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The key challenge for REPAiR is to integrate models and methods from, among others, the environmental sciences, geographic sciences and economic sciences with design and spatial planning methods, both on a software and process level.
The integrated models and methods will enable local and regional stakeholders to use the geodesign decision support environment (GDSE) within a workshop setting to develop fast and reliable alternatives for spatial sustainable development strategies. The main objective of REPAiR is to demonstrate the feasibility and validity of the GDSE as a tool for enhancing waste and resource management. To successfully develop, test and implement the GDSE, the following project objectives have been defined:
- To provide decision-makers with comparative assessments of different integrated spatial resource management strategies (WP2, WP6) by combining forecasting methods (WP4), strategy conceptualisations (WP5) and an integrated assessment of economic, environmental and social sustainability in a collaborative decision support environment (WP4).
- To develop an understanding of the characteristics, mechanisms and dynamics of European resource management systems by analysing the relations between waste flows, environmental and spatial quality, allocation and governance in six peri-urban areas using life cycle thinking (WP3).
- To better interpret the link between metabolic flows and urban processes, by extending the assessment of urban metabolism to include urban driver concepts and urban patterns, as well as environmental and spatial quality, and co-benefits (WP3, WP4).
- To improve the knowledge and reliability of waste related data by reversed material flow accounting (WP3).
- To implement living labs in peri-urban areas across Europe in order to develop, test, implement and assess place-specific eco-innovative solutions for resource management to improve environmental and spatial quality and quality of life (WP2, WP5).
- To understand decision making structures and processes in the case study areas with regard to interests and priorities of different stakeholders in order to add transparency to the decision making process (WP6).
- To develop a framework for transferring (a) the key modules of the GDSE itself; and, (b) the solutions and change models that it will produce across differentiated peri-urban areas (WP7).
- To disseminate and ensure the further uptake of the project's insights on aspects of resource management and GDSE development by including local and regional planning authorities, NGOs, public and private waste management companies, and future urban planners in the project. Moreover, open dissemination of insights, tools and technologies is provided across Europe, establishing the foundation for knowledge-based consultancy services that support local implementation of policies and spatial investments aimed at developing a circular economy (WP8, WP2).
The REPAiR consortium consists of a good balance of partners from the case areas. The REPAiR consortium members can rely on their expertise in waste and resource management, spatial decision support, territorial governance, spatial planning and urban design. Moreover, the members have profound knowledge of the six case study areas. This allows us to develop a GDSE that is scientifically sound, apt for local decision makers and adaptable enough to be used in different locations. Together with the members of the user board, the entire REPAiR team comprises a complete range of representatives of the major stakeholders in all the metropolitan regions involved. The REPAiR user board includes key stakeholders for the development of a circular economy like planning authorities and public/private organisations involved in the strategic environmental assessment, and NGOs and industrial actors in waste and resource management.


EU Says No to Gene Engineered
Fish & Animals
GM fish farming 'too risky'
16:48 03 September 02
Andy Coghlan news service
Genetically-modified fish should not be farmed in pens set in rivers or the
sea, say top scientific advisers to the UK government.
The fish might escape into the environment with unforeseeable consequences,
warns the Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission in a new
report on cloned and GM animals.
"Once the fish has escaped, there's virtually nothing that can be done to
recall it," says commission chairman, Malcolm Grant. He says the
commission's report is aimed at pre-empting in GM animals the public
relations disaster that has effectively killed off Europe's interest in GM
"Genetic biotechnology has opened a new chapter in the relationship between
man and animals," says Grant. "We must therefore prepare now for
developments that may be many years away."
"Objectionable changes"
He estimates that food from elite GM animals will not be available for a
decade, but GM fish could be with us in half that time.
Aqua Bounty Farms, a Massachusetts company developing GM salmon on Prince
Edward Island, is awaiting a licence to sell the fish in the US. "On the
current state of play, we think it's better to say no now," says commission
member Anna Bradley on the issue of offshore and river-based GM fish farms.
The report also says that the law should be changed to "protect" animals
from "some potential fundamentally objectionable changes to their natures"
These might include, for example, altering domestic cats so that they no
longer want to hunt.
Another example might be the production of farm animals with abnormally low
sentience "to increase those animals' ability to withstand a stressful
management regime".
Pet cloning
And the report backs an earlier decision by the government's Animal
Procedures Committee - which regulates animal experiments - not to grant
licences for "trivial objectives, such as the creation or duplication of
favourite pets, or of animals intended as toys".
Grant argues that pet cloning is "trivial, distasteful and could be sold to
gullible owners".
To keep a watch on developments and advise government when to introduce new
regulations on GM and cloned animals, a new "strategic advisory body" should
be created, says the commission.
Serious implications
Ethicists and medical and veterinary scientist generally welcomed the
report. The prominent reproductive scientist Lord Robert Winston says the
recommendations on farmed animals and fish are sensible and appropriate.
"But it really is vital that regulation does not become more restrictive for
GM animals for medical research," he says. "In the US where animal care is
just as compassionate and properly conducted but where it takes a few weeks
to get approval for work rather than a year."
Winston fears a strategic advisory body could delay the licensing machinery
even more, which would have "the most serious implications for British


text:
"Spanish Instructive Planner" and "A Primer for Spanish Language,Culture and Economics" are informative guides that help non-Spanish speaking individuals grasp, manage, and communicate in Spanish.In particular they contain relevant instruction to help those who travel to Latin America, or simply wish to learn more about the language and culture.
The books are easy to read and practical for travelers to carry while on the go. In developing countries where cell phone signals and computers are not always available and reliable,. readers find these books handy and useful.
Both books describe Latin American relations with the United States and the economic trade statics over the last 10 years.Precise summaries of economic information and other relevant facts for business and travel, along with photos of main touristic attractions are present for 14 Latin American countries in Spanish Instructive Planner and for 22 countries in A Primer for Spanish Language,Culture and Economics. After each country description, there is a Spanish lesson covering simple and useful phrases to know, including blank lined pages to jot down key notes or thoughts from the chapter.
Both books also offer general cultural information organized by country, including popular food dishes, currency, politics, cities, religion, how to ask for help, resolving problems, shopping tips, restaurant tips, measurements, greetings, etc.
All this information is combined in a small, practical and easy to carry book.
WHY ARE THE BOOKS SPECIALS?:
What makes Spanish Instructive Planner and A Primer for Spanish Language, Culture and Economics unique is the expertise of the author, Maria Lucila Ortiz, who moved to the United States from Argentina 15 years ago and continues to travel to and from the region. She holds a degree in International Relations from the Universidad Católica de Córdoba, Argentina. She is a successful business planning professional with a proven record of success in a variety of businesses, including publishing and e-commerce in Latin America. These Spanish reference guides are the result of her experience and market analysis needs to help business professionals, travelers and anyone that has the desire to learn Spanish language and culture.

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


Were most cave painters women? Their hand prints say yes.
Cave paintings around the world often include hand stencils, impressions left by blowing paint around a hand. A new study measured those hands and concludes that 75 percent of hand prints in Spain and France show women's hands, not the hands of men or boys as has long been assumed.
By, Correspondent
 - close
 Male and female hands are different both in size and in the ratio between the fingers. These differences enabled Dean Snow of Penn State to examine hand stencils in cave paintings (the outline impression of a hand left by blown paint) and determine that most of the measurable hand prints came from women, not men or boys.
 View Caption
Look at your hands. Is your ring finger longer than your index finger? And is your pinkie finger almost as long as your ring finger? If you answered yes to both questions, you're probably a man. (That or you're a woman with "man hands.")
The role of finger ratios to sex has been known for years, but a new study has taken that conclusion and pushed it in an unexpected direction: underground. Specifically, into caves that were painted about 30,000 years ago.
Ancient humans made hand prints or hand stencils on every inhabited continent in the world, but these cave paintings have always been attributed to men, because they're often associated with paintings of the creatures that early humans hunted, and probably for other reasons related to latent sexism. Smaller hands were attributed to young men or boys.
Recommended: Are you scientifically literate? Take our quiz
"When I first became aware of the digit ratio measure, by reading John Manning's book," says Dean Snow, an emeritus anthropology professor at Pennsylvania State University, "I walked over to the shelf and pulled off a book that's been sitting there for 40 years. I opened the flyleaf and there was a hand stencil from the cave at Pech-Merle, which I ended up using in my work. If John were anywhere near right, that was a woman's hand. It was not masculine at all. And so I thought, 'Wow, there were women down there! At least one. I wonder how many more there were?'"
Because physical traits differ with geography, Dr. Snow limited his study to caves in northern Europe. He also gathered hand measurements from over a hundred students of northern-European ethnicity, to create a modern benchmark. He found that hands fall along a continuum, from very dainty, feminine hands to very masculine hands, with a big grey area in between. He eventually developed a two-step process to predict sex just based on hand prints.
First, measure the lengths of the fingers and palm, and put the numbers into a formula Snow developed. That sorted modern hands into male and female with about 80 percent accuracy. But adolescent males, whose hands haven't reached full size, too often got lumped in with women, so Snow added a second step: look at the ratios between the fingers.
For women, the index and ring finger are often the same length, though occasionally the pointer is longer. For men, the ring finger is often noticeably longer. Then compare the pinkie to the others. In most males, young or old, the pinkie is nearly as long as the ring finger, extending up past the ring finger's highest knuckle. In women, the pinkie can be a good inch or so shorter than the ring finger.
The second step alone could distinguish young men from women with 60 percent accuracy, which Snow acknowledges is more ambiguous than he'd like. But then he found something even more surprising: the overlap between male and female hands is a modern problem.
Back in the Upper Paleolithic, physical differences between males and females – what scientists call "sexual dimorphism" – was more pronounced than it is today.
"If you scale all hands in a modern sample on a single scale, they scale from very, very feminine to very, very, masculine, and there's a great deal of overlap in the middle," Snow explains, "but when I plotted the cases from the caves against the modern distribution of several hundred individuals, the cave specimens all came out at the very ends – and in some cases beyond the ends – of the modern range of differences between males and females."
Snow visited 11 cave regions across France and Spain, focusing on caves famous for their numerous hand stencils. Unfortunately for anthropologists, blowing paint around a hand doesn't always leave a precise print of the hand, plus thirty or forty thousand years of erosion have damaged most of the samples. Of the hundreds of hand prints he examined, Snow was able to take precise, reproducible measurements of just 32, including five from Pech-Merle, the site whose photograph had launched his study.
"Now, 32 doesn't sound like a very big sample," Snow acknowledges, "but it's actually pretty big compared to the sample sizes archaeologists are often dealing with." Plus, traveling around Europe isn't always cheap: "It was as many as I could get with the amount of funding I had."
So what did he find? Only 10 percent of the hand prints on cave walls in Spain and France were left by men, and another 15 percent came from adolescent males. Fully 75 percent of the hand prints on cave walls were female.
Traditional explanations for the hand prints have focused on hunting or perhaps shamanism, but the prevalence of women's hands has reopened the question of what they mean. One researcher has suggested that these could relate to midwifery or fertility, either of humans or the animals drawn on the cave walls. But it could be that women were more involved in hunting and religious rituals than previously thought.
Snow is less captivated by the "interesting but still speculative ideas about what it might all mean," instead focusing on the groundbreaking recent discovery that cave paintings can be given surprisingly precise ages
"Are these hand stencils the same age as the animals they surround, or not? Are all the hand stencils from one part of the upper Paleolithic, or are they distributed across the whole time range? We don't know – yet."
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This paper discusses a quantitative method for the study of historical keyboard tunings that is based on a measure of the perceived dissonance of the intervals in a tuning and their frequency of occurrence in the compositions of Domenico Scarlatti (_PHONE_). We conclude that the total dissonance of a large volume of music is a useful tool for the studies of keyboard instrument tuning in a historical context, although it is insufficient by itself. Its use provides significant evidence that Scarlatti used French tunings of his period during the composition of his sonatas. Use of total dissonance to optimize a 12-tone tuning for a historical body of music can produce musically valuable results, but must at present be tempered with musical judgment, in particular to prevent overspecialization of the intervals.
This study of possible scales used by Domenico Scarlatti first appeared in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, in April 1997, and some of the ideas are further developed in Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale,. John has made MIDI recordings of all 500+ of Scarlatti's sonatas, and has generously placed them in downloadable form here.
To get to my homepage, click here.

