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People of the Geopark
Over many centuries, the special landscapes of what is now the Marble Arch Caves Global Geopark have presented both opportunities and challenges for the people that have lived there, and also contributed to the extraordinary diversity of settlers that have called this area their home. Ranging from the very first prehistoric people of Ireland right up to the present day, a near continuous history of settlement can be found within the Geopark, influenced and dependent on the wonderful natural landscapes around them.
The First People
The first settlers who arrived in Ireland around 10,000 years ago during the Mesolithic period mainly foraged on the shores of seas, lakes, and rivers as the densely forested lands were simply impenetrable to them. Evidence of how Mesolithic people lived is very rare as they were a nomadic people, but the remnants of their microliths or stone tools are sometimes found. Stone tools such as axe heads and scrapers made from locally sourced rocks have been found along the shoreline of Lough MacNean.
The first farmers marked the beginning of the Neolithic period, and this meant a change from the hunter and gatherer lifestyle of the Mesolithic period to a more settled way of life that included building permanent dwellings. Neolithic settlers cleared large areas of upland forests for agriculture as they were much easier to clear than the dense, swampy, lowland forests. One of the most important legacies of the Neolithic farmers was their megaliths, or large stone burial sites. The Cavan Burren Park near Blacklion is a stunning place where Neolithic hut sites as well as many Neolithic megaliths can all be seen. There are also several other examples of Neolithic megaliths in the Geopark, including the Aghnaglack court tomb in Boho.
The Bronze Age
The discovery of metal was a key event in human history and bronze was the first metal that could be moulded into any shape. The Bronze Age did not begin in Ireland until 4,000 years ago, but slowly this new culture became integrated into the Neolithic way of life and the Irish Bronze Age began. Settlers during the Bronze Age began to move away from the traditional megalith type tombs preferring simple burial pits or cists. A new type of tomb appeared in the west of Ireland, the wedge tomb; a spectacular example of which can be seen in Cavan Burren Park, known as the Giants Grave.
Giant's Grave, Cavan Burren Park
The Celts arrived in Ireland around 2,500 years ago and within a few hundred years, Ireland's Bronze Age culture had all but disappeared. The Celts had one major advantage, in that they had discovered iron, giving rise to the Iron Age. Iron was a far superior metal to bronze, being stronger and much more durable. It did however have one major disadvantage as it required much hotter fires to extract it from its ore. The Iron Age people left their mark on the Geopark landscape in the form of several promontory forts, the best example of which is again found within Cavan Burren Park.
The Early Christians
Perhaps the most famous missionary to arrive in Ireland was Saint Patrick, although he was not the first and according to many historians his importance was greatly exaggerated. The churches founded by Saint Patrick and other missionaries were fairly simple affairs and during the late 5th century, hundred of churches were set up. In time, the Irish church matured and by the 6th century a number of monasteries were also set up. Initially intended to be places of retreat, they attracted the patronage of kings and became influential institutions in their own right. Many of these monastic sites were located along watercourses as this was the main method of transport of the time. As a result several Early Christian sites can be found in the Geopark including Devenish Island monastic site and Inishmacsaint High Cross on Lower Lough Erne, and Drumlane Abbey on the shores of Lough Oughter.
Devenish Island (Copyright Tourism NI)
By the 12th century, Ireland was divided politically into a shifting hierarchy of small kingdoms. The Norman invasion of Ireland took place in 1169 at the behest of Dermot MacMurrough, the King of Leinster, and led to the end of the Irish High Kingship. Many changes were brought about by the Anglo-Normans after the invasion including the founding of borough towns, castles and churches, the importing of tenants and an increase in agriculture and commerce. Evidence of the Anglo-Normans in the Geopark area can be seen at the Anglo-Norman motte and bailey on Turbet Island in Belturbet and Clogh Oughter Castle on Lough Oughter.
The Plantation of Ulster was a planned process of colonisation that took place in the northern Irish province of Ulster during the 17th century. English and Scottish settlers took over lands that had been confiscated from Catholic Irish landowners in the counties of Ulster including Fermanagh and Cavan. These armed settlers helped to prevent further rebellion in Ulster, which had proved to be the most resistant of Ireland's provinces to English invasion. There are many Plantation Castles dotted across the Ulster landscape some of which can be seen within the Geopark at Monea, Tully, Portora and Castle Caldwell.
Farming in Ireland
Ireland's population increased rapidly between 1700 and the time of the Great Famine in the 1840's. Poor farmers grew food mostly for subsistence, and due to the ever decreasing availability of land, many people had to resort to farming poor quality lands. Many farmers devised ingenious solutions to this problem such as burning peat rather that wood or coal, and creating 'lazy beds', a method of tillage specially adapted to poor or thin soils. There are many derelict farm cottages dotted across the Geopark that are a reminder of those hard times and the remnants of 'lazy beds' can often be seen in the land adjoining these cottages.
Farming is still an important industry within the Geopark although many of the techniques used have changed dramatically. Tourism is overtaking farming as the most important industry in the region while manufacturing, insurance services, forestry and quarrying all make a valuable contribution to the economic development of both Counties Fermanagh and Cavan.
For more information on the archaeology and built heritage of the Geopark please visit the following websites:


The "Data Sharing Agreement" Every Parent Must Read
The Straight A Fund is a $250 Million grant fund established in Governor Kasich's biennium budget. It is touted as an innovation program, stating "educators now have an unprecedented opportunity to put good ideas into action". To no one's surprise, it is the same cast of characters using millions of Ohio tax dollars to capitalize on your child's personal and education data for the benefit of the education establishment and their cohorts. It is essentially a Common Core slush fund when you consider who sits on the governing board and oversees the awarding of grants; Gerry Stebleton, Andrew Brenner, Peggy Lehner and Dick Ross. One would be hard pressed to find a more solid group of hard core Common Core promoters.
The Straight A Fund awarded the Ohio Appalachian Collaborative grant to twenty seven rural schools last year. Battelle for Kids, which is heavily supported by the Gates Foundation, is the grant administrator and the research is being conducted by the Ohio State University and Ohio University. Their research requires the following information be shared by the student's local district according to the Data Sharing Agreement districts have recently received:
1. Definitions:
 a. Education Records: include records that are directly related to a student; and maintained by as educational agency or institution or by a party acting for the agency or institution. Educational Records includes both paper and electronic records.
 b. Personally Identifiable Information: includes, but is not limited to the following:
 i. student's name;
 ii. name of the student's parent or other family member;
 iii. address of the student or student's family;
 iv. a personal identifier, such as the student's social security number, student number or biometric record;
 v. other indirect identifiers, such as the student's date of birth, place of birth, and mother's maiden name;
 vi. other information that, alone or in combination, is linked or linkable to a specific student that would allow a reasonable person in the school community, who does not have personal knowledge or the relevant circumstances, to identify the student with reasonable certainty; and
 vii. information requested by a person who School District or OSU reasonably believes knows the identity of the student to whom the education record relates.
 c. Records: any information recorded in any way, including but not limited to; handwriting, print, computer media, video or audio tape, film, microfilm and microfiche.
The agreement goes on to reiterate that the "School District may disclose Personally Identifiable Information from an Education Record of a student or parent without consent if the disclosure is to organizations conducting studies for, or on behalf of, educational agencies or institutions to improve instruction".
We no longer need to imagine what they may do with our children's personal information without our knowledge or consent. The agreement repeatedly notes that it is completely in compliance with FERPA.
And if you are screaming, "this can't be legal", read this excerpt from one district's legal counsel advising against sharing the Data Agreement publicly:
There is no ability to state that the agreement is privileged or confidential, or at least not one I legally believe would be sufficient to stand up in court…but often with agreements such as these, with the amount of money that comes with them, general public members may not understand all the intricate details/legalities of the agreement, leaving the comments to be ill-informed."
In other words: Since districts do not have a legal way to hide this agreement from the "ill-informed public," the lawyers (paid for by our tax dollars) are advising them to execute it immediately so as to not jeopardize the big money that will be lost if parents find out their children are being sold for thirty pieces of silver…No child is safe under Common Core.


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Ever wanted to change the resolution of a virtual machine (in VirtualBox) and couldn't find the resolution you want in the settings? You can easily do this using VBoxManager, a command line tool that lets you control various aspects of your virtual machines.
There's one thing you need to know before trying this: you need to install the VirtualBox Guest additions before trying to set a high resolution or else it won't work.
To change the resolution of any running virtual machine, look for its name in VirtualBox Manager VM list and run the following command:
VBoxManage controlvm "MACHINE NAME" setvideomodehint WIDTH HEIGHT BPP
Replacing "MACHINE NAME", WIDTH, HEIGHT and BPP (bits per pixel - 24 or 32) with your values.
In my example, the machine name is "10.10":
So the command to change the resolution to 1280x800 would be:
VBoxManage controlvm "10.10" setvideomodehint 1280 800 32
Thanks to Linuxundich.de for the info!

