Top 16 Celestial Features to See in the Sky
The sky offers a variety of things to see. Besides the constellations and planets, there is always something for you to look at. Here are ten features you can see in the sky without a telescope, and six with.
Seeing the Milky Way at Night
The Milky Way Galaxy is a treat to see from a dark location. It may not seem like much at first, but the hazy band that is often mistaken for a cloud is actually billions of stars too far to resolve individually, thus the familiar band of light is what we see. There are two distinct sections we see, summer and winter – with the summer section being brighter and more defined due to being in the direction of the center of our galaxy!
Watching a Meteor Shower
Depending on which shower you view, as long as there is no moon interference or light pollution, you will have a decent showing! Catching a few shooting stars every minute during peak times is a treat. Sometimes you see brilliant meteors that streak and leave glowing tails. Other times they explode high in the atmosphere, giving off a small "pop!" These events are fun to plan star parties around, and are great excuses to get outside at night.
Lunar Eclipse 1/31/18
Seeing an Eclipse
Chances are, you have seen one total lunar eclipse and possibly a partial solar eclipse in your lifetime. Lunar eclipses, where we see the familiar "blood moon," are always a beautiful sight in the night sky. As the entire night side of the earth can see a lunar eclipse, they are shows for the masses. Solar eclipses are great when viewed safely with filtered glasses, and offer an eerie feeling the more the Moon covers the Sun. Total solar eclipses on the other hand should be on your bucket list!
Viewing a Super Moonrise/Moonset
Thanks to the moon illusion – where the moon appears bigger near the horizon, seeing the Moon rise and set always looks impressive. When the moon is at its closest point to Earth, and is at full phase, we call it a "Super Moon." Because of the closer distance, the moon appears slightly larger, especially near the horizon, and you can definitely tell the difference in brightness.
Sunset near Summer Solstice
Watching the Sunrise/Sunset on Equinox and Solstice Days
Sunrises and Sunsets on a normal day are fine, but seeing them on equinox or solstice days offer you something different. During winter solstice, you see the Sun rise in the southeastern sky, the furthest south it will be for the year, and set in the southwest; and during the summer solstice, it's the opposite – rises in the northeast and sets in the north west. On equinox days, the sun rises due east and sets due west. That is how civilizations kept their yearly cycles before modern calendars took over.
Viewing a Close Conjunction
People typically do not notice the Moon and planets gradually changing their positions in the sky. But whenever the Moon appears close to another planet, I'll often get texts asking me "what's that star/planet next to the Moon?" The same applies when two bright planets appear pretty close, or form shapes in the sky. The best conjunctions, however, are when two objects are close enough to be viewed at the same time through binoculars or telescopes! This website has a list of upcoming notable conjunctions to check out by year under "The Sky" page.
Seeing a Naked Eye Level Comet
Most comets are too small and dim to see with even a small telescope – so much so that you may not realize that there can be quite a few comets in the sky and we wouldn't be aware. Comets that get bright enough to be seen with the naked eye are a rare treat indeed. Unfortunately, because of light pollution, naked eye level comets STILL require a dark sky to witness. Great comets on the other hand – well you're just going to have to wait!
Witnessing a Rocker Launch
If you happen to live relatively near a launch site, seeing rocket launches in person are almost a commodity. Whenever there is a launch scheduled, it's not uncommon for there to be announcements so that people in the vicinity know when and where to look. Rocket launches are awesome sights in the sky, especially when they enter second stage and the Sun reflects all the gas being emitted from it! They actually can get so high that they can be seen hundreds of miles away!
Spotting the International Space Station
There is a period just after sunset and before sunrise when the Sun's light is at a perfect angle to reflect the light from orbiting satellites. You can tell they're different from planes not because of the star like appearance, but because you can see how they follow the arc of the sky. The International Space Station appears as a bright "star" that moves slow across the sky. Whenever you see the ISS travel 18,000 mph above the Earth, it just reminds you that we are at work up in space! Because of the low orbit, you need to check when the ISS will be visible above your location.
Viewing the Sun with a Filter
To view the Sun safely, you need a filter that blocks enough light! Just like eclipse glasses, filters can be attached to binoculars or telescopes, and give you closer looks at the surface of the Sun. Different filters give different results. For example, a visible light filter gives you views of sunspots on the surface, while a hydrogen alpha filter can get you views of prominences and flares!
Observing Venus Through a Telescope
Venus doesn't appear like much, because its white cloud tops block any features. But gradually it appears to have phases just like our Moon. At times, it appears like a full disc when it's further behind the Sun, other times it appears like a crescent when it's between the Sun and Earth – and I can't tell you how many times people confuse it for the Moon! Seeing these phases remind you that Venus orbits the Sun in front of Earth, as it cannot appear the way it does through a telescope if it didn't!
Orion Nebula
Observing a Deep Sky Object Through a Telescope
Many deep sky objects are visible to the naked eye, others are better suited with a telescope! Viewing the deep sky from a dark location offers you a plethora of star clusters, nebulae, and even galaxies to choose from! Besides being beautiful sights themselves, they offer you more perspective on what is out there in the furthest reaches of the universe!
Observing Jupiter through a telescope
Jupiter is often a show stopper when it's in the sky. Besides appearing as the brightest thing in the night sky besides Venus and the Moon, its appearance through a telescope is even more impressive. Besides seeing the cloud bands and Great Red Spot, you can actually see its four biggest moons, known as the Galilean moons, orbit the planet! Sometimes, you can even watch the moons transit in front of, or behind the planet!
Observing the Moon through a telescope
Even though it's our closest object in the sky, the Moon always looks impressive through a telescope because it's so big and bright. With wider view, you can see the entire disc, and start making out features you can't see with the naked eye. But with a closer view, you begin to start feeling like you're walking on the surface of the Moon! Sure, the moon itself hinders our view of the deep sky, but it still always wows the audience when it's seen through telescopes.
Observing Saturn through a telescope
Saturn is the only planet that looks just like its pictures through a telescope! Even at low magnification, the rings can be seen! At high magnification, however, you can easily see a yellow planet with white rings, and even see the Cassini Division, it looks like a black "stripe" that's dividing the main rings. Saturn is such an amazing object to look at through a telescope that anything after it is tough to follow!
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False Friends (26): adjudicar; adjudicate
Oh, no! False Friends
adjudicar ; adjudicate / adjudicación ; adjudication
These pairs are clearly false cognates. In Spanish adjudicar generally has the meaning of "to award," "to allocate" or "to allot." Thus, for example, adjudicar un contrato is "to award a contract," (not "adjudicate a contract"), while in the context of auctions (subastas) adjudicado al mejor postor may often be rendered simply as "sold to the highest bidder."
In contrast, in English "to adjudicate" means "to rule upon or settle judicially; to adjudge," while "adjudication" is "the legal process of resolving a dispute; the process of judicially deciding a case."* Thus, "to adjudicate" is juzgar, fallar or resolver judicialmente, referring to the final ruling of a court or quasi-judicial body, a sense that adjudicar does not have in Spanish. In that regard, when referring to a judicial decision "adjudication" cannot be translated as adjudicación. "He was adjudicated guilty" means le declararon culpable (or) fue declarado culpable (being synonymous with "convicted" or "found guilty"). "Adjudication on the merits" refers to a court's resolución sobre el fondo and "to adjudicate disputes" is resolver conflictos (en sede judicial). Likewise, in the context of court proceedings or hearings before quasi-judicial boards or tribunals, "adjudication of claims" might be translated as resolución de pretensiones, resolución de reclamaciones or, perhaps, resolución de demandas, depending on the context. As additional examples, "adjudication of incompetence" refers to a declaración judicial de incapacidad, and a person "adjudicated incompetent" has been judicialmente incapacitada. In summary, "adjudicate (or) adjudication" could not be appropriately rendered as adjudicar (or) adjudicación in any of these expressions.
The same may be said of the verb "to adjudge," which likewise means "to award, grant or impose judicially." Thus the expression "Ordered and adjudged" often appearing at the end of a court ruling does not mean Ordenado y adjudicado, as the expression has sometimes been rendered literally, but rather precedes a court's disposal of a matter in dispute, denoting its "adjudication" (fallo). So, "It is therefore ordered and adjudged…" might actually be rendered as "Se ordena y falla…".
*Black's Law Dictionary, 8th ed.
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text:
Jun 27, 2008 (08:06 PM EDT)
A Tipping Point For The Trusted Platform Module?
Read the Original Article at InformationWeek
The Trusted Platform Module is a hardware component built into PCs and laptops. It's designed to securely generate and store encryption keys, passwords, and digital certificates. The Trusted Platform Module, or TPM, can be used for a variety of purposes, such as encrypting files and folders and authenticating users, applications, and computers.
According to IDC, nearly 250 million PCs will have shipped with TPM hardware by 2009. In theory, this level of deployment means the module should be the foundation for a variety of useful applications widely embraced by enterprises and individual users. In reality, there are few apps that take advantage of TPM. A major reason is the complexity of managing TPM itself and encryption keys; another may be a lack of awareness of the module and its capabilities.
The Trusted Platform Module is developed by the Trusted Computing Group, a nonprofit organization that designs and develops open specifications for trusted computing. It has approximately 170 members. The module was designed to help organizations protect sensitive information and enable strong authentication for business use and e-commerce transactions. TPM's hardware-based key-generation capabilities make it very secure against many common attacks.
We'll examine why TPM adoption hasn't matched physical deployments and look at the prospects for wider use of the technology.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF TPM
Unfortunately for the Trusted Computing Group, Palladium generated a firestorm of negative feedback. Critics argued that Palladium was primarily designed to take control away from the owner of a computer, and privacy rights advocates were riled up over the fact that it was difficult for TPM to allow sufficiently anonymous verifiable transactions. Fortunately, the 1.2 version of the specification has significantly improved the ability for TPM to be used in a way that maintains privacy while still achieving security.
The primary criticism was that one of the stated design goals of TPM is that it could be used to create supposedly unhackable digital rights management systems. DRM technology aims to prevent users from copying and sharing digital content, such as music and movies. Many in the technology community argue that DRM restricts their fair-use rights and pits users against their own computers.
(click image for larger view)
LOCK IT UP
While a Trusted Platform Module chip could be applied to DRM, it's far from the most common use-case of the technology today. More important in the TPM ecosystem are the other possibilities it affords. The Trusted Computing Group encompasses a variety of platforms, including working groups dedicated to Authentication, Mobile, Software Stack, Storage, Trusted Network Connect, and Virtualized Platform.
The most widespread use of TPM today is Microsoft's BitLocker drive encryption technology. BitLocker can operate with or without the TPM hardware, though the recommended and most secure method of operation requires a 1.2 TPM chip, and it's able to offer significantly more security than non-TPM modes of operation. That's because the keys are secured in the hardware rather than in software, making them harder to tamper with or steal.
Also teaming up with TPM for data encryption are hard drives capable of handling data encryption and decryption internally, such as Seagate Momentus FDE.2 drives. This is one of the few full-disk encryption architectures that would not be vulnerable to the recently publicized "cold-boot" attacks that are able to extract the contents of a computer's memory after it's been powered off and seek out encryption keys.
The Web is one reason the Trusted Computing Group repurposed itself from the original goals of Trusted Computing Platform Alliance back in 2003. Instead of creating a platform for trusted PC computing, it wanted to be able to integrate the same techniques across a wide variety of uses and platforms.
Of course, integrating TPM into the authentication process for a Web application negates one of the values of Web apps in the first place--they're accessible from any Internet-enabled PC.
This problem may be solved by cell phones, which could act as a soft token to authenticate users. For example, if a user wants to access an online banking application from a strange machine, the bank can send a one-time password to the user's phone. The user would enter this password into the banking app. Meanwhile, the entire process is secured against tampering by TPM's hardware-enabled trusted connection from the server to the PC being used.
This leads directly into the weak spot for TPM--key management. Managing the keys protected by a TPM chip is almost identical to any other encryption platform. Not only must those TPM-generated keys support the usual enterprise key management features--such as enrollment and revocation, and key recovery in case of lost PINs--but there are issues unique to TPM, such as maintaining system state when upgrading, as changes may upset the ability of the module to produce a valid key for an encrypted system.
Some standalone software tools already are available for IT to manage the Trusted Platform Module. For example, Microsoft offers some free TPM management tools. And a large number of OEMs that manufacture PCs and laptops ship Wave Systems' Embassy Trust Suite, which is capable of providing a variety of services to maintain the module itself. However, more powerful management capabilities might require an upgrade to one of Wave's enterprise-level products.
Even without an enterprise management platform, however, some organizations may be able to take advantage of the number of TPM chips deployed in their environment right now. The Trusted Computing Group Web site offers a series of white papers on using TPM with existing enterprise systems such as wireless networks, VPNs, and network access control.
While it's important to consider the extra management effort involved, it's definitely worth examining what you can use for free with the built-in tools along with the module.
TPM: A Matter Of Trust