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


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Basking shark feeding. Image copyright SNH - Paul Naylor.
University scientists to reveal the secret life of sharks
University of Exeter scientists are part of a team investigating the movements of large sharks visiting Scottish waters.
The ambitious project begins in Hebridean seas off the West coast of Scotland on 13 July.
Marine biologists from the University of Exeter and Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) will attach satellite tracking tags to 20 basking sharks in the seas around the Inner Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland. Once fitted, the tags will allow people to track the movements of the sharks on the SNH website in close-to-real time.
The tags will provide information on the location and behaviour of the sharks during the summer when they can be seen feeding in large numbers at the surface. They will also track the sharks for several months afterwards, helping scientists understand if the sharks travel to deeper water around Scotland and further afield over the winter.
The tagging work will take place in the waters around Coll and Tiree, and the small island of Hyskeir, near Canna. Research has shown these areas are hotspots for basking sharks, with consistently large numbers sighted there during the summer months. Even though basking sharks are seen in many places round Scotland, displays of social and courtship behaviour, such as breaching and following each other nose-to-tail, have only been observed in these areas, suggesting they are important for key stages in the life cycle of the sharks.
Dr Matthew Witt of the University of Exeter's Environment and Sustainability Institute at the Cornwall Campus said: "Although they have captured the public imagination, we actually know relatively little about how basking sharks live. This is a fantastic opportunity for us to find out more about the movements and lifestyles of these fascinating creatures.
"This project will use some of the newest animal tracking technology available for marine species that allows us to know where the sharks are with near GPS accuracy. This is a hugely challenging project – not least because we are at the mercy of the weather and sea conditions – but the results will prove invaluable in our quest to uncover the secrets of these giants of the sea and help to protect them."
Professor Brendan Godley of the University of Exeter's Centre for Ecology and Conservation at the Cornwall Campus said: "The University of Exeter has played a leading role in the international effort to gain insights into the migrations of marine animals, using satellite tracking. This work on sea turtles, manta rays and now basking sharks is greatly informing conservation.
"This latest project is a great example of how we are working with agencies all over the world to discover more about the amazing marine life that inhabits our oceans. In particular, it complements our ongoing research related to the potential positive and negative effects of marine renewable energy on biodiversity."
Dr Suz Henderson from SNH, who is managing the basking shark tagging project said: "We're really lucky to have the world's second largest fish visit our waters every summer but we know very little about their movements throughout the rest of the year. We want to know how the sharks use the waters between Skye and Mull and how long they remain in the area. We'd also like to find out how important this area is in the life cycle of the sharks, and if some areas are used more than others. The results from this project will help to answer these questions.
"In addition an area between Skye and Mull has recently been identified as a place where it might be appropriate to develop a marine protected area (MPA) to protect basking sharks. The tagging work will help determine if an MPA is an appropriate way to safeguard these magnificent animals."
The tags, which are attached to the sharks using titanium darts and darting poles, will record information on the movement of the sharks, including depth and water temperature. The tags will detach from the sharks after several months.
"The tags might be washed up on beaches after being released from the sharks and if we are able to retrieve them they will provide us with additional information" added Suz. "We'll be asking the public to keep an eye open for them and help us recover as many as we can."
The area where the study is being undertaken overlaps with an offshore wind farm proposal west of Tiree, known as the Argyll Array. The tagging project will provide information about the use of this area by the sharks, giving additional confidence to the advice which SNH provides to Marine Scotland as the development goes through the licensing process.
To track the basking sharks online, after they are tagged, go here.
Date: 13 July 2012


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How to Light Your Jack-o'-Lantern the Arduino Way
- 7:00 AM
This week I will outline a project for Halloween that uses the Arduino and a light to create a glowing effect inside a pumpkin. I use artificial pumpkins for projects like this so I can reuse them in following years. That's not a requirement, though: if you plan on using a real pumpkin, you can build this early and then add the light to the pumpkin once it is carved.
The effect we are going to use is called Pulse Width Modulation, or PWM. Pulse Width Modulation takes advantage of the averaging effect when you switch the power on and off quickly to a direct current (DC) load. For instance, if I create a square wave that is 5 volts high and I keep it on for 10ms and off for 10ms, the DC voltage measured will be 2.5 volts. Duty cycle is measured as a percentage of on time divided by the on time plus the off time. Just think of it as how much time the circuit is on: a 50 percent duty cycle means the the pulse is on for 50 percent of the time, a 25 percent duty means it is on for half that time. The lower the duty cycle, the lower the average DC voltage. This translates into dimming and brightening of the light bulb.
If you want to try this out using a resistor and an LED, here is a simple Arduino UNO Sketch that will dim and brighten the LED in this circuit.
void setup ()
void loop ()
for (int i = 0; i <= 255; i++)
for (int i = 255; i >= 0; i--)
The code introduces two new concepts. The first is a for loop; this is a common construct in programming and you will find lots of uses for it. The simple explanation is you use a variable, change its value, use it again, then change its value again. This goes on until the variable reaches a certain value, at which point you stop using it and move on. The first for loop in the code above is for (int i = 0; i <= 255; i++). The variable is i, the number we are testing for is 255, and we are incrementing i every time we use it.
How are we using it? The statement analogWrite (3,i); is how PWM is implemented in the Arduino. Pin 3 will output a square wave with a certain duty cycle. A value of 0 means a duty cycle of 0%, or completely off. A value of 255 is a duty cycle of 100% or full on. The values in between give different intensity and that gives the effect of the light brightening.
The last thing to address is for (int i = 255; i >= 0; i–) — this is the same as the first for loop except for one difference. In this case i starts at 255 and is decremented to 0; this will dim the light. Play around with the code by using different starting and end values for i.
I have to say for this kind of lighting I prefer incandescent bulbs; they give a warmer glow to the pumpkin. The code doesn't change, of course, but the circuit does. To use an incandescent bulb you need to use the circuit below, which was introduced a few weeks ago in a previous post.
So grab a pumpkin and get carving, and while you're at it carve a few extras for next week's project, where we will be adding pumpkins and a little bit of randomness.


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Sea turtle conservation in French Guiana
Located within the unique Amazon ecosystems of French Guiana is Awala-Yalimapo beach, the most important nesting site for endangered Leatherback turtles and an essential habitat for Green and Olive Ridley turtles. An evaluation of the recovery plan for these turtles has recently been conducted to assess its effectiveness and to account for the progress that has been made since its implementation over the last five years.
Although the complete results of the evaluation are still pending, it is clear that the combined efforts of multiple actors including police services, local authorities, fisheries organizations and above all, NGOs have successfully stimulated conservation in the region for decades.
Until now, the Plan has been utilized for land areas within French Guiana's national borders. The assessment is expected to identify the potential to extend these efforts beyond current land boundaries to the sea and enhance overall regional and transboundary cooperation on a wider scale. The Plan could have many positive effects on neighbouring countries by creating synergies between social challenges and the survival of marine turtles, setting the stage for sustainable fishing and creating green jobs for residents.
More than three million Euros have been raised to support the next five years of the Plan, which will enable actors to meet their goals of reducing some of the most urgent threats to marine turtles including by-catch from local fisheries, feral dog attacks on eggs and nesters and illegal harvesting of eggs.
The French Guiana Sea Turtle Recovery Plan 2007 - 2012 was initiated by the French Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development, Transport and Housing (MEDDTL), coordinated by WWF, an IUCN Member along with the French National Hunting and Wild Life Agency (ONCFS) under the supervision of the Regional environmental authority (DIREN). This Plan is the result of significant documentary research and action by players in the sustainable development field and is the first recovery plan to target marine species in a French overseas territory.
French Guiana, the French overseas territory in the Amazon, is home to unparalleled biodiversity. It hosts primary tropical forests, mangroves, savannahs and several types of wetlands which are some of the richest and most fragile ecosystems on the planet.