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


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HIV is scary.
This article is going to scare some people. Some will find it difficult to read because it makes them feel queasy. Some people won't click the "Continue reading" button due to fear.
Fear is a natural response. All people are naturally risk averse. We prefer to pretend that scary things like HIV don't exist. We prefer to be ignorant. We find the following topics uncomfortable:
- Furries who are HIV positive.
- The incidence of HIV infection.
- The symptoms you'll experience if you contract HIV.
As Michael Harris, a gay Canadian journalist and author, wrote in 2011:
I live in fear — because HIV is a cipher for everything that constrains my sexuality and my potential for happiness.
The furry community is often perceived to be at risk of a HIV outbreak because we are closely sexually interconnected, far more so than a normal social group. There are three main reasons for our close interconnectedness:
- Furries don't strongly separate along gender or sexual preference lines. So a completely heterosexual furry male (or homosexual female) is likely to have a 'short route' for infection via a homosexual male.
- The furry community is relatively sexually active. Consider that the average American, aged 15 to 44, has had just five sexual partners (Ref).
- The furry community is fairly incestuous. This is because most furries socialize within the community where sexual availability is high, and furries often prefer to have sex (and relationships) with one another.
The best test of furry sexual interconnectedness that I am aware of is the Yiffchart, a social experiment conducted by Tursiae, an Australian furry. In 2007, Tursiae invited Australian furries to list their furry sexual partners, with collated results presented anonymously in a chart. The charts shows furries closely clustered together, with few 'degrees of separation' between any two datapoints. The results are particularly striking given the large distances between cities in Australia and the voluntary (and therefore incomplete) data collection method.
You can see the Yiffchart here (_URL_
There are some HIV positive furries, too. I had a chat with Yama Roo, who is HIV positive and was happy to be quoted publicly here on [a][s] (thanks Yama). Yama contracted HIV through unprotected sex with a stranger outside of the fandom. As he puts it: "It was after a bad breakup, so I just went out looking for fun".
Yama has found that his HIV-positive status changed his relationships with other furries: "they usually run away when they hear the letters".
Yama's experience probably explains why the furry world has never experienced a significant HIV outbreak: our interconnectedness means that at-risk furries are likely to be identified by the community. Yama's responsible attitude towards disclosure ("Anyone who knows me knows I'm HIV positive." "I don't even let [furries] flirt with me online without knowing about it.") is probably matched by the capacity of furries to gossip.
While furry's tight-knit community has provided some protection against HIV transmission to date, furries are placing themselves at risk by failing to practise safe sex.
I talked with Biramaye (_USER_), an Australian furry, equality campaigner, and paid porn actor. He has noted the reluctance of many furries to use condoms, and thinks that furries should follow the gay community's example and embrace condom usage. As he puts it, there should be "recognition of social responsibility amongst the more promiscuous".
Biramaye's point, that sexually active furries have a responsibility to use condoms, is simple and compelling. The need for change is illustrated by this story from Yama (before he was infected), an example of today's furry world:
"…we had a group of [furry] friends we played with. It was only those guys, and we all played bare because of it. One of them had a scare, and we all stopped playing for a while. He went outside of the group and it angered all of us. Still, instead of learning our lesson, we just stopped playing with that person (once we all tested negative for things) and started playing bare with each other again. It was pretty stupid."
Such attitudes are common within furry. Yama's candour is rare (and greatly appreciated), but his sexual experiences are not. As he says:
"[Furries] think that as long as they play inside the fandom, they're safe. Hearing HIV makes them realise the reality and is a buzz kill, so they ignore it."
A large proportion of gay men are HIV positive. In major cities in North America (Ref), Western Europe, Australia & New Zealand (Ref), one in five men who have ever had gay sex are HIV positive. Worse, over 40% of these men do not know they are HIV positive (Ref).
This means that, assuming you live in a large western city:
- If you have had gay sex with four men, the chance you have been exposed to HIV is greater than 50%.
- It may statistically be safer to have sex with an HIV-positive man (with a condom) compared with a man who thinks he is negative (also with a condom). Men who are HIV-positive are likely to have sought medical treatment, and therefore have a much lower viral load than those who falsely believe they are negative.
Of course, exposure to HIV – which I define as sexual contact with an HIV-positive person – does not guarantee transmission. The transmission rate from unprotected anal sex is around 1% to 10% depending on viral load, dropping to close to zero if you use a condom.
If you have contracted HIV there are common physical symptoms which will usually occur together, two to four weeks later:
- A very high fever.
- A very sore throat.
- A whole body maculopapular rash, which is like heat rash or measles.
There are a few other symptoms which are common but not universal as the first three:
- aches and pains
- mouth ulcers and sores
- abdominal pain
- vomiting and diarrhoea
HIV is, of course, very easy to avoid: always use a condom.
Condom usage among gay men has become commonplace in the wake of the 1980s HIV/AIDS epidemic. Today, condoms are much more likely to be used in homosexual intercourse than heterosexual intercourse, to the point that only around half of new HIV infections result from male-to-male sexual contact (Ref). This is despite the much greater risk of contracting HIV through gay sex, and that's not just because a homosexual sex partner is (much) more likely to be HIV-positive:
- HIV transmission rates are higher for anal sex than for vaginal sex.
- Transmission rates are much higher when the penetrative partner is HIV-positive. This means that HIV transmission from women to men is rare.
Condoms as a normal part of gay sexual contact is reinforced by many facets of gay culture. This includes fantasy representations of gay sex – the porn.
Condom usage is depicted in 80% of gay porn scenes, compared with 3% of straight scenes. Gay porn scenes without condom usage are typically marked as being unusual by the term 'bareback', and some gay male audiences regard such scenes as 'viewing death on the screen' (Ref).
Such depictions help make condoms an expected element of gay sexual contact. There is an argument that increased visibility of condoms in furry art would similarly normalize their usage among furries. As Biramaye puts it: "most [furry] art is bareback fantasy".
Yama's experiences also suggest that depictions of furry sexual contact should include condoms more often:
"As for the furry fandom, it seems for us majority of the fandom works off of innocence. We came into the fandom young, we have cute characters, and cute words for things. We don't fuck, we yiff. We snuggle, we cuddle, we're very open about the innocence and the cuteness of it. I think a lot of the fandom chooses not to believe in HIV because it destroys that feeling. We all go off to a fantasy land. Furries (in art and stories mostly) don't get HIV. They fuck who they want, and they have fun, and they don't have to worry about consequences.
Most of the fandom is done on the internet, and in the mind. It's an escape, and it has a world of its own. The unfortunate side effect of that is thinking that a mental escape also equals a physical one. We can choose to ignore the social rules of the regular world all we want, that's the mental aspect, but you can't physically remove your body from the rules that govern it. I think that's where things go wrong, and I think that's why most furs "choose" to ignore that STDs even exist."
Furry art, of course, is often set in a world where condom usage would be anachronistic (such as in a medieval setting) or otherwise out of place. However much furry art is 'real world' enough to include condoms. Based on a keyword search of e621.net, I estimate that condoms are depicted in less than 1% of penetrative furry porn although, happily, such depictions show condoms in a positive context: either as a fetish item or as a positive part of the seduction process.
Condoms sometimes appear in the written furry world too: [adjective][species]'s own Kyell Gold uses them at times in his novels, including in the upcoming Out Of Position 3.
Yama goes further:
"I think [increased depiction of condoms in furry art] would only be a small start.


What is Form Builder? BACK | 1 2 3 4 5 6 | NEXT | MAIN
Form Builder is a powerful development tool for building robust, enterprise-class applications that enable end users to retrieve, enter, modify, and save information in the database.
In this lesson, we'll discuss the anatomy of a simple application, and show you how to use Form Builder to create and manipulate its building blocks, or objects.


You're Awarded the Federal Grant, Now What?
Congratulations! You've gotten the federal grant you worked so hard to apply for. What are the next steps you should take to ensure you are successful in carrying out the grant requirements? Will your organization have a positive experience as a federal grantee?
After you have received the confirmation letter from the federal agency who awarded you the grant, these are some steps to take to assure your organization gets off to a good start:
 1. Publicize it - The federal government likes good publicity. The first ones you will want to tell include your staff and Board of Directors. It can be an exciting morale booster for an agency when they receive federal funding. Be sure you celebrate the federal award in noticeable ways within your agency, recognizing those who worked so hard to write the successful grant. A press release to your local newspaper can magnify your image within the community, as the general public often equates federal funding with strength and stability.
 2. Send a thank you letter - Not enough grantees remember to thank the funder for granting them a monetary award. Nonprofit agencies spend so much time and energy looking for grants, researching the facts, writing the grant and waiting for the decision, when a positive decision is finally received they forget to say a simple thank you. The bottom line is the federal bureaucrats who granted you the award love to be thanked and want to feel a connection with the people you serve. The funding agency will remember you if you send them a unique thank you - original artwork by children that your agency serves, or perhaps a thank you card signed by the residents in your women's shelter. It could make a difference the next time you apply for a grant with them.
 3. Organize yourself - When you receive the grant award letter, it will give you a date on which the federal funding period will begin. This date is usually 30 days or more. Use this interim period to organize yourself.
 - Set aside a folder, binder or desk drawer specifically for paperwork related to this grant. You will be receiving more paperwork than you anticipated during the life of the grant; have a place set aside where you can put it so it does not get mixed up with your other paperwork. If you get a phone call from the grants officer in charge of your grant, you want to be able to impress him and put your hands on relevant documents right away.
 - Have a meeting with your assistant or management team and go over the grant application you submitted, what you said you would do, and what needs to be done when you receive the money. Don't wait until you receive the money to begin thinking about it. If there are staff positions to be added, begin the recruitment process for them now. Do as much preliminary work ahead of time as you can. Delegate responsibilities and get the ball rolling.
 - Ensure you have a recordkeeping system in place to track the numbers you are serving with the federal grant. This is important as the federal agency will want to know how many new lives have been improved with the money they are giving you. Set up a system to count the new people you are serving as a result of the grant money awarded to your organization.
© 2015 Federal Grants is not endorsed by, or affiliated with, any government agency. Copyright ©2015


