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Vol. 4, No. 1 – June 2006
USGS Activities Related to Human Health
Human Exposure to Mercury in Ukraine
An integrated environmental/human health study is underway in Gorlovka, Ukraine, where elevated levels of mercury occur
primarily due to past mercury mining and processing activities. Mine waste from mercury production, and current domestic and
industrial use of coal from local sources, contribute to elevated levels of mercury in the environment. The study,
Feasibility of Assessing Health Risks from Long-term Mercury Exposure in Gorlovka, Ukraine, funded by the U.S. Civilian Research and Development Foundation, has been incorporated into U.S. Geological
Survey (USGS) project work on Health Effects of Energy Resources. The goals of the work in Gorlovka are to define levels of
human exposure to mercury, assess possible health effects to exposed individuals, and determine the feasibility of larger
scale epidemiologic studies.
The project involves U.S. participants from the USGS, the Armed Forces Institute of
Pathology, and Sciences International, Inc., as well as Ukrainian scientists from
the Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine Institute for Occupational Health, and
Donetsk National Technical University. During a field visit to
Gorlovka in August 2005, samples of hair, nails, blood, and urine were taken from a group of 30 workers at a mercury
recycling facility on the site of the defunct Nikitovka mercury extraction plant. The scientists also collected environmental samples to
assess mercury levels and potential exposure near the mercury mines and over a larger portion of Gorlovka. Further sampling
will focus on Gorlovka residents lacking occupational mercury exposure, and residents of a nearby control municipality. This
research has the potential to be an important human health case study of mercury exposure.
Navajo Students Assist in Coal Combustion and Air Quality Study
USGS scientists are collaborating with the Navajo Nation
Division of Health on respiratory health issues related to coal combustion products in ambient air and indoor air quality
where coal is burned industrially and for home heating. USGS researchers will be assisted by Navajo students this summer
(2006) to collect air samples. The samples will be analyzed and compared with samples collected this winter.
USGS Scientist Named Director of the International Medical Geology Association's North American Regional Division
The USGS's Joe Bunnell has accepted the nomination as Director of the newly established North American Regional Division
of the International Medical Geology Association (IMGA). The IMGA, formally
inaugurated in January 2006, now has established Regional Divisions throughout the world. The Association grew out of
interest in Medical Geology that continues to expand worldwide at an increasingly rapid rate. The IMGA should enable the
community to better respond to numerous opportunities, to rapidly pass information to those interested in Medical Geology
issues, and to make critical decisions that will benefit this emerging scientific discipline.
Special Session (4.0W) Soils and Human Health, 18th World Congress of Soil Science, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 9-15,
This special session of the World Congress symposium will show the importance of soils and soil properties for human
health. Relevant topics include the influence of soil and climatic factors on the content of essential nutrients or naturally
occurring toxic substances in plant products, impacts of soil pollution on human health, and the spreading of infectious
diseases via atmospheric transport of soil dust. The symposium is a contribution to the ICSU initiative on "Science for
Conference Web Site
Sponsors: Inst.-Plt. Sci.; U.S. Geological Survey; Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Special Session (U07) Health on the Rocks, Western Pacific Geophysics Meeting, Beijing, China, July 24-27, 2006
In 2005 we witnessed and experienced the effects of several natural disasters. These events caused significant loss of
life, devastation to the environment, and extensive financial loss and damage to infrastructure. Yet, in 2005 we also saw
geoscientists and public health officials become more aware of the relationships between natural geological factors and
health in man and animals. This awareness has led to ongoing attempts to understand the influence of ordinary environmental
factors on the geographic distribution of various trace elements (I, F, As, Se, Pb, Hg, Co, etc.) that may adversely affect a
population's health. The 2006 WPGM is the ideal setting to discuss the status of medical geology investigations worldwide,
particularly of those in the western Pacific region. We are seeking submissions that inform and educate as well as lay the
groundwork for future collaborations and data sharing.
Sponsors: U.S. Naval Academy, U.S. Geological Survey
Second National Conference on USGS Health-Related Research, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia, September 12-14, 2006
Collaboration between the public health and earth science communities can lead to solutions for existing and emerging
environmental health problems. Organizations and individuals interested in environmental and earth science factors affecting
human health will be interested in attending this conference, which is designed to provide a broad forum for discussion,
bringing together a variety of interested parties, including policy makers, scientists, resource managers, Congressional
staffers, and representatives from Federal and State governments and non-governmental organizations.
Conference Web Site
Sponsor: U.S. Geological Survey
Special Session (SP01) Natural Dust and Human Health, 7th International Symposium on Environmental Geochemistry, Beijing,
China, September 24-27, 2006
The session will bring together specialists from several disciplines to review the current status of research into
naturally-occurring atmospheric aerosols, the nature of fine aerosol dust, variations in its toxicity and its interaction
with live tissue, the effects of prolonged exposure to natural toxic dusts, and the epidemiology of lung disease and
dust-related conditions in human populations. This session will provide insights into a relatively neglected scientific field
of societal importance, with the potential to form the basis of a state-of-the art publication on the subject.
Session Web Site
Sponsors: University of London, UK, University of Bristol, UK, and U.S. Geological Survey
Medical Mineralogy and Geochemistry Short Course, Menlo Park, California, December 9-10, 2006
The objectives of this workshop are to introduce geochemists and mineralogists to the concepts and problems involved with
the interactions between geomaterials and the human body, to highlight the importance of mineralogy and crystal chemistry in
understanding health issues, and to promote links between mineralogists and geochemists working on medical problems as well
as medical scientists working on problems involving geomaterials.
Course Web Site
Sponsors: U.S. Geological Survey; University of Wisconsin-Madison; Stony Brook University, New York
- U.S. Geological Survey, in press, Navajo coal and air quality in Shiprock, New Mexico:
U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 2006-3094.
- Ayotte, J.D.; Baris, Dalsu; Cantor, K.P.; Colt, Joanne; Robinson, G.R., Jr.; Lubin, J.H.; Karagas, Margaret; Hoover,
R.N.; Fraumeni, J.F., Jr.; and Silverman, D.T., 2006, Bladder cancer mortality and private well use in New
England--An ecological study: Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, v. 60, p. 168-172.
- Ayotte, J.D.; Nolan, B.T.; Nuckols, J.R.; Cantor, K.P.; Robinson, G.R., Jr.; Baris, Dalsu; Hayes, Laura; Karagas,
Margaret; Bress, William; Silverman, D.T.; and Lubin, J.H., 2006, Modeling
the probability of arsenic in groundwater in New England as a tool for exposure assessment: Environmental Science and
Technology, v. 40, no. 11, p. 3578-3585, DOI/10.1021/es051972f.
- Barringer, J.L., Szabo, Zoltan, Schneider, Donald, Atkinson, W.D., and Gallagher, R.A., 2006, Mercury in ground water, septage, leach-field effluent, and
soils in residential areas, New Jersey coastal plain: Science of The Total Environment, v. 361, p. 144-162.
- Chrosniak, L.D., Smith, L.N, McDonald, C.G., Jones, B.F., and Flinn, J.M., 2006, Effects of enhanced zinc and copper in drinking water on spatial
memory and fear conditioning: Journal of Geochemical Exploration, v. 88, p. 91-94,
- Fitzgerald, A.A., Smith, L.N., Thompson, J.H., Chrosniak, L.D., Conko, K.M., Jones, B.F., and Flinn, J.M., 2005, The
effects of copper on zinc-related cognitive deficiencies as assessed by the Morris water maze, in Proceedings of
the Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, Washington, D.C.
- Flinn, J.M., Hunter, D., Linkous, D.H., Lanzirotti, A., Smith, L.N., Brightwell, J., and Jones, B.F., 2005, Enhanced zinc consumption causes memory deficits and increased
brain levels of zinc: Physiology and Behavior, v. 83, no. 5


