What would happen to Scotland's economy after independence?
By Douglas Fraser
BBC Scotland Business and Economy Editor
image captionThe big question is whether the Scottish people would be better off or not outside the UK
Timing... the question... legality. Let's cut to the chase about Scottish independence. What would it mean for the economy?
The answer matters, of course. One recent poll suggested that support for or against is decisively swayed if people think they would be better or worse off by £500 per year.
But which would it be? Better or worse off? No-one's tried this before, either breaking up a political and currency union after three centuries, or splitting a member of the European Union.
We can at least consider some of the questions of independence for the economy of Scotland - and for the rest of the UK.
Historically, Scotland's growth has been lower than the rest of the UK.
From the mid-2000s, it averaged about the UK level, helped by growth in the finance sector.
That doesn't only mean the discredited boom for Royal Bank of Scotland and Halifax Bank of Scotland.
Through the downturn, Scotland's growth has been close to the average position of the UK.
The Scottish economy contracted slightly less, and the recession itself was a bit shorter, and while it appears to be suffering a weaker recovery, it's at least as significant how closely it tracks the UK position.
Convergence with the UK is also a feature of the employment levels and of unemployment.
It's ironic, at a time when Scotland is debating a break from Westminster rule, that it's probably never looked so similar to the UK average.
Smaller nations
Part of the nationalist case for independence is that the Scottish economy has been held back by policy made to suit the south-east of England, and the City of London's financial sector in particular.
Before the credit crunch, First Minister Alex Salmond put the argument at the heart of his campaigning that small nations were more agile and grew faster, citing the "arc of prosperity" around Scotland; Ireland, Iceland and Norway.
For reasons visible from Cork to Keflavik, he's not saying that now, except about oil-rich Norway.
The case can still be made that small Scandinavian nations can enjoy sustained, strong economic growth and prosperity, alongside generous state provision.
But how similar is Scotland to its Nordic neighbours, and how high would taxes have to rise?
The transition to a Scandic-style economy is not a simple process.
Could Scotland afford to go it alone?
The answer is simple - of course it can.
But at what cost to its public finances?
In other words, what might have to change?
Almost every aspect of this debate is contested.
The Treasury's figures are cited as showing higher spending per head, though it's reckoned that gap has been narrowing. BBC Economics Editor Stephanie Flanders took a look at that earlier.
The debate often portrays Scotland as requiring a "subsidy".
But as Stephanie Flanders pointed out, the Treasury's regular requirement of funding from the bond markets is no different, and it's that familiar feature of Britain's public finances - a deficit.
The most recent figures, using Treasury and Scottish government data, show the deficit on Scottish spending over expenditure is a smaller share of gross domestic product than that of the UK as a whole.
According to Glasgow University economists projecting Treasury figures, it's on course to stay that way until 2015-16.
That requires a large share of oil and gas revenue.
Without oil and gas, the Scottish deficit looks very large.
But an independent Scotland could expect to have more than 80% of the UK's oil and gas revenue, subject to negotiation with the Treasury.
With that, the public spending deficit looks more manageable.
But it's often a deficit, nonetheless.
The volatile price of oil means volatile income. The trend is clearly for the volume of oil and gas production to fall, though that is partly offset by higher average prices, higher tax rates, and so buoyant revenues.
So Scotland's public finances could break even some years, but there's little sign of large oil revenue surpluses to pay off debt and build up a national trust fund.
That's what the Norwegians have successfully done with their offshore oil revenue.
Debt and liabilities
Scotland would be expected to take on a share of the UK's national debt. Just how big a share is one of many negotiations that could be expected between administrations in Edinburgh and London.
Alex Salmond said this week it should be based on either share of UK GDP or share of population.
These proportions are not far apart, so with the way public sector net borrowing looks now, the Scottish portion of it would be around £80bn, and continuing to head north.
Scotland would have to service that debt by issuing bonds.
It would have its own credit rating, and with no credit history and political leaders who want to turn on the spending taps to get out of recession, the bond markets may not be impressed.
And what about its bank exposure?
Opponents of independence ask what might have happened if Scotland had faced the meltdown in 2008 of Royal Bank of Scotland and Halifax Bank of Scotland all on its own.
Pumping in more than £70bn in capital and hundreds of billions in guarantees looks impossible for a small country.
Other small countries faced bank crises and they're handling them in different ways.
But it doesn't seem that Ireland or Iceland have been destroyed by the scale of their financial implosion.
It's reasonable to assume that an independent Scotland would have sought to work alongside the rest of the UK to resolve the bank crisis.
It would clearly have been in Whitehall's interests to co-operate, as both economies would have suffered badly from those banks being allowed to go bust.
Europe and trade
The shape of the Scottish economy depends heavily on its future trading relationship.
The country starts within the European Union, and the continent would remain a major trading partner.
There's no precedent for a European member state splitting and creating two new members.
Or would it be one new member and a continuing one?
Would Scotland stay within the EU, and if so, what conditions would other members impose?
There's a lively debate about how that would work.
In short, nobody knows.
Some argue Scotland would retain the UK's opt-out from being required to join the euro currency. Others say it's an automatic requirement for new applicants.
The SNP proposes sticking with sterling until Scots choose, by referendum, to join the euro.
And for obvious reasons in the eurozone, Mr Salmon not rushing into that just yet.
His problem, in explaining this policy, is that remaining with sterling leaves the Treasury and Bank of England in London to set Scotland's monetary policy, while having no influence over it.
Some have questioned whether the Treasury would allow Scotland to use the pound.
What they fail to explain is how the Treasury could stop it.
Border and exchange controls all around England, Wales and Northern Ireland?
That might explain why no-one is threatening it.
However, joining the euro gives an independent government at Holyrood only limited influence in Frankfurt, where decisions are made for a much larger currency zone.
In or out of the EU, it seems unlikely Scotland would lose its access to markets.
Its most important foreign market, by far, would be the rest of the UK.
How well that relationship works politically depends on how the negotiations go.
But within the EU, neither side would be allowed to put blocks on trade.
There would, however, be costs for business. Separate taxation regimes would require separate accounting for those companies operating on both sides of the Cheviots.
And one of the immediate concerns, at least for some businesses, is the cost of political risk while Scotland's constitutional future remains unclear.
Critics of the Scottish government warn that will put off investment, if indeed it's not doing so already. But that argument lacks evidence.
Those sceptical about independence are keeping their heads down, at least until it becomes a more realistic prospect.
And Scottish ministers respond to this warning from UK ministers with a list of diverse, prestige investments in recent months by major international companies.
Which sectors
Unless there are dramatic changes in taxation and currency, some parts of the Scottish economy might see little difference, such as retail, manufacturing, tourism, or the oil and gas sector.
Many companies already operate across many borders, and it would make little difference to deal with another, new country.
But there would surely be a bigger impact for firms in those sectors that look to regulators to shape their markets, such as the finance sector, energy suppliers and rail.
Scotland's corporate sector happens to be very big in those areas.
Finance would continue to be significant, not only because RBS and Lloyds are major players in the Scottish market and as employers, but because there are many other financial companies located in Scotland, to take advantage of the country's financial skills.
It would be open to an independent Scotland and the rest of the UK to agree on sharing regulatory regimes, if only to retain the attractiveness of cross-border trading, and to provide a subsidy mechanism for Scotland's potential in renewable energy.
And what would an independent Scotland do for a historically poor business birth rate?
Bold claims are made for the dynamic effect of unleashing national self-confidence, but they'll never be proven unless it's tried.
Another pillar of the Scottish economy is its education, with universities drivers of innovation and dealers of a strong suit in high level skills.
As with so much of this debate, the future of that sector under independence depends on the decisions made by future Scottish governments. Even if tuition remains free to students, what would be the implications for quality and standards over the long run?
And what about the disproportionately large share of UK research council grants that are won by Scottish academics?
There's another funding gap.
Known unknowns
So the conclusion is, perhaps disappointingly:


text:
C2 AS ( SELECT orderyear, COUNT(DISTINCT custid) AS numcusts FROM C1 GROUP BY orderyear ) SELECT orderyear, numcusts FROM C2 WHERE numcusts > 70; GO
By the way, if it wasn't obvious, the CTEs that the view's inner query is based on can be recursive.
Let's proceed to cases where you need multiple references to the same table expression from the outer query. The task for this example is to compute the yearly order count per year, and compare the count in each year with the preceding year. The easiest way to achieve this is actually to use the LAG window function, but we'll use a join between two instances of a table expression representing yearly order counts just to compare a multi-reference case among the three tools.
This is the code that we used earlier in the series to handle the task with derived tables:
SELECT CUR.orderyear, CUR.numorders, CUR.numorders - PRV.numorders AS diff FROM ( SELECT YEAR(orderdate) AS orderyear, COUNT(*) AS numorders FROM Sales.Orders GROUP BY YEAR(orderdate) ) AS CUR LEFT OUTER JOIN ( SELECT YEAR(orderdate) AS orderyear, COUNT(*) AS numorders FROM Sales.Orders GROUP BY YEAR(orderdate) ) AS PRV ON CUR.orderyear = PRV.orderyear + 1;
There's a very clear downside here. You have to repeat the definition of the table expression twice. You are essentially defining two named table expressions based on the same query code.
Here's the code that handles the same task using CTEs:
WITH OrdCount AS ( SELECT YEAR(orderdate) AS orderyear, COUNT(*) AS numorders FROM Sales.Orders GROUP BY YEAR(orderdate) ) SELECT CUR.orderyear, CUR.numorders, CUR.numorders - PRV.numorders AS diff FROM OrdCount AS CUR LEFT OUTER JOIN OrdCount AS PRV ON CUR.orderyear = PRV.orderyear + 1;
There's a clear advantage here; you define only one named table expression based on a single instance of the inner query, and refer to it twice from the outer query.
Views are more similar to CTEs in this sense. You define only one view based on only one copy of the query, like so:
CREATE OR ALTER VIEW Sales.YearlyOrderCounts AS SELECT YEAR(orderdate) AS orderyear, COUNT(*) AS numorders FROM Sales.Orders GROUP BY YEAR(orderdate); GO
But better than with CTEs, you're not limited to reusing the named table expression only in the outer statement. You can reuse the view name any number of times that you like, with any number of unrelated queries, so long as you have the right permissions. Here's the code to achieve the task by using multiple references to the view:
SELECT CUR.orderyear, CUR.numorders, CUR.numorders - PRV.numorders AS diff FROM Sales.YearlyOrderCounts AS CUR LEFT OUTER JOIN Sales.YearlyOrderCounts AS PRV ON CUR.orderyear = PRV.orderyear + 1;
It seems like views are more similar to CTEs than to derived tables, with the extra functionality of being a more reusable tool, with the ability to control permissions. Or to turn it around, it's probably appropriate to think of a CTE as a statement-scoped view. Now what could be really wonderful is if we also had a named table expression with a wider scope than that of a CTE, narrower than that of a view. For instance, wouldn't it have been great if we had a session-level scoped named table expression?
I love this topic. There's so much in table expressions that is rooted in relational theory, which in turn is rooted in mathematics. I love knowing what the right terms for things are, and generally making sure that I have the foundations figured out carefully, even if to some it might seem like being picky and over pedantic. Looking back at my learning process over the years, I can see a very clear path between insisting on a good grasp of foundations, using correct terminology, and really knowing your stuff later when it gets to the far more advanced and complex stuff.
So, what are the critical pieces when it comes to views?
- A view is a table.
- It is a table that is derived from a query (a table expression).
- It is given a name that to the user appears like a table name, since it is a table name.
- It is created as a permanent object in the database.
- You can control access permissions against the view.
Views are similar to CTEs in a number of ways. In the sense that you develop your solutions in a modular way, focusing on one unit at a time from start to end. Also in the sense that you can have multiple references to the view name from the outer query. But better than CTEs, views are not limited only to the outer statement's scope, rather are reusable until dropped from the database.
There's a lot more to say about views, and I'll continue the discussion next month. In the meanwhile, I want to leave you with a thought. With derived tables and CTEs you could make a case in favor of SELECT * in an inner query. See the case I made for it in Part 3 in the series for details. Could you make a similar case with views, or is it a bad idea with those?

