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From Oxford University Press:
There is a broad consensus among scholars that the idea of human rights was a product of the Enlightenment but that a self-conscious and broad-based human rights movement focused on international law only began after World War II. In this narrative, the nineteenth century's absence is conspicuous--few have considered that era seriously, much less written books on it. But as Jenny Martinez shows in this novel interpretation of the roots of human rights law, the foundation of the movement that we know today was a product of one of the nineteenth century's central moral causes: the movement to ban the international slave trade. Originating in England in the late eighteenth century, abolitionism achieved remarkable success over the course of the nineteenth century. Martinez focuses in particular on the international admiralty courts, which tried the crews of captured slave ships. The courts, which were based in the Caribbean, West Africa, Cape Town, and Brazil, helped free at least 80,000 Africans from captured slavers between 1807 and 1871. Here then, buried in the dusty archives of admiralty courts, ships' logs, and the British foreign office, are the foundations of contemporary human rights law: international courts targeting states and non-state transnational actors while working on behalf the world's most persecuted peoples--captured West Africans bound for the slave plantations of the Americas. Fueled by a powerful thesis and novel evidence, Martinez's work will reshape the fields of human rights history and international human rights law.
- Forces us to fundamentally rethink the origins of human rights activism
- Filled with fascinating stories of captured slave ship crews brought to trial across the Atlantic world in the nineteenth century
- Shows how the prosecution of the international slave trade was crucial to the development of modern international law


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Views: 6 Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2021-11-17 Origin: Site
Ultrasonic water meter is a new type of water meter which can be used to analyze and deal with the time difference caused by the change of velocity when ultrasonic beam propagates downstream and counter-current in water, so as to further calculate the discharge of water.
ow initial flow rate, wide range ratio, high measuring accuracy and stable operation.No internal moving parts open flow components, not affected by impurities in water, long service life. The output communication function is complete, meeting all kinds of communication and wireless networking requirements.With excellent small-flow detection ability, it can solve the problems of many traditional water meters. It is more suitable for gradient charging of water charges, more suitable for saving and rational utilization of water resources, and has broad market and use prospects.
The principle of ultrasonic flow measurement is to use ultrasonic transducer to produce ultrasonic wave and make it propagate in water; When ultrasonic wave propagates in flowing water, it produces "propagation velocity difference", which is directly proportional to the flow velocity of water. Ultrasonic water meter uses this principle and is also called velocity difference ultrasonic water meter.
1, industrial process measurement and control.
2, replace the mechanical flowmeter to improve the reliability of measurement.
3, Replace all kinds of high-performance flowmeters.

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


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Edited by Peter Lloyd, Lois Wade, Sondra C, Flickety and 4 others
1Pull two loose keys from your pocket and let your spectators examine them.
2Pick up both keys and bend the tip of one key by slipping its tip into the ring slot of the other and squeezing both keys in your fist.
3Hide the the tip of the bent key between your index finger and thumb as you place the key on a flat surface.
- Your index finger covers the bent tip as the key lies flat.
4Gently rub the visible part of the key with the fingers of your other hand and slowly press down on the bent tip with your index finger.
- Pressing down will make the visible part of the key rise as you stroke it.


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by Msgr. Ildebrando Jesus Aliño Leyson
35. What is meant by "canonization of Blessed Pedro Calungsod"? The Canonization of Blessed Pedro Calungsod is the solemn act by which the Pope, with definitive sentence, inscribes in the catalogue (canon) of saints Blessed Pedro. By this act, the Pope declares that Blessed Pedro now reigns in eternal glory and decrees that the Universal Church show him the honor due to a saint. Thus, Blessed Pedro will henceforth be addressed as Saint Pedro Calungsod or San Pedro Calungsod. The solemn canonization is an infallible and irrevocable decision of the Pope. "By canonizing some of the faithful, that is, by solemnly proclaiming that they practiced heroic virtue and lived in fidelity to God's grace, the Church recognizes the power of the Spirit of holiness within her and sustains the hope of believers by proposing the saints to them as models and intercessors. The saints have always been the source and origin of renewal in the most difficult moments in the Church's history. Indeed, holiness is the hidden source and infallible measure of her apostolic activity and missionary zeal." – Catechism of the Catholic Church 828.
36. What was required for the canonization process of Blessed Pedro? For the Pope to decide for the canonization, he needs a divine sign of approval which we call a miracle. A miracle may be defined as an extraordinary religious occurrence that came about through a special and gratuitous intervention of God. It is contemporaneously a sign or a manifestation of a divine message to man and a call to conversion. A miracle is a supernatural occurrence, and so, it cannot be explained naturally or scientifically. A major miracle is required for the canonization.
37. Were there supernatural occurrences upon the invocation of Blessed Pedro's help? After the beatification of Pedro Calungsod on March 5, 2000, many different divine favors were reported by people who asked for his intercessory aid. Choosing a major miracle from among these favors was not an easy task. There had to be sufficient objective documentation. Such a criterion was met in a medical case that happened on March 26, 2003 at a hospital in Cebu City. The supernatural occurrence was reported by the doctor himself who was the one who invoked Blessed Pedro.
38. What was the major miracle that God performed through the intercession of Blessed Pedro? The presumed miracle is about the rapid recovery of a 49-year-old patient from Glasgow Coma Scale score 3 and the absence of motor and sensory deficits thereof.
39. What is meant by "coma"? Coma (from Greek "koma" = deep sleep) is a deep state of unconsciousness in which individuals do not consciously respond to stimuli in their environment. The Glasgow Coma Scale is used to measure the depth of coma based upon observations of eye opening, speech, and movement. When we say that the Glasgow Coma Scale score is 3, it means that the patient is in the deepest level of coma. The patient does not respond with any body movement to pain, does not have any speech, and does not open his eyes.
40. What caused the coma of the patient concerned? It was caused by hypoxic encephalopathy which means a lack of oxygen supply to the brain (hypo = less + oxia = oxygen; encephalo = brain + pathy = disorder). In turn, the patient's hypoxic encephalopathy was caused by a cardiac arrest which happened on March 24. The heart stopped pumping blood that carries oxygen to the brain. Three days earlier, on March 21, the patient underwent a heart surgery which was a mitral valve replacement and coronary artery bypass grafting. Both procedures went remarkably well. But, three days later the patient became so restless and had a hard time breathing that led to the cardiac arrest and, eventually, to hypoxic encephalopathy.
41. How serious was the situation of the patient? Brain cells are extremely sensitive to oxygen deprivation. Some brain cells actually start dying less than five minutes after their oxygen supply disappears. As a result, hypoxic encephalopathy can rapidly cause death or severe brain damage. The longer the patient is unconscious, the higher risk for death or brain death, and the lower chances for a meaningful recovery. Complications of hypoxic encephalopathy include prolonged vegetative state – basic life functions such as breathing, blood pressure, sleep-wake cycle, and eye opening may be preserved, but the patient is not alert and does not respond to his surroundings. Such a patient usually dies within a year, although some may survive longer while having neurological deficits.
42. How was the intercession of Blessed Pedro invoked? On March 26, knowing that the patient could die any moment, the attending physician, who is an internist and cardiologist at the same time, invoked the aid of the Visayan teenage martyr saying, "Blessed Pedro Calungsod, please save the life of this patient! Perform a miracle!"
43. What happened after Blessed Pedro was invoked? At 2:00 PM of the same day, the patient was subjected to an electroencephalogram (EEG), a test that measures and records brain waves representing electrical activity in the brain. It was done to find out if the patient in coma was brain dead or not. The EEG result was bad. Nevertheless, at around 6:00 PM, just four hours after the EEG test, the patient started to gain consciousness. In his testimony, the attending physician said, "It was rather a rapid recovery. Patients in such a situation would normally recover only after some weeks, if they ever recover; but, in the case of this patient, it was in less than 48 hours. It was a definitive recovery from Glasgow Coma score 3 to normal mental status and no motor and sensory deficits upon discharge. The patient survived and is still alive today."
44. What was done to verify the supernatural incident? Finding out that there could have been a supernatural occurrence, the attending physician reported the case to the postulator of the Cause for the Canonization of Blessed Pedro in Cebu. Subsequently, an Archdiocesan Canonical Process which involved physicians was instituted in Cebu to verify the presumed supernatural occurrence. The Process went through nine sessions from December 15, 2004 until June 6, 2005. Its positive result was presented to the Vatican which in turn recognized the validity of the Process on November 25, 2005. The Positio Super Miro which is a systematic presentation of documents and arguments on the presumed miracle was then prepared and submitted to the Vatican on May 18, 2006.
45. What was the process done at the Vatican regarding the reported supernatural occurrence? During the following years, the Vatican made a series of clarifications to which the postulator in Cebu also made precise and exhaustive responses. Six Vatican consultor physicians had to gather three times to discuss and clarify some details of the reported case, first on May 29, 2008, then, on September 30, 2010, and finally on March 24, 2011 when they unanimously pronounced that the reported case was beyond natural or scientific explanation. On July 2, 2011, six Vatican consultor theologians authenticated that the supernatural healing was due solely to the intercession of Blessed Pedro. Then, on the following October 11, fifteen Vatican consultors, among which were 7 cardinals, 5 archbishops and 3 bishops, unanimously affirmed that what the consultor physicians and theologians declared could point to an authentic major miracle and that it is opportune to declare Blessed Pedro a saint. A Decree on the authentic major miracle was then drawn up by the Vatican. On December 19, 2011, Pope Benedict XVI received in audience His Eminence Angelo Cardinal Amato, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, and authorized the promulgation of the Decree concerning the miracle attributed to Blessed Pedro. By that decree, the Pope has made known to everyone that there is indeed an authentic major miracle performed by God through the intercession of Blessed Pedro. On February 18, during the Ordinary Public Consistory, the Pope received the unanimous vote of all the cardinals for the canonization of Blessed Pedro and indicated October 21, 2012 as the date of the canonization.
46. Is there any significance of the date of the canonization in the life of Blessed Pedro? The "Great War" in Guam, which started on September 11, 1671 (9/11!) between the missionaries and the pagan natives who wanted to stop the mission, ended with the victory of the missionaries, the establishment of peace and the resumption of the mission on October 21, 1671. Blessed Pedro was martyred and his body was thrown into the ocean in 1672 to stop his mission and to erase any trace of him on this earth; but his 340 long years of oblivion will now be ended by his triumphant canonization on October 21, 2012 when the whole Universal Church – including the inhabitants of Guam – will begin to invoke him as a saint.
47. What is the official title given by the Vatican by which we may call Blessed Pedro when he will have been declared a saint? He will be called Saint Pedro Calungsod, Lay Catechist and Martyr (in English); San Pedro Calungsod, Katekistang Layko ug Martir (in Cebuano); San Pedro Calungsod, Katekistang Layko at Martir.
48. What is a lay cate

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


text: Tetris is a tile-matching puzzle video game originally designed and programmed by Alexey Pajitnov in the Soviet Union. It was released on June 6, 1984. Tetriminos are game pieces in geometric shapes composed of four square blocks each. A random sequence of Tetriminos fall down the playing field. The objective of the game is to manipulate these Tetriminos to create a horizontal line of ten blocks without gaps. When such a line is created, it disappears and any block above the deleted line will fall. When a certain number of lines are cleared, the game enters a new level. As the game progresses, the Tetriminos fall faster, and the game ends when the stack of Tetriminos reaches the top of the playing field and no new Tetriminos are able to enter.