text:
Most Active Stories
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Thu March 7, 2013
If Caffeine Can Boost The Memory Of Bees, Can It Help Us, Too?
Originally published on Thu March 7, 2013 6:13 pm
Who knew that the flower nectar of citrus plants — including some varieties of grapefruit, lemon and oranges — contains caffeine? As does the nectar of coffee plant flowers.
And when honeybees feed on caffeine-containing nectar, it turns out, the caffeine buzz seems to improve their memories — or their motivations for going back for more.
"It is surprising," says Geraldine Wright at Newcastle University in the the U.K., the lead researcher of a new honeybee study published in the journal Science.
In order to study the effects of caffeine on bees, Wright and her colleagues trained the bees, Pavlovian style, to associate a reward of food with a smell of a flower.
"It's a little bit like Pavlov's dog," explains Phil Stevenson of the Royal Botanic Garden in Kew, outside London. "When Pavlov rang the bell, the dog salivated. And in this case, when the bee detects the smell, it extends its proboscis," Stevenson says. (The proboscis is the bee's long, hairy tongue used to suck up the nectar from the flower.)
The researchers wanted to know whether the bees would respond differently to flowers that contained a caffeinated nectar, compared to those that just had sugary nectar.
And, wow, turns out there was quite a difference. The bees feeding on the caffeinated nectar were three times better able to remember the flowers' odor 24 hours later, Stevenson says.
So could this mean that a caffeinated bee has a better memory? "That's exactly what the study shows," he says.
"They [the caffeinated bees] just didn't forget," says Wright.
And the benefit of remembering? Wright says these bees may have an advantage over their pollinating competitors in terms of locating food.
So, whether the caffeine is improving bees' memories — as these researchers suggest — or simply making bees more motivated or vigilant to seek out more of the stimulant, it's intriguing that caffeine could be giving bees the same kinds of buzz that people get.
"Caffeine absolutely influences our behavior," says Abraham Palmer of the University of Chicago. "It changes mood and performance in a variety of different ways." Due to genetic differences, our individual responses to caffeine vary.
Some of the best studies on the effects of caffeine on people come from the U.S. military, where caffeine has been studied as a way to keep soldiers alert.
In one study, researchers observed the effects of caffeine on a group of sailors who were training to become Navy Seals.
During one portion of that training, they are substantially sleep deprived and exposed to a variety of other stressors, "including cold temperatures and demanding physical activities," explains researcher Harris Lieberman of the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine in Natick, Mass.
When Lieberman studied the behaviors of sailors who consumed caffeine compared to those who had a noncaffeinated placebo, he documented a range of benefits.
"We found that in moderate doses, caffeine enhanced ability to pay attention, and it enhanced vigilance," says Lieberman.
And caffeine also seemed to improve the exhausted sailors' short-term memories, something Lieberman was not expecting to see. "We were surprised that caffeine had such widespread effects," he says.
But in the absence of exhaustion, caffeine doesn't seem to help people remember any better.
"I don't think we have good data that establishes that caffeine has beneficial effects on memory," Lieberman says — at least among people who are well rested.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Most of us know what it feels like to have a little caffeine in our system. A cup of coffee wakes us up, gives us a bit of a buzz. Well, it turns out caffeinated nectar does something similar for honey bees. That's the finding of a new study published in the journal Science, as NPR's Allison Aubrey reports.
ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE: It's too early in the year to expect to see honey bees, says researcher Phil Stevenson, especially from his perch at Royal Botanic Garden at Kew, just outside London.
PHIL STEVENSON: That's right. I mean, I've seen a couple of queens from but will be colonies around, but no honey bees as of yet. Yes, it's still a bit chilly for that.
AUBREY: But it won't be long. And Stevenson says when the bees start foraging for food in spring, they take long flights in search of nectar and then haul it back to their hives.
Now it turns out some of this nectar actually contains caffeine. Not just the nectar of coffee plants, but also citrus plants - including lemons, and oranges. So Stevenson and his colleague were curious. They wanted to know if this caffeinated nectar influenced the behavior of bees. So they designed a study.
STEVENSON: And in this study, you can train bees to associate a reward of food with a smell. It's a little bit like Pavlov's dog. When Pavlov rang the bell, the dog salivated. In this case, when the bee detects the smell, it extends its proboscis.
AUBREY: The smell came from flowers, the proboscis is the bee's long, hairy tongue used to suck up the nectar.
Now, in the study, Stevenson wanted to see whether the bees would respond differently to flowers that contained a caffeine rich nectar, compared to those that just had sugary nectar.
STEVENSON: We found that when they were taking sugar nectar with caffeine, they were three times better able to remember the flowers a day later than bees that were feeding on to sugar alone.
AUBREY: So could this mean that a caffeinated bee has a better memory?
STEVENSON: That's exactly what the study shows. We were very surprised by it, but obviously we were also very excited because it shows that bees are better able to remember a flower. And, of course, for bee this makes it better able to locate food.
AUBREY: Which is obviously a big plus in life.
Now, some researchers wonder if bees simply prefer caffeinated nectar. But whether it's improving their memories were making them more motivated to seek it out - it's intriguing that caffeine can be giving these the same kind of buzz that people get.
ABRAHAM PALMER: Caffeine absolutely influences our behavior. It changes mood and performance in a variety of different ways.
AUBREY: That's Abraham Palmer of the University of Chicago. He says due to genetic differences, our individual responses to caffeine vary. But studies show that caffeine does work on our brain's reward system, and in moderate doses can help improve attention and performance on all sorts of mental and physical tasks. Some of the best studies come from the U.S. military, where caffeine has been studied as a way to keep soldiers alert.
Researcher Harris Lieberman explains he studied a group of sailors who were training to become Navy SEALs.
HARRIS LIEBERMAN: During one portion of that training, they are substantially sleep deprived and exposed to a variety of other stressors.
AUBREY: Including cold temperatures and demanding physical activities. Lieberman says when he compared the sailor who consumed caffeine compared to those who had a non-caffeinated placebo, he documented range of benefits.
LIEBERMAN: We found that in moderate doses, caffeine enhanced ability to pay attention, it enhanced vigilance.
AUBREY: And it seemed to improve the exhausted sailors' short-term memories, something Lieberman was not expecting to see.
LIEBERMAN: We were somewhat surprised that caffeine had such widespread effects.
AUBREY: But Lieberman says, in the absence of exhaustion, caffeine doesn't seem to help people remember any better. So he doesn't think that caffeine is much of a memory booster.
LIEBERMAN: No, I don't.
AUBREY: But whether it's humans or those bees, there's clearly something about caffeine that keeps us coming back for more. Allison Aubrey, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