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


text:
Amos moved from Woodbury, CT to Salisbury, CT and then to Richmond, VT
before the Revolutionary War. The first settlements within the limits of the town of Richmond, VT were begun by Amos Brownson
and John Chamberlain with their families in 1775 on what is called Richmond Flats on the south side of the Winooski River.
In the fall of 1775 they abandoned the township as it was so unprotected from both the Indians and the British. They returned
to Richmond at the end of the Revolutionary War accompanied by Asa and Joel Brownson.
Amos spent 11 days serving in the alarm for the relief of Fort William
Henry during the French and Indian War as written in Vol. 1, pg. 204. This volumn also indicates that Amos served in a unit
of the Green Mountain Boys: Capt. Samuel Bellow's Co. of Salisbury, Goodrich's Regt. of Foot. He served in the campaign against
Crown Point from Aug 25 to Dec 7, 1755. In 1788, 1791 and 1793, Amos represented Williston, VT and in 1794 he represented
Huntington. He was a member of the VT State Constitutional Convention of 1791 and 1793 from Huntington.
It is said that Amos was much over six foot tall and slightly stooped from
hard work and rheumatism.


MATLAB Answers
Creating a table of two indexes
29 views (last 30 days)
I am trying to make a temperature conversion table but when I print at the end, all my values are jumbled. How can I seperate the calculations and label the results for each?
bF = input('Input the beginning temperature in Fahrenheit');
eF = input('Input the endung temperature in Fahrenheit');
disp('Temperature in Fahrenheit & Celcuis')
F = [bF:10:eF];
for k = 1
C = (F-32)*(5/9);
Accepted Answer
Benjamin Kraus
Benjamin Kraus on 3 Dec 2020
You need to merge F and C into a single matrix and transpose that matrix:
fprintf('%8.1f\t%8.1f\n',[F' C']')
Benjamin Kraus
Benjamin Kraus on 3 Dec 2020
As your code demonstrates, it is not necessary to use a for loop to perform the same computation on every element of a vector in MATLAB. You can do that in one line of code without a loop.
The requirement to use a loop looks like a homework requirement. You can do this using a for loop, but it isn't necessary, and your current code is not using the for loop correctly.
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text:
American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2018
AHA Scientific Sessions 2018, November 10–12 in Chicago, will provide a new dimension of cardiovascular discovery and clinical practice for clinicians, basic scientists, and researchers.
Health Tech Summit. Discuss the revolutionary trends showcasing the future of digital healthcare solutions and health IT with Silicon Valley CEOs, emerging start-ups, and the minds behind the software.
Frontiers in Science Summits. Engage in lively discussion (and sometimes heated debate) with early, mid-, and senior career investigators on the most impressive pre-publication science in the areas of:
- Arrhythmia Research
- Therapeutic Discovery
- Vascular Disease

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


text:
2. Five school children haunt the Andrew Jackson Hotel.
This hotel is said to be haunted by five small boys who were killed in a fire when the building was a boarding school in 1778. Guests say other ghosts in the hotel include a nun who leapt from the window and a Confederate solider.
3. There's a vampire in the French Quarter.
Ramon, one of the first-known vampires in New Orleans, still haunts the French Quarter. In the 1830s, Ramon owned a home in the French Quarter with many servants. When Ramon died and the servants dug a hole for his body in the garden, they found dozens of bodies buried there that had been drained of all of their blood. The servants kept disappearing after his death. Some say Ramon still lurks at night.
4. Funerals have their own soundtrack.
Jazz funerals began when more than 41,000 people in New Orleans died from yellow fever from 1817–1905. People began to believe that the dead were coming back to infect the living, so during funeral processions the body was carried in a random route through the streets to "confuse" the deceased so they would forget where they lived. Jazz music was added to celebrate the person's life.
5. Some families never leave a corpse's side to keep them from coming back as a vampire.
This is called "sitting up with the dead." The corpse is never left unattended until the body is buried. The tradition began in the 1800s. If there was a sign of paranormal activity, the family would call a witch doctor to make sure the corpse did not come back as something evil and unnatural.
6. A sultan was buried alive.
In the 1840s, a sultan from Turkey rented the Gardette-Laprete house in New Orleans where he created a harem. One afternoon an onlooker noticed blood draining from the home. When the authorities broke down the door, they found dead bodies everywhere. Every person in the house had been killed. They discovered the sultan's body in a shallow grave behind the house. He had apparently been buried alive. No one ever found out who the murderer was.
10. An old woman's ghost sits on hotel beds at Le Pavilion Hotel.
People have allegedly reported that an a old gray-haired woman sat on the side of their bed when they stayed there. They could feel the weight of her body and her cold hands stroking their head while she said, "I will never let you go."
11. Dead doctors and soldiers roam the Hotel Provincial.
Parts of this hotel were once a Civil War Confederate hospital. It is haunted with the medical staff and wounded soldiers who reach out for help and moan. The hotel staff have seen bloodstains appear and disappear on the sheets.
12. The LaLaurie estate used to have a human centipede torture attic.
In the 1830s, Madame LaLaurie tortured her slaves in horrific ways. In her attic, she strapped her slaves to operating tables and performed botched sex-change operations, bizarre amputations, and other horrific medical experiments. It is rumored that their souls haunt the property. To this day, the house has not had a single owner for more than a five-year period.


text:
Saving the Black Sea
Issue 8, June 2005
Official Publication of the Commission on the Protection of the Black Sea Against Pollution and the
GEF Ecosystems Recovery Project
Towards a new European Thematic Strategy on the Protection and Conservation of the Marine Environment [>>]
EC Assistance to the Black Sea Commission [>>]
BSC and UNEP Take Action Against the Marine Litter [>>]
The Implementation of the Black Sea Strategic Action Plan – A Bulgarian Perspective [>>]
Turkey Implements the Black Sea Strategic Action Plan [>>]
Protection and rehabilitation of the Black and Azov Seas in Ukraine [>>]
Black Sea Contingency Plan to the Protocol on Cooperation in Com-bating Pollution of the Black Sea by Oil and Other Harmful Sub-stances in Emergency Situations [>>]
Cooperation between Black Sea and Baltic Sea Experts [>>]
Black Sea GIS [>>]
Ukraine – Key Events in Environ-mental Management [>>]
Georgian Black Sea is important wintering habitat of cetaceans [>>]
Results of EuropeAid Project 2002 – 2004 in Russian Federation [>>]
The Black Sea "Shell Palace" [>>]
Black Sea Action Day [>>]
ICZM Progress in Romania [>>]
Black Sea Biodiversity and Landscape Conservation [>>]
International Black Sea Day: an Event for the Whole Public [>>]
From Black to Blue: A Sea Being Saved [>>]
The Black Sea "Shell Palace» is an awareness and educational project developed within the UNDP-GEF Black Sea Ecosystem Recovery Project with support of NEPCO (the Netherlands).
The project targets teaching children about the shared environmental dangers they face.
It will help the children to strengthen their collective thinking and improve their wider understanding and knowledge of the environment, ecosystems, and the Black Sea.
A beautiful inflatable seashell palace has been designed that will travel between cities around the coast of the Black Sea from the summer of 2006. Children will enter the Sea Shell Palace where they will be led by actors through an imaginary undersea world.
During this interactive journey they will learn about environmental dangers facing the region. Experiencing everything from the perspective of sea creatures makes it come alive and the issues understandable.
Educating and empowering the next generation will have a long-term influence and generate a shift in the ecological thinking of future decision makers in the Black Sea countries. The United Nations' backing is a hallmark of quality and integrity, underscoring the prestige of this educational initiative. It is already generating much interest worldwide - it will be show-cased at the GEF Third Biennial International Waters Conference (IWC) in Brazil later this year. More information about the project can be found at _URL_
Yegor Volovik, Victor Albers


