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By Briana Magistro
SC Staff Writer
A common sight in the eastern and central United States, the blue jay flies into this semester's first "Animal of the Issue." The blue jay is commonly found in coniferous, deciduous, and suburban areas of the eastern United States.
A midsized songbird, the blue jay is not particularly timid. It has been known to scare away smaller birds, especially feeders, by swooping down and screeching. They are not good at sharing, and will typically not even eat with others of their own species.
Blue jays can make many calls, including imitations of birds of prey, like hawks, in order to scare off other birds. However, once acclimated to a local mixed flock, some blue jays will tolerate other songbirds, and they may even act as guards, giving warning calls if a predator is nearby.
Blue jays have an average wingspan of over a foot wide, but they are not actually fast fliers. These jays fly in such a way that does not allow for optimal speed. Therefore, they can be picked out of the open sky by quick and agile predators, like owls. This is why they typically live in areas with a lot of trees or hiding places.
The blue jay is extremely distinguishable, as it has a bright blue plumage on its back and pointed head. It also has a white belly and various black markings.
Contrary to common belief, the blue jay's color does not come from pigment is its feathers. The feathers are specifically refractive to give off blue color in white light. This means that the molecular structure of the feathers enables only blue color to be refracted in sunlight.
Other birds, such as peacocks, also have feathers that refract light in such a way. This is why some birds can have such brilliant and intricate color patterns. If the feathers are damaged, they will not show color since the specific structures that refract light are broken.
The diet of the blue jay includes nuts, seeds, fruits, grains, and insects. Unlike other songbirds, blue jays don't have a preference for where their food comes from, whether it is a berry hanging from a tree or a nut that fell to the ground. They have also been known to carry off nuts to their nests to eat later. Their beaks are hard and strong, and can easily break apart the shells of most nuts.
Blue jay nests are cupshaped and are usually made in trees or big bushes. Like with eating, blue jays are not particular about where they choose to nest and will sometimes even make nests in mailboxes or the homes of other birds. Both mates take part in caring for the nest.
Blue jays can lay between three and seven eggs. The baby birds are able to fly in under a month. Unlike other birds, blue jay babies will stay with their families until fall, when food starts to become scarce.
In the wild, blue jays have been recorded to live longer than 15 years, and have been known to live longer than 20 years in captivity. Although the natural lifespan of the blue jay is long, the birds rarely live past 10 years. This is due to collisions with cars and other urban disturbances.
Mosquitoes, a food source of blue jays and other birds, carry the West Nile Virus, a generally fatal disease that can be contracted by birds after digesting infected food.
To attract blue jays to your home, it is recommended that you use wild birdseeds that contain large seeds, like sunflower seeds or peanuts. Suet, a hard block feed used for woodpeckers and large songbirds, also attracts blue jays. You will know when a blue jay is visiting your deck when you hear its long screech!
Email Briana at:


Could Be Avoided Meaning?
What kind of verb is avoid?
Avoid is never used with an infinitive.
It is followed by a verb in the -ing form: ✗ Avoid to use long quotations unless really necessary….avoid Definitions and Synonyms present tensepast tenseavoidedpast participleavoided3 more rows.
Should be avoided synonym?
Frequently Asked Questions About avoid Some common synonyms of avoid are elude, escape, eschew, evade, and shun. While all these words mean "to get away or keep away from something," avoid stresses forethought and caution in keeping clear of danger or difficulty.
What is it called when you avoid work?
To avoid one's lessons or work. skive. shirk. malinger. truant.
Is avoid a negative word?
Therefore, it's important to know what negative words are and learn how to avoid using them. Here are some tips on avoiding negative words….Words to Avoid in Writing.cannotdamagedo notnotproblemrefusestopunable tohardlyscarcelyunfortunately2 more rows
What is a sentence for avoid?
Examples of avoid in a Sentence She took a detour to avoid the heavy traffic. They successfully avoided each other for days. He tried hard to avoid accidents.
What is avoid mean?
verb (used with object) to keep away from; keep clear of; shun: to avoid a person; to avoid taxes; to avoid danger. to prevent from happening: to avoid falling. Law. to make void or of no effect; invalidate.
Can and could sentences?
Could tell Meaning?
It's like saying "I understood that" or "I was able to see that" for instance if someone said "I could tell that you were angry" they are saying "I was able to see that you were angry"
Could sentences examples in English?
Could meaning with examples?
The definition of could is often used in the place of "can" to show a little doubt. An example of could is someone asking if they can help someone. An example of could is saying that something is able to happen if someone does something. Used to indicate ability or permission in the past.
Could still meaning?
2. adverb [ADVERB before verb] If something that has not yet happened could still happen, it is possible that it will happen. If something that has not yet happened is still to happen, it will happen at a later time. Big money could still be made if the crisis keeps oil prices high.
What part of speech is avoided?
avoidpart of speech:transitive verbinflections:avoids, avoiding, avoided5 more rows


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Author: Raymond Huber
Reading Age: 10 Years
Have you ever felt like you didn't belong, you were different from everyone else? Ziggy certainly was different. He was a drone that wanted to work, had a good memory and kept breaking the hive rules.
The Queen called on Ziggy to perform an important task, where he discovered things about humans the worried him. They were using bees to sniff out explosives. Could Ziggy ever go back to the hive once he knew this?
This story is told from the point of view of Ziggy, the bee, but swaps occasionally to the diary entries of Dr Sophie (Sparkles) the bee scientist. It is an exciting read, once you realize that Ziggy is special and has to find his real family.

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


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mathematical research moved on to other areas.
Yet the last major step towards today's understanding of Galois Theory was achieved in two sets of lecture notes by Emil Artin (_PHONE_): Foundations of Galois Theory, published in 1938, and Galois Theory, published in 1942. According to Artin, Galois Theory studies how field extensions are related to their automorphism groups. He wanted to present the theory independently of its application to the solution of equations. While field theory had been used before to simplify the presentation of Galois Theory, the structure of fields had been largely ignored. Artin abandoned the approach of building a sequence of field extensions by adjoining successive resolvents to the coefficient field. Instead, his starting point was to consider the splitting field of the equation (which is the smallest field containing the roots and coefficients). The splitting field existed by Kronecker; Artin did not investigate the question of how it could be constructed in practice. Thus the historic application of Galois Theory was finally reduced to the question of whether there existed an extension of the coefficient field containing the splitting field. Previous mathematicians, such as Bartel Leendert van der Waerden in Moderne Algebra (1930), had incorporated modern ideas from Linear Algebra and Field Theory into Galois Theory, but Artin was first to make use of the crucial idea of the splitting field in this way. His approach was heavily influenced by Dedekind, Kronecker and Weber, but Artin was able to comprehend how it all fitted together and gave a very succinct, precise and modern presentation of Galois Theory.
Artin gathers together all important conclusions in one Fundamental Theorem of Galois Theory :
If p(x) is a separable polynomial over a field F, and G the group of the equation p(x) = 0 where E is the splitting field of p(x), then:
- Each intermediate field B is the fixed field for a subgroup GB of G, and distinct subgroups have distinct fixed fields.
- The intermediate field B is a normal extension of F if and only if the subgroup GB is a normal subgroup of G. In this case the group of automorphisms of B which leave F fixed is isomorphic to the quotient group G/GB.
- For each intermediate field B, [B:F] is equal to the index of GB and [E:B] is equal to the order of GB.
This Fundamental Theorem makes no reference to substitutions of roots; it talks about field extensions and their automorphism groups. A polynomial is mentioned only to produce a splitting field in relation to the ground field -- Galois Theory is no longer about polynomials. Today's formulations (see or ) of the Fundamental Theorem of Galois Theory are equivalent to Artin's; their aim is to reveal the parallel structure of the extension field and its automorphism group.
Artin followed Weber in making a clear distinction between theory and application. Solvable groups and the idea of solvability by radicals appear only in an appendix to his text, and only for historic reasons. In the 1930s, mathematicians were certainly much more receptive to abstract algebra than Weber's audience had been, but Artin's crucial innovation was the way in which he combined results by Dedekind, Kronecker, Weber and others in order to present a new conception of Galois Theory. In short, Artin unified and completed all the earlier approaches in a formulation of Galois Theory which we still use today.

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


text:
Definition of coelacanth
- a large bony marine fish with a three-lobed tail fin and fleshy pectoral fins. It was known only from fossils until one was found alive in 1938; since then others have been found near the Comoro Islands in the Indian Ocean and off Sulawesi, Indonesia.
- Latimeria chalumnae, family Latimeriidae (or Coelacanthidae), subclass Crossopterygii
mid 19th century: from modern Latin Coelacanthus (genus name), from Greek koilos 'hollow' + akantha'spine' (its fins have hollow spines)


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Doodling while listening actually increases retention of memory, LiveScience reports. A new study shows that subjects who "mindlessly" sketched while listening to a not-so-interesting phone message remembered key facts 29% more than others instructed to just listen. "It helps to keep us on track with a boring task," a researcher affiliated with the study said.
"If someone is doing a boring task, like listening to a dull telephone conversation, they may start to daydream," the researcher continued. "Daydreaming distracts them from the task, resulting in poorer performance. A simple task, like doodling, may be sufficient to stop daydreaming without affecting performance on the main task."


