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of the pathology educator, to teach the things that would truly enhance their competence and; implement competency-based teaching tools to train the students to deal with notional clinical scenarios like professionals.
It is important for the pathology educator to appraise how the millennials can learn their maximum, what are the best digital tools and what are the best online resources. Pathophysiology concepts and morphology are extremely important; however, an educator must also focus on the learners gaining the ability to ask a definable question, search for relevant scientific data, read and critically assess the information using the principles of competency-based molecular pathology, and be able to transmute pathology concepts into clinical practice. In an era of precision medicine, molecular pathology is the new lynchpin of patient-centered medicine, and the learners must know its role not just in diagnosis, but also in disease prevention and management, which behooves the pathology educator to develop their competency to interpret the immunohistochemistry and biomarker testing results. It is important for every learner to attain a solid grasp on sensitivity and specificity of various laboratory tests and to develop the competency to choose the appropriate test and its interpretation to make the best decisions for patient care as future physicians.
This highlights the idea of competency based pathology education in the current precision medicine setting and the way to smoothly transit from traditional knowledge-based lectures to competency-based pathology training. Also, by teaching competencies in pathology, the educator will be able to emboss for the student what actually pathology has to offer.
106 – Pathology Teaching Within Physician Assistants, Podiatric Medicine, and Osteopathic Medical Curricula at Des Moines University
Kevin Carnevale and Yujiang Fang
Purpose – Pathology education is taught within undergraduate healthcare training programs such as Physician Assistant, Physical Therapy, Nursing, Podiatric Medicine, Osteopathic Medicine, and Allopathic Medical Schools. Students within the different healthcare training programs require different depth and breathe of pathology education within their individual curricula. Des Moines University (DMU) is a healthcare sciences university with pathology education offered to physician assistants, podiatric, and osteopathic medical students within a semi-integrated curriculum (traditional first year and systems based second year). We evaluate and compare the lecture hours and subjects taught in general and systemic pathology within the physician assistant, podiatric medicine, and osteopathic medical programs at DMU.
Methods – Lecture hours in pathology subjects were counted and compared in general pathology and systems based courses at DMU for physician assistant, podiatric medicine, and the osteopathic medical curricula. Different subjects within different curricula taught by a pathologist were also evaluated. We compared the lecture hours in pathology teaching of DMU osteopathic curriculum to a traditional second year pathology curriculum at University of South Carolina School of Medicine (USCSOM – allopathic medical school with traditional curriculum).
Results – The osteopathic and podiatric medical students take the same general pathology course within the spring semester of their first year, so the lecture hours are equivalent. The physician assistant students receive 25.7% (9hrs compared to 35hrs) of the lecture hours in general pathology compared to the osteopathic and podiatric medical students. The physician assistant students receive 60.5% (23hrs compared to 38hrs) of lecture hours in systemic pathology compared to the osteopathic and podiatric medical students. Even though the number of lecture hours (38hrs) are the same in systemic pathology for osteopathic and podiatric medical students, the podiatric medical students do not receive lectures in male and female genitourinary pathology, breast pathology, skin pathology, and laboratory medicine. The podiatric medical students do receive separate pathology lectures in surgical pathology, diabetic neuropathy, muscle/joint, bone healing and processing that are not given to osteopathic medical students. The osteopathic medical students received 70% (35hrs DMU compared to 50hrs USCSOM) of lecture hours in general pathology, and 30.2% (38hrs DMU compared to 126hrs USCSOM) of lecture hours in systemic pathology compared to the allopathic students respectively.
Conclusion – Physician Assistant students receive the least amount of lecture hours in pathology education within the healthcare programs at DMU. Even though the lecture hours are the same within general and systemic pathology education between the podiatric curriculum and osteopathic curriculum, the subjects taught in pathology vary within these curricula. Lastly, the amount of pathology teaching for the osteopathic medical students in a semi-integrated curriculum at DMU is markedly less especially within systemic pathology compared to allopathic medical students within a year-long traditional second year pathology curriculum.
107 – The Millennial View of Transfusion Medicine Instruction During Medical School
Marisa Saint Saint Martin
Loyola University Medical Center
Purpose: The aim of our study is to determine how effective current educational practices are, and how pivotal introducing transfusion medicine and its practices early on, and throughout the 4 years of medical education, could potentially impact blood ordering confidence and practices among graduates.
Traditionally, transfusion medicine education has been an under-emphasized discipline of course instruction in medical school education. In the current environment, striving for excellence in quality care and quality assurance, hospital systems have sought the expertise of the transfusion medicine sub-specialty to evaluate blood utilization and laboratory utilization within their systems.
Methods: An interview of the 4th year medical student class of 2018 (160 students) at Loyola Stritch Medical School in Maywood, IL with the use of a Google Forms survey was conducted. The survey included questions about general transfusion medicine practices, length of transfusion medicine instruction, information about obtaining consents, recommendations on length and format of transfusion medicine instruction.
Results: Of the 54 responses, (33.8% of students), 38 (70.4 %) stated that they do not feel comfortable adequately ordering blood products in their future residency career, and 16.7% (9/54) did not feel comfortable obtaining consent for transfusing blood products.
At the Loyola Stritch School of Medicine, the pathology department assists in providing medical school instruction during their 1st and 2nd years of medical school. With that in mind, only 38.9% (21/54) felt that they received adequate instruction during their first two years in medical school.
The class provided feedback for opportunities for improvement in transfusion medicine instruction which ranged from lecture format in the first two years to summary sheets to use while on rotations and their residency years.
Conclusions: Overall, we believe, and our brief study demonstrates, that more hours of transfusion medicine education are needed in medical school. Providing continued assistance and education in transfusion medicine practices throughout medical school and residency training is not only preferred, but also could impact transfusion ordering practices providing better quality care to the patients we serve.
108 – The Use of 3D Printers in Medical Education with a Focus on Bone Pathology
Shayna Youman, Evan Dang, and Bonnie Brenseke
Campbell University School of Osteopathic Medicine
Purpose: The objectives of this study are to create models of benign and malignant bone tumors from CT scans and to assess the effectiveness of the use of such models in medical education.
Method: CT scans of bone pathology were anonymized using 3D slicer software and imported into web-based Democritiz3d for conversion into 3D digital models for 3D printing. Pre-created digital models of tumors were also 3D printed. Randomized groups of medical students will be surveyed for their understanding of bone pathology with and without the use of the 3D printed models.
Results: Printed models were able to imitate gross characteristics of the tumors. Impact on student education is still pending.
Conclusion: 3D printing stylized models of bone tumors is a cost and time-effective means to improve medical student understanding of this pathology.
109 – There is a smart way to teach Pathology: Using resources from BEST network to engage learners
Mohit Shahi and Raja Koteeswaran
School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, Department of Pathology/Microbiology, Eastern Virginia Medical School
A vast majority of medical students are either millennial or Gen Y learners who were raised in an entertainment rich, multi-media environment 1. They are technology savvy and like to be in control of their learning in terms of choice, pace, sequence and content 2. Millennial learners expect immediate feedback and meaningful assessments3. As educators, we face growing challenges with a new generation of students using technology that is constantly evolving 3. One of the technology tools that can benefit pathology educators is SLICE tool of BEST network.
BEST (Biomedical Education Skills and Training) Network is a not-for-profit network of biomedical schools developing and sharing next-generation courseware and technology (best.edu.au)4. It was founded in 2014, as a joint venture of Australian Universities funded by an education grant from the Australian government. As of now, the BEST network has a bank of over 18,000 images with annotations and courseware shared by its members. The BEST network operates on an adaptive learning platform (smartsparrow.com) to design learning activities.
The workshop speakers are from the University of Queensland (UQ) Faculty of Medicine, Australia and Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS), VA, who have used the resources from BEST network in their teaching. In this workshop, the speakers will share their experiences of how they used the high-resolution digital images from BEST network database SLICE (_URL_ to engage the students in labs tutorials, small groups or large classroom settings. They will demonstrate using examples, how to design lessons, gather analytics, and to give feedback with this technology tool. It can be applied broadly across disciplines such as histology, immunology, microbi


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Inspection Control - Focus on Stamp Warranty
After completing this course, the student should be familiar with the basics and importance of the stamp warranty inspection control. The student should completely understand the procedures required for implementing and maintaining an inspection control program with a stamp warranty focus.
Why Learn about Stamp Warranty?
Aerospace projects consist of complex systems of interdependent components. To ensure that the entire system works properly, it is of utmost importance that all of its components are functional and integrated seamlessly. To guarantee this, it is necessary that the system and its components be inspected at different points throughout the project life. Inspection control and the uses of stamps allows you to keep track of the inspections that different components of the system have undergone. While this course describes the methods used by NASA, for academic payload projects you could adopt simpler versions of the inspection control procedures. The main purpose of proof of inspection is still valid for your project.
- What is Inspection Control?
- Personal Warranty in Inspection Control
- Inspection Control System
- Stamps and Marking Materials
- Stamp Designs
This course's structure is strongly based on NASA's SMA Technical Excellence Program (STEP) - "Inspection Control and Personal Warranty", SMA-QE-WBT-252 and "Inspection", SMA-QE-WBT-251, courses, images and content are courtesy of the NASA STEP program.

