes:
"In 2003, 34.8 million families (66% of all households in the country) owned gardening plots (subsidiary plot, allotment, garden, or dacha) and were involved in growing crops for subsistence (Rosstat 2005b). By 2005, 53% (by value) of the country's total agricultural output was coming from household plots (which in 2006 occupied only 2.9% of agricultural land), while the remaining 47% (by value — Rosstat 2006) came from the agricultural enterprises (often the former kolkhozes and sovkhozes) and individual farmers, requiring 97.1% of agricultural lands (Rosstat 2007b)." [Sharahkin, p.12]
Elsewhere in his disseration, he details how much food was being produced in household plots, and its figures were on the order of 90% of all the potatoes in Russia, 80% of all the vegetables, 50% of the meat and milk etc. In other words, very high proportions of certain products, including at least one calorie staple (potato).
Dr. Sharashkin quotes the previous figures from Russian government publications, but his dissertation also contains the results from his primary field research (and therefore are isolated from the usual concerns one might have about the reliability of government statistics): on page 162, Figure 24 indicates that, of the gardening households in the study area:
 - 39% were cultivating under 0.05 hectares (i.e. 500 sq.m.);
 - another 36% were cultivating between 0.05 and 0.1 hectares; and
 - none of them were cultivating more than half a hectare.
Anonymous said...
Very good article. I know from experience that you don't need all that much land. Also, small plots are manageable and old people can participate according to their strength. I am trying to put together such an initiative, borrowing land around town from people who don't use it. Here in Virginia, the soil is good, much of it is virgin in fact, and the climate is also very good. A small percentage of the state's land could feed everybody except for wheat and rice, and there are ways around that. The rivers, unfortunately, are quite polluted and the fish may not be edible, though I have eaten it. The Chesapeake Bay... an ecological disaster despite some efforts at cleaning it up. Still, a fleet of small boats can bring in a lot of fish from the ocean.
On the subject of sheep, people here are stupid. They don't get it that those hills and mountains (old ones, very flattened mostly, rarely inaccessible) are usable for flocks of sheep and goats. They don't get sheep, sheep's meat or milk or cheese. They have forgotten much.
If Virginia can do it, and easily, the entire South can do it just as easily. This is rich land which would be the envy of many a country.
I am going to bring in two Dutch friends who have a huge amount of experience in intensive agriculture.
Example: In 1/2 acre I got so many tomatoes that I was able to make and freeze enough sauce for three years, besides eating a big bowl of them every day during the season.
Stuff grows, folks!
Keep up the good work and the practical work. That is what's needed. Forget about manicures, though, that's the small stuff.
Rob said...
Serious, very relevant stuff. I'm gonna add this to my presentation in Town Meeting this coming Monday. Thanks!
Anonymous said...
A practical comment. You will need to compost. Start now. If you can, talk to your neighbors about keeping compostable stuff for you. You can mix in some grass cuttings and ground leaves, but not too much or you'll kill it. There are good manuals for this, and lots of websites with accurate practical information.
Clifford J. Wirth, Ph.D. said...
Anonymous said...
One has to take to account that due to Climate change, many parts of the United States will succumb to drought and eventual desertification. In many areas such as the Southwest, suburban garden plots will be difficult to maintain without a steady source of water... I can see a situation where refugees from the uninhabitable regions began head to cooler climates further north.
Avi said...
Here's the BBC to the rescue!:
"In 'How to be a Gardener', Alan Titchmarsh distills his knowledge and passion for gardening and his many years of experience, to give you a comprehensive guide that explores every aspect of your garden and how it works."
Anonymous said...
Plant trees.
Nut trees, fruit trees, bee pollen trees, sap trees, nesting trees. It's permaculture that with tending will last generations.
And I'd also recommend outfits like Seed Savers Exchange, Fedco, Native Seeds/SEARCH, and local seed saving and exchanging groups.
Keep your old tools sharp.
Manure is the new Monsanto.
The old one, too.
Sebastian Ronin said...
IMO, it is most important to recognize that NAmerica is not Russia, especially re urban zoning bylaws. It is amazing how anal and stupid the tentacles of NAmerican bureaucracies can at times be.
For those in urban environments, especially those considering digging the front lawn as opposed to the back, prior to investing the financial, intellectual and physical capital to get underway, you may wish to check with your local municipality re bylaws. City planners, as a rule, have not been all that hip to planning/zoning for the coming meltdown.
Should there be some dumb bylaw that stands in your way, then you have the opportunity to go political at the very local, municipal level to get the bylaw tossed. Not only does the bylaw get tossed, but it is also an opportunity to advocate WHY you are taking on the bylaw.
Anonymous said...
"The City of Havana now produces enough food for each resident to receive a daily serving of 280 g of fruits and vegetables a day. The UN food programme recommends 305 g.
Organic Cuba without Fossil Fuels
Matt Capodice said...
Cleveland, Ohio city council just approved keeping farm animals in the city limits. They also are going on a demolition spree of all the abandoned houses in the area.
My city has recently started a farmers market.
Hopefully intelligent planning such as these decisions will continue.
Anonymous said...
Readers / Community should consider buying cheap Bee Pollen or Bea Bread (USA made) which is a most valued #1 SUPERFOOD (It can last for at least 2 years and keep anyone HEALTHY and STRONG come fire, ice or the devil himself and his armies.) :)
Anonymous said...
Why on earth are they demolishing houses where people could live? That makes no sense unless the houses are literally falling down. Maybe I am totally wrong, but this reminds me of the nefarious "urban renewal", which was especially bad in Cleveland, Columbus and other places.
Anon of Florida said...
Excellent, I like these practical articles, keep writing them!
As far as bylaws and whatnot, look at how front yards in forclosed properties are being taken care of. If they are neglected and not have much attention paid to them, you shouldn't have too much trouble ignoring any offending 'rules'.
There is a large lot a few blocks away that was abandoned halfway through preconstruction of yet another useless south floridian condo unit.
There is some evidence of life around the edges of the lot, however before it can be devoted to a potato or cassava growing condition, its probably going to have to be dug up by hoes and soil brought in to enliven the likely sterile ground.
Any suggestions for particular plants that break up packed up ground?
Anonymous said...
Don't be so sure that it's sterile. And the potato is not that particular. If you dig it up after it rains, you'll end up muddy but you can unpack the soil. Maybe you'll have to do it several times, but it's doable.
kollapsnik said...
"Any suggestions for particular plants that break up packed up ground?"
Eric Brende, in his book Better Off, talks about the Amish with whom he spent a year reclaiming some tractor-compacted farmland by some light disking and some special de-clot


text:
Double glazing units consist of two panes of glass that sandwich a layer of air, creating a barrier that acts as a good insulator. Although double glazed windows should last for around 20 years, they do eventually need replacing. Unfortunately they can get to the state where they need replacing sooner if the instalment was not properly or expertly done.
One of the ways to spot that double glazed windows need replacing is when they start to 'mist up'.
Misting up is what happens to double-glazed windows over time, where moisture creeps into the void between the two layers of glass. This causes an unsightly layer of condensation to form in your double glazing unit. Over time, this layer will only worsen, getting larger and larger until the whole window is obscured by a layer of condensation.
- The dreaded misting up of a double-glazed window.
Why Does This Happen?
The reason double-glazed windows mist up (or 'break-down,' as it is sometimes referred to in the trade), is due to a premature failure of the perimeter seal. The perimeter edge of the unit loses its integrity and over time, moisture will creep in at a weak point. When the sun shines directly on the window, the moisture will rise and appear as condensation, leaving your windows misted up.
Misting up is largely dependent on the initial fitting; how the framework was fitted and the seal inserted affects how susceptible the window is to breaking down at a later point.
Another reason for misting up is severe weather conditions; heavy rain and wind can take their toll. Some particularly harsh cleaning products can also contribute to the deterioration of your double-glazing.
But eventually, even the best double-glazed window will start to deteriorate. You can hope for 20 years out of a well-fitted double-glazing unit, but in the end misting up is an unavoidable eventuality.
Why Is It a Problem?
When a double glazed window mists up, it becomes unsightly and unpleasant to look at. One of the benefits of having double-glazing is that slick and modern look it gives a house, this is completely ruined if the windows are misted up. This is especially apparent when the sun shines on it, meaning the nicer a day it is, the worse your house looks.
Alongside the aesthetics, misting up also causes quite a practical problem as it obscures vision through the window. Surely one of the primary reasons for having windows is to give you a portal to the outside world; misting up hampers a window's ability to provide this.
- As can be seen above, misting up really obscures vision through a window.
What Can Be Done?
The simplest and most cost-effective solution to misted up windows is to replace them. Fortunately this doesn't mean the whole installation needs to be replaced, as most of the time the framework can stay the same, it's only the glass which needs to be renewed.
It is an unfortunate truth that double glazed windows eventually deteriorate and start to mist up. As soon as you see condensation forming inside your double-glazed unit that's when you know it's time to replace them…sooner rather than later.