Moving Charges and Magnetism: Lorentz Force, Cyclone Frequency (For CBSE, ICSE, IAS, NET, NRA 2022)
Lorentz Force
The Lorentz Force
 - When the total force on a charge c which is moving with a velocity v in the presence of electric field E and magnetic field B is termed as the lorentz force.
 - The Lorentz Force is the force on a charged particle due to electric and magnetic fields.
 - A charged particle in an electric field will always feel a force due to this field.
 - A charged particle in a magnetic field will only feel a force due to the magnetic field if it is moving relative to this field.
The Cyclone Frequency
F =force
q =electric charge
E =external electric field
v =velocity
B =magnetic field
Cyclone Frequency
 - A charge c completes a circular orbit on a plane normal to B which is the uniform magnetic field.
 - Uniform circular motion frequency is known as cyclone frequency. This frequency is unaffected by the radius and speed of the particle.
 - It can be determined with the help of a machine known as cyclotron which is used to accelerate the particles which are charged.
Biot-Savart Law
Biot-Savart Law
In this law magnetic field dB due to the presence of an element dl which is carrying a continuous flow of current I at the point P at a distance r from the current element is to obtain a total field at P and integration of this vector expression over the entire length of the conductor.
Ampere՚s Circuital Law
Ampere՚s Circuital Law
 - According to this law, an open surface S if bounded by a loop C, then the current I passing through S
 - The sign of I is determined by the right-hand rule.
 - Non-parallel currents repel and parallel currents attract each other.
Developed by:


Pavement Shops
The Effects of the Pavement shops in the boulevard of Puducherry
The boulevard area of Puducherry is attracting domestic and foreign tourists) especially through the French heritage buildings and the rock beach. However, they are littered with non-biodegradable wastes such as plastics and disposable materials, discarded by hawkers selling eatables and the pedlars who sell on the road and these non-biodegradable wastes are posing a threat to the marine life and polluting the sea. Addition to this the vegetable and fruit waste which are degradable also cause a stinks in some streets. This reports aims to provide solution for the issues faced by the Pavement shops and to creating awareness among the people for a trash-free marine environment.
 In general the Municipalities are permitted to enforce reasonable regulations concerning hawking and peddling within their borders. It may be required for such salespeople to obtain licenses; however, municipalities cannot prohibit the business through the requirement of an excessive fee. In such situations where a license is required, a pedlar or hawker must obtain it prior to the time when he or she begins to sell wares and it must be issued to the individual who is actually engaged in the peddling.
The study has the below objectives:
1. To relocate the hawkers to an alternative site.
2. To deteriorate the fees that is paid to the municipalities.
3. To validate the pavement shops to be hygienic and clean.
4. To appoint local authorities to monitor the pavement shops.
5. To eliminate parking of vehicles on either side of the road, as it causes problems to pedestrians.
According to sources, the hawkers were spoiling the beauty of the beach, and so have been asked to move. The tourists and local visitors to the beach front buy snacks etc. and leave the food waste, paper plates, and garbage and plastic cups on the beach itself. At present, there were about 125 hawkers near...


the right profile and that you failed because of bad exam technique or preparation, put it behind you and regroup. All submissions receive a breakdown of where marks have been awarded and deducted. Use this to identify your submission's weaknesses. Once you address these weaknesses, then resubmit.
On the flipside, let's look at the common characteristics of successful submissions.
Successful submission characteristics
 1. Correct preparation and adequate time spent on submissions. Successful candidates understand what they are asked to provide and then do it. It's that simple. A good technique for Part 2 is to continually ask yourself if you're working on what you should be. Remain disciplined. Understand the questions and stay on track.
 2. Clear, succinct submissions. Successful submissions can vary in length, but the content determines if you pass or fail. A useful tip is to play devil's advocate with each section of your submission. Where are the weak points? If you hadn't written it would you understand it? Ask a colleague to review your solution before submitting it. It's amazing what a second pair of eyes can catch.
With regard to Part 2, don't get hung up on what modeling tool you use to generate the specified UML deliverables. Clarity and correctness should be your main goals. Any tool of choice is fine as long as you stick with the specified deliverables (e.g., providing a main index.html page).
Future exams
Reflecting the progress J2EE and its constituent technologies continue to make, the architect exam itself is also under revision. The updated exam will cover J2EE 1.4, J2EE design patterns, the Java Connector Architecture (JCA), and design methodologies such as the Rational Unified Process (RUP) and extreme programming (XP). Other planned extensions to the current format include a feedback mechanism to allow examiners to query candidates about specific points of their architecture.
The revamped exam will not involve face-to-face interviews with prospective candidates. As Cade says, "Much of being an architect is being able to communicate your ideas written and verbally. We can capture the written part of the communication, but we cannot assess candidates on their verbal capabilities. This is why employers must have a thorough interview process."
An interesting phenomenon is that solutions submitted for Part 2 over the last year have changed even though the exam itself has not. The advent of Web services and a move towards a more modular, services-driven approach to architecture in general reflects in the types of solutions candidates submit. That represents to me one of the architect exam's real values. It continues to remain relevant even as the preferred techniques and underlying technologies morph and mature.
Have your say
Hopefully, you now have a clearer sense of Sun's J2EE architect certification and understand why I believe it is well worth pursuing. It's hard work, but the reward is that upon successful completion, you will be a better architect. The architect exam is currently being revised to keep pace with the J2EE platform, and Sun welcomes your input on the exam's content and structure.
If you have any ideas about how to improve the exam, I'd love to hear them. Use the JavaWorld feedback form (see Resources) to send us your thoughts. It's a great way to help influence the next phase of the architect certification process.
The Resources section below contains useful links to get you started. The exam is no substitute for hands-on architectural experience, but it's a great complement to that experience, especially if you embrace the certification work as an opportunity to fill gaps in your knowledge. If you're currently working towards the exam, good luck! If you're not, why aren't you?
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Salesforce-backed AI project SharkEye aims to protect beachgoers
Microsoft's new AI auto-captions images for the visually impaired
A new AI from Microsoft aims to automatically caption images in documents and emails so that software for visual impairments can read it out.
Researchers from Microsoft explained their machine learning model in a paper on preprint repository arXiv.
The model uses VIsual VOcabulary pre-training (VIVO) which leverages large amounts of paired image-tag data to learn a visual vocabulary.
A second dataset of properly captioned images is then used to help teach the...
Microsoft and Qualcomm debut their Vision AI Developer Kit
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text:
The curriculum structure for the Diploma in Metallurgical Engineering has been designed with the emphasis on lab-intensive teaching and learning approach, where almost all of the core courses have practical components. Through these courses, students are exposed to the metallurgical engineering field such as metal extraction, metal processing (rolling, extrusion, stamping), metal casting as well as heat treatment and metal protection. Moreover, student will acquire the knowledge regarding the related metal work in workshops such as milling, cutting, grinding and annealing.
Student will also be exposed to the usage of testing equipment to measure the metal characteristics and behavior such as universal testing machine (UTM), scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) Brinell and Rockwell hardness machines, Izod and Charpy impact test machine and non-destructive test equipment. They will also learn and operate the various welding techniques used in the metal industries, such as arc welding, gas welding, resistance welding, spot welding, TIG and MIG.


text:
|Yves Ramseier||Semester project|
|Section Microtechnique, EPFL||June 1999|
This project aims to determine the movement in a echocardiographic sequence by image processing methods.
In the first part of the report, the methodology is detailed. The mathematics relations that constitute the basement of the process are enumerated and the way to determine the speed of every little window of a digital image is explained. The kind of image we deal with are 2D echocardiography with the time as x coordinate as showed in figure 1.
Fig. 1 2D echocardiography
Then, in the second part, we propose two different original algorithms providing the results showed in the figure 2.
Fig. 2 2D echocardiography with the movement showed with the red arrows
We have represented the speed by displaying a vector in the middle part of each little window considerated. The vector points in the direction of the movement and its norm is proportional to the value of the speed in this point.
The last part starts by comparing the results provided by the two different algorithms. Then the future of the project is discussed and it finishes with a conclusion.


text: The fruit from a mulberry shrub or tree. The fruit is very sweet but does not keep well so they are used mostly to make jellies and preserves. The mulberry trees are not used much any more in America due to several reasons: the berries do not keep well; they cannot be shipped; and silkworms feed on the leaves, making the shrubs or trees difficult to maintain. Dried mulberries are available in some Middle Eastern markets. They have a flavor similar to a fig.


text:
Ed Stoppard, Geoff McGivern, Heida Reed and Raad Rawi as the Mekon
'Reign of the Robots'
'Prisoners of Space'
'21st Century Spaceman' (Documentary)
When Dare and the crew of the Anastasia finally return to Earth they discover that an army of ruthless robots – too powerful and too numerous to be resisted – have conquered the planet. With limited resources, Dare, Digby and Peabody face their greatest challenge yet – to liberate planet Earth. But the task becomes more desperate when Dan discovers the alien force behind the robot invasion. The first season of Dan Dare concludes with daring space action, fearless heroics and the revelation of devastating secrets concerning Space Fleet.