text:
DAKAR: Pieces of pottery, iron tools and jewellery dating back thousands of years have been discovered in Dakar after recent torrential rains flooded some suburbs, university researchers told AFP on Monday.
Moustapha Sall, a lecturer and researcher at Dakar's Cheick Anta Diop university said he happened upon the items by chance during a visit to the suburb of Ouest-Foire in the north-east of the capital after the rains on August 26.
"While visiting the flooded zone, I stumbled upon... pieces of pottery, perforated shells reused as jewellery, iron scoria and small stones including blades which could have been used to cut or carve," said Sall.
"The water washed away the sand and revealed these archeological objects."
Sall said the area was home to several construction sites, where workers said they had come across pieces of pottery and shells, which could hinder any future archeological digs.
"We will do an analysis of the objects discovered and send them to a laboratory" at the university which specialises in dating historical items, Sall said.
Another researcher at the university, Alioune Deme, said the objects could date back between 2,000 and 7,000 BC.


Tel. +358 537 55 244
Cages to use in inland and coastal waters and open sea are made of sections and installed in required size on site.
The size and amount of floating pipes are dependent on the size of the cage and the conditions of the surroundings. For the harsh open sea conditions the cages can be made of even 3 floating rings, which increase the floating capacity and endurance.
kassi2Normally the cages are made with 2 floating rings. The modules between the floating pipes include footboard for the maintenance. One of the floating pipes is normally filled with styrofoam to ensure the fluctuation in case of any damages.