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


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Binzhou, China (PRWEB) July 04, 2014
Huahai Vitiligo Hospital published twelve texts in 2014 to detail major breakthroughs in the treatment of vitiligo. These breakthroughs are the result of combining the practices of both traditional Chinese medicine and modern medicine. Huahai Vitiligo Hospital believes that receiving proper vitiligo treatment is now a world-wide issue, due to the steady increase in reported cases. Because traditional approaches alone historically have not delivered a successful treatment method, Huahai has combined elements of modern medicine with traditional Chinese medicines to provide a holistic, successful cure for vitiligo.
Due to the imminent demand for innovative vitiligo treatment, the Huahai Vitiligo Hospital has published twelve medical texts this year to detail their holistic approach. These publications include, The Research of Vitiligo, New Theory of Vitiligo, The Vitiligo Therapeutics, The Treatment and Nursing of Vitiligo and Vitiligo Nutrition. These books are the result of 20 plus years of research completed by Dr. Cheng Aihua and her scientific research team.
Dr. Cheng Aihua, a renowned scientific researcher and the director of Huahai Vitiligo Hospital explains, "These works cover everything from vitiligo pathogenesis research to theories of new technological developments, from effective clinical and psychological nursing methods to supplemental diet research. These works provide complete, thorough and systematic vitiligo treatment options. We have mastered vitiligo occurrence, development patterns, and a holistic treatment philosophy, which marks the end of vitiligo being considered an incurable condition."
Dr. Cheng Aihua is celebrated for her expertise in traditional Chinese medicine. She has been engaged in vitiligo research for 30 years, which qualifies her rich experience in the theory and diagnosis of vitiligo. She famously formulated the theory "Black and White Cured Together", which is now an industry standard for treating vitiligo. This technique marked a major breakthrough in eliminating or isolating the cause of vitiligo, controlling its development and activating pigment regeneration. Her research signifies the end of vitiligo being deemed incurable, and thus begins new era for modern medicine. This technology has already benefited over a hundred thousand patients worldwide. Dr. Cheng Aihua is considered the highest level authority in the scientific research of vitiligo treatment.
These twelve new research based works integrate both practicability and science; they represent the forefront of vitiligo research. These texts detail new results, technology and methods, and incorporate both traditional Chinese medicine and modern medicine to accurately treat vitiligo.
About Huahai Vitiligo Hospital
Huahai Vitiligo Hospital is based in Binzhou, China and is supported by the United Nations as a scientific demonstration base for the diagnosis and treatment of vitiligo. This organization implements the newest technology of "BWCT", which has successfully cured thousands vitiligo patients. Huahai's information is translated into more than 100 languages. Their mission is to provide services to vitiligo patients worldwide.


Kambo Naturista was founded in 2015 by Deyan G., an established Kambo practitioner at the time. The motivation behind the project was to spread knowledge about Kambo and other natural and shamanic medicines. This was essential, as at this time Kambo had only just started to gain global popularity on a bigger scale, and there were fewer than 100 experienced practitioners outside the Amazon jungle.
Deyan had spent long periods in the Amazon jungle, studying traditional and shamanic healing methods. He also had years of experience as a Kambo practitioner working internationally. He was able to combine all this knowledge and experience to create a unique system that is thought by Kambo Naturista.
The first Kambo Naturista training took place in January 2016. It was the 1st Kambo training ever organized in Peru, and the 1st one anywhere to combine traditional Kambo teachings, shamanic practices, the Kambo dieta and the modern methodology of Kambo.
 Since then numerous Kambo Naturista trainings have taken place. The program is continually evolving, thanks to the amazing contribution of all our practitioners.
The term Naturista is used by ayahuasca shamans in Peru to describe a person that works with natural medicines and lives a natural lifestyle. The natural approach is strongly rooted in our organization and has added great depth to our practice and teachings.
The ancient wisdoms of the Amazon are under threat. As the younger generations of the indigenous peoples are increasingly swept up into the globalized system/machine, they become ever less interested in their traditional medicine. The Kambo Naturista organization has made it its mission to provide some of that wisdom as part of its training, in order to keep its spirit alive.
It is our intention to integrate those traditional, holistic and shamanic together with modern methods, to provide an optimal combination, and a safe and solid foundation for any sincere Kambo seeker, whether a client, patient or student.
Any Amazonian Native or Mestizo is eligible to receive free treatments and training by Kambo Naturista. We hope that this exchange will help to give back a part of something that they have lost through time.
We work closely with the Matses tribe, which is the only group of people in Peru to have preserved their knowledge about the use of Kambo. They play an invaluable role in our training program, and also supply us with our medicine. We pay them a fair rate for this, which helps them make a good living for themselves and support their families and their community.
The Kambo frogs are also very dear to us, and for that reason we have been developing ways to avoid the possible harm created by the extraction of their medicine. All of our practitioners that purchase Kambo sticks through our organization are directly supporting our project to create ponds in the jungle. These ponds are the most suitable habitat for Kambo frogs, and provide them with a peaceful place to live and procreate. In this way, we try to preserve the frogs from extinction. Unfortunately, the high interest in Kambo has also a dark side. Selling the medicine can be a profitable enterprise, causing some people to milk the frogs ruthlessly, without thought for their survival or wellbeing. Kambo Naturista rejects any financial gain from selling medicine. It only provides Kambo sticks to individuals from the KN community, and a third of the payment goes to the pond project, with the rest going to the Matses.


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Is EDM right for 2-axis metal cutoff?
Many people look at the topic of wire EDM cutting in terms of how the method stacks up against laser cutting, 3D manufacturing, or traditional machining for multi-axis shaping of metal. But for us at Metal Cutting Corporation — and our customers — the topic of wire EDM cutting pros and cons is all about 2-axis cutoff and how the EDM method compares with other 2-axis precision metal cutting options.
Wire EDM Cutting Advantages
With the wire EDM cutting process, controlled and rapidly repeating electrical charges are used to remove material from electrically conductive materials. It is a very precise method for the right applications, such as for 2-axis cutting of small parts with tight tolerances at high volumes. For example, for mass production of pins, probes, and other small, solid metal parts with diameters under 0.020" (0.50 mm), wire EDM can deliver:
- Highly repeatable lengths without end deformation, distortion, or delamination
- Far better cost-effectiveness than a method such as laser cutting
For small diameter solids, wire EDM cutting also offers extremely high measures of central tendency, for remarkably high Ppk/Cpk values. For example, EDM not only can cut a precious metal wire of 0.004" (0.1 mm) diameter to a length of 1" (25 mm), but also can do so while achieving a length tolerance of ±0.001", radiused ends, and a Ppk well over the standard minimum of 1.33.
Wire EDM can cut diameters ranging from a few thousandths of an inch to several inches, to lengths from 0.5" (12 mm) to 18.0" (450 mm) and with high dimensional accuracy. Because it does not involve a wheel or saw teeth, the wire EDM cut procedure generally does not leave any burrs, and the kerf width is usually 0.004" to 0.012" (0.1 to 0.3 mm).
Wire EDM cutting is alsoversatile in the hardness of the conductive metals it can cut with relative ease, ranging from copper to the hardest materials including molybdenum and tungsten. EDM also gives a natural radius to the end cut; this may or may not be an advantage, depending on the application.
The most widely known negative is that wire EDM cutting is still an extremely slow method. Modern EDM machines with AWT (automatic wire threading) and CNC capability can be programmed to work "lights out," to help mitigate the slow cutting speed. However, for very high volumes of parts with diameters larger than 0.020″ (0.5 mm), a method such as thin-wheel abrasive cutting might be preferred.
Due to the nature of wire EDM cutting — removing material by using rapidly repeating, controlled electrical charges along a strand of metal wire — the method is limited to electrically conductive materials. Therefore, any material that is a composite or coated with a dielectric is not feasible for EDM.
The total EDM environment — including the wire, deionized water, and workpiece — is charged. The wire's repeated electrical discharges can heat the target area of the workpiece to thousands of degrees. This can result in thermal stress to neighboring portions and cause some amount of waste. The wire itself also suffers damage, so the EDM machine must constantly feed new wire.
Depending on the metal being cut, another disadvantage of wire EDM cutting is that an oxide layer can form on the cut surface. This may require secondary cleaning, which adds to cost.
Wire EDM cutting is best for materials that are solid, so the method is not a good choice for cutoff of tubing. To maintain conductivity, the parts to be cut using EDM must be held firmly in place. This creates significant risk of deformation to tubing. It can also cause the cutting wire to contact the workpiece — shorting out the cut, causing the cutting wire to break, and possibly causing a "step" in the workpiece.
Although you can fixture a tube can so that it rotates in the EDM machine, the method is optimized for more complex shapes and not cost-effective for simple 2-axis cutoff of tubing. In addition, the wire EDM method cannot do very short cutoffs, under 0.125" (3.175 mm), and does not produce quality cut end surface finishes. In fact, wire EDM cutting can result in surface roughness that is often characterized as "craters of the moon"!
So for applications such as medical device tubing that must be cut to very short lengths and have a very smooth end finish, a method such as thin-wheel abrasive metal cutting would deliver the necessary tight tolerance, burr-free results and a clean end cut without tube wall deformation.
A Myriad Of Options
Clearly, there are many advantages and disadvantages to wire EDM cutting as well as the other precision cutting methods that might be considered. So, does EDM make sense for 2-axis cutoff of small parts?
It depends! That's because the efficacy of ANY cutting method can vary greatly depending on the material you use and the desired results. Making the right choice requires an in-depth understanding of your application, its parameters, and the product's end use.
How does wire EDM cutting compare with other precision metal cutting methods? Keep reading to find out.