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Monday, August 16, 2010
mumbai's golden era of mafia
Mumbai's first recorded bank robbery was committed by a man with a fake name,'Anokhelal'. He came to Mumbai from Delhi after seeing the American movie Highway 301 (1950). He formed a gang of local criminals and committed the robbery after doing two rehearsals at the bank which were not noticed by the staff. The movie was later banned in Mumbai. The bank attacked was The Lloyds Bank at Fort in Mumbai. Rs 16 lakhs were stolen and the security guard was killed. The police solved the robbery based on information about a Rs 10,000 worth "Chaddar" that was laid at HajiAli durgah.
The first of mafia elements, or syndicates, perhaps had their origins in the gambling and bootleg liquor dens set up by a criminal named Karim Lala[1] in the 1940s.there was also a don named rama naik who hailed from byculla a close associate of bada rajan and mentor of arun gavli. he reigned from 70 to 1987 when he was encountered on the behest of dawood.Bada Rajan 1970-83. Currently the biggest such underworld leader is Dawood Ibrahim, who is probably living in Karachi, Pakistan.
In the illegal opium trade, the earliest dated mafia family was the Thane-based (Mumbai) Thanevale gang that was responsible for over 80% of the opium and heroin traficking in the 1860s according to an article by Harkisondas Thanawala (1965). Crime films revolving around the Indian mafia, particularly the Mumbai underworld, have been common in Indian cinema since the 1950s, evolving into a distinct genre known as Mumbai noir in the late 1990s.[4] The genre has its origins in the 1950s, with the Raj Kapoor films Awaara (1951) and Shree 420 (1955) being some of the earliest films involving the Mumbai underworld. In the 1960s, Shakti Samanta's China Town (1962), starring Shammi Kapoor and Helen, dealt with the criminal underworld that existed in Chinatown, Kolkata, at the time. It was the earliest film to introduce the plot element of a look-alike working as an undercover agent impersonating a gangster, an idea that was used again Don (1978) and many later films inspired by it.[5]
In the 1970s and early 1980s, many of the most well-known classic Bollywood movies were based around themes of fighting criminals and corruption at a time when crime was rising and authorities were powerless. Classic Amitabh Bachchan films depicted the underworld and the protagonists attempting to overcome it, including Prakash Mehra's Zanjeer (1972), Yash Chopra's Deewar (1975),Manmohan Desai's Amar Akbar Anthony (1977), Chandra Barot's Don (1978) and Vijay Anand's Ram Balram (1980). In particular, Deewar, which Danny Boyle described as being "absolutely key toIndian cinema", was a crime film pitting "a policeman against his brother, a gang leader based on real-life smuggler Haji Mastan", portrayed by Bachchan.[6] Most Bollywood crime movies at the time were fairly unrealistic with the masala style of action and plots. In Parallel Cinema on the other hand, the Calcutta trilogies of Bengali film directors Mrinal Sen and Satyajit Ray, particularly the 1976 filmJana Aranya (The Middleman), dealt with the Calcutta underworld in a more realistic manner.
In the late 1980s, Parallel Cinema filmmakers began producing more realistic Bombay underworld films, with an early example being Mani Ratnam's Tamil filmNayagan (1987), based on the life of the Bombay donVaradarajan Mudaliar, portrayed by Kamal HaasanNayagan was included in Time Magazine's "All-Time 100 Best Films" list, issued in 2005.[7] In Malayalam AbhimanyuAaryan directed by priyadarshan and Indrajaalam directed by Thambi kannamthanam depicts story or Munmbai underworld. The Bombay underworld was also depicted in Mira Nair's Academy Award nominated Hindi film Salaam Bombay! (1988). The underworld was also depicted in several other National Film Award winning films, including Vidhu Vinod Chopra's Parinda (1989) starring Anil KapoorMukul S. Anand's Agneepath (1990) starring Bachchan, and Sudhir Mishra's Dharavi (1991) also starring Om Puri.
Movie poster for Ram Gopal Varma'sSatya (1998), considered the beginning of the Mumbai noir genre.
In the late 1990s, Ram Gopal Varma's Satya (1998) marked the introduction of a new genre of film making, Mumbai noir, of which he is the acknowledged master.[4] The critical and commercial success of Satya led to an increased emphasis on realism in later Mumbai underworld films. Varma's next Mumbai noirfilm was Company (2002), based on the D-Company, a real-life criminal organization. Satya and Company both gave "slick, often mesmerizing portrayals of the Mumbai underworld", and displayed realistic "brutality and urban violence."[6] Satya won six Filmfare Awards, including the Critics Award for Best Film, while Company won seven Filmfare Awards. A prequel to Company was released in 2005, entitled D (2005), produced by Varma and directed by Vishram Sawant. Varma's three films SatyaCompany and D are together considered an "Indian Gangster Trilogy".[8] Varma also directed an Indian adaptation of The Godfather novel in a Mumbai underworld setting, called Sarkar (2005), and has more recently filmed an original sequel called Sarkar Raj (2008).
Mahesh Manjrekar's Vaastav: The Reality (1999) is another film that depicts the Indian mafia. Anurag Kashyap's Black Friday (2004) is based on S. Hussein Zaidi's book of the same name about the 1993 Bombay bombings, which involved the underworld organization, the D-Company.[6] Vishal Bharadwaj's Maqbool(2004) and Omkara (2006) are modern-day Indian mafia interpretations of the William Shakespeare plays Macbeth and Othello, respectively. Farhan Akhtar'sDon - The Chase Begins Again (2006) is a remake of Barot's original 1978 Don with Shahrukh Khan taking Bachchan's place in the title role. Apoorva Lakhia'sShootout at Lokhandwala (2007) is based on a real-life 1991 incident involving Commissioner Aftab Ahmed Khan and the Lokhandwala ComplexWaaris(2008) is an Indian television series on Zee TV with the Indian mafia as its background. The Mumbai underworld has also been depicted in Madhur Bhandarkar's Traffic Signal (2007) and Rajeev Khandelwal's Aamir (2008).
Danny Boyle's Academy Award winning film Slumdog Millionaire (2008), based on Vikas Swarup's Boeke Prize winning novel Q & A (2005), has also portrayed the Indian mafia, under the influence of earlier Mumbai noir films.[9] Boyle has cited previous Bollywood portrayals of the Mumbai underworld inDeewarSatyaCompany and Black Friday as direct influences on the film.[6][10] The Hollywood film Shantaram, based on Gregory David Roberts'sShantaram novel, also features the Indian mafia in its storyline. The film is being directed by Mira Nair and stars Johnny Depp in the lead role.
Indian mafia was widely potrayed in 2009 Bollywood's 2009 critically acclaimed film Kaminey.
[edit]Bollywood connections
D-Company is a term coined by the media for the criminal organization headed by wanted terrorist Dawood Ibrahim. Other prominent members of the gang include Chhota ShakeelTiger Memon andAbu Salem, who is now in the custody of Indian police. It is closely linked to a range of organized criminal and terrorist activities in South Asia, especially in MumbaiIndia, and the Persian Gulf


text:
Reasons to withhold information
If someone requests information under the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA), the information may be withheld for a number of reasons. These include:
- risk to the security or defence of New Zealand or its international relations
- threat to the maintenance of the law, investigation of offences and the right to a fair trial
- serious damage to the economy
- personal privacy
- trade secrets and commercial sensitivity
- the need to protect communications with the queen and the governor-general, collective and individual responsibility of government ministers, and the political neutrality of officials
- free and frank advice between officials and ministers
- legal professional privilege.
Reviewing decisions to withhold
If a person is unhappy with the response they get (usually because information has been withheld), they can ask the ombudsman to review the decision. The ombudsman will obtain the full information from the agency and an explanation of their reasons for withholding it, before forming an independent view on whether the information can be released. If the ombudsman recommends that it should be released, this decision is legally binding.
The New Zealand OIA is unusual in international terms. It goes much further than most other freedom-of-information regimes in terms of what information is able to be requested and the limitations on the reasons for refusing to release information. In most countries, the legislation states categories of documents or information that are automatically excluded from release. Cabinet papers are often automatically excluded, as in Queensland, Australia, for example. In New Zealand cabinet papers are often released only days after cabinet has considered them.
Since 1982 there have been many other legislative reforms that have built on the principles and practice established by the OIA. They include:
- the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987, which applies a similar regime to the local government sector
- the Privacy Act 1993, which replaced the parts of the OIA that dealt with access to personal information with a comprehensive regime for access to such information across the public and private sectors
- the Fiscal Responsibility Act 1994, which established a system of regular disclosure of information about the government's financial position. This act was incorporated into the Public Finance Act 1989 in a set of 2004 reforms
- the Criminal Disclosure Act 2008, which created a regime for pre-trial disclosure of information in criminal cases, to replace the administrative system that had developed under the OIA.


text:
The Sakai Open Academic Environment (OAE) provides a unique collaboration system for university campuses: a social network that helps students discuss class materials, pursue research, communicate with faculty, and discover the risks and benefits of sharing personal information—all in a private, rather than public, forum. This example-driven guide will get you up to speed on various methods used to deploy, customize, and manage OAE, whether you're an IT specialist in an educational institution, or an academic or instructional technologist.
Learn how to work with OAE's source code to modify key areas such as profiles, courses, permissions, and content. You'll soon adapt this network to support the culture and needs of your campus.
- Create research projects and online companions for lecture courses
- Learn about the range of OAE's public and privacy settings
- Customize OAE's look and feel, including the welcome screen, drop-down menus, and sign-up pages
- Connect to a local LDAP to work with accounts and authentication
- Install widgets to extend and customize OAE's core functionality
- Integrate OAE with a web server and backend database
- Get a checklist for deploying your custom OAE to production


text:
on july 30, summer hands-on inquiry based learning activity for the "left-behind" children in rural areas co-sponsored by hengtong group and shaanxi lingerjiu public welfare center was officially held at xi'an qujiang polar ocean park in china. 60 children came to qujiang polar ocean park accompanied by volunteers. they enjoy the wonderful ocean world, watch the performance of marine animals, and have a happy day.
this summer public welfare hibl activity is an innovative activity of the hengtong group public welfare project "kanglei plan". it is another theme activity after "pass love small table", "second classroom" and "mental health classroom". it aims to help rural children better integrate into the city and enrich their childhood life by organizing kanglei children walking out of the mountains into enterprises and cities during the annual summer vacation.
"children seldom have the chance to come to the city. it is the first time for them to come to qujiang polar ocean park. by visiting and playing, they have broadens horizons, enriches their knowledge of the ocean and stimulates their enthusiasm for protecting the marine environment" said principal wang.


text:
It's now possible to buy exact replications of Van Gogh paintings from the Van Gogh Museum. How are they produced, and why?
In the news
The 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive has passed into UK law. What impact will it have on the British art market?
A court recently ruled that the ancient site be reconverted into a mosque, casting the fate of its well-preserved mosaics and wall paintings into question