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Description: In Progressive Enlightenment, Leslie Tomory examines the origins of the gaslight industry, from invention to consolidation as a large integrated urban network. Tomory argues that gas was the first integrated large-scale technological network, a designation usually given to the railways. He shows how the first gas network was constructed and stabilized through the introduction of new management structures, the use of technical controls, and the application of means to constrain the behavior of the users of gas lighting. Tomory begins by describing the contributions of pneumatic chemistry and industrial distillation to the development of gas lighting, then explores the bifurcation between the Continental and British traditions in distillation technology. He examines the establishment and consolidation of the new industry by the Birmingham firm Boulton & Watt, and describes the deployment of the network strategy by the entrepreneur Frederick Winsor. Tomory argues that the gas industry represented a new wave of technological innovation in industry because of its dependence on formal scientific research, its need for large amounts of capital, and its reliance on business organization beyond small firms and partnerships--all of which signaled a departure from the artisanal nature and limited deployment of inventions earlier in the Industrial Revolution. Gas lighting was the first important realization of the Enlightenment dream of science in the service of industry.
Place and publisher: Cambridge: MIT Press
Date of publication: 2012
Number of pages: 360


- The Travel Search Engine
Andros Travel Guide
Andros Postcard
Overview Things to do Suitability Country Info (Bahamas)
Andros Island is the largest island of the Bahamas at roughly 2300 square miles (6,000 km²) in area and 104 miles (167 km) long and 40 miles (64 km) wide at its widest point.
Well known for it's world-class bone fishing and blue hole scuba diving, Andros Island is one of the last frontiers in the Bahamas. Fewer visitors = quiet, uncrowded beaches and a terrific place for quiet and peace. On land, little happens on Andros Island, there are dozens of little settlements with only about 10,000 people dotted around. The people are primarily interested in fishing, catching land crabs in season, hanging out and doing nothing.
The island is filled with natural beauty. Andros has the second largest barrier reef in the Northern Hemisphere at one hundred and forty miles (64 km) long with a drop off of over six thousand feet (1.8 km. The water above the reef is only about twelve feet (4 m) deep on average too. There are more than fourty square miles (104 km²) of rainforest area and the swamp land that is inhabited by more than 50 species of orchids. Andros is actually made up of two different islands adjoined by these deep swamp lands. Two hundred different types of birds are native to the island. Andros is also the least explored island of the Bahamas.
Road trips around Andros Island can be an adventure in patience. The road conditions are pretty awful in a lot of areas, but there are usually lots of interesting experiences along its stretches.
Current Weather
Andros Town, BHS
Temperature: 25°C
Humidity: 54
Wind: 10 mph SSE
5 day forecast (click to dropdown)


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|Celebrating Women's Day|
The upheaval of the sixties and the women's movement of the seventies finally brought about the lasting changes that many of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers had started fighting for in the early 1900's.
|National Women's History Project|
Although times have changed, they still remain the same. You will find the women of the cemetery usually bear one of these descriptive names on their stones to describe their station in life; daughter, sister, aunt, wife, mother, grandmother, widow. On older stones, the term consort or relict was used to describe the woman's marital status.
From the 17th through 19th centuries, consort was usually used on the graves of women, although a man could also be a consort. The word consort was normally used in this manner:
Mary LaPlant faired better in regard to information about her life. Mary was the consort, or spouse, of Lambert Barrots. Both her birth and death dates were listed along with 'LaPlant', which was probably, her birth name possibly used as a middle name.
Relict was another term from the 17th and 18th centuries that meant the woman was the surviving spouse of the marriage and had not remarried. Relict was used much as our term widow is used today to describe a woman whose spouse has died before her.
Most of the other relationship terms used to describe a woman remain the same. They can give us more insight into the lives of our female ancestors, and yet, it seems, never quite enough.
Daughter describes any female descendent or offspring.
Charlotte Snyder was a daughter. Unfortunately we do not know whose daughter, nor do we know the exact dates of her birth or death.
'Mary dau. (daughter) of L.J. & M.E. Miles' had a more detailed stone. Mary's death date and age were listed, along with the symbol of a rosebud, used to indicate the lose of a young life.
Sister is a female who has both parents in common with another offspring. Sister is not as prevalent on gravestones as other relationship terms.
Two sisters will share this marker. Each has her married name on the stone. Unfortunately, for genealogy purposes, we do not know what their birth name was.
Aunt describes a female who is the sister or sister-in-law of your parent.
With this stone designation of Aunt, we may assume that Hannah never married. Her birth and death dates were listed, along with her middle name.
Wife is the female partner in a marriage.
Catharine – wife of Samuel Thorn with a date of death listed, although covered up by years of soil buildup. Samuel had a willow tree placed on the stone, a symbol of mourning.
Anna B. was the wife of John G. Frisz. Anna's birth and death years were listed and her stone was very substantial and ornate.
This couple's stone showed Edward's birth and death years, but for Ella, only the year of her birth. Did she move away, remarry or did someone just forget to have the date of her passing engraved in the stone?
Mother – a female, who has given birth to a child, adopted a child or raised a child. The female parent.
Charlotte T. Engle's stone showed her birth and death dates along with the simple inscription 'Mother.'
Myrtle's stone indicated that she was someone's mother and the year of her birth and death.
There are also the poignant stones, such as 'Hattie Clark and Daughter.' No dates, no name for the child.
Grandmother – The mother of your mother or father.
Grandmother is another designation, which is seldom found on gravestones.
Naomi Graves Bray was honored with the term 'Grandmother' placed on her stone, along with her birth and death years and a religious symbol.
Other designations, or lack of, that can create a dilemma about who these women were:
This stone tells us only that Elizabeth was buried here, along with her birth and death years. No last name, no relationship designation.
Here, a bit more detail, Flora's last name - Clement. A birth year was given, but no death year.
This stone is intriguing. The large marble marker was used for the grave of Jesse Cravens' wife who died in 1885. A four-line epitaph was engraved at the bottom. But I find the semicolon a mystery. Was it used to indicate an omitted or unknown letter? If so, then Jesse Cravens had nothing to do with this stone, as he should have known the spelling of his wife's name. So who had this stone erected? And why use a semicolon instead of a question mark if the letter or letters were unknown? Does any one have any ideas?
This stone tells of someone much beloved.
And it seems only fitting to close out with a stone that seems to sum up Women's History Month.
"James Henry – Husband of Beatrice Steel"
Beatrice Steel – Touché'!


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Bringing a Turtle, Snake, or Lizard into the United States
CDC does not regulate snakes or lizards, but does limit imports of small turtles, tortoises and terrapins and their viable eggs. Turtles with a carapace (shell) length of less than 4 inches and turtle eggs may not be imported for any commercial purpose. An individual may import as many as six small turtles or six eggs or any combination totaling six or fewer turtles and turtle eggs for noncommercial purposes. This rule was implemented in 1975 after it was discovered that small turtles frequently transmitted Salmonella to humans, particularly young children.
- Turtles with shell length (carapace) less than 4" and viable turtle eggs may NOT be imported for commercial purposes
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regulates the importation of reptiles. Regulations regarding reptiles, fish, injurious [PDF - 2 pages] or endangered species can be found on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service import/export website.