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A TYPICAL DAY AT JR. K
Each day we have recitation, calendar, bible, and phonics first thing in the morning. Students then have P.E. for 30 minutes. We have show and tell, letter-of-the-week crafts, and math before lunch. We eat lunch together. In the afternoons, we have a theme for the month and an author or artist study for which we read books, draw in our narration journals, make crafts, write stories, and create artwork. Students also have recess and rest time every day.
Jr. Kindergarten at LLS is more than a preschool. We teach the following subjects and skills in our program:
LLS Jr. K serves families and children who will turn five during the school year or who potentially could go to Kindergarten but need an extra year to mature.
Students should be four years of age by August 1 of the calendar year attending. If the birthday is later than May 31st, the student can be tested and accepted on an individual basis.


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Date: December 2009
Creator: Myers, Joyce Eady
Description: The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which faith-based preschools promote spiritual development in preschoolers. The participants in the study were faith-based early childhood teachers and administrators from seven states. Early childhood professionals representing 11 Christian faith traditions completed written surveys or online surveys. A total of 201 faith-based educators completed the survey; 20 respondents participated in semi-structured interviews. The concurrent triangulation mixed-method design provided data on 8 program dimensions which support children's spiritual development: prayer, Bible literacy, worship, building character, service opportunities, assessment, parental involvement and context. I analyzed quantitative data using descriptive and inferential statistics. All items were examined using mean, standard deviation, frequency, and percentages. Qualitative data gathered from semi-structured interviews were coded and analyzed using NVivo8® qualitative analysis software (QSR International, Inc., Cambridge, MA, _URL_). From this data I identified the extent to which faith-based preschool programs support children's spiritual development through the practices of prayer, Bible literacy, worship, building character, service opportunities, assessment, parental involvement and context. Data analyses revealed statistically significant differences in faith-based teachers' hours of training in children's spiritual development across all program practice dimensions. A key finding of the study was that training in children's spiritual development...
Contributing Partner: UNT Libraries


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Strategies for getting your code committed
A key goal of GSoC is to produce useful code that is integrated into the code base of your community. Every organization has different standards for code submissions, but there are some general rules you can follow that will help make your code easier to integrate:
- Follow the documentation guidelines. Some organizations have a policy that code must have some documentation before it can be committed.
- Make sure the tests pass! You have tests, right?
- Include lots of useful comments in your code. Comments make people happy.
- Tests are sensitive to the versions of software, operating system and libraries you are using. It is a good idea to run your tests on a few of the most commonly used versions of libraries or prerequisites, if possible.
- Document exactly what kind of environment you wrote the code in, and whether certain things may be dependent on your operating system or platform. For example: "This patch was tested on Linux x86 and OS X Intel, but may have some issues with FreeBSD"
- Read through recent commits to the repository that you would like your code to be in. You will often learn about something relevant to your code, such as a macro that makes your life easier or a special trick for avoiding bugs.
- Commit often. You can always maintain a local branch of the code to which you keep committing regularly. This keeps you from losing work; it also gives you something concrete to show your mentor and get feedback on.
- Take the feedback on your code positively. Appreciate the comments and suggestions you receive and use them for your next commit. It certainly helps you write better code and grow as a developer.
There's something really satisfying and fulfilling about getting your code accepted and seeing it used by many others. Getting your code submitted is your first step towards achieving that accomplishment! More importantly, it helps you in honing your skills as a great developer and contributor.
Pro Tip: You can also ask other students to review your code for you and give you feedback. Use other students in your community and the GSoC program as a resource.


July 01, 2005
Table of Contents
July 01, 2005
 House takes up voluntary country-of-origin bill - July 1, 2005
posted June 15, 2005
House Agriculture Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia and 42 co-sponsors in May introduced bipartisan legislation for a voluntary country-of-origin labeling program for beef, pork, and lamb sold in the United States.
The Meat Promotion Act (H.R. 2068)—V-COOL, for short—would replace mandatory country-of-origin labeling for meat and is scheduled to take effect in September 2006.
Goodlatte said VCOOL would allow producers to work with processors and retailers to provide labeling information to help them market their product. This approach benefits both consumers and producers, the chairman added, and is preferable to the mandatory program, which is more likely to harm those it's meant to help.
If passed, the act will allow retailers to label beef, pork, and lamb as U.S. products only if they are derived exclusively from animals born, raised, and slaughtered in the United States.
Participants would have to keep records the Department of Agriculture could inspect to verify program compliance. Violators, including anyone labeling meat from animals that have not been born, raised, and slaughtered in America as having U.S. country-of-origin status, would be subject to a civil penalty of up to $10,000.
In addition, the USDA would create a unique label for retailers to designate country of origin.
The American Meat Institute, National Cattlemen's Beef Association, National Meat Association, and National Pork Producers Council support the V-COOL proposal.


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If global warming will continue to gain momentum, the first living creatures who will disappear him from the face of the Earth, will become lizards. According to the American scientists from Clemson University, to climate change cold-blooded reptiles to adapt will not.
According to scientists, the more hot it will become in the habitats of lizards, the harder it is for these animals to maintain optimum body temperature. When reptiles will "overheat", they will need to look for a shadow, and the more similar will happen, the more time and effort the lizards have to spend on this quest.
Specialists conducted a series of experiments involving animals, and also built a computer model that allows to understand how the lizards will affect climate change.
In the study, specialists found out that the most comfortable lizards feel only the territories covered with many small shadows (e.g. from grass), but not where there is a large "solid" shading (e.g. from trees). According to scientists, climate change will affect the vegetation and its distribution in such a way that suitable for lizards of the shadows to become smaller, while the demand for them will only increase. Ultimately, this can lead to the disappearance of lizards, at least, those who today inhabit hot regions.
A few years ago, a number of studies have shown that to the 80-th years of the current century due to global poteplenie disappear 40% of lizards, and 20 percent of existing species will cease to exist completely. However, according to the authors of a new study, their predecessors came from the fact that to find the shadow of the lizard is not difficult, and did not take into account that this requires time and effort, so the results were too "optimistic".


text:
Bats of the genus Pteronotus (Chiroptera: Mormoopidae) are known to inhabit high-temperature roosts. This study examines the thermal ecology of a colony of three different species of Pteronotus in a sea cave on the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica. Previous work found the cave to be inhabited by three species of the same genus: P. personatus, P. parnelli, and P. gymnonotus, and documented that temperatures in the cave at low tide with bats present can exceed 40° C. This high ambient temperature makes this cave one of the few locations where bats have been documented to roost at temperatures warmer than their body temperature. However, the cave fills with seawater during high tide, which potentially creates a cooling effect. We explored whether temperatures in the cave fluctuated significantly with tide levels and the presence or absence of roosting bats. Hobo data loggers were placed in the cave for several days to continually record changes in ambient temperatures within the different parts of the cave at different combinations of tides and bats. Upon entering the cave, temperatures of roosting individuals (during the day), and the cave ceiling (at night) were also recorded using an infrared thermometer.
Temperatures on the ceiling of the cave, which was entirely covered with roosting individuals, at low tide were measured at 40-41°C. However, during low-tides at night (with bats absent), temperatures were only 37-39°C in the equivalent parts of the cave. Ambient air temperatures collected by the Hobo data loggers detected no significant effect of tide levels (low vs. high) on ambient temperature. Results from sensors placed near the bottom of the cave showed significantly lower temperatures when bats were present, but when sensors were elevated ~8m, it was found that temperatures in the upper parts of the cave were significantly higher with bats present. These patterns are likely related to the properties of the cave walls to absorb and radiate heat generated by the bats. In the upper areas of the cave, where bats roost, the presence of bats clearly elevates temperatures. The genus Pteronotus may use these high temperatures as a means of thermal competition to exclude species with lesser heat tolerance from using the otherwise highly-desirable roosting habitat.