Question: What Does Moi Mean In Dutch?
What does moi mean in text?
Mothers Of InventionInternet Slang, Chat Texting & Subculture (2) Organizations, Education Schools etc.
( 3) Technology, IT etc (4) MOI — Mothers Of Invention..
What Dutch means?
What does TOP mean in Dutch?
More meanings for top. top noun. topje, bovenstuk, hoofd, spits, kruin. summit noun. toppunt, piek, summum, kruin, punt.
Does Moi mean me in French?
moi → me, it's me, speaking.
What does Moi mean medically?
Mechanism of InjuryMechanism of Injury (MOI) Definition.
What language is moi?
NigerianMoimoi or Moin-Moin is a Nigerian steamed bean pudding made from a mixture of washed and peeled black-eyed peas, onions and fresh ground red peppers (usually a combination of bell peppers and chili or Scotch bonnet). It is a protein-rich food that is a staple in Nigeria.
What are the 4 types of behavior?
What is Moi in human behavior?
 Moi is a person's basic identity. …  Most often, we think that human persons are just actors in the whole process of the shaping of selves. MEAD AND VYGOTSKY  For Mead and Vygotsky, the way that human persons develop is with the use of language acquisition and interaction with others.
What does lekker bezig mean?
nice busyLekker Bezig literally translates into English as 'nice busy' and denotes the feeling of accomplishment someone has whilst pursuing a particularly engaging activity.
Is bliksem a swear word?
bliksem – strike, hit, punch; also used as an expression of surprise/emphasis (rude; many consider the word a profanity). It derives from the Dutch word for "lightning", and often occurs in conjunction with donner. Used as a curse in Afrikaans: Jou bliksem!
What causes human Behaviour?
Behavior is also driven, in part, by thoughts and feelings, which provide insight into individual psyche, revealing such things as attitudes and values. Human behavior is shaped by psychological traits, as personality types vary from person to person, producing different actions and behavior.
What does going Dutch mean sexually?
to "go Dutch" or to have a "Dutch treat" is to eat out with each person paying for their own bill, possibly from a stereotype of Dutch frugality.
What are Dutch traits?
Happy people. The Netherlands is ranked fifth in the World Hapiness Report. … Greetings. When Dutch people meet for the first time they shake hands. … Direct approach. Dutch people do not beat around the bush and will often speak their minds. … Punctuality. … Unannounced visit.
What is your name in Dutch?
Basic Dutch PhrasesGood MorningGoedemorgenkhoo-duh-mawr-ghuhWhat's your name? (formal)Hoe heet u?hoo hayt ewWhat's your name? (informal)Hoe heet je?hoo hayt yuhMy name is (I'm called)…Ik heet…ik hayt…I am…Ik ben…ik ben49 more rows
What does Bokkie mean in South Africa?
bokkie – (diminutive of bok, literally meaning "goat" or "doe") a popular term of endearment, comparable to "sweetheart", "honey", etc.
Can you live in the Netherlands without speaking Dutch?
Answer: No, not if you live in a multinational city like Amsterdam. In general, everyone speaks pretty good English so you can get around just fine without knowing a word of Dutch. However, if you're trying to live in the Netherlands, it will be important to learn Dutch so that you can integrate into the culture.
Do Dutch speak English?
Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. English in the Netherlands, according to research, can be spoken by 90% to 93% of the Dutch population. … Dutch's genealogical proximity to English is also noted as a significant factor since both languages are closely related West Germanic languages.
What are the three types of human Behaviour?
What does the word moi mean?
Moi is the French word for 'me'
What lekker means?
– Lekker: An Afrikaans word meaning superb or fantastic which is applied equally to a person, object or event.
Are Dutch and German the same race?
Nederlanders) or the Dutch, are a West Germanic ethnic group and nation native to the Netherlands. They share a common ancestry, culture and speak the Dutch language….Dutch people.NederlandersCanada1,112,000Australia336,000Germany128,000Belgium121,00026 more rows


What is an " Apostille „?
In German inheritance law, the probate court usually asks for documents that have to be provided with an " Apostille „. But: What is an " Apostille „?
Asking for an Apostille means that the document needs to be „legalised", in other words that another, higher authority confirms its authenticity.
How that can be done depends on the state and the authority, in which the document was originally issued.
There is a lot of differences between the legal systems, which is why it can be worth to ask first the probate court what kind of legalization or „Apostille" they need from your special country or the state where the documents stem from (which does not have to be your country).
Prices for legalisation also vary a lot between the different countries, but they cost around 30,- € usually, give or take. But the money you might waste by getting a useless legalization is maybe not even the worst. Even more annoying could be the waste of time – by getting a stamp from somewhere, then sending the documents to the German probate court – and then weeks later getting the information that this paper was not the one they needed.
It is wiser to ask someone competent to give you or get you a reliable answer.
If you need competent advice in English, you can contact us here
Dr. Donat Ebert
Rechtsanwalt – Lawyer
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Community Patrol Groups
Three men facing the mountains and glorious landscape
Local people take an active role in many ZSL projects, patrolling their local forests or seas. We help ensure that these patrol groups have the training, resources and ongoing support they need for success. Community patrols are helping protect tigers and pangolins in Nepal; African elephants, western gorillas and chimpanzees in Cameroon; and endangered seahorses, sharks and rays in the reefs and mangroves of the Philippines.
Why does ZSL support community-based patrol groups?
Conservation can only be sustainable long-term if local communities not only support this, but take a lead role in protecting local wildlife. Local people have immense knowledge of their own environment, with a rich understanding of their landscape, its wildlife, and the threats it faces.
In many countries where ZSL works, local people have legal rights to benefit from resources in or around protected areas, so they have a particular interest in protecting these from illegal use. Some patrol groups aim to protect resources such as forest plants or mushrooms, while others discourage poaching for the illegal wildlife trade. Community patrols typically coordinate with park rangers, so that they can learn from each other, with rangers understanding local needs and perspectives, while reducing risks for local patrols.
ZSL projects often combine community-based patrolling with other mechanisms to benefit local people, such as sustainable livelihoods support and community-managed conservation areas, whether on land or sea.
Tiger in long green grass
We're working for a world where wildlife thrives
With your support we can bring wildlife back from the brink of extinction.
Nepal has strong national legislation that provides mechanisms for people to benefit sustainably from resources in national park buffer zones and Community Forests. These long-standing rights provide an incentive for community patrol groups to ensure that rules are followed and neither residents nor outsiders exploit resources illegally. At ZSL, we partner with Nepali communities that are actively engaged in combatting the illegal wildlife trade. We support community-based anti-poaching patrols that are protecting Nepal's tigers and elephants, pangolins, and gharials.
Tiger in long green grass
The Philippines
Since 1995, we have helped establish 54 community-managed marine protected areas in the Philippines. Community patrols are key to their success, enforcing spatial access restrictions (such as no-take zones), which allow fish and marine invertebrates space to grow and reproduce. Our partner communities recognise the benefits of protecting their areas, and invest in patrols and guardhouses.
The forests of the Dja conservation complex covers almost 2 million hectares, home to elephants, gorillas and chimpanzees. This vast area is targeted by criminal gangs linked to international wildlife trafficking and the bushmeat trade.
Putting indigenous Baka communities at the forefront of patrolling would create unacceptable risks, so instead we support communities to collect information on illegal activities and share this safely with rangers, who are trained and equipped with our support. The communities also monitor enforcement activities to ensure laws are applied fairly, and benefit from investments in sustainable livelihoods.
Photo - A group of trainee guards at the edge of a forest, using hand-held monitoring devices
We are supporting community management of a new local protected area (the Khoid Mogoin gol-Teel), part of our pioneering work to enable communities to take a lead role in recovery of Mongolia's fragile forest-steppe ecosystem. This includes training local herders to patrol the forests and use SMART (Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool) to discourage illegal logging, harvesting of non-timber forest products, and recording of other illegal activities within the protected area.
two rhinos in long green grass
We're working for a world where wildlife thrives


text:
Ph.D. Department of History Temple University
2016 to 2017
Fellow in Residence
Planter's Paradise: Nature and Culture on Hawaiʻi's Sugarcane Plantations
My research focuses on the intersection of industrial agriculture, environmental change, and U.S. expansion in the nineteenth century. In my dissertation, I examine how, over the course of the nineteenth century, the Hawaiian Islands became one of the world's most efficient and productive sugarcane plantation systems, and how sugarcane planting fueled the rise of biological, technological, and cultural exchange networks linking the islands to the outside world. The sugarcane plantation, I argue, was a point where ideas about nature, methods of converting the natural environment into commodities, and dynamic environmental conditions all influenced each other. As cane planting came to dominate Hawaiʻi's environment and economy, it undermined Native Hawaiian sovereignty and increased U.S. power in the islands.


text:
Downloadable (1 PDF - 15 pages)
The Habitat Hunters activity can also be found within the Needs of Plants and Animals - Let's Do Science Bundle. If you are interested in purchasing this activity and more, you can check out the Needs of Plants and Animals bundle here.
During the Habitat Hunters activity, which is ideal for K-1, students will determine the essentials of a suitable habitat for various grassland animals. Probing questions help them to identify the requirements that animals have for the maintenance of life.
By the end of the activity students should be able to:
Additional resources included with the activity plan:


Sign In
Comparing Integration Approaches
The table below summarizes the pros and cons of each approach to integration.
Federated Database
Platform Specific
Extract, Transform, Load
Handles Simple Mappings
Handles Complex Mappings
Complex mappings are master-detail mappings between systems where data elements don't naturally line up
Handles Simple Customs Mappings
Ability to handle mappings other than those that are pre-configured
Handles Complex Custom Mappings
Bi-Directional Sync Capability sometimes seldom
Fully Configurable
Can be modified to meet changing business requirements
Access Live Data usually
Single Database
Makes all data from all systems appear as though it is in single database
SQL Queries Across Non-Database Sources
Uses SQL For Mapping, Transformations, Sync
Uses Proprietary Language For Mapping, Transformations, Sync
Setup & Configuration Easy Very Easy Complex
Federated Integration
A Federated Database is the newest approach to solving long standing integration challenges. Essentially you have a single database (in the cloud) that has federated links to some or all of your other systems. The existing systems in this case can be on-prem applications with underlying databases (e.g. on-prem ERP) or newer cloud based SaaS offerings accessible only via APIs. federated drivers link their respective systems into your federated database. This makes it appear as though all of your data from all of your systems is in one big database. You can issue normal SQL queries to select data and read/write/update data across systems. API programming is eliminated. Synchronization between systems can be live. "Integration" becomes just like moving data around in a single database.
Federated Integration
Federated-based integrations have unlimited configurability, live access to the freshest data, and full support for bi-directional integration.
ETL Integration
Most integrations today still rely on some form of Extract, Transform, Load (ETL). Essentially the data is extracted from one system, transformed in some way, and loaded into another system. This if often performed nightly. There are two primary problems with this approach: synchronization and stale data. The largest challenge is synchronization. If the data is flowing only from system A to system B this is generally not an issue. However, if system B needs to change that data in some way and send those changes back to system A, things can quickly get complicated when you need to prevent one system from overwriting changes made by another system. Bi-directional sync is often avoided in ETL for this reason. The benefit of the ETL approach is that the data mappings are typically customizable and therefore can meet changing business requirements.
ETL-based integrations make you wait for your data and lack support for effective bi-directional integration.
Plugin-Based Integration
Although there are many types of plugins used for integration, plugins typically try to provide semi-live integration and therefore can sometimes overcome the bi-directional sync issues and data freshness issues that plague ETL-based integrations. However, plugin-based integrations typically have very limited configuration options and are often only viable for the simplest of integrations. Businesses looking for an enterprise-class solution generally need more flexibility than a plugin can provide.
Plugin-based integrations have limited configurability and seldom work for anything beyond simple use cases.