OpenWindows Advanced User's Guide
3.3.2 Print Working Directory (pwd)
The command pwd (print working directory) tells you where you are in the file system hierarchy:
$ pwd
Your output will look somewhat different from that in the example, as your directory structure will be different. Remember that your working directory is your current location within the file system hierarchy.


text:
The Violate Man
The Violate Man is the first book-length study of representations of male/male rape in U.S. American culture. Although it might seem that this topic is underrepresented, male/male rape appears in the news with surprising frequency. A spectacular example of this are the photographs from Abu Ghraib documenting the humiliation, both violent and sexual, of male prisoners in Iraq. In the U.S., academic studies have demonstrated and newsmedia reports substantiate that male/male rape is a lived reality in society, a health crisis in U.S. American prisons, a rising epidemic in the military, and a significant component of the problem of sexual assault on college campuses. As the problem of rape in the real world continues, representations of male/male rape, especially jokes, have proliferated on television and at the movies. Think, for example, of Betty White's 2010 appearance on Saturday Night Live, which included a sequence joking about prison rape – "the wizard of ass" is White's memorable punchline.
The Violate Man argues that because official studies and education on the topic of male/male rape are so rare, it is this unofficial discourse – especially narrative representation in the movies and on television – that currently shapes our society's thinking about male/male rape. Rather than a topic that is avoided or silenced, discourse around male/male rape is actually common, and it is put to specific cultural uses, frequently coded and decoded, and freighted with a complicated but widely shared set of cultural meanings. This will be the first book to develop critical ways of examining these phenomena and the first to theorize the effects of these representations on a culture in which this violence itself is increasingly common.
The Violate Man focuses specifically on discourse about male/male rape as opposed to acts of rape in the real world. Each chapter addresses a different medium of entertainment, switching carefully between newsmedia, theatre, fiction, film, and serial television. Discrete treatment of each medium allows the book to treat a wide swath of U.S. American culture, while also addressing the formal concerns important to each medium.
Engaging with queer theory (primarily Eve Sedgwick and Leo Bersani), gender theory (primarily Judith Butler and Kaja Silverman), and theories of violence such as those of Freud, Rollo May, and Erich Fromm, The Violate Man argues that questions surrounding male/male sexual violence have much to teach us about the limits of our thinking about sex, gender, violence, equality, and difference. Our contemporary moment is rife with confusion about "toxic masculinity" and other intersections between violence and gender. This book addresses those questions by charting a history of U.S. American images of male/male rape from 1965 to the present day.
My title uses the uncommon adjective violate – a word describing an object that has been violated – because of its homophony with the word violet. In this way I am intending the title The Violate Man to do what narrative representations of the violated male body often silently work to do: create an equation between the violate and the violet, conflating homosexuality or femininity with the violated body.

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


Take the 2-minute tour ×
Recall that we call a map $i: A \rightarrow X$ a cofibration if it has the homotopy extension property. We will say a pointed space $X$ is well-pointed, if the inclusion of the basepoint $\{ * \} \hookrightarrow X$ is a cofibration.
A pointed cofibration $i: A \rightarrow X$ is a based map of pointed spaces that has the homotopy extension property with respect to homotopies respecting the basepoint. Note that a cofibration is always a pointed cofibration, but the converse is not true.
It is stated in May's "Concise Course in Algebraic Topology", although not proved, that if a map of well-pointed spaces is a pointed cofibartion, then it is already a cofibration. I've been trying to do it on my own using "the box method", but it didn't lead me anywhere.
How does one go to prove such statements? Is there any general method, any useful tricks?
I assume that all spaces are compactly generated weakly Hausdorff.
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This is lemma 1.3.4 in May's "More concise algebraic topology", it looks very technical.
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5 essential things you should know before you go to Tibet
featured image
Even though there are many things you should know before you going to Tibet, here are 5 essential things you should know before you go to Tibet since Tibet is absolutely unique and different in its culture, religion, customs and the landscape so on,. Tibet is one of the five national autonomous regions of the People's Republic of China. It is located in the southwest of China and the southwest of Qinghai Tibet Plateau. The land area of the whole region is more than 1.22 million square kilometers, accounting for 12.8% of the total area of the country. The oldest Bon religion in Tibet and the Tibetan Buddhism, which dominate the politics, economy and culture of Tibetan society, permeate all aspects of social life, thus forming the folk customs and aesthetic tastes different from other nationalities. Tibet's folk culture is rich in content and rich in cultural relics.
Tibet not only has a unique high plateau with countless snow-capped mountains' scenery, but also has a charming green natural landscape, beautiful lakes and vast grassland, inhabited by thousands of Tibetan nomads. Up to now, there are many Tibetan people whose living customs are far away from the modern people outside the plateau. Just because of the distance, everything in Tibet has an ornamental value.
 1. How to get to Tibet?
One of the 5 essential things you should know before you go to Tibet is how to get to Tibet. There are three ways to travel to Tibet, you can choose by plane, train or by land. You can fly to Lhasa, the capital city of Tibet from almost all the cities in mainland China and internationally, from Kathmandu to Lhasa. You can also take train to Tibet from most parts of the cities in mainland China but the best way to get to Tibet by train is from Xining which is located in the northwest of China and the capital city of Qinghai Tibetan plateau. The train from Xining to Lhasa takes 21 hours and it is the best part of the high plateau train trip landscape. You can come to Tibet by land by taking Sichuan Tibet highway overland tour, Qinghai Tibet highland overland tour and Yunnan Tibet highway overland tour. Internationally, there are two ways to go to Tibet by land, one is from Kathmandu to Kyirong border and another is from Kashgar to Kailash.
 - When is the best time to trip to Tibet?
The best time to go to Tibet is from April till end of October because during this period of time, the weather warms up, all the scenery turns into green and little bit of rain to fresh up and gives more oxygen for the sunny and dried weather in Tibet. The best time for trekking in Tibet is from May to June and September to end of October but for a short trekking around Mount Kailash is available from May till end of October.
 - When is the cheapest and less touristic time when you go to Tibet?
One of the 5 essential things to know before you go to Tibet is to know when the cheapest and less touristic time when you go to Tibet. The cheapest and less touristic time when you go to Tibet is in the winter time and nowadays, we highly recommend Tibet winter tour because the tourism supply and nationwide facility has been improved a lot and in many major cities including Lhasa, the capital city of Tibet, Tsetang, cradle of Tibet located to the south of Lhasa city, Shigatse, fertile land and western cultural center of Tibet located to the west of Lhasa, Nyingtri, the eastern forest region of Tibet located to the east of Lhasa city, we can provide very good hotels with 24 hours hot water, rooms are heated for 24 hours as well.
There are also plenty of restaurants and most of the scenic spots are opened like summer. The price of the flights are 50% cheaper, it is very easy to get train tickets, most of the scenic spots and vehicle transportation is 30% cheaper and human resource including Tibet travel guide is around 20% cheaper. During winter in Tibet, the sun shines so brightly and during the day time, as long as there is sunshine, you never feel very cold. In every scenic spots, you will see thousands of Tibetan pilgrims coming from different regions of Tibet including Amdo, the far north eastern part of Tibet and Kham, the far south eastern part of Tibet. There are thousands of Tibetans, doing prostration in front of Jokang temple to do their daily Buddhist practices. There are also quite many religious and other Tibetan traditional festivals are going on during winter time in Tibet so traveling to Tibet in winter makes your Tibet trip more cheaper and gives more authentic experience of Tibet travel.
 - What are the things to see during your Tibet travel?
One of the 5 essential things to know before you go to Tibet is there are many beautiful natural scenic sights and famous monasteries and temples in Tibet. During your travel in Tibet, you can't miss visiting the Potala Palace and Jokhang temple in Lhasa. The Potala Palace is located in the center of Lhasa city. The Potala Palace was built in 7th century by the 33rd King of Tibet called Songtsan Gampo during Tubo Dynasty. The king married two princes Princess, princess Bhrikuti Devi from Nepal and Princess Wencheng of the Tang court. Both princess brought the most sacred statues of Buddha Shakyamuni as their dowry. The Potala Palace was destroyed badly by fire in around 9th century and in around 17th century, the 5th Dalai Lama rebuilt the Potala Palace into the present size and since then the Potala Palace has become the winter palace of the Dalai Lama and now it has been listed as the UNESCO world heritage site.
Jokhang Temple also known as "zulakang" (In Tibetan, means Buddha Hall), located in the center of the old urban area of Lhasa, is a Tibetan Buddhist temple built by Tibetang King Songtsan Gampo, with a history of more than 1300 years, and has the supreme status in Tibetan Buddhism. Jokang temple is the most brilliant building in Tibet, and also the earliest Tibetan traditional building in Tibet.
There are many important and interesting monasteries and temples to visit in Tibet including Drepung and Sera monasteries, Ramoche temple, Ganden monastery inside Lhasa, Samye monastery, Palchoe monastery, Tashi Lhunpo monastery, Traduk temple and Yumbu Lhakang so on. During your Tibet trip, you should not miss visiting the most important scenic sights including the Mt Everest, Mt Kailash, several most famous sacred lakes of Tibet including Namtso lake, Yamdrok lake, Mansarovar lake, Dhangra Yumtso lake, Tso Ngonpo lake ( Kokonor ) etc.
 - What are the etiquette and Taboos in Tibet that you should know before going to Tibet?
One of the 5 essential things to know before you go to Tibet is etiquette and Taboos. Tibet is divided into different regions but the most important place that you should not miss visiting when you are going to Tibet is Lhasa so today we are going to give some information about etiquette and Taboos of the Tibetans in Lhasa.
Lhasa has a pleasant climate and has long been the political, religious, economic and cultural center of Tibet. There are so many interesting scenic spots and cultural sights to visit in Lhasa. The area is known for its strict dress code. Lhasa women use wool to make short sleeved summer clothes.
Lhasa women wear the most beautiful Tibetan gowns made of the best used wool and the women who are married wear a waistlines or known as apron made of various colors of wool or silk. Whenever there is a traditional festival or during Tibetan new year, all the Lhasa women, including young generations will have to wear this beautiful Tibetan traditional gown and Tibetan traditional hat made of the best woolen cloth and a little bit murmured hair. In Tibet, to dress in a beautiful traditional way is to give a respect to the older ones, leaders or your friends. Especially when they have special celebration. Tibetans believe that people who come to your home with beautiful clothes can bring you good luck.
The people in Lhasa are very polite and when you are talking to older people, teachers, leaders, monks or nuns, you always speak softly and use the respectful words in Tibetan. The younger generations always touch their right hand on their head and as if they are scratching on their head when they are talking to older people, teachers, leaders so on, It is also another way of paying respect. People in Lhasa raise their hands and bow their head when they meet some friends or people they know in the market or street, that is to greet the people. Tibetans take off the hat during their visit to the monasteries or temples which is also respect to Buddha. Tibetans don't have any entertainment or parties if someone dies in their family for 49 days. They also don't sing or dance during those 49 days. Tibetans offer white scarf to Buddha or statues of Bodhisattva during their visit inside the monastery which is a respect to Buddha and symbol of displaying their white and pure heart to Buddha in order to clear their sin.
When people have parties, Tibetans always touch the glass with each other before you drink. They


South African vote and census data
The following is not my post. It is a comment by Manuel on an earlier post. It is so interesting in its detail, that I thought it deserved to be "promoted" to a central place in the virtual orchard.
A few weeks ago I finally included on my website's South Africa page the results of last May's election; I also took the opportunity to run some correlations between the election results and South African census data. Initially I worked at the level of the country's 213 local municipalities, where I found a very high inverse correlation (-0.90) between the DA share of the vote and the black African percentage of the population in the 2011 census; that figure remained at -0.88 when census figures were substituted with data from the 2016 Community Survey.I also found a very high correlation at the municipal level of 0.90 between the share for the right-wing VF+ (whose vote increased noticeably in the election) and the percentage of Afrikaans-speaking whites over the total population in 2011 (0.91 when using 2016 Community Survey data).
In fact, the municipal-level results of last May's election showed that in municipalities where the population is 95%+ black African (on average 98% black and 1% white), the DA vote came down to about 5%, behind EFF and even IFP, while ANC remained far ahead with 70% of the vote; the exact figures vary depending on whether 2011 or 2016 population figures are used for the analysis.
However, for good measure I ran the correlations at the electoral ward level – the lowest level for which both election results and 2011 detailed population statistics are readily available (the 2016 Community Survey data doesn't go below the local municipality level). There are currently a total of 4,392 wards in South Africa, and at this level the inverse correlation between the DA share of the vote and the percentage of black Africans was even stronger, standing at -0.93. Meanwhile, the correlation between the VF+ share of the vote and the percentage of white Afrikaners over the total population remained at 0.90.
In addition, clear voting patterns emerged when wards were grouped by race majority (or plurality): DA won handily in majority white, Coloured or Indian/Asian wards, but dropped to single digits and came behind EFF in majority black African wards, where ANC won a sweeping victory (95% of black South Africans live in majority black wards, while 74% of Coloureds and 61% of whites reside in majority Coloured and white wards, respectively; the majority black wards are 93% black, while the majority Coloured wards are 75% Coloured and the majority white wards are 63% white; the majority Indian/Asian wards are 64% Indian/Asian, but only account for 38% of that group's overall population).
Separately, I also tested a fifth, "no race dominant" category (no racial group over 50% and second largest group at or above 25%), but I found it made little difference in the results for the other groups. Overall, the "no race dominant" category was plurality black with a sizable white minority not far behind, as well as substantial numbers of Coloureds and Indians/Asians. In the election that additional category went solidly for DA, although by considerably less than the combined non-black majority (white-Coloured-Indian/Asian) wards, while ANC didn't do nearly as well as the increased percentage of blacks (relative to the non-black group) would have suggested; on the other hand the EFF vote appeared to be largely in line with the increase in the percentage of blacks.
Speaking of EFF, in an earlier comment I had compared its result with that of the far-right HNP in the 1981 white House of Assembly election. However, after going over ward figures grouped by race on a province-by-province basis that assessment needs to be qualified. Even just looking at the majority black wards, EFF remained at best below 20% and nearly fifty points behind ANC; by contrast, in 1981 many National Party MPs were horrified to see their HNP challengers – who usually polled in the single digits – rack up 30% of the vote, and in some cases even more. As such, EFF isn't quite yet as strong a challenger to ANC on the left – even among blacks – as HNP was to NP on the right among Afrikaners back in 1981, but that could change in the years ahead.
In fact, a far more apt analogy with the rise of HNP in 1981 among Afrikaner voters would be precisely the substantial vote increase for VF+, which had its best showing in majority white wards, where it won 11% of the vote; it fared poorly elsewhere, polling just 2% even in Coloured wards, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact it had Peter Marais, a former Cape Town mayor, Western Cape premier and notorious party hopper as its Western Cape candidate for premier (Mr. Marais has switched parties over half-a-dozen times in the past twenty-five years). In fact, the low VF+ share in Coloured wards was strongly correlated (0.84) to the 6% white minority (mostly Afrikaners) living in those wards. Moreover, within the majority white wards there was a wide gap in VF+ support between wards where whites were predominantly English-speaking, and those where they were mainly Afrikaans-speaking: VF+ polled just 3% in the former but reached 15% in the latter. The latter figure rose to 23% and 24% in the white majority wards of the North-West and Limpopo provinces (25% and 23% in the provincial ballot), where the white population remains overwhelmingly Afrikaner. This turn of events may well be a South African manifestation of the worldwide surge of the populist right, but also the recurrence of a historical phenomenon among Afrikaners, or a combination of both. In any event, earlier this summer VF+ went on to win by a landslide (albeit on a low turnout) a municipal by-election in a Stilfontein (City of Matlosana) ward where it had narrowly outvoted DA in the May provincial ballot.
There were also fairly evident voter turnout differences among the four ward groups: white majority wards had a far higher turnout rate (78%) than blackor Coloured-majority wards (65% in each case) or Indian/Asian majority wards (68%).
Finally, the ward-level election results show two very different South Africas co-existing side by side: one comprised by wards where black Africans constituted at least 95% of the population (on average over 99%), in which ANC swept the election on a 63% turnout with 73% of the vote, far ahead of EFF (13%), IFP (5%) and DA (4%); and another made up of wards in the rest of the country, where black Africans constituted 49% of the population, Coloureds and whites 22% each and Indians/Asians 6%, and where DA prevailed over ANC, 42% to 38%, with EFF polling 8% and VF+ 5%, on a 70% turnout rate.
Party lists for South Africa 2019
South Africa: No confidence vote looming?
The National Executive Committee (NEC) of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa is attempting to get President Jacob Zuma to resign. Media coverage of this (such as a BBC story from 5 Feb.) too often implies that this is a "normal" presidency with a fixed term. However, despite the title, as far as executive survival in office is concerned, South Africa's head of government is a prime minister. He can be removed by a vote of no confidence.
See the Constitution of South Africa, Article 102(2):
It could hardly be more clear than that. So if the ANC (which has far more than a majority of assembly seas) wants Zuma out, there's no question how this will end. Zuma may have his own reasons to want to make the party go through the spectacle of a no-confidence vote, rather than step down "voluntarily", but he does indeed serve at their pleasure.
It is also not as if is unusual in parliamentary systems for parties to replace their leader and the prime minister before an election. In Presidents, Parties, and Prime Ministers, David Samuels and I show that roughly a third of PMs in parliamentary democracies lose office by an intra-party procedure (rather than by losing a general election or leading a coalition that collapses). We did not note the timing of such removals relative to elections, but there is little doubt that many of the party-initiated removals take place closer to the next election than the preceding one. (In most such systems, the election can be called early on initiative of the new PM. The South African constitution also has a provision for early election, at the initiative of the assembly majority itself–Art. 50.)
Already this past December the ANC's convention narrowly voted to elect Cyril Ramaphosa as head of the party (over Zuma's ex-wife). He will lead the party in the campaign for the general election of 2019, whether or not Zuma is still president at the time.
A key difference in South Africa, compared to most other parliamentary systems, is that the prime minister is also the head of state–hence the title, President. In fact, other constitutional provisions in South Africa seem lifted from an actual presidential system (