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See more from this Session: Soil Minerals and Human Health: II/Div. S09 Business Meeting
Tuesday, November 2, 2010: 2:00 PM
Long Beach Convention Center, Room 202C, Second Floor
Aflatoxins are toxic metabolites produced by fungi in grains. Moderately contaminated grains that cannot be used as food are often directed to animal feed. Economically-feasible detoxification measures for contaminated feeds are needed. The objectives of this research were to identify effective bentonites as aflatoxin adsorbents and to evaluate the performance of the clays as aflatoxin amendments in feeds for broiler chickens. Five bentonite samples from
Gonzales, Texas, USA were collected and characterized by the published selection criteria for aflatoxin adsorbents (Dixon et al, 2008). Aflatoxin adsorption capacity, pH, CEC, organic carbon, particle size distribution, and mineralogical and structural compositions of the bentonites were analyzed. Two bentonites were identified as potentially good aflatoxin adsorbents based on the analyses. These two bentonites were selected for an in vivo poultry experiment where chickens were fed with highly aflatoxin-contaminated corn to test the efficacy of the clays in detoxifying aflatoxins. Also, detailed mineralogy analyses were conducted on these two samples after size fractionation. Clay 4TX and 1TX contained 87% and 65% clay, respectively. Smectite was the dominant mineral phase in the clay fractions of the two bentonites. Other minerals were also present and it is not likely that the zeolite, quartz, or feldspars will cause harmful effects on the chickens, but the presence of pyrite and heavy metals in 1TX raised concerns about its use in animal feed. These investigations indicate that certain bentonites can effectively adsorb aflatoxin in vivo. Directly mixing the high-adsorbing bentonites as dry powder to highly contaminated poultry feed can reduce the acute aflatoxin toxicity to broiler chickens but does not eliminate it.

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


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March 22, 2012
Looking into Anne Frank's unblinking eyes
Is the image of Anne Frank heading in the same commercial direction as Edvard Munch's "The Scream"?
Munch's Expressionist painting, once an iconic representation of horror, for years has been available as a party inflatable, an action figure mask, even a bobblehead. With the installation of a lifelike wax figure of the famed Holocaust diarist on display in Madame Tussauds in Berlin, could Frank's image be susceptible to the same misappropriation and exploitation?
Considering that a 1999 issue of Time magazine listed Anne Frank as one of the most important people of the 20th century, and that the "Diary of Anne Frank" is one of the best-selling books of all time, it probably should not be surprising us that publishers and manufacturers are cranking out Anne Frank posters, postcards, limited edition T-shirts and key chains in an effort to cash in on her celebrity.
The fact that Madame Tussauds has locations worldwide indicates tourist acceptance of the museums, which are filled with kitschy wax likenesses of celebrated personalities such as John Kennedy, Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe and Rihanna—all done up in unblinking cosmetic perfection. But are we ready for a young Jewish martyr and personification of the Holocaust to be melted into the waxy mix?
It's not entirely clear. The German publication Der Spiegel noted that the wax figure of Adolf Hitler, which the museum reintroduced after it was beheaded by a visitor in 2008, is in the next room. Chris Hale, a producer who lives in Berlin, wrote on his blog that Frank's likeness is displayed in "the city where the diabolical plan to murder all the Jews of Europe was hatched."
But with several metal sculptures of Frank already on display in the U.S. and Europe—there's even one near the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam—why all the fuss? Isn't a wax figure just a sculpture done in a different medium?
Madame Tussauds did not respond to JTA's request for comment. But museum spokeswoman Nina Zerbe told Der Spiegel that the museum wanted to convey a "sense of optimism" with the figure and that "It's important to let the story continue."
Perhaps it is the motionless three-dimensional quality of the wax likeness. Frank is shown seated at her writing desk in the attic room made famous in her diary, complete with frozen smile that adds a dimension of jittery concern. The projects that put her and her world into motion—a Tony Award-winning Broadway play, a movie, a Japanese animation, a PBS movie of her life and a CD with a virtual tour of the house where she hid—all escape this effect.
An Anne Frank comic book even seems to capture her spirit better.
In 2010, The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam approached two American comic book artists, writer Sid Jacobson and illustrator Ernie Colon, to create "Anne Frank, The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography." Published that year by Hill and Wang, the book was among the first major projects in print to move beyond the boundaries of presenting Frank simply in word and in photos.
"Can Anne Frank's Story Be Told in a Comic Book?" Time magazine asked when the book first came out, foreshadowing some of the concern that the boundary-breaking Frank wax figure has received.
"With a graphic format we could make a more truthful presentation of the story," Jacobson said in a recent interview from his home in Los Angeles. From traveling to Amsterdam and seeing the house and the research, he knew he wanted to put the Frank story in context by also telling the story of the rise of Nazism.
"Seeing a person that you know introduced in a few quick panels is so much more effective than reading," said Jacobson, a former executive with Marvel and Harvey Comics and one of the writers of the comic book classic "Richie Rich." Jacobson also was the author of another retelling of tragedy, "The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation."
The book, even in its two-dimensional comic book flatness, is better able than a wax statue to take the viewer inside the attic where Frank hid from the Nazis. It graphically illustrates where the rooms were situated. It also shows us the joy of Frank's first kiss with fellow hider Peter Van Pels, the horror of her discovery by the SS, and her mother and sister's awful death from typhus in Bergen-Belsen.
As the book had broken boundaries when it was published—it has since been translated into Dutch, German, French, Italian and Spanish with plans for a Hebrew edition—I wondered what its author thought about the Frank wax likeness.
"I found it offensive, I think they should have stayed away from it," Jacobson said, adding that "Ours was done with dignity."
On the Madame Tussauds website there is this introduction to a museum visit: "You'll find yourself saying sorry to someone for nearly bumping into them before realizing it's a wax figure of Penelope Cruz or Johnny Depp. That's the skill of our sculptors."
But what if you are not ready for waxen verisimilitude or simply don't want to bump into Anne Frank?
A few years ago while visiting the Hollywood Forever cemetery in Los Angeles, I was startled by the engraved lifelike images in a section where many Russian Jews were buried. I had never seen an image of the dead on a headstone. They were done in such realistic detail that they creeped me out.
I had a similar feeling at an open casket funeral, which is not a Jewish tradition. On both occasions I was ready to honor the dead and was curious about their life story. But did I want to encounter them? No.
In Judaism, the viewing of a dead person is considered a violation of their modesty. We can look at them, but they cannot gaze back. In Madame Tussauds, when we look into those unblinking Anne Frank eyes, there is no return teenage glare that says, "How could you let this happen?"
And there can be no look that says, "Don't let this happen again."
Anne Frank, The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography, $11.29, Amazon.com.
Madame Tussauds, Berlin: Admission, age 15 and older, 18.85 euro (about $25); ages 3-14, 14.35 euro (about $19).
Have something that might be good for Goods for the Jews? Contact Edmon J. Rodman at _EMAIL_.


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Music & Musical Instruments - Overview
The Museum's music collections contain more than 5,000 instruments of American and European heritage. These include a quartet of 18th-century Stradivari stringed instruments, Tito Puente's autographed timbales, and the Yellow Cloud guitar that belonged to Prince, to name only a few. Several of these rare instruments can be heard in performances of the Smithsonian Chamber Players and in other public programs. Music collections also include jukeboxes and synthesizers, square-dancing outfits and sheet music, archival materials, oral histories, and recordings of performances at the Museum. The vast Sam DeVincent Collection of Illustrated Sheet Music is a remarkable window into the American past in words, music, and visual imagery. The Duke Ellington and Ruth Ellington Boatwright collections contain handwritten music compositions, sound recordings, business records, and other materials documenting the career of this renowned musician.


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The goals of the California Invasive Species Action Week (CISAW) are to increase public awareness of invasive species issues and promote public participation in the fight against California's invasive species and their impacts on our natural resources.
Prevention is the most effective strategy in managing invasive species. However, hundreds of invasive plants and animals have already established in California and are rapidly spreading each year. These invaders are negatively impacting our waters, our native plants and animals (some of them rare, threatened, or endangered), our agriculture, our health, our economy, and our favorite recreational places. Help us celebrate California's Invasive Species Action Week, and more importantly, help stop the spread of invasive species, by volunteering to take action.
Learn how invasive species are affecting California, with Invasive Species Week Lunchtime Talks (June 7-11, 2021). Webinars are part of California Invasive Species Action Week, organized by the California Department of Fish & Wildlife. Webinars were recorded and available for viewing.


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Classifying North Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Tracks by Mass Moments
Jennifer A. Nakamura; Upmanu Lall; Yochanan Kushnir; Suzana J. Camargo
- Classifying North Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Tracks by Mass Moments
Nakamura, Jennifer A.
Camargo, Suzana J.
- Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
- Permanent URL:
- Book/Journal Title:
- Journal of Climate
- A new method for classifying tropical cyclones or similar features is introduced. The cyclone track is considered as an open spatial curve, with the wind speed or power information along the curve considered to be a mass attribute. The first and second moments of the resulting object are computed and then used to classify the historical tracks using standard clustering algorithms. Mass moments allow the whole track shape, length, and location to be incorporated into the clustering methodology. Tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic basin are clustered with K-means by mass moments, producing an optimum of six clusters with differing genesis locations, track shapes, intensities, life spans, landfalls, seasonal patterns, and trends. Even variables that are not directly clustered show distinct separation between clusters. A trend analysis confirms recent conclusions of increasing tropical cyclones in the basin over the past two decades. However, the trends vary across clusters.
- Atmospheric sciences
- Item views:


Bit stuffing is a term used in communication techonology. It is related to a method to transmit and receive synchronous data transmission in a more robust way on the physical (lower) level of communication. It has two main uses:
1. Suppose, we transmit logic bit '0' as a change in signal level from high to low or vice versa. And the logic '1' is transmitter as not changing the signal level. For example:
Sent Data 0 0 1 1
Signal level high |----|
 | |
Now, suppose there are many 1's being transmitted. If they were transmitted for a long time, the receiver might get confused, go off-sync, 'lose the count' of 1's and receive wrong data in the end. Because of that it is being decided that after, let's say 5 consequent 1's, we always insert (stuff) one 0, just to change the signal level so that the receive can remain on sync. This process is called bit stuffing.
2. The second use for bit stuffing is when we decide on a higher protocol level that six 1's in a row signal us of something, for example, flag of the end of current packet transmission. But problem arises when we want to transmit data that has 6 or more 1's in a row. To overcome this problem, the receiver and transmitter agree that when after 5 consequent 1's in data we insert (stuff) a 0. In that way following 1's will be separated and won't be mistaken for a flag.
The receiver in its turn always removes a 0 after 5 consequent 1's.
Bit stuffing is used in USB communication in the UTM, in IrDA communication and other protocols as well.


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Dairy farmers in the north country power up equipment every day to finish chores, but they rely on the brainpower of researchers to tell them the latest strategies for making their operations profitable.
Thats why about a dozen farmers took time Tuesday at the Ramada Inn, 21000 Route 3, to listen to researchers from Cornell University, Ithaca, report findings from multiyear research projects funded by the Northern New York Agricultural Development Program.
Highlighted were studies on how predatory worms called nematodes are being used to combat the invasion of the alfalfa snout beetle, the latest strategies for planting winter cover crops and a free online tool that helps farmers cut spring fertilizer costs.
Many farmers are applying the microscopic roundworms called nematodes to their alfalfa crops to battle the alfalfa snout beetle, said Cornell entomology professor Elson J. Shields, who has conducted research on the beetle since the late 1980s. Results have been especially promising in an ongoing study since 2007 on the effectiveness of the method. Research has been conducted in 161 fields on 51 farms in six counties, mainly Jefferson, Lewis and St. Lawrence.
Equipment for treating fields with nematodes is simple and inexpensive. Once the nematodes are mixed with water in a large bucket or garbage can, they are applied to fields in rows with a golf cart or ATV equipped with a spray rig, such as a PVC pipe with holes, that allows gravity to distribute the water. Farmers can breed their own nematodes by purchasing cups of wax worms to inoculate. A $150 purchase of wax worms to breed nematodes will allow treatment of an estimated 5 acres.
Mr. Shields said nematodes usually need to be applied only once. Once the microorganisms are in the soil, they may be spread farther throughout fields by plows and harvesting equipment.
The study suggested that if the presence of the snout beetle is left untreated, alfalfa losses can climb up to $381 per acre after four years. In contrast, the cost to apply nematodes is roughly $30 an acre.
Once you treat an infected area, you can restore the alfalfa when the beetles die out, Mr. Shields said. And two years worth of plowing can spread (nematodes) to an entire field.
Farmers have a good reason to be Internet-savvy an online tool that helps them save money on nitrogen fertilizer was highlighted by Cornell researcher Bianca Moebius-Clune, who has worked on the project for the past decade.
The free service, Adapt-N, helps farmers accurately predict how much fertilizer they need by using a computer model that factors in current farm and weather patterns. The tool is available at _URL_.
Farmers normally use the same amount of nitrogen fertilizer every year. Doing so is problematic, however, because rainy weather during the spring calls for more fertilizer than usual, while dry conditions call for less. Thats where the online tool becomes useful: Based on 60 trials on farms in Iowa and New York since 2011, farmers saved anywhere from 25 to 60 pounds of fertilizer by using the tool, Ms. Moebius-Clune said. Eighty percent of farmers who participated in the study saved on fertilizer costs an average of $24 an acre.
For example, dairy farmer Robert Donald of Moravia in Cayuga County saved about $70,000 in fertilizer costs by using the online tool. He used 210 pounds of fertilizer to treat 1,000 acres of corn in 2010, which he dropped to 80 pounds in 2011 based on calculations from the program.
This is a very precise tool that farmers have never had before, Ms. Moebius-Clune said.


Memory Alpha
Revision as of 18:54, May 1, 2011 by Capricorn (Talk | contribs)
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The Tellurians are a alien species known for their various food stuff, including Tellurian mint truffles and Tellurian spices. (DS9: "The Assignment"; TNG: "The Most Toys")
Tellurian actually is a rare synonym for Earthling.
The Telurian plague, written with only one "l", is presumably not related to this species.
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Recently I was given the opportunity to work in a React Native project, as a developer, most of my experience was with React, so I was thrilled with expanding my knowledge in this area.
As I started studying the platform, I got really interested in how to make animations using React Native, and in this blogpost, I am going to share my experience, and create a guide for beginners on how to start animating your React Native apps. In this guide, we are going to create a Burger Button that when activated spins and turns into an X button. For this, introductory knowledge of React Native will be required.
To follow the code, use the instructions in Getting Started with React Native, and then we can start our guide.
There are different techniques provided by this library to animate your component's properties, the most basic being 'Animated.timing'. To show this we are going to begin creating a simple burger button.
Any resemblance with a music playing app is purely coincidental. But before we can begin animating this component, we have to add a wrapper to the views we want to animate, so we can dynamically change its properties. This wrapper is provided by Animated, and it needs to be used for all of the components you wish to animate.
Now that we have setup the basis, we are going to use the 'Animated.timing' function to begin animating the relevant properties. This function takes a property with a value created by Animated's method Animated.Value, and updates it according to instructions. First we are going to translate the upper and lower parts of the button to the middle. Why we need to do this for our animation will be explained later.
With this, we have our first animation in React Native. As you can see, we created a function that uses Animated Timing to change the value of our translateY property, and passed this value to our Animated Views through an object called animatedStyles.
Now we are going to see how to animate more complicated properties, such as color, and rotation. To achieve such animations, we are going to have to use the mathematical concept of Interpolation, which consists of constructing new data points within the range of a discrete set of known data points (according to Wikipedia).
Fortunately, we don't need any mathematical knowledge for this, we can use Animated to interpolate our data, which means, it can calculate which colors would make sense in the animation between two given colors. For example, this is how it would look like if we wanted our button to change colors from green to red when activated. Additionally, we are going to use interpolation to clean up our code, and remove the repeated values in the translate animations.
To interpolate our data, we have to use our animated property's method 'interpolate', and pass into it an input range and an output range. The input range must be the value of the range of our animated property, and output range the initial and final value of the component's property we wish to animate.
Interpolate supports mapping strings, this way, you can pass rotation values, and colors (either by names or RGB hex codes). To continue the animation of our button, now we are going to make the middle part of the button disappear as the animation occurs.
Additionally, we can pass an array with more than only two numbers to both input and output range parameters, with this we could make an animation that has different interactions in the output depending on the range of the input, like an animation that is really fast in the beginning, and slower in the end, similar to keyframe animations in CSS.
For now we have only used Animated's timing method, but there are other possibilities to animate your values. For the rotation we are going to use Animated.Spring, which is an animation function that does not take a duration, it only needs a toValue to work, but you can set friction and tension or speed and bounciness to improve your animation. The spring animation imitates a physical spring, and so, it overshoots the toValue that you provide, the amount it overshoots depends on the values we set before.
To make this animation run in parallel with our previous animation we need to use Animated's parallel function, which takes an array of Animated methods and runs them in parallel. In our example we are going to use high tension and low friction on our spring, so it will be really bouncy:
With this, we have finished our animation. Other possibilities for composing animations are sequence, that waits until one animation ends for the other to begin, and delay, that waits a given amount a time after an animation begins to start the next one.
Comparison with CSS animations
If you have any experience with CSS animations, you can see the similarities. With CSS animations we can declare a transition which will watch for a given CSS property change and automagically interpolate the values for this property to pass during the transition, or we can declare a keyframe animation and decide what we want to happen in the progression of our animation.
With React Native we have to use an approach similar to the CSS keyframe animations, and declare how we want our animation to progress. The main advantage of CSS animation vs React Native Animation is that not all of the properties of CSS are in React Native styles, one example we have on our burger button is the transform origin CSS property.
If we wanted to create the rotation animation of our button, we could declare the transform origin of our upper part of the burger, for example, as left and simply rotate it to 45 degrees, and reach the same animation as the one we did in this course, which needed a translateY to the final position where rotating 45 degrees from the center of the bar would reach the position we want.
But this is not a problem with Animated, it's a problem with React Native in general, but more and more CSS properties are being added to React Native, and I believe, eventually it will reach a realm of possibilities very similar to that of CSS3 in general.
In the introduction of the blogpost I talked about the possibility of creating native animations, but until now we haven't used any of it. Not everything we can do with Animated is supported by the native driver, as a rule of thumb, we cannot animate layout properties, we can animate things like transform and opacity.
In our project, we can use native driver for anything, except the background color and the height of the middle part of the button. But Animated only supports one driver per animation, so we cannot declare a Native Driver for this animations that do not support it, we have to declare a separate, non native driver for them. The way we use the native driver is very simple, we simply have to set a boolean in the animation to true, as follows:
This won't change our animation, it will simply make it more fluid and consume less memory.
With these few basic concepts, we can get started creating useful animations that will improve our users experience with our apps.
Furthermore, with React Native and Animated, we can also track gestures using the Animated.event method and create dynamic animations, like dragging an element or scrolling. Also, we can use libraries to improve our animations, some that I tend to use are libraries that create SVG animations, like flubber.js and D3-Interpolate.
There is still much to be improved in React Native's Animated API, but the path ahead for the platform is very exciting and filled with very smart people. This was my take on how to start with animating your React Native apps, any suggestions are more than welcome.
Thank you for reading!


Question: How Do You Use UPI?
Is UPI pin same for all bank account?
Is debit card necessary for UPI?
What is UPI and how do you use it?
UPI is a bank account linked instant payment system. It enables you to transact money between two bank accounts. If you have a bank account with UPI-enabled member bank and a mobile phone, you can start using UPI. But before that you need to download the UPI-enabled app.
What is the function of UPI?
UPI or Unified Payments Interface is an immediate real-time payment system that helps in instantly transferring the funds between the two bank accounts through a mobile platform. Hence, UPI is a concept that allows multiple bank accounts to get into a single mobile application.
How do I use UPI ID?
You can make direct bank payments to anyone on UPI using their UPI ID or scanning their QR with the BHIM app. You can also request money through the app from a UPI ID. Send money by entering UPI ID, account number, aadhaar or by scanning a QR. Request money from other UPI users by entering their UPI ID.
Do you need net banking for UPI?


Medieval Writing
The History of f
The letter f could be somewhat variable in the early scripts, but became more standardised over time. One of the most noticeable variations does not show up so well in this particular style of presentation, as f is sometimes tall with a long ascender, and sometimes sits lower on the line with a descender. In some scripts it extends both above and below the smaller letters as a very tall letter.
square capital F In the Old Roman square capitals, F has a familiar right angled open form. In this script, all letters are of equal height.
rustic capital F In the rustic capital script, it is much the same, but wit the slight curve to the lines typical of this script.
uncial F The uncial F is similar in general form, but sits lower on the line, with a tail hanging down and slightly curved.
New Roman cursive f In this example of New Roman cursive, the minuscule f is tall, extending above and below the other letters, and curved.
In the pre-Carolingian minuscule scripts or National Hands, f varies somewhat between the uncial form and that derived from New Roman cursive, with a few eccentric variations. Where the letter is very tall, it is generally only distinguished from s by the cross bar, as both letters tend to have very similar vertical elements.
half uncial f In a 6th century half uncial script it sits low, as in the uncial form, although in this example the top has bee simplified from three strokes to two.
Corbie ab f In the specialised book script Corbie ab it extends above and below, with a curved ascender and straight descender.
old Italian f An old northern Italian book hand of the 8th century displays a form closer to the uncial, with a split top.
Germanic f This example of Merovingian minuscule or Germanic book hand shows a clean and simple example of the New Roman cursive type.
Luxeuil f The other named special Merovingian book hand, Luxeuil minuscule, has a quite peculiar form, with a curved split back and a closed loop rather than a curved top and crossbar. This is a unique form of the letter.
Visigothic f In the Visigothic script, it is simple and straight.
insular half uncial f The formal script known as known as insular half uncial employs a form closely related to the uncial. In this example the descender is short, even though the letter sits low on the line. It is slightly split at the back.
insular minuscule f This 10th century example of insular minuscule is very similar, with a more markedly split back.
Beneventan f In Beneventan minuscule the letter is tall extending above and below the others.
Merovingian chancery f The tendency for vertical extension and horizontal compaction in Merovingian chancery script has made f into a very tall skinny letter.
old curialis f In the old curialis of the papal chancery, it is twisted into a loop rather than equipped with a crossbar.
The Carolingian scripts generally adopted a fairly standardised form of f.
Caroline minuscule f In a formal rounded version of Caroline minuscule it has become simple and open with a curved ascender. It extends only a very small amount below the baseline.
Caroline minuscule f A sample from a forged 12th century monastic charter shows a similar form.
later curialis f The later papal curialis of the 11th century has adopted this standard letter f.
papal f By the 12th century the diplomatic minuscule of the papal chancery has produced a very tall narrow letter with a closed loop at the top, but it does not extend far below the baseline.
Imperial f The 12th century diplomatic minuscule of the Imperial German chancery has added a few of its trademark squiggles to the top of a straight ascender.
In the formal Gothic book hands, the Carolingian f does not change its essential form, varying only in details and degree of angularity.
protogothic f This protogothic f from a 12th century French book hand entirely resembles a Caroline minuscule f.
rotunda f The 14th century Gothic rotunda version of the letter is much the same.
textura f This 13th century Gothic textura f of medium grade is somewhat wider.
prescissa f The very formal Gothic prescissa, displays neat angles rather than a curve on the ascender.
textura f A relatively informally written late 15th or early 16th Gothic textura script fits the same general pattern.
textura f A 15th century Dutch language formal Gothic textura has added a tiny angular hairline to the base.
The standard and quite recognisable f develops a few variants in the later cursive scripts.
more about f
Histories of Individual Letters
History of Scripts
What is Paleography?


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How is figurative language used in ''The Devoted Friend'' by Oscar Wilde?
Oscar Wilde's "A Devoted Friend" is an example of a type of story called a "fable." Fables usually sound like children's stories because they are meant to instruct or demonstrate a moral, and they often feature animals as characters. This type of story is, by its very nature, figurative in meaning, because it is not meant to be taken literally. If we took this story literally we would have ducks and rats and linnets talking to each other.
The figurative nature of the story is also a bit ironic because the linnet is telling a story about humans. Within the story's reality, he is using human behavior to teach a moral to other animals. Wilde has succeeded in turning the normal pattern upside down. Again, none of this is meant to be taken literally, so its meaning is figurative.
You might also think of the story as symbolic. Symbolism is a type of figurative language (along with simile, metaphor, personification). The animals represent, or symbolize, different kinds of people. The duck is a concerned parent, the linnet is something of a philosopher, and the water rat is a selfish, ignorant person who can only look at things in terms of his own well-being.
This story is also an example of a "frame story" because it consists of a story within a story. This happens when the linnet tells the duck and water rat a story about two humans.
"The Devoted Friend" by Oscar Wilde is a short story whose main idea is the exposure of the double standards of what is thought to be as the proper, righteous, and polite society of Victorian London.
Therefore, irony would be the first technique as well as the personification of the marsh animals who are taking part of the story and tell each other the tale of the miller and Hans.
The nested story is also figurative. The animals tell a story within their own story.
Epigrams and aphorisms are rampant in every work of Oscariana and is evident in the juxtaposition of ideas such as the idea that having a moral in a story is a negative thing, and how (even though the moral of the story was clear) nobody seemed to care to recognize it.
That is what reinforces Wilde's use of irony in his tales, and how he wants to expose society for what it is.


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Probabilistic Model Showing Sigmoid Semilogarithmic Survival
Most isothermal microbial survival curves plotted on semilogarithmic coordinates appear linear, concave upward, or concave downward. This indicates that the underlying mortality probability rate is constant, monotonically falling, or monotonically rising, respectively. Other mortality patterns emerge when the mortality probability rate function has a peak or valley, in which case the resulting sigmoid curve starts with downward concavity and ends with upward concavity, or vice versa. This Demonstration simulates such survival patterns, as well as monotonic but with two inflection points, using a fully probabilistic model where the underlying mortality probability rate function is constructed from combinations of two stretched exponential (Weibullian) terms.
Snapshot 1: simulated sigmoid semilogarithmic survival curve type I generated with a mortality probability rate function having a peak
Snapshot 2: simulated sigmoid semilogarithmic survival curve type II generated with a mortality probability rate function having a valley
Snapshot 3: simulated sigmoid semilogarithmic survival curve type III generated with a mortality probability rate function having two inflection points (double sigmoid)
Consider a live microbial cell or viable bacterial endospore exposed to a lethal agent, be it heat, chemical disinfectant, ultra-high hydrostatic agent, radiation, and so on. We assume that the cell or spore can be in one of two states: alive/viable or dead/inactivated. In other words, growth, injury, recovery from injury, and adaptation do not occur on the relevant time scale. If a microbe is alive at time,, then after time step, it has a mortality or inactivation probability, where is the probability rate function at time 1, and a probability to remain alive or viable (see the diagram). After a second time step, which for simplicity remains of the same duration, the mortality probability is and that of survival is. Similarly, for the third time increment, the survival probability is, and so on. Assigning each time step a pertinent unit time, that is,, the survival probability after the time step is [1, 2].
To create a discrete survival curve of a group of cells or spores, start by generating a random number,, and check whether. If so, the cell or spore is considered inactivated and the calculation stops. If not, then generate another and check if, in which case the cell or spore is considered inactivated and the process ends for that particular spore. If not, the process is repeated with new generated and until the cell or spore dies out. The same is repeated for all spores and the tally is recorded. The discrete survival curve is the sum of the number of living cells or viable spores at time units 0, 1, 2, 3, and so on.
This Demonstration lets you select three model types with a setter bar. The models are all combinations of two stretched exponential (Weibullian) terms and are displayed above the plot at the top. They generate curves with a peak (type I), valley (type II), or monotonic with two inflection points (double sigmoid, type III), which most likely indicates a mixture. Using sliders you can select the seed for the random number generation, the number of points to be generated, the initial number of living cells or viable spores, and the parameters of the probability rate function. The parameters are,,,,, and, where and are the terms' asymptotic levels, and their characteristic times (arbitrary units), and and the corresponding "shape factors" that control the steepness of the rise and decay. The program then plots the probability rate function and, below it, the corresponding survival curve on linear and semi-logarithmic coordinates.
The Demonstration shows how certain shapes of the underlying mortality probability rate function, that is, with peak, valley, or two inflection points, affect the overall shape of the survival curve of small and large microbial populations. Not all parameter combinations allowed by the Demonstration necessarily have a match in the microbial world, but the Demonstration does show, in agreement with other reports, that as the number of cells or spores in the population increases, the survival curve simulated by the stochastic model becomes smoother and more deterministic.
 J. Horowitz, M. D. Normand, M. G. Corradini, and M. Peleg, "A Probabilistic Model of Growth, Division and Mortality of Microbial Cells," Applied & Environmental Microbiology, 76, 2010 pp. 230–242.
 M. G. Corradini, M. D. Normand, and M. Peleg, "A Stochastic and Deterministic Model of Microbial Heat Inactivation," Journal of Food Science, 75, 2010 pp. R59–R70.


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RAINBOW BALLET 3-6 YRS
Celebrating the aesthetic and creative elements of ballet through dance, fairy tales, storytelling, drama and technical development.
Our Rainbow Ballet classes are much loved as they foster ballet technique development without the stress that can be associated with learning ballet. Within our uncompromising framework our dancers acquire skills whilst still having the freedom to express themselves creatively and of course, have a good time. At Big Steps Little Feet, we do not believe that ballerinas should conform to a certain shape or style and we encourage our blossoming dancers to bloom and grow.
- All our classes are streamed by age to maximise every dancer's potential for learning and growth
- Classes progress year by year in technical and creative challenges
- Once dancers reach 6 years of age they may progress to Creative Dance or Classical Ballet
- To celebrate and honour every child's natural abilities and reveal their unique talents
- Developing strength, technical ability and growth in a stress free and creative space
- Celebrating storytelling, fairy tales, creative dance and the magic of childhood
- Teaching dancers the foundations of ballet - sautes, tendus, arabesques, jetes, pirouettes
- Developing an awareness of posture, musicality, alignment, weight placement and coordination
To enhance creativity and keep our classes interesting and fresh, a new theme is introduced every term. This allows for individual classes to be brought to life each week with new characters, props and activities. Our themes intertwine through a combination of creative dance, storytelling, free movement, drama and skill development. All our props and costumes are lovingly and mindfully made by hand.
TERM THEME EXAMPLE: The Sea
WEEKLY THEME EXAMPLES: Mermaids, Seahorses and Pirates
- Our classes start with a warm up designed to develop non-locomotor skills and activate the mind and body
- The weekly and term themes determine the dramatic elements of the class, which lead the children on a challenging and joyous adventure, at the same time developing their ballet technique, music appreciation, creative dance skills and gross motor development
- A familiar cool down exercise brings the class to a close. This often includes dress-ups, free dancing or narrative inspired dance followed by a relaxation activity
Classes are streamed by age and progress year by year. As dancers mature, the ballet syllabus becomes more demanding increasing the technical and creative challenges to suit the age and ability of your child.
What to wear and bring
We encourage our students to dress in clothes that are comfortable whilst still expressing their creativity.
- Pink leather ballet shoes – these can be purchased from a specialist dance wear supplier (no jiffies or ballet flats please)
- Students can choose their own style of leotard, skirt, ballet dress, soft fairy dress or soft tutu
- Remember to layer up during the colder months - ballet or footless tights, crossovers or a soft knitted cardigan are good options
- Please avoid dresses/dress ups that are too long and elaborate as they can restrict the amount of movement and also make dancers itchy and uncomfortable
- Leggings, shorts or bike shorts
- T-shirt or singlet
- Black ballet shoes
- Avoid jeans, cargo pants and anything bulky
Local Dancewear Suppliers
BLOCH: Shop 2, 25-33 Bronte Rd Bondi Junction or 117 York Street CBD
SALVIOS: 34 St Pauls Street Randwick
If shopping online, brands to look out for are Bloch, Capezio, Sansha or Energetiks
Remember to bring a water bottle to class. Snacks are permitted before and after class however please ensure they are nut free.


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International organizations launch initiatives for sustainable water use in Asia Pacific
05 December 2007 | News story
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have launched concrete initiatives to achieve more sustainable management of precious water resources in the Asia Pacific region.
IUCN stressed its commitment to establishing a network of people focussed on promoting and apply environmental flows in the Asia Pacific region. Environmental flows refer to water within a river, wetland or coastal zone which maintain ecosystems and their benefits where there are competing users.
IUCN Director General Julia Marton-Lefèvre stressed that in order to realise environmental flows there needs to be more integrated thinking to recognise the environment as a stakeholder in water-related decisions. She also called "for a balance in technical and institutional innovations for water resources management and work on practical solutions".
The FAO unveiled a joint initiative with the International Water Management Institute to re-invent irrigation and agricultural water governance in the Asia Pacific region to meet the Millennium Development Goals. Dr Changchui He, Assistant Director General and Regional Representative of FAO stressed that irrigated agriculture is the major water consumer and backbone of food security in the region, thus development and environmental targets will not be met if this sector does not adopt forward-looking strategies. He said: "Five hundred million people in the region are undernourished. Achieving food security with a rapidly growing population is an enormous challenge."
These commitments were launched at the Asia Pacific Water Summit, held in Beppu, Japan, as part of the high level session on Water for Development and Ecosystems.
Governments, NGOs, international and regional organizations present at the summit confirmed their commitment to moving forward with the necessary institutional reforms and technical innovations to ensure that water is managed in a way that provides both environmental and development benefits.
Participants stressed a sense of urgency in taking concrete action towards integrated thinking in which development enhances sustainability instead of threatening it. The session highlighted the need to invest in ecosystems as development infrastructure which must be maintained, restored, monitored and managed. The session also reiterated the dependence of the region on water for food security under further threat from climate change, on agriculture and irrigation as a key area for reform and investment to increase its productivity and social economic and environmental outcomes.
In her summary comments, Ms Margaret Catley-Carlson, the Chair of the Global Water Partnership, observed that the challenges to implementing recommendations remain formidable. The full range of difficult governance issues need to be addressed if further progress is to be made. The challenge will be implementing the policy recommendations of this summit which participants have committed to.
For more information:


text:
|"There are plenty of eye-witness accounts. Just because you're so narrow-minded you need to have everything shoved under your nose before you–"
This article contains of a list of appearances, but currently has few or no notes and references. Please help the Harry Potter Wiki by adding notes and/or references to bring this article to a higher standard of quality.
The sea serpent is an aquatic creature found in several oceans around the world including the Atlantic, Pacific, and Mediterrainean Sea. Reaching over a hundred feet long with a horse-like head and snake-like body, the sea serpent is a fearsome looking creature. Despite this, no Sea Serpent has ever been known to hurt a human, despite Muggle stories of encounters with the beasts. It rises in humps out of the water as it swims.
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (video game) (Mentioned on a Famous Wizard Card)
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (video game) (Mentioned on a Famous Wizard Card)
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (video game) (Mentioned on a Famous Wizard Card)
- Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
- Pottermore (Mentioned only)
Notes and references


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Nowadays considerable efforts are concentrated on hazard assessment of energetic materials. The final aim of such investigations is the proper choice of safe conditions of use, storage and transportation of these substances. Typical experimental methods in this field include thermal analysis and adiabatic calorimetry.
Taking into account specific features of methods applied and practical tasks to be solved we can propose the following TSS subset that includes ADaExpert, TDPro, ForK and IsoKin, and ReRank, ThermEx and ConvEx.
TDPro and ADaExpert support all necessary types of data processing for data of thermal analysis and adiabatic calorimetry. The auxiliary Text File Converter program allows simple method for data conversion so that TDPro and ADPro can be used in combination with any thermal analytical and adiabatic instrument respectively.
IsoKin is the convenient tool for easy and fast preliminary analysis of data by applying model-free kinetics. Results of this analysis are helpful for creation of formal kinetic models that are evaluated by using
ForK. These models are the basis for assessing hazard by applying the last group of programs.
ReRank provides easy and fast determination of hazard indicators of chemicals whereas


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The meat of most adult mammals falls in the category of red meat, such as beef, lamb, pork, venison, goat and some others.
Not all red meats are the same color. The color variations result from differences in diet, exercise, breed, and especially by the age of animal, which can produce darker red meat as it gets older.
In the case of red meat, you probably associate a pinkish-red color with freshness. This color is a result of the protein called myoglobin, that stores oxygen in muscle cells and is purplish in color. When it is mixed with oxygen, it becomes oxymyoglobin and produces bright red color. The more myoglobin there is in the cells, the redder the meat.
When you cook the red meat, the color changes depending on what the meat's interior temperature is. The redder the meat, the darker it will get when cooked.
Prolonged exposure to air and light will darken meat that starts out bright red. Color changes can also occur if raw meat is frozen, where it can fade or turn more of a brownish shade due to oxidation.
Even if there's a color change, the meat remains perfectly fine to eat if stored in the refrigerator or freezer and consumed within a safe period of time. Ground meat may be refrigerated for one to two days and five days for other cuts.
Beyond color change, the best way to tell if the meat gone bad is to let your other senses be your guide. Smell it, touch it, and look at it.


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Economists do not understand Hayek.
They simply don't.
I want here to explain in simple terms what economists don't get, and what they would grasp if they were to ever understood what Hayek is doing.
Thomas Kuhn explains how roadblocks to explanatory success, and conceptual novelties inspired by explanatory failure, providing new avenues to understanding, open the way to new explanatory strategies and success.
Here is what Hayek does. Hayek identifies roadblocks to explanatory success in economic science, and then he recasts the explanatory problem and explanatory strategy of economics to overcome these roadblocks. He achieves a new understanding of the science of economics which solves old problems and puts is on a secure logical foundation.
If we think about how economist have locked themselves into a titanium box inherited from an old tradition of what "knowledge" demands and what "science" must look like, then we can grasp why economists haven't yet begun to see what Hayek has achieved.
To get from the current state of non-understanding to a position of understanding, we need to sketch out a few things, and then show how they are related to one another. We need to sketch out the old picture of what "knowledge" and "science" must be, and how that formed into a powerful central dogma. We need to identify the roadblocks to explanatory coherence and success which economics faced over the last century, and how those problems came to a head in the work of Friedrich Hayek on prices, production goods, trade cycle dis-coordination, and in the economics of socialism. We need to talk about how the false dogma of what "knowledge" and "science" demand has shaped economics, and how that dogma contributed roadblocks to explanatory coherence and success in economics. Finally, we need to show how Hayek overcame these roadblocks to explanatory success my recasting the explanatory problem and explanatory solution set in economic science, braking away from old fallacies and dogmas once set in concrete among economists and philosophers.
Here is what we are going to learn.
We are going to learn that Hayek's research project was dominated by a closely related set of conceptual problems, all of which had been running into conceptual roadblocks. Among other thinks, Hayek was working on extending the pure logic of choice, also known as the pure calculus of marginalist valuation, from the case of multiple consumption goods to the case go multiple production goods. Hayek was also working on the problem of using the pure logic of choice to understand what is happening when the economy cycles from boom phases to bust phases. Closely related to both problems, Hayek was working on the problem of using the calculus of marginalize valuation to rethink what classical economists had said about the distribution of income and the nature of money and interest, problems which were interrelated through pre-marginalist theories of profit, interest, and capital.
We are going to learn that the a false image of "knowledge" and "science" dominates the imagination of economists, a false image derived from 19th century German economists and philosophers, ultimately grounded in false ideas derived from the Greeks. Hayek challenges and smashes this false image, combining his revolutionary work in neuroscience and epistemology with insights derived from David Hume, Carl Menger, Karl Popper, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, among others. Hayek marshals his new thinking in a process of re-casting the explanatory problem and explanatory mechanisms of economics, making use of a constellation of new ideas and forgotten explanatory achievements from the past.


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|Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002
You confuse COP with efficiency, and they are two quite different things. Even many of the textbooks confuse these terms quite often.
Rigorously, the efficiency of a motor or system may be defined as (total useful output) divided by (total energy input from all sources). No inert system can have an efficiency of greater than 100%, for that would be a violation of energy conservation.
The coefficient of performance (COP) of a motor or system may be defined as (total useful output) divided by (energy input by the operator only). If the operator only has to input, say, 10 joules of energy and the active environment freely inputs 90 joules of energy, then the total input is 100 joules. Now suppose that the system has 50% efficiency; i.e., it wastes or "loses" half the energy before it dissipates the rest of it in the load to do useful work. In that case the system outputs 50 joules of work for a total input of 100 joules, but with the operator only inputting 10 of those 100 input joules.
So this system has an efficiency of 50% but a COP =5.0.
A windmill, e.g., may have an efficiency of 30% or less, but its COP approaches infinity because the operator does not have to input any energy at all. He just pays for the siting, building of the windmill, repairs, and maintenance. And hopes his winds hold good.
The common home heatpump is usually not even 50% efficient, but in appropriate conditions it has a maximum COP = 8.22, and any good heatpump will actually produce about COP = 4.0.
In a sailboat, you have to input some energy to move the rudder and steer it, but not nearly so much energy as is used to propel the boat through the water. The wind caught by the sail inputs the rest of it. Yet the sail is a fairly sloppy process also, and unless well-designed will not be nearly as efficient as a well-designed one.
So the trick is to get the active environment to give you a "free wind" so you can have something approaching a windmill. Or as close to that as you can get.
Fortunately, in electrodynamics there are many "free winds" one can make with ease. The simplest one is to just make a common dipole. Lee and Yang received a Nobel Prize in 1957 for their work in broken symmetry and the weak interaction. One of the broken symmetries that was proven was that of opposite charges -- such as are on the ends of a dipole.
The very words "broken symmetry" in power systems implies that something virtual has become observable. In other words, the charges of the dipole continually absorb virtual photons from the seething vacuum (that is proven and well-known, and one does not have to prove it again). The spin of the charges then coherently integrates that absorbed virtual energy into real, observable EM energy. The dipole thus pours out EM energy in all directions at the speed of light. Let it alone and don't destroy it, and it will pour out that energy indefinitely. The dipoles in the original matter in the universe have been doing that for some 14 billion years or so. We used that fact of broken symmetry of opposite charges, together with the known clustering of virtual charges of opposite sign around any "isolated" observable charge, to treat the observable charge as a set of composite dipoles. Hence this finally explained the long-vexing source charge problem: how does a charge just sit there an pour out energy in all directions at the speed of light, establishing its associated fields and potentials and all that energy in them? We explained that in 2000, after a couple or three years work on it.
A simple "free energy system" can be built for a dollar. Just place a charged capacitor (or electret) across a permanent magnet so that the E-field is perpendicular to the H-field of the magnet. That silly thing will sit there and pour out Poynting energy flow S = E x H, so long as you just let it alone. Wait one year, and it will have changed the energy density of a volume of space a light year in radius (reaching out beyond the solar system).
In solving the dipole and source charge problems, it was found that the energy input comes from the time domain into 3-space via the negative charge, and exits 3-space back to the time domain via the positive charge.
In electrical engineering, it is recognized that the source charge pours out the energy to create all its associated fields, but until 2000 there has been no explanation as to what furnished the input energy. In effect, electrical engineering and classical electrodynamicists for more than a century have assumed that every charge in the universe is a perpetual motion machine of the worst kind, creating energy out of nothing.
There is no problem at all in extracting all the energy one wishes from the active vacuum, anywhere in the universe, at any time. Just make a dipole.
The problem is in (1) catching some of that freely gushing EM energy in a circuit containing a load, and (2) dissipating the caught and collected EM energy in that load to power it, without using half the caught energy to destroy the source dipole(s).
That is the ONLY real energy problem on the planet, and always has been.
It is ironic that the National Academy of Science, the National Science Foundation, the great national test labs, the universities, and the private research institutes are not working on the sole energy problem at all.
Hope this helps.


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Deutalios concept art
Alternate names Deutelios, Deuterious
Species Fish/rat hybrid
Planned for Godzilla vs. Biollante
Deutalios (デューテリオス, Dyūteriosu) is an unused kaiju from the unmade original draft of the 1989 Godzilla film, Godzilla vs. Biollante.
Although no official source has yet to give the etymology behind Deutalios' name, his Japanese name is similar to the chemical Deuterium, a rare isotope of Hydrogen which features one proton and one neutron instead of the single proton and lack of neutrons found in normal Hydrogen nuclei. This is fitting, as Deutalios is comprised of parts from two separate organisms to create a hybrid chimera.
Deutalios resembles a cross between a rat and various fish. He has a long, whip like tail and extended ears which appear to display gills on them, large tusks, and a horn protruding from its head. For a creature that was adapted to living in water, Deutalios appears to have retained its long fur. In some concept art, Deutalios appears to have fins in place of forelimbs, allowing him to swim. The horn on his head also resembles an angler fish's antenna in this artwork, while his eyes are very large and pupil-less, similar to fish eyes.
Godzilla vs. Biollante
Godzilla was going to fight Deutalios instead of the Super X2 and the rose form of Biollante. After prevailing, Godzilla would have consumed the monster. The monster was possibly dropped due to the graphic nature of this scene, or simply to make room for another battle with Biollante and the Super X2.
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How does Elie lose his sense of self through his suffering and despair in Night?
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I would suggest that one way the Eliezer loses his sense of self in the narrative is through the idea that survival becomes the driving force of his consciousness. The brutal conditions of life in the camps help to remove Eliezer from aspects the previously defined his sense of self. The movement from Sighet helps to dislodge him from his physical community. The breaking up of his family helps to remove his emotional sense of self. The violation of his faith loses his spiritual compass. In the end, the Nazis end up reducing Eliezer to a being where survival is the only driving force of his state of being in the world. At the end when Eliezer cannot recognize the face in the mirror staring back at him, it is symbolic as well as a physical displacement that has transpired.
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No magic is incorporated in our activity. It is all based on common practice. End to end Systems offers a full corrective action cycle, mutually conducted with the customer:
- What are the symptoms?
- What are the motivations, needs, capacity, opportunities and who are the key stakeholders?
- What are the desired goals, outcomes are we looking for and their success criteria?
- What is the culture/environment/constrains set/organization structure/policies/regulations/procedures?
- What are the current risks, and what additional risks may be developed?
- What methods will be used?
- Plan the master activities and all their associated work broken down activities, their dependencies, their duration.
- Plan resources required.
- Set responsibilities, authorities and associated operation/organization structure.
- Plan risk management.
- Perform all planned activities, including risk management.
- Manage changes.
- Collect evidence and compare to the set goals and actual to plan.
- Close control loops and assess requirements satisfaction deviations.
- Conclude achievements and lesson learned.
- Recommend/set corrective action for next stage.