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


text:
Sample tour of Bath, one of England's top tourist destinations
Information on Bath
Bath has a population of about 84,000, is located some 115 miles ( 184 km) West of London in the county of Somerset.
Roman Era: The Romans invaded Britain in AD 43 and within twenty years had found and built a Roman Baths complex and adjoining temple around the country's only natural hot springs which they named Aqua Sulis. Here, the Romans encouraged worship of their goddess, Minerva. The complex appears to have fallen into progressive decline from around the late 3rd century onwards, in tandem with decline of Roman power in the West. The bathing complex was rediscovered in the 18th century, has been restored and is now a major visitor attraction. Today, visitors can connect with the Roman bathing experience at the Thermae Bath Spa facility.
Georgian Era: Richard 'Beau' Nash ( _PHONE_) was the catalyst for the development of Bath as a fashionable resort in the 18th century. Some 5000 listed (heritage) buildings date from this period when father and son architect duo of John Wood the Elder (_PHONE_) and John Wood the Younger (_PHONE_) were active in the construction of such notable architectural features as the Circus, Queen Square, Assembly Rooms and Royal Crescent.
Information on the Roman Baths
The Romans occupied most of mainland U.K. from around AD 43 to AD 410 from which period we have a massive physical legacy of roads, ruins, settlements, inscriptions, coins, amphitheatres and cities plus military sites such as Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall.
Modern-day Bath was known as Aqua Sulis, a recreation themed settlement centred on the hot springs which emerge from deep within the earth. More information as follows:
- The water flows at a rate of 250,000 gallons per day at temperature of 46 degrees centigrade (115 F.) and contains 43 minerals.
- The construction demonstrates advanced hydraulic engineering skills of the Romans in the art of taming natural springs.
- Building of the Baths and temple was completed by around AD 75. In subsequent periods the original simple but elegant structure was modified and extended to include a laconium (circular room with dry, hot air), a cold plunge Circular Bath and new suite of baths at the east end.
- A religious site dedicated jointly to the local deity Sul (from which Aqua Sulis is derived) and the Roman goddess Minerva.This was a destination for pilgrims seeking guidance of Sulis Minerva and healing in curative waters.The facility was open to a wide range of the populace, from age 18 months to 86 years, both military and civilian.
- At the centre of Aqua Sulis was a classical temple dedicated to the deities mentioned above.
- The temple was designed so the hot springs arose from the ground within the temple courtyard with the water channelled into an elaborate bathing facility.
- Military tombstones have been found in the locality but the site may have been used by the Roman Army for convalescent and recuperative purposes.
Information on Bath Assembly Rooms
The Bath Assembly rooms are located on Bennett Street. They were designed by John Wood the Younger in 1769. Their purpose was to be a place for dancing and music. When completed in 1771 the Rooms were described as 'the most noble and elegant of any in the kingdom'. Today, this building is home to the Fashion Museum, one of the world's great museum collections of historical and contemporary dress.
Information on Bath Pump Room
The practice of drinking the thermal waters of Bath only began in the later seventeenth century. A pump was installed to allow patients to have access to the water directly from the spring. In the first years of the eighteenth century a building was erected where the drinkers could be sheltered. This became the first Pump Room and was completed in 1706. Due to rising demand and new Pump Room was built in 1795 and this connected with the two smaller springs known as the Hot Bath and the Cross Bath.


text:
Many new stargazers have trouble understanding our reference to "degrees", "arc minutes", and "arc seconds" when talking about the separation of celestial objects. So here's a primer on measuring angular distances.
Astronomers measure angular separation of objects in degrees. There are 360 degrees in a circle. And the angular separation of any point on the horizon and the point directly overhead (the zenith) is 90 degrees. Halfway from the zenith to the horizon is 45 degrees.
Smaller angles are a little trickier. But your hands and fingers are a remarkably accurate (and convenient) measuring tool. When you hold your hand at arm's length, you can estimate angles like this:
- Stretch your thumb and little finger as far from each other as you can. The span from tip to tip is about 25 degrees
- Do the same with your index finger and little finger. The span is 15 degrees
- Clench your fist at arms length, and hold it with the back of your hand facing you. The width is 10 degrees
- Hold your three middle fingers together; they span about 5 degrees
- The width of your little finger at arm's length is 1 degree.
Now let's go smaller. When you look through a telescope, you see a field of view of 1 degree or less… a very small slice of sky.
Astronomers measure angles smaller than 1 degree in arcminutes, or "minutes of arc". There are 60 arcminutes in one degree, so 1 arcminute is 1/60 degree. The symbol for arcminutes is '. So the full Moon, for example, is about 30′ (thirty arcminutes) across. Coincidentally, so is the Sun.
Each arcminute is divided into 60 arcseconds, or "seconds of arc". So 1 arcsecond is 1/60 arcminute and 1/3600 degree. The symbol for arcseconds is ". The face of Jupiter, which you can see this summer, is about 50″ across. A good optical telescope in steady skies can resolve down to about 1″ (one arcsecond).


text:
Why Engineering Mechanics Equilibrium of a Particle?
In this section you can learn and practice Engineering Mechanics Questions based on "Equilibrium of a Particle" and improve your skills in order to face the interview, competitive examination and various entrance test (CAT, GATE, GRE, MAT, Bank Exam, Railway Exam etc.) with full confidence.
Where can I get Engineering Mechanics Equilibrium of a Particle questions and answers with explanation?
IndiaBIX provides you lots of fully solved Engineering Mechanics (Equilibrium of a Particle) questions and answers with Explanation. Solved examples with detailed answer description, explanation are given and it would be easy to understand. All students, freshers can download Engineering Mechanics Equilibrium of a Particle quiz questions with answers as PDF files and eBooks.
Where can I get Engineering Mechanics Equilibrium of a Particle Interview Questions and Answers (objective type, multiple choice)?
Here you can find objective type Engineering Mechanics Equilibrium of a Particle questions and answers for interview and entrance examination. Multiple choice and true or false type questions are also provided.
How to solve Engineering Mechanics Equilibrium of a Particle problems?
You can easily solve all kind of Engineering Mechanics questions based on Equilibrium of a Particle by practicing the objective type exercises given below, also get shortcut methods to solve Engineering Mechanics Equilibrium of a Particle problems.
The joint O of a space frame is subjected to four forces. Strut OA lies in the x-y plane and strut OB lies in the y-z plane. Determine the force acting in each if the three struts required for equilibrium of the joint. Set = 45°.
A "scale" is constructed with a 4-ft-long cord and the 10-lb block D. The cord is fixed to a pin at A and passes over two small pulleys at B and C. Determine the weight of the suspended block E if the system is in equilibrium when s = 1.5 ft.
Determine the tension developed in cables OD and OB and the strut OC, required to support the 500-lb crate. The spring OA has an unstretched length of 0.2 ft and a stiffness of kOA = 350lb/ft. The force in the strut acts along the axis of the strut.

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


text:
What is overseas warehouse? What are the advantages of overseas warehouses?Overseas warehouse refers to storage facilities established overseas
In cross-border trade e-commerce, overseas warehouses refer to domestic enterprises that transport goods to target market countries in the form of bulk transportation, establish warehouses and store goods locally, and then respond to local sales orders as soon as possible. Picking, packing and distribution are carried out directly from local warehouses.
This new form of cross-border logistics is conducive to solving various pain points in the development of cross-border e-commerce and encouraging e-commerce companies to go global. After the customer places the order, the exporter can directly deliver the goods locally through the overseas warehouse, which greatly shortens the delivery time and reduces the barriers to customs clearance; the goods are transported in batches, which reduces the transportation cost; the customer can easily return and exchange the goods after receiving the goods, which also improves the shopping. experience.
1. The first journey of overseas warehouses converts scattered international small packages into bulk transportation, which will greatly reduce logistics costs.
2. Overseas warehouses can transform traditional international delivery into local delivery, ensure that goods reach consumers faster, safer and more accurately, and improve consumers' cross-border trade shopping experience.
3. The return processing process of overseas warehouses is efficient and convenient, adapting to the shopping habits of local buyers, making buyers more assured when shopping, and can solve the traditional international return and exchange problems.
4. The combination of overseas warehouses and traditional warehousing and logistics can avoid foreign trade risks and avoid logistics shortcomings caused by special reasons such as holidays, thereby improving the overseas competitiveness of my country's e-commerce, and truly helping e-commerce provide local services and adapt to local buyers. Consumption habits.
Remarks: The above content is only an internal opinion and is for reference only.