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Compliance with data protection laws using Hippocratic Database active enforcement and auditing
by C. M. Johnson, T. W. A. Grandison
Governments worldwide are enacting data protection laws that restrict the disclosure and processing of personal information. These laws impose administrative and financial burdens on companies that manage personal information and may hinder the legitimate and valuable sharing and analysis of this information. In this paper we describe an integrated set of technologies, known as the Hippocratic Database (HDB), which enables compliance with security and privacy regulations without impeding the legitimate flow of information. HDB's Control Center allows companies to specify fine-grained disclosure policies based on the role of the user, the purpose of the access, the intended recipient, and other disclosure conditions. Its Active Enforcement component transparently enforces these policies by transforming user queries in a middleware layer to ensure that the database returns only policy-compliant information. HDB's Compliance Auditing system efficiently tracks all database accesses and allows auditors to formulate precise audit queries to monitor compliance with privacy and security policies. In this paper, we outline the basic architecture of the HDB solution, discuss the advantages of our approach, and illustrate the features of each component with practical compliance scenarios from the financial services industry.


The Zumalakarregi Museum, as a benchmark centre for learning about and enjoying the 19th century in the Basque Country, offers a dynamic journey through a period that holds the key to understanding society today.
It is...
...a history museum focused on events and people.
... a museum that uses unconventional techniques to teach visitors about the society and history of the Basque Country in the 19th century
Learning itineraries
 1. The Zumalacárregui brothers: a Carlist general and a Liberal politician. Two representative personages, providing two different viewpoints on the Basque Country in the 19th century, set against the transition from the Ancien Régime to Liberalism.
 2. The industrial revolution. From traditional iron-working to foundries: early industry and the advent of the railways in the 19th century.
 3. War and peace. A reflection on the origins, forms and consequences of violence taking the 1st Carlist War as an example of warfare. A thought-provoking itinerary that is highly relevant today as it helps to understand the peace processes drawn up to resolve conflicts.
 4. The century of the revolutions. A look back at the key points for understanding Carlism and Liberalism in the Basque Country in the 19th century, and the difficult, violent transition from the Ancien Régime to the Liberal system.
 5. "The century of the revolutions" *NEW*
 6. Birth of the Liberal state. The crisis of the Ancien Régime and the formation of the Liberal state
 7. Iron roads. A journey through the vestiges of the early industrialisation process in the area around the Zumalakarregi Museum: the Ormaiztegi viaduct, the mines of Zerain and the old Mirandaola iron-works in Legazpi.
 8. A journey through our past (combined ticket). Participants observe everyday rural and urban life on a tour of the Igartubeiti Farmhouse Museum and the Zumalakarregi Museum, learning about the development of architecture, the economy and society from the 16th century to the 19th.
Outdoor guided tours
 1. Mining structures in Ormaiztegi
 2. The mining landscape of the Goierri
 3. Historical tour of Ormaiztegi. NEW!
 4. Following the iron-ore trail. NEW!


Koko Crater Trail – Honolulu, Hawaii - Atlas Obscura
Koko Crater Trail
Climbing this abandoned railway leads to breathtaking vistas of O'ahu.
Hawaiʻi isn't short on spectacular views. But for a prime perspective of this patch of paradise, you'll have to put in a bit of effort.
This trail—dubbed "Nature's StairMaster" and the "Stairs of Doom"—is actually an old railroad. During World War II, the United States military built lookout pillbox bunkers on Koko Crater. They constructed a railway tram to shuttle supplies and people up and down the steep terrain. After the war, the site was converted into an Air Force station, which was deactivated in 1966.
The abandoned railroad was later converted into a walking trail. But this is no place for a leisurely stroll. The rickety 1,048 stairs gain a walloping 1,100 feet in elevation in under a mile. The stairs start out at a moderately steep slope, though the incline increases the farther you hike, eventually soaring upward, the way a roller coaster track rolls toward the sky. Locals and tourists alike huff and puff their way to the top, where they're rewarded with breathtaking (literally) vistas of Hanauma Bay. From the summit, you'll have unparalleled views of the verdant land fringed by frothy waves and azure water.
Time hasn't been particularly kind to the trail. Natural decay, coupled with decades worth of tramping trail-goers, has left parts of the track in rough shape. A group called the Kokonut Koalition formed to both preserve and advocate for the steps.
Know Before You Go
Access to the trail is free and there are no legal restrictions to hiking it. You can go any time—be sure to bring a flashlight or headlamp if you're planning a sunrise or sunset hike. Parts of the trail are in states of disrepair, so take caution while walking.


IRQ is an abreviated computer term short for Interupt Request.
CPU does its computing cycles until a device like a printer or sound card or network adapter interupt the CPU so that the CPU gives its attention and cycles to what the device is asking for.
There are 16 IRQ Channels in every motherboard. Below is the standard layout of each IRQ channel:
IRQ 0 System Timer
IRQ 1 Keyboard
IRQ 2 Cascade to IRQ 9
IRQ 3 Com 2&4 (mouse)
IRQ 4 Com 1&3 (modem)
IRQ 5 LPT 2 (but usually Sound Card )
IRQ 6 Floppy drive
IRQ 7 LPT Port 1 (Printer)
IRQ 8 Real time clock
IRQ 9 VGA, NIC (redirect to IRQ 2)
IRQ 10 CD ROM Drive
IRQ 11 Open
IRQ 12 Open (Bus mouse port)
IRQ 13 Math co-processor
IRQ 14 IDE Controller (hard disk drive)
IRQ 15 PCI/ISA Bridge (motherboard)
see also ports & DMA.
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Nature's Benefits in Kenya: An Atlas of Ecosystems and Human Well-Being represents a step forward in the analysis of poverty in Kenya and its relation to the natural environment. It is the result of a partnership of national and international organizations, some of which were involved in preparing the first high-resolution poverty maps of Kenya. This publication springs from an effort among these partners to overlay the newly created poverty maps with environmental resource maps based on surveys and remote sensing data. The intent is to show the location and status of key environmental resources that are likely to have significant links with poverty.
In creating this report, we worked with several purposes and audiences in mind.
- One key purpose has been to build the information and analytical base for implementing Kenya's Economic Recovery Strategy and other national strategies. The maps highlight the benefits nature provides to people and the connections between poverty and ecosystem services. Our aim is to demonstrate how map-based analysis of povertyecosystem relationships can make a difference in policy development and implementation.
- Secondly, we hope to encourage the private sector to give greater consideration to the role of environmental resources in alleviating poverty, with particular reference to the potential contribution of improved environmental management and investments in ecosystem restoration and enhancement. Likewise, we wish to assist environmental specialists in undertaking analyses that can shape anti-poverty policies.
- The third purpose has been to conduct a multisectoral analysis of poverty-environment linkages. In Chapter 8, we analyze competing demands for diverse ecosystem services—including food crops, drinking water, irrigation water, and wood—across an entire region (the Upper Tana River watershed). We hope that this multidimensional geospatial analysis will inspire comparable studies involving additional environmental resources and other geographic regions of the country. Such an integrated look at poverty-environment relationships, we hope, will encourage increasing collaboration between institutions both inside and outside government.
We believe that now is the right time to put together an atlas that explores poverty through an ecosystem lens. There is a growing demand for integrated data and mapping of environmental resources, poverty, and the complex web of relationships between environment and livelihoods. The Kenyan Government has committed to several national plans, strategies, and international agreements requiring action toward achieving goals for development that are economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable.
Efforts are under way to include environment in poverty-reduction programs, such as the Poverty-Environment Initiative—a joint effort of the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Environment Programme, the Government of Kenya, and other national stakeholders. Various agencies, including the Kenyan Ministries of Finance and Planning as well as the Poverty Analysis and Research Unit at the Central Bureau of Statistics, have expressed interest in environmental profiles of high poverty areas. Following Kenya's State of the Environment Report 2003 and 2004, the National Environment Management Authority is exploring ways to use its environmental reporting data and expertise to inform national poverty-reduction efforts.
Another significant development is the growing interest of the media and the public in examining resource conflicts and competing demands for ecosystem services. Conflicts between wildlife conservation and cultivation of agricultural crops, competing demands for water resources by upstream and downstream users, and the conversion of public forests to other land uses are issues of particular concern.
We anticipate that the information presented in this atlas will be of value to various national and community-level groups. Kenya's policymakers form one core audience, encompassing national and District decision-makers and the analysts working with them in government, civil society, and the private sector. Other users include policymakers and analysts in international organizations who collaborate with Kenyan decision-makers. We hope that Kenya's students and teachers will use this study to enrich curricula in geography, environmental science, economics, and other disciplines and that the lessons learned in Kenya can be usefully applied to other countries and regions.
World Resources Institute
Jaspat L. Agatsiva
Department of Resource Surveys and Remote Sensing
Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, Kenya
Anthony K.M. Kilele
Director of Statistics
Central Bureau of Statistics
Ministry of Planning and National Development, Kenya
International Livestock Research Institute