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Revisiting the Greed and Grievance Explanations for Violent Internal Conflict
Author: Syed Mansoob Murshed, Mohammad Zulfan Tadjoeddin
Access full text: available online
This Journal of International Development article assesses two recent explanations for the onset of internal conflict: greed and grievance. The former reflects elite competition over valuable natural resource rents. The latter argues that relative deprivation, and the grievance it produces, fuels conflict. However, this article argues that neither the presence of greed or grievance is sufficient for the outbreak of violent conflict. Violent conflict requires institutional breakdown, or the failure of the social contract.
Pure versions of the greed hypothesis are, on their own, unsatisfactory explanations for the causes of conflict. In reality the competing greed versus grievance hypotheses may be complementary explanations for conflict. The greed explanation for conflict duration and secessionist wars works in cross-country studies, but has to make way for grievance-based arguments in quantitative country case studies. Grievances and horizontal inequalities may be better at explaining why conflicts begin, but not necessarily why they persist. Neither the presence of greed or grievance is sufficient for the outbreak of violent conflict, something which requires institutional breakdown, which we describe as the failure of the social contract.
The breakdown of the social contract captures institutional malfunctioning and it is also crucial in transforming grievances into collective violence. A failing social contract may be the real signal of the risk of civil war.
- In certain instances, where there are substantial quantities of natural resource wealth, greed may be the dominant factor prolonging conflict, but without group formation (for which some historical grievances are important), violent collective action cannot take place.
- Some societies, despite having conditions pre-disposing them to civil war, such as horizontal inequality, polarisation and natural resource rents, do not descend into conflict.
- For the forces behind either greed or grievance to take the form of large-scale violence there must be other factors at work, specifically a weakening of the 'social contract'. This is similar to the weak state capacity, and by implication poor institutional quality.
- Even if rents from capturable resources do constitute a sizeable prize, violent conflict is unlikely to take hold if a country has a framework of widely agreed rules.
- Such a viable social contract can be sufficient to restrain, if not eliminate, opportunistic behaviour such as large-scale theft of resource rents, and the violent expression of grievance.
The degradation of the social contract is more likely in the context of poverty and growth failure.
- As yet, no empirical models at the level of cross-national analysis exist to properly test for the relative power of greed vis-a-vis horizontal inequality type grievances in explaining conflict onset.
- Greed and grievance can and do co-exist; because one breeds the other a model of their simultaneous determination is required, along with the contribution of poverty (which is chiefly about the lack of growth) and institutional quality.
- Furthermore, the existing econometric literature regarding the causes of conflict allows us to infer little about the true nature of the causal links between the phenomena examined.
- The most robustly significant predictor of conflict risk and its duration is some indicator of economic prosperity. At a higher income people have more to lose from the destructiveness of conflict; and higher per-capita income implies a better functioning social contract, institutions and state capacity.
Access full text: available online
Murshed, S. M. and Tadjoeddin, M. Z., 2009, 'Revisiting the Greed and Grievance Explanations for Violent Internal Conflict', Journal of International Development, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 87-111
Syed Mansoob Murshed


Chapter 9. The Berkeley DB Environment
Table of Contents
Database environment introduction
Creating a database environment
Opening databases within the environment
Error support
DB_CONFIG configuration file
File naming
Specifying file naming to Berkeley DB
Filename resolution in Berkeley DB
Shared memory regions
Remote filesystems
Environment FAQ
Database environment introduction
A Berkeley DB environment is an encapsulation of one or more databases, log files and region files. Region files are the shared memory areas that contain information about the database environment such as memory pool cache pages. Only databases are byte-order independent and only database files can be moved between machines of different byte orders. Log files can be moved between machines of the same byte order. Region files are usually unique to a specific machine and potentially to a specific operating system release.
The simplest way to administer a Berkeley DB application environment is to create a single home directory that stores the files for the applications that will share the environment. The environment home directory must be created before any Berkeley DB applications are run. Berkeley DB itself never creates the environment home directory. The environment can then be identified by the name of that directory.
An environment may be shared by any number of processes, as well as by any number of threads within those processes. It is possible for an environment to include resources from other directories on the system, and applications often choose to distribute resources to other directories or disks for performance or other reasons. However, by default, the databases, shared regions (the locking, logging, memory pool, and transaction shared memory areas) and log files will be stored in a single directory hierarchy.
It is important to realize that all applications sharing a database environment implicitly trust each other. They have access to each other's data as it resides in the shared regions, and they will share resources such as buffer space and locks. At the same time, any applications using the same databases must share an environment if consistency is to be maintained between them.
Database Environment Operations Description
db_env_create() Create an environment handle
DB->getenv() handle Return DB's underlying DB_ENV handle
DB_ENV->close() Close an environment
DB_ENV->dbremove() Remove a database
DB_ENV->dbrename() Rename a database
DB_ENV->err() Error message
DB_ENV->failchk() Check for thread failure
DB_ENV->fileid_reset() Reset database file IDs
DB_ENV->open() Return environment's home directory
DB_ENV->open() Return flags with which the environment was opened
DB_ENV->lsn_reset() Reset database file LSNs
DB_ENV->open() Open an environment
DB_ENV->remove() Remove an environment
DB_ENV->stat() Environment statistics
db_strerror() Error strings
DB_ENV->version() Return version information
Environment Configuration
DB_ENV->set_alloc() Set local space allocation functions
DB_ENV->set_app_dispatch() Configure application recovery
DB_ENV->set_cachesize() Set the environment cache size
DB_ENV->set_data_dir() Set the environment data directory
DB_ENV->set_encrypt() Set the environment cryptographic key
DB_ENV->set_errcall() Set error and informational message callbacks
DB_ENV->set_errfile() Set error and informational message FILE
DB_ENV->set_errpfx() Set error message prefix
DB_ENV->set_event_notify() Set event notification callback
DB_ENV->set_feedback() Set feedback callback
DB_ENV->set_flags() Environment configuration
DB_ENV->set_isalive() Set thread is-alive callback
DB_ENV->set_intermediate_dir_mode() Set intermediate directory creation mode
DB_ENV->set_shm_key() Set system memory shared segment ID
DB_ENV->set_thread_id() Set thread of control ID function
DB_ENV->set_thread_count() Set approximate thread count
DB_ENV->set_thread_id_string() Set thread of control ID format function
DB_ENV->set_timeout() Set lock and transaction timeout
DB_ENV->set_tmp_dir() Set the environment temporary file directory
DB_ENV->set_verbose() Set verbose messages


Macedonian Holidays – a Comprehensive Guide
When you observe the hospitable and welcoming predisposition of Macedonian citizens, curiosity strikes right away – I wonder how these people are celebrating their holidays, how many they actually have, and to what degree these obstruct the normal flow of everyday commerce, business and administration?
new year in skopje macedonia
The handy guide below lists all of the public Macedonian holidays, their significance and celebratory tradition. It will help you plan upfront, knowing exactly when the country is taking a collective break.
Surely enough, like any nationality close to the Mediterranean, Macedonians like to have their celebrations. But while Macedonian holidays are numerous indeed, only 12 of them enjoy public holiday status. These public holidays maintain religious, national and ethnic tradition, with majority of them based on the orthodox faith.
The fact that some are movable and others have a fixed date, begs the necessity of drawing an annual chart. The one below, as you will notice, is based on the 2018 calendar year.
Macedonian public holidays 2018
The table presented is pretty much self-explanatory, so if you need to have a quick look and orient yourself properly just glance over.
For those of you who like to take a closer look, clicking the name of the holiday will take you down this page for a more detailed explanation. a detailed explanation is available below.
Looking at the table above, you'll notice 12 Macedonian holidays, signifying religious and national tradition.
If a holiday happens to fall on a weekend, the authorities will issue a proclamation that basically sets the observation on a different day, allowing the country to take a collective break. That being said, even people who are not of orthodox faith are getting a day off when celebrating Christmas of Easter. The same holds true for the Muslim holiday of Eid Al Fitr (the end of Ramadan).
Some of the ethnic and religious holidays are enjoyed by specific communities, but the public holidays provide a mandatory break regardless of your ethnic or religious background. The Macedonian holidays are regulated by the Law on Holidays in the Republic of Macedonia, 2007. It is this law which permits the authorities to proclaim additional non-working days for holidays if they are officially published.
The religious holidays are often celebrated traditionally in both the capital of Skopje, as well as around the country. Some of the national holidays are celebrated exclusively at specific locations, like for example Meckin Kamen near Krushevo, respecting historical context and tradition.
Macedonian public holidays described
Going over the public holidays in Macedonia, we will try and reflect on the meaning of each, describing the general perception, importance, and cultural appreciation.
New Year's Day
Observing the Gregorian calendar as all other countries in the world (except Israel), Macedonians are celebrating New Year's Day as a public holiday. The celebration traditionally starts at 00:00, with fireworks, music and public square concerts – majority of which have been discontinued recently, for the reason of charity donations. A practice described by many locals as an act of virtue signaling, and populist moves by a sharply divided political spectrum.
Orthodox Christmas Day (often googled as Macedonian Christmas)
christmas in macedonia
Observed every year on the 7th of January, Macedonians are celebrating the birth of Christ. The celebration is humble and confined to religious temples only, as opposed to the western consumerism craze happening around the holidays. If there is a parallel to be drawn, you can find much similarity to western enthusiasm with Christmas with the celebration of the New Year's Eve in Macedonia.
Much of this, as many believe, boils down to communist rule partly prohibiting excessive religion appreciation. Macedonia is long past the years of communism, but tradition seems to hold on.
Orthodox Easter Monday
The date itself is movable, and it changes every year. For 2018, the Orthodox Easter Day is celebrated on the 8th of April (Sunday – the day of week is fixed and never changes), and the public holiday is established on Monday the 9th of April, being a non-working day.
Easter, traditionally, is celebrated on midnight where many people gather inside and around every active church, to pray and wait for the resurrection of Christ. The traffic in Skopje is largely obstructed, for crowds of people are walking on the streets, visiting churches located in the city center.
Groups of friends, family and teenagers are covering the center, many of which are not paying attention to the religious aspect of the gathering, but are enjoying the social nature of the event.
The following day is considered the 2nd day of Easter (which is celebrated for 3 days in a row), where the family comes together for lunch. Recently, the trend is for people to flock the southern border, heading towards neighboring Greece, for a 2-3 day vacation.
Since Great Friday (observed by Orthodox Christians, and established as a non-working day for the people of the Orthodox faith) extends the weekend, which is further prolonged by the public holiday observed in Monday, many people decide to treat themselves with a short vacation. Putting this into consideration, we can say that the conservative tradition of Macedonians is definitely changing its shape.
Labor Day
May Day, which is associated with the commemoration of the achievements of the labor movement, is celebrated in over 80 countries as a public holiday. It is also known as Labor Day, or International Worker's Day.
In the States, the observation is moved to September, as to avoid commemorating some of the deadliest riots, while in Russia the holiday is meat to symbolize solidarity with the worker class.
In Macedonia, however, there is little appreciation of the ideological background of the holiday. It is, instead, a day reserved for weekend gateways (when the calendar year is gracious enough to place it next to a weekend), or hedonistic picnics in nature.
Saint Cyril and Methodius Day
Celebrated in both Bulgaria and Macedonia, this is a day of culture and literacy as much as it is of religious tradition. Observed on the 24th of May, it is also known as the Alphabet Day, proclaimed as a public holiday only in Macedonia.
Two Byzantine brothers born in the 9th century, Cyril and Methodius went as missionaries to present day Ukraine, spreading Christianity among the Slavic peoples of Great Morava, Pannonia and Bulgaria.
Credited with devising the Glagolitic alphabet (precursor to the Cyrillic, named after Cyril), the transcribed religious book spreading both faith and literacy. As of today, over 300 million people use the Cyrillic script.
Eid al Fitr
Marking the end of Ramadan and the fast, the date of Eid depends on the sighting of the moon, with slight variations in the exact time of celebration around the world.
The law of holidays of the republic of Macedonia announced in the year 2007, established this as the first Muslim holiday elevated to the rank of a public holiday, making it a non-work day for people from all religious backgrounds.
Macedonian Republic Day
krushevo republic day macedonia
Marking two important events from Macedonian history – the Ilinden uprising in 1903 and the Republic establishment in1944 – this holiday is also known for its religious significance. Marking the prophet Elijah's ascension into heaven, it is therefore known as Ilinden (or Saint Elijah's Day – translated from Macedonian).
The formal celebrations take place in Krushevo, on Meckin Kamen (Bear's Rock), where the famous battle with the ottoman army took place during the 1903 uprising. Ethnic music and traditional Macedonian clothing are often decorating the celebration.
Macedonian Independence Day
Celebrating the referendum for independence in 1991, the Macedonian Independence Day marks the beginning of the modern Republic of Macedonia. When it falls on a weekend, the government additionally announces the observation day.
The country gained its independence from Yugoslavia, where within its borders it was only a federal state. After the Independence Day, Macedonia became a sovereign parliamentary democracy.
Taking place on September the 8th, 1991, over 95% of the voters have chosen Independence from Yugoslavia, granting Macedonia the only peaceful separation from the union, while the region has succumbed to conflict. Several official events are held, celebrating national pride.
Revolution day (Day of uprising)
Celebrated on the 11th of October, this is the day of the uprising against the fascist aggressor, when in 1941 armed insurgents form Prilep attacked Axis occupied zones in the city. The resistance continued well into the following years, lasting until the end of the war in 1994.
No significant celebration events are held during this day.
Day of the Macedonian revolution
Commemorating the establishment of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO – or VMRO in Macedonian), this day is celebrating the historical and patriotic importance of this liberation movement operating within the Ottoman Empire.
The organization was founded by Dame Gruev, Hristo Tatarchev, Peter Pop-Arsov, Andon Dimitrov, Ivan Hadzinikolov and Hristo Batandzhiev. It is celebrated on the 23rd of October, without excessive formality and celebratory events.
The day of the Macedonian revolution is only recently established as a public holiday, thanks to the right wing party bearing the name of the historic organization.
Saint Clement of Ohrid
A disciple of Saint Cyril and Methodius, St. Clement of Ohrid was born in 840. He was leading one of the Slavonic schools established by the Bulgarian King Boris, and is commonly accredited with inventing the Cyrillic alphabet.
An