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I have defended my thesis entitled "Classical and quantum cryptanalysis for Euclidean lattices and subset sum".
Post-quantum cryptography refers to a branch of cryptography aimed at designing nonquantum (ie. classical) cryptographic systems which are secure against an adversary having a quantum computer. In this thesis we focus on the study of two fondamental problems for post-quantum cryptography: the Shortest Vector problem (SVP) and the random Subset-Sum problem.
The SVP asks to find the shortest non-zero vector of a given lattice. It serves as a gauge to quantify the security of lattice-based cryptography which is wildly considered to be promising for the post-quantum era. The main approaches to solve the SVP are the sieving algorithms, which use exponential time and space, and the enumeration algorithms, which use superexponential time and polynomial space. In this thesis, we first give a provable time memory trade-off which roughly interpolates between the resource guarantees of sieving algorithms and those of enumeration algorithms. We then show the fastest state-of-the-art provable quantum algorithm that solves SVP using 2^(0.9535+o(n)) time and requires 2^(0.5n+o(n)) classical memory but only poly(n) qubits. We also provide the fastest classical algorithm in the provable setting whose memory is 2^(0.5n+o(n)). As for the enumeration algorithms, it was previously commonly believed that they can benefit from a quantum quadratic speed-up using Grover's algorithm. We show that the quadratic speed-up can indeed be achevied for lattice enumeration and its cylinder and discrete pruning variants, but with more sophisticated quantum algorithms such as quantum walk on trees. Our quantum speed-up applies further to extreme pruning where one repeats enumeration over many reduced bases: a naive approach would only decrease the classical cost mt (where m is the number of bases and t is the number of operations of a single enumeration) to m*sqrt(t) quantum operations, but we bring it down to sqrt(mt).
The random subset-sum problem also underlies some cryptographic schemes aiming at post-quantum security, although it is mostly of academic nature. In a cryptanalysis context, it often serves as a cryptanalytic tool as many problems on which modern cryptography is build can be expressed as some (vectorial) versions of the subset sum problem. More recently it is also shown that it can be used as a building block in some quantum hidden shift algorithms, which have applications in quantum cryptanalysis of isogeny-based and symmetric cryptographic schemes.
In this thesis, we present new classical and quantum algorithms for solving random subsetsum instances. We first show the fastest state-of-the-art classical algorithm using Õ(2^0.283n) time. Next, we improve the state of the art of quantum algorithms for this problem in several directions. We devise an algorithm with asymptotic running time Õ(2^0.236n), with the advantage of using classical memory with quantum random access. The previously known algorithms all used the quantum walk framework, and required quantum memory with quantum random access. We also propose faster quantum walks for subset-sum with time complexity Õ(2^0.216n). This time is dependent on a heuristic on quantum walk updates that is also required by the previous algorithms. We show how to partially overcome this heuristic, and we obtain a quantum algorithm with time Õ(2^0.218n) requiring only the standard subset-sum heuristics.


GLOSSARY: Spectrophotometry
Spectrophotometry is defined as a process in which light of known intensity and wavelength is passed through a solution and used to estimate the levels of substances dissolved in that solution. Different materials absorb light of specific wavelength and the more of that substance present, the more light of that wavelength will be absorbed. If we measure the amount of light of a particular wavelength which passes through the substance, we can calculate the amount absorbed and therefore estimate the levels of the material absorbing the light.


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I am developing a little Game with something like particles, where every particle is represented by a box2d Body.
To insert new particles I need to find a place in the b2World where no bodies reside. How can I obtain this?
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Depending on the density of the particles this can be a pretty hard problem to solve.
If the density of particles is low you have a good chance that a (semi-random) position is free. And something like this would be viable. (pseudo code of course)
bool placed = false;
Vector2 position = (50,50); // rough indication of where we want to insert the particle
 // Slightly randomize the position so that we try a different position
 // near the intended position every iteration.
 float direction = A random number between 0 and 2*PI;
 float length = A random number between 0 and a chosen maximum displacement
 Vector2 displacement = (sin(direction), cos(direction)) * length;
 Vector2 tryPosition = position + displacement;
 // Iterate over all the bodies already in the simulation.
 // Note that you can get the bounds of a body using its shape list.
 if there are no bodies at tryPosition
 placed = true;
 Add the particle
But be wary, there are a few problems with this algorithm. There is a chance that it will take a long time (or maybe even forever) before a free position is found, and the chances of it taking a very long time increase with the density of particles.
A second solution is more work but is guaranteed to finish.
You divide the world in cells (this is called spatial partitioning). You select a cell where you want to place the new particle. In the image below the cell where we, at first, want to place the new particle is colored blue:
Initial state
As you can see the cell marked blue is occupied by an existing particle (the red circle). So we can't place a new particle here. We mark the cell as occupied and continue to spiral out:
The next step
We continue to spiral out (no randomness here, we just rotate clockwise around the already checked cells) until we find the solution: The solution
As you can see we will always find a place to put the new particle that is as close as possible to the intended space.
Note that since we know which places we have checked the algorithm can in the end even give up telling us there are no free places. So it has a guaranteed runtime of O(maxNumberOfParticles * numberOfCells) before it has placed a new particle or has given up.
Now you have to make a decision on the size of the cell. Too large and you might miss free spaces, too small and finding a solution will take a long time. Another decision you have to make is if you want to cache a list of occupied cells to use in further frames (you will have to update part of it whenever a particle moves) or that just doing this when you spawn a new particle is good enough (in that case you won't even need a list, it's implied that a cell is occupied by the algorithm continuing).
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Just adding something to this solution, you should use AABB queries to get the particles in a specific region: _URL_.html#_Toc258082976. And also you should start with a large query, and then if something is found, subdivide and search again. – Rui Campos Sep 9 '12 at 9:52
+1, I didn't know that was built in. You're absolutely right and this should speed up the algorithm considerably. – Roy T. Sep 9 '12 at 9:54
Thanks a lot for the answer! I got it working now! – philipp Sep 11 '12 at 17:56
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text:
Shutters protect rooms from light and heat. Blinds are made out of PVC plastic or aluminium given their lightness and resistance to wear.
A belt is used to open and close the shutters. When you open the roller blind, it rolls around a drum hidden in the upper part of the window.
The belts become worn with use. They are then unable to bear the weight of the shutter and the shutter ends up dropping.
You can easily replace the worn belt just by following steps that are explained in the AMIG belt packs.
1. Roll the belt around the winder of the shutter drum.
2. Stretch out the belt to the lower winder.
3. Turn the winder until it is tense and attach the belt to the drum fastener.
You should use the widest possible belt that fits the roller and winder. The broader the belt, the better the grip and the longer the shutter will last.


Ford Fusion
Ted Blackman
July 15, 2020
Overview and Rationale
Ford Fusion was an overhaul of Urbit's over-the-air upgrade process and a rewrite of its build system. The new update system corrects a few long-standing bugs with the previous one, and the new build system is simpler, smaller (by around 5,000 lines), and easier to manage.
Since deployment of Ford Fusion to the livenet in late June, over-the-air updates (OTAs) have been much smoother. Before Ford Fusion, it was common for an OTA to take several hours, use too much memory, and leave ships in inconsistent states. After Ford Fusion, multiple OTAs have been pushed out, including kernelspace changes, and most users didn't even notice.
Urbit has always been able to update itself OTA, but this process has often been rocky. Updating an operating system kernel on-the-fly is a difficult problem in general, like performing heart replacement surgery on yourself while running a marathon. Code that allows Linux to update its kernel in this way became a startup called Ksplice, won multiple awards, and sold to Oracle. Even that, as impressive as it is, and as brilliant as its programmers are, can only perform certain limited kinds of patches to the kernel.
Urbit isn't exactly a traditional operating system, so the comparison is somewhat unfair, but the purpose of better architecture is to create unfair comparisons. In this case, because the Nock layer is frozen, upgrading everything above that layer is easier. Upgrades are also facilitated by pure-functional semantics, transactional event processing, a type system oriented toward concrete data, and orthogonal persistence. These features make it feasible for Urbit to upgrade itself in the general case, not just some special cases.
Ford Fusion has fixed the major upgrade issues of the past by guaranteeing three properties that in retrospect are obvious requirements, but, like much of Urbit, took many years and rewrites to identify as such:
 - Atomic: the update should complete or fail in one transaction. If it fails, the system shouldn't get stuck.
 - Self-contained: there must be no implicit dependencies or hysteresis (dependence on previous system states) when building the new software from source.
 - Ordered: updates must be monotonically sequenced from the system's lowest layer to highest.
Let's walk through them one by one.
In previous versions of Urbit, updates failed atomicity by deferring parts of the update to later events, which are separate transactions that can fail independently. Generally, each deferral causes an exponential increase in the number of failure states that needed to be handled.
We've learned that asynchronicity is an entropic state. A system will tend toward more asynchronicity over time unless effort is put into keeping it synchronous. As Jonathan Blow has noted, the language server protocol has turned every editor plugin into a distributed system, since now it has to communicate asynchronously with the main editor process.
Consider an update system that took multiple Arvo events to complete. An ad-hoc higher-level transaction system would need to be built to roll back the effects of the first few events in case of failure. It's important for various parts of the system to be able to emit effects on upgrade; since those effects would need to be rolled back if a later event in this upgrade fails, the system would need to maintain a queue of those events and only apply them once all the other upgrade events have completed.
Note that the asynchronicity has now spread. Some effects that would normally be guaranteed to be processed synchronously might now be asynchronous. Entropy has begun to take hold, chipping away at the set of invariants the system is capable of guaranteeing.
This observation is not purely theoretical. False modularity was the cause of internal asynchronicity in Clay where it had to wait for responses in a complex dance with Ford, which was another vane (Arvo kernel module); moving Ford into Clay allowed function calls that were synchronous from Clay's perspective, which allowed further simplifications, culminating in about a twenty percent reduction of source code size of the Arvo kernelspace.
Steve Yegge's "platform rant" describes a Bezosian edict prohibiting synchronous communication among modules through direct linking. This can be seen as an acknowledgment of the difficulty Amazon was going to have when it needed to turn internal services external. If your software needs to run in hell, build it that way from the start.
An Urbit ship is not an enterprise SaaS product and does not need to run in this hell; it exists for just one person, with natural pressure pushing it in the opposite direction from Amazon's web services. Instead of needing a ship's state and functionality sharded into microservices strewn across multiple clusters, an Urbit instance is easiest to manage as a single server with all its state unified into one data structure and its event log stored as one totally ordered sequence of state updates -- the antithesis of a distributed system.
Before Ford Fusion, each commit to the Clay filesystem validated its files using filetypes (called "marks") defined by files in the previous commit. This could cause bugs if the filetype definitions had changed in a backward-incompatible manner. It also meant a commit could not add both a new filetype and new files of that type; instead, you needed two commits: one to define the filetypes, and a second to add files of that new type. More theoretically, it caused history-dependence. The validated contents of files in a commit could vary based on the history of commits that led to this one.
Another way source code failed to be self-contained was that it had access to symmetry-breaking information at build-time, namely ship, desk (Urbit's answer to a git branch), and (faked) date. A build recipe should be able to shared, cached, and rerun without dependence on local conditions, so user code now no longer learns its ship, desk, or date until runtime.
Source code also had build-time access to Urbit's immutable global namespace, called the "scry namespace", which the kernel makes available as an implicit argument to userspace Hoon code. The scry namespace is immutable and referentially transparent, i.e. a request must always yield the same result for all time, but if an agent asks the kernel for a resource that's from the future, hosted on another ship, or to which that agent doesn't have permission, the kernel will deny the request.
If the kernel denies a scry request that user code made during the build process, the build system has no choice but to treat it as a nondeterministic error. Nondeterministic errors can never be fully eradicated, if for no other reason than that the user always has the option to defenestrate the machine—there's nothing deterministic about that. But we try to minimize them, and especially to minimize uncertainty as to under what conditions they might occur.
No build should be killed by the absence of files outside the desk, so as of this update, user code can no longer scry at build time. Once built, userspace programs can scry if run in a context with a scry handler; a Gall agent's runtime scry requests still work just fine.
The final kind of failure fixed by Ford Fusion was the lack of ordered layering during a software update. The most common form of this failure was that old Ford had a tendency to try to build userspace code using the previous version's standard library. This didn't work too well, unsurprisingly.
Emerging from this underworld required making a number of changes to the Arvo kernel, Clay, Gall, and the procedure for kernel updates. To avoid turning into a pillar of salt, I'll skip the details of how the old system worked and instead describe the new update procedure.
How Updates Work Now
These are the layers of the stack that update themselves on the fly, from lowest to highest:
 - hoon: the hoon language definition and compiler, defined in /sys/hoon/hoon
 - arvo: the arvo kernel proper and related type definitions, in /sys/arvo/hoon
 - zuse: the standard library, in /sys/zuse/hoon
 - vanes: arvo kernel modules, including clay itself, in folder /sys/vane
 - userspace: apps, marks, ancillary source code like libraries, and user data
An update to one layer necessitates a reload of all layers above it; e.g. a change to Zuse should trigger updates to the vanes and userspace. Conversely, an update to a higher layer should not cause a spurious reload of lower layers, which should not be affected by the change; for example, an update to just userspace should not cause any reloads of system code.
Clay is responsible for enforcing the layering of updates. An update to a module is triggered when an attempt is made to commit a change to Clay that affects one or more files needed to build the module. For example, if the 'foo' agent's source, defined in /app/foo/hoon, imports the 'bar' library from /lib/bar/hoon, then a modification to /lib/bar/hoon triggers an update to the 'foo' agent. All vanes and userspace files depend on Zuse, which depends on the Arvo and Hoon sources, so a change to the Hoon, Arvo, or Zuse sources will trigger updates to all vanes and userspace files.
When asked to perform a commit, Clay determines which layers need to be updated based on which files have changed and which modules depend on those files. For now, all running programs load their source from the %home desk, so only