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


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Spin-Polarized Conceptual Density Functional Theory
Tuesday, 11 September, 2012 - 09:30
Campus: Brussels Humanities, Sciences & Engineering campus
Faculty: Science and Bio-engineering Sciences
Freija De Vleeschouwer
phd defence
Free radical chemistry constitutes a substantial part of important large-scale industrial
chemical processes. Some examples are radical chain polymerization (resulting in a
whole variety of industrial plastics like for instance polyethylene, polypropylene,
poly(vinyl chloride) and polystyrene), combustion of fuels, pyrolysis and steam
cracking. Radicals are also essential in atmospheric chemistry through the oxidation
of other molecules in the air and in biochemistry through cell damage. The main
obstacle in understanding radical reactions is the high reactivity and short lifetime of
radicals. Quantum chemistry and more specifically Conceptual DFT allows us to
address these issues theoretically and computationally. In this work various chemical
concepts, essential to explain the reactivity of radical systems, are being studied and
in some cases even quantified, resulting in easily accessible scales. The first
investigated concepts are electrophilicity and nucleophilicity. It is stated that radicals
can be regarded as electrophilic or nucleophilic and that the nature of radicals is
certainly of relevance in a variety of radical reactions, as is illustrated in this work.
The definition of the electrophilicity index, as introduced by Parr, was used to
construct an electrophilicity scale of 47 radicals, important in organic chemistry. This
scale is independent of the reaction partner and free from experimental or theoretical
reaction data. Next, the somewhat vague concept of stability was studied. The
intrinsic stability of a radical is intuitively defined as the reactivity of that radical with
respect to a range of different chemical environments, so irrespective of the reaction
partner, the presence of a solvent, and so on. A model is presented that breaks down
Bond Dissociation Enthalpies into parts that only incorporate properties of the
individual radical fragments, that is radical electrophilicity, radical stability and
Pauling electronegativity of the radical center. The resulting scale reproduces several
acknowledged stability sequences from literature, such as the effect of increasing
alkylation and delocalization. In addition, the BDE model is suitable to compute
intrinsic stabilities for other (uncharged) intermediates like biradical and divalent
systems. A third and last studied concept in this work is kinetic (ir)reversibility in
intramolecular radical reactions. This concept is very important when considering side
reaction in radical polymerization. Through the analysis of the spin-polarized Fukui
function and dual descriptor along the reaction path of 4 intramolecular side reactions
in the polymerization of PVC and within the framework of the reaction force concept,
the irreversibi-lity of the 1,2-Cl shift, the 1,5- and the 1,6-backbiting reactions as well
as the reversibility of the 2,3-Cl shift could be explained. Finally, the last Chapter
focuses on intramolecular cyclization reactions, for which the regioselectivity is
rationalized through a special form of the spin-polarized dual descriptor via the
positive orbital overlap between the radical center and one of the carbon atoms of the
radical's double bond, agreeing with the experimental findings.
PDF icon 201005272a.pdf


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As part of the launch there will be a Thematic Session at the Birmingham meeting entitled "Advancing our understanding of long-term ecology: combining ecological and palaeoecology approaches and metrics"and organised by Althea Davies and Ambroise Baker.
Last week I went to the University of Nottingham for the third BES Macroecology Special Interest Group annual meeting. Macroecology concerns itself with ecological patterns and processes at large spatial and/or temporal scales, and so is a natural place to link palaeoecological research with that of modern ecologists and biogeographers. The conference took place over two days, and comprised a mix of 5 minute lightning talks, longer invited talks (including two keynotes by Catherine Graham of Stony Brook University, New York) and discussion sessions.
There are plans to hold next year's Macroecology SIG meeting at the Centre for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate (CMEC) at the University of Copenhagen, and I'd like to encourage palaeoecologists to consider attending. Chatting to the delegates at the Nottingham meeting, there certainly is a growing interest in ecological change over longer timescales and the role of history in shaping modern biotas, and so palaeoecologists have a lot to offer to these sorts of research areas. Copenhagen's got to be a nice place for a conference as well…
We enjoyed so much how this one-day meeting was scheduled, with some formal approach including four plenary and lighting talks, and other informal initiatives such as speed dating and discussion groups. This way, all participants could interact with other non-directly related researchers.
The focuses of the plenary talks were related to different fields within macroecology. In this sense:
Andy Purvis opened the session with the definition of macroecology, the trends and shifts of study topics it has carried out since the discipline began and ended with what macroecology is not any longer.
David Jablonski explored through examples of bivalves studies how climate in time and space affects the studies of diversity dynamics, mainly addressed to three key questions: a) Extinctions, b) Latitudinal Diversity Gradients, and c) Geographical ranges.
Lee Hsiang Liow encouraged us to evaluate both processes and observations, and highlighted the importance of modelling both to take into account the "unobservable" or latent truth including examples of capture-recapture and occupancy methods.
Kathy Willis gave a review of the trends followed for conservation strategies since 1980s, until the development of the "ecosystems services" idea of given an economic value to biodiversity. Her main statement was focused on how palaeo-data can help in providing information to some "knowledge gaps" related to human resources including: a) trends in biomass, b) trends in nutrient cycling, c) trends in in final ecosystems services, and d) sustainability of ecosystems services.
Lighting talks were related to more specific study cases of macroecology, including specific researches about turtles, fungi, beetles, crocodiles, foraminifera or dinosaurs, in several spatial and temporal scales.
We would like to thank again Phil, Victoria, Adriana and Isabel for the great day that finished with a nice and warm wine reception sponsored by BMC Ecology. We hope to attend further events like this soon.


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As an NLP Practitioner (Study of Human Excellence), I am always seeking ways to help people "perform above their self imposed limitations." Whether it is sports, business or personal, the key to success is learning how to perform above your self imposed limitations. We have all seen what happens when people continue their same old behavior patterns and expect different results. You get the same old results. Yet why do people in all areas of life still operate from this very old, outdated and ineffective model of performance?
The answer is simple: People perform within their comfort zone. The comfort zone is defined as the place in people's mind where fear, resistance, and obstacles create a false sense of security. A place where people rely and wait on outside influences to impact their life vs relying on inner strengths, improved skill sets and higher level qualities to influence outside circumstance. It is a place where growth, transformation, and skill upgrades don't exist. It is accepting that nothing can be done and one is the victim of their circumstances. And finally, it is a limited set of behaviors attempting to accomplish goals.
The solution: Fixed goals and variable means.
Explanation: Most people will do the opposite of the solution. They will set variable goals with fixed means rather than fixed goals with variable means. When you set variable goals with fixed means, you will either set goals at a low level or once the goals are set, lower your goals to match your internal and unconsious perception of yourself based on the following factors
1. Limited beliefs. (What you think you are capable of; What you think is possible in the world; What you believe you deserve;, etc.
2. State of mind. (Are you performing in a depressed, anxious, or frustrated state of mind or are you performing with passion, excitement and enthusiasm.)
3. Skill sets. (Are you attempting to accomplish your goals based on the same skill sets you learned years ago, or are you constantly and continuously seeking, learning and applying higher and higher level skill sets.
4. Identity: Do you think of yourself in only one way or do you have many ways to think of your role that can expand your performance. A simple example would be a restaurant server. If you thought of yourself as someone who just served a meal to the customers, then your behavior would reflect your identity. Mechanically, delivering the food, cleaning the table and asking for payment. However, if you expanded your identity to not just a server but also a person who wants to inspire, motivate and deliver happiness to all your customers, in other words a "STATE CHANGER", then you might develop a whole new set of skills, behaviors and qualities that would create a much different experience for your customers.
5. Environment: Do you work in an environment that keeps you in your current level of thinking, performing and circumstances. Or do you seek new environments (new friends, groups, circumstances) that can assist you to new levels of awareness and performance?
Fixed goals with variable means concept is where you keep your goals and time frames fixed and rather than change your goals to match your perceived capabilities and / or resources, you change your behaviors, mindset and capabilites to meet your goals. You move "yourself" up to meet the higher level goals rather than moving your goals down to meet your current self.
Steps to fixed goals with variable means:
1. Realize you have set your goals within your comfort zone.
2. Revisit your goals by asking how your goals would change if you set them above your self imposed limitations. And then ask yourself: What is the first thing you would notice about your life that would change as a result of these new and revised goals?
3. Set new goals based on #2 and set these goals as fixed goals with fixed time frames.
4. Imagine performing above your self imposed limitations and ask yourself what beliefs, states of mind, skill sets, identity, and environment would be needed to support these higher level goals.
5. Create a self improvement program and create more variable means (i.e. changing mindset – see 1 through 5 above). (Variable means is another word for behavioral flexibility and behavioral flexibility is when one has many options through different behaviors, empowering mindsets and expanded awareness to accomplish one's fixed goals.
Note: All great athletes have coaches. Individuals and businesses would be served well to have a coach to teach, monitor, evaluate and help adjust ones variable means as well as assisting in setting high level goals.
Dave Isaac is a Certified NLP master practitioner and helps individuals, businesses and athletes perform above their self imposed limitations and achieve peak performance. For more information on NLP, please visit _URL_
Dave's emails is: _EMAIL_