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The dialogue recorded at this link is a fabulous example of doing many things right in a conversation with somebody you disagree with. Peter Kreeft was taking a class that was being taught by a homosexual activist. Kreeft hoped to chat with his professor (whom he calls "Art") about his views, striving to open and clarify their respective views on the subject. Kreeft is right to observe that rarely happens when discussing homosexuality.
But I dare say it did happen in this case. Even Kreeft comments that he was not disappointed.
What happened in this conversation that rarely ever happens when two people dialogue about homosexuality? I cannot speak for the many failed conversations, but let's make some observations about Kreeft's conversation with Art.
- He started by explaining that "I believe in listening before arguing, as you said you do. So I'm not trying to argue now—that's not the point of my question—but first of all to listen and to understand." What a brilliant way to begin the conversation! If only we could all remember to listen first and understand the other person's perspective before we open our mouths in response.
- Kreeft is careful to qualify his comments. He knows full well the baggage many people carry into these kinds of conversations so he wisely begins with the statement, "Please don't take this as a personal insult, or even an argument…" and proceeds from there. When discussing the kinds of subjects that people typically get hyper-sensitive about it is always wise to clarify that no offense is intended, and to tailor your speech to minimize any accidental offense.
- There is no specific quote to make this point, just a general observation about the flow of the conversation. Near the beginning Kreeft asks a couple of clarifying questions, then lays out his perspective on the subject, answering Art's questions. Kreeft has a few lengthy monologues as he makes his case. But he gives Art a chance to respond. In fact, near the end they both exchange roughly the same amount of words, with Art getting a long, uninterrupted monologue near the end. In other words, the conversation was relatively even-handed. Kreeft wasn't dominating the chat and neither was he timidly letting Art speak without responding.
- Kreeft was willing to change his mind. He began the conversation with a certain view of the "hate the sin, love the sinner" perspective and freely admitted that by the end of the conversation Art had given him something to think about with respect to that distinction that he had never thought of before. That is a clear example of open-mindedness. As this dialogue was not recorded from Art's perspective we have no way of knowing how effective Kreeft was during the discussion.
- Kreeft was also strategic in his approach. The very last line is brilliant. While Kreeft appears to be giving up a lot of ground to Art the very last line is a marvelous example of stepping back out of the conversation and looking at the whole thing from another perspective. We don't know what Art's response to Kreeft's final observation was (perhaps Art's response is in Kreeft's book, How to Win the Culture War, within which this dialogue is recorded) but Kreeft clearly provides some excellent food for thought with respect to the importance homosexuals place on their lifestyle.
I want to throw out a quick disclaimer. I do not actually agree with Kreeft's concession with respect to the "hate the sin, love the sinner" distinction. I still think there is theological validity to that perspective and Art's counter-example is misleading. However, the point of my article is not to agree or disagree with the conclusion, but to observe the conversation itself. All in all, this is a great example of a healthy dialogue. It was healthy because both sides were free to express themselves without condemnation, and confidently did so. It was healthy because once the perspectives were expressed they were intelligently, respectfully wrestled with by both participants. Even though the subject matter was very personal, neither participant chose to be personally insulted. Many of the principles I describe in Arguing with Friends were exemplified in this dialogue and the results were as wonderful as anybody could reasonably hope for from a controversial conversation.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if every conversation about homosexuality adopted this tone? Perhaps one day, but change starts at the individual level. Next time you discuss homosexuality (whatever your perspective on the subject) will you follow the example of Art and Kreeft?


Saturday, March 3, 2012
Chinese Twins Adopted by Different Families Stay Connected
As reported from Canada, a fascinating tale of twins separated by adoption and their adoptive families' efforts to keep them connected:
The girls were born in China, separated by circumstance and parceled out to two different families.
Whether by fortune or design -- no one will ever know -- the couples who adopted them were both from Ontario. And they figured it out.
Kirk and Allyson MacLeod adopted their daughter, Lily, 12 years ago and brought her home to Keswick, north of Toronto. Mike and Lynette Shaw adopted their daughter, Gillian, 12 years ago and brought her home to Amherstburg, just outside Windsor. When the parents discovered the connection, they vowed to raise them as sisters.
The situation is as rare as it is fascinating: Lily and Gillian are one of only a handful of twin pairs in the world known to be growing up in this way — apart, yet together. They are an accidental experiment, giving researchers a new window into human behaviour by allowing them to study the effects of nature and nurture in real-time. For science, Lily and Gillian are a treasure.
And for the people raising them — strangers thrown together by extraordinary circumstances — the unusual arrangement has made them pioneers of a whole new kind of blended family. They are making up the rules as they go.
The families noticed that their referral pictures seemed to be of the same child and contacted their agency:
The two families contacted the adoption agency and asked coordinators to look into the matter. At first, the parents were concerned the orphanage may have inadvertently assigned one baby to two different families. Adoption documents even gave the girls the same birthday. If there were two of them, could they be twins?
Word came back from the orphanage a few days later: there were indeed two babies. Workers said the girls were found in different locations, brought in separately. They were not twins, just look-alikes.
And so the MacLeods and Shaws found themselves, two months later, at a hotel in China's Hunan province, waiting outside an elevator with three other couples. When the doors opened, five nannies stepped out with five little girls in their arms, babies bundled into so many layers of clothing they could hardly move. Only their heads peeked out of the hooded zip-up suits they wore.
It was immediately clear to all that two of the babies were identical.
Officially, the orphanage still insisted the girls, then 8 months old, were unrelated and could not be adopted together. If the parents didn't take the baby assigned to them, they would go back into the adoption pool. And there was no guarantee they would end up together next time.
Maybe workers at the orphanage really didn't know. Maybe they didn't care. Or maybe, as the girls' parents like to think, they couldn't afford a DNA test and did what they thought was the next best thing: place the twins with families near each other.
These aren't the only twins raised apart that are known to researchers, of course:
Twelve pairs are part of Segal's ongoing research on reared-apart twin children, a project that promises to open a new window into human behaviour. Every few years, for as long as they are willing, the twins and their parents will complete a giant questionnaire packet that tracks their behaviour, attitudes and health as they age.
The article has lots of stories about separated twins, and about commonalities between Lily and Gillian as well as between other separated twins.
1 comment:
Karen said...
I can't wrap my head around this concept. If EVERYONE ELSE knew they were twins, why couldn't the orphanage workers know the same thing? A friend of mine wanted to know what kind of "mutt" she had, so she sent away for a DNA swab kit. It cost her all of $50, and the company came back with results of every breed the dog had in him. It seems a DNA test for people would not be too expensive, and it irks me that an orphanage can't spend money to do that. Is it that they do not make as much on the donation if adopting twins, as adopting separately?
I've seen one other set of identical twins from China. One of the parents was going through the orphanage referral pictures while at work, and a coworker asked if it was a picture of her own daughter, when she researched it further, she found the parents of the second girl, and they connected and did a DNA test, and sure enough, they were identical twins.
Our daughter had another girl in the orphanage that, when I saw the referral picture (a month after ours was done) I had to do a double take. I've kept in touch with this mother, and we are interested in doing DNA tests. We have a couple of pictures with the other girl in the background, while they were in the orphanage. They too, were found at different times, and their paperwork says they are 2 weeks apart in age. They're not identical at all, but they look very similar. If they are not paternal twins, they might be cousins, because their referral pictures look so close...their facial expressions in the referral pictures are very similar and even their hair lines look similar. I can understand why, if they're related, the orphanage did not know so...but in a case where they look identical, IMO there is no excuse for claiming ignorance.
It also puzzles me as to why birth parents would leave them at different times, and different places. Do they think their children have a higher chance of being adopted if adopted separately because they think the one child policy flows over to adoption? Or were they considering keeping one of the twins? I don't get that part. Perhaps it's either?? Or possibly something else???