text:
Replicon Particle Vaccine for White Spot Syndrome Virus in Marine Shrimp Phase II
Currently there are no truly effective interventions or therapeutic treatments for White spot syndrome virus (WSSV) in farmed shrimp. Current production practices focus on pathogen exclusion by stocking specific pathogen free (SPF) larvae, decontamination and filtration of water to prevent pathogen introduction, and strict biosecurity at hatcheries and grow out pond sites. This is extremely challenging due to the prevalence of WSSV in estuarine waters in shrimp producing areas, resulting in devastating financial losses, even in SPF populations. WSSV was first discovered in 1992 after several outbreaks of a high mortality disease occurred in shrimp farms in Taiwan. Within a decade it has spread throughout the world and is now endemic in most shrimp producing areas. WSSV has a wide host range of over 50 separate species including all penaeids and crayfish. In the United States, a 2007 APHIS study showed that 66% of tested samples were positive and it has been declared endemic by the state veterinarian and OIE in the Louisiana freshwater crayfish population. The combined economic impact of WSSV in farmed shrimp is tremendous. It is estimated that Asia alone has lost over $6 billion since 1992, and the Americas about $1-2 billion since WSSV introduction in 1999 with countries such as Ecuador showing the greatest economic impact. In addition to the tremendous economic effect on shrimp production, there is a rising concern for an introduction of WSSV into native crustacean species. Avenues exist for the introduction of WSSV into naive species such as reprocessing of frozen emergency harvested product or animal movement. In addition, the United States possesses over 350 of the estimated 500 species worldwide of crayfish species. In North America, 65 out of the estimated 400 resident species are endangered and half of these are listed as needing protection. The outcome of the proposed project would be the first effective commercially available vaccines that protect against disease caused by WSSV in shrimp. Harrisvaccines intends to market vaccine to be used in two different shrimp production settings. First, an injectable vaccine for adult breeding females will be targeted to SPF production companies and larger integrated intensive shrimp producers abroad who possess their own hatcheries for the purpose of restocking their ponds. The second would be an orally administered vaccine for post larvae (PL) shrimp that would aid in protection of the shrimp prior to entry into the ponds. This accomplishes disease prevention in the hatcheries as well as the ponds. The goal is to prevent disease that can cause increases in the variable costs of raising shrimp. In addition to the observable clinical signs of disease, WSSV is directly responsible for a reduction of feed conversion rates which result in increased feed costs and a reduction in harvest weight combined with 70-100% mortality. The costs associated with restocking ponds lost to disease add to this devastation. A vaccine against WSSV is undoubtedly a valuable insurance for the investment of shrimp rearing.
Small Business Information at Submission:
1102 SOUTHERN HILLS DR STE 101 Ames, IA 50010-8225
Number of Employees:


text:
UMaine bioethicist works with those on the front lines grappling with end-of-life issues
When 41 year-old Terri Schiavo died this past March, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed and 15 years after brain damage left her in a persistent vegetative state, the nation was watching. Millions of people, whether proponents of right to life or death with dignity, will never look at end-of-life issues the same way again.
That's good, according to medical ethicist Jessica Miller. "There is a sense of being able to overcome anything that sort of permeates American culture," says Miller, a University of Maine assistant professor of philosophy and the clinical bioethicist for Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor.
"It's difficult for people to allow the end of life to occur, either for themselves or their loved ones. Some of the doctors I work with say that until we have a national conversation about death and our mortality, we are never going to resolve these problems."
In her experience, people who believe in an afterlife aren't necessarily more willing to let go of this life than those who believe this is all there is. And the end-of-life decisions are often more difficult than they used to be.
"Death has become much more complicated in many ways," says Miller, who studies the moral and ethical issues in medicine and medical research. "For one thing, we now have two different criteria for death. One is the traditional cardiopulmonary standard: If your heart stops and you stop breathing, you're dead. The other standard is brain death. This became possible because people could be maintained on ventilators after all brain function has ceased, and it facilitated organ procurement and donation."
The medical community accepts both definitions of death. But for the family of someone who is breathing–even if the breathing is being done by a machine and there is virtually no chance of recovery–it can be excruciatingly difficult to "pull the plug." It can be just as hard to withhold nutrition and water from someone who is in a persistent vegetative state or to refrain from performing CPR on a terminally ill cancer patient who has a heart attack.
Families often look to physicians or chaplains for guidance in making end-of-life decisions. Some of those decisions, such as whether to withhold treatment or remove a feeding tube, are fraught with ethical dilemmas. Miller's role as a bioethicist isn't to tell hospital physicians and staff what is right and wrong. Rather, she says, "I try to help them identify ethical issues and educate them about different ways of reflecting on ethical problems."
Her point is that no one has a lock on moral or ethical truths.
Miller teaches ethics and bioethics at UMaine, and that makes her an especially valuable resource for hospital physicians and staff, says Rex Garrett, director of Chaplaincy Services at Eastern Maine Medical Center. "It is important to have someone from the academic arena, where both the old discussions and the current discussions are active and alive," he says. "Having that body of knowledge behind her, she can bring in the conceptual reality to help us understand the practical realities."
Every other month, Miller participates in the hospital's Bioethics Grand Rounds, an educational session in which clinicians present an actual case for a panel to discuss. In alternate months, Miller leads an ethics reading group that often includes physicians, nurses, social workers and chaplains.
"Sometimes we don't even get to the literature we had planned to discuss because a physician will come in and start talking about a case that is bothering him (or her)," Miller says. "Or something is troubling a nurse, but she (or he) isn't sure it should be a real concern. I facilitate the discussion and try to help them figure out what their uneasy feelings reflect and what ethical values are at stake."
Having someone to help clinicians grapple with complex ethical issues is much more important than it was even a generation ago, says Dr. Erik Steele, chair of EMMC's Code Committee and chief medical officer for Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems, which includes the medical center. "One reason is that our ability to keep people alive has outstripped our ability to make them well," he says.
"Also, for the past 20 or 30 years, people have had more interest in being able to make decisions about their care, including end-of-life care. So, there is an increasing role for somebody who can help guide us through the ethical, legal and clinical minefields of end-of-life decision making. If I could have an ethicist and a lawyer in my pocket when I make rounds, that would be great. That's how often things come up."
Steele estimates that at least 80 percent of the ethical dilemmas that arise at Eastern Maine Medical Center involve end-of-life issues. Part of the reason is simply that the population is aging, and more people than ever are approaching the end of their lives.
"But it's also because death is so final," Steele says. "You know that if you make the wrong decision, it can have tremendous repercussions, so you work extra hard to get it right."
Steele says that anyone who would like to die in a way that doesn't require the involvement of a bioethicist should have a living will or other type of advance directive.
"When it comes to end-of-life decision making, I think Dr. Miller would like to be like the Maytag repairman," he says. "The day when no one needs her help with that would be a good day."
More and more people are seeking to avoid being kept alive by artificial means against their will and, at the same time, to relieve their families of the burden of making end-of-life decisions for them. By filling out an "advance health care directive," a person can, Miller says, "project their autonomy into an incapacitated future."
The most common type of advance directive is a living will. It enables people to detail which treatment measures, if any, should be taken to keep them alive if they become debilitated and unable to make decisions or communicate their wishes. Living wills are adequate in most cases, but they do have shortcomings, Miller says. They don't always eliminate uncertainty or guarantee that one's wishes will be followed.
"Primary care physicians are being encouraged to have young, healthy patients get living wills, but it's very hard for young people to know exactly which treatments they might want under certain conditions when they are older," she says. "Also, some living wills offer sort of an a la carte menu, so you can specify, 'Yes, I want CPR. No, I don't want antibiotics.' However, a choice like that could put a hospital medical staff in a bind because it might not make sense to resuscitate a person if they can't administer antibiotics to prevent infection."
Doctors and hospital administrators can find themselves caught between the wishes of a patient, as expressed in a living will, and a relative who, as Miller puts it, "advocates forcefully in the moment" for doing everything possible to keep the patient alive.
A better type of advance directive, she says, is the durable health care power of attorney, a legal document that names a proxy to make decisions on your behalf if you are unable to do so. It invests one person with the authority to give physicians and hospitals clear direction. However, if you want that direction to reflect your wishes, Miller says, you need to make sure your proxy knows what your wishes are.
"Whether you have a living will, a health care proxy or just an order about whether to perform certain life-sustaining measures, nothing really takes the place of thinking for yourself and meditating on what life means to you and under what conditions you would want to receive treatment," she says. "Then communicate that to your loved ones and physician."
Nothing that a person does in this life–drawing up a living will or giving someone power of attorney–can guarantee that family members or close friends won't argue about end-of-life decisions. Miller recalls a case in which two sisters had been taking care of their elderly mother for years before her condition dramatically worsened. They decided it was not in their mother's best interest to have more aggressive life-sustaining treatment and that she would not have wanted it.
"Then their brother flew in from another part of the country and said they were just being blinded by their exhaustion and motivated by a desire to be relieved of care-giving," Miller says.
Even if the mother had not designated a health care power of attorney, a living will could have been helpful. "A living will at least gives people a starting point," Miller says. "They can see what your wishes were when you were of sound mind and not incapacitated. Then, more often than not, a discussion in which everybody has a chance to have their say produces consensus if not unanimous agreement."
Since April, EMMC and the other hospitals of EMHS have offered advance directive forms on the Web (_URL_). At last count, more than 10,000 had been downloaded. Maine residents also can find forms on the attorney general's site (_URL_
Originally published in UMaine Today magazine, September/October 2005
Image Description: Jessica Miller