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, etc. For example, if a bruk with løpenummer 10 was subdivided, the old bruk would be numbered 10a, and the new bruk that was created would be numbered 10b. The 1838 matrikkel also introduced a new way of measuring the real estate tax, using the skylddaler. 1 skylddaler was set equal to 400 speciedaler (an old currency), and 1 skylddaler was divided into 5 ort or 120 skilling so that an accurate tax could be assessed on each farm. The 1838 matrikkel contained both the old and the new numbering system for each farm, and thus serves as a cross-index between the new and the old numbering system.
The matrikkel from 1886 also contains such a cross index. The 1886 matrikkel once again changed the numbering system: each farm was assigned a gårdsnummer (farm number)and a bruksnummer (bruk number). This matrikkel has been made available on the Internet by the
Registreringssentral for Historiske Data (RHD) at the University of Tromsø (in Norwegian only). In addition, RHD has scanned in a
sample page from the 1886 matrikkel. On the top left hand side of that page you can see how the 1886 matrikkel cross references the new gårdsnummer and bruksnummer with the old matrikkelnummer and løpenummer:
(Gaards-No. = Farm number, Brugs-No. = Bruk number, Tidligere= Earlier/Prior, Matr. No. = Matrikkel Number, Løbe-No.= Løpenummer, and Gaardens Navn = The name of the farm)
The 1886 matrikkel also changed the way the tax was calculated. Instead of using skylddaler, the 1886 matrikkel set the total real estate tax for all farms in Norway equal to 500,000 skyldmark, and set 1 skyldmark equal to 100 øre. The value of each farm was then determined in terms of skyldmark.
The husmann and the husmannsplass
As I mentioned earlier, a farmer who owned his own farm, i.e., a selveier, did not have to pay any landskyld, but he did have to pay real estate property taxes. A leilending, on the other hand, did not have to pay any real estate property taxes, but instead had to pay landskyld to the jorddrotte (the owner of the farm). There was one person, however, who paid neither landskyld nor real estate property taxes, and that was the husmann - a person who rented a husmannsplass.
The best way to define a husmann is by reference to the matrikkel. A husmann was a person who leased a small cottage on someone else's farm, where the small cottage did not have its own matrikkel nummer i.e., it was not assessed separately from the farm for real estate tax purposes. The husmann could rent just a small cottage without any land, in which case he was referred to as a husmann uten jord (a husmann without land), or he could rent a small cottage with a small plot of land, in which case he was referred to as a husmann med jord (a husmann with land). In eastern Norway it was common for a husmann to pay his rent by providing a few hours of labor (arbeid) each month to the farmer. This type of husmann was therefore called a arbeidshusmann. On the west coast of Norway, on the other hand, it was common for a husmann to pay his rent in cash, and this type of husmann was called a bygselshusmann, and the place he rented was called a bygselsplass. Frequently the bygselshusmann on the west coast of Norway was a shoemaker or perhaps a tailor, whose occupation gave him a source of income with which to pay rent for his little bygselsplass. (Along the coast of Norway you can also find references to a strandsitter. This was a husmann who earned his living from the sea and who rented a cottage down by the shoreline).
Although a typical husmann was not wealthy, this did not necessarily mean that he was worse off than a farmer who owned his own farm. As the historian Hans Try has pointed out:
There were large differences both regionally and also within a community. A husmannsplass could be much larger than some of the smaller farms in a community. In fact, a husmann could even have more farm animals than the farmer from whom he was leasing the husmannsplass. This could be the case if the husmannsplass lay at the edge of the farm where the husmann had easy access to grazing land that was owned and used in common by the various local farms. As for regional differences, in Søndeled in Nedenes the average farm in 1875 had only 2.9 cows, while in Dovre in the same year the average husmannsplass had 4.2 cows. For the entire country, however, the average farm had 6.7 cows, while the average husmannsplass had only 2.1 cows.
The Inderst or Losjerende One other term you may find as you search through old Norwegian records is Inderst or Innerst. This term was used to refer to a lodger - a tenant who rented a room or a bed in the home of a leilending or a husmann, but who did not receive board, i.e., not room and board, but room only. You may also see this person referred to as a losjerende or logerende (a lodger). The inderst could be a seasonal worker on the farm or could be self-employed as a tailor, shoe-maker, etc.
Conclusion Reading old Norwegian census records, probate records,and real estate records requires us to have some background information about how the ownership of farms in Norway changed during the centuries. Genealogy is not only about collecting as many names and dates as possible, but also learning more about how our ancestors lived. I hope this article has provided some information that helps you in your quest to learn more about your Norwegian ancestors.
1. Mykland, Knut [Ed.] Norges Historie, Bind 11, To Kulturer en Stat, _PHONE_, p. 253 (Oslo: J.W. Cappelens Forlag,A/S, 1979) (quote translated by John Follesdal)
2. Nordnes i middelalderen (mellomfagsoppgave), Universitetet i Bergen, 1997, _URL_ translated by John Follesdal)
3. The landskyld was in 1626 1 laup 2 1/2 pund butter and 1 sheep.
4. Kjelland, Anfinn Bygdebok for Lesja, Gardsog slektshistoria, Bd.1. Innleiing
_URL_ translated by John Follesdal)
5. Ravnanger, Helen, supra
6. Mykland, Knut [Ed.] Norges Historie, Bind 7, Gjennom Nødsår og krig, p. 221 (Oslo: J.W. Cappelens Forlag, A/S, 1979) (quote translated by John Follesdal)
7. Ibid, page 221-222 (quote translated by John Follesdal).
8. Dyrvik, Ståle Overgangen til sjøleige i Norge. Nokre nye data for 1700-tallet in Historisk tidskriftbd. 56. Oslo (1977)
9. Mykland, Knut, supra at p. 229 (quote translated by John Follesdal)
10. Mykland, Knut, supra at p. 341 (quote translated by John Follesdal)
This page was created on 04 September 1998
Last modified: 12 August 2000
Copyright, 1998 JohnFollesdal


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Charles Wilkes 150 years ago came perilously close to losing the Civil War for the Union. Wilkes had achieved fame in _PHONE_ in command of the US Navy's Surveying and Exploration Expedition in the Pacific. He and his crew explored much unknown land in the Pacific and Wilkes is credited as the first man to establish that Antarctica was a separate continent. On November 8 he was in command of the USS San Jacinto when he stopped the British steam mail ship Trent and took off James Mason and John Sliddell, Confederate diplomats on their way to France. Wilkes was hailed as a hero in the North, receiving the thanks of Congress, while the British were outraged at what they regarded as piracy.
War seemed likely between the Union and Great Britain. The British government despatched troops to Canada, and prepared an ultimatum to the Lincoln administration, demanding the release of Mason and Sliddell. A dying Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's husband, acted to prevent war by toning down the ultimatum. Lincoln decided that one war was quite enough and released Mason and Sliddell who promptly sailed for Europe aboard the sloop HMS Rinaldo. (more…)


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Em is how the letter M is pronounced.(noun)
An example of em is how you'd say "M" when reciting the alphabet.
Em is defined as a casual or informal way of saying them.(pronoun)
An example of em is telling someone that you called your friends over; you called em over.
See em in Webster's New World College Dictionary
Origin: taken as corruption of them, but also < ME hem, dat. pl. of 3d pers. pron. used as acc. & later replaced by them
See em in American Heritage Dictionary 4
Origin: From Middle English hem
Origin:, from Old English him, heom
Origin:, dative and accusative pl. of hē, he; see he 1.
Learn more about em


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What Is a Credit FacilityWritten by pradeep
Home » Finance and Investing
There are many definitions of credit facility. It is commonly known as a loan, which is taken from a financial institution and a person who is in need of the credit. Credit facilities consist of different types of credit that ranges from revolving credit to a credit that is used as a backup for the company. When a person asks for a credit from the bank, he should pledge immovable property to the bank in the form of collateral. This is a mandatory in all the banks, unless it is a small amount. There are various types of credit facilities, which the banks provide. This article will discuss about these facilities.
- credit cardthis is a device, which the bank issues to its account holder. The cardholder can use this card to make credit purchases from shopping. At the end of every month, the cardholder has to pay the bill, which he has accumulated with the use of the credit card. The car holder has the advantage of paying this amount in installments. He will have to pay interest on the amount unpaid by him. However, he should pledge collateral to get a credit card based on which his card limit will be set.
- Bank overdraftthis is a type of credit facility, which only the current account holder can take. When the person has a current account in the bank, he has the right to withdraw a few extra thousands exceeding the balance in his account. For this amount exceeding the balance in his account, he should pay interest as per the interest rate that the bank charges.
- Payday loansthis is one of the popular credit facilities, which is being used by many people today. As the name suggests, this is a loan, which is given to you based on your salary. However, you should repay the loan to the institution on the day that you receive you pay from your employer. This is a loan, which does not require you to pledge any collateral and thus, is easily available to all. They do not even ask for any credit background, which is why the high rate of interest.
However, any bank, which provides loans, will ask you for your credit background. The interest rate on which the loan is given will depend upon the credit background. If you have a good background, which is free of all problems, the interest rate will be low. Else, the interest rate will be high. Thus, you should keep all these documents ready while applying for a loan.
Credit facility is flexible in nature. It is not necessary that the facility is just used according to business wants but you can use this facility wherever the funds are required.