yes, there can be more than one rule governing the shapes in each set.
Next question is, "What is the proportion of shorter quantitative reasoning questions compared to the long ones or is it completely random?"
I think the majority of them tend to be around the chart, and the chart and text format. There's slightly relatively less of the text-only but you need to be prepared to do all of them.
We have a question from Cash, who said, "How long should be spent preparing, roughly, one month, two months or just a few weeks?"
Again, the answer to that is it's a little bit down to you. I would say that persistence is one of the key ways in which you're going to be successful at these. If you, over that month period, were to do a little bit of practice every other night or every three days, that could well be sufficient for you. If you're practicing once in a month, then that may well not be. I would say it's less a matter of quantity of practice or timeframe of practice. It's more about the quality and the depth.
I'm having a quick look at other questions here. Pratree asks, "In quantitative reasoning, do you think calculators should be used extensively or only when you cannot manage to do it mentally?"
I think, mentally, if you can eliminate some of those distracters first, do it. Otherwise, then move onto the calculator to get the precise answer and perhaps decide between a couple of them. I think it's pretty likely you're going to have to use a calculator. You're not going to be able to do all mental arithmetic.
Harmit asks around verbal reasoning questions but I'll cover those in just a moment.
Priesha asks, "Which of the four sections tend to be the most/least difficult?"
It's, again, down to you, what you personally tend to find the most and least difficult. I would say give them a go and then spend the most time practicing that which you find the toughest.
Yes, and then Abbas asks, "Do you recommend we follow a set method in abstract reasoning to identify the rule or just randomly look around until you identify the rule?"
I would almost have in mind for you that these questions will have been designed according to certain rules around number of sides, shape of shapes, shading of shapes, orientation of shapes. Almost work through a mental checklist of each of those and say, "Right. Is there a consistent pattern emerging?" So I would say, randomly, you might spot it but I'd say try and bit a little bit more planful in your analysis.
Keep those questions coming, that's fantastic.
Verbal reasoning
What we're going to do now is move on to the next area which is the Verbal Reasoning tests. Much like the quantitative reasoning, is a testing of reasoning skills using numbers, this is your reasoning skills involving words. It's probably worth saying that compared to other tests of Verbal Reasoning, the level of English required in the UKCAT test is probably slightly higher than in most others.
So some of the terminology that's used and some of the complexity of words that are used can be quite stretching. Again, practice is going to help you in this regard. Also, we're saying that the topics covered in the verbal reasoning tests and the quantitative reasoning tests, again, won't necessarily have anything to do with med school. They've been designed to be universally applicable so that it doesn't unfairly bias people who have had practice in one area more than in another.
Let's take a look at verbal reasoning in a little bit more detail. What you'll get up front is a text passage. We haven't reproduced it here because the density of it would actually make it just unreadable on a slide forma. You're probably going to get, a good, two or three paragraphs worth of text. You will then have a series of questions afterwards that you need to gauge the truthfulness of, based upon the information in the passage.
In terms of the format of that text passage, what we've found in our analysis of the UKCAT tests are that they can be purely text, they can be in bullet-point form, you'll have a list of instructions, I believe, one of them is around how to conduct a certain type of Scottish dance, and each bullet-point gives you a step-by-step guide in how to conduct that.
It can be in a letter format, as well. Perhaps a letter of complaint and that can either be a sole letter or a letter with a reply. Those are the main formats.
In terms of the topics that are covered, they do range very, widely. They can be historical accounts. They can be autobiographies. There's some scientific type topics, some technology topics. So, as I say, not at all related to what you'll be doing because it's trying to be context-free as far as possible.
You'll be asked to decide whether each of those statements that we saw previously, let me just flip back to that slide, so you saw those "A", "B", "C" and "D", you've got four statements to evaluate. You need to decide if they are true based upon the information in the passage (i.e., they follow logically from or they are explicitly mentioned in the passage), they are false (i.e., they are explicitly the opposite it said in the passage or it would be illogical as a result of what's in the passage) or cannot say, you don't have sufficient information to make that judgement based on the information in the passage.
I think you need to be mindful here. There are certain words to look out for so if you, for example, it says something like, "Many patients experienced an allergic reaction to the medication." If a statement says, "All patients experienced an allergic reaction to the medication," watch out because the word "many" implies that not everyone did and, therefore, the answer to the question.
"All patients experienced an allergic reaction," is probably going to be false because there's actually many and that implies not all. Avoid assumptions. Avoid also bringing in outside knowledge. If you know something for a fact that is contradicting what's in the passage, don't let that cloud your judgement and, as mentioned earlier, watch out for the complex vocabulary that's required to answer some of these questions.
Decision analysis
Let's move onto the fourth type. The fourth type here is decision analysis and the overall idea is that, whereas the abstract reasoning test was looking at your ability to reason inductively, this is looking at your ability to reason deductively, so to use data to be able to reach conclusions. It takes the form of a kind of a code, almost a code-breaking test. It's quite an exciting test to do.
You're asked to encrypt and decrypt information based upon some code tables that you're given. So let's talk through what that looks like. So you're given some code tables up front. First of all, a list of general rules where words are substituted by letters. So the word "opposite" would be substituted by the letter "A". The word "big" would be substituted by the letter "C". You then have some basic codes such as "I" substituted by the number 1 and so on. I've shown you two columns there. They do actually spread out to up to four columns worth of codes.
Now, you're given a scenario so you can see here that the scenario is around an ancient tribe, the [Sacra doti]tribe and the Movag tribe and they've come up with this way of communicating with one another through codes. It's all a little kind of irrelevant but it helps to kind of set the scene a little bit and helps get you into the mindset that you need to be in, in order to crack these codes. Again, not directly relevant to what you'll be doing in the job.
Decryption, so this is the first type of question that you'll face and it's the most common type of question, by far, in this test. You will be asked, "What is the best interpretation of the following code?"
You can see in the example on the screen, question 14, you've got "g" and then in brackets "af15, e4," and then "a4, 11". Where there are brackets or parentheses around letters, it means that the meaning of those letters and numbers should be combined to make a cohesive whole. If you had the words something like, "hot", "wood", "up" and the brackets around it, it might be something like a blazing log fire or something like that. You need to combine it and get the overall meaning.
Commas separate concepts from one another. Again, what you need to do is to come up with the best interpretation of the code. You're not going to find a perfect interpretation. There's going to be multiple options provided to you and you need to decide which one best fits the code. Sometimes it's down to the order in which those codes are arrayed in the original question. Sometimes it's down to how eloquently they describe a concept so it's down to you to make that judgement call. That's the decryption.
Encryption, you can see an example there, question 5, it will say, "Which code is the best representation for, 'Yesterday, the weather was raining,'" and you need to look at the multiple choice options and decide which one best encapsulates that concept. As I say, there's far fewer of those but they can be quite challenging too.
Questions around this section? Let's just take a little look and see what's come through. There's quite a few more that have come through.
Maria


economics 800 words original apa format
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There are many examples of how the actions of a company have negatively affected consumers. Product recalls, bans, and warning labels have helped to protect consumers and companies are focusing more today on social responsibility. Examine why has there been such a relatively high number of these incidences and what companies can do to protect consumers.
Assignment Guidelines:
 - What legal and ethical responsibilities do companies have to their customers?
 - Cite and discuss in detail two cases in which a company endangered customers because of the manufacture or design of their products. How did the company address the issue?
 - What consequences did the companies in the cited cases face and were these consequences warranted? Why or why not?
Compose your findings in a Word document, and be sure to cite your sources.
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The Blob object represents a blob, which is a file-like object of immutable, raw data; they can be read as text or binary data, or converted into a ReadableStream so its methods can be used for processing the data.
Blobs can represent data that isn't necessarily in a JavaScript-native format. The File interface is based on Blob, inheriting blob functionality and expanding it to support files on the user's system.
Using blobs
To construct a Blob from other non-blob objects and data, use the Blob() constructor. To create a blob that contains a subset of another blob's data, use the slice() method. To obtain a Blob object for a file on the user's file system, see the File documentation.
The APIs accepting Blob objects are also listed in the File documentation.
Returns a newly created Blob object which contains a concatenation of all of the data in the array passed into the constructor.
Instance properties
Blob.prototype.size Read only
The size, in bytes, of the data contained in the Blob object.
Blob.prototype.type Read only
A string indicating the MIME type of the data contained in the Blob. If the type is unknown, this string is empty.
Instance methods
Returns a promise that resolves with an ArrayBuffer containing the entire contents of the Blob as binary data.
Returns a new Blob object containing the data in the specified range of bytes of the blob on which it's called.
Returns a ReadableStream that can be used to read the contents of the Blob.
Returns a promise that resolves with a USVString containing the entire contents of the Blob interpreted as UTF-8 text.
Creating a blob
The Blob() constructor can create blobs from other objects. For example, to construct a blob from a JSON string:
const obj = {hello: 'world'};
const blob = new Blob([JSON.stringify(obj, null, 2)], {type : 'application/json'});
Creating a URL representing the contents of a typed array
The following code creates a JavaScript typed array and creates a new Blob containing the typed array's data. It then calls URL.createObjectURL() to convert the blob into a URL.
This example creates a typed array containing the ASCII codes
 for the space character through the letter Z, then converts it
 to an object URL. A link to open that object URL is created.
 Click the link to see the decoded object URL.
The main piece of this code for example purposes is the typedArrayToURL() function, which creates a Blob from the given typed array and returns an object URL for it. Having converted the data into an object URL, it can be used in a number of ways, including as the value of the element's src attribute (assuming the data contains an image, of course).
function typedArrayToURL(typedArray, mimeType) {
 return URL.createObjectURL(new Blob([typedArray.buffer], {type: mimeType}))
const bytes = new Uint8Array(59);
for(let i = 0; i < 59; i++) {
 bytes[i] = 32 + i;
const url = typedArrayToURL(bytes, 'text/plain');
const link = document.createElement('a');
link.href = url;
link.innerText = 'Open the array URL';
Click the link in the example to see the browser decode the object URL.
Extracting data from a blob
One way to read content from a Blob is to use a FileReader. The following code reads the content of a Blob as a typed array:
const reader = new FileReader();
reader.addEventListener('loadend', () => {
 // reader.result contains the contents of blob as a typed array
Another way to read content from a Blob is to use a Response. The following code reads the content of a Blob as text:
const text = await (new Response(blob)).text();
Or by using Blob.prototype.text():
const text = await blob.text();
By using other methods of FileReader, it is possible to read the contents of a Blob as a string or a data URL.
Specification Status Comment
File API
The definition of 'The Blob interface' in that specification.
Working Draft Initial definition.
Browser compatibility
BCD tables only load in the browser
See also