text:
Post-mortem MRI may detect cause of sudden cardiac death
From: Cardiology Today
Researchers were able to identify chronic, subacute, acute and peracute MI using post-mortem cardiac MRI on human forensic corpses of patients who experienced sudden cardiac death. The imaging technique, they wrote, may offer a viable alternative to clinical autopsy.
Post-mortem MRI detected at least one ischemic lesion in 76 of the 136 cases. The causes of death in these cases were determined to be cardiac-related in the final forensic case assessment. In these patients, the researchers identified 124 myocardial lesions, 25 of which were chronic, 16 subacute, 30 acute and 53 peracute. Confirmation of chronic, subacute and acute lesions could be made histologically and macroscopically, with 100% agreement between autopsy and post-mortem MRI findings.
The researchers were unable to observe peracute lesions macroscopically on autopsy but were able to verify peracute lesions found on post-mortem MRI in targeted histological evaluations in 62.3% of cases. Peracute lesions could be linked to a matching coronary finding in 84.9% of cases. The remaining 15.1% did not have a matching coronary finding but presented with severe myocardial hypertrophy or cocaine intoxication.
"Post-mortem imaging is a new tool to explore [sudden cardiac death]. As in popular television series, the careful collection and analysis of data from different sources, including clinical information and advanced post-mortem imaging, lead to the identification of the cause of death," André Schmidt, MD, PhD, of the Medical School of Ribeirao Preto, University of São Paulo in Brazil, wrote in an editorial comment. "From an epidemiological point of view, it will probably reduce the number of cases of unknown origin and may contribute to the establishment of a cost-effective diagnostic protocol."
For more information:
Disclosure: This work was supported in part by a grant from Philips AG Healthcare, Zürich, Switzerland. The researchers report that they have no other relevant financial disclosures. Schmidt reports no relevant financial disclosures.
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text:
Did San Luis Obispo produce any goods? Were they well-known for producing anything?
Did San Luis Obispo produce any goods? Were they well-known for producing anything? I'm working on a Mission report and I can't find any literature on
The primary products produced by the missions were cow hides and tallow. The cow hides were also known as Yankee dollars, because they were traded for manufactured goods brought by ships which were mostly from Boston. San Luis Obispo was also famous for being the first mission to make roofing tiles, which the other missions soon copied.
As of 1832, the last year for which records were kept, San Luis Obispo had a herd of 2.500 cattle and 5,432 sheep. San Luis Obispo also had large agricultural fields under cultivation.


Welcome to the Corvette Forums at the Corvette Action Center!
Silicon grease
I read where silicon grease is used to protect and lube your rubber weather seals. Does anyone know if you can buy that locally in auto stores. Also would that be the same as dieletric grease that you use for your spark plug boots. I think that is some type of silicon grease but don't know if its the same.
Thanks Roy
As far as I know, they are all the same thing. Most silicone compounds are practically identical. They are described as grease-like materials usually based on the dispersion of a silica-thickening agent in a dimethyl-silicone fluid. Thank goodness, it is just called silicone grease. They are used as a moisture barrier, surface protectant, dielectric insulator and for specialized release and lubrication. These compounds are not to be used for metal-to-metal load bearing lubrication.
Technically the term "dielectric" describes a property of something, not a type. It is the ability of a substance to resist the transmission of an electrostatic force from one charged body to another. In electronics the term "dielectric constant" is the measure of a materials ability to do this, the lower the value the greater the resistance. The label describes it use, rather than the type of material in the tube. So when you see a tube of "Dielectric Grease" you can be sure it is a tube of silicone compound.
Being water repellent, hydrolytically stable, non-corrosive, chemically inert, odorless, excellent dielectric properties, excellent coating ability (adheres when fluids would drip or spin off), and colorless are features that make them attractive.
You can see why their use in automotive connectors is so common, they stick when somethings will not, they do not corrode things, they repel water, they do not boil, or catch fire until greater than about 600 degrees Fahrenheit and are good insulators. Hope that helps.
Well-known member
Oct 12, 2000
Amarillo, TX
1981 UL5
Yep just what C5Phil said..
Your local parts house, PepBoys, K-Mart, Target and Wal-Mart probably have just what you are looking for in their automotive section..
I use the little tubes silicone that the Substation guys get from G.E. or Westinghouse for gasget material when working on Transformers.. Hey,, remember what C5Phil said..;).. It works great too :gap
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Saturday, December 22, 2012
Candy Cane Craft: Do a Pepermint Stick Experiment!
I recently got a very awesome book in the mail to review: Candy Experiments, by Loralee Levitt. In a word the book is awesome. My kids and I spent an afternoon doing just about every experiment in the book, and they were totally and completely engrossed.
And the side-effect of the experiments that I liked the most was that they used candy. Candy for science instead of for eating.
How perfect is this book so kids will use up at least some of their Halloween candy doing experiments?
One of the easiest and most fun experiments we did was fill a bowl with water and then see what candy floated, and which sunk. You'd be surprised by the results, and I was surprised by how much candy this particular experiment was able to use up as the kids kept asking to try "just one more!" Of course, kids. Of course.
If you want to try your own candy experiments, here's a fun one from the book that uses Candy Canes, Crazy Canes:
Time: 10 to 30 minutes
Skill Level: Get a grown-up
Snap! That's what happens to your candy cane if you try to bend it. Is there a way to bend candy canes without breaking them?
What you need:
Aluminum foil
Baking sheet
Candy cane or straight candy stick
What to do:
1. Preheat the oven to 250°F.
2. Tear off a square of aluminum foil. Fold it in half, then fold again and again to make a rectangular strip about 3 inches wide (wider than the candy cane). Bend this strip into a fun shape, like a zigzag, an S-curve, or a bowl.
3. Place the foil shape on the baking sheet and put the candy cane on the foil shape. Heat in the oven for 5 to 20 minutes. (The melting time will depend on the size of the candy cane.) Check frequently until the candy cane has softened and curved into the shape of the mold.
What's happening:
When you're melting an ice cube, you can see it turn to water. An ice cube is a solid, made from molecules locked together as crystals. When it melts, the molecules break apart. The solid becomes a liquid.
The molecules in a candy cane don't make crystals. Instead, the candy cane contains lots of kinds of molecules jumbled together, like the fruit Life Saver in the Life Savers Melting Race experiment on page 96. When it gets warm, it doesn't turn liquid right away. Instead, it gets softer and softer as the molecules shift around. That's why you can turn a warm candy cane into a crazy cane.
In fact, your candy cane has already been heated and bent. A candy cane is made from a straight candy stick that's bent into a cane shape while it's still warm.
To purchase the book visit
I was not compensated for this post. I did receive a copy of Candy Experiments - and I highly recommend it.
1 comment:
Jessica Watson said...
Oh how cool, I wonder if I can get creative and try to make it shape into the kids initials (this is the part where my crafts go all wrong and become a craft fail).
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text:
This course on managing behaviour and reducing the risk of exclusions is comprised of 4 videos:
Video 1: For Senior Leadership Teams
This presentation will describe the scale of the issue and shows the dramatic rise in both permanent and fixed term exclusions over the last 4 years. It focuses on the main reason for both permanent and fixed term exclusions: Persistent Disruptive Behaviour or PDB. It will outline both the challenges and also the opportunities for meeting the needs of students at risk by posing 3 key questions and supplying 3 key solutions. It will then introduce the SF3R model for behavioural intervention.
Video 2: For Teaching and Support Staff
This is a presentation for both teaching and support staff working with students at risk for both permanent and fixed term exclusion, particularly for PDB. It will demonstrate how the SF3R approach where Structure, Flexibility, Rapport, Relationships and Resilience can be applied in order to meet the learning, behaviour and socialisation needs of students who may be struggling in both the primary and secondary school setting. It will outline a sample of approaches and support strategies to deal with demanding, disruptive and defiant individuals and to de-escalate difficult situations.
Video 3: For Parents and Carers
This presentation will consider how parents can work in partnership with the school in terms of children at risk for fixed and permanent exclusions, particularly for PDB. It will provide some tips for supporting children with behavioural issues at home and will outline effective ways of communication with the school.
Video 4: For School Governors
This presentation will describe the scale of the issue and shows the dramatic rise in both permanent and fixed term exclusions over the last 4 years. It will consider some of the policies and procedures involved in the school exclusion process and will outline how the SF3R approach may well be an option to reduce the rate of exclusions particularly for PDB across the school. In order to balance out the risk, we will describe how resilience can also be an important factor in helping to support students and staff within the school community.
Exclusion is a process that is necessary on some occasions particularly in terms of the health and safety of individuals, damage to property and/or serious infringement of schools rules and procedures. PDB the main term that is used in the exclusion process has no standardized definition that appears to have been agreed upon. It is basically used to cover a spectrum of behaviours, from calling-out in class, annoying/distracting other students and general attention seeking. Permanent exclusions for PDB do not occur as a one-off incident as in other cases such as an assault on a member of staff or issues regarding drugs or weapons but rather as a culmination of a number of days of fixed term exclusions which would need to reach 45 days in any one academic year. Fixed term exclusions are usually between 1 to 5 days therefore for someone to be permanently excluded for PDB they would have multiple fixed term exclusions for PDB. In terms of attitude and policy regarding exclusion in the last 4 years there have been changes with regards to the advised responses to behaviours which fit within the PDB spectrum. This would include Zero tolerance approaches with regards to low level disruption and failure to follow school policies and procedures.
There are as result 3 main principles to be explored here.
- What exactly does the term PDB actually mean?
- Why do schools continue to issue multiple fixed term exclusions for PDB when this approach does not change the outcome and what could be done differently?
- What could be done to help teachers and schools to support students who exhibit PDB characteristics?
The term PDB by its present description of "a spectrum of behaviours, from calling-out in class, annoying/distracting other students and general attention seeking" would appear to fit many of the criteria of the term Attention Deficit Disorder ADHD and associated conditions including Oppositional Defiant Disorder ODD and Conduct Disorder CD. ADHD is a term that describes 3 main traits Impulsivity, Inattention and Hyperactivity and these traits can often lead to distractible, demanding, difficult and disruptive behaviour in a school setting if not identified and supported effectively. As one of the core traits of ADHD is Impulsivity this means that many actions or behaviours are not premeditated. As a result, sanctions would be unlikely to change the outcomes of negative choices made by the individual and this is why a repetitive punitive process such as multiple fixed term exclusions will not alter the outcome. Students with ADHD do respond effectively to the teaching and learning environment that can offer a structured and flexible approach to learning and behaviour.
I believe the following is therefore required:
- To consider whether the issues within the term PDB may in fact be undetected traits of ADHD and overlapping conditions including ODD and CD.
- To consider after the second Fixed term exclusion for PDB that the student excluded would take the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) in order to ascertain whether point 1 was a significant factor
- Staff would thereafter require Training through the SF3R approach on how best to support this child in order to prevent further potential exclusions.
The SF3R approach is behaviour for learning training programme for individuals with ADHD and associated conditions with 5 major components.
- School leadership approach for building the habits for learning, behaviour and socialisation
- To create behaviour policies to reflect the current circumstances and to train the staff first
- Rules, Rituals and Routines for children and young person's being taught and not told
- To focus on Mood and Motivation
- A whole school acceptance and understanding Neurodiversity
- Alternative ways of supporting skills in learning, behaviour and socialisation
- Effective communication with children and young persons
- Practical strategies for dealing with frustration and defiance
- Feedback for students including rewards and consequences
- Developing effective staff to student and peer to peer relationships
- Dealing with bullying behaviour
- Working in Partnership between school and home
- Unleashing the Power of Resilience
- Preparing for Transitions
- Role modelling good practice