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A. Gertzman (Gr72)
$35.00 cloth; 424 pages; 53 illustrations
Between the two world wars, at a time when both sexual repression and sexual curiosity were commonplace, the erotic literature trade flourished in America. The market was large and contested, encompassing not just what might today be considered pornographic material but also sexually explicit fiction of authors such as James Joyce, Theodore Dreiser, and D.H. Lawrence; mail-order manuals; pulp romances; and dirty little comics.Ó
Bookleggers and SmuthoundsÓ recaptures this significant chapter in American publishing history, offering captivating portrayals of the pariah capitalistsÓ who shaped the erotica industry, and of the individuals, organizations and government agencies who sought to control them.
Among the most compelling personalities we meet are the notorious publisher Samuel Roth, the Prometheus of the Unprintable,Ó and his nemesis, John Sumner, head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, a man as aggressive in his pursuit of pornographers as in his quest for a morally united Ñ and ethnically homogeneous Ñ America.
This first examination of the trade in erotica during the 1920s and 30s provides a basis for understanding the evolution of both obscenity law and sexual explicitness in literature, and raises important issues about the relationship between moral control, idealism and the marketplace in ways that continue to resonate today.
Publishers Weekly called the book an absorbing account of an often overlooked corner of American publishing history. Only by understanding the quintessentially American history of this business can we understand the eroticized culture we inhabit today.Ó AB Trade Reviews called it a careful study of the shifting cultural climate,Ó and a major work of scholarship.Ó
Ñ University of Pennsylvania Press
Originally published on September 2, 1999


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Developing ecological sites and associated state-&-transition models to anticipate dynamic ecosystem responses to disturbance in complex landscapes of North Central Pennsylvania
Development of shale gas resources in north central Pennsylvania is driving landscape modification in a region characterized by complex geomorphology and a long history of intense human land use. Thus, land managers are tasked with anticipating ecological responses to fragmentation of young (< 100 years), even-aged forests in variable settings. To address these challenges, we are adapting tools originally developed for rangeland management in the western US: Ecological Sites (ESs) with associated State-&-Transition Models (STMs). In this study, we are developing ESs, across a seven-county region of north central PA, using a geographic information system to partition landscapes by multivariate analysis of four, ecologically relevant geomorphologic variables (elevation, slope, aspect, and curvature) derived from 10-m resolution digital elevation models. We are developing STMs through spatially explicit analysis of two vegetation datasets. Pre-European disturbance vegetation of each ES is being assessed via analysis of corner trees in digitized maps of original land surveys (1780s through 1850s) of 49 townships. Within these same townships, modern forest composition data from 549 sampling plots are being used to determine current species distributions with respect to ESs, identify alternative forest composition states, and to explore potential drivers of changes between states.
A boot-strapped analysis of possible clustering solutions indicated that six clusters (i.e. ecological sites) represented the most appropriate solution. The influence of each geomorphic variable on each ES was explored via contingency-table analysis, which indicated that cluster analysis divided landforms along logical gradients with respect to potential moisture availability. Though preliminary, inferences drawn from analysis of land survey data suggest that historic species distributions were strongly related to geomorphology. In contrast, modern data suggest that the relationship between species distributions and geomorphology has weakened relative to historic conditions. Furthermore, the modern data suggest extremely weak correlations between species abundances, suggesting little coherence in community structure. Species with broad ranges of ecological tolerance, especially red maple (Acer rubrum) and red oak, (Quercus rubra) are by far the most dominant species across the study region. We suggest that historic deforestation and associated modification of dynamic soil properties as the most likely mechanism driving these changes. In many respects, the modern forests of north central Pennsylvania represent novel community assemblages, in the early stages of reassembly following a massive resetting event a mere century ago. ESs and STMs could prove to be valuable management tools in these systems.


Technician Mayelin Mejias works at a vaccine processing plant at the Finlay Vaccine Institute in Havana, on January 20, 2021. YAMIL LAGE / Contributor/ Getty Images
Cuba is developing a vaccine, Soberana 02, which could be used to vaccinate its population.
Three others are also in the works. Cuba has a history of effective campaigns without Western help.
Several anti-capitalist countries have expressed interest in receiving the vaccine.
Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories.
A vaccine developed by the Cuban government is touted to enter Phase 3 trials in March, raising the prospect of the small, communist nation overseeing a homegrown vaccine drive.
The vaccine, Soberana 2, has yet to be formally approved. But Cuba is betting big on its success, which builds on a history of medical programs where the nation has acted alone.
The country aims to be one of the first in the world to vaccinate its entire population of 11 million by the end of 2021, though it will start significantly behind others countries which are already giving out jabs.
100 million doses of Soberana 02 could be produced by the country for domestic use and export by the end of the year, officials there say.
The country is developing four vaccines in parallel. The Finlay Institute of Vaccines is leading on Soberano 02, and also Soberano 01, which is not as far through the process.
Two more, Abdala and Mambisa, are being developed by the Centro de Ingeniería Genética y Biotecnología.
Mambisa, which is still very early in the phases of testing, is an intranasal treatment, which means it would be delivered through the nose rather than by a needle.
Both the institutes are funded and operated by the Cuban government.
A promising program – but little public data
"The Finlay Institute is a leading biopharma institution in Cuba", Professor Beate Kampmann, director of the Vaccine Centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told Insider in an interview.
"This is a solid enterprise that is [already] making the vaccines for a lot of Latin America, including tetanus and other conjugated vaccines."
Story continues
If Soberana 02 is proven to be effective in Phase 3 clinical trials, it will be the first vaccine against COVID-19 to be developed in Latin America.
Phase 3 is the final stage before a vaccine is generally approved by national regulators.
A Phase 1 trial of a vaccine is limited to a dozen or so people, to show it is safe. Phase 2 often involves more than 100 people, and measures side-effects and how the broad immune system reacts.
The Phase 3 is typically the real test of whether the vaccine works, and involves several hundred volunteers. Its goal is to measure how effective the vaccine is compared to a control group.
The Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca vaccines all passed Phase 3 before widespread use. For the WHO to approve the vaccines for emergency use, Cuba will need to show they has at least 50% efficacy.
Safety and immunogenicity data from the Phase 1 and 2 trial results have not been published yet, which makes it difficult for external experts to judge whether they work. Past performance is helpful indicator, but no guarantee of success.
Experimental COVID-19 vaccines can fall at the first hurdle. Pharma giants Merck and Sanofi gave up on vaccine candidates after early trials didn't pan out.
Cuban scientists told Mesa Redonda, a popular Cuban television program, that the vaccines are "working well".
Eduardo Martínez Díaz, president de BioCubaFarma, speaks to Mesa Redonda about the Soberana 02 vaccine. YouTube/Mesa Redonda
The scientists said they were using tried and tested vaccine platforms, developed by Cuba's biotech industry.
Soberana 02 is a conjugate vaccine, a type of vaccine which carries the portion of the spike protein which binds to human cells. On its own, this bit of protein will not trigger a strong immune response, so the vaccine is tied to ("conjugated with") another substance to boost its effectiveness.
In animals, the vaccine triggered a strong neutralising response, according to data which has not yet been reviewed by other scientists.
Kampmann said that, according to available data, the vaccine's Phase 1 trials, which began in October, have just finished recruiting. The Phase 2 was initiated on December 21, 2020, and is scheduled to recruit 910 participants over the course of a year.
In a tweet on January 5, however, the Finlay vaccine institute said that 700 participants had already received the first dose of the Phase 2 trial of Soberana 02 and that it expects a Phase 3 trial in March.
When the trial starts, the vaccine is due to be given to 42,000 Cubans, with the aim of being extended to the rest of the population at a later date, the tweet said.
On the design of the vaccine, Kampmann said that this type of vaccine has been used by this team many times before, and is likely to be pretty safe.
But, she said, until the relevant data from the trials is public, it's impossible to know how good the vaccine is.
Big pharma, communist-style
Over the past decades, Cuba has plowed cash into its state-owned biotech industry. After the revolution of 1959, foreign and domestically-owned pharma companies were nationalized, and the Cuban government has run a centralized biotech industry ever since.
Professor Helen Yaffe, a Cuba expert, told Insider: "In the advanced capitalist countries in Europe and the US, we don't know much about Cuba's prowess in medical science and global health"
Yaffe is a lecturer of economics and social history at Glasgow University and author of "We Are Cuba!: How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World".
"But in the global South," she continued, "they do. Why? Because for over 60 years Cuba has had 400,000 healthcare professionals working around the world."
The small island nation is accustomed to exporting medical professionals to crisis-hit areas of the world in a program called the Henry Reeve Brigade.
An emergency contingent of Cuban doctors and nurses arrive at Italy's Malpensa airport after traveling from Cuba to help Italy battle the spread of the coronavirus, near Milan, March 22, 2020. REUTERS/Daniele Mascolo
The scheme made headlines early in the pandemic, when Cuban medics came to help the overwhelmed Lombardy region of Italy.
The work prompted a campaign to nominate the Cuban doctors for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, which has been endorsed by US celebrities Tom Morello and Danny Glover.
Yaffe highlighted that the Cuban biotechnology sector is distinctive. Because it is owned by the state and not supported by speculative financing, she said its priority is not to make money, but prioritize health outcomes.
This approach is seen by some as medical humanitarianism, by others as medical diplomacy.
Friends in the Global South
Cuba is "a global leader in South-South transfer of technology" the WHO said in a report published in 2015.
It has struck past deals with Algeria, India, Brazil, China, South Africa, Mexico, Argentina, Vietnam and Malaysia.
Several countries have publicly expressed interest in purchasing the Soberana 02 vaccine once the Phase 3 trial is complete, including Jamaica, Venezuela, Vietnam, Pakistan, and India.
The African Union, which represents all 55 nations in Africa, has also shown interest.
Latin American countries are also likely to request the vaccine if it proves to be efficacious, according to Kampmann, the academic in London.
Cuba makes the yellow fever and the tetanus vaccine for the childhood immunization programme in the area, and Kampmann said that there is "trust in their ability to deliver vaccines"
"Price-wise they are also going to be attractive", Kampmann said. Cuban vaccines would likely cost less than other licensed vaccines, which are just too expensive for low and middle income countries, she said.
On Sunday, Mexico's foreign minister said it was considering approving a phase 3 trial of a Cuban vaccine there, local media said.
Iran is due to be the first foreign country to receive the vaccine, in a Phase 3 trial of Soberana 02 run in collaboration with the Pasteur Institute in Iran. Up to 150,000 Cuban and Iranian volunteers are due to receive the vaccine during this trial.
Both countries have long been subject to sanctions led by the US. Iran has had a tumultuous relationship with Western vaccines, and has accused the sanctions imposed by former President Donald Trump of hindering its access to vaccines.
In July 2020, UN special rapporteurs called on the US to lift its embargo on Cuba, which they said impeded the delivery of "medicine, medical equipment, food and other goods essential to surviving the pandemic."
Iran has the highest number of COVID-19 cases of its near neighbors.
On January 8, Iran banned the imports of COVID-19 jabs from the US and UK, after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the jabs "untrustworthy".
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei speaks on state television in Tehran, Iran on June 03, 2020. Iranian Leader Press Off. / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
By contrast, the country has started rolling out the Russian Sputnik V vaccine to health-care workers, with Iranian president Hassan Rouhani saying he is willing to take the shot to prove it that it's safe.
Read more: We can't just close Guantanamo Bay prison, we also