Take the 2-minute tour ×
It has always been my understanding that the word for England is イギリス. But the wikipedia page for English-American says イングランド系アメリカ人. Even rikaichan has イングランド as England. Is there a difference in usage between these two words? What about 英国?
And as a side question, where does the word イギリス come from?
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1 Answer 1
up vote 17 down vote accepted
イギリス is used to refer to the United Kingdom which consists of four main countries, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is also sometimes referred to as 英国 which used more for official names (such as the Embassy). It can be seen alongside similar names such as 米国. The character also gets used in newspapers/convenient abbreviations (eg 日英同盟 is the expression often used to refer to the Anglo Japanese Naval Treaty).
イングランド refers to England. it is used as when referring to the country/institutions designated at that level such as the national football team.
The origin of the use of 英 (and ultimately イギリス）dates back to the name given to British people by Chinese. It was pronounced YING and used phonetically to replicate the Portuguese name of Ingles. (This character's meaning of "great" or "superior" and the name "Great Britain" is coincidence. For the record, Great Britain is the term used to refer to the largest island of "the British Isles" which is a geographical name for the islands occupied by the UK and the Republic of Ireland. "Great" is used in the same sense that people refer to "Greater China", to include Hong Kong and Taiwan, or Greater London.) This must date back more than 300 years, before the union of Scotland with England and Wales so the confusing (and for some, annoying) tendancy to refer Britain/the UK and its people as England/English goes back such a long way it would even seem to have been ingrained into Asian languages several hundred years ago.
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My professor marked points off my essay when I used イングランド -_- – Ataraxia Oct 24 '12 at 13:12
I don't think there is anything wrong with イングランド if that is what you meant although most Japanese probably use イギリス to refer to both but say スコットランドif they want to highlight something such as, say, the birthplace of golf. or the location of Edinburgh. – Tim Oct 24 '12 at 13:54
While it may not be "wrong" to use 「イングランド」 to refer to "England", the truth is that among us native speakers, you would sound pretty snobbish to do so unless you are talking about international soccer. I cannot recommend that a Japanese-learner use the word everytime s/he wants to say "England". Believe it or not, many Japanese-speakers actually would not even be familiar with the word 「イングランド」. – l'électeur Jun 10 '14 at 1:10
Your Answer


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Horticultural therapy is the use of professionally directed plant, gardening, and nature activities for the purpose of optimizing the physical and mental health of its participants.
Have you noticed how a walk in the forest or being around plants makes you feel better, or how happy you are when you pick the season's first vine-ripe tomato? How about when you share a favorite perennial with a friend or see someone admiring your garden?
When people are engaged in appreciating or tending plants, their sense of well-being increases. A trained horticultural therapist fosters this benefit. Stress exacerbates every physical or emotional ailment; counteracting stress has a positive impact on attaining good health.
Horticultural therapy maintains or improves physical health by providing unlimited opportunities for exercising, increasing flexibility, improving coordination and balance, and building physical strength. Multiple studies have demonstrated that physiological indicators such as respiration, pulse, and blood pressure respond positively to engagement with plants.
Horticultural therapy elicits positive psychological and emotional responses by relieving stress, providing a nonthreatening atmosphere, alleviating depression, and helping people connect with nature. Research studies confirm these and many other psychosocial benefits when people interact with plants and nature.


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Corktown Historic District
Corktown Historic District
Bagley Street in Corktown
|Architectural style:||Colonial Revival, Late Victorian, Federal|
|Added to NRHP:||July 31, 1978|
Corktown is the oldest neighborhood in Detroit, Michigan, although the city of Detroit is twice as old. The current boundaries of the current district include I-75 to the north, the Lodge Freeway to the east, Bagley and Porter streets to the south, and Rosa Parks Boulevard (12th Street) to the west. The neighborhood was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
The Corktown Historic District is largely residential, although some commercial properties along Michigan Avenue are included in the district.
The roots of Corktown lie in the Great Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s. The Irish immigrated to the United States in droves, and by the middle of the 19th century, they were the largest ethnic group settling in Detroit. Many of these newcomers settled on the west side of the city; they were primarily from County Cork, and thus the neighborhood came to be known as Corktown. By the early 1850s, half of the population of the 8th Ward (which contained Corktown) were of Irish descent. Historically, the neighborhood was roughly bounded by Third Street to the east, Grand River Avenue to the north, 12th Street to the west, and Jefferson Avenue/Detroit River to the south.
By the Civil War, German immigrants had begun making inroads into the Corktown neighborhood. By the turn of the century, the original Irish population had diffused through the city, and other immigrants, notably Mexican and Maltese, moved in. As the century progressed, southern migrants in the U.S. lured by the jobs in the automobile industry followed suit.
The residential section is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is designated as a City of Detroit Historic District. The neighborhood contains many newer homes and retains some original Irish businesses.
The original buildings in Corktown are Federal-style detached homes and rowhouses built by Irish settlers. A worker's row house circa 1840 is located on Sixth Street and is one of the oldest existing structures in the city of Detroit. In further years, modestly sized Victorian townhouses with Italianate, Gothic, and Queen Anne elements were constructed.
Notable residents
See also
- "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 2007-01-23.
- Corktown from ModelD Media, retrieved 8/6/09
- History from the Greater Corktown Development Corporation
- Corktown Historic District from the National Park Service, retrieved 8/6/09
- Armando Delicato, Julie Demery, Detroit's Corktown, Arcadia Publishing, 2007, ISBN 0-7385-5155-4
- "Interactive Map." Greater Corktown Development Corp Retrieved on April 24, 2009.
- "Owen MS Attendance Area." Detroit Public Schools. Retrieved on April 24, 2009.
- "M. L. King HS Attendance Area." Detroit Public Schools. Retrieved on April 24, 2009.
- "Detroit City Council Biography." Sheila Cockrel. Retrieved on April 25, 2009.
- Greater Corktown Development Corporation (GCDC)
- DetroitIrish.org, Information about the Irish Community in greater Detroit.
- Glorious Detroit: Corktown
- Corktown Historic District from the city of Detroit


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Copper Cluster Size Effect in Methanol Synthesis from CO2
journal contributionposted on 08.05.2017, 15:49 by Bing Yang, Cong Liu, Avik Halder, Eric C. Tyo, Alex B. F. Martinson, Sönke Seifert, Peter Zapol, Larry A. Curtiss, Stefan Vajda
Size-selected Cun catalysts (n = 3, 4, 20) were synthesized on Al2O3 thin films using mass-selected cluster deposition. A systematic study of size and support effects was carried out for CO2 hydrogenation at atmospheric pressure using a combination of in situ grazing incidence X-ray absorption spectroscopy, catalytic activity measurement, and first-principles calculations. The catalytic activity for methanol synthesis is found to strongly vary as a function of the cluster size; the Cu4/Al2O3 catalyst shows the highest turnover rate for CH3OH production. With only one atom less than Cu4, Cu3 showed less than 50% activity. Density functional theory calculations predict that the activities of the gas-phase Cu clusters increase as the cluster size decreases; however, the stronger charge transfer interaction with Al2O3 support for Cu3 than for Cu4 leads to remarkably reduced binding strength between the adsorbed intermediates and supported Cu3, which subsequently results in a less favorable energetic pathway to transform carbon dioxide to methanol.


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Students will enter "life expectancy" data into lists and set up scatter plots and trace the scatter plot to select two points. Secondly, they will use the points to calculate slope and write a linear equation. Finally, they will use the Transformation Graphing App to fit the data using a linear equation in slope-intercept form and analyze the meaning of the slope and the intercept in relationship to birth year and life expectancy.
Before the Activity
Provide each student with a copy of the attached.pdf document.
During the Activity
Follow the directions on the attached document.
After the Activity
Review student answers
As a class, discuss questions that appeared to be more challenging
Re-teach concepts as necessary


This Film Is More Than 100 Years Old
To Demonstrate How Spiders Fly (1909)
To Demonstrate How Spiders Fly is a very short educational film (it's only a minute long), made using stop-motion animation to explain how spiders travel across unexpectedly large distances. It was directed by F. Percy Smith, a naturalist and photographer who helped pioneer the use of many now-familiar film-making techniques, such as time-lapse sequences.
I love spiders and I love stop-motion creatures and I utterly love this. What a wonderful thing.
And a hundred and ten years old.
1. I watched this, yes, via the BFI Player – To Demonstrate How Spiders Fly
2. I think this may be my favourite thing
3. I just wish I'd seen it earlier so I could have incorporated this knowledge into Spiders Are Wonderful (multiple winner of the factual book of the year award in 2011).
Film Information
Title: To Demonstrate How Spiders Fly
Director: F. Percy Smith
Year: 1909
Runtime: 1 minute


Posts Tagged 'Pre-clovis'
15,000-year-old campsite in Texas challenges conventional story of American settlement [Scientific Breakthrough]
24 Mar
15,000 years ago, humans camped in a lush Texas valley, leaving thousands of artifacts behind, from tools to face paint. This could be definitive proof that ancient people arrived in America by boat, not by walking the Bering Strait. More »


How to Tell if You Are Hydrated
How do you know if you are hydrated? The best way to tell if you are hydrated is to look at the color of your urine. If it is pale yellow to clear, you are likely hydrated, but if it looks like apple juice or darker, you need to drink something ASAP. Carry a water bottle with you throughout the day and keep refilling it between meetings, at work and on the course. This will help with your overall hydration status.