text:
Medical Emergency Assessment Form for Fitness Program
It's a good idea to have all participants in your fitness and exercise programs complete this Medical Emergency Assessment Form before taking part.
- The form is especially important for clients who are seriously overweight or who have health issues such as asthma, allergies, or hypertension.
- Each participant provides personal information about their current state of health and medical history.
- Participants must also provide the name and phone number of their physician, persons to contact in case of emergency, and details of their medical insurance coverage.
Once you buy the form, you can download it, personalize it with your logo and contact information, and use it as and when needed.


Take the 2-minute tour ×
I am making a "halo" shader in unity using GLSL. And I've come to a roadblock.
What I need to do is take a texture, like the following, and make it transparent according to the darkness of it. And I don't want a cutout, because that cuts it off at a hard edge.
Default particle
This line of code doesn't seem to work.
gl_FragColor = texture2D( vec4( _MainTex.r, _MainTex.g, _MainTex.b, _MainTex.a), vec2(textureCoordinates));
share|improve this question
1 Answer 1
Normally you store the transparency of a texture in the alpha channel, you can use an external editor like Paint.Net (free) or Photoshop to edit the alpha channels of a picture.
However since you're using shaders there is another trick you can do. A color is totally black if all it's color channels (R/G/B) are 0. It's gray when it's 128/128/128 and white when it's 255/255/255. If you want to determine the blackness you can take the average of the RGB channels, however a picture with bright red but no green or blue will still mean 'pretty black' and will still be 2/3rds transparent. However just try it for fun change your blend shader code to and see how it looks:
float blackness = (_Maintex.r + _Maintex.g + _Maintex.b) / 3.0;
gl_FragColor = texture2D( vec4( _MainTex.r, _MainTex.g, _MainTex.b, blackness), vec2(textureCoordinates));
share|improve this answer
I'd call that luminance or gray level or something, not 'blackness' (it's actually more like 'whiteness', since it's 0 for black and 1 for white). – Nathan Reed Jun 10 '12 at 5:20
Your Answer


Date of Award
Document Type
Degree Name
Doctor of Education (EdD)
Executive Leadership
First Supervisor
Bruce Evan Blaine
Second Supervisor
Irene Scruton
This quantitative study adds to previous research on school leadership effects on school performance. Utilizing existing school level data from Washington D.C. charter schools, this study explores the shift to distributed leadership structures and presence of emerging school-level leadership roles, including academic, behavior, and operational leaders. Then using organizational rosters to create new leadership variables, the study completes controlled multivariate regression modeling to explore the relationships between the presence or absence of these roles with school performance. Overall, the findings show that leadership predictors, despite having intuitive and theoretical links to school performance, had effects of less than 1% on the model's ability to explain the 2019 school performance. This is likely because 75% of the variability was explained by control variables, including the best predictors of school performance—the prior year's performance and reenrollment. Beyond the modeling statistics, the additional exploratory data analysis of tables correlating performance by ward and convergence of titles provide insights that could inform further research, policy, and practice in the charter school sector and in the education-reform movement.
Included in
Education Commons


Definition: Nephropathyenteens is a medical term for kidney disease.Definition: Nephropathy03/16/200508/11/201608/11/201608f9d36c-3aaa-4afb-b654-67ff93b3abf8Nephropathy People who have had diabetes for many years can develop damage to small blood vessels and organs throughout the body. This is more likely to occur if the diabetes has not been well controlled. One organ that is commonly affected is the kidney. Nephropathy is a medical term for kidney disease. The type of kidney disease caused by diabetes is called diabetic nephropathy. NefropatíaLas personas que sufren de diabetes durante muchos años pueden tener problemas en los vasos sanguíneos pequeños y en cualquier órgano del cuerpo. to Know for Teens With Diabetes


Version 1 (modified by James Wheare, 8 years ago) (diff)
A dictionary that keeps its keys in the order in which they're inserted.
insert(index, key, value) Inserts the key, value pair before the item with the given index."
value_for_index(index) Returns the value of the item at the given zero-based index.
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[112nd Congress]
[House Document 111-157]
[Jeffersons Manual of ParliamentaryPractice]
[Page 204]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office, _URL_]
[[Page 204]]
 sec. xxiv--bills, first reading
Sec. 399. Obsolete requirements as to first reading of bills. When a bill is first presented, the Clerk reads it at the table, and hands it to the Speaker, who, rising, states to the House the title of the bill; that this is the first time of reading it; and the question will be, whether it shall be read a second time? then sitting down to give an opening for objections. If none be made, he rises again, and puts the question, whether it shall be read a second time? Hakew., 137, 141. A bill cannot be amended on the first reading, 6 Grey, 286; nor is it usual for it to be opposed then, but it may be done, and rejected. D'Ewes, 335, col. 1; 3 Hats., 198.


text:
.planes = [self.right, self.left, self.bottom, self.top, self.far, self.near]
Note: Do not try to draw these normals in the viewport to compare them to the Maya display of the frustum as you'll see a fairly large discrepancy on the vertical bounds. I am not sure yet whether this is a bug in Maya's draw, or whether it is displaying a different bounds, but the values obtained with this method are accurate and do mark the limits of what is rendered to screen.
Taking the name of the camera we want to build, we get the camera object and determine the total model view matrix we want to compare against. In this case, we're using the inverse transformation matrix of the camera to map our frustum in world space and not just object space. In Maya, there is also a post projection matrix that can be used to alter the final render, and should be taken into account. Remember, the order of matrix multiplication is important.
You should also note that OpenMaya's MFloatMatrix stores it's values in a flat list, meaning we'll need our indices from 0-15.
And finally, the intersection function:
def intersects(self, bbox): limits = [bbox.min, bbox.max] for plane in self.planes: # The corner furthest in normal direction of plane index_x = int(plane.normal.x > 0) index_y = int(plane.normal.y > 0) index_z = int(plane.normal.z > 0) point = OpenMaya.MVector(limits[index_x].x, limits[index_y].y, limits[index_z].z) # If this corner is not in front, none are, bbox is out of view if not plane.is_in_front(point): return False return True
It should be worth noting that a bounding box in maya is by default in object space, and that we would need to convert it to world space to get an accurate result.
In the end, frustum culling boils down to some very simple methods. Of course, there are a lot of ways to expand on this, for example, if you were comparing to oriented bounding boxes (something which is not natively supported in Maya). It would also be worth storing your combined projection matrix so that you could easily check whether any specific vertex was in render view.
I hope this helps someone else out there make a little more sense of how this works, it's certainly not an easy concept to get first try!