Suppose that X1,...Xn form a random sample from a uniform distribution on the interval [0,theta], and that the following hypothesis are to be tested:
null: theta greater than or equal to 2
alternative: theta less than 2
Let Yn=max(X1,...Xn) and consider a test procedure such that the critical region contains all the outcomes for which Yn is greater than or equal to 1.5
Determine the power function of the test
Determine the size of the test


text:
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97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement
In 97 Orchard, Jane Ziegelman explores the culinary life that was the heart and soul of New York's Lower East Side around the turn of the twentieth centurya city within a city, where Germans, Irish, Italians, and Eastern European Jews attempted to forge a new life. Through the experiences of five families, all of them residents of 97 Orchard Street, she takes readers on a vivid and unforgettable tour, from impossibly cramped tenement apartments down dimly lit stairwells where children played and neighbors socialized, beyond the front stoops where immigrant housewives found respite and company, and out into the hubbub of the dirty, teeming streets.
Ziegelman shows how immigrant cooks brought their ingenuity to the daily task of feeding their families, preserving traditions from home but always ready to improvise. While health officials worried that pushcarts were unsanitary and that pickles made immigrants too excitable to be good citizens, a culinary revolution was taking place in the streets of what had been culturally an English city. Along the East River, German immigrants founded breweries, dispensing their beloved lager in the dozens of beer gardens that opened along the Bowery. Russian Jews opened tea parlors serving blintzes and strudel next door to Romanian nightclubs that specialized in goose pastrami. On the streets, Italian peddlers hawked the cheese-and-tomato pies known as pizzarelli, while Jews sold knishes and squares of halvah. Gradually, as Americans began to explore the immigrant ghetto, they uncovered the array of comestible enticements of their foreign-born neighbors. 97 Orchard charts this exciting process of discovery as it lays bare the roots of our collective culinary heritage.
About the Author
Jane Ziegelman is the director of the Tenement Museum's culinary center and the founder and director of Kids Cook!, a multiethnic cooking program for children. Her writing on food has appeared in numerous publications, and she is the coauthor of Foie Gras: A Passion. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.


text:
Drawing Connections is owned by teacher Jenna Hyde and family. Jenna designs activity mats based on the classic "dot-to-dot" activity, but in larger form. The idea behind the mats is to help young learners (or anyone practicing their handwriting) to have a fun and accessible way to practice number and letter recognition by writing them and connecting them in succession without wasting paper. Each mat is reusable and works best with dry erase markers. A marker and eraser are included in each order!
Check out a video of the Activity Mats in action.


text:
December 11, 2012 | 2
If you have seen any of Peter Jackson's movies, such as this week's release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, then you have probably noticed the logo for the special effects company Weta Workshop, which works on most of the director's New Zealand–based projects. The workshop is named after a bunch of endemic New Zealand insects that look, at first glance, like crickets or grasshoppers on steroids. Weta consist of about 70 species of the largest and heaviest flying insects in the world. Some giant weta species — "very cool, prickly little monsters," as Weta Workshop puts it — weigh in at up to 30 grams and boast bodily lengths of up to 10 centimeters.
A newly discovered member of the group—the Denniston white-faced cave weta—isn't quite that big or monstrous. In fact, the scientists who found and tentatively named the species (it hasn't been given an official taxonomic name yet) don't know how big the species grows, because only juvenile insects were found. But they do know that its only habitat could soon disappear.
This newest weta was discovered on the Denniston Plateau on the sparsely populated west coast of New Zealand's South Island. The plateau receives an amazing six meters of annual rainfall, creating unique rock formations that are home to many rare and endangered species. The 190-hectare area is slated to be converted into an open-cast coal mine that could increase the country's coal exports by 63 percent but which conservationists say would destroy the habitat and its unique denizens.
The Denniston white-faced cave weta was found during a four-day "Bioblitz" in March that identified more than 500 confirmed species on the plateau and another 219 unconfirmed species. Among the hundreds of species was the new weta, which bears a mostly black body, a distinctive white band behind its head and leg spines unlike other weta species. "It just stood out," Massey University (M.U.) associate professor Steve Trewick said in a prepared statement. "We haven't seen anything with that appearance and coloration."
Trewick, who led the expedition along with fellow associate professor Mary Morgan-Richards, also tested the new weta's DNA, which proved to differ from other known species. "This weta might occur elsewhere as well as Denniston, but what it highlights is that destroying distinctive habitat is likely to destroy biodiversity even before we know it is there," Trewick said. "If we're destroying biodiversity before we've even identified it, we're clearly following the wrong strategy."
The Bioblitz was supported by the conservation organization Forest & Bird, which seeks to protect the area from the planned coal mine. M.U. is also currently undertaking a project—called Beta Weta Geta—to classify the taxonomy and biodiversity of all of New Zealand's cave weta species.
Photo: Denniston white-faced cave weta courtesy of Massey University


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Money Cowrie Shells
(image via: Naples Sea Shell Company)
The Money Cowrie (Monetaria moneta) is one of the smaller (30-45mm or 1-2″ long) species of Cowrie shells; actually sea snails found in temperate regions of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The relative abundance of glossy Cowrie shells and their roughly standard size led to the shells being used as a medium of exchange – natural currency, as it were – in many African, Asian and Pacific island nations up until the late 19th century.
Money Cowries are one of many species of Cowrie shell, and these days their straw-yellow to milky white shells literally pale in comparison to some of the other species, notably the Map Cowrie and especially the Tiger Cowrie. The latter is becoming rare due to demand for shells by collectors and jewelry-makers.
World's Newest Snail
(images via: Pensoft)
New to us, perhaps, but this exquisite, semi-transparent, cave-dwelling snail found in Croatia's Lukina Jama–Trojama cave system has probably been living happily and obliviously beneath our notice (and the ground) for untold millions of years. Given the name Zospeum tholussum by its discoverer, Dr. Alexander Weigand of the Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany, only a single living specimen of the new species was found: 980m (3,215ft) deep in a water-filled cavern. As the snail lives in complete darkness, it requires neither shell pigmentation nor eyes.
Deadly Cone Snails
Death by snail? It's more likely than you think: around 15 human fatalities annually can be attributed to poisonous, venomous snails, specifically those of the genus Conus, or Cone Snails. Unlike Fugu or Greenland Sharks, the danger lies not in eating the creatures but by being stung by them. Cone Snails employ a barbed harpoon-like dart attached to an internal venom gland to subdue their prey, and humans who pick up the oft-beautiful shells too often live (or not) to regret it.
(image via: Ahuii Crafts and Shells)
While the stings of smaller Cone Snails are often likened to those of bees, larger shells such as the Marbled Cone (Conus marmoreus) and Textile Cone pack a correspondingly more powerful package of poison. The beauty of these shells can be likened to a fatal attraction, however, as children find it hard to resist picking up these shells when they're washed up on beach sands. Be aware that though a sea snail may have washed ashore, it may still be living and it WON'T be pleased to meet you!