Why Soapstone Griddles Are So Effective
soapstone griddlesSparq's founders LOVE to grill, and you can imagine our dismay when discovered that grilling over an open flame carries HUGE risks of cancer. There is staggering research that finds; Grilling meat directly over an open flame can increase your risk of CANCER by 50% – 70%. We love grilling too much AND our health too much to accept this type of risk. Enter Soapstone Griddle, over the last 3 years we did our homework and came up with a product that would afford us the best of both worlds, our health, and our grill.
Did you know the lifestyle factors of diet and tobacco-use together account for approximately 70% of all human cancer, with diet by itself accounting for 35%-45% of human cancer (Goodherham et al., 1996)? In other words, approximately 80,000 per one million people are estimated to get cancer from diet-related causes.
Points we found in our research to reduce the risk of cancer from grilled foods;
 1. The American Cancer Society recommends avoiding fat dripping onto the hot coals or open flame which causes smoke and flare-ups that can contain carcinogens.
 2. The National Cancer Institute recommends avoiding direct exposure of meat to an open flame or a hot metal surface which causes charring and carcinogen mutation.
 3. The NCI also recommends avoiding prolonged cooking of meat at high temperatures (over 300ºF).
 4. Research published by MSNBC and other science journals recommend using a homemade marinade (avoid thick commercially available marinades).
Features we built into our Soapstone Griddle;
 1. Using the best griddle will remove your meat from an open flame or a hot metal surface (As recommended by the National Cancer Institute).
 2. Using our Soapstone Griddle will prevent flare-ups from dripping fat (As recommended by the American Cancer Society).
 3. Soapstone's temperature qualities allow you to cook at lower temperatures and achieve the same results in the same amount of time (As recommended by the National Cancer Institute).
 4. Our Soapstone Griddle's groove design will naturally self-baste creating a moist, organic marinade while melting away unwanted fat (As recommended by science journals and reported by major news outlets).
Best Soapstone Griddles, Cookware, Pots & Stone Cookers
01. Brazilian Soapstone Griddle or Pizza Pan with Copper Handles
02. Soapstone Griddle and Pizza Tray with Handles
03. Soapstone Cooking and Baking Surface
04. Soapstone Safety Saute Cooker
05. Soapstone Non-toxic Stew Cooker with Flexible Copper Handle
06. Brazilian Eco-friendly Soapstone Stew Pot
07. Brazilian Soapstone Cooking Pot
08. Naturestone Soapstone Pot with Lid
Why Soapstone Griddle?
Soapstone Griddles are carved out of the finest soapstone that the earth has to offer. For centuries soapstone has been used for its ability to retain and radiate heat for long periods of time. Native Americans used it for cooking slabs, pipes, and bowls.
To this day it is the material of choice for wood burning stoves and masonry heaters. Brazilians use soapstone cookware for all their culinary needs. In the United States, it is mostly used for countertops in high-end homes, as well as in laboratories. Soapstone is nonporous and is ideal for use around food because it will not harbor bacteria, stain and it will not rust.
We Need To Avoid Dangerous Cookware, See What Say The Experts!
Give Your Grill an Upgrade
Whatever grill you might have, a Soapstone Griddle will make it better, period. Find out what many cultures have known for centuries, that soapstone is one of Mother Nature's greatest cooking tools. It will change the way you grill.
By using soapstone's ability to heat evenly and consistently, you can turn any ordinary grilling experience into a phenomenal one. Our Soapstone Griddles are specially designed to harness soapstone's unique cooking capabilities. Soapstone does not have any sort of taste and will, therefore, not add any unwanted flavors to meats or vegetables. It is also non-porous, which makes it ideal for use around food, as it is resistant to harboring bacteria.
*** The stone protects your food against hot spots and flare-ups, while still allowing that smoky BBQ flavor to access your food. It also reduces cancer-causing carcinogens produced in a normal grilling environment.
Special and Effective Soapstone Design
The ridges on the stone raise the meat slightly above the cooking surface and allow it to brown by preventing escaping juices from contacting the meat. They also leave grill marks, which is the signature of any well-cooked steak.
The troughs are designed to collect the juicy drippings so that they may be recycled into a moist and flavorful environment that will continually baste your meat in its own juices while melting away any unwanted fats. Our slabs have been fire tested to 1200°F so you can sear a steak at exceptional temperatures, or cook ribs low and slow until the meat falls off the bone. We have no doubt that you will soon feel like we do and even a good steak house will lose its appeal.
Your Soapstone Griddle was also designed for use in direct conjunction with pellet grills. The ability of the soapstone to store and radiate heat will enable the pellet cooker to maintain a constant temperature in varying conditions, thus reducing the number of pellets that need to be burned to maintain the desired temperature.
Better yet, it keeps the heat right next to the food, which is where it is needed. The soapstone will enable the grill to return to the desired temperature much quicker if the lid has to be opened and will cut down on heat loss. This is not only a savings of our natural resources and environment, but it is also a considerable saving passed on to you, the consumer.
It also serves as a heat deflector in pellet grills, charcoal grills, and gas grills. By placing the Grill Slab directly over the flame it will absorb the heat and radiate it evenly throughout the grill thus eliminating hot and cold spots. It will also keep the direct flame from drying out the meat. The end result is juicier, tender meat that is evenly cooked.
You can also turn it over and use the flat surface to cook fish or vegetables. By placing it upside down over a range stove you can use it as a griddle. The possibilities become endless when you start thinking about it. So give your imagination the Sparq that it needs. Your taste buds will thank you.
Gooderham, N. J., Murray, S., Lynch, A.M., Yadollahi-Farsani, M., Bratt, C., Rich, K.J., Ahao, K, Murray, B.P., Bhadresa, S., Crosbie, S.J., Boobis, A.R., & Davies, D.S. (1996). Heterocyclic amines: Evaluation of their role in diet associated with human cancer. British Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, 42, 91-98.
"Pancreatic cancer risk: associations with meat-derived carcinogen intake." Presented at the April 18-22, 2009 American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) Meeting in Denver, CO. First author: Kristin Anderson, Ph.D., associate professor and cancer epidemiologist with the University of Minnesota's School of Public Health and Masonic Cancer Center.
(1) _URL_
(2&3) _URL_
(2) Knize MG, Felton JS. Formation and human risk of carcinogenic heterocyclic amines formed from natural precursors in meat. Nutrition Reviews 2005; 63(5):158–165.
(3) Jägerstad M, Skog K. Genotoxicity of heat-processed foods. Mutation Research 2005; 574(1–2):156–172.
(4) _URL_
Recent Posts


- Randon Hall, MD
Tarsal Coalition - A Rare Find
Tarsal coalition, a rare foot condition that can be difficult to spot, but super satisfying when you catch it. Tarsal coalitions are connections between two bones in the foot, which have developed from birth. Not a common diagnosis, as it has been reported to occur in less than 1% of the population. Here is a deeper look at these interesting cases and practical approach.
Non-Specific Symptoms
The things that make this condition difficult to spot is the presenting symptoms are vague and very similar to other minor sports injuries. Symptoms can include anything from chronic pain in the mid-foot, recurrent ankle sprains or nothing at all. In my experience, patients usually report long-standing pain in their foot that doesn't improve over a period of several months. The typical age of presentation for those young patients who actually have symptoms tends to be late school age to early adolescence. Children's bones start out as cartilage and become more solid as they age. Therefore, the first symptoms can vary depending upon when the bones in the foot transition from a more flexible cartilage to a more rigid bone. In my experience, many times the patient does not have a rigid flatfoot as is noted in the classic case.
Imaging Diagnosis
If the diagnosis is suspected, tarsal coalition can typically be identified on plain x-ray, particularly in the oblique view (see below). Of note, if the patient's coalition is more fibrous tissue than bone, it may not always show up on a plain x-ray. When more detailed imaging is needed, typically CT scan is the gold standard.
Oblique X-ray showing Normal Anatomy of the Calcaneus (C) and Navicular (N) Bones
Approach to Treatment
The treatment varies depending upon the specific situation. My approach for young athletes with tarsal coalition is a step-wise approcah. With mild pain, I will simply start with physical therapy to see if we can increase mobility of the midfoot and strengthen the supporting muscle of the foot and ankle. When an athlete has more significant pain I will try a boot or short leg cast for about 1 month to decrease the irritation and motion at the coalition, and follow with physical therapy. If the first two steps have failed or the patient has been in severe pain for a prolonged period, I then would consider surgical intervention. A commonly used successful approach is to transect the coalition and place a bit of the patient's fat tissue in between the bones to prevent the formation of a new connection.
Here is a look at a recent study from Cureus. 2018 Jul; 10(7): e2944. Published online 2018 Jul 8. doi: 10.7759/cureus.2944
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|Construction Safety and Health
|U.S. Department of Labor
OSHA Office of Training and Education
An open excavation is an unnatural situation. The average landscape shows no vertical or near vertical slopes.
Soil or dirt is a very heavy material. A cubic foot can easily weigh 114 pounds and a cubic yard can be as heavy as a pick-up truck.
Consider a column of soil which is one foot by one foot and several feet high. At one foot of depth a horizontal plane one foot by one foot is carrying the cubic foot which lies over it. The stress, or load per unit area is 100 lbs. per square foot (psf). At a depth of two feet the horizontal plane is carrying two cubic feet or 200 psf. At a depth of five feet the vertical stress is 500 psf, and so on.
The column described would soon collapse if not supported by similar adjacent columns. Stresses are developed which act horizontally on the column. These lateral stresses can be considered ½ as large as the vertical stresses. At a depth of five feet the vertical stress is 500 psf and the lateral, or horizontal stress is 250 psf.
Undisturbed soil may be visualized as an infinite number of columns of soil adjoining and supporting one another. The system is in equilibrium and is perfectly stable.
When an excavation is cut the system is disturbed. Lateral stresses which existed on the excavation wall are removed as the excavation is done. The soil in the excavation wall immediately begins to move, however slowly, into the excavation.
At the same time the surface of the ground next to the excavation subsides, creating an unnatural situation. The surface of the ground is in tension and some of the weight of the soil in the excavation wall is transferred to the soil back away from the wall face by a phenomenon called shear.
The combination of tension in the ground surface and shear stress causes cracks to form back from the edge of the excavation. Cracks occur from the edge of the excavation. Cracks occur from about to of the depth of the excavation back from its edge. For example, if an excavation 10 feet deep is dug the cracks may be found somewhere between three to seven feet back from the excavation edge. There may be several cracks. They are usually vertical and they may be ½ the depth of the excavation.
When cracks develop, the weight of the soil in the excavation wall is no longer partly carried by the soil back from the excavation's face.
Then the lower part of the excavation wall fails under the great stress from the weight of the soil above it. There is no lateral stress to prevent the failure.
When the bottom of the excavation fails, or "kicks," into the excavation the support for the upper part of the excavation wall is now essentially hanging only be shear and tension forces. Failure occurs.
A third cave-in quickly follows. Soil, like concrete, is normally strong in compression but not at all strong in tension. Reinforced concrete makes use of the compressive strength of concrete and the tensile strength of steel. There is no steel in the soil.
Cave-ins generally come in multiples. If the first one doesn't get you, the second one may and the third is always a possibility.
This example of the mechanics of a cave-in has offered a discussion of some of the forces involved in such accidents. It has by no means considered all of the forces which may be involved in such an occurrence. Weathering, water, vibration and superimposed loads may add to the hazardous conditions leading to cave-ins.


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W64 to AC3 Converter
Convert W64 to AC3
W64 to AC3 Conversion Software converts W64 files to AC3 fast. The converter is a multiple channels encoder. The software supports 2.1, 4.0, 4.1, 5.1, 6.1, and 7.1 channels encoding for AAC, AC3, AIFF, AU, FLAC, OGG, and WAV files. The software also supports common file format such as AIFF, MKA, AAC for iPod/iPhone/iPad/iTunes/DSi, AAC, M4A (MPEG-4 audio), MPA, VOC, OGG, etc. It could convert CDA to M4R (iPhone ringtone), FLV to MMF, WV to M4A (MPEG-4 audio), 3GP2 to FLAC, WMA to M4B (MPEG-4 audiobook), AU to OGG, and so on.
What is W64?
W64 file is a Sony Wave64 Audio. Sony Wave64 is a file format that's similar to the RIFF format. The RIFF format allowed for approximately 4GB of audio data, which was sufficient to hold about 6 hours and 45 minutes of 16-bit/44.1kHz audio. The advent of multi-channel audio - such as 5.1 surround - and 24-bit/96kHz or 192kHz audio, made the RIFF format inconvenient. To accommodate the larger files, the Sony Wave64 is a true 64-bit file format designed to overcome the size limitations of the RIFF format.
W64 typically stores uncompressed sampled audio as pulse-code modulation (PCM) data, and also supports several codecs for compressed audio. It's developed by Sonic Foundry, maintained by Sony.
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- ItemA retrospective study of the effect of testicular biopsy extracted spermatozoa in intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) on reproductive outcomes in assisted reproductive treatment (ART)(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2023-03) Oosthuizen, Micke; Burger, Riana; Erasmus, Evelyn; Matsaseng, T.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. Dept. of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.ENGLISH SUMMARY: Background: Azoospermia, a possible cause of male infertility, is responsible for 10–15 percent of infertility cases. Azoospermia is characterized by the absence of spermatozoa following microscopic analysis and centrifugation of the complete sperm specimen. Azoospermia patients can be divided into two categories, obstructive azoospermia (OA) and non-obstructive azoospermia (NOA). The effects of testicular spermatozoa compared to ejaculated spermatozoa on ART outcomes still remain controversial. Spermatozoa from different sources or diagnostic groups result in significantly different treatment outcomes in some studies but not in others. There are differences in the quality of sperm from patients diagnosed with OA and NOA. Due to ongoing controversy, this study was therefore conducted to establish ICSI outcomes with ejaculated spermatozoa and testicular retrieved spermatozoa under specific laboratory conditions. Aims: The primary aim was to retrospectively investigate the effect of testicular biopsy spermatozoa (TB group) compared to the effect of ejaculated spermatozoa (ES group) on ART outcomes. The secondary aim was to retrospectively evaluate whether the reason for azoospermia (NOA or OA) affects the IR, CPR, LBR, and MR. Materials and Methods: This study was retrospectively conducted on the data obtained from medical and laboratory records between 2017 and 2020 at Drs. Aevitas Fertility Clinic, Pinelands, South Africa and Tygerberg Fertility Clinic for the period of 2015 – 2020. Data was categorized and filtered based on predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Data was submitted for statistical analysis (statistical significance: P < 0.05). Results: The FR (84.66% vs 82.47%), Cleavage Rate (97.15% vs 98.76%), Blastulation Rate (54.73% vs 53.82%), CPR (44.86% vs 35.94%) and MR (29.17% vs 36.28%) were not significantly different between the TB group and the ES group respectively (p>0.05). The IR (30.69% vs 23.06%) and the LBR (33.64% vs 23.96%) was significantly different between the TB group and the ES group respectively (p<0.05). The FR (86.30% vs 79.29%), Cleavage Rate (96.79% vs 98.39%), Blastulation Rate (57.19% vs 45.43%), IR (29.27% vs 35.33%), CPR (43.90% vs 48%), MR (36.11% vs 8.33%) and LBR (29.27% vs 44%) were not significantly different between the OA group and the NOA group respectively (p>0.05). Conclusion: The present study primarily compared the results of ICSI with testicular spermatozoa with those of ICSI with ejaculated spermatozoa. Sub analysis were done on the two different azoospermic groups (NOA and OA). This retrospective study indicated similar FR, Cleavage Rates, Blastulation Rates, PR and MR for the ES group and the TB group. The current study found a significant difference in the IR and LBR between these two groups. By comparing the OA and the NOA group no significant difference in the FR, Cleavage Rates, Blastulation Rates, IR, CPR, MR and LBR was found. The present study, as well as available literature, confirms that the use of testicular spermatozoa does not have a negative effect on ICSI treatment outcomes. This study can therefore provide valuable information during consultation for ICSI treatment in these patients and provide them with assurance that it is possible to achieve normal FR as well as good quality embryos, IR, CPR and lower MR with ICSI.
- ItemPolycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) : an audit of how many PCOS patients struggle to lose weight with recommended diet management in a Tygerberg Hospital population(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2022-12) Alwakwak, Asma Ahmed E.; Matsaseng, T.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. Dept. of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.ENGLISH SUMMARY: Introduction: Polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) is a common endocrine disorder of women in the reproductive eage (Matsaseng, 2017). It has a variable clinical appearance, with manifestations that include menstrual irregularities, hirsutism, acne, obesity, infertility, impaired glucose tolerance, diabetes, and a significant cardiovascular risk profile (Teedeetal., 2010). Globally, the prevalence of PCOS is 5% to 10% of women in the reproductive age. Insub-Saharan Africa, studies on the prevalence of PCOS are scarce and values range from 16% to 32% (Pembe & Abeid, 2009). Materials and Methods: Aim of the study: To evaluate how many PCOS patients struggle to lose weight with recommended diet management in a Tygerberg Hospital population. Study design: This is a retrospective observational study. Setting: The setting of the study is the Reproductive Medicine Unit of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the Tygerberg Academic Hospital. Results: A total of 73 women were recruited for the study between June and December 2021. The average age of the study participants was 29.3years. All of the study participants (100 %) struggled to lose there commended weight. Average BMI was 38.1kg/m2 and 37.7kg/m2 at first and last visit, respectively. We created two BMI category variables, each with four levels, namely pre-obese, obese class 1, obese class 2, and obese class 3. Most of the participants were obese class 2 at both the first and last visits. The classification was pre-obese (25 to 29.9), class 1 (30 to 34.9), which is associated with a mildly increased risk of co-morbidities, class 2 (35 to 39.9), which is associated with a moderately increased risk of co-morbidities, and class 3 (≥40), which is associated with a severe risk of co-morbidities. Conclusion: Inconclusion, our study shows that 38 % of patients with PCOS at Tygerberg Academic Hospital are obese, and none of the patients succeeded in losing the recommended weight following the initial standard therapy offered.
- ItemA retrospective study of the effect of endometriosis on reproductive outcomes in assisted reproductive treatment(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2023-03) Pfeiffer, Nadine; Erasmus, Evelyn; Burger, Riana; Matsaseng, T.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. Dept. of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.ENGLISH SUMMARY: Background: One of the leading causes of female infertility is a chronic condition known as endometriosis. There are four stages of endometriosis, and 25 to 50% of affected women experience endometriosis-related infertility. Endometriosis is suggested to impair the pelvic environment, ovaries (oocyte quality and quantity), and the uterus. Endometriosis is a frequent indicator for Assisted Reproductive Treatment (ART). However, there is a lack of consensus regarding the impact of this disease and its subsequent stages on outcomes achieved in ART. With the optimisation of ART, it is necessary to further evaluate the effect endometriosis may have on reproductive and embryological outcomes. Objectives: Primary objective: To retrospectively evaluate the reproductive outcomes (post-embryo transfer) of endometriosis patients (EE group) compared to the success of tubal factor infertility patients (TF group) by calculating implantation rate (IR), clinical pregnancy rate (CPR), live birth rate (LBR), and miscarriage rate (MR). Secondary objective: To retrospectively evaluate the pre-embryo transfer outcomes of the EE group and TF group by calculating fertilisation rate (FR), number of oocytes retrieved, percentage of good quality day 3 embryos (GQE), and blastulation rate (BR). Tertiary objective: To retrospectively evaluate whether the stage of endometriosis affects BR, IR, CPR, LBR, and MR. Materials and Methods: This retrospective study (2017 to 2020) used anonymised data from the Tygerberg and Aevitas Fertility Clinics. It included a study group, the EE group (N = 101) and a control group, the TF group (N = 110). The EE group were subdivided, if the stage of endometriosis (ES) was known, as stage I and II (ES1-2 group [n=13]) and stage III and IV (ES3-4


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The Exclusionary Rule is considered as one of the revolutionary rules in the country. It is aimed at giving back the power to the people, rather than concentrating it on a select few, which mostly include the law enforcement forces. This rule has come under immense fire in recent times, but the truth remains that it is one of the foremost rules when it comes to safeguarding civil rights. There are however, some exceptions to the Exclusionary Rule, which make it quite difficult for the criminals to get any benefit from this rule. More on the Exclusionary Rule, and its impact on criminal cases, are mentioned in detail below.
Exclusionary Rule defined
This rule is aimed at protecting civilians from illegal searches and seizures carried out by the law enforcement agencies in the country. This rule states that, any evidence that was gathered because of an illegal search or seizure will have to be excluded from being presented in a court of law. This primary objective of this rule is to make sure that the law enforcement officers stay within the lines of the law when it comes to collecting evidence. The significance of this law lies in the fact that, it prohibits the admission of evidence, even if it incriminates the defendant, if the evidence was obtained through an illegal search. In other words, it ensures that no law is broken in the attempt to uphold justice.
Exceptions to the Exclusionary Rule
This rule is not without its exceptions. These exceptions are necessary to ensure that no criminal gets past the net of justice due to some slight misjudgment on the part of the law enforcement agencies.
The first exception to this rule is the "good faith exception". This exception makes it clear that, the evidence that was gathered with the help of a search warrant that lacked a probable cause can still be admitted in the court. But this only if the officer who gathered the evidence was at the time under the impression that the search warrant was valid. There exists anther exception to this rule, and it is the Plain View doctrine. It states that if evidence was to appear in plain view of the officer, then it can be seized without the need for a warrant.
These are some details regarding the Exclusionary Rule. It is a very important rule, which gives a sense of security to the civilians.