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


Vertical Gardening
Grow up! Vertical gardening adds another dimension to your indoor or outdoor growing spaces.
Vertical gardens -- think living walls -- are of the hottest new garden trends and yet it's one of the oldest (have you ever grown a vine on a fence or trellis?). A vertical garden is a perfect solution for just about any garden -- indoors or out.
Vertical garden elements can draw attention to an area or disguise an unattractive view. In a vertical garden, use structures or columnar trees to create vertical gardening rooms or define hidden spaces ready for discovery. Trellises, attached to the ground or to large containers, allow you to grow vines, flowers, and vegetables in a vertical garden using much less space than traditional gardening requires.
Indoors, you can grow small-stature houseplants as vertical gardens by creating living walls, for a tapestry of color and texture that helps to filter out indoor air pollutants. In cold-winter climates, houseplants grown in vertical gardens add much-needed humidity in months when the furnace runs and dries the air out. Increasingly, hotels and office buildings are incorporating living walls and vertical gardens both inside and outside.
Learn more about container gardening.
Vertical Gardens as Green Walls
Green or living walls, another form of vertical gardens are the latest fashion in vertical gardening. Some are simply walls covered with climbing plants, while others involve a modular system that allows plants to grow inside the structures.
French botanist Patrick Blanc is credited as the father of the green wall movement. He produced his first project on the exterior of the Museum of Science and Industry in Paris in 1988. Dozens of his other works are now installed worldwide, indoors and out. Blanc refers to his projects as living paintings or vegetal walls.
Creating a green wall or a vertical garden using Blanc's methods requires metal framing, a sheet of rigid plastic, and felt. The frame can be hung on a wall or it can stand alone. The rigid plastic, attached to the frame, makes the wall waterproof. The plants' roots grow in the felt, which evenly distributes water and fertilizer. Plant selection depends on the light and other growing conditions.
Some living wall or vertical garden systems include spaces for soilless potting medium so other types of plants can be grown, plus irrigation systems. Besides watering and fertilizing, green walls require other maintenance, including pruning, dusting, weeding, and, sometimes, plant replacement. Vertical walls or gardens are heavy, so check with a structural expert to make sure your wall can handle the load.
Vertical Gardening Considerations
Take these elements into account when gardening vertically outdoors:
Anchor your vertical garden structure in place before planting to allow you to avoid disturbing the roots or stems of plants. Pair heavy or more demanding plants with sturdier structures.
Tall plants or structures cast shadows on the vertical garden that will affect the growing patterns of nearby plants.
Plants grow differently on a vertical garden. Some, such as climbing roses, need to be physically attached to structures, while others, such as morning glories, are twining and will loop themselves around trellis openings.
Plants grown in a vertical garden might need more frequent watering and fertilizing because they're exposed to more light and wind.
Plants for Vertical Gardening
Black-eyed Susan vine
A wide variety of plants is used on green walls or vertical gardens, with plant selection determined by the light conditions.
For traditional vertical gardening, consider these selections:
Annual flowering vines that climb without becoming too heavy include black-eyed Susan vine (Thunbergia alata), cardinal climber (Ipomoea x multifida), cypress vine (Ipomoea quamoclit), moonflower (Ipomoea alba), scarlet runner bean (Phaseolus coccineus), and hyacinth bean (Dolichos lablab). All grow best in full sun.
Discover other annual vines.
Easily grown perennial vines for vertical gardens include clematis hybrids, American bittersweet (Celastrus scandens), and ivy (Hedera selections). All grow best in full sun; clematis prefer to have their flowers in sun and their roots in shade.
Discover other perennial vines.
Climbing hydrangea
Vines for shade vertical gardens include hardy kiwi (Actinidia kolomikta), chocolate vine (Akebia quinata), Dutchman's pipe (Aristolochia macrophylla), and climbing hydrangea (Hydrangea petiolaris).
Edibles that adapt well to vertical gardening include fruiting vines such as kiwi (Actinidia deliciosa), Siberian gooseberries (Actinidia arguta), edible flowers such as vining nasturtiums, and vegetables such as peas, squash, tomatoes, and pole beans.
Columnar plants provide vertical gardening interest. Many can be grown without a supporting structure. Consider planting columnar apple trees, arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis), junipers (Juniperus scopulorum), or Lombardy poplars (Populus nigra).
Vertical Garden Structures
Fences, arbors, trellises, tuteurs, obelisks, and other types of structures make it easy to grow plants in vertical gardens. Hanging baskets can be considered elements of vertical gardening because they break the horizontal plane of gardening. Attach a drip irrigation system for easy watering, or add a rope-and-pulley system to allow easier access to hanging baskets for watering and tending your vertical garden.
If you have an existing structure such as a shed or garage, add a trellis in front of one of the walls so vertical garden plants have a structure to support their stems but don't cause any damage to the wall. Be sure to leave some space between the trellis and the wall for air circulation.
Make a living picture with succulents!
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WHAT IS DNA, AND HOW CAN WE USE IT IN SCIENCE?
This webinar is an introduction to my later webinar about bear poop (yes, poop indeed!). DNA can tell us so much about bears (and humans too).
The talk will consist of an introduction to DNA. I will present general information about its properties and purpose in our body, i.e. its size, its chemical structure, its information content. Then I will give a short description about how the DNA works in our bodies, before introducing you to the process by which DNA is utilized for scientific research. In the end I will give an overview over what type of research use DNA and the information contained in it.


Countdown To Beijing: Water Polo
Water polo to some may seem like a simple sport. From a television viewer's perspective, it just seems as if players toss around a ball in a swimming pool and try to score on an opposing team. But the sport actually requires more skill than arm strength, accuracy and plain old swimming techniques.
A History Worth Diving Into
In the late 19th century, water polo first began as a form of rugby played in rivers and lakes in England and Scotland. Known as "water rugby", the game was soon called "water polo", based on the English pronunciation of "pulu", the Balti word for ball. Like most sports when they were first created, there weren't a lot of rules for water polo back then. For example, wrestling and holding players underwater to get the ball were allowed.
But the game was soon modernized. By the 1880s, water polo evolved into a fast-paced game that was played with a soccer-sized ball. Instead of sticking people underwater to get the ball, swimming, passing and scoring techniques were emphasized. To help create a set of rules for the sport, the London Water Polo League was founded in 1888.
The establishment of rules then took water polo to the next level. The first English championships were played in the same year the league was founded. In 1890, the first international water polo game took place, with Scotland defeating England by a score of 4-0. Leading up to the 20th century, the game started to develop and become popular in Europe. Countries like Germany, Austria, France, Hungary and Italy started to compete using British rules.
The North Americans played by a different set of rules. In the United States, the game was characterized by rough play, holding and diving underwater. The ball they used was also different as it was soft, partially-inflated and could be gripped tightly and carried underwater. Because of the different style of play and rules, European teams did not compete in the 1904 Olympic Games in St. Louis.
However, the United States decided soon enough that their rules and regulations needed to be changed. By 1914, most US teams agreed to conform to international rules. With everyone abiding by the same format, an international water polo committee was formed in 1929. Consisting of representatives from Great Britain and the International Amateur Swimming Federation (FINA), rules were developed for international matches. Since then, FINA has been the international governing body for the sport.
Splashing About The Basic Skills
The game of water polo is fairly simple to play. Situated in a swimming pool, two teams of seven players play a match. A game starts with two teams of seven players lined up on their own goal line. When the referee blows their whistle, both teams sprint to the midpoint of the playing field and try to recover the ball.
The offensive team then passes the ball around to each other, looking for an opening to score. On defense, the players try to regain possession of the ball by attempting to knock it away or steal it. They usually commit a foul only if the offensive team has a chance to score on the goalie.
To help the sport branch off from its primitive ways, certain techniques and skills were created. Not only did they add a sense of elegance to the sport, but they also made it more competitive.
The obvious main skill is swimming. Since water polo is a team sport, it requires players to swim around based on strategies. Athletes must be able to swim end-to-end of a 30-meter pool at a constant pace, without touching the sides or bottom.
Some of the popular swimming techniques include:
- The front crawl which allows players to swim with their head out of water so they can observe the playing field at all times.
- The arm stroke which is used in a shorter and quicker manner to protect the ball.
- The backstroke which is used by defenders to track advancing attackers and by the goalie to track where the ball is. The water polo backstroke is different from the ordinary swimming technique as players sit in an almost upright position.
Water polo athletes must also have exceptional ball-handling skills. Players are only allowed to touch the ball with one hand at a time, so they have to be able to throw or catch with either hand. There are two basic passes in water polo: the dry pass and the wet pass. The dry pass is when the ball is thrown to a teammate in the air while a wet pass is deliberately thrown into the water.
Along with passing, there are also a few different shooting techniques. Outside water shots (power, lob or skip shots) can test a goalie's skill and either overpower them or confuse them. Inside water shots are useful as the player doesn't have to stop swimming to do them. Some popular inside water shots include the pop shot, the screw shot and the spring shot.
Players must also be able to tread water. Since they cannot touch the bottom of the pool, athletes must be able to use the "egg-beatering" and scissor kick techniques. By constantly moving their legs underwater, these techniques allow water polo players to maintain a constant position above water. Goalies must also be able to jump out of the water so they can hold their position when they're anticipating a shot.
Dipping Into Water Polo Equipment
Since the action takes place in a swimming pool, not a lot of equipment is used. Items required in water polo include the following:
Balls: A water polo ball is constructed out of waterproof material which allows it to float on water. It also has a unique texture that prevents it from slipping out of players hands. The size varies for men's and women's games.
Caps: Along with identifying players, water polo caps are used to protect their heads. The home team wears light-coloured caps and the away team wears dark-coloured caps. Goalies wear red caps that have the number "1".
Swimwear: Since you need to move freely in the water, male water polo players wear swimming briefs instead of shorts. Female players wear a one-piece swimsuit.
Goals: One goal for either side is required to play a water polo match. They can either be placed the side of the pool or in the pool using floaters.
Swimming Into The Olympics
Water polo has been a part of the Summer Olympics since the second games in 1900. However, women's water polo wasn't introduced until the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games after a series of protests.
Some of the best teams include Hungary, Italy and Great Britain. Since the first tournament in Paris, Hungary has been the most dominant, winning eight gold medals, three silver medals and three bronze medals. The country's success can be attributed to one of their famed players, Dezso Gyarmati. Gyarmati led Hungary to the podium in five Olympic games: 1948, 1952, 1956, 1960 and 1964. Another successful player was Terry Schroeder, who led the U.S. to silver medals in 1984 and 1988.
Hoping to repeat as gold medalists this year will be Hungary in the men's tournament and Italy in the women's tournament.
If you're interested in hearing more about other Summer Olympic sports, then stay tuned. Articles on the history and development of interesting sports will be posted every weekend up until the actual Olympics!
Jul 16, 2008
by Anonymous
Some of the best teams
That may have been the case in the beginnings of water polo, but today best teams are Hungary, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro.