text:
AI is everywhere nowadays. But what role does it play in checking plagiarism?
The AI market will be worth $62 billion in 2022. While you can allude this success to AI in our phones, IoT, and other devices, it's becoming more and more important in many things. One particular aspect that requires AI is checking plagiarism in content.
Today, we'll analyze the role of AI in checking plagiarism. Besides that, we'll also analyze its two chief branches, NLP and Machine Learning. So, let's get started.
What Is Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial Intelligence is the intelligence exhibited by machines or software. The field of study also studies how to create such intelligence. AI has been around for decades, but it's only in recent years that it's become a hot topic.
Largely because of the many ways in which AI can be applied to our lives and the dramatic impact it can have on society. Artificial Intelligence and some of its use cases in content include checking plagiarism or rewriting text.
The use of AI in checking plagiarism is a relatively new phenomenon. While the use of AI in checking plagiarism is not as widespread as its use in other fields, it is employed by the most capable plagiarism checkers. And has been able to provide some interesting insights into the world of academic dishonesty.
There are many ways that AI can be used to check for plagiarism. One way is using a machine learning algorithm to scan the text. Another way is by using natural language processing to compare the text with other texts on the internet.
Why NLP Is Important In Plagiarism Checkers
Natural language processing is a branch of artificial intelligence that is concerned with the interactions between computers and human (natural) languages. This field emerged from the confluence of two different research threads in the 1960s, computer science, and linguistics.
Now, the two most important factors of NLP in plagiarism detection are segmentation and tokenization. In other words, NLP breaks down the content to perform a line-after-line analysis of the content inserted into the plagiarism checker. After that, it analyses things such as:
- Common phrases in the similar text;
- Similar synonyms and symbols in other content;
- Analyzes punctuations or functional words and prepositions.
This allows NLP to fish out even the slightest similarities between two content types. Since the primary job of NLP is to analyze content and convert it for computers, it works in sync with other AI algorithms. Therefore, when it works, it seamlessly detects plagiarism.
However, NLP is bound by other AI codes and algorithms to push forward. An example of this would be a translator looking to find similar speech patterns between two speakers. However, we're the ones listening to the translator.
So, when the translators determine that two speeches are indeed similar, we only know that the words said are duplicates. That's just how NLP works in terms of computers and machines, as it's our translator, and the content is our speech.
Why Machine Learning Is Important In Plagiarism Checkers?
A machine learning algorithm is a system that can learn and improve its performance on a given task. An AI content tool will use machine learning algorithms to learn from past examples of human-written content. It will then be able to analyze similar content with fewer errors.
The primary purpose of machine learning in plagiarism checkers is to analyze the common patterns in plagiarism. This includes copied content's sloppy paraphrasing or similarity between two identical content types.
This important branch of AI is known as deep learning, as it mimics the deep learning techniques of neurological intelligence like ours. Therefore, when it acts as a plagiarism checker, it efficiently analyses:
- Content's similarities;
- Percentage of duplicity;
- Similarities between content sources.
And that's how machine learning plays its part in checking plagiarism.
4 Reasons Artificial Intelligence Is Important Checking Plagiarism: How it Works
It's important to understand that machine learning and NLP are two branches of AI actively working in plagiarism detection.
However, to see how AI works as a whole, it's imperative to see it working in a tool. Here are 4 reasons that tell us the importance of AI and how it works in a plagiarism checker:
- Accurate Scanning
The first step in any plagiarism checker is to scan your content accurately. This is when NLP kicks in first, as it analyzes your content. However, you don't see it working, as it's more behind-the-scenes stuff than something you see. Instead, the tool tells you how much work is done:
Even if the 1% scanning is completed, it indicates that NLP has kicked in and analyzed your content. Therefore, it ensures the plagiarism checker is ready for accurate scanning.
- Rapid Comparisons
While this part is something you don't see either, it's happening when you scan your content. This part of AI allows the scanner to rapidly compare two texts. Particularly the texts that have similarities to yours. Now, the main AI branch behind this process is deep learning.
It allows the scanner to quickly find equivalence between two text types. Once the content scanner has found similar text, it's this element that allows AI to thoroughly compare content and do so quickly.
- Plagiarism Percentage
Once machine learning and NLP are done, the AI allows the tool to indicate the overall percentage of plagiarism in a text. Every tool indicates this differently, as some would even tell you the minor similarities.
However, the capable tools with advanced AI will give you an accurate reading akin to this:
As you can see, the tool thoroughly indicates the overall similarities between the two contents. Besides that, some tools like the one we're using allow you to compare the exact two lines found in your content.
- Source Designation
The final act of AI in a capable plagiarism checker is to help you find the source of plagiarism. While it's important to find similarities, the process of plagiarism removal requires citation of the original source. A capable AI-based plagiarism checker helps you find the source like this:
That's one of the main reasons AI is important in checking plagiarism: it gives you the original source's link and allows you to remove it efficiently. While it's not found in many other tools, most writers need to find this, and only the most proficient AI-based tools can do this.
These are some of the factors that warrant the importance of AI in checking plagiarism. It's quick, efficient, and saves a ton of time. Therefore, it's not only an essential part of checking plagiarism; it's a pillar of removing it in 2022.


Man-of-Steel-General-Zod-HelmetIn the new movie Man of Steel, Superman engages in a fight with his fellow aliens from Krypton that causes significant damage to Metropolis. Disaster expert Charles Watson estimates the costs of the physical damage done to the city to be about $2 trillion. To put that in context, 9/11's physical damage cost $55 billion, with a further economic impact of $123 billion.
What would be the impact of Superman's fight on the economy? According to some liberal economists, it would lead to a economic boom. In defending President Obama's stimulus proposal in 2011, Paul Krugman proposed a peculiar solution for economic recovery that mimics the one in Man of Steel: prepare for an alien invasion.
"If we discovered that, you know, space aliens were planning to attack and we needed a massive buildup to counter the space alien threat and really inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months," he declared, arguing in favor of the president's stimulus package. "And then if we discovered, oops, we made a mistake, there aren't any aliens, we'd be better [off]."
Man of Steel must be Krugman's favorite movie: you not only get an alien invasion (Kal-El, General Zod and his soldiers) but you get alien destruction on a massive scale. Just think of all the economic benefit Metropolis gained!
Krugman is a prime example that a person can win a Nobel Prize for economics, teach economics at Princeton, and write about economics for the New York Times and still not understand some of the most basic principles in economics. Unfortunately, Krugman is not alone. The idea that natural disasters, man-made disasters, or even alien-made disasters, are "good for the economy" is one of the oldest and most persistent fallacies in economics.
A hundred years before Superman was created, a Frenchman named Frederic Bastiat explained the problem with thinking that destruction is an economic good. Economist Art Carden explains Bastiat's reasoning:
Robert Murphy, an adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute, also notes there are two important elements in Bastiat's analysis:
1. an assumption about what we now call "crowding out" or, what is the same thing, denying that there are "idle resources," and
2. the distinction between wealth and employment.
While Carden and Murphy provide sophisticated economic reasons why we should not believe destruction is good for humanity, there is a simpler explanation that should appeal to Christians: It contradicts God's creational mandate. As Anne Bradley explains,
God has not just called us to preserve what he has given us, but to increase and grow it. Our job description as given in Genesis 2 is to:
- Be fruitful and multiply.
- Create rather than destroy.
The Christian approach to economic growth — which can lead to human flourishing — is to be innovative, productive, creative, and a responsible steward of resources. While it's commendable to try to find a silver-lining after a disaster, we shouldn't be deceived. Whether the broken windows are caused by a hurricane, a baseball, or aliens from Krypton, the destruction only makes humanity poorer.
 - Josh Lowery
 Not sure if there's a column to written about this or not, but I'll put it out there. I see Bastiat's logic here (and agree with it), and I also incline toward Amity Shlaes' contention in "The Forgotten Man" (which is made elsewhere by myriad conservative economists) that it was WWII that got us out of the Depression, not the New Deal. On the surface, it seems like Bastiat would disagree with Shlaes, but I'm assuming that I must be misunderstanding something about one of them. Can someone enlighten me?
 - Stephen Martin
 Here's an article addressing that question, josh.
 - Dan Sullivan
 World War II was a *lot* of broken windows. The problem is that enforced idleness diminishes wealth just as much as destruction does. If labor were not walled off from natural oppoftunities, people would freely produce for themselves, and a people who tried to give them "jobs" would find few people wanting job.
 The United States and its predecessor colonies were like that in early times, and people who wanted to be served called it "a labor shortage."
 The natural ratio of producers to consumers is two hands per mouth.
 - RogerMcKinney
 That's a very poor understanding of economics. A "producer" with no capital but his "two hands" cannot produce enough to even support himself, let alone a family. Production has always and everywhere required capital, if nothing more than a stick to plow the ground and savings to keep the farmer alive until the harvest.
 There was no "forced" idleness in the Great Depression. The previous boom had caused a great deal of bad investment that caused massive amounts of capital needed for production to become worthless. When capital is destroyed, workers who depended upon it for jobs lose those jobs.
 WWII did not rebuild that capital. Only savings can do that. WWII just destroyed even greater amounts of capital.
 - Dan Sullivan
 You seem to have bought into Marx's definition of capital, which confounds land with capital. To the classical liberals, capital was products of labor used to aid future production, and land was all of nature. A person with land and no capital might have no idleness, he has the means to produce wealth for himself.
 As for the ad hominem comment about my "very poor understanding of economics," I will let the real estate editor of *Fortune* respond:
 "Sullivan has made several studies of the financial impact of higher land taxes on property owners, and speaks at meetings of Pittsburgh neighborhood and business groups to spread the incentive-tax doctrine. Such efforts are crucial. Few people, even among public officials and real estate executives, understand the nature of the tax and its economic ripples."
 Now, on to "There was no forced idleness in the great depression." Seriously? There was no vacant land where people would gladly work, held by someone who wasn't using it, but merely holding it to prevent others from using it unless they paid tribute to him? Nobody chasing them away from these natural opportunities at gunpoint?
 You also use the faulty Marxist definition of capital from that point on. Your "faulty investments" were really not investments but acquisitions, and usually acquisitions of land or of stocks companies that were acquiring land and other privileges. The "capital" that was "destroyed" was not capital at all, but real estate prices, and what was destroyed was the private ownership of homes and productive businesses by the residents and producers.
 "Only savings can" "build capital." No, the savings to which you refer is the saving of money, which is not wealth or capital, but merely a claim to wealth and capital. Real capital is created when people go to work and make it.
 Real estate prices peaked in 1925 and in 2005. Real estate prices always peak a few years before a recession, and they are always worst in the places that have the lowest taxes on real estate.
 - Bill Hickman
 Joe –
 You don't understand PK's point. He's not arguing for the actual destruction of wealth. See where he calls for a ***fake*** alien invasion? It's a cheeky point to illustrate his belief that extra spending, for whatever purpose, would probably help the economy. So the broken windows fallacy doesn't apply.
 - Joe Carter
 While Krugman has argued more clearly in favor of the broken window fallacy ("And yes, this does mean that the nuclear catastrophe could end up being expansionary, if not for Japan then at least for the world as a whole." I think his "alien invasion" theory is a complementary example.
 Keep in mind that the purpose of preparing for a fake alien invasion is to spend resources on something *that is not needed.* It would be similar to pretending a window is broken so we can replace the window and justify employing the glazier. In many ways, it's a even sillier commitment to the broken window fallacy (at least a broken window actually needs to be replaced).
 - Guest
 Are you rejecting my comment?
 - Pingback: Weekly Roundup: Same Sex Marriage And Superman | the PUBLIC HOUSE()
 - Dan Sullivan
 Hmm, My comment seems to have been removed without explanation.
 - Harold Kyriazi
 Tell me about it! I've tried posting twice, with no apparent luck, Maybe the site is moderated?
 - Harold Kyriazi
 Neolibertarians generally think that such wealth destruction must, under any and all circumstances, be viewed as an unmitigated harm, failing to understand that if some people are cut off from the earth and thus from natural opportunity, they might benefit by being offered jobs and thus a share of the wealth that those wages buy.
 - RogerMcKinney
 Wealth destruction is not an unmitigated disaster? That's very odd. But what you are saying is that some workers are made better off if the rich are made poorer and Bastiat would completely agree. In fact he states that in his analogy. The worker who repairs the broken window is richer, but at the expense of the worker who would have received the savings of the window owner for other work. So when the property of the rich gets destroyed, the rich man is poorer while the repairman is wealthier, but the other poor worker who would have received the savings of the rich had not the destruction occurred is also poorer.
 - Dan Sullivan
 It isn't


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Rocky Mountain Research Station Publications
RMRS Online Publication - Journal
Articles, External Publications, and Special Reports
Trace gas and particle emissions from domestic and industrial biofuel use and garbage burning in central Mexico
Christian, T. J.; Yokelson, R. J.; Cardenas, B.; Molina, L. T.; Engling, G.; Hsu, S.-C. 2010. Trace gas and particle emissions from domestic and industrial biofuel use and garbage burning in central Mexico. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. 10: 565-584.
In central Mexico during the spring of 2007 we measured the initial emissions of 12 gases and the aerosol speciation for elemental and organic carbon (EC, OC), anhydrosugars, Cl-, NO-3, and 20 metals from 10 cooking fires, four garbage fires, three brick making kilns, three charcoal making kilns, and two crop residue fires. Global biofuel use has been estimated at over 2600 Tg/y. With several simple case studies we show that cooking fires can be a major, or the major, source of several gases and fine particles in developing countries. Insulated cook stoves with chimneys were earlier shown to reduce indoor air pollution and the fuel use per cooking task. We confirm that they also reduce the emissions of VOC pollutants per mass of fuel burned by about half. We did not detect HCN emissions from cooking fires in Mexico or Africa. Thus, if regional source attribution is based on HCN emissions typical for other types of biomass burning (BB), then biofuel use and total BB will be underestimated in much of the developing world. This is also significant because cooking fires are not detected from space.
Keywords: trace gas, particle emissions, biofuel, Mexico
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Publications: Trace gas and particle emissions from domestic and
industrial biofuel use and garbage burning in central Mexico
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estate - definition and synonyms
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noun [countable] estate pronunciation in British English
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 1. 1
 British an area where there are many houses, usually built at the same time by the same company. Many estates are owned by local government and have cheap houses for poorer families. The American word is development
 He grew up on an estate.
 1. c.
 a very large area of land that belongs to one person, usually with a very big house on it
 She has a team of six people who manage the estate.
 2. 2
 [usually singular] all the property and money that belongs to someone, especially someone who has just died
 3. 3
 British a long car with an extra door at the back and a lot of space behind the back seats
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Patrick Ferguson (1744 - 1780)
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Cause of death: killed in the Battle of Kings Mountain
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About Patrick Ferguson
Major Patrick Ferguson (1744 – October 7, 1780) was a Scottish officer in the British Army, early advocate of light infantry and designer of the Ferguson rifle. He is best known for his service in the 1780 military campaign of Charles Cornwallis, in which he aggressively recruited Loyalists and harshly treated Patriot sympathisers. His behaviour led to a militia uprising against him, and he was killed in the Battle of Kings Mountain, where he was the only regular army officer present from either side of the conflict. His body was mistreated in the aftermath of the battle by the victorious Patriot forces before burial.
Early life
Patrick Ferguson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on May 25 (Old Style)/June 4 (New Style) 1744, the second son and fourth child of advocate James Ferguson of Pitfour (who was raised to the judges' bench as a Senator of the College of Justice, so known as Lord Pitfour after 1764) and his wife Anne Murray, a sister of the literary patron Patrick Murray, 5th Lord Elibank.
Through his parents, he knew a number of major figures in the Scottish Enlightenment, including philosopher and historian David Hume, on whose recommendation he read Samuel Richardson's novel Clarissa when he was fifteen, and the dramatist John Home. He had a large number of first cousins through his mother's family: these included Sir William Pulteney, 5th Baronet, Commodore George Johnstone, and Sir James Murray (later Murray-Pulteney).
Seven Years' War
After returning home in 1772, he took part in light infantry training, coming to the attention of General Howe, and developed the Ferguson rifle, a breech-loading flintlock weapon based on Chaumette's earlier system.
American War of Independence
In 1777, he went to serve in the American War of Independence with his experimental rifle corps. However, after initial success, he was shot through the right elbow-joint at the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777. Shortly before, he had had the chance to shoot a prominent American officer, accompanied by another in distinctive hussar dress, but decided not to do so, as he had his back to him and was unaware of his presence. He was told in hospital by a surgeon, who had been speaking to some American casualties, that General Washington had been in the area at the time. Ferguson wrote that, even if the officer were him, he did not regret his decision. However, the officer's identity remains uncertain, and the presence of the aide in hussar dress has led to suggestions that he may have been Count Casimir Pulaski. For some months, he lived under threat of amputation, and also received news of his father's death. He eventually recovered, although his right arm was permanently crippled. He resumed his career in May 1778, under the command of Sir Henry Clinton.
In October 1778, he was sent to lead a raid to suppress privateers who had been seizing British ships and were based around the Little Egg Harbor River in what is known as the Battle of Chestnut Neck. Shortly after this raid, Ferguson was notified that a detachment of Pułaski's troops was located nearby. Ferguson marched his troops to the site of the infantry outpost, which comprised fifty men a short distance from the main encampment. At first light, Ferguson ordered the bayonet charge; only five of his quarry were taken alive in what was called the Little Egg Harbor massacre. Ferguson's own account (under the pen-name Egg-Shell) conveys his dismay at Pułaski's lack of preparations and lack of look-outs. Pułaski eventually led his mounted troops (Pułaski's Legion) forward, causing Ferguson to retreat to his boats minus a few men that had been captured.
After winning several victories over American forces, Cornwallis occupied Charlotte, North Carolina in the summer of 1780. He subsequently divided his army and gave command of one section to Ferguson. Ferguson's wing consisted of Loyalists he had recruited to fight for the British cause. When Ferguson publicly threatened to invade the mountains beyond the legal limit on westward settlement unless the colonists there abandoned the cause of American independence, the mountaineers organised an army to fight Ferguson at King's Pinnacle, an isolated ridge on the North Carolina-South Carolina border. On October 7, 1780 the two armies met in the famous Battle of Kings Mountain. The battle went badly for the Loyalists, and during the fighting, Ferguson was shot from his horse. He was dragged with his foot still in the saddle to the rebel side. When an American walked over for his surrender, he drew his pistol and shot the American as a last act of defiance. His corpse was found with eight musket holes in his body. The Patriots then stripped it of its clothes and urinated on it. He was buried near the site of his fall. It was claimed – according to Patriot accounts – that his corpse was ill-used before burial in an oxhide.
A lifelong bachelor, he was buried with one of his mistresses, 'Virginia Sal', who was also killed in the battle. In the 1920s the U.S. government erected a marker at his gravesite, which today is a part of the Kings Mountain National Military Park, a unit of the National Park Service.
Cultural references
In the 1835 novel Horse-Shoe Robinson by John Pendleton Kennedy, a historical romance set against the background of the Southern campaigns in the American War of Independence, Ferguson appears and interacts with the fictional characters in the book, en route to the climactic scene in which he is killed in the Battle of Kings Mountain.
In Louis L'amour's 1973 book The Ferguson Rifle, Ferguson stops by a poor family home on his way to the Battle of King's Mountain and kindly gives his personal copy of the Ferguson rifle to a boy who later carries it West. Ferguson is shown to be a gentleman who displays all the appropriate social graces to a lady (the boy's ill mother) and compassion to a family in need by giving up his personal firearm asking only that the boy keep it always, and never use it against the king. (p7)
In Steve Ressel's 2010 novel "State Of One", Ferguson is the main antagonist against James Pariah, a former soldier under Ferguson's command during the Battle of the Brandywine in 1777. Ferguson had been resurrected as a golem by the Leeds Witch with hopes of raising a golem army of similar soldiers, all armed with Ferguson rifles, to destroy the ratification of the US Constitution in September 1787. James Pariah cleaves to his old Ferguson rifle, sometimes referring to it as his wife, having modified it with special actions such as a spring-loaded knife in the stock.
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Major Patrick Ferguson's Timeline
October 7, 1780
Age 36


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At the end of a week that included wildly premature celebrations over the passage of a profoundly flawed climate bill, we relay a letter from Extinction Rebellion Global Support, reporting on an often overlooked aspect of conservation in the global south:
Since early 2022, the Maasai in northern Tanzania have intensified their fight against eviction from their ancestral lands in the Ngorongoro conservation area and Loliondo.
The government wants to use the lands to make a safari park and expand trophy hunting opportunities, and have subjected the Maasai communities to waves of violence, exclusion, and evictions. Over the past months, XR Youth Solidarity and other rebel groups have organised joint international solidarity actions with the Maasai.
In February, the Maasai organised a blockade at the entrance to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. At the same time, rebels in London and Edinburgh protested outside the Tanzanian High Commission and several travel agencies who fuel the tourism that is driving the Maasai evictions.
Conservation projects often involve the violent theft of land from indigenous and other local communities, most of whom have lived in harmony with that land for millennia. It is known as Fortress Conservation, or colonial conservation, and the Environmental Justice Atlas currently records 141 cases worldwide.
Fortress Conservation is accepted or even practiced by many well-known organizations, for example WWF, and is used by corporations to greenwash their extractivism. The Maasai and rebel groups have launched a boycott of companies that benefit from the practice and the tourism it fosters.
80% of the world's remaining biodiversity is on indigenous lands, and communities like the Massai want to lead our efforts to protect the planet and stop ecocide, not be displaced by them.
In July, a delegation of indigenous East African people travelled to a major conservation conference in Rwanda and demanded an end to Fortress Conservation, and the beginning of indigenous led conservation without Western intervention.


You Can Feel It in the Air
At some point in our lives, we notice ourselves lugging around an overload of ideas and information. How is it that we continually play the role of unwitting receiver to a barrage of loaded transmissions? 'Transmission' is a series of exhibitions presented by the New Museum of Contemporary Art, which profiles artists and scholars exploring the concept of 'transmission' in and through new media, radio, sound and broadcast media. 'Airborne,' the second show in the series, takes on the 'aesthetic, sonic and socio-political' aspects of these cunningly concealed wireless transmissions. Curated by Anne Barlow and Defne Ayas, in collaboration with, the exhibition features seven works by New York-based artists that aim to give substance to intangible electronic signals and to the interests they power. Take Paul Davies 'Prayer Antenna,' which wittingly transforms viewers into supplicants as they kneel to insert their head into an ordained helmet covered with antennas; or Mendi and Keith Obadike's '4-1-9,' which invites one to compose an individualized email money transfer scam. Airborne will be at the New Museum until June 4, with performances on May 4 at 6:30PM. - Ophra Wolf


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package Attempt; use Exporter; use base qw(Exporter); use vars qw(_USER_ $VERSION); _USER_ = qw(attempt); use strict; _TAG_ warnings; use Carp qw(croak); $VERSION = "1.01"; =head1 NAME Attempt - attempt to run code multiple times =head1 SYNOPSIS use Attempt; # if the database goes away while we're using it, just try again... attempt { my $dbh = DBI->connect("DBD::Mysql:foo", "mark", "opensaysme") or die "Can't connect to database"; $dbh->{RaiseException} = 1; $dbh->do("alter table items change pie pies int(10)"); } tries => 3, delay => 2; =head1 DESCRIPTION Attempt creates a new construct for things that you might want to attempt to do more than one time if they throw exceptions, because the problems they throw exceptions to report might go away. Exports a new construct called C. The simplest way to use C is to write attempt followed by a block of code to attempt to run. attempt { something_that_might_die(); }; By default perl will attempt to run to run the code again without delay if an exception is thrown. If on the second run an exception is again thrown, that exception will be propogated out of the attempt block as normal. The particulars of the run can be changed by passing parameters after the code block. The C parameter effects the number of times the code will attempt to be run. The C parameter determines how often perl will wait - sleep - between runs. C can return values, and you can exit out of an attempt block at any point with a return statement as you might expect. List and scalar context is preserved though-out the call to the block. =cut sub attempt (&;@) { my $code = shift; my %args = _USER_; my _USER_; my $result; # find out how many attempts we're going to take, # defaulting to two. my $tries = exists($args{tries})? $args{tries} : 2; # try while we've got tries left. while (1) { # do we want a list? my $wantarray = wantarray; # try running the code eval { if ($wantarray) { _USER_ = $code->() } else { $result = $code->() } }; # return if we're sucessful return ($wantarray? _USER_ : $result ) unless $@; # we've used up a try $tries--; last if $tries < 1; # sleep if we need to select undef, undef, undef, $args{delay} if exists $args{delay}; } # got this far and didn't already return, so propogate the error croak $@; } =head1 AUTHOR Written by Mark Fowler _EMAIL_ Copryright Mark Fowler 2003. All Rights Reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. =head1 BUGS Only respects list and scalar context, doesn't replicated the more complicated forms of context that B supports. The caller isn't what you might expect from within the attempt block (or rather, it is, but isn't what it would have been if the block wasn't there) Bugs should be reported to me via the CPAN RT system. L. =head1 SEE ALSO L, L =cut 1;


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anthropological work in Ituri Forest
...of Africa; 1873). Stanley was the first to cross the forest from west to east, following essentially the same route as the present Kisangani-to-Bunia road. In the 1930s the Jesuit missionary Paul Schebesta undertook the first anthropological studies of the people of the Ituri. Since then, many aspects of the behaviour, ecology, and growth and demography of the Bambuti and their villager...
What made you want to look up "Paul Schebesta"? Please share what surprised you most...


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empirical is looking for young, goal-oriented college graduates with a desire to learn, be challenged, and integrate themselves into our culture and future. We provide experiential learning and talent development to develop leaders capable of maintaining and growing empirical's leadership in our industry. The curriculum is designed to fast-track the careers of potential leaders through an intense rotational training program, in-depth exposure to business activities, and relevant experiences.
eMAAP Trainees Can Expect
- A challenging 9–15 month program
- A successful learning/working experience that develops young talent into successful leaders
- Exposure to empirical processes, project work, and leadership opportunities
- Mentorship and guidance
- Honest, transparent, and ongoing communication


Women's Health
This module looks at how women's health is impacted by health inequity. This includes looking at specific issues related to maternal and reproductive health, such as cervical screening and access to healthcare services, and how they are exacerbated in vulnerable groups, such as Gypsy and Traveller communities.
What will I be able to do at the end of this module?
By the end of the session, participants will:
 - Understand the impact of health inequity on women's health
 - Be able to identify specific health issues that women face in a deprivation context
 - Consider solutions to improve outcomes for women facing these inequalities


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Shaken Baby Syndrome
A child with Reference shaken baby syndrome Opens New Window is admitted to a hospital for observation and treatment. Doctors will closely monitor the child. They watch for signs of brain swelling and difficulty breathing, which can lead to the death of brain cells or a Reference stroke Opens New Window. If signs of these problems occur, the child is admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) where he or she is treated with Reference oxygen therapy Opens New Window and/or a Reference ventilator Opens New Window. A Reference neurosurgeon Opens New Window may treat the bleeding and swelling in the brain. Sometimes surgery is needed.
Other treatment depends on the child's specific injuries. For example, a cast is applied to any broken bones and cuts are stitched or bandaged. A child who has Reference seizures Opens New Window is evaluated by a Reference neurologist Opens New Window who may prescribe anticonvulsant medicine. Other types of specialists assess, treat, and monitor children who have long-term care issues, such as those related to Reference intellectual disabilities Opens New Window or physical disabilities.
Other children in the care of the suspected abuser must be protected and examined for injury.
A wide variety of Reference counseling Opens New Window therapies may be used for both children and parents. Specific treatment depends on the type of abuse, who inflicted it, in what setting it occurred, and the child's age. Health and legal professionals work as a team to develop the most effective program using their training, experience, judgment, and creativity.
Parents may regain custody of their children after they have lost guardianship because of child abuse or neglect. Whether they do so depends on the severity of the abuse or neglect and a professional evaluation of their rehabilitation progress. In severe cases, future contact between parent and child must be supervised. Sometimes parents lose all parental rights.
Intentional injury is a crime. Police perform site investigations and interview other caregivers. If intentional injury is suspected, the child's caregiver will be charged and tried in a criminal court.
|By:||Reference Healthwise Staff||Last Revised: Reference February 16, 2011|
|Medical Review:||Reference John Pope, MD - Pediatrics
Reference Thomas Emmett Francoeur, MD, MDCM, CSPQ, FRCPC - Pediatrics


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What does this program measure?
Sulfur Dioxide is measured at 4,10,23,and 40 meters above the ground, in units of parts per trillion by volume.
How does this program work?
Why is this research important?
This is part of an effort to monitor long-term of emissions from Kilauea and Mauna Loa volcanoes. It may provide a precursor to the next Mauna Loa eruption. These measurements also detection large sulfur dioxide pollution events from Asia.
Are there any trends in the data?
No trends. Kilauea has been in continuous eruption since 1983. Mauna Loa last erupted in 1984. Since 1994; SO2 levels from Mauna Loa have been low (<500ppt, or parts per trillion).
How does this program fit into the big picture?
What is it's role in global climate change?
The SO2 data can be used to detect periods of volcanic pollution at the observatory. This can provide a non-baseline filter for other measurements.
Comments and References
NOAA Sulfur Dioxide Monitoring (SO2)


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Date: August 1938
Creator: Fox, Raymond E.
Description: In this exposition, the writer has attempted to give a clear idea of the origin, organization, and curricua of the three types of schools of the Mexican public educational system. The information was gathered from first-hand knowledge, from careful study and analysis or publications of the department of Education, visits to schools, Interviews with school pen, and from various earler works on the subject of Mexican education.
Contributing Partner: UNT Libraries


The VICE Channels
 The First Floating Solar Power Labs Will Be Built in a Swiss Lake by the End of the Year
 Written by
 Brian Merchant
 Senior Editor
 We've got giant desert solar plants, rooftop installations galore, and concentrated solar systems that melt salt to store power--but our solar doesn't do a whole lot of floating yet. In August, it will.
 Two Swiss companies just partnered to sponsor the most the most futuristic science project of the year thus far: floating, solar-powered labs designed to study "the effectiveness of concentrated solar power on water." By year's end, the world will have its first three buoyed solar islands.
 The labs will be launched off the shore of the Swiss lake Neuchâtel in August, and the project sounds intriguing indeed. PV Tech has the specs:
 - Each floating laboratory is 25 meters in diameter and will carry 100 PV panels.
 - Each panel will be back-to-back on a 45° incline.
 - The islands can rotate 220° in the direction of the sun tracking it throughout the day.
 - Their location on the water lowers its resistance, therefore increasing its effectiveness.
 Each will be connected to the grid on the mainland, and anchored to the lakebed by cables connected to concrete blocks. The solar islands are expected to remain intact for a quarter of a century.
 It all seems a bit far-fetched, but the idea has actually been stewing for over five years now. Floating solar was first pushed in 2007 by Thomas Hinderling, a Swiss researcher who, at the time, was the CEO of the Centre Suisse d'Electronique et de Microtechnique. Then, his vision looked like this:
 Hinderling explained his vision to Wired after his proposal first attracted $5 million in funding from the United Arab Emirates, which had just recently begun its push to fund clean energy technologies:
 Hinderling estimates that an island a mere mile across could generate 190 megawatts of power with a breakeven price point of $0.15 a kilowatt hour, or about twice current electricity prices in the United States.
 The islands will consist of a plastic membrane loaded up with solar concentrating mirrors floating above the water. The mirrors are used to heat liquid to turn it into steam, which drives a turbine that generates energy … the entire platform can be turned to align with the sun, generating maximum efficiency without a complicated tracking system.
 Here's the concept vid Hinderling's company promoted, set to the Tangerine Dreamy kind of music middle-aged folk inevitably deem futuristic:
 Who knows? Maybe it was the smooth tunes that eventually sold the U.A.E. on the whole unlikely debacle. More likely it was because the U.A.E., a tiny desert nation with immense oil wealth but limited property space, was interested in the notion of getting more of its power from solar without using up prime real estate. The nation still gets a lot of its electricity from the inefficient and pollution-heavy means of burning oil, and is keen on both switching to cleaner sources and becoming a leader in the cleantech sector by the time it depletes its fossil-fueled wealth.
 French newscasters Nuovo did an interesting piece on the U.A.E.'s involvement in kickstarting the floating solar labs, but, alas, it's largely in French.
 Renewable energy specialists remained skeptical well into 2008, but Hinderling and co. pushed on, successfully completing a prototype outside of Abu Dhabi in 2009.
 Here's the prototype undergoing a rotation test:
 Satisfied that the technology is up to snuff, Hinderling pushed the project into the next phase. Now, his solar lab company is called Nolaris--Hinderling left CSEM in 2010 to become CEO there-- and it has attracted $108 million in investment from Viteos SA, a Swiss energy company. That's enough to construct three islands and the infrastructure needed to route power back to the mainland. Once built, each island will boast a capacity of 33 kilowatts.
 Naysaying critics are probably still going to call the project infeasible, unlikely. But at this juncture, with climate change creeping up and breathing down our necks, we need more experiments like this, not less. For chrissake, let's spin solar on giant cones, let's build it into winding treelike formations, and yeah, why not, let's push it out to sea in thermal circles.


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longer crisis-driven as service-impacting events grow less frequent and are quickly resolves when they do occur.
When designing a private cloud, development of the Health Model will drive much of the information needed for Knowledge Management. The Health Model defines the ideal states for each infrastructure component and the daily, weekly, monthly, and as-needed tasks required to maintain this state. The Health Model also defines unhealthy states for each infrastructure component and actions to be taken to restore their health. This information will form the foundation of the Knowledge Management database.
Aligning the Health Model with alerts allows these alerts to contain links to the Knowledge Management database describing the specific steps to be taken in response to the alert. This will help drive predictability as a consistent, proven set of actions will be taken in response to each alert.
The final step toward achieving a private cloud is the automation of responses to each alert as defined in the Knowledge Management database. Once these responses are proven successful, they should be automated to the fullest extent possible. It is important to note, though, that automating responses to alerts does not make them invisible and forgotten. Even when alerts generate a fully automated response they must be captured in the Service Management system. If the alert indicates the need for a change, the change record should be logged. Similarly, if the alert is in response to an incident, an incident record should be created. These automated workflows must be reviewed regularly by Operations staff to make sure the automated action achieves the expected result. Finally, as the environment changes over time, or as new knowledge is gained, the Knowledge Management database must be updated along with the automated workflows that are based on that knowledge.
The goal of Incident Management is to resolve events that are impacting, or threaten to impact, services as quickly as possible with minimal disruption. The goal of Problem Management is to identify and resolve root causes of incidents that have occurred as well as identify and prevent or minimize the impact of incidents that may occur.
Pinpointing the root cause of an incident can become more challenging when workloads are abstracted from the infrastructure and their physical location changes frequently. Additionally, incident response teams may be unfamiliar with virtualization technologies (at least initially) which could also lead to delays in incident resolution. Finally, applications may have neither a robust Health Model nor expose all of the health information required for a proactive response. All of this may lead to an increase in reactive (user initiated) incidents which will likely increase the Mean-Time-to-Restore-Service (MTRS) and customer dissatisfaction.
This may seem to go against the resiliency principle, but note that virtualization alone will not achieve the desired resiliency unless accompanied by highly mature IT Service Management (ITSM) maturity and a robust automated health monitoring system.
The drive for resiliency requires a different approach to troubleshooting incidents. Extensive troubleshooting of incidents in production negatively impacts resiliency. Therefore, if an incident cannot be quickly resolved, the service can be rolled back to the previous version, as described under Release and Deployment. Further troubleshooting can be done in a test environment without impacting the production environment. Troubleshooting in the production environment may be limited to moving the service to different hosts (ruling out infrastructure as the cause) and rebooting the VMs. If these steps do not resolve the issue, the rollback scenario could be initiated.
Minimizing human involvement in incident management is critical for achieving resiliency. The troubleshooting scenarios described earlier could be automated, which will allow for identification and possible resolution of the root much more quickly than non-automated processes. But automation may mask the root cause of the incident. Careful consideration should be given to determining which troubleshooting steps should be automated and which require human analysis.
Human Analysis of Troubleshooting
If a compute resource fails, it is no longer necessary to treat the failure as an incident that must be fixed immediately. It may be more efficient and cost effective to treat the failure as part of the decay of the Resource Pool. Rather than treat a failed server as an incident that requires immediate resolution, treat it as a natural candidate for replacement on a regular maintenance schedule, or when the Resource Pool reaches a certain threshold of decay. Each organization must balance cost, efficiency, and risk as it determines an acceptable decay threshold – and choose among these courses of action:
The benefits and trade-off of each of the options are listed below:
Option 4 is the least desirable, as it does not take advantage of the resiliency and cost reduction benefits of a private cloud. A well-planned Resource Pool and Reserve Capacity strategy will account for Resource Decay.
Option 1 is the most recommended approach. A predictable maintenance schedule allows for better procurement planning and can help avoid conflicts with other maintenance activities, such as software upgrades. Again, a well-planned Resource Pool and Reserve Capacity strategy will account for Resource Decay and minimize the risk of exceeding critical thresholds before the scheduled maintenance.
Option 3 will likely be the only option for self-contained Scale Unit scenarios, as the container must be replaced as a single Scale Unit when the decay threshold is reached.
The goal of Request Fulfillment is to manage requests for service from users. Users should have a clear understanding of the process they need to initiate to request service and IT should have a consistent approach for managing these requests.
Much like any service provider, IT should clearly define the types of requests available to users in the service catalog. The service catalog should include an SLA on when the request will be completed, as well as the cost of fulfilling the request, if any.
The types of requests available and their associated costs should reflect the actual cost of completing the request and this cost should be easily understood. For example, if a user requests an additional VM, its daily cost should be noted on the request form, which should also be exposed to the organization or person responsible for paying the bill.
It is relatively easy to see the need for adding resources, but more difficult to see when a resource is no longer needed. A process for identifying and removing unused VMs should be put into place. There are a number of strategies to do this, depending on the needs of a given organization, such as:
The benefits and trade-offs of each of these approaches are detailed below:
Option 4 affords the greatest flexibility, while still working to minimize server sprawl. When a user requests a VM, they have the option of setting an expiration date with no reminder (for example, if they know they will only be using the workload for one week). They could set an expiration deadline with a reminder (for example, a reminder that the VM will expire after 90 days unless they wish to renew). Lastly, the user may request no expiration date if they expect the workload will always be needed. If the last option is chosen, it is likely that underutilized VMs will still be monitored and owners notified.
Finally, self-provisioning should be considered, if appropriate, when evaluating request fulfillment options to drive towards minimal human involvement. Self-provisioning allows great agility and user empowerment, but it can also introduce risks depending on the nature of the environment in which these VMs are introduced.
For an enterprise organization, the risk of bypassing formal build, stabilize, and deploy processes may or may not outweigh the agility benefits gained from the self-provisioning option. Without strong governance to make sure each VM has an end-of-life strategy, the fabric may become congested with VM server sprawl. The pros and cons of self-provisioning options are listed in the next diagram:
The primary decision point for determining whether to use self-provisioning is the nature of the environment. Allowing developers to self-provision into the development environment greatly facilitates agile development, and allows the enterprise to maintain release management controls as these workloads are moved out of development and into test and production environments.
A user-led community environment isolated from enterprise mission-critical applications may also be a good candidate for self-provisioning. As long as user actions are isolated and cannot impact mission critical applications, the agility and user empowerment may justify the risk of giving up control of release management. Again, it is essential that in such a scenario, expiration timers are included to prevent server sprawl.
The goal of Access Management is to make sure authorized users have access to the services they need while preventing access by unauthorized users. Access Management is the implementation of security policies defined by Information Security Management at the Service Delivery Layer.
Maintaining access for authorized users is critical for achieving the perception of continuous availability. Besides allowing access, Access Management defines users who are allowed to use, configure, or administer objects in the Management Layer. From a provider's perspective, it answers questions like:
From a consumer's perspective, it answers questions such as:
Access Management is implemented at several levels and can include physical barriers to systems such as requiring access smartcards at the data center, or virtual barriers such as network and Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) separation, firewalling, and access to storage and applications.
Taking a service provider's approach to Access Management will also make sure that resource segmentation and multi-tenancy is addressed.
Resource Pools may need to be segmented to address security concerns around confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Some tenants may not wish to share infrastructure resources to keep their environment isolated from others. Access Management of shared infrastructure requires logical access control mechanisms such as encryption, access control rights, user groupings, and permissions. Dedicated infrastructure also relies on physical access control mechanisms, where infrastructure is not physically connected, but is effectively isolated through a firewall or other mechanisms.
The goal of systems administration is to make sure that the daily, weekly, monthly, and as-needed tasks required to keep a system healthy are being performed.
Regularly performing ongoing systems administration tasks is critical for achieving predictability. As the organization matures and the Knowledge Management database becomes more robust and increasingly automated, systems administration tasks is no longer