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Let's say we are given $a$, $b$, $d$ with $1 \leq a, b, d \leq 1000$ and inequalities $x \geq a$, $y \geq b$, and $a+b < x + y \leq a+b+d$.
I need to combine all this and the following into one inequality. Is there a common factor that we can multiply to one or the other or something? Can we exploit the fact that ranges are known? How do we proceed in such a case? Any help is appreciated.
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Instead of writing $1 \leq a \leq 1000$, $1 \leq b \leq 1000$ and $1 \leq d \leq 1000$, I instead wrote $1 \leq a, b, d \leq 1000$ which is equivalent. – Michael Albanese Feb 6 '13 at 8:12
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The range defined for one set of value(s) is independent from the range of some other. For instance, $a+b


Factors affecting flowering
Whether a plant is cultivated for its flowers or its fruit, flowering is important to cultivators. Remember that all fruits start as a flower and to be more specific, a fruit is a part of the flower that holds the seeds. So basically, the more flowers that exist, the more the fruits will grow. Farmers and gardeners want to know the factors that affect flowering time and the flowering rate.
By learning about such factors, they can make necessary actions to increase their production.
 Project description:
In this project you will investigate the effect of one specific factor on flowering of one specific plant. You have many choices while selecting the specific plant and the specific factor that you want to study. In this project you will perform a plant growth experiment and record the plant's flowering related data.
 Details of this project:
More details or support on this project is available for the members of ScienceProject.com. Material needed for experiment (seeds, soil, pots,...) may be found at home or obtained locally.


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Afrique centrale : les pays - Map Quiz Game
- Guinée équatoriale
- République Centrafricaine
- république démocratique du Congo
Learning the countries of Africa all at once is a tall order. Dividing them up into smaller regions like central Africa makes the task much more manageable. Using this map quiz game, you will find it far easier to learn and identify the countries of central Africa. Learning Africa is an essential element of any proficient Geography Club.
Your high score (Pin)
Log in to save your results.