Always Live Your Life To The Fullest
'Live your life to the fullest' is an injunction to make the most of the relatively short time to be alive on earth. The logic in the injunction is that since everyone has only a single lifespan on earth so it should logically be lived to its utmost.
The essence of the challenge behind the injunction is that we are not born equal, nor do we have equal opportunities. The individual born in the street gutter faces a significantly different scenario to the one born at the same instant to highly qualified professionals in a upmarket American hospital.
People who are born into lives with every advantage are said to be born with silver spoons in their mouths. They may have doting parents, many servants, high quality education and sound advice about what to do with their lives. Unfortunately some such people end up squandering all or most of the opportunities that they have inherited.
The inequality of birth circumstances have led many political theorists to propose societies in which wealth is equally shared. As Marx propounded such theories he was waited on by his female slave who had been given to him when she was eight. When his theories were applied a few bullies grew very rich and the numbers of poor rose even further.
If it is accepted that birth circumstances do not necessarily guarantee fulfillment then one may turn to ways of finding meaning. Many lifestyle experts suggest goal setting as a method that can secure a sense of purpose and satisfaction. A poor shepherd who starts with nothing dies with two hundred sheep in his fold may die happy. A prince who has made a break through in farming on his inherited lands may feel equally satisfied.
Many writers and speakers in the English literary canon have addressed the question of how to live your life to the fullest. There seems to be a general consensus that the answer does not really lie in power or material gain. The small bird that bursts into song on a gray Winter's day seems to know something important without the aid of books, speeches or online resources. Instinctively it affirms its being in its song.
Click here for more information about Always Live Your Life To The Fullest If You Can.
Paulette Hart
Comments are closed.


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"Decolonizing Design Research" is a workshop series that explores how research can create spaces and places that reflect values of anti-racism and justice. The dominance of western design aesthetics and research methods is largely invisible to those who were trained in design. As a result, these practices can reinforce existing power structures that are harmful to many. This workshop series will provide a space to understand how to mitigate bias in design research methods and learn about less familiar methods used in other disciplines and contexts.
Who creates and benefits from knowledge?
How are the actions and findings from research communicated?
What research or data underpins an impactful social movement?
Workshop participants will gain insights from academic and applied research about methodologies that can be linked to shifting power and working toward liberation. Prior attendance in this series is not required to participate in this program.
Organized by
AIANY Social Science and Architecture Committee


The marine environment is a complex and diverse system, in which biotic and abiotic elements interact over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Intrigued by this richness and diversity, we aspire to investigate marine systems at the interface between scientific discplines.
The approach we take is based primarily on collection, analysis and interpretation of remote-sensing data from satellites and drones. These data are used to characterize variability patterns and motions over multiple spatial (meters to thousands of kilometers) and temporal (minutes to decades) scales, and to gain insights on interrelationships between system's components.


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A librarian who caters to the needs of the young adult population, ages 12 to 18. Job opportunities are available in public and school libraries.
Besides answering questions of library patrons, YA librarians contribute to many other areas of the library. Often, they are asked to provide computer and technology assistance or help patrons with homework. They select materials for the library's collection, such as books, audiobooks, games, CDs, and the like. From these materials, they regularly give booktalks as a means of helping teens know what new and interesting materials are available. In addition, YA librarians are in charge of planning activities for teens at the library, which can include both educational and recreational events, such as a summer reading programs and gaming tournaments. (Source: American Library Association)
User/reader services to young adults, reference, administration, outreach to schools and juvenile detention centers, information literacy.
Suggested electives include:
60626 Library Materials and Services for Young Adults
60630 Reference Sources and Services for Youth
(Refer to the program guidesheet above for additional suggested coursework.)


text:
Alternate Exterior Angles
Date: 06/03/2002 at 15:45:58 From: S.B. Subject: Geometry definitions Dear Dr. Math I have been trying to find out what exterior alternate angles are for hours! My teacher assigned us a vocabulary sheet for geometry, and the only term I can't find is alternate exterior angles. I know what an alternate interior angle is, but not an exterior one. I am completly clueless! Please help, A.S.A.P.! Thanks------ S.B.
Date: 06/03/2002 at 17:08:38 From: Doctor Peterson Subject: Re: Geometry definitions Hi, S.B. Here's a clue, from everyday English usage: "interior" means "inside", and "exterior" means "outside". (You may see those words on paint can labels, for example.) So alternate _interior_ angles are on opposite sides of the transversal, _between_ the parallel lines, like the pair of x's and the pair of y's here: \ ---+------- x \y \ y\ x -------+--- \ Alternate _exterior_ angles are also on opposite sides of the transversal, but _outside_ the parallel lines: x\ y ---+------- \ \ \ -------+--- y \x I suspect a lot of students hear these phrases as a whole, and never stop to think what the individual parts (alternate, interior, exterior) mean -- because they expect math terms to be incomprehensible and unrelated to real life! Sometimes math makes more sense than you realize at first. Maybe I can also help you not have to look for hours next time. To find what a word means, I would first go to a regular English dictionary; then maybe try one of the dictionary or encyclopedia resources listed in our FAQ, or search our site; then go to google.com and enter the phrase "alternate exterior angles" to see if there is a definition on the web. You'll find it! - Doctor Peterson, The Math Forum _URL_
Search the Dr. Math Library:
Ask Dr. MathTM
© _PHONE_ The Math Forum


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Submitted by BonnieMake colored, numbered, lettered etc eggs and birds sitting on a nest with corresponding numbers, colors, letters. Have your children match them
Match The Eggs
Submitted by KarlieGet an egg carton and color the inside (where the eggs sit) various colors. Have the children match the colors with those of Easter eggs and sort the eggs
Make Your Own Bird Nest
Submitted by FloreneProvide you students with mud, sticks, grass, leaves, twigs, pine needles, and pebbles. Let you kids create their own bird nest.
Dinosaur Egg Hunt
Submitted by leeHide plastic eggs (Dinosaur Eggs) on the playground or in the classroom and have a dinosaur egg hunt
How Many Eggs
Submitted by FrancesGet a picture of a bird and make a nest. Write a different number on each bird. Let the kids place the correct number of eggs (corresponding numbers) into the birds nest.
Submitted on the Comment BoxlCut out a materials, egg cartons and different colored playdough. have the children roll the different colored playdough as aggs and sort them in the egg carton.
These Preschool Ideas Found At:Everything Preschool >> Themes >> Eggs >> Games


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Where dateObject is the object of date which is required to call setYear() method and the value passed to the setYear() method can be any two digit or four digit number. If yearValue is a two digit number ( i.e 45) then this method will automatically assume this value as 1945.
Description with example:
To describe the use of setYear() method we have created a simple html page into which we have created an input box. This text box takes the input as a two or four digit number which represent the year to be set.
| function setYearFunction()
var dt= new Date();
var year = document.getElementById('yearValue').value;
alert("Current date :" +dt);
alert("Date after set :"+dt);
In above lines of code, first line of the function creates a date object variable which consists of current date. In the next line we have taken the year value into a variable "year" which holds the yearValue taken as input to the input box by the user. Now we can set the year of the date object by calling method setYear() over date object "dt".
Here is the full example code of setYearExample.html as follows :
Output of the HTML page would look like as given above.
Insert any year in four digit. Suppose, as in our example we have inserted value 1900 and then click on button "Set Year". It first shows the current date before calling setYear() method in an alert message box.
After alert message it will set years value to 1900 from 2009 which can be seen in out put as above.
Recommend the tutorial


text:
- látex (m); (before n) [foam/mold] de látexMore example sentences
- Humidity affects the drying time of all paints, but especially latexes.
- The water-based latexes of the invention provide stable emulsions containing a blend of waterborne polymer particles which undergo crosslinking upon film formation.
- The three latexes that are most commonly used in polymer-modified concrete are styrene-butadiene resin, acrylic latex, and vinyl acetate ethylene copolymer.
Find out how to write letters in Spanish, including advice on greetings, layout, endings...
Catalán is the language of Catalonia. Like Castilian, Catalan is a Romance language. Variants of it include mallorquín of the Balearic Islands and valenciano spoken in the autonomous region of Valencia.