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Welcome to the SWA Tools Portal!
Looking for a tool to strengthen WASH in your country? To get started, select the Building Block or Action Point you want to explore below. A set of filters will appear to the left. You will be able to narrow down your search by filtering the region/country, scope, subsector, language, and organization.
At any time, you may browse all tools or select another building block by clicking on the appropriate link in the horizontal menu above. You may also use the search box on the right to search by keyword.
- Budgets and expenditure frameworks
- Explore financial data
- Financial planning
- Coordination Mechanisms
- Legal and regulatory frameworks
About this portal
The Portal houses tools that help national governments and their development partners put the different aspects of the SWA Framework including, Building Blocks, Collaborative Behaviours, Guiding Principles into practice. The portal is a constantly-growing database and resource list, and is easily searchable by keywords.
The objectives of the portal are to:
- Provide a "one stop shop" through which sector practitioners, policy and decision-makers can select tools to support the implementation of WASH Building Blocks and Collaborative Behaviours appropriate to the specific context and purpose for which they are needed
- Provide for a platform facilitating easy access to experiences gained and lessons learned by different actors and in different countries who have used the tools.
- Support countries to take leadership of the tools they use (and move away from tool use that is driven by donor preference and funding)
- Prevent further fragmentation and duplication of tools
- Identify gaps where tools don't exist and work together to fill them
If your organization would like to add a tool, please follow these instructions.
Add a tool to the portal
Are you a tool developer or author of a case study or report relevant to strengthening WASH?
You are welcome to add your tool using the form below. But please first check if it meets our criteria. For a WASH tool to be included in this Portal, it must:
- Focus on WASH "software" – policies, processes and techniques that help strengthen the WASH enabling environment (upstream). It does not include tools for the implementation of WASH hardware or infrastructure (downstream).
- Be primarily focussed on targets 6.1 (water) and 6.2 (sanitation and hygiene) of the SDGs. Case studies/reports etc. that are related to the MDGs or other SDGs should only be included if they are relevant for learning about implementation of SDG6.1 or 6.2.
- Be open source (available for use with no license or purchase fees).


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As parents, many Ohio residents make an effort to shield their kids from stress. This means shouldering the burden when it comes to matters that can lead to worries, such as financial concerns. According to a recent study, high levels of debt could have a serious negative impact on the well-being of children, regardless of the lengths to which parents go to protect their kids from money-related stress. As a result, eliminating your debts could have significant impacts on children's quality of life.
The study looked at information collected on more than 9,000 children between the ages of 5 and 14. The debt levels for each family were calculated and monitored, and information was collected on any behavioral problems that the children experienced. The period of the study extended for 22 years, giving researchers the opportunity to track behavioral changes over time, as the debt scenario for each family shifted.
What was discovered is that children in families with more than $10,000 in unsecured debt experienced behavior problems at a standard deviation of 0.12 over those who lived in homes where debt was not an issue. It is important to note that the researchers divided debt into two categories, secured, such as mortgages, and unsecured, such as credit card bills. In families in which debt increased from around $5,000 to around $10,000, behavior problems in affected children rose a standard deviation of 0.5.
Researchers did not delve into the exact reasons why kids impacted by debt displayed more behavior problems than those who lived in families without high debt levels. It could be that the stress of financial issues caused tension between the parents, making the home less stable for the children involved. It might also be that kids who live in financially stressful households took on some of that stress themselves, and acted out to try to work through those feelings.
The study suggests that families in dire financial straits may have more to worry about than the accumulation of new bills. In cases in which children are beginning to exhibit behavior problems, Ohio parents might want to consider pursuing an aggressive form of debt relief, such as personal bankruptcy. Eliminating your debts could bring a fresh start for the family as a whole and may even increase the well-being of the children living in the home.
Source: fool.com, "Here's How Your Debt Can Harm Your Children's Happiness", Maurie Backman, Feb. 21, 2016


Stefano Mancuso
Plant neurobiologist
Stefano Mancuso is a founder of the study of plant neurobiology, which explores signaling and communication at all levels of biological organization, from genetics to molecules, cells and ecological communities.
Why you should listen
Does the Boston fern you're dutifully misting each morning appreciate your care? Or can the spreading oak in your local park take umbrage at the kids climbing its knotted branches? Not likely, says Italian researcher Stefano Mancuso, but that doesn't mean that these same living organisms aren't capable of incredibly sophisticated and dynamic forms of awareness and communication.
What others say
"To christen the lab in 2004, Mancuso decided to use the controversial term 'plant neurobiology' to reinforce the idea that plants have biochemistry, cell biology and electrophysiology similar to the human nervous system." — Nicole Martinelli,
Stefano Mancuso's TED talks
Quotes from Stefano Mancuso


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Palm Springs, Calif.— The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a final rule Wednesday protecting Casey's June beetle as an endangered species and designating 587 acres of critical habitat for it in Riverside County, Calif. Known only from the Palm Canyon area of Palm Springs, the beetle is critically endangered by urban development. The Center for Biological Diversity, entomologist David Wright and the Sierra Club petitioned to protect the beetle in 2004. Wednesday's final rule is the result of a landmark legal settlement between the Center and the Service that will expedite protection for 757 imperiled species across the country.
"We're excited that this unique California beetle now has the Endangered Species Act protection it needs to survive," said Tierra Curry, a biologist with the Center. "Endangered Species Act protection with critical habitat designation is the most effective tool we have for saving species from extinction."
Once thought to occur from Palm Springs to Indian Wells in the Coachella Valley, the species now survives in only two populations in a small area in the southern part of Palm Springs. Remaining habitat consists of just 800 acres scattered in nine isolated fragments, primarily on private lands, and is actively shrinking due to the rapid pace of development.
"Clearly, habitat protection is the most important conservation measure for the Casey's June beetle," said Curry. "This announcement recognizes the dire straits of this scarab beetle, which is found nowhere else in the world, and gives it the habitat protection it needs to continue to exist."
Background on the Species
Casey's June beetles are medium-sized June beetles (June beetles are named after their tendency to fly in late spring evenings), about one to two inches long, and dusty brown or whitish with longitudinal stripes. Their reddish-brown antennae are clubbed, as is common in scarab beetles, with ends consisting of a series of leaf-like plates that can be held together or fanned out to sense scents. Adults emerge from holes in the ground to mate in late March through June. Females have rarely been found, and always on the ground rather than in flight. Males fly swiftly over the ground from about one hour before dusk to shortly after dark to look for females.
Contact Info: Tierra Curry, _PHONE_
Website : Center for Biological Diversity


Ben Rotman
The Refugees from Darfur
"A series of paintings expressing the experience of the African refugees after being driven from their homes in Sudan, experiencing violence, murder and rape, and falling prey to wild animals during their escape.
"And the world kept silent!!!!
Ben Rotman met these exiles and monitored their activity after the horrors, and expressed his impressions in perspective paintings emphasizing their fate and the essence of their lives.
"The prominent figures in these paintings are women, men and children in various situations reflecting sorrow and despair. In one of the characteristic paintings depicting the escape from Sudan, the exiles have their backs to the viewer and, wearing their traditional robes and head coverings, march through the desert to the open horizon, beating their drums. Another painting shows the figure of a young boy crouching in what appears to be a more urban environment, on a stairway, with his head between his hands, his face concealed, with an older person?s hat flung into space.
"The refugees, who are forced to come to terms with their fate, express this through their traditional dress, their lifestyle and their difficulty in assimilating in modern society, while continuing to bear the scars inflicted on them by the horrors they experienced.
"The paintings express tremendous compassion for those who survived the horrors, while rebuking and defying wealthy, well-fed western society."
Ben Rotman's art on the Web
Ben Rotman's AutoGallery exhibit


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The prefix "di" means "two" -- except when it doesn't! Here we start with the prefix "di," combine it with a word, and end with the answer: a different word. For example, the clue "Double an instruction to be quiet" leads to the answer "dish." Good luck!
All answers are one word.
-1.Double myself. (This might be worth some money in North America!)
-2.Double a poetic stanza. (Here's a different sort of question.)
-3.Double a guitar-like stringed instrument. (This answer is a little watered down.)
-4.Double a way of standing. (Have you gone too far?)
-5.Double not being on time. (This answer should open your eyes.)
6.Double a large, boxy motor vehicle that can haul lots of people or goods. (That doubled passenger seating is very comfortable indeed.)
-7.Double quiet, silence, calm and non-motion. (The answer is highly purified.)
-8.Double someone who believes the existence of God cannot be known. (The answer will test you.)
-9.Double a classical lyric poem. (The answer will electrify you.)
-10.Double a grape-bearing plant. (Perhaps these grapes are unusually holy.)