Is there a point of Centre of Instantaneous Rotation (CIR) for every type of motion or only for cases of rolling?
 - 2
 $\begingroup$ What do you think, and why? $\endgroup$ – Carl Witthoft Jan 27 '14 at 12:31
 - $\begingroup$ Related post: physics.stackexchange.com/a/88597/392 $\endgroup$ – John Alexiou Jan 27 '14 at 20:35
 - $\begingroup$ In the plane there is a point and in 3D there is a screw axis (see answer below). The point in 2D is where the 3D screw axis intersects the plane of motion. You can get to all the planar relationships from projecting the 3D problem down to a plane. $\endgroup$ – John Alexiou Jan 28 '14 at 15:34
For a 3D rigid body there is always an instantenous screw axis. This consists of a 3D line (with direction) and a pitch. The pitch describes how much parallel translation occurs for each rotation of the rigid body. A pure rotation has zero pitch, whereas a pure translation has an infinite pitch. ( 3D Kinematics Ref. html, University of Pennsylvania Presentation ppt, Screw Theory wiki)
Screw Properties
 1. Given a moving rigid body, a point A located at $\vec{r}_A$ at some instant has linear velocity vector at the same point $\vec{v}_A$ and angular velocity $\vec{\omega}$.
 2. The screw motion axis has direction $$\vec{e} = \frac{\vec{\omega}}{|\vec{\omega}|}$$
 3. The screw motion axis location closest to A is $$\vec{r}_S = \vec{r}_A + \frac{\vec{\omega}\times\vec{v}_A}{|\vec{\omega}|^2}$$
 4. The screw motion pitch is $$h = \frac{\vec{\omega} \cdot \vec{v}_A}{|\vec{\omega}|^2}$$
where $\times$ is the cross product, and $\cdot$ is the dot (scalar) product.
Image point S having a linear velocity $\vec{v}_S$ not necessarily parallel to the rotation axis $\vec{\omega}$. Working backwards (from S to A), the linear velocity of any point A on the rigid body is
$$ \vec{v}_A = \vec{v}_S + \vec\omega \times ( \vec{r}_A-\vec{r}_S) $$
This is used in the screw axis position equation $|\vec{\omega}|^2 (\vec{r}_S-\vec{r}_A) = \vec{\omega} \times \vec{v}_A$ (from above) as
$$ |\vec{\omega}|^2 (\vec{r}_S-\vec{r}_A) = \vec{\omega} \times \vec{v}_S - \vec{\omega} \times \vec\omega \times ( \vec{r}_S-\vec{r}_A)$$ which is expanded using the vector triple product as
$$ |\vec{\omega}|^2 (\vec{r}_S-\vec{r}_A) = \vec{\omega} \times \vec{v}_S - \vec{\omega} (\vec{\omega}\cdot (\vec{r}_S-\vec{r}_A))+ |\vec{\omega}|^2 (\vec{r}_S-\vec{r}_A)$$ $$ \vec{\omega} \times \vec{v}_S = \vec{\omega} (\vec{\omega}\cdot (\vec{r}_S-\vec{r}_A)) =0 $$
since right hand side is always parallel to $\vec{\omega}$ and the left hand side is always perpendicular to $\vec{\omega}$. The only solution to the above is the velocity at the screw axis S to be parallel to the rotation
$$ \vec{v}_S = h \vec{\omega} $$
and the velocity at A becomes
$$ \vec{v}_A = h \vec{\omega} + \vec{\omega} \times (\vec{r}_A-\vec{r}_S) $$
I assume you are talking about a rigid body in motion in a plane.
Consider any two different points on the body, A and B. At any point in time, each one has a velocity vector $\vec{v_A}$ and $\vec{v_B}$ (assuming neither one is, itself, the center).
Consider the line normal to $\vec{v_A}$, call it $n_A$, and likewise $n_B$.
Where these two lines intersect is the instantaneous center. If the two lines are parallel, the motion is pure translation.
If you want to extend it to 3 dimensions, $n_A$ and $n_B$ are planes normal to $\vec{v_A}$ and $\vec{v_B}$. Where they intersect is a line, an "axle" if you like.
 - $\begingroup$ I was confused with why in case of rolling motion the "instantaneous axis of rotation"(IAR) was introduced. Why couldn't we just use axis through the center of mass. Looked for (1) what IAR actually is, (2)should it always be zero (in the case of rolling motion on a surface), and (3)can there exist another such axis rather than the point of contact between the surface and the object for which the answers I were mathematical, so I couldn't get that. Could you help me with that? I didn't post the question separately cause it'd probably be closed as duplicate. $\endgroup$ – suiz Apr 29 '18 at 4:47
 - $\begingroup$ Well, I know what IAR is and based on your answer the third question can be answered; for an object rolling on a surface it is the only instantaneous axis of rotation, and I think for every instant it is at rest. Am I right? $\endgroup$ – suiz Apr 29 '18 at 6:09
 - $\begingroup$ _USER_: I'm not sure I understood your question(s), but the simplest example is a wheel rotating on a roadway. Suppose you take a photograph with very short exposure but not instantaneous. In that short exposure time, every point on the wheel will be seen to be tracing a circular path around the point of rolling contact. Sometimes these things are hard to understand if you haven't yet learned calculus, because in calculus you deal with infinitesimal quantities - quantities that are as small as possible without being zero. $\endgroup$ – Mike Dunlavey Apr 29 '18 at 20:04
Instantaneous rotation axes appear just studying the motion of rigid solid bodies.
Consider a rigid solid body ${\cal B}$ moving in the three space. To study its motion, fix a point $O \in {\cal B}$ and a triple of orthonormal axes ${\bf k}_1$, ${\bf k}_2$, ${\bf k}_3$ at rest with ${\cal B}$ centred at $O$.
We can now describe the motion of ${\cal B}$ with respect to a fixed orthonormal triple of axes ${\bf e}_1$, ${\bf e}_2$, ${\bf e}_3$.
If $P\in {\cal B}$ is a particle of matter of ${\cal B}$ determined by ${\bf x}_P = \sum_{i=1}^3 x_{Pi} {\bf k}_i$, and these components do not change in time just because ${\cal B}$ is a rigid body, its position ${\bf y}_P(t)$ in the space is given by: ${\bf y}_P(t)= {\bf y}_O(t) + {\bf x}_P$ that is, in components: $$y_{Pi}(t) = y_{Oi}(t) + \sum_{j=1}^n R_{ij}(t) x_{Pj}\quad (1)$$
where ${\bf k}_j(t) = \sum_{i=1}^3 R_{ij}(t){\bf e}_i$ and $R(t) \in O(3)$ is a given rotation.
Now consider the $t$-derivative for $t=0$, when ${\bf k}\equiv {\bf e}_i$, of (1). We can fix arbitrarily the instant $t=0$ changing the origin of time so this value does not play any fundamental role and we can re-define the triple of ${\bf e}_i$ in order that ${\bf k}(0)\equiv {\bf e}_i$ is valid for $i=1,2,3$.
$$\frac{dy_{Pi}}{dt}|_{t=0} = \frac{dy_{Oi}}{dt}|_{t=0} + \sum_{j=1}^n \frac{dR_{ij}}{dt}|_{t=0} x_{Pj}\quad (2)\:.$$
This identity can be used to study the first approximation of the motion of the body ${\cal B}$ in a neighbourhood of $t=0$:
$$y_{Pi}(t) = y_{Pi}(0) + \


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Epoch Error Handling, Part 2
Posted by ApochPiQ, 16 September 2011 · 303 views
One excellent comment on the previous entry on Epoch's error handling philosophy observed that the design really looks an awful lot like exceptions, and doesn't do much for the orthogonal separation of the four points of error handling I enumerated at the top of that post.
Let's revisit those points:
 - Propagating error information as failures occur
 - Adjusting control flow in the presence of error circumstances
 - Maintaining certain contractual semantics (this file will get closed, that memory will get freed, etc.)
 - Responding to and possibly recovering from error conditions
In the last post, I introduced guard { } entities and the evacuate() function. Together, these address the first two points. evacuate() takes an optional parameter, which is stored in a special out-of-band register in the VM, and is recovered by the guard { } entity and (optionally) passed to a recovery function.
An obvious question at this point arises: why tie error information with the stack unwinding mechanism of evacuate()? Consider the alternative:
foo : () -> ()
entrypoint : () -> ()
 recovery : (42) -> () { debugwritestring("Error in foo") }
The only real difference is that we need two function calls now: one to assign the out-of-band error information into the magic register, and one to perform stack unrolling.
What does this really gain us? Two things: first, we can now set error information without stack unwinding; and second, we can unwind the stack without propagating error information. This seems like it really gets the orthogonality of the two points being addressed here.
Unfortunately, the wins aren't all that great. We already had the ability to unwind the stack without propagating an error: just call evacuate() and let the nearest guard { } catch it. And if we can set error information without acting on it, all we really have done is create a special global variable, with all the evilness and treachery that that implies.
So in my book, it makes sense to leave these two concerns tightly coupled. Error propagation and stack unwinding make sense together, in my opinion, and they'll probably remain connected in Epoch unless someone has a great argument against doing so.
The other two points on the list, though, are where things get interesting. Let's consider recovery mechanisms first.
Since Epoch allows nested function definitions, and also allows use-before-define code style, it is trivial to organize your error handling any way you deem appropriate. Want a global error handler? Easy! Just pass a global function to guard { }. Want a local error handler that uses a function's internal state to affect how it reacts? Also easy! This was alluded to in the previous post, but is worth looking at again in detail:
entrypoint : () -> ()
 integer(count, 0)
 recovery : () -> ()
 debugwritestring("Succeeded " ; cast(string, count) ; " time(s) before failing!")
In essence, guard { } allows us to totally separate the code which handles errors from the code which might raise errors, in any organizational pattern we like. Since guard { } is intelligent about calling the recovery function (i.e. it supports pattern-matched parameters), we can do all manner of cool things as the situation demands. There is no obligation, as there is with exceptions in most languages, to handle errors right there in a catch() style block.
So what about contract obligations?
This is where things get really neat in my opinion. Consider the two principal mechanisms for upholding contractual obligations in imperative languages with exceptions: RAII (enabled by deterministic destruction), or finally() blocks (necessary in garbage collected environments).
Epoch supports optional garbage collection. So we can't always count on RAII. We also can't always count on finally() blocks because if an object is marked for deterministic destruction, it might have been obliterated by the stack unwinding process.
The solution is to make contracts a first-class language feature. Instead of loosely encoding the notion of "always close this file" or "always release this memory" or whatnot, we allow those concepts to be expressed directly. Moreover, for things like memory management, "release this memory" might simply be deleting a reference in garbage collected mode, or actually doing reference counting and deterministic destruction in manual mode. Think of it like having a smart pointer wrapping every memory allocation in your program, by default.
This is a bit more hazy in terms of syntax potential, which is mostly why I didn't expand on it too much in the previous post. There are a lot of options for how to make this look, and it will take some seriously careful thought to come up with a good approach that'll survive long-term.
I honestly haven't got a clear idea of what to make the code look like for this, but it relates heavily to the object philosophy of the language itself - something which is still heavily in flux and needs a lot more thought before I can unveil it.
Here's a quick teaser, though:
 - Data structures do not directly allow methods to be attached to them
 - "Contracts" tie a data structure instance to a set of invariants, which are upheld by code
 - You don't invoke methods on a contract, you send it a message
 - Message passing is uniform for both contracts and parallel processing, both in syntax and implementation
 - This means you can distribute computations based on contracts without changing your code!
 - Yes, I'm stealing heavily from Erlang.
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Lake Waccamaw offers lessons in history and nature
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At three miles by five miles, Lake Waccamaw covers nearly 9,000 acres. It is what is known as a Carolina bay.
"There are over 500,000 Carolina bay lakes. This is the largest bay lake," said Toby Hall with Lake Waccamaw State Park.
Carolina bays are oval shaped bodies of water that all have similar characteristics.
"You'll notice they all predominantly go the same direction, northwest to southeast," said Hall.
Several theories exist for how the Carolina bays were formed, from meteors to sinkholes. The most popular at this point is the oriented lake theory.
"Ocean waters receded to where they are today. Winds from the north-northeast came in and actually carved out these oval shapes," said Hall.
Most figure they are called Carolina bays because bays are bodies of water. That is a misconception.
"It does get its name from bay vegetation, the three trees that grow typically around Carolina bay lakes," said Hall.
The northern shore of Lake Waccamaw is limestone, which is exposed in several locations. That gives the water an unusual neutral PH and a great deal of biodiversity.
"There's 54 species of fish, 15 species of mussels and clams and 10 species of freshwater snails," said Hall. "They have seven endemic species that live only in Lake Waccamaw."
Because the neutral PH is so critical to the lake's ecosystem, the state park recently created a team of monitors to make certain the water is not becoming too alkaline or acidic.
"That is a very fragile balance in maintaining the water's chemistry out here on Lake Waccamaw," said Hall.
The tea color of the lake is not related to the PH level. It is generated as the four creeks, which feed the lake, pass through decaying vegetation.
There's plenty to learn at Lake Waccamaw State Park from early Native American presence and the discovery of several dugout canoes that are being kept under the surface of the lake to a new display featuring the bones of a baleen whale found in the lake.
"It's been carbon dated to about 2.8 million years ago, which actually shows that, yes this was ocean at one time," said Hall.
Put everything together and it adds up to what many think is a special place.
"This is a gem for North Carolina," said Hall. "The importance of its protection and the continuation for future generations is what we strive for here at the lake."