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A cog railway, rack-and-pinion railway or rack railway is a railway with a toothed rack rail, usually between the running rails. The trains are fitted with one or more cog wheels or pinions that mesh with this rack rail. This allows the trains to operate on steep gradients.
The first cog railway was the Middleton Railway between Middleton and Leeds in West Yorkshire, England, UK, where the first commercial steam locomotive, The Salamanca, ran in 1812. This used a rack and pinion system designed and patented in 1811 by John Blenkinsop.
The first mountain cog railway was the Mount Washington Cog Railway in the US state of New Hampshire, which carried its first fare-paying passengers in 1868 and reached the summit of Mount Washington in 1869. The first rack railway in Europe was the Vitznau-Rigi-Bahn on Mount Rigi in Switzerland, which opened in 1871. Both lines are still running.
A number of different rack systems have been developed. Today, the majority of rack railways use the Abt system.
The Riggenbach rack system was invented by Niklaus Riggenbach working at about the same time as, but independently from Marsh. Riggenbach was granted a French patent in 1863 based on a working model which he used to interest potential Swiss backers. During this time, the Swiss Consul to the United States visited Marsh's Mount Washington Cog Railway and reported back with enthusiasm to the Swiss government. Eager to boost tourism in Switzerland, the government commissioned Riggenbach to build a rack railway up Rigi Mountain. Following the construction of a prototype locomotive and test track in a quarry near Berne, the Vitznau-Rigi-Bahn opened on 22 May 1871.
The Riggenbach system is similar in design to the Marsh system. It uses a ladder rack, formed of steel plates or channels connected by round or square rods at regular intervals. The Riggenbach system suffers from the problem that its fixed ladder rack is more complex and expensive to build than the other systems. Common structural shapes Following the success of the Vitznau-Rigi-Bahn, Riggenbach established the Maschinenfabrik der Internationalen Gersellschaft fur Bergbahnen (IGB) - a company that produced rack locomotives to his design.
The Strub rack system was invented by Emil Strub in 1896. It uses a rolled flat-bottom rail with rack teeth machined into the head approximately 100 mm apart. Safety jaws fitted to the locomotive engage with the underside of the head to prevent derailments.
The best-known use of the Strub system is on the Jungfraubahn in Switzerland. It is the simplest rack system to maintain and has become increasingly popular.
The Abt system was devised by Roman Abt, a Swiss locomotive engineer. Abt worked for Riggenbach at his works in Olten and later at his IGB rack locomotive company. In 1885 he founded his own civil engineering company.
During the early 1880s, Abt worked to devise an improved rack system that overcame the limitations of the Riggenbach system. In particular, the Riggenbach rack was expensive to manufacture and maintain and the switches were complex. In 1882 Abt designed a new rack using solid bars with vertical teeth machined into them. Two or three of these bars are mounted centrally between the rails, with the teeth offset. The use of multiple bars with offset teeth ensures that the pinions on the locomotive driving wheels are constantly engaged with the rack. The Abt system is cheaper to build than the Riggenbach because it requires a lower weight of rack over a given length. However the Riggenbach system exhibits greater wear resistance than the Abt.
The first use of the Abt system was on the Harzbahn in Germany which opened in 1885.
The pinion wheels can be mounted on the same axle as the rail wheels (as in the picture at right), or driven separately. The steam locomotives on the Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company had separate pistons driving the pinion wheel.
The Locher rack system, invented by Eduard Locher, has gear teeth cut in the sides rather than the top of the rail, engaged by two cog wheels on the locomotive. This system allows use on steeper grades than the other systems, whose teeth could jump out of the rack. It is used on the Pilatus Railway.
Locher set out to design a rack system that could be used on gradients as steep as 1 in 2 (50%). The Abt system - the most common rack system in Switzerland at the time - was limited to a maximum gradient of 1 in 4 (25%). Locher showed that on steeper grade, the Abt system was prone to the driving pinion over-riding the rack causing potentially catastrophic derailments, as predicted by Dr. Abt. To overcome this problem and allow a rack line up the steep sides of Mt. Pilatus, Locher developed a rack system where the rack is a flat bar with symmetrical, horizontal teeth. Horizontal pinion engage the centrally-mounted bar, both driving the locomotive and keeping it centered on the track.
Following tests, the Locher system was deployed on the Pilatus Railway which opened in 1889. No other public railway uses the Locher system, although some European coal mines use a similar system on steeply graded underground lines.
The Lamella system (also known as the Von Roll system) was developed by the Von Roll company after the rolled steel rails used in the Strub system became unavailable. It is formed from a single blade cut in a similar fashion to the Abt system but typically wider than a single Abt bar. The Lamella rack can be used by locomotives designed for use on the Riggenbach or the Strub systems and some railways use rack from multiple systems. The St. Gallen Gais Appenzell Railway in Switzerland has sections of Riggenbach, Strub and Lamella rack.
Most of the rack railways built from the late 20th century onwards have used the Lamella system.
Originally almost all cog railways were powered by steam locomotives. The steam locomotive needs to be extensively modified to work effectively in this environment. Unlike a diesel locomotive or electric locomotive, the steam locomotive only works when its powerplant (the boiler, in this case) is fairly level. The locomotive boiler requires water to cover the boiler tubes and firebox sheets at all times, particularly the crown sheet, the metal top of the firebox. If this is not covered with water, the heat of the fire will soften it enough to give way under the boiler pressure, leading to a catastrophic failure.
On rack systems with extreme gradients, the boiler, cab and general superstructure of the locomotive are tilted forward relative to the wheels so that they are more or less horizontal when on the steeply graded track. These locomotives often cannot function on level track, and so the entire line, including maintenance shops, must be laid on a gradient. This is one of the reasons why rack railways were among the first to be electrified and most of today's rack railways are electrically powered.
On a rack-only railroad locomotives always push their passenger cars for safety reasons since the locomotive is fitted with powerful brakes, often including hooks or clamps that grip the rack rail solidly. Some locomotives are fitted with automatic brakes that apply if the speed gets too high, preventing runaways. Often there is no coupler between locomotive and train since gravity will always push the passenger car down against the locomotive. Electrically powered vehicles often have electromagnetic track brakes as well.
The maximum speed of trains operating on a cog railway is generally very low, about 25 km/h.
See also list of mountain railways
Uses steam engines [WORLD HERITAGE CERTIFIED]
not a rack railway but similar technology
Fell system railway (not rack):
US Patent Issued to International Business Machines on Sept. 27 for "Tool-Less Rack Rail System Incorporating Clamping Mechanism" (Minnesota, Texas Inventors)
Oct 01, 2011; ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 1 -- United States Patent no. 8,025,166, issued on Sept. 27, was assigned to International Business...
Patent No. 7,762,411 Issued on July 27, Assigned to IBM for Tool-Less Rack Rail System (Minnesota, Texas Inventors)
Jul 28, 2010; ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 30 -- Stephen Peter Mroz, Joseph Daniel Rico and Jeffrey Alan Verkerke, all from Rochester, Minn., and John...

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


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Growth and Inspiration through Volunteering and Education (GIVE), is a community organization founded in 2010 and run by high school students. GIVE was inspired by the need for civic engagement and the desire to improve our local community. We seek to invest in the next generation by striving to provide opportunities to those who seek them in the fields of education, empowerment, and leadership. We especially emphasize the importance of learning and promote an enthusiastic attitude towards it. Through our multiple programs, we serve as mentors to younger children, provide resources to underprivileged students, and attempt to leave our mark on the next generation through our efforts.
The mission of GIVE (Growth and Inspiration through Volunteering and Education) is to promote the leadership of youth through projects that will improve the quality of life in their communities.
GIVE's Founders and Board of Directors
After 8 years, over 5000 students and volunteers impacted and 20 tutoring centers
GIVE's Community Engagement Projects
1. Free tutoring program
2. Children's book publication
3. Test-prep book collection program
4. Fairfax County RecQuest Summer Program: STEM initiative
5. Backpack drive in collaboration with Collect for Kids