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and present. The tribes hooked places to moral actions by stories, so that in describing a place, one was also teaching a morality tale... somewhat like fairy-tales told to children of today.
Tualatin subsistence (Zenk 1976: 31) was based on 5 main groupings:
- Vegetable (especially camas, wapato, tarweed seeds, hazelnuts, blackberries, salal, huckleberry, serviceberry, acorns);
- Fisheries (salmon, steelhead, lamprey eels, trout, suckers);
- Large game (white-tailed and black-tailed deer, elk);
- Small and medium-sized game (beaver, rabbit, squirrel, waterfowl, grouse, quail, dove);
- Insects (grasshoppers, caterpillars, yellowjacket larvae).
Zenk and others list the following utilized items:
Plants: mushrooms; moss; fern (bracken, sword, lady, spiny wood, male and licorice); western dock; cattail; grass; tule; sedge; thread grass; camas; wild carrot; lily (mariposa; rice-root or chocolate; tiger; fawn; harvest); springbank clover; cow parsnip; skunk cabbage; strawberry; tarweed; tobacco; wapato; yampa; ellgrass; yarrow; lupine; mint; blackberry; blackcap; salmonberry; thimbleberry, raspberry; cascara; wild cherry; crabapple; elderberry; soapberry; gooseberry; hazel; huckleberry; kinnikinnik; wild rose; salal; serviceberry; Indian plum; cranberry; willow; vine maple; fireweed; stinging nettle; ash; cottonwood; maple; oak; acorns; cedar; fir; pine; yew; bullrush; alder; ocean spray. Edible cambium could be obtained from Sitka spruce; shore pine; western hemlock; red alder; and black cottonwood.
Mammals: mole; rabbit; ground squirrel; chipmunk; tree squirrel; gopher; beaver; mouse; wood rat; porcupine; whale; bear; racoon; seal; elk; deer; antelope; mountain sheep; muskrat; geese; swan; duck; heron; crane; grouse; quail; pigeon.
Fish: clam; crawfish; mussel, salmon; steelhead; trout; sucker; eel; eulachon; sturgeon; turtle.
Insects: caterpillar; grasshopper; yellowjacket larvae; honey bee.
Rev Summers quoted a conversation with Sulkia, a Yamhill, on houses:
"of inner ash bark. In ancient times the walls of their lodges were made of the same material and the roof of the outer bark". Poles were set in the ground for a frame and bound together and to a cross-pole at the top by cord twisted out of the fibers of cedar bark. The cambium mats, cut as large as possible, were tied to the frame through holes made at the points of contact and the thick roof covering came out some distance beyond the walls. They likes sheltered spots in the hills for winter abodes, but came into the open valleys, or down by the ocean, in summer" (Cawley 1994:40).
Cawley (1994: 40), again presenting journal entries from Summers, shows how he described one aspect of Yamhill material culture on the Coastal reservation:
"There are some old squaws (sic) here, who showed us a long string of deer's toes, a seed tray like Ikill's, only more worn, and the usual cooking and water buckets. There was a very pretty satchel, for hanging on the wall and holding nice things. It was unlike any we had seen previously and was ornamented with colored fibers, having more than fifty deer (sic) on the one side and geometric figures on the other. The weaving was very close and fine. Another sack of like shape was here also, but much plainer. Sulkia said the mother of one of the women made these baskets in her youth, when she was known throughout her village for the beauty of her weaving. He also said "the chalbs (note - trays) were mostly made, like the one we had seen this morning, of inner ash bark".
The Fuller Mound (38 by 24 meters and 1.5 meters deep), along with the nearby Fanning Mound, were dug by Dr Edmundson in 1941-42 with the field notes stored at the Oregon State Museum of Anthropology in Eugene. This is the type-site for the Fuller Phase. Laughlin wrote up a short report in American Antiquity in 1943 in which he excavated forty-one burials. The artifacts included projectile points, knives, scrapers, a ceremonial blade, net weights, fish clubs, pestles, stone bowls, digging stick handles, ear spools, nose plugs, shell beads, bone flakers, bone awls, bone needles, antler wedges, gaming pieces, and a bone saw. Historic trade goods included glass beads, brass buttons, copper bangles, copper beads and sheet copper (Woodward et al. 1975).
The Fanning Mound was 61 by 38 meters and 1.5 meters deep. Eighteen burials were recovered. A similar range of material culture was retrieved, but also included bone harpoons, brass finger rings, a brass spike, and brass thimble (Murdy & Wentz 1975).
The Fuller Phase contains fishing technology in the weights (net or line) and harpoons as well as fish vertebra recovered at the site. Coast to interior trade is indicated by the marine shell. The burials exhibited fronto-occipital flattening (Beckham et al. 1981: 172-174). The range of artifacts may relate to increasing complexity through time or it may simply be a sign of better preservation in more recent deposits.
Fishing technology among the Kalapuya was quite complex. Fishing was done with line and hook. Hooks were made from bone and shell. Fish hooks included barbless compound forms as well as the fish gorge designed to catch in the throat of the fish. The gorge was made by splitting out bone splinters and then shaping them on sandstone abraders. The length of the gorge determined the size of the fish that would be caught. If the gullet of the fish was too small, the gorge would not open fully, if too large, it would slip out.
Fishing line was usually made from stinging nettle or dogbane (hemp), and where available, cedar. Sometimes willow inner bark was used as well. The nettle or dogbane plant was dried and then rubbed together to separate out the fiber from the chaff. This material was then made into string. Fishing nets were made out of the same material, using a wooden shuttle and a gauge for net size. Small dip nets were used on poles as well as seine and gill nets. Net weights were made out of stones and floats out of wood. Fishing traps were made from split willow or cedar. Traps were used alone or in combination with weirs that funneled the fish into the traps. Traps included many specialized forms, such as tidal weirs, double weirs to trap fish between them to be dipped out, log and rock dams, and grid traps. In some places, herring spawn was harvested from artificial floating seaweed frames. Fishing spears (leisters, gigs, and harpoons) were made from wood or bone. Sometimes soap-root was mixed with soil and water and rubbed on rocks along a stream to cause the fish to rise to the surface where they were scooped up in dip nets or baskets.
If you have an interest in fishing technology, I suggest Hilary Stewart's 1977 book Indian Fishing: Early Methods on the Northwest Coast. He book covers line fishing; spears and harpoons; nets and netting; traps and weirs; cooking and preserving fish; and the spiritual side of fishing. She covers the complexity of NW Coast fishing technology in great detail with remarkable drawings.
"According to Joel Berreman (1937: 23) and John Swanton (1952: 452) the area encom-passed by French Prairie was included in the ancestral territory of the Ahantchuyuk Band of Kalapuya. This band, also known as the Pudding River or French Prairie Indians, occupied the Pudding River watershed, the lower Molalla River drainage, and the area between the Pudding River and the Willamette River, i.e. French Prairie... Since this is one of the least known bands of the Kalapuya, no named villages were recorded by historians or ethnographers (Swanton 1952: 452). The lack of information on this band is directly related to the fact that French Prairie was the earliest center of European economic activity and settlement in the Willamette Valley. Direct contact enhanced exposure to disease and the year round presence of an expanding non-Kalapuyan population probably dispersed the few survivors to neighboring bands" (Brauner, Poet & Bell 1998: 20).
"A number of village groups within the Ahantchuyuk territory are noted in the literature. One of the best known is Champoeg, noted by Gatschet (in Zenk 1976: 86) as a town in the French Prairie area where the root pu'ičik [


Brief Introduction to the Geothermal Approach of Climate Reconstruction
One of the most important components of climate change is the variation of temperature at the Earth's surface. Because temperature changes at the surface affect the distribution of temperature in the subsurface, ground temperatures comprise an archive of signal of past climate.
How Borehole Temperatures Can Be Related to Climate Changes
Thermal regime at shallow depths of the crust is controlled by the temperature condition at the surface and the heat flowing from deeper part of the Earth. In an idealized homogeneous crust, if the surface temperature is steady, the distribution of ground temperature is a linear function of depth. However, if the surface temperature changes with time, the ground temperature will depart from the linear distribution which is governed by heat flow (q) and thermal conductivity (k). A progressive cooling at the surface will cool down the rocks near to the surface, increase the thermal gradient at shallow depths, and lead to a temperature profile with curvature like the one shown in green in the illustration above. A progressive warming, on the other hand should be responsible for a temperature profile with smaller even negative thermal gradients at shallower depths like the one shown in red. If the surface temperature oscillates with time, oscillations in the ground temperature will follow. The magnitude of the departure of ground temperature from its undisturbed steady state is related to the amplitude of the surface temperature variation, and the depth to which disturbances to the steady state temperature can be measured is related to the timing of the original temperature change at the surface. A ground surface temperature history is therefore recorded in the subsurface. By careful analysis of the variation of temperature with depth, one can reconstruct the past fluctuation at the Earth's surface.
Advantages of the Geothermal Approach in Climate Studies
 - Direct Temperature Study
 It is a kind of direct temperature - temperature study. Therefore, it is free of any uncertainties due to conversion from proxy data to temperatures.
 - Important Time Interval
 The time interval over which the geothermal technique has resolving power covers both industrial and pre-industrial periods.
 - Fewer Anthropogenic Disturbances
 There exist many ground temperature profiles measured from boreholes located in remote areas. Climate information preserved in those temperature profiles contain fewer anthropogenic disturbances such as urban thermal island effect and agriculture.
 - Extensive Geographical Coverage
 There exist tens of thousands of borehole in the world which have been systematically temperature logged for heat flow determination. The huge archive of existing borehole temperatures comprises a great potential for a comprehensive world wide paleoclimate study.
 Back to Borehole Temperatures and Climate Reconstruction Homepage


Ghent University Academic Bibliography
Project: Eroding or changing citizenship?
project duration
31-DEC-99 – 31-DEC-99
An ethical study and a research in the sociology of public morality concerning the ethico-political identity of the Fleming and their subjective attitudes vis a vis the public domain. How do Flemish people approach the public domain and how do theyintegret their responsibilities confronting public spaces.


What is Integrative Neuroscience Technology?
Learn more about how Nootripure leverages Integrative Neuroscience Technology (INT) to give unprecedented results through the Nootripure products.
What is INT?
Integrative Neuroscience Technology
/ˈintəɡrādiv nu̇r-ō-ˈsī-ən(t)s tekˈnäləjē/
The combining holistic and allopathic medicines with psychology based tools to study their effects when used together in a single therapeutic application.
For our purposes, we use 5 areas natural and western medicines: nootriopics, cannabinoids, adaptogens, mushrooms, and TCM herbs. Then we combine this with effective therapy techniques from 5 areas of psychology: neurolinguistic programming, neuro-associative conditioning, emotional freedom techniques, biopsychology, and clinical psychology.
Why is INT preferable?
More safe than any medication. More effective than any herb.
The current approach to improving how we feel is to pacify symptoms of illness with chemicals and leave it to the person to try holistic remedies such as stress reduction techniques, massage, stretching, yoga, nutrition, or herbal supplements to heal themselves. The main issue is that most people will take the medication to reduce the symptoms of their illness, but will not engage in the actual therapies to heal it. The other group of people will engage in some healing practices, but they often are not enough to permanently reverse the illness.
INT is both effective enough to allow the individual to act uninhibited by their conditions, and also heal them long term. By leveraging the strengths of each type of medicine and negating their side effects, one will receive a powerful yet balanced feeling that no other product can deliver.
How does it work?
Balancing physiological systems
For example, most "nootropic" supplements use caffeine as their primary ingredient. This without INT can be dangerous as caffeine can damage the stomach over time, increase stress responses, promote anxiety, and cause jitteriness. We apply integrative neuroscience strategies to the caffeine so that these negative side effects do not happen, and we are left only with the benefits such as improved wakefulness, alertness, and energy. The strategy would be something like this. First we improve the flow of electricity through the enteric nervous system, then accelerate the metabolism of the spleen and stomach, which allows for improved nutrient carrying by the blood. These extra nutrients, electrolytes, and minerals traveling to the brain will stabilize the electrolytic balance, and fuel the increased consumption of the neurons. From this, all side effects of caffeine are minimized, and we have created a much healthier way of consuming caffeine that delivers energy in the moment, and improves mental health in the long run. This is especially important for people with neurological disorders as disruptions in the neuronal equilibrium can have severe side effects.
How do we use INT?
The Science Behind the Most Effective Products in the World
We strive to make the most effective products in the world. INT is the scientific methodology that allows us to do that. The results that people get from the Nootripure products are a direct relationship to the methodologies by which we apply integrative neuroscience. Here is a stepwise guide as to how we use integrative neuroscience methodologies to develop new products.
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Experience the difference with integrative neuroscience technology.
Or learn more about the science here.


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The government of Japan announced its decision to award Edwin A. Cranston, professor of Japanese literature, the decoration of the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, on April 29. Cranston is recognized for his contribution in introducing classical Japanese literature to the people of the United States and other parts of the world, and in nurturing many young Japanologists.
Cranston has dedicated himself as an instructor in Japanese language and literature at Harvard for 44 years. He became an assistant professor as a specialist of Japanese literature in 1966, becoming a full professor in 1972.
Cranston has translated the Japanese waka, a 31-syllable poem, from the ancient period to the medieval period, and has introduced waka internationally with his detailed footnotes and commentary. His two volumes of "A Waka Anthology" (1993, 2006) have brought to light thousands of poems from ancient texts. Cranston's most recent book on Japanese poetry is titled "The Secret Island and the Enticing Flame" (2008).


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region in the NE part of the Indian peninsula, divided between the Indian state of West Bengal & Bangladesh
part of the Indian Ocean, east of India & west of Myanmar & the Malay Peninsula
See Bengal in American Heritage Dictionary 4
A region of eastern India and Bangladesh. It was a province of India until 1947, when the eastern part became East Pakistan, and later (1971) Bangladesh, and the western section was included in independent India.
Benˌga·leseˈ(bĕnˌgə-lēzˈ, -lēsˈ, bĕngˌ-) adjective & n.
, Bay of
An arm of the Indian Ocean bordered by Sri Lanka and India on the west, Bangladesh on the north, and Myanmar (Burma) and Thailand on the east.


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Eco Tech: Desalination plant in Australia will be powered entirely by renewable energy
Eco Factor: Water desalination plant in Western Australia will purchase renewable energy for power.
With the freshwater crisis looming large, specifically in places like Australia and Dubai, inventors have started looking for ways to convert seawater and make it potable. However, these desalination plants require a huge amount of energy, which mostly comes from non-renewable sources or use just a part of renewable energy.
To solve the crisis in Western Australia, a new $780 million plant is being constructed that will be able to produce about 20% of the requirements of fresh water. The noteworthy part doesn't just end here, as the developers state that the plant will entirely be powered by renewable energy, which will be purchased from utilities generating energy from solar, wind and geothermal sources.
Construction is scheduled to commence sometime later this year, with completion scheduled for 2011. Several green groups, including the WA Conservation Council, will keep a keen eye on the energy being used to make sure that plant developers aren't just making false claims.


Development of the Concept of Car key Fobs
The concept of car key fobs appears to be pretty straightforward. But as you start to delve deeper, you will notice that there is much technological complications and procedures that ultimately result in the proper functioning of the car key fob. If you are not aware of the technology behind the making of the key fobs, you won't be able to realize how important it is to keep the keys intact. Again, if you want to understand the mechanism of working of these key fobs, you have to know the mode of operation of the objects. You will be surprised to hear that the technology working behind the functional key fob has its original design for opening the garage doors.
The basic device
Long back in the 1960s, the key fobs were in use for opening and closing the garage doors. The working principle was simple. There was a tiny radio transmitter that would send the signal to a small receiver in the garage space. The entire concept depended on a single transmission. The popularity of the key fobs kept on increasing. But the problem was, all the receivers would respond to the same signal. So the chief problem was, you could open the door of the garage of your neighbor too as the automatic response of the receiver.
Broadcasting individual signals
Now the problem became significant as there was no privacy or security. One lost key can imply that all the cars in the neighborhood's garages will be at risk. When it comes to using the same mechanism on the cars, the single signal transmissions could not be the best way out. So the various manufacturers, including began experimenting in trying to broadcast a single signal which will be unique for a lock. The manufacturers began to come up with innovative technology for broadcasting different signals for different vehicles.
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Most of the 10 councils which had the biggest increases in recycling rates last year, according to data from Defra, have brought in fortnightly refuse collections and food waste recycling in the past two years.
Therefore, fortnightly collections should be recommended over weekly rounds to boost recycling, Defra suggests.
Last month, Eric Pickles, the local Government secretary, said councils that failed to run weekly bin rounds should lose public funding as there was "no plausible reason" to run a reduced service.
The most improved council was Runnymede Borough Council, Surrey, which increased recycling rates from 29 per cent in 2010/2011 to 47 per cent last year, a success the council put down to introducing a wider range of what could be recycled, including food waste.
The council also switched from weekly to fortnightly refuse collections in January 2011.
Bury Council increased recycling rates by almost 50 per cent by changing to fortnightly household rubbish rounds and bringing in food waste collections for 56,000 households which already had bins for recycling their garden waste.
Vale of White Horse and West Oxfordshire district councils both boosted their recycling rates to above 60 per cent of total waste in the latest figures.
Both councils introduced a system of fortnightly rubbish and separate weekly food waste collections in the past two years.
Vale of White Horse District Council has the highest recycling rate, of almost 69 per cent, of any English local authority.
David Harvey, cabinet member for environment at West Oxfordshire council attributed their success to bringing in food waste and free garden waste collections, and to the commitment of residents to recycling.
He said: ''West Oxfordshire residents are keen recyclers and there has been a dramatic increase in recycling rates since we introduced food waste and free garden waste collections.''
The combination of fortnightly rubbish rounds and separate food waste collections proved a success for Cheltenham Borough Council, which boosted recycling rates by a third from under 35 per cent of waste to 46 per cent in a year.
Councillor Roger Whyborn, cabinet member for sustainability, said: ''The increase in recycling is undoubtedly because from April 2011 we made several changes to waste collection across the borough - introducing weekly food waste, combined with only collecting residual waste fortnightly caused a major step change in people's recycling habits.''
Although both fortnightly recycling and food waste caddies have raised controversy in some quarters, Maidstone Borough Council - which brought in separate food waste and fortnightly bin collections in January 2011 - said surveys showed residents were satisfied with their rubbish and recycling services.
Jennifer Shepherd said: ''We've not had any issues with the refuse collection frequency and we've got high participation in recycling.''
And she said: ''As soon as we introduced the food waste we had a reduction of waste of 8 per cent. The little bit of extra work of sorting out their waste and see what they're throwing away does make the difference.''
Of the 10 councils with the largest increase in recycling, only the London Borough of Newham, which had the second best increase, has weekly bin collections and no food waste pick-ups.
However the council is increasing its recycling from a low base, raising levels from just under 15 per cent to almost 23 per cent over the past year.
The Communities and Local Government Department has awarded funding to 85 councils from a £250 million fund to encourage local authorities to maintain or return to weekly bin collections, which Communities Secretary Eric Pickles describes as a ''basic right'', at the same time as improving recycling services.
Just five councils applied for money to bring back weekly refuse rounds for all or some of their households, but more than a quarter of the successful bids are looking to introduce or enhance food or organic waste collections.


Destination Details
Destination: Santiniketan
Destination Type: Cities
City: Santiniketan / Bolpur
Country: India
Shantiniketan is a small town near Bolpur in the Birbhum district of West Bengal and about 212 kms north of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta).
It was made famous by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, whose vision became what is now a university town – Visva-Bharati University. The place now attracts thousands of visitors each year.
Shantiniketan was earlier called Bhnbandanga (named after Bhuban Dakat, a local dacoit), and was owned by the Tagore family. In 1862, Maharshi Debendranath Tagore, the poet's father, while on a boat journey to Raipur, came across a landscape with red soil and lush green paddy fields. He decided to plant more saplings and built a small house. He called his home Shantiniketan, the abode of peace. He founded an Ashram here in 1863 and became the initiator of the Brahmo Samaj.
The Shantiniketan campus is adorned by splendid sculptures, frescoes, murals, and paintings of Rabindranath, Nandalal Bose, Ramkinkar, Binodbehari Mukhopadhyay, and others.
Birbhum District, where the Shantiniketan is located, is also famous for its fairs and festivals like Poush Mela (December), Joydev Mela (January), Basanta Utsav (Holi) in March and the famous mystic Baul Singers.
By Air : The Nearest Airport is Kolkata Airport 165 kms
By Rail : The Nearest Railway Station is Bolpur
By Road : You can easily get regular buses to Shantiniketan from other major cities of the country
he Uttarayana complex where the poet lived consists of several buildings such as Udayana, Konark, Shyamali, Punascha, and Udichi, which reflect the architectural genius of the poet's illustrious son – the late Rathindranath Tagore.
In addition, there are Kala Bhavan, Sangeet Bhavan, Patha Bhavan, Bichitra, Cheena Bhavan, and Hindi Bhavan. You can also see Chhatimtala and the Prayer Hall.
Close to Shantiniketan there are several tourist destinations such as Fullora (40 kms), Nalhati (104 kms), Sainthia, Kankalitala (7 kms), Bakreshwar (58 kms), Massanjore (78 kms), and Tarapith (80 kms). The first five are Shaktipithas where the different body-parts of Goddess Sati is said to have fallen.
Visit Amar Kutir, Tagore's Ashram, Chhatimtala & Ballavpur Wildlife Sanctuary
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text: Braj has 12 large forests (vans) and 24 smaller forests (upavans), a total of 137 groves, 6 hills, innumerable kunds, and is inhabited by over 600 hamlets. Once an ecologically rich zone, much of its flora and fauna is lost. Only 3 groves remain out of 137, the western hills were illegally mined and the kunds, said to number over 1000, are drying up and are polluted. The holy river Yamuna is heavily polluted with sewage, its waters unfit for ritual bathing. Yet pilgrimage is flourishing and devotees from all over India continue to arrive in Braj in ever-increasing numbers to do parikrama (circumambulation), also known as ban yatra. The longest of these is the chaurasi kos (84 kos or 168 miles) parikrama that takes the pilgrims on the circumambulatory tour of the main forests and water bodies as well as the holy cities of Mathura and Vrindavan. The cultural heritage of Braj is extraordinarily rich in mythology and folklore sustained by natural and built-up sites reclaimed repeatedly over centuries.


text:
Main Article Content
In translating hyperboles, the effect of exaggerating something from the source text when translated literally into the target text can cause a strange meaning and less acceptable because the terms are not in accordance with the rules of the target language. This study aimed to analyze the translation strategies used by the translator in translating type of hyperboles and its translation quality in The Shrunken Head Novel. The descriptive qualitative research approach is used as a research design. The results of the study showed that there are two types of hyperboles found in this novel, namely overstatement of numbers and quantity and impossible description. Then, there are three strategies that used by translator to translated types of hyperbole in this novel, namely the sense of the word may be translated non-figuratively, retaining the word in the original but to add the sense of the word and substituting a figurative expression from SL to TL. The analysis on translation quality showed that 212 data of hyperboles (88%) considered as accurate, 207 data (86%) belongs to acceptable and 164 data (68%) are considered as high readability.


text:
- Perceptions of Coercion, Discrimination and Other Negative Experiences in Postpartum Contraceptive Counseling for Low-income Minority Women
- Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 22, Number 4, November 2011
- pp. _PHONE_
- View Citation
Background. Using in-depth qualitative methods, we investigated negative contraception counseling experiences, including those felt to be coercive or discriminatory, in a population of postpartum urban minority women. Methods. Brief surveys and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 consenting postpartum women who had received care at a Medicaid-funded obstetrics clinic. In-person one-on-one interviews were then reviewed for themes using an iterative process of qualitative analysis. Results. In this sample of African American (63%) and Hispanic (37%) women (median age 26), 73% had unplanned pregnancies. Features of negative counseling experiences included having insufficient, non-physician-directed and impersonal counseling. Most women had experienced episodes of poor communication with providers; 10 described feeling coerced or perceiving racially-based discrimination in counseling. Conclusions. Negative experiences with contraceptive counseling may affect contraception utilization. Contraceptive education should respect each individual's autonomy, culture, and values.


Grow a new generation of agricultural professionals and problem solvers by conducting hydroponics activities in your classroom!
Whether using alternatives for plant production to address changes to the Earth and its environment, learning how to grow crops on other planets, or simply using new farming approaches to accommodate urban populations, humans are employing different methods – such as engaging in hydroponics activities – to cultivate vegetation. Teach students how to use hydroponics, the method of growing plants without soil, to lay the foundation for future agricultural careers while empowering all students to solve problems in meaningful ways.
1. Build a Hydroponic System
hydroponics activitiesAs illustrated by Dr. Brian Waters, who is an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, choosing to build a system to illustrate concepts through hydroponics activities takes a lot of dedication and patience, but is well worth the effort. Assign different sections to groups of students, allowing them to build separate parts of the whole system, eventually connecting the entire project. Student groups should then individually present their parts of the project from the beginning through the final steps.


daemons-0.1.0: Daemons in Haskell made fun and easy
Safe HaskellSafe-Infered
Socket pipes
socketReader :: MonadIO m => Socket -> Producer ByteString m ()Source
Stream data from the socket.
socketWriter :: MonadIO m => Socket -> Consumer ByteString m ()Source
Stream data to the socket.
Socket server/client
type Handler r = Producer ByteString IO () -> Consumer ByteString IO () -> IO rSource
A simple handler: takes an incoming stream of ByteStrings, an stream of ByteStrings, and ties them together somehow. Conceptually, the simplest handler would be identity:
 import Control.Monad
 import Control.Pipe
 import Data.ByteString.Char8
 handler reader writer = do
 let identity = forever $ do
 x <- await
 yield x
 runPipe (writer <+< identity <+< reader)
See the pipes tutorial for more examples of writing pipes.
Since ByteStrings are fairly boring by themseleves, have a look at Control.Pipe.Serialize which lets you deserialize/serialize pipes of ByteStrings easily.
runSocketServer :: MonadIO m => Socket -> Handler () -> m ()Source
Listen for connections on the given socket, and run Handler on each received connection. The socket should previously have been bound to a port or to a file. Each handler is run in its own thread. Even in case of an error, the handlers' sockets are closed.
runSocketClient :: MonadIO m => Socket -> Handler r -> m rSource
Run Handler on the given socket.


Authored by sangtackett
Carpet Cleaning in Saudi Arabia
It is not as easy as it seems to carpet cleaners in Saudi Arabia. In fact, the process of cleaning carpets can sometimes be so labour intensive that many hotels and foreign visitors are avoiding it completely. Most expatriates who do own carpets either use them as a way to add a bit of culture to their homes or just for decoration, while others use them as a form of protective covering for their floors and walls.
Carpet cleaning in Saudi Arabia is different from how it is done in other parts of the world. For one thing, carpets are never allowed to be steamed. The hot water used for carpet cleaning in Saudi Arabia is usually from a hot bath tub or a swimming pool. This prevents the development of molds and fungi that grow on carpet. Some carpets are even steamed while others are soaked for an hour or two.
Read More : تنظيف سجاد بالقطيف
After the carpet is saturated, it is removed from the room and placed in a large vat or bin where it will sit and dry. Some carpets are put in this same large vat outdoors in the hot sun to dry out completely. While this is taking place, special chemicals are mixed that loosen the dirt and grime on the carpet. Sometimes, water is used but this is not common because water can cause damage to some carpets. Once the dirt is loose, a machine or person is used to suck up the water.
Before the carpet can be reused, the liquids used have to be neutralized with water. This is usually done by mixing vinegar and baking soda together. Then the carpet cleaning process begins. Usually three to four people are used for carpet cleaning in Saudi Arabia.
A special machine called a 'rubber" is used to scrub the carpet. Different than your normal vacuum cleaner, it uses special chemicals that bond with the dirt and grime on the carpet. The "rubber" then uses its suction power to pull up the carpet and dispose of it through the "spout". This allows the carpet to dry very fast. Then another "rubber" is used to extract the water from the carpet.
After the carpet has dried and been cleaned, it is inspected for any signs of mold, fungus, mildew, dirt or bacteria. If so, the carpet is treated again. Each time the carpet is inspected, special chemicals are used. Many times the carpet is treated with chlorine to kill any remaining mold or fungus. Other times special disinfectants are used to kill bacteria.
There are special cleaning companies that only perform these services for their clients. They know the intricacies of doing carpet cleaning in Saudi Arabia due to the climate and the soil conditions. That is why some companies have been established to only perform this service for their clientele. Some carpet cleaners are fully bonded and insured, while others are not, and they will be willing to let you know up front.
Keep in mind that you need to make arrangements for a reliable carpet cleaner to come and do your carpet cleaning in Saudi Arabia. If your carpet does not pass their standard inspection, they will not do it. The last thing you want is for something to happen because your carpet was not cleaned properly. That is money down the drain that could have been used to decorate your home.
You should expect that the rental that you pay will cover everything, the cleaning equipment, the chemicals, and the labour of the carpet cleaners. You should note that dry carpet cleaning in Saudi Arabia is often done using a steam cleaner. You should also know that dry carpet cleaning is not usually required, so it would be wise to inquire about it when renting your carpet.
When you rent a carpet in Saudi Arabia, you are responsible for its care. That is why you should carefully consider all of your options before renting a carpet cleaning service. Ask for an inspection report to ensure that everything was done according to standard practices. Also, if your carpet is something you are not familiar with, make sure you learn all you can about the carpet's proper care before you rent a service.
Renting a dry carpet cleaning service to clean your carpet in Saudi Arabia is not difficult, but it is important to do some research ahead of time. This will help to guarantee that you get the best experience possible on your carpet. If you make sure to choose a reputable company, you will have peace of mind that your carpet will be cleaned to its fullest potential.
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Create a line
- On the toolbox, click the Line tool.
- On the workspace, drag the pointer to where you want the line to end.
- To create a line that is at a multiple of 45 degrees, press SHIFT and drag the pointer.
- On the Inspector, change the properties for the line.
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The Color of Movies, Visualized
These images are called spotmaps: each colored square represents the average color from one second of a movie, and that process is repeated the whole way through the film. Can you guess which movies are shown above?
The images are a result of the ongoing Spotmaps project by Andy Willis, who aims to construct these color blueprints for a whole heap of movies. So far, he's worked his way through 296, reaching all the way back to 1923.
The films are processed using Python, and then the result are plotted so there are 60 data points on each line: each row is a minute of film, and the vertical height represents the length of the film in minutes. You can take a look at the rest of the spotmaps over on Willis' website.
Oh, and if you're still wondering, the films shown above are Avatar, Looper and Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy, in that order. [Spotmaps]