text:
Adverse maternal and fetal outcomes in a novel experimental model of pregnancy after recovery from renal ischemia-reperfusion injury
Ellen E. Gillis, Michael W. Brands, Jennifer C. SullivanJournal of the American Society of Nephrology2021
Background Recent clinical studies report that women with a history of AKI have an increased incidence of maternal and fetal adverse outcomes during pregnancy, despite fully recovering renal function prior to conception. The mechanisms contributing to such adverse outcomes in pregnancy after AKI are not yet understood. Methods To develop a rodent model to investigate fetal and maternal outcomes in female animals with a history of AKI, we used ischemia-reperfusion injury as an experimental model of AKI in female Sprague Dawley rats. The 12-week-old animals underwent warm bilateral ischemia-reperfusion surgery involving clamping of both renal arteries for 45 minutes or sham surgery (control). Rats were allowed to recover for 1 month prior to mating. Recovery from ischemia-reperfusion injury was confirmed by measurements of plasma creatinine and urinary protein excretion. We assessed maternal and fetal outcomes during late pregnancy on gestational day 20. Results After recovery from ischemia-reperfusion injury, compared with healthy sham-surgery controls, dams exhibited pregnancy-induced renal insufficiency with increases in plasma creatinine and urea, along with increased urinary protein excretion. Additionally, recovered ischemia-reperfusion dams experienced worse fetal outcomes compared with controls, with intrauterine growth restriction leading to higher rates of fetal demise and smaller pups. Conclusions In this rat model, despite biochemical resolution of ischemia-reperfusion injury, subsequent pregnancy resulted in maternal renal insufficiency and significant impairments in fetal growth. This mirrors findings in recent reports in the clinical population, indicating that this model may be a useful tool to further explore the alterations in kidney function after AKI in women.


text:
El libro de arena – The Book of Sand
The Book of Sand tells the story of the Dune of Valdevaqueros as a metaphor of the absurd will of humanity to dominate nature, while remaining separate from her. It presents a multifaceted approach which delves into the social, environmental and political facts that led to the formation of the dune, relating it to philosophical questions. Its a local history that takes place in Punta Paloma (Tarifa, Cádiz) an idyllic enclave in the Strait of Gibraltar, just 14 km away from Africa where the dune originated as a result of the military intervention which took place in 1939, at the end of the Spanish Civil War. This operation radically changed the physiognomy of the area and generated long-term environmental and social consequences that remain to be resolved.


text:
- Area teachers spend summer in TTU engineering labs to help high school students
- To learn more about RETainUS and from teachers and faculty, watch this YouTube video.
- A Summer of Teaching, Learning / Teachers Get Into the Lab
Teacher ParticipantsJoe is a science teacher at Cookeville High School in Putnam County. His faculty mentor was Dr. Ying Zhang and together they researched the method and apparatus used for creep testing of ferritic-martensitic steel. This steel, with 9% chromium material, is thinner which helps reduce the fatigue associated with extreme heating and cooling associated with power generating plants. Joe compared the results of different testing methods to ascertain which apparatus would produce the most consistent results when performing a creep-rupture test.
The Legacy Cycle Joe developed from this work will ask students to research tests that are associated with metal creep, stress, and strain. Then the students will design tests to measure these qualities in a common household metal – aluminum foil. Finally, students will design a product that can be made from recycled aluminum and engineer the process for its recycling.
At least 8 of Tennessee State Standards will be met with this curriculum.Angela McCulley is a science teacher at White County High School. She worked with mentor Dr. Holly Stretz, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at Tennessee Tech. Angela's research concerned the procedure for successfully synthesizing nanorods with a high aspect ratio. Nanorods add strength when added to electrophoresis hydrogels for medical diagnostics.
The Legacy Cycle Angela developed will ask her students to choose among different brands of sunscreen. One criterion of comparison will be the nanoparticles of each brand. The students will design their own decision-making system for comparison and selection of the optimal sunscreen. With money provided by the grant, Angela is purchasing classroom equipment for hands-on demonstration of electrophoresis. Once the students have selected their sunscreen, they will create marketing materials on its properties and the reasons why consumers should buy it.
At least six Tennessee Curriculum Standards are met with this legacy module.
Josh Price is a Science teacher at Clay County High School in Celina, Tennessee. He mentored with Dr. Ying Zhang, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering. Josh analyzed high-temperature coatings on the microstructure and composition of nickel-based superalloys. Specifically, his work concerned the pack cement method of applying diffusion coatings to metals to make them more heat and corrosion resistant.
The Legacy Cycle that Josh developed from his research posits a situation for his students in which they are FAA investigators called into the scene of an airliner crash. Their assignment is to research and analyze the type of metal used in the engine and research processes that will help those metals better withstand the high ambient temperatures of the engine. Elements of this curriculum are conducting an electroplating activity in the lab, and optionally presenting the results of their accident investigation at a science fair.
Josh's legacy cycle meets 19 of the Tennessee Curriculum Standards Course Level Expectations and Checks for Understanding.
Bridget Pugh is a Science teacher at Monterey High School in Putnam County. She mentored with Dr. Holly Stretz, an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at TTU. Bridget's research with Dr. Stretz focused on polymer hydrogels which have many uses in the field of medical and bio-technology. The research question was: 1) How strong are the gels? and 2) Do gold nanoparticles affect specific properties of the gels? During her research, Bridget designed and had built an apparatus to better test tensile strength. This apparatus will be incorporated into her classroom legacy cycle.
This teacher developed two separate legacy cycles, one each for her physics and chemistry classrooms. Her physics students will be asked to determine the strength of several known polymers. The students must research polymers, methods of measurement, and design a means of measuring strength. The chemistry students are asked to identify products in their everyday lives that contain polymers and record the types. The students will utilize this information to invent and describe a new product that is currently not on the market that includes their polymer's strengths.
These curricula meet many of the Tennessee State Curriculum Standards.
Virginia Mayfield participated in the "pilot" RET program in 2008 and found it to be so useful in her classroom that she applied to the 2009 program as well. Virginia teaches mathematics at Monterey High School in Putnam County. Dr. Kenneth Currie, Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering, mentored this teacher in researching a more "holistic" approach to cellular manufacturing. Virginia applied a bond energy and a genetic algorithm to determine a method of reducing part manufacturing costs based on shared part features and shared machines.
The Legacy Cycle derived from Virginia's research asks the students to assume the job of an industrial engineer in charge of scheduling shipments for a motor manufacturer. The task is to calculate the composition of the shipment of two different types of motors to ensure the truck is filled to capacity. Two additional and increasingly complex challenge questions are built from this initial scenario.
Five Algebra II Curriculum Standards are met with this legacy cycle.
Robert Sircy is an in-service teacher completing his education degree at Tennessee Tech University. Robert was paired with mentor Dr. Cynthia Rice-York, an Assistant Professor in Chemical Engineering at Tennessee Tech University. His research concerned characteristics of membranes of fuel cells and how to reduce the amount of methanol that crosses the nafion membrane. Current methanol fuel cells are inefficient and if we can improve upon them, doors are opened to use fuel cells in many different conditions.
The Legacy Cycle that Robert developed from his fuel cell research places his students into a hypothetical R&D department of a large polymer production company, designing the optimal polymer for their client's needs. The students will learn about fuel cells and manipulate their variables with a hands-on laboratory using miniature fuel cell cars. They will be asked to determine how many protons a Nafion membrane can hold, using multiple perspectives and approaches to the question. The students will have an opportunity to test their own membrane in the lab and will write a sales publication to advertise their product.
The classroom applications of this legacy cycle include chemical reactions, reaction rates, thermodynamics, and energy transfer.
Rachel Sparkman is a science teacher who mentored with Dr. Joseph Biernacki in the Chemical Engineering Dept at TTU. Rachel's research was a chemical analysis using fast pyrolysis of biomass. This process evaluates its potential as a feed stock for production of bio-oil, with similar characteristics to crude petroleum. Preliminary results suggest the three main types of carbon compounds that make up fescue are cellulose, hemicelluloses, and lignin.
The Legacy Cycle that Rachel developed asks her students to imagine they are on an island with a boat that is out of fuel. They are tasked with finding a fuel source using only resources from the island. Students will be learning about combustion of carbon compounds, exploring heat, and alternate fuels. After selecting their fuel, the students must describe a method of harnessing the energy from the fuel source.
This classroom module meets most course level expectations, checks for understanding, and state performance indicators for physical science: 1) embedded technology and engineering and 2) matter.
Cynthia Stowers teaches mathematics at Clarkrange High School in Fentress County. Cynthia mentored with Dr. Cynthia Rice-York, an Assistant Professor in Chemical Engineering at Tech, on polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells.
Cynthia's Legacy Cycle will use fuel cell technology to teach the complex number system. Her challenge for her students is, "What characteristics of fuel cells are measured by researchers in determining the efficiency of using fuel cells?" The main focus is the research and study of fuel cells, using real data to plot points on the complex plane, then to build a fuel car and race!
This curriculum module covers twelve course-level expectations, six state performance indicators, and twelve checks for understanding. The standards span mathematical processes, numbers, and operations and algebra.
Lynne Thurber is a science teacher at Cookeville High School in Putnam County. She mentored with Dr. Joseph Biernacki, a Professor of Chemical Engineering at Tennessee Tech. Her work analyzed the hydration of Portland cement, specifically the dynamics of the products calcium hydroxide and silicate. Studying the formation of these products is helpful in understanding the reaction mechanism and kinetics of cement hydration. Lynne's research suggests that reacting solutions of Portland cement do not reach calcium hydroxide saturation levels, possibly due to an interfering process or reverse reactions. Other trials indicate that calcium hydroxide is not stable in the reaction vessel, possibly due to side reactions.
The Legacy Cycle that Lynne developed asks her students to imagine they have been hired to make concrete tiles for a countertop, with the requirements that the tiles are strong and attractive. She asks the students to determine how they will make the tiles and how they can determine the tiles' strength. During this cycle, the students will participate in a hands-on lab, actually making concrete and pouring the mixture into molds to make tiles. The students will design a strength-testing method and carry out the test. Their tiles will then be judged for strength and appearance. This legacy cycle meets several course level expectations and checks for understanding in both physical world concepts and chemistry.