CHomP Text Data Formats
All the files used by the programs in the homology package (except for the BMP files) are text files which contain human-readable definitions of the data structures they represent. Binary data formats, however, are going to be implemented in the future for more efficient data storage. A suggestion of a format for storing cubical sets as bitmaps is currently under construction (any comments or suggestions are welcome).
In each input text file, the user can place his or her own comments. Every semicolon ';' marks the beginning of a comment - the remaining part of the line, including the semicolon, is ignored by the programs. Note that the programs themselves add some comments to the data they write to files. The user must be aware of this fact and ignore these comments or use them for their own purpose.
The so-called white characters (spaces, tabulators and end-of-lines) are treated as separators of words and are ignored wherever appropriate to allow for aesthetic formatting of the data with nice indents and superfluous empty lines.
In this page, a few specific examples are shown to illustrate the data file structures better than the abstract descriptions. For more complicated examples, the reader is kindly referred to the examples provided with the package.
Sets of cubes
Each n-dimensional (hyper)cube is assumed to have the edges of length 1 and vertices in the points whose all coordinates are integer. Each cube is represented by the vertex with minimal coordinates. In the text files, the coordinates must be enclosed in parentheses and separated with spaces or commas.
For backwards compatibility, in the output data all the programs from the Homology package precede the list of cubes with the word "dimension" followed by an integer number indicating the space dimension. However, in the input files every line beginning with the word "dimension" is ignored by the programs, because the space dimension is now determined directly from the number of coordinates appearing in the definition of each (hyper)cube.
For example, the set consisting of the five squares shown in the picture to the right can be encoded in the text form as follows:
 ; definition of the cubes
 ; illustrated in the picture
 dimension 2
Some of the programs in the package (currently probably only homcubes) are able to read the full cubical sets in which cubes are defined just by space-separated sequences of numbers, one cube per line. This feature was requested by some people using Matlab. The above-mentioned set of cubes would then be defined as the following text file:
 2 1
 1 2
 2 3
 3 3
 3 2
Numeric encoding of cubes is also possible, as illustrated in the example num. To save the space, one can use integer numbers in the input files to refer to (hyper)cubes defined earlier. These numbers begin with 1 and refer to the cubes in the order they were read by the program from the input files or created during the computations. Be careful not to use numbers which are out of range. In the example above, the cube defined by "(2,1)" is assigned the number 1, the cube "(1,2)" receives the number 2, and so on, as indicated in the picture. In order to distinguish from the format in which the cubes may be written without parentheses, in some situations one must either precede each number with the '#' character, or place each number in a separate line. See the example num for details.
The feature of numeric encoding is especially useful for the program homcubes and allows to decrease the size of the input text files, especially the file with the definition of a combinatorial multivalued map. Since the order in which the program reads input files is not 100% obvious and may change in the future, it is recommended to use the option -c filename to read through the given file in order to fix the order of cubes in a deterministic way.
Cubical sets
Cubical sets are sets that contain (hyper)cubes of dimension that is not necessarily maximal, embedded in the common space Rn. Such cubes are referred to in the Homology Package as cubical cells. Each of these cells can be defined in two ways, either by their opposite vertices, one with the minimal coordinates, and the other with the maximal ones, or as a carthesian product of intervals.
In the example illustration to the right, there are four elementary cubes: a 2-dimensional square, two 1-dimensional segments and one 0-dimensional point. Using the first discussed convention, they can be defined in the text file in the following way:
 [(1,1) (2,2)] ; the square
 [(3,2) (4,2)] ; the horizontal line segment
 [(2,3) (2,4)] ; the vertical line segment
 [(3,3) (3,3)] ; the point
Using the second convention, the same objects can be defined as follows:
 [1,2] x [1,2]
 [3,4] x [2]
 [2] x [3,4]
 [3] x [3]
Note that the intervals are closed and can be written also using parentheses (), braces {} or angular brackets <>. Each closed interval of length zero can be written either in the form of an interval, or by specifying only that point, e.g. "[3]" is equivalent "[3,3]", as shown above.
Combinatorial cubical multivalued maps
A combinatorial multivalued map is a multivalued map which assignes to each (hyper)cube in its domain a set of (hyper)cubes, possibly empty. Such a map can be defined in the Homology package in two ways. The first way, a more general one, defines each assignment in the form of a line containing the argument, then an immitation of an arrow consisting of a dash and the "greater than" sign, and finally the set assigned to the argument in braces {}. The elements in this set are separated by spaces or commas. Note that the braces must appear even if the set is empty.
For example, consider the combinatorial multivalued map depicted in the illustration to the right. Cube no. 1 is mapped to the pair of cubes, no. 1 and 2. Cube no. 2 is mapped to cube no. 2, cube no. 3 is mapped to the empty set, and cube no. 4 is mapped to the pair of cubes no. 3 and 4. This map can be defined in the text format as follows:
 (2,1) -> {(2,1) (1,2)}
 (1,2) -> {(1,2)}
 (2,3) -> {}
 (3,3) -> {(2,3),(3,3)}
Another way of defining a combinatorial multivalued map was introduced by M. Mazur and J. Szybowski in their program chmap which is now part of the Homology package. This way is more restrictive, contains an obligatory text header and allows to define only maps which assign a rectangular set (a convex set) to each cube in the domain. The file should begin with the line containing the phrase "Space Dimension:" followed by an integer indicating the space dimension. The next line should contain the phrase "Number Of Primitive Arguments:" followed by the number of elements in the domain of the map. The third line should contain the phrase "Map: AlmostPerfect". The next line should contain the phrase "Primitive Argument" followed by the word "Value". Then the map is defined by providing the domain cube written in the form of a cubical cell followed by its image (set of cubes) written in the same form as a cubical cell, that is, by providing the two opposite vertices of the rectangular set: the first vertex should contain the minimal coordinates of the set, and the other one---maximal. Finally, at the end of the file there should be the word "END". Note: All the programs except for chmap actually ignore the numeric information contained in the header, but this header must exist in order to distinguish the two data formats.
Unfortunately, the example map defined above cannot be written in the form discussed here, so let's consider another map, illustrated in the picture to the right. Here cube no. 1 on the left is mapped to the cubes no. 1, 2 and 3 on the right, cube no. 2 is mapped to the cubes 1, 4 and 6, and cube no. 3 is mapped to all the cubes except for 3. The actual text definition of this map would be as follows:
 Space Dimension: 2
 Number Of Primitive Arguments: 3
 Map: AlmostPerfect
 Primitive Argument Value
 [(1,2) (2,3)] [(1,1) (4,2)]
 [(2,2) (3,3)] [(1,1) (2,4)]
 [(3,3) (4,4)] [(1,1) (3,4)]
Note that this format can save some space if the images of single cubes are very large. Just for comparison, the definition of the same map in the former format is as follows:
 (1,2) -> {(1,1) (2,1) (3,1)}
 (2,2) -> {(1,1) (1,2) (1,3)}
 (3,3) -> {(1,1) (2,1) (1,2)