text:
Who's Who - Karl Boy-Ed
Karl Boy-Ed (_PHONE_) served as Germany's naval attaché to the U.S. until his eventual expulsion as a saboteur shortly before the U.S. entered the war in 1917.
Boy-Ed, who entered the Germany Navy at a young age of German parentage (his father was a merchant in Lubeck), and was something of a protégé of Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, worked with the Naval Secretary in seeking to boost the overall size of the Navy, a strategy that played dividends with the ambitious (and frustrated) Kaiser Wilhelm II.
As a Captain Boy-Ed was despatched to the U.S. in 1911 as his country's naval attaché. With war underway in Europe from August 1914 Boy-Ed worked closely with Franz von Papen in establishing a spy ring and a group of saboteurs, each determined to hinder U.S. economic aid to the Entente Powers.
Von Papen was effectively expelled from the U.S. in 1915 although Boy-Ed remained. Nevertheless his activities grew both in scale and in notoriety, to the point where the peaceable U.S. President Woodrow Wilson felt obliged to instruct Germany to recall Boy-Ed early in 1917. The U.S. shortly afterwards entered the war on the side of the Allies.
Back in Germany Boy-Ed continued to serve his country, this time as Director of the Navy's press department. Following the armistice he married an American woman (from Virginia) and settled north of Hamburg.
Boy-Ed died following a horse-riding accident on 14 September 1930; he was aged 58.
A "gutzer" was slang for a stroke of bad luck.
- Did you know?


text:
Reviewed by Sarah Haines
Science Education Professor
Often in elementary level life science, we focus on the mature stages of living organisms. Children learn to recognize them quite well, but they may not be as familiar with how the organisms got that way in the first place. For example, many children do not recognize larval forms of insects, but they can easily name adult forms.
This book is one in a series that focuses on the life stages of various living organisms. Written at approximately a fourth to fifth grade level, the text provides an elementary but fascinating look at the life cycle of a ladybug. The magnified photos are sure to attract the young reader as they gain an up–close look at the life stages and anatomical parts of the insect. These full page photos with captions support a large text so the books can be accessible to younger readers as well. The books ends with a very nice summary of the entire life cycle of the ladybug, from egg to adult. This full page outline of the organism's life cycle includes thumbprints to reference the photos in the book. There is a glossary, an index and several print and online resources. The books in this series would be excellent for supporting National Science Standard C: Life Science–Life Cycles of Organisms.
Review posted on 8/22/2012


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Improved Simulation of Stabilizer Circuits Scott Aaronson
Summary: Improved Simulation of Stabilizer Circuits
Scott Aaronson
University of California, Berkeley
Daniel Gottesman
Perimeter Institute
The Gottesman-Knill theorem says that a stabilizer circuit--that is, a quantum circuit consisting solely of CNOT, Hadamard, and phase gates--can be simulated efficiently on a classical
computer. This paper improves that theorem in several directions. First, by removing the
need for Gaussian elimination, we make the simulation algorithm much faster at the cost of a
factor-2 increase in the number of bits needed to represent a state. We have implemented the
improved algorithm in a freely-available program called CHP (CNOT-Hadamard-Phase), which
can handle thousands of qubits easily. Second, we show that the problem of simulating stabilizer
circuits is complete for the classical complexity class L, which means that stabilizer circuits
are probably not even universal for classical computation. Third, we give efficient algorithms
for computing the inner product between two stabilizer states, putting any n-qubit stabilizer
circuit into a "canonical form" that requires at most O n2
/ log n gates, and other useful tasks.
Fourth, we extend our simulation algorithm to circuits acting on mixed states, circuits containing a limited number of non-stabilizer gates, and circuits acting on general tensor-product
initial states but containing only a limited number of measurements.
Collections: Physics; Computer Technologies and Information Sciences


Homeowners report that painting a home's exterior costs an average of $2,911 with a typical range between $1,735 and $4,104. The average price per square foot ranges from $0.50 to $3.50 depending on your location, condition of your exterior and accessibility. Stucco and brick cost an average of $1 per square foot more than vinyl or wood. The average 2,500 square feet home costs an average of $4,000, though it can range from $1,250 to $8,750. House Painting Thornton
In issue #28 of Garth Ennis's comics series Preacher, Jesse Custer is sitting in front of the painting in the MoMA, examining it. In issue #43, the story of which is titled "Christina's World", Jesse relates his visit to the museum to his mother, Christina L'Angell, who explains to him that when she first discovered the painting in a book, she thought Wyeth had painted her own life. In addition, the cover to issue #43 by artist Glenn Fabry is a variation of Christina's World, with Christina in the role of Anna Christina Olson. House Painting Thornton
The woman in the painting is Anna Christina Olson (3 May 1893 – 27 January 1968). She probably suffered from Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease, a genetic polyneuropathy.[2][3] Wyeth was inspired to create the painting when he saw her crawling across a field while he was watching from a window in the house. He had a summer home in the area and was on friendly terms with Olson, using her and her younger brother as the subjects of paintings from 1940 to 1968. Olson was the inspiration and subject of the painting but she was not the primary model; Wyeth's wife Betsy posed as the torso of the painting. Olson was 55 at the time that Wyeth created the work.[4]
Exterior paint prep projects often involve multi-story work. This means you're going to need a ladder or even a scaffold to boost your reach while supporting you safely. Setting up a ladder or scaffold outside is trickier than an interior application. This is because you'll need to take the stability of the ground into account. A ladder which stands steady on a concrete driveway may sink into soft dirt as soon as you put your weight onto it. Or even worse: that ladder may not move at all until you're 10 feet or more in the air.


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Today is the start of National Papaya Month, which means one immediate thing: There's a papaya shake in my near future.
The beauty of papaya, the fleshy fruit that's never cloyingly sweet, is that it loves citrus as much as it loves dairy and sugar.
Drop papaya chunks into a blender with cold water and lime and you've got a tart, refreshing shake. Or blend the fruit with milk and your choice of sweetener and the result is creamy delicious.
Some of my favorite ways to enjoy ripe Florida papaya:
- Chilled, sliced lengthwise (as you might slice a wedge of honeydew melon) and served with a generous sprinkling of lime.
- Blended with water, lime juice and a touch of sugar, and poured into an ice cube tray. Pop out a frozen cube and slurp it as you would an ice pop.
- Ripened and smashed into cream or half and half with honey or sugar, and poured into a rectangular, freezer-proof container to make a homey gelato.
- Cut into cubes while still firm and simmered in a simple syrup of water and sugar with a cinnamon stick, until the fruit is tender and the liquid is thickened. Cool and serve with a wedge of cream cheese.
- Diced into a salsa, and added to chopped red onions, jalapeños, minced cilantro. Toss with lime and a drizzle of olive oil.
- Blended with either milk or water into a frothy shake. Add straw and levitate in bliss.
A few tips:
- For a sweeter fruit, look for papayas that are hot yellow and rather soft to the touch.
- Slice the fruit down the middle, lengthwise, and with a spoon scoop out the seeds. Cut the halves into sections and peel each section with a paring knife.
- Store fresh-cut cubes in a sealed container for up to four days, depending on how the ripeness of the fruit.
- You can toss the seeds or use them to grow your own papaya plant.