US produced TOW 2A ATGWs in Syria
N.R. Jenzen-Jones and Yuri Lyamin
In early April, representatives of the armed opposition group Harakat Hazm from the Syrian province of Idlib uploaded a YouTube video showing Hazm combatants launching a missile from a TOW type anti-tank guided weapon (ATGW), near the town of Heesh. This video, representing the first time the TOW missile was identified in Syria, caused a stir amongst observers and the media.
The TOW weapons system is a US designed ATGW, initially developed by Hughes Aircraft Company in the mid-1960s, and first fielded by the US Army in 1969. "TOW" stands for "Tube-launched, Optically-tracked, Wire-guided", which accurately describes the characteristics of the initial TOW missile, and most of its successors and variants. Typical TOW systems are semi-automatic command to line-of-sight (SACLOS) principle weapons, which require the weapon's operator to keep his target in the weapon sight until the missile has impacted. When the missile is fired, a sensor in the sighting system tracks a flare in the tail of the missile. The targeting computer attached to the firing post transmits flight corrections to the missile by way of two extremely thin wires which unravel during the course of the munition's flight.
There are nine common missiles in the TOW family, with several versions of most of these having been produced. Additionally, there are a number of prototype or limited rate production models believed to have been developed. With the system having been in service for nearly 50 years, and still being produced by Raytheon today, the upgrades and modifications in that time have been significant. In terms of capability, the modern TOW vastly outstrips its ancestor.
Some of the TOW family of missiles. Original source unknown.
The TOW missile model seen in Syria, as identified by markings visible in this video, is a BGM-71E-3B, or TOW 2A. The TOW 2A was the first TOW family production missile to introduce a tandem warhead, designed to defeat explosive reactive armour (ERA). The missile weighs 22.65 kg with a 5.9 kg high explosive anti-tank (HEAT) warhead, containing 3.09 kg of LX-14 explosive composition. Armour penetration (using standard RHA testing) is estimated given as 900 mm. The TOW 2A has a range of 3,750 metres, with the missile's S&A (safe and arm) device arming no closer than 30 m from the launcher. The TOW 2A is significantly more capable than early-generation TOW systems, and also represents a capability increase over many of the systems currently in service with the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), and those seen in the hands of anti-government forces.
TOW-2A diagrams
These diagrams, taken from a USGOV publication, show the TOW 2A missile and some of its major components.
Missile tubes are marked with individual serial numbers, however in the Syrian example seen the serial number has been partially abraded, but may be "657769". ARES has contacted the appropriate departments with the US government and Raytheon and asked for further information. The yellow bands towards the forward end of the missile tubes indicate that they contain high explosive (HE) rather than practice missiles, and the brown bands indicate the presence of a low explosive (launch rocket motor).
TOW missile being fired by rebel group in Homs. Note nose probe (source).
The National Stock Number (NSN) for the missile is visible in the video (see image below). A quick search for the NSN using the Defense Logistics Agency's WebFLIS service shows that BGM-71E-3B missiles have seen service with both the US Army and US Marine Corps, with the Marines having recently become the primary managing organisation for this item. This particular example is marked as having been produced by Hughes Aircraft Company as part of a contract first awarded in January 1990 (see contract number, also visible in the image below). This contract was taken over by Raytheon when Hughes was purchased by them in 1997, and has been re-awarded seven times since its initial issuance, with the most recent award in 2004. Consequently, the missile in question was most likely produced between 1990 and 1997.
Markings on a TOW missile tube in Syria.
Videos of TOW systems in Syria immediately lead to an examination of the possible origins of such a weapon, and potential routes of supply which would have made the acquisition of such systems by anti-government forces possible. With the exception of limited numbers of French MILAN systems, the SAA is believed to only field Soviet/Russian ATGWs, and whilst the armed wing of Hezbollah has TOW systems, these appear to be confined to Lebanon; in Syria they have been largely using the same weapons as allied Syrian government troops (presumably for logistical reasons). Because of this Hazm are unlikely to have captured these systems in Syria, and probably acquired them from foreign sources. The state or group which supplied these systems remains unclear.
TOW system in use with a rebel group in Daraa (source).
US produced TOW missiles of one variety or another are in use with over 40 international armed forces, including many of Syria's regional neighbours including Bahrain, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, Israel, Iran, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UAE, and Yemen. Additionally, TOW systems are believed to be in the hands of a few non-state armed actors, including Hezbollah. Other countries have also produced TOW missiles. Egypt produced early model TOW missiles for some time beginning in the 1980s, however it is unknown whether they continue to do so (it seems likely that they do not, given TOW missile purchases from abroad, including the US, in the past decades). Whilst Iran does produce a modified copy of the TOW (the Toophan), the markings on the missile launch tube pictured above indicate it is of US origin.
Unassembled TOW systems in use with Hazm (source).
Since the initial video was released, another two groups of militants in the two different provinces of Syria – Homs and Daraa – have also uploaded videos showing their possession of TOW missiles. It seems likely that these other received TOW ATGWs from the same source as Hazzm. Various commentators and analysts have pointed to a handful of western or western-aligned states as being responsible for the provision of these systems to anti-government fighters, but little concrete evidence has been offered. Agence France-Presse reported that according a knowledgeable source, "moderate, well-organised fighters from the Hazm movement have for the first time received more than 20 TOW anti-tank missiles from a Western source" and that "more have been promised should it be proven that the missiles are being used in an effective way". Whilst it certainly seems likely that these ATGWs are being supplied by an outside state – possibly a recipient of US foreign military aid or a purchaser of surplus US weapons – other possible avenues of ingress exist, and we would need more evidence to state such as fact.
Hughes TOW ad
An advertisement from Hughes Aircraft Company, likely produced sometime in the 1990s, showing the TOW-2A and highlighting the worldwide appeal of the system.
With thanks to Eliot Higgins, John Ismay, Charles Lister, and Michael Weber. Feature image taken from this video


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Frances Woolley is a professor of economics at Carleton University
The video game NHL 10 is programmed to make fighting worthwhile. According to producer David Littman, "if you're down 3-0 in a playoff series and you're getting killed, or if your team isn't playing well, you can start a fight and it gets all the energy back for your team. Your team's energy goes back to 100 per cent."
But in the real world, are teams that win fights more likely to win games? In a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Sports Economics, economists Benjamin Leard and Joanne Doyle use detailed, game-level data from the 2007/08 NHL season to estimate the impact of fighting on the probability of winning.
It's not easy to do. Teams that fight might be less likely to win because losing causes brawling, that is, players start fights when they're behind and they're frustrated. Leard and Doyle eliminate this problem in two ways. First, they focus on first and second period fights, ones that might be expected to build momentum and influence the course of a game. Second, to isolate the impact of fighting, they control for other factors that influence the probability of victory: differences between the teams in the number of power plays, the number of face-offs won, the ratio of shots on goal to the number of possessions, goalie save percentages, and home ice advantage.
Leard and Doyle get their information on fights from two sources. First, they use statistics from dropyourgloves.com to calculate the number of punches thrown and landed by fighters from each team. The difference between the two teams' number of punches thrown (or landed) is then used as a measure of fighting success. The researchers find that punching is no way to win hockey games: a team that throws or lands more punches has no significant advantage over its opponent.
The second measure comes from hockeyfights.com, where viewers watch fight videos and vote on who won. When Leard and Boyle measure victory using hockeyfights.com results, there is some suggestion that winning fights gives a team an advantage. My reading of their results is that winning a fight might have no impact on the probability of victory, or it might increase in the probability of success by two percentage points. The sample of 2007/08 games with first and second period fights is too small to decide between these two alternatives.
Leard and Doyle place more emphasis on the punches thrown and landed measures than the hockeyfights.com results, because they argue that punch counts are more objective than Web polls. This leads them to conclude that "fighting success does not appear to have any measurable effect on the probability of winning."
Leard and Doyle's results are unlikely to convince those who see fighting as part of the code, a way to police the ice. Yet players risk their future well-being when they step up and take one for the team. As a hockey mom I can't but ask: for what?
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.003.
So I go back to the drawing board, and use a lot more data. And, this time, I come up with an estimate of.001, with an SD of.002.
And we have the same conversation! I say, "look, it's not different from zero." And you say, "it's not different from.001, either. I still think clutch hitting exists at.001."
So I go and try again. And, every time, I don't have an infinite amount of data, so, every time, my point estimate is something other than zero. And every time, you point to it and say, "See? Your study is completely consistent with my hypothesis that clutch hitting exists. It's only a matter of how much."
What's the way out of this? The way out of this is to realize that you can't use statistics to prove a point estimate. The question, "does clutch hitting exist?" is the same as the question "is clutch hitting exactly zero?". And, no statistical technique can ever give you an exact number. There will always be a standard error, and a confidence interval, so it will always be possible that the answer is not zero.
You can never "prove" a hypothesis about a single point. You can only "disprove" it. So, you can never use statistical techniques to demonstrate that something does not exist.
What we should be talking about is not existence, but size. We can't find evidence of absence, but we can certainly find evidence of smallness. When an announcer argues for the importance of being able to step up when the game is on the line, we can't say, "we studied it and there's no such thing". But we *can* say, "we studied it, and even under the most optimistic assumptions, the best clutch hitter in the league is only going to hit maybe.020 better in the clutch... and there's no way to tell who he is."
Or, the short form -- "we studied it, and the differences between players are so small that they're not worth worrying about."
But aren't there issues where it's important to actually be able to disprove a hypothesis? Take, for instance, ESP. Some people believe they can do better than chance at guessing which card is drawn from an ESP deck.
If we do a study, and the subject guesses exactly what you'd expect by chance, you'd think that would qualify as a failure to find ESP. But when you calculate the confidence interval, centered on zero, you might have to say, "our experiment suggests that if ESP exists, its maximum level is one extra correct guess in 10,000."
And, of course, the subject will hold it up, and triumphantly say, "look, the scientists say that I might have a small amount of ESP!!"
What's the solution there? It's to be common-sense Bayesian. It's to say, "going into the study, we have a great deal of "evidence of absence" that ESP doesn't exist -- not from statistical tests, but from the world's scientific knowledge and history. If you want to challenge that, you need an equal amount of evidence."
That makes sense for ESP, but not for clutch hitting. Don't we actually *know* that clutch hitting talent must exist, even at a very small level? Every human being is different in how they respond to pressure. Some batters may try to zone out, trying to forget about the situation and hit from instinct. Some may decide to concentrate more. Some may decide to watch the pitcher's face between pitches, instead of adjusting their batting glove.
Any of those things will necessarily change the results a tiny bit, in one direction or the other. Maybe concentration makes things worse, maybe it makes it better. Maybe it's even different for different hitters.
But we *know* something has to be different. It would be much, much too coincidental if every batter did something different, but the overall effect is exactly._PHONE_.
Clutch hitting talent *must* exist, although it might be very, very small.
So why are we so fixated on zero? It doesn't make sense. We know, by logical argument, that clutch hitting can't be exactly zero. We also know, by logical argument, that even if it *were* exactly zero, it's impossible to have enough evidence of that.
When we say "clutch hitting doesn't exist," we're using it as a short form for, "clutch hitting is so small that, for all intents and purposes, it might as well not exist."
When the effect is small, like clutch hitting, it's not a big deal. But when the effect might be big, it's a serious issue.
A lot of formal studies -- not just clutch hitting or baseball -- will find they can't reject the null hypothesis. They usually say, "we found no evidence," and then they go on to assume that that also means they can assume that what they're looking for doesn't exist.
They'll do a study on, I don't know, whether an announcer is right that playing a day game after a night game affects you as a hitter. And they'll get an estimate that says that batters are 40 points of OPS worse the day after. But it's not statistically significant. And they say, "See? Baseball guys don't know what they're talking about. There's no evidence of an effect!"
But that's wrong. Because, unlike clutch hitting, the confidence interval does NOT show an effect that "for all intents and purposes, might as well not exist." The confidence interval is compatible with a *large* effect, of at least 80 points. (That is, since 2 SD is enough to drop from 40 points to zero on one side, it's also enough to rise from 40 points to 80 points on the other side.)
So it's not that there's evidence of absence. There's just absence of evidence.
And that's because of the way they did their study. It was just too small to find any evidence -- just like my office is too small to find any asteroids.
Labels:,
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Two new "Moneyball"-type possibilities
I'm usually doubtful that significant "Moneyball"-type inefficiencies still exist in sports. But, recently, two possibilities came up that got me wondering.
First, in a discussion about baseball player aging, commenter Guy suggested that there are lots of good young players kept in the minors when they're good enough to be playing full-time in the majors. He mentions Wade Boggs, whom the Red Sox held back in the early 80s in favor of Carney Lansford.
It's certainly a possibility, especially when you consider the Jeremy Lin story. Of course, baseball and hockey are different from basketball and football, because they have minor leagues in which players get to show their stuff. But, still.
Second, and even bigger, is something Gabriel Desjardins discovered.
For the past several seasons, the NHL has been keeping track of the player who draws a penalty -- that is, the victim who was fouled. Desjardins grabbed the information and tallied the numbers.
Most of the players near the top of the list are who you would expect -- Crosby, Ovechkin, and so on. But the runaway leader is Dustin Brown, of the Los Angeles Kings.
Over the past seven seasons, Brown drew 380 opposition penalties. Ovechkin was second, with 255; Ryan Smyth was twentieth, at 181.
That means the difference between first and second place was almost twice the difference between second and twentieth place. Dustin Brown is exceptionally good at getting his team a power play.
Desjardins writes,
"Incidentally, 380 non-coincidental penalties is worth roughly $33M in 2012 dollars relative to the league average, and quite a bit more relative to replacement level.... Dustin Brown has made roughly $15M so far in his career, making him one of the biggest deals in the entire league."
Wow. If you had tried to convince me that you could find an official NHL stat that would uncover $33 million worth of hidden value, I wouldn't have believed you. But there it is.
Labels:,,,
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
A research study is just a peer-reviewed argument (part II)
I've always said that a regression doesn't speak for itself. A regression is just manipulated data. To support a hypothesis, you need more that just data: you need an argument about why that data matters.
I wrote about that here, when I said that a research paper is just a peer-reviewed argument. Some commenters disagreed. They argued that science is, and has to be, objective -- whereas, arguments are always subjective.
Having thought about it further, I don't understand how it isn't more obvious that there's always a subjective argument involved. At the very least, if you find a significant association between X and Y, you have to at least suggest whether X causes Y, whether Y causes X, or whether something else causes both.
So, I don't get it. For those of you who don't believe that studies need to argue subjectively, what is it you're thinking?
Here's an example to let you be specific. It's an imaginary regression, where A, B, and C are used to predict X. I'm assuming.05 is the threshold for significance, but if you prefer a different level, feel free to change the p-values accordingly.
Here are the dependent variables, the coefficients, and the significance levels. An asterisk means the value is