Ex parte McCardle – Case Brief Summary
Summary of Ex parte McCardle, 74 U.S. (7 Wall.) 506 (1868).
After the Civil War, Congress imposed military government on many former Confederate States by authority of the Civil War Reconstruction Acts. McCardle (D) was a Mississippi newspaper editor held in military custody on charges of publishing libelous and inflammatory articles.
McCardle filed a habeas corpus writ claiming that Congress lacked authority under the Constitution to establish a system of military government. The Act authorized federal courts to grant habeas corpus to persons held in violation of their constitutional rights and granted the Supreme Court the authority to hear appeals.
The circuit court denied McCardle's habeas corpus writ but the Supreme Court sustained jurisdiction to hear an appeal on the merits. After arguments were heard however, Congress passed an act on March 27, 1868, repealing the portion of the 1867 Act that allowed an appeal to the Supreme Court and the exercise by the Supreme Court of jurisdiction on any such appeals, past or present.
 1. Does Congress have the power to make exceptions to the Supreme Court's appellate jurisdiction in cases in which it has already granted jurisdiction?
 2. Must the Court always first determine if it is has jurisdiction to review a case?
Holding and Rule (Chase)
 1. Yes. The Constitution gives the Supreme Court appellate jurisdiction, but it gives Congress the express power to make exceptions to that appellate jurisdiction.
 2. Yes. The Court must always determine first if it is has jurisdiction to review a case.
The court held that appellate jurisdiction of the Court is not derived from acts of Congress, but from the Constitution, and is conferred with such exceptions and under such regulations as Congress shall make. The court held that when Congress enacts legislation that grants the Supreme Court appellate jurisdiction over final decisions in certain cases, it operates as a negation or exception of such jurisdiction in other cases.
In this case, the repeal of the act necessarily removed jurisdiction. Without jurisdiction, the Court cannot proceed; the only thing it can do is announce that fact and dismiss the cause of action. When a legislative act is repealed, it is as if it had never existed except in transactions past and closed. Thus, no judgment can be rendered in a suit after repeal of the act under which it was brought.
Dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.
In this case, Congress withdrew the right to hear habeas corpus cases only when the Court got a case under the Act of 1867 on appeal from a lower court. The Supreme Court would still have been able to hear an original petition for habeas corpus filed in the Supreme Court.
See Martin v. Hunter's Lessee for a constitutional law case brief in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that it has appellate jurisdiction to review decisions of state courts involving issues of federal law.
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text: Asset allocation information examines all securities (equities, bonds, mutual funds, etc.) in the Advisor Perspectives universe. An attempt is made to identify each security by its ticker, CUSIP, or description. If the security cannot be identified in this manner, it is treated as "Unknown" for asset allocation purposes. Balanced mutual funds (contained a mixture of equities and bonds) are classified as either an equity or a bond fund, depending on whether 50% or more of the assets are equities or bonds.


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Sinophone Islam, as found in the Xibei (Xinjiang, Gansu, Qinghai and Ningxia), is characterized by sectarian (jiaopai) divisions among four groupings: the Qadim, the Sufi orders (menhuan), the Ikhwan, and the Salafis. With the exception of the latter, all of these sects adhere to a common doctrinal and legalistic tradition, shared by their co-religionists in Central Asia, of Maturidi-Hanafism. Yet this commonality in the framework – and the broader Sunni affiliation that unites all of these sects – has not deterred the emergence of discernible sectarian identities shaped by strained inter-sectarian relations that have occasionally devolved into exclusion, excommunication (takfeer) and even violence. This sectarian configuration makes China's Islamic landscape unique when compared to other non-Chinese Muslim contexts wherein sectarian cleavages have, particularly over the past two decades, expressed themselves in terms of the more well-known Sunni-Shi'ite divide. This highly-contingent sectarianism creates an opening for thinking about the evolution of societal and state-centred politics (in relation to minority religiosities) as well as the unexpected international entanglements of the People's Republic of China (PRC) into the religious and ideational worldviews of others.
The proposed research project aims to explore the question of Muslim sectarianism as it relates to the PRC by focusing on three distinct dimensions. First, at the communal-level, the project looks at the production and re-production of sectarian identities among Sinophone Muslim communities in the Xibei from the twentieth century onwards. Some of the critical questions that will be examined include how and why did such self-identities get promoted by elites as well as take root (i.e. the process of sectarianization) in the Xibei while failing to do so in other environments such as in the Zhongyuan or Yunnan. Additionally, how have these sectarian identities intersected with other 'unifying' ethnic/nation-building projects – Hui, Salar, Dongxiang, Bao'an – promoted by the state?
Second, at the state-level, the project interrogates how the modern Chinese state, in both the Maoist and post-Maoist eras, imagined and controlled sectarian divisions among its Xibei-based Muslim citizens. Of interest is identifying the hallmarks (sources) and evolution of official thinking on the topic, and what strategies have been deployed by multi-levelled state actors, in provinces such as Qinghai for instance, to contend with these divisions and realize stability maintenance (weiwen). In other words, this dimension is concerned with understanding the PRC's 'state governance of Muslim sectarianism' and how it utilizes/checks the tensions arising from sectarian difference.
Third, at the international-level, the project considers how the PRC has been incorporated into the sectarian imaginaries of various actors from the Muslim world over the preceding two decades. It will pay particular attention to the Arab world wherein various narratives have re-cast China as a key battleground for a much larger Sunni-Shi'ite struggle. In doing so, China's rise and growing visibility within Muslim-majority Belt and Road Initiative countries is brought under new light, highlighting the 'religious-sectarian' aspect of this rise. In many ways, this dimension shows how the "realities" of China (including that of sectarianism within it) are side-lined in favour of other more locally-grounded ideational projects.
The project, which will be converted into a book, promises to be of interest to those studying sectarianism and sectarianization, state management of religion and minorities, Islam in China, and global perceptions of China.
Article (joint authorship) submitted to Journal of Contemporary China entitled "Guarding Against the Threat of a Westernising Education: A Comparative Study of Chinese and Saudi Cultural Security Discourses and Practices towards Overseas Study"
Cultural security has become a major watchword in the national security discourses of both the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Within this discourse, overseas study has been imagined as a conduit for cultural and ideological subversion threatening the authority of the prevailing regimes. At the same time, overseas study has been actively encouraged by both the Chinese and Saudi states as an important element in their modernization projects. In the past two decades, the Chinese and Saudi overseas student populations have been some of the largest in the world. The article seeks to explore these tensions by examining the conceptualisation and practice of cultural security in the PRC and Saudi Arabia through their management of overseas study.
Article (single-author) to be-soon submitted to Journal of Islamic Studies (Oxford University) entitled: "Traditions of Anti-Wahhabism in China: An Account of the Yihewani Hardliners and the Theological Origins of the Yihewani-Salafiyya Schism"
The paper examines the Yihewani hardliners, also known as the Ma-Ha faction, a notorious subcurrent of the broader Yihewani known for their strong anti-Wahhabism and concentrated primarily in rural Gansu and Qinghai. It provides an account of this subcurrent, sketching out its contextualized emergence, leadership profiles, doctrines and narratives. More recent developments, including the subcurrent's suppression by the state, will also be part of this account. The core argument made by the paper is that the significance of the Yihewani hardliners and their beliefs is that they best encapsulate the logic that underlies the Yihewani-Salafiyya sectarian division in China, long conceived in terms of a schismatic division over matters of orthopraxy and madhab or legal-school identity (Hanafism versus Hanbalism). Rather, as the paper shows in its investigation of the history and beliefs of the Yihewani hardliner subcurrent, this schism is – under a more persuasive and logical reading of sectarianism that will be propose in the paper – rooted in theological differences that have long been neglected in the existing English and Chinese scholarships.


Fuel economy: Windows down or air con on, which is better?
Image of Chris Evans
Author: | Updated: 02 Jun 2021 16:56
The UK summer has been as unpredictable as ever so far, but with temperatures soaring right now, what's really the best to keep cool in the car as you take advantage of the lockdown restrictions easing? Should you open your windows or turn on the air con?
It's a question that many drivers have pondered over the years, with many of you may already be aware there's apparently a magic number to take into account when it comes to deciding which is a more efficient way to keep cool; 45mph.
The Smart Climate menu in the new Volkswagen Golf
Below this speed it makes sense to open your windows to let a breeze. Above this speed, the drag effect of the windows being open, begins to make it more fuel efficient to shut them in favour of switching on the air con.
This advice is based on the results of a 2004 study by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), which studied the impact of windows open vs. A/C in large saloons and sports utility vehicles.
Guideline advice
There are plenty of variables that this study couldn't have accounted for such as: how much the windows are open by, the aerodynamics of different car models, how long someone might use their air con for (as some use might only use it for a short blast) and the option of using the fan without turning on the air con. It's also not the most recent research.
As such, the 45mph figure is a guide, but a fairly good one. While all this might seem like a minor issue, getting it wrong can have a notable impact on your fuel economy; using AC can increase your fuel consumption by as much as 10% but opening the windows at higher speeds can increase fuel consumption by as much as 20%.
Mythbusters also took a stab at answering the question, finding in favour of windows down being more fuel efficient.
Meanwhile, another study has revealed that hybrid car fuel economy is harder hit by air con use than conventional combustion-only cars.
In a study by Emissions Analytics, it was found that the impact of AC on hybrid fuel economy was almost twice as much, with fuel efficiency dropping 6.1% in a hybrid car on average, compared to just 3.8% for standard petrol car and 4.6% for a diesel. This might be something worth bearing in mind, if you drive a hybrid.
What about air pollution?
The windows v air con debate isn't just about working out which is more fuel efficient. It is also worth considering your exposure to air pollution. While the 45mph line is a good guide, things get a bit more complicated when you are in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
In these situations, it is probably best to avoid using air con or opening your windows. However we know that in hot conditions that might be uncomfortable, so as a solution you could turn on the air con but close your air vents, so the air con merely recycles the cabin air rather than drawing the air from outside, where there is nose-to-tail line of traffic all belching out exhaust fumes.
What's else can I do?
There are old-fashioned ways too that you could consider to keep your car cooler too, such as trying to park in the shade or in a garage, opting for tinted windows or heat deflectors or just using a fan to keep cool.
What's best for fuel consumption?
There might be purist among you who think that the very notion of air con in cars in this country is a crime against fuel efficiency but we know that for many Brits, air con is now just a standard feature they expect to find – and be able to use – all we'd say is use it wisely and sparingly and you can stay cool without burning a hole in your wallet.
We could go into the environmental impact of various AC systems and the refrigerant gases they use, but that is probably for another article.
In most driving conditions though, apart from on the motorway, it's likely that a crack in the window, will work better for you than turning on the AC, but the choice is of course, yours.
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