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In a symplectic manifold $(X^{2n},\omega)$, a hypersurface $Y\subset X$ has contact-type if there is a contact form $\lambda$ such that $d\lambda=\omega|_Y$. Recall that a contact form is a 1-form with $\lambda\wedge(d\lambda)^{n-1}>0$, i.e. the opposite of a foliation. For example, a starshaped hypersurface has contact-type in $\mathbb{R}^{2n}$, or more generally an $Y\subset\mathbb{R}^{2n}$ transverse to a Liouville vector field defined in a neighborhood of $Y$. In particular, any contact manifold $Y$ is a contact-type hypersurface in a symplectic manifold (the symplectization $\mathbb{R}\times Y$).
Now it's nice and useful to consider symplectic manifolds where its boundary has contact-type. And this can usually be done given a compact symplectic manifold (cobordism between contact manifolds).
This leads to the question of whether or not you can always build such a space. In other words:
Given a random hypersurface in $\mathbb{R}^{2n}$, is it of contact-type? How do you tell when it's not of contact-type?
Edit: In light of the posted responses, I think it would be appropriate to tweak one of the questions above. In particular, it was essentially pointed out twice that in the "set of hypersurfaces" there are open neighborhoods which contain no contact-type ones. But, are "most" hypersurfaces in $\mathbb{R}^{2n}$ of contact-type? i.e. Should I expect my hypersurface to be of contact-type?
share|improve this question
4 Answers 4
up vote 5 down vote accepted
Not all hypersurfaces in $\mathbb{R}^{2n}$ are of contact type.
Weinstein, in the paper: "On the hypothesis of Rabinowitz' periodic orbit theorems", where he defined the concept of contact type, gives a criterion. If $H^1(\Sigma)=0$, and $\Sigma$ is of contact type, then the characteristic line bundle comes with a distinguished orientation, determined by those vectors $\xi$ such that $\alpha(\xi)>0$ for all contact forms $\alpha$. This is independent of the contact form. For periodic orbits this induces a positivity criterion. In the same paper he also constructs an hypersurface in $\mathbb{R}^4$ which is not of contact type, by showing that the criterion is violated.
Many hypersurfaces are of contact type, as you remarked. Another nice example are mechanical hypersurfaces. These are hypersurfaces arising as level sets from hamiltonians $H=T+V$, where $T$ is the kinetic energy term $T=\frac{1}{2}\vert p\vert^2$, and $V$ is a potential depending only on $q$. This works in general cotangent bundles.
share|improve this answer
I haven't read Weinstein's paper, so this example may be essentially the same, but Hofer and Zehnder give an example of a wine bottle $S^3$ in $\mathbb{R}^4$ in their book (at the end of section 4.3). – Sam Lisi Aug 24 '12 at 9:09
Also, to emphasize something implicit in the examples of Weinstein and Hofer-Zehnder is that a small perturbation won't allow you to make them contact. (This is discussed somewhat in Hofer-Zehnder, if I am not mistaken.) This tells you that being of contact-type is not generic for a hypersurface in $\mathbb{R}^4$. – Sam Lisi Aug 24 '12 at 9:26
Here is an example of a surface which cannot be made of contact type even after isotopy. The elliptic surface $E(1)$ is obtained by blowing up $\mathbb{C}\mathbb{P}^1$ nine times. It is a symplectic four-manifold with fibre of genus 1 and 12 singular fibres. If we make a fibred connected sum between two copies of E(1) we obtain the elliptic surface $E(2)$, which is a symplectic four-manifold with fibre of genus 1 and 24 singular fibres.
Then $E(2)$ is separated by a torus $T^3$ into two pieces which are diffeomorphic to the complement of a regular fibre in $E(1)$. This shows that the separating torus cannot be made of contact type because, by a result of Chris Wendl, all strong fillings of $T^3$ are diffeomorphic to a blow up of $T^*T^2$.
share|improve this answer
There are also examples that are characterized dynamically. By Viterbo, every contact-type hypersurface of $\mathbb{R}^{2n}$ carries a closed Reeb orbit, i.e. a closed leaf of the characteristic line bundle. (Actually, Hofer and Zehnder show this is true for any stable hypersurface.) There are examples of autonomous Hamiltonians on $\mathbb{R}^{2n}$ that fail to have any closed orbits on a specific level set, thus providing examples of hypersurfaces that fail to be stable. These are due to Ginzburg and Gurel.
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The condition is clearly quite restricting however it is obvious that no effective proceedure could exist to determine if a hypersurface is or is not of contact type.
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_USER_: welcome to MO! I had some questions, I was wondering if we could chat over email (if you have time and are willing to). I cannot locate your email but mine is on my website. – Chris Gerig Jan 1 '13 at 19:01
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_USER_{xu-idr-neighbor-autodiscovery-12, number = {draft-xu-idr-neighbor-autodiscovery-12}, type = {Internet-Draft}, institution = {Internet Engineering Task Force}, publisher = {Internet Engineering Task Force}, note = {Work in Progress}, url = {_URL_ author = {Xiaohu Xu and Ketan Talaulikar and Kunyang Bi and Jeff Tantsura and Nikos Triantafillis}, title = {{BGP Neighbor Discovery}}, pagetotal = 33, year = 2019, month = nov, day = 26, abstract = {BGP is being used as the underlay routing protocol in some largescaled data centers (DCs). Most popular design followed is to do hop-by-hop external BGP (EBGP) session configurations between neighboring routers on a per link basis. The provisioning of BGP neighbors in routers across such a DC brings its own operational complexity. This document introduces a BGP neighbor discovery mechanism that greatly simplifies BGP operations in such DC and other networks by automatic setup of BGP sessions between neighbor routers using this mechanism.}, }


cannabis and music
We Asked Some Experts Why Weed and Music Go So Well Together
Winding through the crowds of Coachella, Electric Daisy Carnival, or any other summer festival, you'll inevitably catch a whiff of weed smoke in the air. We may not all have the same taste in music, but we can definitely agree on one thing: smoking pot and listening to tunes is the greatest combination since peanut butter and marshmallows.
Despite plenty of stoner message boards on the internet scribbled with pseudo-science attempting to answer that question, it's more complicated than you might think. Marijuana has been studied for decades in North America, but continues to be illegal in most places. Like many psychedelic drugs, it has suffered from a social stigma that has affected the potential for research on it.
However, there's been a growing body of work, drawn from multiple disciplines including psychology, neuroscience, and musicology, that looks at how our brains react to music while on drugs. Just last year, in 2015, a study was published on how LSD affected a listener's emotional reaction to music.
While there is plenty of anecdotal evidence out there about the link between music and weed, actual research is surprisingly hard to find. Nonetheless, we got together several academics from different fields to find out more.
The Experts:
Dr. Sophie Scott: A British neuroscientist who teaches at University College of London in London, UK.
Dr. Zach Walsh: A professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC.
Dr. Jörg Fachner: A professor of music, health, and the brain at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, UK.
THUMP: Why do music and marijuana seem to go together so well?
Dr. Zach Walsh: It seems like people love listening to music when they smoke cannabis. Cannabis users will often include increased appreciation of art in general and music specifically. There's just this deep relationship.
Dr. Sophie Scott: I sometimes wonder if the relationship with marijuana isn't a happy coincidence in two things that might be activating similar brain areas, but also have been so culturally brought together. There may be more cultural bringing together than neural.
What's actually happening in the brains of stoned people listening to music?
Dr. Jörg Fachner: [Marijuana] works like a psycho-acoustic enhancer. That means you are more able to absorb, to focus on something, and to have a bit of a broader spectrum. It doesn't change the music; it doesn't change the ear functioning. Obviously it changes the way we perceive ear space in music.
It also changes time perception, and if you listen to music, it is a time process, so if you have a different time perception of course you will listen differently to music.
Walsh: [Marijuana] puts you in a relaxed pleasant state, and there you are able to be receptive to music, or to be perhaps in the moment. Cannabis improves all types of things that are related to being present in the moment, as opposed to long term planning and worrying and ordering and organizing.
What parts of the brain are you looking at?
Fachner: In the study that I've done with the EEG [electroencephalogram, a machine that measures electrical brain activity], there are changes in the occipital area, which is processing visual; the temporal area, which is processing the auditory; and then in the parietal. These three connections seems to be of benefit for the listener.
Walsh: When you think about psychedelics, their effects are largely on the serotonergic system, whereas cannabis' effects are very diffuse. Cannabis can facilitate the activity of a bunch of other things—like gamma [waves], which is where you get the relaxation; all the systems that facilitate dopamine, which is why people like it so much. But, when we think about the main effect, a large concentration of cannabinoid receptors are in an area called the hippocampus, which is involved in the formation of memories.
Why is there so little research on this aspect of cannabis?
Scott: Essentially [marijuana and music] are looked at by two totally different groups of people. The people interested in how drugs affect the brain are not interested in music and vice versa. Even if you see similar networks [in the brain] getting activated, I don't think there's anybody theorizing about that relationship quite so strongly.
Walsh: We're looking at major indications, as far as medical use, that are going to have public health implications and alleve suffering. Because of the barriers that there have been to studying cannabis, it was hard enough to be able to do studies that could really help the health and well-being of veterans.
Interviews conducted separately by Gigen Mammoser.
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Investigating the science behind one of the world's best pairings.
Why Cannabis Makes Music Sound Better
There's nothing quite as relaxing as listening to good music. But how can you make it sound better? With cannabis, of course! By combining music and weed, you are onto something very special. You'll never hear music the same way again. But what's behind this phenomenon? Read on to find out.
It's an age-old image—lighting up your favourite strain, putting on your favourite record, then sitting back to relax while enjoying your favourite tunes and a smoke. But why does the music always seem to be better when you're high? In this article, we delve into some possible contributing factors. Don't worry, this won't be some science-filled buzzkill post, but it might just explain why you "feel" the music that little bit more when you're high.
To gain a great understanding, we need to look inward—not on a philosophical level, but a chemical one.
Firstly, it is well-known that cannabis affects the area of the brain that processes auditory stimulation. There have been numerous tests where subjects reported a greater ability to recall lyrics, understand differences in sound, rhythm, and other nuances that make musical pieces sound better. Some subjects also claim that cannabis blurs the line between auditory and visual senses, producing a phenomenon known as synaesthesia.
There are many theories as to why cannabis produces such a reactive effect on our enjoyment of music. These range from our perception of time to even just a passive placebo effect. Here are some ideas as to why it feels different listening to music while high.
Cannabis has an impact on our perception of time, as well as the speed of our internal clock. This potentially gives the listener a heightened auditory sense when listening to music and allows them to experience songs in a much more detailed way as they have "more time" to examine what they are listening to.
As we know, cannabis triggers the endocannabinoid system. This is a biological system that monitors functions in the brain such as pain, memory, and mood. When this system is stimulated, it stands to reason that physiological changes to cognition may cause users to experience a more focused state of mind. Being able to pay more attention will allow you to hear parts of the music you would otherwise not notice.
Another reason could simply be a placebo effect. Maybe we think the music sounds grander and the lyrics have a deeper meaning because we want to believe it, making us much more enveloped and "in the moment". It could be because of the ritual of enjoying music and cannabis together. For many people, sharing a joint or bowl starts with putting on the right music. As the smoke permeates the lungs, the music permeates the soul.
From The Beatles to Bob Marley and Snoop Dogg to Brian Wilson, drug use is often synonymous with the creative process for many artists, both past and present. This alludes to the notion that, while many artists will create music under the influence, listeners can also have a heightened connection to the music because of their own mind-altered state, picking out and appreciating subtle nuances that might go unnoticed to the average listener.
Famously, renowned astronomer and all-round brilliant mind Carl Sagan often preached the importance of combining cannabis and music during his lifetime. He explained how the change in state of mind allowed him to hear the music differently and understand parts of music theory he previously could not get a grasp on, such as counterpoint and harmony. If it was good enough for Carl Sagan, it is good enough for us, in our humble opinion.
In conclusion, there are many factors that contribute to your enjoyment of music. But in the end, it really doesn't matter why cannabis makes music sound more beautiful. But there is a pretty unanimous consensus amongst smokers that it does add to the overall enjoyment. So turn on some tunes, light up a joint, close your eyes, and enjoy.
Ever wonder why your favourite album sounds so much better when you're high? You're not alone. Check out the science behind the phenomenon here!