Nichomauss' Theorem
Revision as of 19:21, 17 November 2020 by Jdb (talk | contribs) (Nichomauss' Theorem)
Nichomauss' Theorem
Nichomauss' Theorem states that $n^3$ can be written as the sum of $n$ consecutive integers, thus giving us $1^3+2^3+...+n^3=(1+2+...+n)^2$.
A Visual Proof
Imagine a cuboid with a height of $1$, and length and width of $n$. Divide it into unit cubes. Now, starting from the bottom right of the cuboid (when it's flat on the ground), imagine the first cube to have $l=w=h=1$ (call this $a_1$). Now, extend its length and width by $2$ to get another cuboid with $l=w=3$ and $h=1$ (call this $a_2$). Color $a_1$ yellow and $a_2$ blue. Now, it's easy to see that $a_2$ has $(3 \cdot 3 \cdot 1)-(1 \cdot 1 \cdot 1)=8$ unit cubes and $a_1$ has $1 \cdot 1 \cdot 1=1$ unit cube. We can then rearrange the $8$ unit cubes into a $2 \cdot 2 \cdot 2$ cube. Thus, we clearly have $(1+2)^2=1^3+2^3$. And we can continue this process to $n$ unit cubes and $n$ cuboids with $l=w=n$, $h=1$, which gets us to $(1+2+...+n)^2=1^3+2^3+...+n^3$.
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How to remove an element from a list by index
How do I remove an element from a list by index in Python?
I found the list.remove method, but say I want to remove the last element, how do I do this? It seems like the default remove searches the list, but I don't want any search to be performed.
1/20/2020 10:01:46 AM
Accepted Answer
Use del and specify the index of the element you want to delete:
>>> a = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
>>> del a[-1]
>>> a
Also supports slices:
>>> del a[2:4]
>>> a
[0, 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
Here is the section from the tutorial.
6/5/2018 3:18:39 AM
You probably want pop:
# now a is ['a', 'c', 'd']
By default, pop without any arguments removes the last item:
# now a is ['a', 'b', 'c']
Like others mentioned pop and del are the efficient ways to remove an item of given index. Yet just for the sake of completion (since the same thing can be done via many ways in Python):
Using slices (this does not do in place removal of item from original list):
(Also this will be the least efficient method when working with Python list, but this could be useful (but not efficient, I reiterate) when working with user defined objects that do not support pop, yet do define a __getitem__ ):
>>> index = 3 # Only positive index
>>> a = a[:index] + a[index+1 :]
# a is now [1, 2, 3, 5, 6]
Note: Please note that this method does not modify the list in place like pop and del. It instead makes two copies of lists (one from the start until the index but without it (a[:index]) and one after the index till the last element (a[index+1:])) and creates a new list object by adding both. This is then reassigned to the list variable (a). The old list object is hence dereferenced and hence garbage collected (provided the original list object is not referenced by any variable other than a).
This makes this method very inefficient and it can also produce undesirable side effects (especially when other variables point to the original list object which remains un-modified).
Thanks to _USER_ for pointing this out...
This Stack Overflow answer explains the concept of slicing.
Also note that this works only with positive indices.
While using with objects, the __getitem__ method must have been defined and more importantly the __add__ method must have been defined to return an object containing items from both the operands.
In essence, this works with any object whose class definition is like:
class foo(object):
 def __init__(self, items):
 self.items = items
 def __getitem__(self, index):
 return foo(self.items[index])
 def __add__(self, right):
 return foo( self.items + right.items )
This works with list which defines __getitem__ and __add__ methods.
Comparison of the three ways in terms of efficiency:
Assume the following is predefined:
a = range(10)
index = 3
The del object[index] method:
By far the most efficient method. It works will all objects that define a __del__ method.
The disassembly is as follows:
def del_method():
 global a
 global index
 del a[index]
 10 0 LOAD_GLOBAL 0 (a)
 3 LOAD_GLOBAL 1 (index)
 6 DELETE_SUBSCR # This is the line that deletes the item
 7 LOAD_CONST 0 (None)
pop method:
It is less efficient than the del method and is used when you need to get the deleted item.
def pop_method():
 global a
 global index
 17 0 LOAD_GLOBAL 0 (a)
 3 LOAD_ATTR 1 (pop)
 6 LOAD_GLOBAL 2 (index)
 9 CALL_FUNCTION 1
 12 POP_TOP
 13 LOAD_CONST 0 (None)
 16 RETURN_VALUE
The slice and add method.
The least efficient.
def slice_method():
 global a
 global index
 24 0 LOAD_GLOBAL 0 (a)
 3 LOAD_GLOBAL 1 (index)
 6 SLICE+2
 7 LOAD_GLOBAL 0 (a)
 10 LOAD_GLOBAL 1 (index)
 13 LOAD_CONST 1 (1)
 16 BINARY_ADD
 17 SLICE+1
 18 BINARY_ADD
 19 STORE_GLOBAL 0 (a)
 22 LOAD_CONST 0 (None)
 25 RETURN_VALUE
Note: In all three disassembles ignore the last two lines which basically are return None. Also the first two lines are loading the global values a and index.
pop is also useful to remove and keep an item from a list. Where del actually trashes the item.
>>> x = [1, 2, 3, 4]
>>> p = x.pop(1)
>>> p
If you want to remove the specific position element in a list, like the 2th, 3th and 7th. you can't use
del my_list[2]
del my_list[3]
del my_list[7]
Since after you delete the second element, the third element you delete actually is the fourth element in the original list. You can filter the 2th, 3th and 7th element in the original list and get a new list, like below:
new list = [j for i, j in enumerate(my_list) if i not in [2, 3, 7]]
This depends on what you want to do.
If you want to return the element you removed, use pop():
>>> l = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
>>> l.pop(2)
>>> l
[1, 2, 4, 5]
However, if you just want to delete an element, use del:
>>> del l[2]
>>> l
[1, 2, 4, 5]
Additionally, del allows you to use slices (e.g. del[2:]).
Licensed under: CC-BY-SA with attribution
Not affiliated with: Stack Overflow
Email: [email protected]


text:
modules, just repeat this. For example, to set an old 3Com network interface card to use the BNC (coax) connector and IRQ 10, you would pass:
Sometimes it may be necessary to blacklist a module to prevent it from being loaded automatically by the kernel and udev. One reason could be that a particular module causes problems with your hardware. The kernel also sometimes lists two different drivers for the same device. This can cause the device to not work correctly if the drivers conflict or if the wrong driver is loaded first.
You can blacklist a module using the following syntax:
This will cause the module to be blacklisted in
/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.local both during the
installation and for the installed system.
Note that a module may still be loaded by the installation system itself. You can prevent that from happening by running the installation in expert mode and unselecting the module from the list of modules displayed during the hardware detection phases.
 With current kernels (2.6.9 or newer) you can use 32 command line options and 32 environment options. If these numbers are exceeded, the kernel will panic.


text:
Tapping the Liquid Gold
WATER BATTLE SITES
Central Plains Water scheme: involves taking water from the Rakaia and Waimakariri rivers and storing it in a reservoir in the dammed Waianiwaniwa Valley. The water will be used to irrigate 60,000ha bounded by the rivers, SH1 and the Malvern foothills. Red Zones: Environment Canterbury has labelled many blocks of land as red zones areas that have no more groundwater allocation to spare for irrigation. But farmers keep fighting for more water through legal challenges. Project Aqua: The lower Waitaki River was the site where Meridian abandoned a bid to build six new power stations by diverting two-thirds of the river through channel alongside the river.
Canterbury has 78,162 kilometres of rivers and 4753 lakes with a surface area of 702 square kilometres, an area the size of greater Christchurch.
The Canterbury region has 70 per cent of the country's irrigated land and generates 24% of the nation's power through hydroelectricity.
The aquifiers on the Central Plains are fed by seepage from the rivers and by rainfall. They supply almost all the water for irrigation and for human use.
The groundwater of the Canterbury Plains is a large continuously flowing body of water within layers of silts, sands and gravel down to a depth of 500m.
The Waimakariri River is the source of Christchurch's pristine untreated drinking water through the underground aquifer system. It's also one of the largest and best examples of a braided river in New Zealand.
(c) 2008 Press, The; Christchurch, New Zealand. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.


text:
Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt's record-setting performances have unleashed a wave of interest in the ultimate limits to human running speed. A new study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology offers intriguing insights into the biology and perhaps even the future of human running speed.
The newly published evidence identifies the critical variable imposing the biological limit to running speed, and offers an enticing view of how the biological limits might be pushed back beyond the nearly 28 miles per hour speeds achieved by Bolt to speeds of perhaps 35 or even 40 miles per hour.
The new paper, "The biological limits to running speed are imposed from the ground up," was authored by Peter Weyand of Southern Methodist University; Rosalind Sandell and Danille Prime, both formerly of Rice University; and Matthew Bundle of the University of Wyoming.
"The prevailing view that speed is limited by the force with which the limbs can strike the running surface is an eminently reasonable one," said Weyand, associate professor of applied physiology and biomechanics at SMU in Dallas.
"If one considers that elite sprinters can apply peak forces of 800 to 1,000 pounds with a single limb during each sprinting step, it's easy to believe that runners are probably operating at or near the force limits of their muscles and limbs," he said. "However, our new data clearly show that this is not the case. Despite how large the running forces can be, we found that the limbs are capable of applying much greater ground forces than those present during top-speed forward running."
In contrast to a force limit, what the researchers found was that the critical biological limit is imposed by time -– specifically, the very brief periods of time available to apply force to the ground while sprinting. In elite sprinters, foot-ground contact times are less than one-tenth of one second, and peak ground forces occur within less than one-twentieth of one second of the first instant of foot-ground contact.
The researchers took advantage of several experimental tools to arrive at the new conclusions. They used a high-speed treadmill capable of attaining speeds greater than 40 miles per hour and of acquiring precise measurements of the forces applied to the surface with each footfall. They also had subjects' perform at high speeds in different gaits. In addition to completing traditional top-speed forward running tests, subjects hopped on one leg and ran backward to their fastest possible speeds on the treadmill.
The unconventional tests were strategically selected to test the prevailing beliefs about mechanical factors that limit human running speeds –- specifically, the idea that the speed limit is imposed by how forcefully a runner's limbs can strike the ground.
However, the researchers found that the ground forces applied while hopping on one leg at top speed exceeded those applied during top-speed forward running by 30 percent or more, and that the forces generated by the active muscles within the limb were roughly 1.5 to 2 times greater in the one-legged hopping gait.
The time limit conclusion was supported by the agreement of the minimum foot-ground contact times observed during top-speed backward and forward running. Although top backward vs. forward speeds were substantially slower, as expected, the minimum periods of foot-ground contact at top backward and forward speeds were essentially identical.
According to Matthew Bundle, an assistant professor of biomechanics at the University of Wyoming, "The very close agreement in the briefest periods of foot-ground contact at top speed in these two very different gaits points to a biological limit on how quickly the active muscle fibers can generate the forces necessary to get the runner back up off the ground during each step."
The researchers said the new work shows that running speed limits are set by the contractile speed limits of the muscle fibers themselves, with fiber contractile speeds setting the limit on how quickly the runner's limb can apply force to the running surface.
"Our simple projections indicate that muscle contractile speeds that would allow for maximal or near-maximal forces would permit running speeds of 35 to 40 miles per hour and conceivably faster," Bundle said.
Peter Weyand is an associate professor of applied physiology and biomechanics in SMU's Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education & Human Development.
Matthew Bundle is an assistant professor of biomechanics in the College of Health Sciences at the University of Wyoming.
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


text:
Some word confusions are interesting but not quite common enough to qualify for an entry on my Common Errors in English Usage Web site. Some seem nevertheless worth discussing here.
"Berth" originally referred to the room required by a ship to maneuver freely, later to the space within which a ship could anchor itself near the shore. Hence the expression "to give a wide berth," meaning to stay well away from someone or something.
Then it was sailors rather than ships who were berthed: a place for a sailor to sleep was a berth. And to have a berth was more broadly to have a place—a job—on a ship.
Finally, the term came to be applied to athletics, where a contestant is assigned a berth: a spot in a contest. A basketball team is assigned a berth in the Final Four.
The stacked beds in railroad sleeper cars and bunks are also referred to as berths.
Since most people now encounter the term in connection with sports, they sometimes misspell it as "birth." You will also occasionally see people saying they give something "a wide birth."
Punning journalists love to play with mistakes like this. The headline on an article about Caesarean section in the New York Post was "Given a Wide Birth."