text:
The Jompy Water Boiler, designed by David Osborne, is an innovation in the developing field of water purification for use in poor communities around the world. Traditionally the water is heated separately when cooking, by fuel fired stoves. Osborne, a plumber from Scotland, theorized that water purification could be integrated with cooking food over open flame stoves, as well as by using the sun's energy. By placing a an aluminum alloy coil between the flame and the cooking pot, water can be circulated across the top of the stove.
Cold water goes into one end, and thanks to the large surface area of the device it can be heated quickly to boiling point before it comes out of the other end. While it's being used, a normal pan can be placed on top of it to cook as normal, meaning that you don't have to use as much fuel. The device can also be used to heat water with the sun. Filling it full of water and leaving it out in direct sunlight should raise the internal temperature to about 80°C over the course of about 20 minutes. The hot, uncontaminated water that comes out can then be used to drink or to clean safely. An off-the-shelf digital thermometer can be placed into the output tube from the coil to monitor required temperatures for pasteurization.
The Jompy boiler weighs 700g and, over a fire, it can raise a liter of water every minute to about 86 °C -- hot enough to kill most of the bacteria that cause water-borne diseases such as cholera, dysentery and diarrhea. Rugid in design, it can withstand extended use. The device has been tested in Kenya and India earlier this year, and Kenyan president Mwai Kibaki has personally endorsed the Jompy, which is being rolled out around the country in supermarkets and through charities like the Red Cross.


text:
A plasma of hydrogen ions is trapped in a tokamak by balancing the pressure gradient and magnetic forces.
The equation of motion of a plasma is described by magnetohydrodynamics
ρ(dv/dt)= jxB - grad p
where ρ is the plasma density
is the velocity
of the plasma fluid
is the plasma current, B
is the magnetic field and p
is the pressure.
When the plasma is in equilibrium the velocity will be zero and the following equation results
jXB = grad p
This is the fundamental
equation of magnetic equilibrium.
It follows that
B. grad p = 0
j. grad p = 0
These two equations imply that the magnetic surfaces
are surfaces of constant pressure and that the plasma current is a flux surface quantity (i.e. a quantity which is a constant on a magnetic flux surface
The picture that emerges in a tokamak is of toroidally nested magnetic surfaces. As the minor radius of these surfaces tends to zero, the flux toroid becomes a line known as the magnetic axis.
In the simplest scenario, the surfaces are nested circles. Each successive circle is shifted slightly outwards due to the plasma pressure (i.e. the Shafranov shift). In fact, in most modern tokamaks, the magnetic flux surfaces are warped in shape (to optimise performance). The triangularity and elongation are two quantities used to define the surface shape.
External current coils are used to impose magnetic fields to keep the plasma in one place. Otherwise it will quickly hit the vessel wall and quench.


What does the cake on snapchat mean
What does mean?
Meaning of Birthday Cake Emoji This emoji is the recognized symbol of the person's Birthday — and it is used to inform everyone about the celebration or to congratulate someone else with this day. Due to characteristic candles, it is rarely used in any other, not birthday-related meanings. +add.
What does mean on Snapchat?
What does the cake emoji mean?
The Cake Emoji signifies a birthday. When this emoji appears next a friend's name on Snapchat, it means your friend is celebrating their birthday.
What do the Snapchat icons mean?
Red heart: You've been #1 best friends for two weeks. Pink hearts: You've been #1 best friends for two months. Grimacing face: You share a #1 best friend, meaning you both send most of your messages to the same person. Smiling face: You're best friends, but not #1 best friends.
What does mean on Tiktok?
What does Hourglass⌛ emoji mean on Tik Tok? This emoji is called Hourglass Done. It is the recognized symbol of time. It is often used as a reminder not to waste time or as a specific starting point of a countdown to some event.
Does cake mean money?
Do you have change for a C-note? Cabbage — An informal term for money. Cake — If we work hard, we'll be making cake later. Change — An insignificant amount of money.
You might be interested: How to make 7 up cake icing
What does mean from a girl?
Mwahahaha! This Smiling Face With Horns emoji means trouble, especially in the form of devil characters, bad boys and girls, general mischief, and sexual innuendo. This emoji is typically portrayed as a purple face with the same furrowed brows as the Angry Face emoji. —but with an impish smile and two horns.
What does mean from a girl?
two hearts
What does mean in texting?
What does the cake emoji mean on Tik Tok?
The fairy emoji is used to make a mean comment seem funnier, also used in a sarcastic tone. : [loveface] inserts a custom emoticon which looks similar to the When posting a comment on TikTok, each shortcode is replaced with a TikTok graphic. The style of cake widely varies across platforms.
What does s u mean on Snapchat story?
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How to make boxed cake taste like bakery
How to make a batman cake at home
How do you make a character cake? Step 1: The Picture. Find a picture of the character you want and print it out to the size that you will have on the cake. Step 2: Prepare the Cake. Bake a cake. Step 3: Prepare the Frosting. Step 4: Parchment Vs Plastic. Step […]


text:
of spatial fragmentation occurs in the Atlanta metropolitan area, and the urban fringe near Chicago exhibits the least pronounced fragmentation. Part of this difference may be attributed to the nature of the agricultural production in the surrounding areas. The area around Atlanta contains a greater proportion of specialty crops and poultry which can be profitably raised on smaller tracts, yet near Chicago larger tracts of land are required for row crop production. However, similar crops are grown near Minneapolis which exhibits a higher degree of fragmentation. The difference between Chicago and Minneapolis, therefore, may be more directly attributable to differences in urban characteristics.
It is also important to note that land use patterns are not symmetric around the urban core. Thus, even within a particular metropolitan area, the degree of urban influence is not uniform across space. For example, the degree of fragmentation is greater west of Dallas than east.
In sum, farmland values are higher near urban areas. Urban influence is associated with land values being "bid up" by competing land use activities, including residential and commercial development. The June Area Survey data support this notion as cropland values are shown to be higher in urban-influenced areas with an expected premium at the median of about $2,000 per acre. The pattern of influence, however, has not changed substantially at a national level in recent years, even given the significant volatility in the residential land market. Price impacts are shown to vary by metropolitan area, however, altering both the value of lands and the pattern of land use activities.
The natural question then arises, "What is the likely impact of urban influence in future years?" The ratio of cropland values to capitalized rents, which measures the influence of nonagricultural factors, can change in at least two ways. First, the agricultural value of land may increase as the result of rising commodity prices. Second, a further decline in the housing market may reduce urban development. Deferred futures contracts suggest that commodity prices are expected to remain high, and USDA farm income forecasts suggest increasing returns to agricultural production. In addition, recently released Case-Shiller Home Price Indices suggest a continued decline in housing values.
This study suggests urban influence has exhibited little variation nationally over the preceding decade. The difference between median values for rural and urban-influenced acreage remained relatively consistent both ahead of the housing price bubble and after its burst. Therefore, if recent strong commodity prices and farm earnings continue in the agricultural sector, it is unlikely that changes in U.S. farmland values in the future will be a direct result of urban influence. The distribution of commodity production and differential housing market outcomes, however, will contribute to varied outcomes across major metropolitan areas.
For more information
Barnard, C.H. (2000). "Urbanization Affects a Large Share of Farmland." Agriculture and the Rural Economy, 10 (2): 57–63.
Blank, S.C. (2007). "Farmland Values as an Indicator of Regional Economic Performance?" Agricultural and Resource Economics Update, University of California.
Irwin, E.G. and N.E. Bockstael. (2007). "The Evolution of Urban Sprawl: Evidence of Spatial Heterogeneity and Increasing Land Fragmentation." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104 (52): 20,672–20,677.
United States Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Service. (_PHONE_). June Area Survey. Available online: _URL_
United States Department of the Interior.(2006-2010). National Land Cover Database. Available online: _URL_
United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. (2005). Population Interaction Zones for Agriculture. Available online:_URL_
Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller Home Price Indices. (2011). Available online: _URL_


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Help with tiled maps
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3 replies to this topic
#1 Jac0blee Members - Reputation: 100
Posted 14 February 2012 - 05:51 PM
Hi guys i was experementing with tiled maps and wondered how to make the user stop when they hit a wall. also how to make directional bullet firing controlled by mouse. im a new programmer and need a little bit of a kickstart thanks for the help!
#2 TehOwn Members - Reputation: 134
Posted 14 February 2012 - 07:57 PM
Lets break down what you're asking for.
 - User must stop when they hit a wall
For this, you need to learn about Collision Detection. This literally means, "Detecting when an object collides with another" and usually involves some action which occurs when there is a collision (bouncing off, stopping, exploding, etc) There are many simple ways to do this, especially in Tile/Grid-based games. One of the simplest ways of doing this is what I used for collision in my PacMan clone.
When you first create games, your player will simply have an X position and a Y position. In a tile-based game, you can use this to detect the player's position in relation to the tiles and the grid on which they lie. Imagine that your player lies on a chess board, if the squares on the board are 64 pixels wide and long, then if your player was at (32,32) then he'd be considered to be in the top-left square. If he was at (500,500), he'd be in the bottom-right square.
Now, each tile in your game must be considered passable or not-passable. Grass would usually be passable, but Walls would not. This allows you to define which tiles players CAN and CANNOT walk on.
With this information together, you can work out which grid-space the player is attempting to enter and check if it is passable or not. If it is not passable, prevent the player from entering that space, but position them so they are immediately outside it.
That is the theory. Hopefully someone can provide you with useful articles to help you implement it yourself.
 - Directional bullet firing
For this, you need to create objects that will move depending on a velocity. This is updated every frame and you can also do collision checks on the bullets to detect if they hit anything (like a wall or player).
These concepts are explained quite simply here:
 - Mouse input
Depending on which engine or API you are using; getting and using mouse-input can have a varied level of difficulty. What are you using?
p.s. Hopefully my explanations were easy to follow. Giving advice to others is quite a new thing for me.
#3 SeiryuEnder Members - Reputation: 199
Posted 15 February 2012 - 06:16 AM
I'm not sure what your language, OS, or scripting interface is; so I'm going to answer as if you're in Windows C++.
It's been several years since I've made a tile-based game, so bear with me. These are the highlights that I remember.
Tile maps:
The key thing to realize is that tile maps can have multiple "layers".
Primary layer: where your character runs around.
Foreground layers: objects 'in front' of your character, usually scrolls faster than primary layer
Background layers: objects 'behind' your character (IE scenery), usually scrolls slower than primary layer
Collision layer: non-visible areas where the character will 'collide' with the world. May define several types of collision, such as slopes or different terrain (ice)
Trigger layer: Areas that cause an event when something enters them (player, enemy, etc)
Refer to TehOwn's post for more information about tile collision.
Mouse Input & bullet firing:
You really want your input to be hardware accelerated, but to get things going quickly you can use the windows function GetCursorPos(LPPOINT).
This returns a point in screen space, you need to convert it to client space.
void Player::UpdateGun()
 // This buffers the input, so we aren't shooting a bullet
 // every frame the left mouse button is held
 static bool bMouseWasClicked = false;
 // Check if the left mouse button is pressed
 if( GetAsyncKeyState( VK_LBUTTON ) &&!bMouseWasClicked )
 POINT mousePos;
 float bulletDirX, bulletDirY;
 bMouseWasClicked = true;
 // Get current position of mouse
 GetCursorPos( &mousePos );
 ScreenToClient( hWindow, &mousePos );
 // Get a vector from the gun to the mouse
 bulletDir.x = mousePos.x - m_Gun.x;
 bulletDir.y = mousePos.y - m_Gun.y;
 // Normalize the direction vector
 float mag= sqrt( bulletDirX * bulletDirX + bulletDirY * bulletDirY );
 if( mag == 0.0f ) mag = 1.0f;
 bulletDirX /= mag;
 bulletDirY /= mag;
 // Tell the gun which way to fire
 m_Gun.Fire( bulletDirX, bulletDirY );
 bMouseWasClicked = false;
This is completely untested code, but that's the general idea.
#4 Jac0blee Members - Reputation: 100
Posted 16 February 2012 - 10:09 AM
Thank you guys so much for the help you really explained it well, i do know about collision detection and was just wondering how to implement it into tiled maps so that i could have walls and such and the code for the mouse directional shooting is very helpful thankyou!
Old topic!


Tirumazhisai Azhwar is one of the twelve azhwars (or alwar), a group of Vaishnava saints who sang devotional poems on Lord Vishnu. Those poems are collectively known as Naalayira Divya Prabhandham.
Tirumazhisai Alwar was the son of Bhrigu but raised by a childless tribal couple. He proclaimed that he doesn't belong to any of the four varnas (Avarna) i.e., Brahmin, Vaishya, Kshatriya and Shudra. But there was a couple of incidents other people saw him by the caste he was raised in.
As a part of his journey, Alwar was travelling to Thirukudanthai Sarangapani temple, Kumbhakonam which is also known as Aravamudhar Sannidhi. Alwar stopped at a verndah and sat down. A group of brahmins were reciting Vedas. Because they saw a person who is not a dwija, they stopped reciting (There is a smriti injunction that Vedas should not be chanted in front of a non dwija). Alwar noticed it and moved very distant from them. Later, the brahmins wanted to resume the chanting where they stopped. But they couldn't remember it and clueless. Alwar realised their cluelessness and turned back. He took a black grain, broke it with his nail and dropped it down. By this action, they took the hint and continued the chanting.
kṛṣṇānāṃ vrīhīnām nakhanirbhinnaṃ nakhanirbhinnaṃ
कृष्णानां व्रीहीणां नखनिर्भिन्नं नखनिर्भिन्नं
At this point, those brahmins understood the alwar knew the Vedas but he doesn't open his mouth. They asked for his pardon.
What is the meaning and context of the above verse Alwar hinted to the Brahmins? Where is this mantra located?
 - _USER_.NRAO Thanks for pointing out. Edited. – Sarvabhouma May 19 '19 at 6:09
Partial answer providing location of verse in scriptures and English translation for the same; Answer that provides interpretation explaining the meaning and significance/reason for sacrifice is awaited.
This is from Taittariya Samhita of Krishna Yajurveda:
1.8 प्रपाठक: 8 राजसूयः
1.8.9 अनुवाक 9
रत्निनां हवींषि
बार्हस्पत्यं चरुं निर् वपति ब्रह्मणो गृहे शितिपृष्ठो दक्षिणा । ऐन्द्रम् एकादशकपालम्̇ राजन्यस्य गृह ऋषभो दक्षिणा । आदित्यं चरुम् महिष्यै गृहे धेनुर् दक्षिणा नैर्ऋतं चरुम् परिवृक्त्य्àइ गृहे कृष्णानां व्रीहीणां नखनिर्भिन्नं कृष्णा कूटाँ दक्षिणा । आग्नेयम् अष्टाकपालम्̇ सेनान्यो गृहे हिरण्यं दक्षिणा वारुणं दशकपालम्̇ सूतस्य गृहे महानिरष्टो दक्षिणा मारुतम्̇ सप्तकपालं ग्रामण्यो गृहे पृश्निर् दक्षिणा सावित्रं द्वादशकपालम्
Here is the English translation:
The Rajasuya
8. The offerings to various deities
i. 8. 9.
To Brhaspati he offers an oblation in the house of the Brahman (priest); the sacrificial fee is a white-backed (animal). (He offers) to Indra on eleven potsherds in the house of a Rajanya; the sacrificial fee is a bull. To Aditya (he offers) an oblation in the house of the chief wife; the sacrificial fee is a cow. To Nirrti (he offers) an oblation in the house of the neglected wife, made up of rice broken by the nails; the sacrificial fee is a black hornless (cow). To Agni (he offers) on eight potsherds in the house of the leader of the host; the sacrificial fee is gold. To Varuna (he offers) on ten potsherds in the house of the minstrel; the sacrificial fee is a great castrated (ox). To the Maruts (he offers) on seven potsherds in the house of the village headman; the sacrificial fee is a dappled (cow). To Savitr (he offers) on twelve potsherds [1] in the house of the carver; the sacrificial fee is a speckled (ox).
Going through Sanskrit Dictionary,
 - It's commonly known that Kṛṣṇā means black.
 - Vrīhī means grain of rice.
 - nakha is the sanskrit word for nails and nirbhinna means broken/divided or pierced; so here "nakhanirbhinnaṃ" mean broken (or torn off) by the nails.
Thus, the action of breaking black grain of rice by nail would remind the verse of 8th Parapathaka of 1st Kanda of Taittariya Samhita.
P.S 8th Prapathaka of 1st Khanda is about Rajasuya and 9th Anuvaka is about offerings to various deities.
 - I'm aware that they were reminded of the verse that it is talking about breaking the black grain with nails. Velukkudi Krishnan swamy says that in his lecture youtu.be/r6OS4zpp68M?t=3084. I asked about the context and meaning of the verse i.e., why is the black grain talked about and why is it broken with nail etc., Is this related to some Yajna or wh etc., like that. The last paragraph is not relevant IMO. – Sarvabhouma May 19 '19 at 14:20
 - 4
 Your questions is "What is meaning of verse?" and "Where is the mantra located?". I think the translation and dictionary meaning is clear and provided location from Vedas. Now if you want to know about ritual or sacrifice then it would be specific question e.g. what is significant of breaking rice in sacrifice. – Pandya May 19 '19 at 14:31
 - 1
 Meaning is not just translation. By meaning, I mean interpretation/analysis behind the verse. We do not just copy paste translations. Do we? Dictionary meaning is already clear. I wanted the context what is spoken. Context means how and why it is spoken and the meaning (not translation) behind the verse. See the body. – Sarvabhouma May 19 '19 at 14:37
 - _USER_ ok. Btw, this is about offerings to various deities in Rajasuya. – Pandya May 19 '19 at 15:32
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text: The optical methods of disperse media investigations are widely used today in many branches of physics from biophysics to environmental science and astronomy. Scatterers one meets in the fields are commonly known to have complex shape and structure, and many theoretical methods to treat the interaction of radiation with such particles have been developed. However, most of these approaches are still too computationally demanding for proper modelling of the optical properties of disperse media contain in non-spherical inhomogeneous scatterers.The main idea of the book is to provide a reader with thorough information and various tools to solve the problem. The authors plan to review the contemporary light scattering methods, to introduce efficient versions of the fast exact methods as well as of some approximate ones, to summarise theoretical studies of the applicability ranges of the methods and to formulate and illustrate the principia effects of scatterer shape and structure variations on the optical properties. As applications cosmic dust, atmospheric aerosols, nanosensors and other scatterers will be considered.


How to keep your fiddle-leaf fig alive and happy
There's no denying fiddle-leaf figs were the indoor "it plant" of 2017 and they're still a favourite today.
Known mainly for it's shady dark green leaves, veiny leaftlets and hefty price tag, this fashionable foliage has proved to be quite the challenge for some. To make sure you're giving your fiddle-leaf all the TLC it needs, Yates horticulturalist Angie Thomas shares tips on how to look after your very own.
Why choose a fiddle-leaf?
"Fiddle leaf figs (Ficus lyrata) are fantastic, large leafed figs that make a wonderfully bold statement when grown as in indoor plant."
How to nail the positioning
"They love a spot indoors that's well lit but protected from direct sunlight. It's a good idea to rotate the pot around, by half a turn, every fortnight so that each side of the plant receives some light. This will help reduce the chance of lop sided growth."
The fiddle-leaf fig is a plant that makes a big statement. (Leon&George)
What not to do
"Fiddle-leaf figs don't like drafts from windows or air conditioners. They're native to humid tropical rainforests, so they love a protected humid environment."
How often should you water a fiddle-leaf fig?
"Over watering your fiddle-leaf fig is courting disaster! Only re-water when the top few centimetres of potting mix feels dry. I highly recommend feeding your fiddle leaf fig during the warmer months of the year with a liquid fertilizer."
Uh-oh! So it's started to "sulk" - how to salvage your fiddle-leaf:
"Figs can be temperamental if they're moved. 'Weeping' figs are notorious for dropping their leaves when they're moved and fiddle-leaf figs can also sulk and lose some of their leaves if you move them.
"If your fiddle leaf fig is not liking its current spot and is not looking happy, then move it to a better location (such as with brighter light or away from a draft). Otherwise, try to avoid moving your fig or if you do have to move it, do it gradually and hope it doesn't notice!"


What does the word number mean?
Usage examples for number
 1. She gave Shirley the telephone number. – The Valley of the Giants by Peter B. Kyne
 2. What a number of things had happened within the last two hours! – The Room in the Dragon Volant by J. Sheridan LeFanu
 3. There were also a number of girls. – The Boys' Life of Mark Twain by Albert Bigelow Paine
Each person working in the medical industry sometimes needs to know how to define a word from medical terminology. For example - how to explain number? Here you can see the medical definition for number. Medical-dictionary.cc is your online dictionary, full of medical definitions.


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Correction: Europe-Science Bonanza story
Thursday - 1/31/2013, 7:00pm ET
BRUSSELS (AP) -- In a story Jan. 28 about a European Union science award, The Associated Press reported erroneously that EUR1 billion euros was equivalent to $1.34 million. The correct conversion is that EUR1 billion euros equals $1.34 billion.
A corrected version of the story is below:
2 science projects win up to $1.3 billion each
European projects to model human brain, explore graphene win up to EUR1 B ($1.34 billion) each
Associated Press
BRUSSELS (AP) -- Two European science projects -- one to map the intricacies of the human brain, the other to explore the extraordinary carbon-based material graphene -- won an EU technology contest Monday, getting up to EUR1 billion ($1.34 billion) each over the next decade.
The projects were selected from 26 proposals.
In addition, the increased knowledge about how the brain works -- and how it manages billions of processing units and trillions of synapses while consuming no more power than a light bulb --may lead to "a paradigm shift for computing," the European Commission, the European Union's executive branch, said in a statement.
"The economic and industrial impact of such a shift is potentially enormous," the commission said.
"The pharmaceutical industry won't do this, computing companies won't do this -- there's too much fundamental science," Markram said. "This is one project which absolutely needs public funding."
Each of the projects will initially receive EUR54 million ($73 million) from the European Union's research budget, an amount that will be matched by national governments and other sources. Further funding will depend on whether they reach certain milestones within the first 30 months, but over a decade it could total EUR1 billion ($1.34 billion) each.
In this age of government austerity, the commission promised to monitor the projects carefully so they continue "to be an efficient use of taxpayers' money."
Don Melvin can be reached at.


text:
The 11th Annual Water Matters Day
will be held on
Saturday, March 9, 2013!
An important part of Broward County's effort to educate residents about water conservation is Water Matters Day. This fun, activity-filled event focuses on teaching residents about the need to conserve and protect water for people, plants and animals. The event helps Broward residents make the connection between their daily activities and the impact they have on our local water resources and natural environment.
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The best part is that while Water Matters Day is about education, it's also about fun. The event is packed with workshops, giveaways, children's activities, and entertainment. For instance, while parents are learning about choosing the right plants for their yards, their children can learn about creating backyard wildlife habitats in a birdhouse-building workshop. They can also listen to a local folksinger in the entertainment pavilion, or help their parents collect giveaways, which in the past have included rain gauges, automatic shut-off devices for irrigation systems, native trees and plants, and garden mulch.
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A Datomic entity provides a lazy, associative view of all the information that can be reached from a Datomic entity id.
The Entity interface provides associative access to
 - all the attribute/value pairs associated with an entity id E
 - all other entities reachable as values V from E
 - all other entities that can reach E through their values V
Nagivation to other entities is recursive, so with thoroughly connected data such a social network graph it may be possible to navigate an entire dataset starting with a single entity.
The Entity interface is completely generic, and can navigate any and all Datomic data.
The examples below refer to the following example datoms concerning entity 42, a.k.a. Jane Doe.
The Database.entity method will return an Entity, given an entity id or lookup ref:
jane = db.entity(42)
Given an entity, you can then navigate to any of that entity's attributes:
// returns "Jane"
firstName = jane.get(":person/firstName")
The special attribute :db/id provides access to the entity's own id:
// returns 42
id = jane.get(":db/id")
If an attribute points to another entity through a cardinality-one attribute, get will return another Entity instance:
address = jane.get(":person/address")
If an attributes points to another entity through a cardinality-many attribute, get will return a Set of entity instances. The following example returns all the entities that Jane likes:
// empty, given the example data
peopleJaneLikes = jane.get(":person/likes")
If you precede an attribute's local name with an underscore (_), get will navigate backwards, returning the Set of entities that point to the current entity. The following example returns all the entities who like Jane:
// returns set containing John
peopleWhoLikeJane = jane.get(":person/_likes")
Entities do not "exist" in any particular place; they are merely an associative view of all the datoms about some E at a point in time. If there are no facts currently available about an entity, Database.entity will return an empty entity, having only a :db/id.
Laziness and Caching
Entity attributes are accessed lazily as you request them. Once you access a particular attribute, the attribute will be cached for the lifetime of that entity instance.
The Entity.keySet method will return the keys available for an entity, without caching their values.
The Entity.touch method is a convenience that will access and cache all the attributes of an entity. In addition, touch will also access and cache the attributes of any other entities reachable through an attribute whose schema definition includes :isComponent true.
As an example, consider a database of orders, line items, and products. A line item is a component of an order. A product is related to an order, but is not a component of the order. In such a database, touching an order will access the order's attributes, and recursively access all the order's line items. Touching an order will not access the line items' products.
The touch method is a convenience, suitable for interactive exploration, or for when you know that you will need all of an entity's information. When this is not the case, it can be more efficient to be explicit, and ask for precisely what you need.
Note that none of the entity APIs mandate any communication with a server. Entities are lazy values, backed by a lazy database value in an application process. In particular, entities are not subject to the N+1 select problem, which is an artifact of client/server query architectures.
Entities and Time
Entities know the point in time on which they are based. Given an entity, you can access the database on which the entity is based
db = entity.db()
From the database you can then find the database's basisT, the transactions that contributed to the entity, etc.
Entities represent only a point in time, not the database across time. Notice that the "across time" aspect of the database vanishes when making entities.
The point-in-time nature of entities means that entities can be derived from any point-in-time view of a database, i.e. the return values of Connection.db, Database.asOf, Database.since, and Database.with.
Entities cannot be derived from with any time-spanning view of a database, i.e. the return value of Database.history.
Usage Considerations
Entities are always consistent.
Entities are lazy, immutable values. They are thread safe and do not require coordination with any other concurrent uses of the same information.
Entities are based on a point in time of the database. Navigation from an entity will always and only reach other entities with that same time basis, allowing extended calculations to be performed without coordination.
Entities are not a mapping layer between databases and application code. Entities are a direct, mechanical translation from database information to associative application access.
Entities are not suitable for existence tests, which should typically be performed via lookup of a unique identity.


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I have an image with width 4096 and height 2896. I would like to scale the image to below 4000 pixels wide - and as close to 4000 as possible. I would also like to keep the dimensions whole numbers.
Is there an equation to do this?
More Details
 - Clarification: I do not care if I divide by a rational number.
 - Reason: I am doing this due to a software limitation. The software that we make the image with can not have a width or height 4000px or more. But the size I want is 4096. To try and make the final image as crisp as possible, I reasoned that you should not have any rounding.
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3 Answers 3
If we want to scale down as in divide by an integer, then you have very few choices. To say that we want to divide a number by a whole number and get a whole number out is to say that we want to divide a number by one of its factors. $4096$ is a $2$-power, so you're only choices there are powers of $2$.
Unfortunately, $2896 = 2^4181$, so the only divisors of $2896$ that are also divisors of $4096$ are $1, 2, 4, 8, 16$. (And now I see Jennifer's answer - but I'm not done yet).
But if we are a bit looser in our idea of scaling, as in divide by some rational number, then we have a few more choices. It's still true that our numerator will be one of $1,2,4,8,16$. But we can more or less arbitrarily choose our denominator. For example, we might choose to scale down by a factor of $16/15$.
$4096 \cdot 15/16 = 3840$, and $2896 \cdot 15/16 = 2715$. So it's a bit smaller than what you would have wanted, but it maintains the correct aspect ratio.
What is the cost here? It's not clear (to me, at least) how one defines the new colors for this new picture on a pixel by pixel basis, but perhaps that is something that people already know how to cope with.
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Thanks for the answer! - It took me a while to understand, but I think this is what I need to do: Find the highest common denominator and then create the biggest fraction from that (in this case 15/16). Please correct me if i am wrong. – lindon fox Aug 29 '12 at 7:12
You can't keep it close $4000$. We have $4096 = 2^{12}$, $2896 = 2^4 \times 181$, i.e. the gcd of width, height is $2^4.$ If I understand you correctly, the scaling factors are $2, 4, 8,$ and $16$.
Can't you just scale it by.9 or something, and then round numbers up or down?
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Let me know if answer doesn't make sense at all. I will just delete it! – user2468 Aug 29 '12 at 5:27
Well, 4096/2896 $\approx$ 1.41436. The closest whole number ratio to that with width 4000 is 4000/2828
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I'm using a plugin called Duik 15 to rig a character to turn the right arm into an IK controller, and it has produced an expression that is unable to find one of my layers.
I'm not sure why it's not able to see it, but I'm wondering if anyone has encountered the issue before within their expressions?
Here's the expression that Duik generated, with the problem being on line 2.
layer1 = thisComp.layer('M R Bicep'); // Not finding me
layer2 = thisComp.layer('M R Forarm');
controller = thisComp.layer('C_M R Hand');
endPos = layer2.effect('IK End')(1);
ctrlEffect = controller.effect("IK M R Forarm");
limit = effect('IK Limit')(1);
FK = ctrlEffect(4);
IKFK = ctrlEffect(3) == 0;
cw = ctrlEffect(1) == 1;
function getWorldPos(L) {
 return L.toWorld(L.anchorPoint);
function ik() {
 A = getWorldPos(layer1);
 B = getWorldPos(layer2);
 C = layer2.toWorld(endPos);
 E = getWorldPos(controller);
 a = length(B,C);
 b = length(E,A);
 c = length(A,B);
 x = (b*b + c*c - a*a )/(2*b);
 alpha = Math.acos(clamp(x/c,-1,1));
 D = E - A;
 delta = Math.atan2(D[1],D[0]);
 result = radiansToDegrees(delta - (cw? 1 : -1)*alpha);
 V = B - A;
 adj1 = radiansToDegrees(Math.atan2(V[1],V[0]));
 IK = result - adj1 + value;
 if (IK < limit) IK+=360;
 return IK;
IKFK? ik() : FK;
And also a screenshot of some of my layers, with the offending code situated inside M R Bicep's rotation expression.
My layers
 - 2
 This is on a mac right? Has it only just started hapening? I've been having trouble with layer names in expressions on a mac with the most recent version of AE, specifically with the DUIK scripts. For some reason the layer names end up with invisible line returns in them. It's made DUIK almost unusuable on the mac. – stib Oct 24 '16 at 12:18
 - I can confirm this is still happening on Mac, latest version of AE :( – Parker Young Apr 12 '17 at 22:33
I don't know if this counts as an answer so much as a workaround but I was getting the same error message when I was manually typing in the layer name. There was no typo; the layer definitely existed. It was maddening.
But when I used the pickwhip to link it to the layer, After Effects would automatically generate the 'thisComp.layer("Layer Name Here")' code. Then I just built the rest of my expression around that line. That seemed to work fine.
Your Answer


text:
Degrees and Certifications:
Welcome to the 2021-2022 school year at Warner Girls' Leadership Academy and Room A201 Meredith College. I have transitioned into the 7th and 8th Grade Social Studies Teacher. I look forward to the adventures that the Wildflowers and I will have as we journey through Ancient Greece and Medieval times or the beginning and Reconstruction of America. I look forward to hearing your voices and analyzing situations in history as historians! I look forward to partnering with you to make our Wildflowers grow and be prepared for their next journey in lifehigh school.
Class Dojo Messenger is the best way to contact all 7th/8th-grade teachers and to keep up with Middle School updates, important dates, activities we are doing in class, and school-wide events.
Social Studies Topics:
Grade 7, WORLD STUDIES FROM 750 B.C. TO 1600 A.D.: ANCIENT GREECE TO THE FIRST GLOBAL AGE
1) Economic Decision Making 2) Feudalism/The Middle Ages 3) Non-Western World Trade
Grade 8, U.S. STUDIES FROM 1492 TO 1877: EXPLORATION THROUGH RECONSTRUCTION
1) The Beginning of America 2) The American Revolution 3) Civil War and Reconstruction 4) Tru2U - High School Preparation
Here is what will be included in Social Studies Class:
1) Warm-ups on Schoology
2) Discussions on Schoology
3) Digital Assignments
4) Tests and Quizzes
5) TCI resources
6) Online Social Studies resources


text:
The blood of beheaded French King Louis XVI has been found by scientists in an old gourd. Louis XVI was beheaded by a guillotine by French revolutionaries in 1793.
Scientists found a small piece of fabric placed inside of a hollow gourd, which left blood stains. The squash was decorated with words that say, "On January 21, Maximilien Bourdaloue dipped his handkerchief in the blood of Louis XVI after his decapitation"and belonged to a family in Italy.The scientists said the DNA is very similar to genetic material from what is believed to be the mummified head of an earlier French king, AFP reports.
The gourd has been in the hands of an Italian family for a century.
The monarch was killed by guillotine by French revolutionaries more than 200 years ago, on 21 January 1793.The BBC reported that after Louis XVI's beheading, spectators were believed to have dipped their handkerchiefs in his blood.
For years, researchers have been trying to establish whether a genuine memento of this momentous execution in the Place de la Revolution survives today. A new DNA analysis has solved a mystery that has lasted for almost 220 years, finding that an ornate gourd almost certainly carries the bloodstains of the fallen king.
On Jan 21 1793, a Parisian called Maximilien Bourdaloue witnessed Louis's public decapitation as the postrevolutionary "Terreur" took hold. Afterwards, he joined many others in dipping a handkerchief in the pool of blood left at the foot of the guillotine.
Bourdaloue then secreted this garment inside a calabash, now in the possession of an Italian family. The rag itself has long since decomposed, but the container still carries crimson stains and an inscription recording how the souvenir was collected after the king's "decapitation".
A new study in the current issue of "Forensic Science International" has filled in the missing link. The breakthrough came when scientists took a DNA sample from the mummified head of one of Louis's most illustrious ancestors: King Henri IV, who ruled France from 1589 until 1610.
This analysis established that Henri possessed a rare partial "Y" chromosome. Louis was one of his direct male-line descendants, separated by seven generations. The stains on the calabash also contained the "Y" chromosome, along with other matches, leading experts to conclude that the container almost certainly holds the blood of the executed king.
The Execution of King Louis XVI of France
On January 20, 1793, the National Convention condemned Louis XVI to death, his execution scheduled for the next day. Louis spent that evening saying goodbye to his wife and children. The following day dawned cold and wet. Louis arose at five. At eight o'clock a guard of 1,200 horsemen arrived to escort the former king on a two-hour carriage ride to his place of execution. Accompanying Louis, at his invitation, was a priest, Henry Essex Edgeworth, an Englishman living in France.


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Why was I a recipient? Well, the students had actually gathered the sweet, edible, goodness for a biology project, and used one of my class periods to teach a lesson to other biology students about the science of syrup gathering.
It came from our school's own maple trees, and is fabulous. It has a rich, textured sweetness with a complex finish that hints of honey and nuts. I cannot wait to pour it over pancakes or French toast tomorrow morning for breakfast.