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The teachers will show a PowerPoint presentation to review social studies standards, the Antebellum time period, social classes, and photos of people from the time period. Students will re-create the photos as tableaus and will write original dialogue from the perspective of the subjects of the photos.
How can tableaus be used as an acting tool for various characters/people?
What was life like in South Carolina during the antebellum period?
What were the different classes of people in South Carolina and what were their lives like during the antebellum period?
What impact did the cotton gin have on slavery in the South?
What role did slavery play in South Carolina's secession from the Union?
What were many South Carolinians fearful of abolitionists?
Why did South Carolinians have such a strong belief in states' rights?
Other Instructional Materials or Notes:
- PowerPoint Presentation
- Various photos of the Antebellum period showing multiple classes of people.
Sticky notes, pencils
- 3-4 The student will demonstrate an understanding of life in the antebellum period, the causes and effects of the Civil War, and the impact of Reconstruction in South Carolina.
- South Carolina played a key role in events that occurred before, during, and after the Civil War; and those events, in turn, greatly affected the state. To understand South Carolina's experiences during this tumultuous time, the student will uti...
- Grade 1: Write left to right leaving space between words.
Lesson Created By: ShomoneikBrown
Lesson Partners: ABC (Arts in Basic Curriculum)


Quick Answer: What Causes Stress In Police Officers?
What are the effects of police stress?
The findings reveal that police officers experience daily psychological stress that puts them at an increased risk of various long-term health effects that may include cardiovascular disease, obesity, suicide, sleeplessness and cancer..
Can police officers have PTSD?
New studies have shown that police officers suffer symptoms indicative of PTSD at a similar rate as veterans of the military. Between seven and 19 percent of police officers exhibit symptoms of PTSD, compared to 3.5% of the general public. By and large, police officers suffer from cumulative PTSD.
What is the meaning of police personnel?
Definition. Police personnel refers to permanent, full-time equivalents of police officers and other support; part-time employees are converted to full-time equivalents (e. g.
What causes PTSD in police officers?
What do you consider the five most stressful aspects of work in law enforcement?
(2014) found that physical threats, lack of support, and organizational pressure were the highest ranked stressors. Collins and Gibbs (2003) found that the police organizational culture and an officer's workload were the highest ranked stressors.
How police can reduce and manage stress?
Law enforcement officers can reduce stress by: Planning meals and making healthy eating choices. Stop eating high-calorie fast food. Scheduling vacations and personal downtime.
What challenges do police officers face?
Law enforcement officers are exposed to disease and infected evidence and must take necessary precautions or risk being infected with AIDS, hepatitis B, or tuberculosis. Other dangers include the stress and fatigue of police work.
What are police officer hours?
Police and Sheriff's Patrol Officers work a minimum of 40 hours a week. They may work night patrol and often work on weekends and holidays. In addition, Officers are often required to be on-call. Some agencies offer a work schedule where Officers work 10-hour shifts, four days a week.
What types of stress do police officers deal with?
What are qualities of a police officer?
What are the three types of stresses?
Stress is the force applied to a rock and may cause deformation. The three main types of stress are typical of the three types of plate boundaries: compression at convergent boundaries, tension at divergent boundaries, and shear at transform boundaries.
What is police burnout?
What is the average life expectancy of a police officer?
A 2013 study published by the National Institutes of Health found the average life expectancy of a police officer to be 57, almost 22 years younger than the general population.
What are common signs and symptoms of police officer burnout?
Which is a major problem associated with police stress and burnout?
Police Stress and Burnout Issues associated with police stress are alcohol abuse, family problems, and suicide.


text:
عالم حواء للرشاقة و الجمال و احدث الازياء و الموضة و ديكور المنزل و كل ما يهم العروسة, فساتين افراح, دبل الخطوبة و اطقم ذهب, العناية بالشعر و البشرة مع وصفات حصرية بالفيديو من مطبخ همسه
الاثنين، 29 أغسطس، 2011
What is a Pennyweight of Gold? What is a Gram of Gold?
These are the most frequently asked questions we receive at GoldFellow. It's problematic for everyone as it doesn't relate to any measurement we currently use in our daily life. Pennyweights, however are still commonly used in the U.S. jewelry industry but we prefer to use the more accurate and globally recognized Grams (metric) as our unit of measure.
There are 20 pennyweights also referred to as DWT in an ounce. There are also 31.1 grams in an ounce. As we are talking about precious metals I'll use gold in my example throughout this post.
Many of our customers are weighing their valuables on home kitchen or postal scales of either mechanical or digital make. Most measure in grams and ounces, particularly when weighing food. The grams shown on your scale are not the same as the grams used in gold! You are measuring on a device that uses 28 grams per ounce while gold is measured in troy ounces. There are 31.1 grams per Troy ounce. The simplest way to use your home scale is to multiply the number showing as ounces by 20. That's it. If your scale shows 3.5 oz you have approximately 70 pennyweight. 1.5oz is about 30 pennyweight and so on. (Same for silver and platinum)
Ok, now for measuring your gold in grams. The scale shows 3.5 ounces. Multiply by 31.1 and it comes to 108.85 grams of gold. If it's 1.5 oz x 31.1=46.65 grams.
Lastly, if you would like to know a price per gram, follow this formula. $20 per pennyweight is$12.86 per gram. To convert simply divide $20 by 1.555=$12.86. Try $18 dwt divided by 1.555 and you get $11.58 gram
As the founder of the largest wholesale gold jewelry manufacturer in the United States, I built a reputation upon doing business ethically. My company supplied gold jewelry to the most respected jewelry stores, department stores, discount big box retailers and TV shopping networks in America. Though I sold my company to Warren Buffet's Berkshire-Hathaway in 2007, my reputation in the jewelry industry remains impeccable.
Our founders began selling gold jewelry to America's leading jewelry retailers in 1977, ultimately becoming the largest manufacturer and distributor of gold jewelry in the United States. During 30 years of working in the gold jewelry industry, GoldFellow's™ founders sold and distributed over 50 million pieces of 10kt, 14kt and 18kt gold jewelry such as chains, bracelets, necklaces, rings, earrings and more. That's over 300 tons of GOLD!
Over the course of time, many of these jewelry items ended up in drawers, locked away for safe keeping or at the bottom of your jewelry box.
These gold items are made from precious metal, and with gold prices at an all time high, have significant value when sold to the right company. GoldFellow™ is that company. GoldFellow™ was started with the goal of providing consumers a trusted, safe and convenient way to sell their unwanted gold, platinum and silver jewelry for cash. We now offer our 30 years of expertise to you. GoldFellow's™ mission is to pay you top dollar for your gold, platinum and silver


text:
Environmental Dilemmas and Policy Designby Huib Pellikaan, Robert J. van der Veen, Robert J. Veen
Pub. Date: 09/16/2002
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
This book examines environmental policy-making through research into individuals' reaction to environmental issues. It is often assumed that people are reluctant to contribute to environmental protection, because they do not see it as in their interests. The authors argue that self-interest is just one of a number of motives which affect people's choices, and that
This book examines environmental policy-making through research into individuals' reaction to environmental issues. It is often assumed that people are reluctant to contribute to environmental protection, because they do not see it as in their interests. The authors argue that self-interest is just one of a number of motives which affect people's choices, and that voluntary environmental polices are thus more likely to succeed than might be expected. They base their arguments on detailed surveys of public opinion.
Table of Contents
Preface; Part I. Background: 1. Environmental pollution as a problem of collective action; 1.1. Can something be done?; 1.2. Environmental dilemmas and the logic of collective action; 1.3. Surveying environmental dilemmas from the actor's perspective: rational choice; 1.4. How motives speak to preferences; 1.5. Non-equivalent dilemmas and reported behaviour; 1.6. Policies of self regulation in the Netherlands; 1.7. Moral commitment in environmental dilemmas: conditional or unconditional?; 1.8. Determinants of cooperation in environmental dilemmas and policy design; 2. A Dutch approach: self regulation as a policy concept; 2.1. Introduction; 2.2. Dutch environmental policy and the idea of self regulation; 2.3. The social instruments; 2.4. An environmental ethos and the social dilemma; 2.5. Self regulation: compliance-oriented or virtue-based?; 3. The actor's perspective on collective action; 3.1. The subjectivity of the actor in rational choice theory; 3.2. Problems of collective action; 3.3. Social dilemmas; 3.4. The actor's perspective; Part II. The Survey: 4. Preference orderings and measurement; 4.1. Three potential social dilemmas; 4.2. Measuring preference orderings; 4.3. Three different environmental problems; 4.4. Avoiding response effects; 5. Rational choice; 5.1. Conditions of rational choice; 5.2. The dominance rule of rational choice; 5.3. Choice of strategy; 5.4. The robustness of the dominance rule; 5.5. Conclusion; 6. Consistency of motives and preferences; 6.1. A model of reasoned choice; 6.2. The motives of Valuation and Willingness; 6.3. The test of consistent preferences; 6.4. Consistent preferences in the three cases; 6.5. Does motive-preference consistency matter?; 6.6. Conclusion; 7. The non-equivalence of the cases; 7.1. Hard and easy cases of the dilemma; 7.2. The model of the hardest case; 7.3. The scalability of the cases; 7.4. Conclusion; 8. Reported behaviour; 8.1. Determinants of behaviour; 8.2. The sociocultural model; 8.3. An alternative model; 8.4. From motives to behaviour; Part III. Conclusions: Theory and Policy: 9. Do people accept self regulation policy?; 9.1. Introduction to Part III; 9.2. Acceptance and agreement; 9.3. The acceptance of legal regulation and self regulation; 9.4. Conclusion; 10. Do people agree with the environmental ethos?; 10.1. Introduction; 10.2. The two stages of the environmental ethos; 10.3. Knaves, pawns or knights?; 10.4. The ethical interpretation of motives and preferences; 10.5. The agreement response; 10.6. Acceptance and agreement: overview; 11. Moral commitment and rational cooperation; 11.1. Ranking preference orderings; 11.2. The meta-ranking approach; 11.3. Enlightened self-interest and moral commitment; 11.4. Consistent preferences in the meta-ranking; 11.5. An environmental meta-ranking; 12. Reciprocity and cooperation in environmental dilemmas; 12.1. The puzzle of unconditional cooperation; 12.2. The reciprocity thesis; 12.3. Cost of cooperation and conditionalities in environmental dilemmas; 13. Assessing self regulation policies; 13.1. The context of environmental dilemmas; 13.2. Consistent ethical cooperation; 13.3. Background features of hard and easy cases; 13.4. Mapping problems and the salience of the environmental ethos; 13.5. Individual cost and collective gain; 13.6. Comparing motives in the polar cases; 13.7. The dimension of private significance; 13.8. Self regulation policy: symbolic or real?; 13.9. A non-moralistic approach to environmental responsibility; 13.10. Self regulation in proportion to facilitation; Bibliography; Index.
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Definisi 'distinguish'
English to English
1. mark as different Terjemahkan
We distinguish several kinds of maple
source: wordnet30
2. detect with the senses Terjemahkan
The fleeing convicts were picked out of the darkness by the watchful prison guards|I can't make out the faces in this photograph
source: wordnet30
3. be a distinctive feature, attribute, or trait; sometimes in a very positive sense Terjemahkan
His modesty distinguishes him from his peers
source: wordnet30
4. make conspicuous or noteworthy Terjemahkan
source: wordnet30
5. identify as in botany or biology, for example Terjemahkan
source: wordnet30
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$output.= ''. sprintf(_x('%1$s %2$s - %3$s %4$s', 'thst'), get_avatar( $comment, 48 ), (...);
This is my line of code and Wordpress Theme Checker tells me "Text domain problems. You have not included a text domain!" I have included one though, as you can see. What could be the problem here?
share|improve this question
1 Answer 1
up vote 1 down vote accepted
_x() is for string with a context. So your second argument is just the context, and there is no text domain.
$string = _x(
'%1$s %2$s - %3$s %4$s', # string to translate
'recent comments 1 = gravatar, 2 = … ', # context for translators
'thst' # text domain
$visible = sprintf( $string, get_avatar( $comment, 48 ), … );
$output.= ''. $visible. '';
Explain all numbers in your context parameter.
share|improve this answer
$output.= ''. /* translators: comments widget: 1: comment author, 2: post link */ sprintf(_x('%1$s %2$s - %3$s %4$s'), get_avatar( $comment, 48 ), ''. get_comment_author_link(), ''. get_the_title($comment->comment_post_ID). '', ''. get_comment_date('l, j F Y'). '', 'thst'). ''; Ok I got it now. the text domain needed to go at the very end since the other things in the middle are numbers. Thanks! – charlenemasters Feb 14 '13 at 10:48
No, use a context parameter and a text domain as explained in my answer. – toscho Feb 14 '13 at 10:49
Ok I'm not sure I understand. All the elements after x_() are the elements that are inserted into '%1$s'... How does the context parameter come into this? What is it, what does it do and where do I put it? – charlenemasters Feb 14 '13 at 11:01
_USER_ I made an update to my answer to show better how it works. Is that better? – toscho Feb 14 '13 at 11:10
Got it to work and I understand it now. Thanks a lot! – charlenemasters Feb 14 '13 at 11:42
Your Answer


text:
Posted on Thursday 26th May 2011
A University of Birmingham scientist is set to join weather experts from across the country to help the local community learn more about weather and the climate with hands-on activities and demonstrations at a week-long roadshow coming to the city this half-term.
Organised by the Big Lottery funded Open Air Laboratories (OPAL) project, the OPAL Weather Roadshow is taking place between Wednesday 1 June and Sunday 5 June at Canon Hill Park and will feature an exciting range of activities providing all ages with the chance to investigate their local weather.
One of the highlights will be the opportunity to become a weather presenter for the day using the latest green-screen technology where University of Birmingham geographer, and OPAL Community Scientist, Dr Adam Bates, will be on hand to discuss climate forecasts for the local area.
Dr Bates, from the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences said:
"Changes to our climate strongly impact both people and wildlife; whether through small changes in long-term amounts of rainfall and temperature, or extreme events like large floods and tornadoes, the weather affects us all.
"The OPAL Weather Roadshow gives people the opportunity to find out more about how changes to their local climate might affect them, and to gain first-hand experience of how weather is measured, predicted and reported. It will also be really fun."
Other activities taking place during the roadshow include the chance to create a tornado, although this will be on a much smaller scale than the 2005 Birmingham tornado which caused £40million worth of damage. Infra-red temperature guns will allow people to measure the temperature of clouds in the sky and a lightning ball will provide a glimpse of lightning up close.
As well as hands-on activities, a professional weather station will display measurements of temperature, pressure, humidity, wind speed and solar radiation. Weather experts from the Royal Meteorological Society and Imperial College, London will be on hand to explain their significance, enabling people to learn more about weather and climate in an interactive way.
The OPAL Weather Roadshow will be held at Canon Hill Park, Birmingham between Tuesday 31 May and Sunday 5 June and is free and open to everyone. For more information see _URL_ Further information about the OPAL project can be found at: _URL_.
For further information, please contact Amy Cory, University of Birmingham Press Office via 0121 _PHONE_ or _EMAIL_.
Notes to Editors
- Open Air Laboratories (OPAL) is a nationwide partnership initiative, led by Imperial College London, that inspires communities to discover, enjoy and protect their local environments. It aims to create a new generation of nature-lovers by stimulating interest through local and national projects which are accessible, fun and relevant to anyone who wants to take part. OPAL provides the skills and materials needed for the first national community-led study of the world around us. For more information, please visit _URL_.
- The Big Lottery Fund, the largest of the National Lottery good cause distributors, has been providing grants to health, education, environment and charitable causes across the UK since its inception in June 2004. It was established by Parliament on 1 December 2006. Full details of the work of the Big Lottery Fund, its programmes and awards are available on the website: _URL_.
- The Big Lottery Fund's Changing Spaces programme was launched in November 2005 to help communities enjoy and improve their local environments. The programme funds a range of activities from local food schemes and farmers markets, to education projects teaching people about the environment. A £11,760,783 Changing Spaces grant was awarded to the leading OPAL partner, Imperial College London, in August 2007.