Monday, February 17, 2014
Kids Read is on Hiatus
Due to staffing level changes, we have to put Kids Read on hiatus. Please enjoy any of our past book discussion questions.
Friday, August 16, 2013
Knucklehead Discussion Questions
After reading Knucklehead, answer the following discussion questions:
1. Do you think that Knucklehead is a good or a bad name for this book? Is knucklehead meant as an insult or a compliment in this book?
2. Jim and John have to share a bedroom. Do you share your bedroom with a sibling? What is good or bad about sharing a room?
3. Jon's mom taught the boys how to cook, read, and make decorations. What have your parents taught you to do?
4. What is your favorite story that Jon told?
5. Do you think that Jon's parents or brothers would tell the same stories? Do you think that the stories would still be funny?
6. These are all true stories of Jon's life growing up in the 1950's. Do you think that that he would have done the same types of things in the 2010's?
7. If you were writing a memoir (or autobiography) of your life right now, what kind of stories would you tell?
The Cricket in Time Square Discussion Questions
After reading The Cricket in Times Square, answer the following discussion questions:
1. How does Mario find Chester? What does Mario do when he finds Chester?
2. What is Chester's special talent?
3. Why does Mama Bellini change her mind about Chester?
4 Why does Chester decide to retire? Which is more important to you-being famous or being happy?
5. What do you think will happen to the Bellinis when Chester leaves?
6. Do you think that the characters are happier at the end of the story than they were in the beginning?
7. Who is your favorite character? Why?
For more adventures of Chester Cricket, check out:
2. Tucker's Countryside
3. Harry Cat's Pet Puppy
4. Chester Cricket's Pigeon Ride
5. Chester Cricket's New Home
6. Harry Kitten and Tucker Mouse
7. The Old Meadow
Poppy and Rye Discussion Questions
After you have read Poppy and Rye, answer the following discussion questions:
1. Clover has 63 children. Would you like that many brothers and sisters? Why would this be good or bad?
2. How are Ragweed and his brother, Rye, different? Alike? Do you have a brother or sister? Are you alike or different?
3. How does Thistle describe Rye? Do you think this is true? How would your family describe you?
4. The motto of the beavers is "Progress Without Pain". Do you think that this is true in the story? What about in real life?
If you would like to read the rest of the series, try:
1. Ragweed
2. Poppy
3. Ereth's Birthday
4. Poppy's Return
5. Poppy and Ereth
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Summer 2013 Titles
This summer we're pulling out the stops. Pick any title that we have done in the past, read it, and answer the questions. Questions can be answered online or be emailed to "kidsread at".
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Smile Discussion Questions
After you have read Smile by Raina Telgemeier, answer the following discussion questions:
1. Smile is shelved in our junior graphic novel area, which means that it uses pictures to help tell the story. Would this book have been better or worse without the pictures?
2. Do you think that this story takes place in 2013? What are some clues that tells you when Smile takes place? (For example, no cell phones.)
3. How do you feel about Raina's friends? What would you do if your friends treated you this way?
4. Raina is disappointed with how her teeth look when her braces are removed. Why does she think she looks weird? How do her new friends react? What would her old friends have said?
5. Why do you think that Raina Telgemeier called this book Smile?
If you liked Smile, check out Drama, also by Raina Telgemeier.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
A World Without Heroes Discussion Questions
After you have read A World Without Heroes, answer the following discussion questions:
1. A World Without Heroes is a fantasy. Fantasy stories are those created with imagination. Can you give any evidence to support that this is a fantasy book?
2. There are a lot of unique names in the book, such as Maldor, Galloran, and Tark. Do you think that the names help create the character (good or bad)?
3. What is a hero? Jason has a big decision in that he desires to go home, but can also sacrifice everything and become a hero for Lyrian. Which would you choose?
2. Seeds of Rebellion
3. Chasing the Prophecy


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Kids have their own transportation needs. Sure, they can use a bicycle or Big Wheel to get around the neighborhood, but what if there are items that need to be carried along? Ever try to haul a bunch of toys, a pile of dirt, or your beloved pet on a bike? Chances are, they might not arrive intact at your destination. That is, until the advent of a small red wagon known the world over as a Radio Flyer. Versatile, practically indestructible, these metal workhorses have hauled tons of kid-friendly cargo for almost a century, and show no signs of slowing.
Our story begins with an Italian immigrant named Antonio Pasin, whose passion was handcrafting wooden wagons. He named his creations "Liberty Coasters" (after the famous statue in NY Harbor) and, by 1923, he took a cue from the blossoming auto industry, switched to steel, and began mass-producing his wagons for children all across America. One particular version, Model #18, became forever known as the Radio Flyer (an homage to the inventor's fondness for radio and aviation) and was heavily advertised at the 1933 World's Fair in Chicago, via a 45-foot tall statue of a kid sitting in one of his wagons. From that point, seemingly every kid that saw one was quick to add it to his or her Christmas wish list.
A perfect accompaniment to any child with a paper route, Radio Flyers were sturdy enough to transport pets, toys, even other children. Other models would follow over the years, including the Zep and the Streak-O-Lite (complete with working headlights). For larger loads, one might even consider the Radio Rancher (introduced in the 50s), which sported higher side rails for more secure hauling. In the 70s, perhaps the snazziest of the bunch was offered, the Fireball 2001. The dragster of the wagon family, it came with a roll bar, mag wheels and nifty paint job. Today, while the traditional metal versions are still available, Radio Flyer also offers a line of rugged plastic wagons, as well as sports utility wagons, complete with shock absorbers.
Immortalized in its own 1992 film (of the same name), the Radio Flyer is firmly entrenched in our collective childhood. If you didn't have one, you probably knew someone that did, and you were a little envious. It's been that way for almost a century now, and the Radio Flyer shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
If your childhood included tugging a Radio Flyer around the neighborhood, we do hope you'll take a moment and share your memories in our comments section, as we tip our hats to a true toy classic.


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About the Project
This project seeks to improve the resiliency of coastal communities by better understanding the trade-offs in single family residential (SFR) building design that is preferred for reduction of flood hazard exposure (via elevation) but, simultaneously, increasing exposure to wind-related hazards. Because flooding caused so much damage during Sandy, the adaptive response has been to change zoning regulations and building codes to require, in certain locations, elevation of single-family homes above new higher flood levels. For example, in Fairfield where flooding damaged thousands of homes, 48 single-family residences are now elevated with additional SFR elevations already in the planning stages. While elevating homes minimizes flood risk, these newly elevated homes may now be at greater risk from exposure to damaging winds.
Complicating wind hazard exposures in Connecticut and other New England regions are SFR building designs which tend to be multiple stories high (e.g., typical colonial) with steeply sloping roofs. These typical design elements exacerbate the potential risk from wind damage because building height and roof slope increase wind loads. And, while existing SFR homes must be elevated, no wind retrofit design elements are required to be installed during the elevation process. The question coastal communities' must consider is, do SFR elevation requirements without consideration of additional wind load exposure make their community more (or less) resilient? This project's goal is to help coastal communities answer this question by exploring the tradeoffs between flood and wind risks.
To evaluate these trade-offs, damage assessment methodologies for coastal communities under wind and flood hazards will be built and applied to real-world residential buildings in Fairfield and Milford. Deliverables include design parameters for new and retrofit SFR, such as recommended elevation height of low rise buildings to avoid flood hazard, building type or roof type and slope and educational materials on wind/flood hazard and recommendations to improve coastal community resiliency.
Resilient Coastal Communities Under Wind and Flood Hazards Report
Connecticut Sea Grant Research Awards
Funding for this project is provided by the NOAA Regional Coastal Resilience Grants under the NOAA Office for Coastal Management.
- Wei Zhang, UConn Civil & Environmental Engineering (Project Lead)
- Christine Kirchhoff, UConn Civil & Environmental Engineering
- Juliana Barrett, CT Sea Grant, Extension
This project is a part of the following topical areas: