text:
By Nicholas Hebb
Occasionally I get asked in FlowBreeze can create Nassi-Shneiderman diagrams. Short answer: No. However, you can make them using the built-in shapes and drawing tools in Excel. there are free tools available online, but if you already have Microsoft Excel, then hopefully this short tutorial will save you from having to download and install some specialized software.
Nassi-Shneiderman diagrams (aka, NS diagrams or structograms), are used to outline structured programs. They are not very common in industry today but are sometimes used as a computer science teaching tool, often as an alternate to flowcharts. A simple example is shown below.
Sample Nassi-Shneiderman diagram
Any statement that is not
a branch or loop.
Binary branch statement,
such as an if statement
with a true/false choice.
such as a switch-case statement.
Default case is the short leg of the triangle.
Loop with precondition,
such as a for loop or a while loop
Loop with postcondition,
such as a do-while loop.
Adding a bunch of shapes to the diagram is fairly straightforward. (Well, except for the Branch triangle, which is a pain. We'll show why below.) Since the default shape style in Excel is dark blue with centered text, we will create some baseline shapes with plain styling that we place off to the side and then copy and paste to build the diagram.
Before adding shapes, the first step is to create a grid and then turn on Snap to Grid. These steps are covered in the How to Flowchart in Excel article, so we won't repeat them here.
Click the Insert tab, then click the Shapes dropdown and select either a Rectangle from the Basic Shapes group or a Process shape from the Flowchart group. Use you left mouse button to draw it to size on the sheet. With the shape still selected, right-click on the shape and select Format Shape from the context menu. Follow these steps to set the styling:
There are several triangle shapes available in Excel, but the only one that is suitable is the Isoceles Triangle under the Basic Shapes group. It has an adjustment handle (covered below in Adjusting Branch Shapes) that lets you move the center vertex for making switch branches. There is one problem, though. It points upward, and if we rotate the shape, then any text will be upside down. So what we will do is to create a branch shape and use a borderless, transparent textbox on top of that.
Grouping the Triangle and Textbox:
Grouping shapes together lets you treat multiple shapes as a single object, which is how we will want to use our contrived branch block.
Once shapes are grouped you can select individual shapes within the group by first clicking on the group to select it, and then clicking again on the individual shape. Do this now to select the textbox. Right-click on the textbox and use the Format Shape dialog to change the Fill to None and the Line Color to No line. You now have a reusable branch element.
Now that we have created the base shapes, creating the diagram is just a matter of copying and pasting the baseline shapes. Of course, you will need to position and size the shapes as you build the diagram. You will also need to set the z-order* of the triangles and adjust their vertices so that the branch statements are properly positioned on top of the process blocks, which are both covered below in the Editing tips section.
* Z-order is the front to back positioning. When shapes overlap, it determines which shape is on top.
In Excel, shapes that can be altered display yellow "adjustment handles" at the adjustment points. You can click and drag these points to change the shape of the shape, so to speak.
When dealing with branches and loop tests, it is often necessary to change the z-order stacking of a shape by bringing it forward or sending it backward. The easiest way to do this is to right click on a shape and use Bring to Front or Send to Back from the context menu. But the following keyboard shortcuts are useful when a shape is hard to select with a mouse.
The multi-key shortcuts look odd compared to most keyboard shortcuts, but when you hold the Alt key, Excel hightlights them on the screen making the path becomes obvious. The letters map to characters in each word, even though they are not underlined like menu systems. For example, Send to Back is Page Layout > Arrange > Send Backward > Send to Back.
You can select shapes with your mouse and use the Tab key to toggle between selected shapes. To select multiple shapes, click the first shape and then hold the Shift key down as you click on the others. You can also use a special Select Objects cursor available on the Home tab under the Find & Select menu. You need to toggle this cursor off to resume normal mouse usage - via the menu or by double-clicking anywhere on the worksheet.
Clicking and dragging with the mouse is the most obvious way, but you can also use the keyboard arrow keys to move a shape around. With Snap to Grid on, shapes will snap to the next cell as you do this.
On the Home tab, use the standard horizontal and vertical text alignment buttons.
On the View tab, uncheck the Gridlines checkbox.
Starting with Excel 2007, copy operations place an image of the copied range onto the Windows clipboard. To save the diagram as an image, select the cells fully encompassing the diagram, copy, and then paste into an image editor (even MS Paint will suffice). Alternately, you can paste into Word. I recommend doing a Paste Special and choosing the Enhanced Metafile format. Metafiles are like vector graphics in that when you resize the image, the lines and text will still render nicely.
Lastly, you can save to PDF. Excel has some problems when saving shapes to PDF. I recommend that you read the How to Save Excel Flowcharts to PDF article


Harry Potter Wiki
Morfin Gaunt's knife
Revision as of 01:14, January 26, 2013 by Harrypotter394 (Talk | contribs)
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Morfin Gaunt with his wand and knife during his nephew's visit.
This knife belonged to Morfin Gaunt. It was seen in 2 memories via Albus Dumbledore's Pensieve in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
The knife was first seen in Bob Ogden's memory during the first lesson between Harry Potter and Albus Dumbledore. In the summer of 1925, Ogden was sent to summon Morfin to a hearing for attacking Tom Riddle Sr., a Muggle with a spell that covered his face in hives. As head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, visited the Gaunt shack to investigate Morfin's use of magic on a Muggle. Upon first meeting Ogden, Morfin held the knife brandished in one of his hands and with his wand making him cast a jinx that caused yellow pus to flow from Ogden's nose.
Morfin was seen using the knife again when he was threating to attack Ogden for firing a Revulsion Jinx at his father, Marvolo Gaunt when he was throttling his daughter Merope Gaunt when hearing that she was in love with the Muggle her brother attacked. It is unknown what happened to the knife when Morfin and his father were imprisoned in Azkaban, but when Morfin was released he had it in his possession again.
During Harry and Dumbledore's third lesson, the dove into Morfin's memory in which he meets his nephew (his sister's son), Tom Riddle who later became Lord Voldemort. Morfin held the knife up in his left hand and his wand on his right. Riddle entered the shack and at the very moment Morfin saw him, he thought it was his Muggle brother-in-law since Riddle resembled his father so much. He tried to attack Riddle but when he spoke in Parseltongue, Morfin stopped.
It is unknown what happened to the knife after Morfin was sent to Azkaban again after being wrongfully convicted by the Ministry of Magic for the deaths of the Riddle family where he later died, but it's possible he lost the knife forever.
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Relationships Among Gender, Gender Role Individualized Trust, And Self-Disclosure, John D. Foubert
Self-disclosure, the process of revealing personal information to other people, was examined in relation to gender, gender role and individualized trust. Undergraduate subjects (N = 293) completed the Jourard Self-Disclosure Scale (Jourard, 1971b), the Individualized Trust Scales (Wheeless & Grotz, 1977), the Bem Sex Role Inventory (Bem, 1974), and a demographic questionnaire. Significant interactions emerged between gender and individualized trust (p <.01), gender and gender role (p <.05), and individualized trust and gender role (p =.01). An androgynous gender role was shown to lead to higher rates of self-disclosure in the high trust condition but not in the low trust condition. Although masculine males and masculine females did not disclose differently, feminine females disclosed markedly more than feminine males. The relationship between individualized trust and gender role revealed an increase in self-disclosure common to androgynous individuals is restricted to those who are high trusting.

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


text:
CHAPLAINCY IN EDUCATION
Chaplaincy in an education setting can take many shapes, it is essential is that it meets the needs of the institution and responds to the local setting.
There are a variety of models within the Diocese of Exeter; however, there are some fundamental principles which need to be considered.
- Support from senior management
- Support from local church communities, ecumenical where possible
- Support from the Diocese, licensing of chaplains, providing training, etc.
- Adequate resources – these need not be financial
- A base – this can be virtual
- Chaplaincy is not a vehicle for proselytising
Chaplaincy can offer:
- Additional and specific spiritual and pastoral support of students
- Support for staff
- Additional support/ resource to the curriculum
- Critical incident support
- Community links
- Can be seen as working beyond the "gates"
- Additional activities
- Chaplains can often go where other "fear to tread"
Remember that Chaplaincy is to the whole community.
Chaplaincy can best be described as the Walk to Emmaus, Chaplains walk alongside all participants of an institution, they listen to their story, support their issues, if appropriate share their own story and signpost to others for further guidance and support if necessary.
Chaplaincy in Education is transformative and:
- offers spiritual and pastoral care to everyone and shares the life of the community;
- is distinctively Christian and utterly inclusive and works with people of all faiths and cultures;
- is 'the public face of God' for the community;
- 'is there to listen and care, to pray for and bless the school/college/university.'
Chaplains can be lay or ordained and from any Christian church. With the support of local churches and the diocese, almost anyone can be called and trained to be a chaplain.
Chaplains have the opportunity to be part of wider regional and national support networks and training opportunities – details these can be found in our newsletters


of playing Urza's Saga?
The biggest drawback of the card is the space it takes in your list. It is good in multiples and good early, so playing just one is ok but probably not optimal. So then you have to think about how many colorless lands you can really play, and what you'll have to cut. Different answers have been given to that question – see the decklist section for more discussion.
The other drawbacks are that (1) it sends itself to the graveyard; (2) it is an enchantment; and (3) it is somewhat mana intensive. Sending itself to the graveyard means that it puts you down a land when it dies. You can often find Mox Diamond with it so that you don't lose mana, but that's not always an option and you don't always have Loam to get it back. As an enchantment, it is a prime target for opposing Force of Vigors, which can be a bit back-breaking when they tag your Mox and your Saga. It also enables your opponents to turn things like Disenchant into land destruction (though does anyone play Disenchant anymore?).
The card is also quite mana-hungry. To get the full two constructs, you need to spend effectively 6 mana over two turns. Six mana over two turns for a pair of constructs and a 1 mana artifact isn't a bad deal, but it can be clunky when you want to cast other spells and have to choose between constructs or Sylvan Library, for example. In the early turns when you want to drop lock pieces or be porting your opponent, your mana can be somewhat strained.
These drawbacks are far from making the card unplayable, but they're things to keep in mind.
How does Urza's Saga interact with Thespian's Stage?
When Saga was spoiled, I was blowing up my judge friend's phone with questions. Every interaction was more confusing than the last, but to answer the main question – yes, you can end up with a land that can create constructs forever and will not die to being a saga.
To explain how this works, imagine Thespian's Stage as a troupe of actors, and the play they're learning is the story of Urza's Saga.
When Stage first copies Saga, the actors have just started learning and can't actually do anything except be actors. In real magic terms, this means that you will have an Urza's Saga with 0 chapters and thus with no abilities (except the Thespian's Stage ability). At this point, the actors can't even figure out how to tap for mana. Note that this is true no matter how many chapters are on the Saga you're copying. Stage copies only the text printed on the card, not any abilities the card may have gained. Thus it will always be a blank saga to start out with – your actors don't have any clifnotes.
Then, when you hit the first main phase of your turn, the actors learn the first chapter of the Saga. At this point, your land will gain a lore counter and, in the process, gain the ability to tap for mana. Good job, actors!
In the next first main phase, your actors are really getting into it and now they can build constructs just like Urza used to! Like the original Saga, the Stage-Saga will gain another lore counter at the start of the main phase and thus gain the ability to make constructs just like a normal Saga could.
But now here comes the tricky part. When your Stage-Saga hits your first main phase for the third time, your actors are so engrossed in the Saga that they are willing to die to stay true to the story. In the game, this means that if you don't copy a new land, the Stage-Saga will get its third counter and go the graveyard just like a normal Saga would.
But you don't have to do this. Instead, while the third chapter trigger is on the stack (or at any point before it resolves), you can use Stage's copy ability to copy another land that is not a saga. If you do this, you will now have a land that has (1) all the abilities of the land you copy; (2) the usual Stage ability to copy other lands; and (3) the abilities Stage gained while it was a Saga. Because of how layers work, Stage will have 'gained' abilities, not just copied them, and thus it will keep those abilities as it turns into other lands. Your actors are now a traveling troupe, playing Urza's Saga at different locations. If you choose to copy a fresh land with the third chapter trigger on the stack, you will even get to search up an artifact for your troubles, all without sacrificing your Stage (since it will not be a saga when the third chapter ability resolves). The result is that you could well have a basic forest that can make constructs. Kinda neat!
Does Urza's Saga replace Field of the Dead?
Urza's Saga could replace Field of the Dead if you want it to. Because of the interaction with Stage, Saga can be used to create a creature every turn and thus provide the same kind of threatening inevitability that Field does, all while being available a lot earlier and asking much less in the way of setup. Plus Saga's creatures are just bigger – 4/4s and 5/5s vs 2/2s. For more arguments in favor of cutting Field for Saga, watch Jarvis Yu's stream.
That said, I'm not personally 100% sold on the idea of cutting Field. Unlike Saga, Field can create multiple creatures in a single turn, which can often be the difference in bailing you out of a bad board position. Field also has the potential to make zombies the turn you draw it, requires no mana investment, and does not ask you to have a free Stage for it to be effective. Copying Saga with Stage and then copying a fresh land means taking several turns and a minimum of 6 mana to get a permanent source of constructs; that's a lot of mana in the early game and a lot of time in the late game where every top-deck can matter. So while I would probably play 3 Sagas before the first Field, I think the potential upside of one Field is worth not playing the 4th Saga.
How does Urza's Saga interact with Blood Moon?
Urza's Saga has an odd interaction with Blood Moon, Spreading Seas, and other effects that turn a land into a completely different land. When these effects hit Saga, it turns into an Enchantment Land – Saga Mountain (or Island, or what have you). But it also loses all its other relevant saga abilities. This means that its max chapter is no longer determined by the text of the card, but instead defaults to zero. Then, since its number of lore counters is greater than or equal to the max chapter number, it goes to the graveyard as a state-based effect.
The details may be a bit tricky, but the bottom line is – Blood Moon destroys Urza's Saga upon resolution.
What does a list with Urza's Saga look like?
Ok, so maybe you're sold on the card, maybe you're not, but at the very least you've heard enough to need some actual lists. The crucial question for these lists is: what do we cut for Saga? To this there are more or less 2 different answers. You can cut Rishadan Port, since it is another colorless land. Or you can cut nonland threats like Sylvan Library/Valakut Exploration since Urza's Saga increases your threat density and thus makes those kinds of threats less necessary. Below are a series of decklists to give you a sense of what people are trying (apologies for the differing formats, but people like to post their lists in different places). If necessary, open the images in a new tab to make them bigger.
Here are some examples of the first school of thought, where we shave a few Valakut Exploration but ultimately still play a decent suite of value enchantments alongside Sagas:
from the 5-0 deck dump, vod here
thanks to Neoshinji for this list
thanks to alli for this list
The common theme in these lists is that you don't really get to play Port. Some are playing a single extra Ghost Quarter instead, which is an interesting alternative.
Next we also have the Library-less lists like the semi-experimental one Jarvis Yu played on his stream:
thanks to Jarvis Yu for this decklist
And this other option from Monroe on the Lands discord:
thanks to heymonroe of Turn Zero Games for this decklist
These lists are going harder on Saga (playing the full set) and leaning on it together with the traditional Lands package to carry them. They don't have value enchantment engines, but the thinking is that with Saga, you don't need them.
I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention another super cool piece of technology due to alli – BUG Saga Lands, a list that leans heavily on artifact synergies and Academy Ruins along with Urza's Saga!
thanks to alli for this list
The interaction between Academy Ruins and Baleful Strix is pretty great, and Saga can find Nihil Spellbomb here for what is likely the best 1cmc graveyard-hate artifact there is.
Wrapping up – where does Urza's Saga fit?
Of course, none of these lists are definitive or set in stone. What is clear is that Urza's Saga is a powerful effect and one that Lands is uniquely suited to take advantage of. That said, I've played maybe 30 or so matches with the card, so I can hardly claim to


Clincal Trials
EDIBLE is an interventional clinical trial in 120 children and adolescents with epilepsy due to Focal Cortical Dysplasia (FCD) type II. The EDIBLE study will investigate the role and possible benefits of a ketogenic diet (KD) taken for six months before resective surgery, on seizure outcome and other factors. Visit this page for more information.
What is DESIRE?
Epilepsy is a condition which affects over 6 million persons in Europe. Among these are 100 000 children who are diagnosed annually with epilepsy. Currently available antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) have not been found to prevent the onset of epilepsy, or to alter the natural course of the disease, and the effect of the medicines we have to date is essentially symptomatic.
DESIRE is an EU funded project which has brought together a critical mass of researchers from 26 different institutions in Europe.
These researchers are using these EU funds to focus on types of epilepsies which have proven to be very difficult to treat ie epileptogenic developmental disorders (EDD), i.e. early onset epilepsies whose origin is closely related to developmental brain processes. EDD are the most frequent drug-resistant pediatric epilepsies and they carry a lifelong perspective of disability and reduced quality of life.
A major cause of EDDs are malformations of development of an important part of the brain – the cortex. EDDs are often manifested as conditions in which epileptic activity itself may contribute to severe cognitive and behavioral impairment in the child. These are called epileptic encephalopathies.
What are we researching in DESIRE?
EDDs collectively represent a major medical and socio-economic burden and yet their diagnosis, what is happening at a basic cellular level and how best to treat are poorly understood.
Thus the main aims of DESIRE are to research:
 1. the possible genetic causes of EEDs and understand what is happening at a molecular and protein level in the brain in these conditions
 2. to find new diagnostic tools (biomarkers) and protocols by studying children with EDDs and thus to provide standardized diagnosis research across Europe.
 3. To find new treatment for EDD using clinical protocols and novel preventative strategies.
Who is involved in DESIRE?
DESIRE is an EU FP7 funded project, involving 26 partners in 11 countries, with eight third parties, more than 250 researchers involved and 19 clinical centres involved in the clinical trial. It is co-ordinated by Prof. Renzo Guerrini, Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Area del Farmaco e Salute del Bambino (NEUROFARBA) Universita degli Studi di Firenze, Italy.
These consortium partners have an excellent track record in genetics, basic neurophysiology, neuropathology and clinical research. Specialized expertise will also be made available by the SMEs involved to help develop novel diagnostic tools for tailored treatment approaches.
How can patients can contribute to DESIRE?
You can do so by contacting one of our partners (see our participants page for a list of participants across Europe) and ask whether it would be possible to participate in one of the various clinical trials. You or your child can participate in these trials if you have epilepsy, by providing blood samples, by participating in the treatment trials, by making our project known to other patients and representatives and if you wish by donating money for further research.
If you are interested to learn more about DESIRE, please contact:
Prof. Janet Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, University of Malta - member of DESIRE WP7, Dissemination and Exploitation.


text:
Its source is Georgios, a Greek name meaning "Farmer."
This boy's name is used in Russian.
St. George was named Patron Saint of England in the 14th century. The story of his 4th-century martyrdom in Palestine was brought back to Britain by Crusaders, and embellished with the legend of his fighting the devil in the form of a dragon.
However, the name was not enthusiastically adopted by English speakers until the ascendancy of King George I in the early 18th century.
George I's grandson, George III (known to Americans as the tyrant condemned in the Declaration of Independence), was loved and celebrated in the United Kingdom for his interest in agriculture. As if to emphasize the irony of a king whose name means ''farmer,'' he became known as ''The Farmer King.''
Use of the name in America owes a great deal to one of George III's opponents, George Washington.

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


text: This article explores the impact of the tonsillectomy operation using a large data base and several different approaches. The likely range of effects of the surgery and various threats to validity are studied from a quasi-experimental perspective. Information on possible patient self-selection for tonsil surgery is provided. Selection is dealt with from another viewpoint by comparing the outcomes of patients under the care of physicians having a "high propensity to operate" with those going to physicians who tend to operate less. Finally, a computer simulation studies the extent to which the measured results of tonsil surgery might be explained by particular selection mechanisms working in conjunction with random processes of episode generation. The "savings" in respiratory episodes estimated by the various approaches ranges from 0.1 episodes to approximately 0.8 episode for the year following surgery.


1. Holly Riggs Junior Member
 English - United States
 What does "Lo estoy" mean? Like in the phrase, "Si, lo estoy."
 I can work out the meaning of estoy (I am), but lo appears ambiguous to me. I can assume it could be a direct object pronoun (it), but I absolutely don't understand the role it plays in this particular sentence. If this is an answer to a question, then what could the question be like?
 2. Wandering JJ
 Wandering JJ Senior Member
 British English
 Perhaps a statement:
 -You look tired.
 -Yes, I am.
 -Te ves cansado.
 -Lo estoy.
 3. blasita
 blasita Senior Member
 Spanish - Spain (Madrid)
 Lo, as a personal pronoun, can be masculine (when it refers to a masculine noun). And neuter, when the antecedent is a neuter pronoun (e.g. eso) or a noun group beggining with the article lo.
 The neuter pronoun lo can also replace a phrase, a sentence. Taking JJ's example:
 Parece que estás cansado, contento, agobiado, etc.
 (Sí,/No,) lo estoy.
 Also, for example:
 ¿Estás mejor?
 (Sí,/No,) lo estoy.
 And just add what María Moliner (DUE) says about this:
 4. FromPA
 FromPA Senior Member
 Philadelphia area
 USA English
 The phrase "I am" is not a complete thought ("I am what?"). English allows you to leave the thought incomplete (the rest of the phrase is understood from the context), but Spanish requires you to complete the thought -- "I am that (lo)," with "that/lo" referring to the previously stated condition.
 5. donbeto
 donbeto Senior Member
 Vancouver (Canada)
 Eng (Canada)
 Yes. Another example is "I know.". In Spanish, it's "Lo sé.".
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This page is part of © FOTW Flags Of The World website
Lithuania - History of Lithuanian Flags
Last modified: 2014-05-29 by zoltán horváth
Keywords: lithuania |
See also:
The following material represents a synopsis of the history of Lithuanian flags:
Not much is known about Lithuanian flags prior to the 1200's. The earliest available records talk about "yellow Gediminas towers" on a "red field. This is a clear reference to King Gediminas of Lithuania who ruled from 1316 to 1341. The earliest described Lithuanian flag contains a block shaped outline of the Voruta castle, home of King Gediminas during his reign. Of interest however is that archeological diggings have unearthed Lithuanian bracteate's dating from King Mindaugas'es reign (1234 - 1263) in Gotland and elsewhere showing the same outline on the coins as is attributed to King Mindaugases flags.
The earliest known mention of Lithuanian flags is in the "Chronicon Dubicense"; it cites an "insignia Lithwanorium" in the text but does not go on to describe it. Logic would state that it must have been one of the "towers of Gediminas". Ample documentation exists regarding the Lithuanian flags which participated in the Tannenberg battle of 1410 against the Teutonic Knights. Lithuanian units from the Aukstaitija province flew the red and yellow towers of Gediminas.
Aside from the towers of Gediminas (also called gates of Gediminas), which now are identified with all things Lithuania, there are two other "national" symbols which have adorned Lithuanian flags since the early Middle Ages - the Apostolic cross and the Vytis.
The Apostolic cross was introduced by King Jogiella (1377 - 1398) who made the cross an integral part of the Gediminian royal houses coat-of-arms. The choice of this particular symbol was a masterpiece of diplomacy by King Jogiella. The King knew that a "pagan" Lithuania would be no match against her many enemies. By marrying into the Polish royal family, he also adopted Christianity for Lithuania. This would then prevent any future "crusades" from being undertaken against Lithuania. As the Lithuanian kingdom was located in both "eastern" and "western" Europe and as the Apostolic cross was accepted as a "Christian" cross by both Constantinople and Rome, King Jogiella could not have selected a better symbol for the Lithuanian royal household. The Apostolic cross thus quickly made it on to Lithuanian flags and banners. Any battles the Lithuanian's would from then on conduct in the defense of their realm would be against the people of the enemy nation - not against the Christian beliefs of their enemies.
From the available records of the Tannenberg battle of 1410, four Lithuanian flags are described as carrying the Apostolic cross. They were: King Jogiella's personal banner (1&4 quarter - blue field, white Vytis; 2&3 quarter - red field white cross) King Jogiella's personal household troop banner. (1&4 quarter - red field, white Vytis; 2&3 quarter - blue field yellow cross) The Lithuanian Kremenec infantry battalion. (red field, white cross) The Lithuanian Samogitia infantry battalion. (red field, green hill holding a white cross).King Jogiella also introduced a second symbol in to Lithuanian history - the Vytis. The Vytis, which means "hero" (in German "Held", in Hungarian "Vitez" and in Slovenian "Vytez"), is a knight mounted on a charging horse. Its intent was to not only honor the Lithuanian nobility (who could easily identify itself with a knighted rider), but also the common Lithuanian soldier who did well in battle. Through King Jogiella's decree, a white "Vytis" placed in to a red field would henceforth become the flag of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Two small distinctions were to be noted. While both the Jogiellian and Kestutian royal households would use the same "Vytis" as their coat-of-arms, on the Jogiellian coat-of-arms, the shield on the "Vytis" contained the Apostolic cross and on the Kestutian coat-of-arms, the shield on the "Vytis" contained the "towers of Gediminas". The "Vytis" flag is also described by various chroniclers of the Tannenberg battle of 1410. They were: Grand Duke Vytautis'es personal flag.
King Jogiella's personal flag (same as described above). King Jogiella's personal Lithuanian body-guards.Lithuanian army troops.Lithuanian garrison troops. Lithuanian-Ruthenian levy formations. Lithuanian-Ukrainian levy formations. Grand Duke Vytautis'es personal royal flag flew in Constanza (present day Switzerland) when Vytautis attended a Church Council there. On a side note, just as the Poles and Lithuanian's had militarily defeated the Teutonic Knights in battle, so they defeated them at the Church Council. At the conclusion of the meeting, the Pope revoked many rights previously granted to the Teutonic Knights. Grand Duke Sigismund Kestutaitis (1432 - 1440) was assassinated in 1440 by Lithuanian nobles from King Jagiello's family. As a result, many members of the Kestutian royal household fled to Moscow. That effectively ended the Kestutian influence in Lithuanian state affairs. From then until 1795 (when the remnants of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were absorbed by Russia), the white "Vytis" in the red field was the official Lithuanian state flag. The "towers of Gediminas" remained in the Lithuanian coat-of-arms. It must be noted that since Lithuania joined Poland to form the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was the larger of the two in terms of size. For many years, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was one of Europe's largest kingdoms. The Lithuanian flags flew in Vilnius, Kaunas, Kiev, Smolensk, Odessa and nearly at the gates of Moscow. But being large in size often seems like an open invitation from ones neighbors to make theirs what is yours.
As of the last partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Russia gained control of all of Lithuania (Lithuania Minor excepted). During the Napoleonic wars, both Prussia and Russia raised "Lithuanian" military formations. Many of the raised formation received their own battle flags. For example, the Russians raised the Imperial Lithuanian Guards Regiment - and gave it their own flag. Prussia had already raised a "Lithuanian" Dragoon Regiment back in 1717. It too flew its own flag until 1919.
Lithuania remained under Russian control until 1914/1915 when the German army effectively occupied all of Lithuania; though both the Russians and the Germans continued to use "royal" Lithuanian heraldry unchanged in design.
Lithuania regained its independence in 1918 from a 200 plus year Russian occupation. But in 1918, the new nation needed a flag. Initially, there were calls to resurrect the old "imperial" banners; a prime advocate for this was Dr. Jonas Basanavicius. His recommendation called for the new Lithuanian state flag to be a white Vytis in a red field. Regretfully, political circumstances were against the good doctor. A red field was too closely associated with Lenin's brand of communism. Thus, the old imperial flag would not do, though it was accepted as the Lithuanian coat-of-arms. The colors of green, red and yellow had historically been the ones most frequently used in Lithuanian flags. These colors too are to this day very popular in Lithuanian folk art. Thus, in late 1918, Lithuania adopted its current "national" flag - horizontally striped yellow (top), green (middle) and red (bottom). Yellow was interpreted to mean the energy and warmth of the radiating sun. Green stood for the bountiful green acreage's of Lithuania. Red represented the blood flowing in both animal life and man alike. Philosophically, one could say that the Lithuanian state flag is a
celebration of life. Since its creation in November of 1918, the Lithuanian Air Force used a unique national recognition symbol for its military aircraft. It was a trapezoid formed from yellow-green-red stripes. In the center of the inner red stripe, there was a white Vytis. This symbol was placed on all six positions as well as the rudder. As this was very cumbersome to draw, within a few months, Lithuania changed its national recognition symbol to the ever familiar Apostolic cross. This has been in use ever since.
During the interwar period, Lithuania flew numerous types of official flags. Nearly every one included the yellow-green-red stripes in its designs.
Lithuania's independence ceased to exist in 1940. As with Estonia and Latvia, introduced Soviet rules and regulations banned all references and uses of republican Lithuanian symbols.


text:
The Pillars of the Earth
|The Pillars of the Earth|
|Followed by||World Without End|
The Pillars of the Earth is a historical novel by Ken Follett published in 1989 about the building of a cathedral in the town of Kingsbridge, England. It is set in the middle of the 12th century, primarily during the Anarchy, between the time of the sinking of the White Ship and the murder of Thomas Becket. The book traces the development of Gothic architecture out of the preceding Romanesque architecture, and the fortunes of the Kingsbridge priory and village against the backdrop of historical events of the time.
Before this novel was published, Follett was known for writing in the thriller genre. The Pillars of the Earth became his best-selling work. The book was listed at no. 33 on the BBC's Big Read, a 2003 survey with the goal of finding the "nation's best-loved book." The book was selected in the United States for Oprah's Book Club in 2007. Follett published a sequel, entitled World Without End (2007).
Set during the reign of King Stephen and the Anarchy, the novel explores themes of intrigue and conspiracy against historical events. It explores the development of medieval architecture, the civil war, secular/religious conflicts, and shifting political loyalties.
The story is divided into six sections plus a prologue. The headings are:
- Prologue, 1123
- Part One, 1135–1136
- Part Two, 1136–1137
- Part Three, 1140–1142
- Part Four, 1142–1145
- Part Five, _PHONE_
- Part Six, 1170–1174
Plot summary
After the sinking of the White Ship, King Henry I of England is left without a clear heir, and The Anarchy begins upon his death. Two candidates (Henry's nephew Stephen of Blois and Henry's daughter Maud) present their claims, build their armies, and fight for the throne. Ambitious nobles and churchmen take sides, hoping to gain advantages.
Tom Builder and his family roam southern England, seeking work. In midwinter, his starving wife, Agnes, dies in childbirth, forcing them to leave the baby (later found and brought to Kingsbridge to be a monk, unknown to Tom Builder). He encounters a woman Ellen, who lives in a forest cave with her son, Jack, whose father was a French jongleur who was executed after washing ashore and meeting Ellen. Tom settles in Kingsbridge with Ellen and Jack, and his own two children, Alfred and Martha. He works for Prior Philip, who wants to expand his priory by rebuilding a cathedral. Conveniently, the old Romanesque cathedral burns down the night Tom arrives, and none suspect foul play. Tom offers to build a new church and Phillip agrees.
Philip appeals to King Stephen for financial support and is given land and the right to take stone from a nearby quarry, which has been granted to Percy Hamleigh as part of the earldom of Shiring. Percy's interests are not in supporting the cathedral. Hamleigh wants to topple the earl Bartholomew because Bartholomew's daughter, Aliena, had rejected Hamleigh's son William. William attacks Aliena and her brother Richard at the castle; he rapes the girl and injures the boy. Homeless and destitute, Aliena and Richard go to petition the king for aid; at the court, they find their dying father Bartholomew in prison, who demands they swear an oath to work for Richard to regain the earldom. Aliena supports Richard financially by becoming a wool merchant, with Phillip's help. Richard becomes a knight for King Stephen, fighting in the civil war against Maud. Richard gains the king's favour by defending him at the Battle of Lincoln.
Tom, meanwhile, has been building the cathedral, and living with his children, Alfred and Martha, his lover Ellen and her son Jack. Alfred bullies Jack. When Ellen and Tom are discovered to be unmarried, a charge of fornication is brought against them. Outraged, Ellen returns to the forest with Jack. Tom befriends Prior Philip and, when Ellen returns, he persuades Philip to allow them to marry. As masons, Jack and Alfred fight again. While the better mason and a skilled sculptor, Jack is expelled from the cathedral construction. He becomes a novice monk in order to stay in Kingsbridge.
William and Richard compete for the earldom, but it has been bankrupted by the prosperity of Kingsbridge at Shiring's expense. Attempting to restore his fortunes, William burns down Kingsbridge and kills many people, including Tom Builder. After losing her fortune again, Aliena agrees to marry Alfred, as he promised to support Richard in exchange. Jack and Aliena make love on the morning of her wedding. When she marries Alfred anyway, Ellen curses the wedding and renders him impotent.
Jack goes to France and hones his skills as a sculptor and mason. Having learned his father's identity, he meets his family in Cherbourg. He did not know that Aliena was pregnant.
In Kingsbridge, Alfred persuades Philip to replace the wooden roof with a stone vault. The building collapses during a service, killing many people. Aliena gives birth to a red-headed son, and Alfred abandons her, as he has been impotent: the baby can't be his. Aliena follows evidence of Jack's sculpture through France, finding him in Paris.
They make love, and she tells him of the collapsed roof and lost relic. Jack and Aliena return to England with their baby and they seek permission to marry. Philip forbids the union until her marriage to Alfred is annulled. This requires Waleran Bigod's recommendation to the archibishop, but Bigod and the Hamleighs are allies, and they intend to ruin Philip and Aliena.
Meanwhile, Richard has joined the forces of Maud's son, Henry, Count of Anjou. When Henry invades, Stephen agrees to have Henry succeed him, with all properties to revert to those who had owned them prior to Stephen's reign. Frustrated that Richard will not gain the earldom until Stephen's death, Aliena persuades William's young wife, Elizabeth, to hand the castle over to them. William returns to the village of Hamleigh as sheriff.
After many years, Kingsbridge cathedral is completed. Waleran accuses Prior Philip of fornication by claiming the monk Jonathan is Philip's son. Ellen swears that Jonathan is Tom Builder's son. After Waleran accuses her of perjury, she exposes his own perjury and complicity in a conspiracy to sink the White Ship carrying William Adelin, heir of King Henry I.
Meanwhile, William Hamleigh has become involved with the plot to assassinate Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury. William is convicted of sacrilege and hanged for his part in the plot. The Pope forces King Henry's public repentance and symbolic subjugation of the crown to the church.
In the 1999 Preface to The Pillars of the Earth Follett tells readers that he grew up in a Puritan-based family, whose worship space was very spare. In preparing for writing, he was reading about medieval architecture, and
-...developed an interest in cathedrals. Before too long, it occurred to me to channel this enthusiasm into a novel. I knew it had to be a long book. It took at least thirty years to build a cathedral and most took longer because they would run out of money, or be attacked or invaded. So the story covers the entire lives of the main characters. My publishers were a little nervous about such a very unlikely subject but, paradoxically, it is my most popular book. It's also the book I'm most proud of. It recreates, quite vividly, the entire life of the village and the people who live there. You feel you know the place and the people as intimately as if you yourself were living there in the Middle Ages.
The Preface includes the following sources:
- An Outline of European Architecture, by Nicholas Pevsner.
- The Cathedral Builders, by Jean Gimpel.
- The Medieval Machine, by Jean Gimpel.
The novel's Kingsbridge is fictional. He set it in Marlborough, Wiltshire; Follett chose that location because the cathedrals of Winchester, Gloucester, and Salisbury could be reached from there within a few days on horseback. Kingsbridge Cathedral as described is based on the cathedrals of Wells and Salisbury.
Historical accuracy
While the book has been praised for its description of Medieval life, it also features some historical inaccuracies. Some of these might be to make the characters and the plot more suited for modern readers while some are clear anachronisms:
- The English nobility of that period were Norman French immigrants. Norman French was the language of the court and upper class and it did not spread far into the rest of the English society. The ability of ordinary Englishmen to speak French was considered unusual. Thus many of the encounters across social classes presented in the book have been characterized as implausible by some critics, although in fact bilingualism was then emerging in English society for practical and mercantile reasons. For example, the noblewoman Aliena (presumably a native Norman French-speaker) becomes a successful wool merchant, communicating with the Anglo-Saxon-speaking locals and running a successful business among them.
- Sugar is mentioned several times in the book. Sugar was not available in England at that time


text:
People frequently use fluctuating string in AdS black hole (see 1,2,3 etc) to study dynamics of a "free external quark" in quark-gluon-plasma (QGP) at finite temperature. The background black hole geometry induces a black hole in the string world sheet. Many interesting results about the boundary theory can be obtained, at least qualitatively, just studying the Nambu-Goto action.
My question is : Why do people usually choose just one of the transverse spatial directions along which the world sheet can fluctuate? Suppose there is a background magnetic field in addition. Shouldn't one need at least two spatial directions for the world sheet to fluctuate to observe/study its effect on the "quark"?
This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2015-11-09 19:45 (UTC), posted by SE-user pinu


National Institute for Environmental Studies Invasive Species of Japan Japanese | English
 1. Invasive Species of Japan >
 2. Vascular plants >
 3. Ambrosia trifida
Ambrosia trifida
Basic information
Scientific name Ambrosia trifida
Click to magnify
Common names Giant Ragweed, Great Ragweed, Buffalo Weed, Horse Weed
Higher taxon Asteraceae, Asterales, Magnoliopsida, Magnoliophyta
Natural range North America.
Habitat Farm area, fruit garden, pasture field, riverside, roadside, vacancy, etc.
Invasion information
Range in Japan Almost entire Japan including Okinawa. Range in Japan
Origin Unknown.
Date The first record was in 1952 at Chiba Pref. and Shimizu Port of Shizuoka Pref.
Route Accidental: With agriculture products such as grains or beans.
Impact Actual: Competition with native plant, crop, pasture, etc. Allelopathy. Parasite (insects, fungi). Allergen for hay fever.
Affected organism: Native plants such as Primula sieboldii, crops, pasture, etc. (competition). Human (health damage).
Introduced range in other countries Europe, Asia
Reference Notes
 - etc.
100 of the Japan's Worst Invasive Alien Species.
South Korea prohibits importation of this species.


text:
Classification of Vegetation Communities of Maryland: First Iteration
A Subset of the International Classification of Ecological
AMORPHA FRUTICOSA TIDAL SHRUBLAND
Tall Indigobush Tidal Shrubland
Tall Indigobush Tidal Shrubland G?
Summary: This freshwater tidal shrubland occurs on tidal rivers bordering the Chesapeake Bay on sandy levees and shorelines above mean high tide. Microtopography is variable, from pronounced hummock-and-hollow to essentially flat. Soils are well-drained sands and gravel to poorly drained peat in lower-lying depressions. The shrub canopy is relatively open and characterized by Amorpha fruticosa. Other associates may include Acer rubrum, Fraxinus pennsylvanica, Decodon verticillata, Ilex verticillata, and Rosa palustris. The herbaceous layer is diverse and comprised of a mixture of Osmunda regalis, Hibiscus moscheutos, Thelypteris palustris, Boehmeria cylindrica, Leersia oryzoides, Peltandra virginica, Polygonum sagittatum, Sium suave, and Typha angustifolia.
Range: This vegetation occurs central Atlantic coast at the headwaters of the Chesapeake Bay.
TNC Ecoregions: 58:C
USFS Ecoregions: 232Ad:CCC
References: Harrison 2003
Authors: J. Harrison / L. Sneddon Confidence: 3 Identifier: CEGL006844
- Maryland Vegetation Classification Subset Report III. Shrubland
|Return to Table of Contents|
This Page Up-dated on February 09, 2010


text:
Changing Currency Correlations - Possible Strategies
We update the currency correlation tables and charts on weekly basis. Because of the characteristics of economies and their interdependence or the lack of it, various currency pairs tend to maintain some correlation or again a lack of it. But again there are times of turmoil when economic uncertainties are high and volatility becomes unpredictable. Such are the times when the currency correlations tend to behave abnormally and away from their average ranges. Such times present the opportunities to enter the market for making a trade. This is done with the expectations that sooner or later the market will tend to normalize and the average ranges of the correlation values will be back in the picture.
Considering this, it is always good to keep a track of the changes in the correlation values of major currency pairs while trading in Forex. The idea is to observe some sudden and big changes in the normal behavior of any two specific currency pairs which normally have some strong positive or negative correlation. When such big change from the average range of correlation between those two pairs take place, then enter the trade with the pair with higher volatility.
In this section we will bring the changing correlation values where we can compare the weekly averages with the monthly and yearly averages to see some sharp changes. We will cover the following currency pairs:
Currency Correlation Tables And Charts


text:
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Comparing 'Cousin Kate' and 'The seduction', two poems about pregnancy.
The first 200 words of this essay...
GCSE Comparative poetry essay
The genre of both the poems are about pregnancy, fathering and how pregnancy has effected the lives of virtuous, innocent young women. The main difference between the two poems is that the first one called 'Cousin Kate' is set in the past, around the 1914's, while the other one called 'The seduction' is more modern. This is because of the language used and how the words use syntax.
"Not mindful I was fair." "She had met him at the party "
The first line was taken from the poem called "Cousin Kate" while the other one was taken from "The Seduction" poem. The sentence structure of the first line has been changed around because, if it were written as a sentence than the poem would not sound correct because the number of syllables would not match the line before or after it. (I was not mindful, I was fair). If the second half of the line was not there (I was fair) the sentence would not make sense because the reader would not know what the writer is talking about as there is
No first, second or third person narrative
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""Yoel Lax. Religious Studies. GCSE Student.
""M Singh. English. A Level Student.


Distinguish between. Organizing and Co-ordinating
Distinguish between.
Organizing and Co-ordinating
1. Meaning
Coordination is the orderly arrangement of group efforts to provide unity of action in the pursuit of a common goal.
2. Objective
To identify and bring together all the required resources.
To ensure the harmony of efforts of the employees for the smooth functioning of the organization.
3. Area of function
It includes identification and grouping of activities, assigning the work, and establishing the authority relationship.
It includes integration of efforts of top-level, middle level, and lower level.
4. Factors
Internal and external factors are considered in the arrangement of resources.
It is the harmonization of human resources.
5. Order
It is based on planning.
It is an important element of organizing which follows planning.
6. Resources
All available resources i.e. men, money, material, machine, and method are arranged in a systematic manner.
It is related to human resources.
7. Nature
It takes place till the time all the resources are collected and arranged.
This is a continuous process related to all managerial levels.
8. level of Management
Top and middle-level management related with organizing the required resources.
It is related to all the levels of management to achieve the goal of the organization.


text:
This historic map of the Eastern Hemisphere simulates the illuminated mariners charts of the 17th Century. The original murals, painted by N.C. Wyeth, are in Hubbard Hall at the National Geographic Society headquarters.The 1928 "Map of Discovery: Eastern Hemisphere" map features:
- Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia
- Illuminated mariners chart style
- Present-day political boundaries
- Traces the routes of the great discoverers
- Margins depict the forces of nature in the style of the 16th Century
Coverage Area: Eastern Hemisphere, including Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia.
This Mounted Map is a fine art plaque that consists of your selected map printed on art print paper with a heat activated adhesive that adheres the map to a piece of MDF wood. A UV Blocking Laminate is added on top for protection (but not for dry erase).Click here to download sample images


WordReference Random House Learner's Dictionary of American English © 2014
es•cape /ɪˈskeɪp/USA pronunciation v., -caped, -cap•ing,n., adj.
 1. [~ (+ from + object)] to slip or get away, as from confinement or jail:How did the mice escape from their cage?
 2. to avoid (capture, punishment, injury, or the like): [+ object]The town escaped the worst of the storm.[no object]managed to escape with only cuts and bruises.
 3. [no object] to issue from a confining enclosure, as a gas or liquid:Air escaped from the balloon.
 4. [+ object] to fail to remember or notice:His name escapes me at the moment.
 1. [countable] an act or instance of escaping.
 2. a way or means of escaping: [countable]We used the tunnel as an escape.[uncountable]The back door is your only means of escape.
 3. [countable] a way or means of avoiding reality:liked to read mystery stories as an escape.
adj. [before a noun]
 1. for or providing an escape:an escape hatch.
 2. being a key on a microcomputer keyboard, often used to return to a previous program screen:Hit the escape key.
 3. escape, elude, evade mean to keep free of something. To escape is to succeed in keeping away from danger, from being chased or observed, etc.:to escape punishment. To elude is to slip through an apparently tight net, thus avoiding, often by a narrow margin, whatever threatens; it implies using skill or cleverness to baffle or fool:The fox eluded the hounds by his clever twists and turns. To evade is to turn aside from or go out of reach of a person or thing, usually by using a trick to direct attention elsewhere:to evade the police.
Collins Concise English Dictionary © HarperCollins Publishers::
escape /ɪˈskeɪp/ vb
 1. to get away or break free from (confinements, captors, etc)
 2. to manage to avoid (imminent danger, punishment, evil, etc)
 3. (intransitive) usually followed by from: (of gases, liquids, etc) to issue gradually, as from a crack or fissure; seep; leak
 4. (transitive) to elude; be forgotten by: the actual figure escapes me
 5. (transitive) to be articulated inadvertently or involuntarily: a roar escaped his lips
 1. the act of escaping or state of having escaped
 2. avoidance of injury, harm, etc
 3. a means or way of escape
 4. (as modifier): an escape route
 5. a means of distraction or relief, esp from reality or boredom
 6. a gradual outflow; leakage; seepage
 7. Also called: escape valve, escape cock a valve that releases air, steam, etc, above a certain pressure; relief valve or safety valve
 8. a plant that was originally cultivated but is now growing wild
Etymology: 14th Century: from Old Northern French escaper, from Vulgar Latin excappāre (unattested) to escape (literally: to remove one's cloak, hence free oneself), from ex-1 + Late Latin cappa cloak
esˈcapable adj esˈcaper n
'escape' also found in these entries:
In the English description:
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text:
Audio-Technica, a leading innovator in transducer technology currently celebrating "50 Years of Passionate Listening," is proud to announce that the paper "On the Study of Ionic Microphones" and its writers were selected as the recipients of the "AES 133rd peer review paper award, signifying it as the "best paper of the show." The paper, composed by Hiroshi Akino, Audio-Technica Corp., Japan, with Hirofumi Shimokawa, Kanagawa Institute of Technology, Japan, and Jackie Green and Tadashi Kikutani of Audio-Technica U.S., was presented at a juried paper session at the 133rd AES Convention in San Francisco, California.
Jackie Green stated, "We are honored and delighted to receive this recognition. Audio-Technica has been at the forefront of many technology paradigm shifts, yet historically we have published very little regarding our research. We look forward to taking a more active role in advancing the art and science of audio technology, and sharing this information with our distinguished peers."
The paper encapsulates the following research: Diaphragm-less ionic loudspeakers using both low-temperature and high-temperature plasma methods have already been studied and developed for practical use. This study examined using similar methods to create a diaphragm-less ionic microphone. The paper reviews the experimental outcome of two ionic methods, and considerations given to resolve issues revealed by the study.


text:
UC San Diego researchers have
developed a novel technique to perform
information mediation across
heterogeneous sources, even when the sources
to integrate. This is accomplished by a novel
architecture that allows information sources
to be converted
into "knowledge sources." Such a knowledge
source not only exports its logical structure
capabilities to the mediator, but exports its
domain constraints, and any relationships not
obvious from the data.
The mediator also allows a domain expert to provide additional domain knowledge in a declarative manner—this domain knowledge serves as the "glue" that the mediator uses to logically compute how two seemingly unconnected information sources are related. The "glue knowledge" is represented as a graph called the domain map. When a mediator answers a query against an integrated view, it places the results in the context of the domain map—thus the partial results searched out from different data sources are all represented in the domain map and connected through a commonly accepted domain knowledge framework. This architecture has been successfully applied to different application areas, including neuroscience.
See patent 7,533,107.
|United States Of America||Issued Patent||7,533,107||05/12/2009||2001-037|
Additional Patent Pending


text:
Lisa Pursey, of Waimairi School, asks :-
If you carved your initials into the bark of a tree and then visited the tree thirty years later, would the initials then be high up the tree?
Walter Fielding-Cotterell, an arboriculturist with the Christchurch City Council, responded.
Trees increase in height by way of cells produced by tissue contained in the tip of every shoot. This very small piece of cell dividing tissue is called the apical meristem. Cutting a cabbage sprout in half lengthways will give you a good idea of how an apical meristem is formed, the dome-like cluster of cells in the centre being the meristem itself. Radial growth is provided by the cambium, a thin cylinder of dividing cells extending from the top to the bottom of the tree. New conductive cells are formed on the inside and outside of the cambium layer increasing the diameter of the stem. Another layer of cambium, the cork cambium, forms the bark which protects the tree.
The function of the tip or apical meristem can be likened to chimney builders standing near the top of the chimney and constantly producing and laying bricks (cells) always rising with the height of the structure. Other builders (the cambium) continuously reinforce the chimney by building horizontally. Therefore, the brick or cell laid at 1.5 metres above the ground remains at that height. However the rapid production of cells beneath the bark causes it to rupture and repair itself (and the carving wounds). The new cells formed will fill and widen the initials until they eventually disappear.


text:
I saw this lesson on Artsonia in several variations.
- drawing sheet A4 size
- white pencil or silver gel pen
- black paper for background
Start this the lesson with a class discussion about witches. How can you recognize a witch? What things belong to a witch? What can you say about the clothing of a witch?
Students draw with pencil the lower half of the body of a witch: skirt and legs. Around this body they draw things that belong to witches. Draw a horizon line at about 1/3 part from the bottom. The drawing should be coloured with markers. Colour the background with markers or chalk pastel. The latter is obviously faster than colouring the background with markers.
Paste the drawing on a black background and decorate the rim with theme-related little drawings. Use a white pencil or a silver gel pen.
In the debriefing should be clear that you only need a half drawing to recognize a witch: Which witch is this?
Made by students of grade 3


Quality of Life Comparison
If you lived in United States instead of Bulgaria, you would:
live 5.3 years longer
In Bulgaria, the average life expectancy is 75 years (72 years for men, 78 years for women) as of 2020. In United States, that number is 80 years (78 years for men, 82 years for women) as of 2020.
be 44.8% more likely to be obese
In Bulgaria, 25.0% of adults are obese as of 2016. In United States, that number is 36.2% of people as of 2016.
make 2.7 times more money
Bulgaria has a GDP per capita of $21,800 as of 2017, while in United States, the GDP per capita is $59,800 as of 2017.
be 29.0% less likely to be unemployed
In Bulgaria, 6.2% of adults are unemployed as of 2017. In United States, that number is 4.4% as of 2017.
be 35.5% less likely to be live below the poverty line
In Bulgaria, 23.4% live below the poverty line as of 2016. In United States, however, that number is 15.1% as of 2010.
pay a 4.0 times higher top tax rate
Bulgaria has a top tax rate of 10.0% as of 2016. In United States, the top tax rate is 39.6% as of 2016.
be 34.6% less likely to die during infancy
In Bulgaria, approximately 8.1 children die before they reach the age of one as of 2020. In United States, on the other hand, 5.3 children do as of 2020.
have 49.4% more children
In Bulgaria, there are approximately 8.3 babies per 1,000 people as of 2020. In United States, there are 12.4 babies per 1,000 people as of 2020.
be 90.0% more likely to die during childbirth
In Bulgaria, approximately 10.0 women per 100,000 births die during labor as of 2017. In United States, 19.0 women do as of 2017.
Basic Needs
be 34.7% more likely to have internet access
In Bulgaria, approximately 64.8% of the population has internet access as of 2018. In United States, about 87.3% do as of 2018.
spend 22.0% more on education
Bulgaria spends 4.1% of its total GDP on education as of 2013. United States spends 5.0% of total GDP on education as of 2014.
see 56.3 times more coastline
Bulgaria has a total of 354 km of coastline. In United States, that number is 19,924 km.
United States: At a glance
How big is United States compared to Bulgaria? See an in-depth size comparison.
The statistics on this page were calculated using the following data sources: The World Factbook, National Revenue Agency, Bulgaria, Internal Revenue Service.
Join the Elsewhere community and ask a question about United States. It's a free, question-and-answer based forum to discuss what life is like in countries and cities around the world.
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text:
Help stop spread of the 'STD of the sea'
The Division of Wildlife Resources is encouraging all water enthusiasts to help prevent the spread of the 'STD of the Sea' by 'Practicing Safe Boating' on Utah's waters.
STD stands for skiff-transmitted disease — invasive mussels that spread by attaching to boats or getting into water that remains in boats after a day of boating or fishing.
"Invasive mussels are a serious threat to Utah's drinking water supply and the state's recreational waters," says DWR Aquatic Invasive Species (AIS) Program Coordinator Jordan Nielson. "An infestation of invasive mussels can destroy fisheries, pollute shorelines and beaches, damage boats and equipment, and cost taxpayers millions of dollars to control."
Mussels have already infected Lake Powell. The help of every boater in Utah is needed to prevent them from spreading to other lakes and reservoirs in the state.
"The goal of the 'STD of the Sea' campaign is to help boaters understand how serious this issue is and how important it is that they properly decontaminate their boats and other watercraft," says DWR AIS Biologist Nate Owens. "If all boaters work together, our waters will remain clear of mussels. Once mussels infest a body of water, there isn't anything we can do to get them back out."
Drivers will start seeing more invasive mussels checkpoints around Utah, including at the state border, Bear Lake and Lake Powell. At these checkpoints, vehicles hauling boats must pull over so the watercraft can be inspected for mussels or standing water. If either is found, the driver can be cited. If necessary, the boat will be decontaminated with hot water.
The DWR is asking you to help prevent the spread of the 'STD of the Sea' by following this simple protocol:
1. Clean: Clean all plants and mud from each area of your boat, including your trailer, hull, bilge and other equipment.
2. Drain: Pull all plugs and fully drain all water from your boat, including live wells, ballast tanks, bladders and bilges.
3. Dry: Allow your boat to dry completely before you launch in other waters–7 days in summer; 18 days in spring or fall; and 30 days in winter (or freeze for 3 straight days).
Then, the next time the boat is used, the boater must fill out a certification form that verifies that the boat has been decontaminated. Failure to properly decontaminate a boat can result in a citation and fine.
Boaters can also have their watercraft professionally decontaminated, free of charge. To find a decontamination station, and to learn more about invasive mussels, visit STDoftheSea.com.


text: We investigate the mixing, penetration, and ignition characteristics of high-pressure n-dodecane sprays having a split injection schedule (0.5/0.5 dwell/0.5 ms) in a pre-burn combustion vessel at ambient temperatures of 750 K, 800 K and 900 K. High-speed imaging techniques provide a time-resolved measure of vapor penetration and the timing and progression of the firstand second-stage ignition events. Simultaneous single-shot planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) imaging identifies the timing and location where formaldehyde (CH2O) is produced from first-stage ignition and consumed following second-stage ignition. At the 900-K condition, the second injection penetrates into high-temperature combustion products remaining in the near-nozzle region from the first injection. Consequently, the ignition delay for the second injection is shorter than that of the first injection (by a factor of two) and the second injection ignites at a more upstream location near the liquid length. At the 750 K and 800 K conditions, high-temperature ignition does not occur in the near-nozzle region after the end of the first injection, though formaldehyde remains from first-stage reactions. Under these conditions, the second injection penetrates into cool-flame products that are slightly elevated in temperature (∼100 K) relative to the ambient. This modest temperature increase and the availability of reactive cool-flame products reduces the firstand second-stage ignition delay of the second injection by a factor of approximately two relative to the first injection. At the 750-K ambient condition, high-temperature ignition of the first injection does not occur until the second injection enriches the very fuel-lean downstream regions.


text:
The Crossing the line certificate (SAFR 14028, HDC 0034) commemorates an equator crossing, a seafaring milestone. This certificate,
dated February 10, 1910, was made out to E. Schwerin while a Mariner aboard the S.S. MARIPOSA (built 1883; steamer), and was
issued by the Oceanic Steamship Company-Tahiti Line. The document is affixed with a red wax stamp containing the ship name.
The collection is processed and open for use without restrictions.
Historical Note: Equator crossing rituals have been performed in the Western world for over 400 years. The ceremony is performed
aboard the vessel where the landlubber (one learning to sail) is subjected to a ritual death and rebirth in order to gain
a new status of Seafarer (seaman or mariner). Landlubbers must prove themselves capable of standing the terrors, stresses
and strains of maritime life, and prove they have the courage and strength of character to gracefully accept the rowdy humor
encountered in daily shipboard life.
Some material may be copyrighted or restricted. It is the researcher's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright or other
case restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in the collections.


text:
This question already has an answer here:
- operators as strings 13 answers
I have a textarea where user can create a dynamic formulas using dropdown lists(for operators, variables etc) like this:
basic / workingDays * attendingDays
where values of
attendingDays are saved in database. I want to map these variable from database during runtime. How can I do this.


What Is A Gustnado? (Hint: It May Have Collapsed The Indiana State Fair Stage)
Last weekend, a deadly tragedy struck the Indiana State Fair when the main performance stage collapsed during a freak storm. A witness to the event captured this terrifying moment on video.
After looking at the weather data and videos of the event, at least one meteorologist believes a gustnado may be responsible. So what exactly is a gustnado?
A gustnado is a short-lived, ground-based vortex that forms during a severe thunderstorm...
A gustnado is gust storm that forms ahead of a thunderstorm. It's a pocket of powerful, swirling air that extends between 30 to 300 feet high.
...its winds can be as strong as an F1 tornado...
A gustnado produces intense wind bursts that can reach up to 80 MPH, as powerful as an F1 tornado. This is powerful enough to uproot trees with shallow roots, knock down billboards and cause minor damage to roofs, chimneys and windows.
... its not a tornado, but can be confused with one...
Gustnadoes are often confused with tornadoes as both can occur during a thunderstorm. A gustnado forms on the gust front of a thunderstorm, while a tornado forms from a giant rotating thunderstorm called a supercell. Unlike tornadoes, gustnadoes stay on the ground and their vortex does not reach the storm clouds above. Gustnadoes are like whirlwinds and dust devils, but they are more powerful and devastating.
...a gustnado may be the cause of the stage collapse at the Indiana State Fair.
AccuWeather.com Senior Meteorologist Henry Margusity studied the unusual storm that hit the Indiana State Fair last weekend. After looking at radar data and video footage from the fair, he believes the evidence points to a gustnado. You can read his argument here. [Accu-Weather, Weather Savvy via Scientific American]


text:
Staying ahead of the technology curve means strengthening your competitive advantage. That is why we give you data-driven innovation insights. This time, you get to discover 5 hand-picked startups developing water management solutions that impact climate change.
Global Startup Heat Map highlights 5 Top Water Management Solutions out of 559
The insights of this data-driven analysis are derived from the Big Data & Artificial Intelligence-powered StartUs Insights Discovery Platform, covering 1.379.000+ startups & scaleups globally. The platform gives you an exhaustive overview of emerging technologies & relevant startups within a specific field in just a few clicks.
The Global Startup Heat Map below reveals the distribution of the 559 exemplary startups & scaleups we analyzed for this research. Further, it highlights 5 water management solutions that we hand-picked based on criteria such as founding year, location, funding raised, and more. You get to explore the solutions of these 5 startups & scaleups in this report. For insights on the other 554 water management solutions, get in touch.
Aquasolis develops Water Recovery Solutions
Global warming has increased droughts and is changing landscapes around the world. As a result, some freshwater sources are no longer available. In such circumstances, startups contribute to adaptation to climate change by developing water desalination and recovery technologies. Such solutions make seawater usable for a range of industrial and individual purposes, including drinking.
Norwegian startup Aquasolis offers reverse osmosis (RO)-based water recovery and desalination solutions that reduce operational costs and minimize the environmental impact of the water purification process. The startup leverages RO recovery technology to send water through the system in a way that requires less energy and yields increased recovery. The solution's off-the-shelf components can also be connected to a standalone power system to provide drinking water and irrigation water for agriculture.
Optishower builds Smart Water Management Platform
With the growing population and overconsumption of water, water supply in cities is becoming a big challenge. Climate change and water scarcity necessitate smart water management platforms that enable efficient water supply and reduced water consumption. By providing accurate real-time information, these solutions enable water distribution companies to make systematic decisions for efficient water management.
Portuguese startup Optishower develops a sustainable water monitoring and management platform for hotels. Using the Internet of Things (IoT) integration, the platform measures and meters the consumption of water and provides real-time information. Then, it analyzes the data generated by connected sensors for smart maintenance planning. The startup encourages proactive engagement of customers to reduce the use of water by offering them loyalty points.
MetroPolder offers Smart Water Storage
Water management is an important issue in urban planning due to the growing concern of water scarcity. Climate change alters hydrological cycles and makes water availability unpredictable. As a result, stormwater storage solutions are gaining popularity as alternative water sources for drinking water as well as enabling other applications such as irrigation.
Dutch startup MetroPolder develops smart water storage solutions integrated into flat roofs. The Polder Roof consists of a buffer system, an internet-connected weir, and an online dashboard. The weir measures and regulates the water level and the run-off, whereas the dashboard displays information about the roof and operating system. The solution stores the rain that falls on the roof and serves as the foundation for a green roof. The Polder Roof enables irrigation, infiltration, or a connection to greywater systems, as well as serves as a solution for flooding in cities.
Urban:Eden provides Urban Floodwater Solutions
Due to climate change, cities face various challenges such as heatwaves, unpredictable heavy storms, and floods. Due to the urban heat-island effect, city surfaces heat up faster than natural landscapes. To normalize temperatures in cities, green areas that are adequately supplied with water and water bodies are extremely important. As a result, urban water management solutions that regulate water supply gain popularity.
German design studio Urban:Eden provides urban wetland and floodwater cycling paths that consist of modular elements from drainage concrete and runoff channels. During heavy rains, the solution leads the rainwater to natural filters in parks or percolates into the ground. This relieves the load on the mixed water system, protects the water bodies, and restores the natural water cycle.
Evjia develops an Agriculture Water Management System
Climate change and higher temperatures also increase the demand for water for growing crops. Under scarce conditions, sustainable irrigation is a priority for agriculture. To meet this challenge, startups develop solutions that provide crops with the optimal amount of water they need. At the same time, these solutions conserve natural resources for the benefit of ecosystem services.
Italian startup Evja develops a solar-powered agriculture water management system. It utilizes smart agriculture sensors, AI, and advanced agronomic models. The wireless sensors track air humidity, air temperature, leaf wetness, solar radiation, CO2, and soil moisture to enable real-time agriculture climate and soil monitoring. The system then suggests optimal irrigation for improving farm water management. Evja's solution enables AgriTech companies to make better decisions, deal with climate change, and increase yield while lowering the environmental impact.
Discover more Water Management Startups
Water management startups such as the examples highlighted in this report focus on water storage and recovery technologies, IoT, and wireless monitoring solutions. While all of these technologies play a major role in advancing water management, they only represent the tip of the iceberg. To explore more water management technologies, simply get in touch to let us look into your areas of interest.


text:
Empower to Innovate. Innovate to Empower
LAS is a mission-oriented translational research lab focused on the development of new analytic technology and analysis tradecraft. The new technologies will help us understand the underlying scientific principles and analytics required to meet the complex and dynamic challenges presented by "Big Data." The new tradecraft will help us discover, understand, and enhance critical aspects of intelligence analysis. These new technologies and tradecraft will be brought together through the development of user experiences that allow engagement with the data, tools, and techniques to achieve mission outcomes.


Node: Showing Pictures, Next: , Previous: Modifying Pictures, Up: Picture Reference
void show ([string text = "", [bool stop = false]]) Function
Prints information about the Picture to standard output.
show() first prints the string "Showing Picture:" to standard output, followed by text, if the latter is not the empty string ("")1. Then it calls, prints the size of shapes and labels, and the value of do_labels. Then it calls show() on each of the Shapes on shapes. Since show() is a virtual function in class Shape, the appropriate show() is called for each Shape, i.e., Point::show() for a Point, Path::show() for a Path, etc. If stop is true, execution stops and the user is requested to type to continue. Finally, the string "Done showing picture." is printed to standard output.
void show_transform ([string text = "Transform from Picture:"]) Function
Calls, passing text as the argument to the latter function.
 1. Actually, it's printed to standard output even if it is the empty string, you just don't see it.


Wavelet transform
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 (Redirected from Wavelet series)
Jump to: navigation, search
An example of the 2D discrete wavelet transform that is used in JPEG2000.
In mathematics, a wavelet series is a representation of a square-integrable (realor complex-valued) function by a certain orthonormal series generated by a wavelet. Nowadays, wavelet transformation is one of the most popular candidates of the time-frequency-transformations. This article provides a formal, mathematical definition of an orthonormal wavelet and of the integral wavelet transform.
Formal definition[edit]
A function \psi\in L^2(\mathbb{R}) is called an orthonormal wavelet if it can be used to define a Hilbert basis, that is a complete orthonormal system, for the Hilbert space L^2(\mathbb{R}) of square integrable functions.
The Hilbert basis is constructed as the family of functions \{\psi_{jk}: j, k \in \Z\} by means of dyadic translations and dilations of \psi\,,
\psi_{jk}(x) = 2^\frac{j}{2} \psi(2^jx - k)\,
for integers j, k \in \mathbb{Z}.
This family is an orthonormal system if it is orthonormal under the standard inner product \langle f, g\rangle = \int_{-\infty}^\infty f(x)\overline{g(x)}dx on L^2(\mathbb{R}).
\langle\psi_{jk},\psi_{lm}\rangle = \delta_{jl}\delta_{km}
where \delta_{jl}\, is the Kronecker delta.
Completeness is satisfied if every function h \in L^2(\mathbb{R}) may be expanded in the basis as
h(x) = \sum_{j, k=-\infty}^\infty c_{jk} \psi_{jk}(x)
Wavelet transform[edit]
The integral wavelet transform is the integral transform defined as
\left[W_\psi f\right](a, b) = \frac{1}{\sqrt{|a|}} \int_{-\infty}^\infty \overline{\psi\left(\frac{x-b}{a}\right)}f(x)dx\,
The wavelet coefficients c_{jk} are then given by
c_{jk} = \left[W_\psi f\right]\left(2^{-j}, k2^{-j}\right)
Here, a = 2^{-j} is called the binary dilation or dyadic dilation, and b = k2^{-j} is the binary or dyadic position.
Basic idea[edit]
The fundamental idea of wavelet transforms is that the transformation should allow only changes in time extension, but not shape. This is effected by choosing suitable basis functions that allow for this.[how?] Changes in the time extension are expected to conform to the corresponding analysis frequency of the basis function. Based on the uncertainty principle of signal processing,
\Delta t \Delta \omega \geqq \frac{1}{2}
where t represents time and ω angular frequency (ω = 2πf, where f is temporal frequency).
The higher the required resolution in time, the lower the resolution in frequency has to be. The larger the extension of the analysis windows is chosen, the larger is the value of \Delta t[how?].
Basis function with compression factor.jpg
When Δt is large,
 1. Bad time resolution
 2. Good frequency resolution
 3. Low frequency, large scaling factor
When Δt is small
 1. Good time resolution
 2. Bad frequency resolution
 3. High frequency, small scaling factor
In other words, the basis function Ψ can be regarded as an impulse response of a system with which the function x(t) has been filtered. The transformed signal provides information about the time and the frequency. Therefore, wavelet-transformation contains information similar to the short-time-Fourier-transformation, but with additional special properties of the wavelets, which show up at the resolution in time at higher analysis frequencies of the basis function. The difference in time resolution at ascending frequencies for the Fourier transform and the wavelet transform is shown below.
STFT and WT.jpg
This shows that wavelet transformation is good in time resolution of high frequencies, while for slowly varying functions, the frequency resolution is remarkable.
Another example: The analysis of three superposed sinusoidal signals y(t) = \sin(2 \pi f_0 t) + \sin(4 \pi f_0 t) + \sin(8 \pi f_0 t) with STFT and wavelet-transformation.
Analysis of three superposed sinusoidal signals.jpg
Wavelet compression[edit]
Wavelet compression is a form of data compression well suited for image compression (sometimes also video compression and audio compression). Notable implementations are JPEG 2000, DjVu and ECW for still images, REDCODE, CineForm, the BBC's Dirac, and Ogg Tarkin for video. The goal is to store image data in as little space as possible in a file. Wavelet compression can be either lossless or lossy.[1]
Using a wavelet transform, the wavelet compression methods are adequate for representing transients, such as percussion sounds in audio, or high-frequency components in two-dimensional images, for example an image of stars on a night sky. This means that the transient elements of a data signal can be represented by a smaller amount of information than would be the case if some other transform, such as the more widespread discrete cosine transform, had been used.
See Diary Of An x264 Developer: The problems with wavelets (2010) for discussion of practical issues of current methods using wavelets for video compression.
First a wavelet transform is applied. This produces as many coefficients as there are pixels in the image (i.e., there is no compression yet since it is only a transform). These coefficients can then be compressed more easily because the information is statistically concentrated in just a few coefficients. This principle is called transform coding. After that, the coefficients are quantized and the quantized values are entropy encoded and/or run length encoded.
A few 1D and 2D applications of wavelet compression use a technique called "wavelet footprints".[2][3]
Comparison with wavelet transformation, Fourier transformation and time-frequency analysis[edit]
Transformation Representation Output
Fourier transform f(\xi) = \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} f(x)e^{-2 \pi ix \xi}\, dx ξ, frequency
Time-frequency analysis X(t, f) t, time; f, frequency
Wavelet transform X(a,b) = \frac{1}{\sqrt{a}}\int_{-\infty}^{\infty}\overline{\Psi\left(\frac{t - b}{a}\right)} x(t)\, dt a, scaling; b, time
Other practical applications[edit]
The wavelet transform can provide us with the frequency of the signals and the time associated to those frequencies, making it very convenient for its application in numerous fields. For instance, signal processing of accelerations for gait analysis,[4] for fault detection,[5] for design of low power pacemakers and also in ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless communications.[6]
(1) Discretizing of the c-τ-axis
Applied the following discretization of frequency and time:
 c_n &= c_0^n \\
 \tau_m &= m \cdot T \cdot c_0^n
Leading to wavelets of the form, the discrete formula for the basis wavelet:
\Psi(k, n, m) = \frac{1}{\sqrt{c_0^n}}\cdot\Psi\left[\frac{k - m c_0^n}{c_0^n}T\right] = \frac{1}{\sqrt{c_0^n}}\cdot\Psi\left[\left(\frac{k}{c_0^n} - m\right)T\right]
Such discrete wavelets can be used for the transformation:
Y_{DW}(n, m) = \frac{1}{\sqrt{c_0^n}}\cdot\sum_{k=0}^{K - 1} y(k)\cdot\Psi\left[\left(\frac{k}{c_0^n} - m\right)T\right]
(2) Implementation via the FFT (fast Fourier transform)
As apparent from wavelet-transformation representation (shown below)
Y_W(c, \tau) = \frac{1}{\sqrt{c}}\cdot\int_{-\infty}^{\infty} y(k) \cdot \Psi\left(\frac{t - \tau}{c}\right)\, dt
where c is scaling factor, τ represents time shift factor
and as already mentioned in this context, the wavelet-transformation corresponds to a convolution of a function y(t) and a wavelet-function. A convolution can be implemented as a multiplication in the frequency domain. With this the following approach of implementation results into:
 - Fourier-transformation of signal y(k) with the FFT
 - Selection of a discrete scaling factor c_n
 - Scaling of the wavelet-basis-function by this factor c_n and subsequent FFT of this function
 - Multiplication with the transformed signal YFFT of the first step
 -


text:
Definitions for crispiness
The noun crispiness has 1 senses? (no senses from tagged texts)
1. brittleness, crispness, crispiness
(firm but easily broken)
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Meter & Rhyme in the Poem "Unharvested"
Definition of Alliteration in Poems
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"The Army Is Like A Family": Memories Of A Cold War Army Spouse
Mary Lou McClellan
Mary Lou McClellan grew up in Parma, Ohio. Her mother was a shop owner and her father was in communications. In the summer, she and her siblings loved to ride bicycles to the local swimming hole and swim all day, enjoying sandwiches their mother packed. In 1950, she married George McClellan, who had enlisted in the Army, completed his service, and then commissioned from Ohio State ROTC. In 1952, she and her two-month-old daughter flew to Germany to join her husband, who had traveled ahead. Their first assignment in Germany lasted until 1956, and during this time another daughter was born. Stints at Ft. Benning, Georgia, for the Advanced Course, and Monterey, California, for Russian language school followed, as did two more children, both boys, one born in Georgia and one in California. The family returned to Germany in 1958 and spent two years in Oberammergau for additional Russian language training before being stationed in Berlin, with occasional duty at the Potsdam House. In 1961 she lived through construction of the Berlin Wall, and in 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, her last daughter was born. In 1964, when George was assigned to Korea, Mary Lou and the family returned to Parma, Ohio, and lived near extended family. From 1965 to 1966, the family lived in Thailand, assigned to the Thai Military Academy, where Mary Lou taught English. After George returned to the States, they relocated to West Point, where George taught in the Department of Earth, Space, and Geographic Sciences until deploying to Vietnam from 1968 to 1969. After returning from overseas, the family was reassigned to the Military Academy. In this interview, she focuses on her life as an Army spouse during the Cold War. She describes living in Germany in the 1950s and 1960s, the children attending German Schools, and various aspects she liked about German culture and society. She recalls being spied on by the Soviets, experiencing major world events, and various periods of unrest in Germany. She discusses living in Thailand and enjoying a vastly different culture. She reflects upon her time at West Point and its close-knit community. Finally, she highlights changes she observed during her decades as an Army spouse.
conflicts Cold War Vietnam War
topics Military Families Life After Military Teamwork PTSD West Point History
interviewer David Siry
date 23 September 2020
name Mary Lou McClellan
specialty Army Spouse


text:
Nagoya, Japan - Professor Takashi Yoshimura and colleagues of the Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules (WPI-ITbM) of Nagoya University have finally found the missing piece in how birds sense light by identifying a deep brain photoreceptor in Japanese quails, in which the receptor directly responds to light and controls seasonal breeding activity. Although it has been known for over 100 years that vertebrates apart from mammals detect light deep inside their brains, the true nature of the key photoreceptor has remained to be a mystery up until now. This study led by Professor Yoshimura has revealed that nerve cells existing deep inside the brains of quails, called cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)-contacting neurons, respond directly to light. His studies also showed that these neurons are involved in detecting the arrival of spring and thus regulates breeding activities in birds. The study published online on July 7, 2014 in Current Biology is expected to contribute to the improvement of production of animals along with the deepening of our understanding on the evolution of eyes and photoreceptors.
Many organisms apart from those living in the tropics use the changes in the length of day (photoperiod) as their calendars to adapt to seasonal changes in the environment. In order to adapt, animals change their physiology and behavior, such as growth, metabolism, immune function and reproductive activity. "The mechanism of seasonal reproduction has been the focus of extensive studies, which is regulated by photoperiod" says Professor Yoshimura, who led the study, "small mammals and birds tend to breed during the spring and summer when the climate is warm and when there is sufficient food to feed their young offspring," he continues. In order to breed during this particular season, the animals are actually sensing the changes in the seasons based on changes in day length. "We have chosen quails as our targets, as they show rapid and robust photoperiodic responses. They are in the same pheasant family as the roosters and exhibit similar characteristics. It is also worth noting that Toyohashi near Nagoya is the number one producer of quails in Japan," explains Professor Yoshimura. The reproductive organs of quails remain small in size throughout the year and only develop during the short breeding season, becoming more than 100 times its usual size in just two weeks.
In most mammals including humans, eyes are the exclusive photoreceptor organs. Rhodopsin and rhodopsin family proteins in our eyes detect light and without our eyes, we are unable to detect light. On the other hand, vertebrates apart from mammals receive light directly inside their brains and sense the changes in day length. Therefore, birds for example, are able to detect light even when their eyes are blindfolded. Although this fact has been known for many years, the photoreceptor that undertakes this role had not yet been clarified. "We had already revealed in previous studies reported in 2010 (PNAS) that a photoreceptive protein, Opsin-5 exists in the quail's hypothalamus in the brain," says Professor Yoshimura. This Opsin-5 protein was expressed in the CSF-contacting neurons, which protrudes towards the third ventricle of the brain. "However, there was no direct evidence to show that the CSF-contacting neurons were detecting light directly and we decided to look into this," says Professor Yoshimura.
Yoshimura's group has used the patch-clamp technique for brain slices in order to investigate the light responses (action potential) of the CSF-contacting neurons. As a result, it was found that the cells were activated upon irradiation of light. "Even when the activities of neurotransmitters were inhibited, the CSF-contacting neurons' response towards light did not diminish, suggesting that they were directly responding to the light," says Professor Yoshimura excitedly. In addition, when the RNA interference method was used to inhibit the activity of the Opsin-5 protein expressed in the CSF-contacting neurons, the secretion of the thyroid-stimulating hormone from the pars tuberalis of the pituitary gland was inhibited. The thyroid-stimulating hormone, so-called the "spring calling hormone" stimulates another hormone, which triggers spring breeding in birds. "We have been able to show that the CSF-contacting neurons directly respond to light and are the key photoreceptors that control breeding activity in animals, which is what many biologists have been looking for over 100 years," elaborates Professor Yoshimura.
There have been many theories on the role of CSF-contacting neurons in response to light. "Our studies have revealed that these neurons are actually the photoreceptors working deep inside the bird's brain. As eyes are generated as a protrusion of the third ventricle, CSF-contacting neurons expressing Opsin-5, can be considered as an ancestral organ, which shares the same origin as the visual cells of the eyes. Opsin-5 also exists in humans and we believe that this research will contribute to learning how animals regulate their biological clocks and to find effective bio-molecules that can control the sensing of seasons," says Professor Yoshimura. Professor Yoshimura's quest to clarify how animals measure the length of time continues.
This article "Intrinsic photosensitivity of a deep brain photoreceptor" by Yusuke Nakane, Tsuyoshi Shimmura, Hideki Abe and Takashi Yoshimura is published online on July 7, 2014 in Current Biology, Volume 24, Issue 13, Pages R596-597.
The World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI) for the Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules (ITbM) at Nagoya University in Japan is committed to advance the integration of synthetic chemistry, plant/animal biology and theoretical science, all of which are traditionally strong fields in the university. As part of the Japanese science ministry's MEXT program, the ITbM aims to develop transformative bio-molecules, innovative functional molecules capable of bringing about fundamental change to biological science and technology. Research at the ITbM is carried out in a "Mix-Lab" style, where international young researchers from multidisciplinary fields work together side-by-side in the same lab. Through these endeavors, the ITbM will create "transformative bio-molecules" that will dramatically change the way of research in chemistry, biology and other related fields to solve urgent problems, such as environmental issues, food production and medical technology that have a significant impact on the society.