By definition, the floor is the channel that streams the active speaker. What you need to know on VoiceBoxer is that:
 - The active speaker always speaks on the floor, regardless their language selection
 - Each language channel will stream the floor until the interpretation booths are engaged in a target language
 - The assignment of a language to the floor is based on the interpreters selection of a target language and it works by exclusion. As an example, in a English-French-Spanish event, when the English-French interpreter targets French and the English-Spanish interpreter targets Spanish, then the platform knows that the floor must be English (ie. the language that is not being fed by an interpreter)
 - If you listen to the floor, you can still use the chat translation functionality. The translation will work towards the language that has been identified as floor language


text: The new bis(pentalene) complex Cr2(η5: η5-C8H4 1,4SiiPr 3)2 has been synthesized and characterized; it is found to exhibit paramagnetism at room temperature, and solid-state magnetic studies show that the dimer is best modeled as containing a pair of antiferromagnetically interacting S = 1/2 centers with the separation between the singlet ground state and triplet excited state being 2.23 kJ mol -1. Structural data show a Cr - Cr distance of 2.2514(15) Å, consistent with a strong metal-metal interaction. The bonding has been further investigated by density functional, hybrid, and CASPT2 methods. The metal-metal interaction is best described by a double bond with each metal having an 18-electron count. Theory predicts the singlet and triplet states to lie close in energy but puts the triplet state at a slightly lower energy than the singlet. The energy difference predicted by CASPT2 is closest to the experimental value.


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|Scientology Video Channel||
USING THE TONE SCALE
The simplest thing to know about this scale is that people find it difficult to respond to communication which is too far above where they are stuck on the scale. If you try to help someone in apathy by talking to them in enthusiasm, you will probably not have much success. The gap between such extremes is not easily bridged unless you understand the Tone Scale.
Using knowledge of the Tone Scale, however, you would recognize the emotion one-half to one full tone above the person, communicate in that tone and thus bring him up to higher tones. By moving up the scale gradiently it is possible to help someone overcome fixed conditions and regain a more happy and vital outlook.
The Tone Scale is of enormous value in life and its relationships. Mr. Hubbard thoroughly researched human behavior and the full body of his work in this area furnishes an accurate description of the attitudes and behavior of others. By knowing where a person falls on the scale, one can precisely predict his actions.
Knowledge of the Tone Scale gives one a greater understanding of his fellows than ever before available. It is a true technology of helping others to improve their conditions.


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The difference between a stepping stone and a stumbling block is how it's used.
Be careful what you listen to, we tend to repeat the words that we hear most often. We also attract people by our words – positive people with positive words, negative people with negative words.
I cannot overemphasize the importance of surrounding yourself with positive people.
Success is a process that takes work and practice. Begin now to eliminate the stumbling block words from your vocabulary and build stepping-stones to your success.
Eliminate the stumbling blocks
- Can't is a four-letter word that stops you cold in your tracks.
- Every time you use this word, put a quarter in the cuss jar.
- Once you tell yourself that you can't do something, your subconscious obeys you and makes it impossible to do.
- Once you decide that you can't do something, you will stop seeking opportunities to grow and learn in this area.
- Can't puts an impenetrable wall between you and success.
It won't work
- Another quarter in the cuss jar when you use this phrase.
- It won't work changes your attitude from seeking success to focusing on failure.
- You will begin to list the reasons why it won't work and find no reasons why it can work.
- This is only part of this sentence. The other part of the sentence is – but I won't.
- This phrase also deserves a quarter in the cuss jar.
- You recognize the problem but you have no intention of changing.
I quit, I stop, no more
- We use this phrase to stop bad habits and behaviors.
- The problem with using this sentiment is that you leave a hole. You have nothing to replace the old behavior with.
- If you want to correct a bad habit, you must replace it with something better or you will soon return to the old behavior.
- All behavioral holes will be filled.
- This is negative goal-setting.
- Your subconscious mind has dignity and does not like to be forced to do things. It will fight back.
Do this, or else
- This is another example of negative-goal setting.
- You are creating a subconscious ultimatum and your subconscious will fight back.
It was nothing
- You subconsciously minimize accomplishments AND maximize failures.
- If you accomplish something, wallow in it.
- Turn up the emotional intensity of your successes.
- Fear is a natural reaction to the unknown.
- To progress in life, we must move out of our comfort zone.
- Focus on happily arriving at your destination.
- The fear will dissipate after you take the first few steps toward your goal.
There's always tomorrow
- Our friend procrastination.
- Your subconscious will always fight to keep you in your comfort zone.
- Procrastination is a trick it uses.
- Fight back by doing something NOW.
- When you have a goal, HOW will become apparent, although not immediately.
- Never ask how you will do it, just move toward your goal, the path will become clear as you begin your journey.
- This stumbling block leads to victimization and depression.
- Everyone has challenges in life and your challenge is not unique.
- Why me is an indication of self-absorption.
- You will never be successful if you believe that you are somehow the center of the universe.
- Challenges are the free weights of life; they build the muscles of our character.
- Instead of asking why me, ask what can I learn from this and how can I help others?
Keep the stepping-stones
The next time I will…
- Use this phrase when you make a mistake.
- Give yourself a new behavior to replace the old one with.
I want to
- Makes tasks desirable to the subconscious rather than forcing yourself to do something.
Wow, I did a great job on that
- Recognizing your accomplishments will build self-esteem.
- Self-esteem is the beginning of success.
- Changes your focus to the positive.
- You will not move enthusiastically toward any goal that is not your idea.
- You cannot thrive if you live someone else's dream for your life.
- Removes procrastination.
I can hardly wait
- Gives you emotional excitement to work on your goals.
How can I use this setback
- Puts control back in your hands.
- Empowers rather than victimizes.
Your old way of speaking was a habit. To change your habit, you must practice your new way of speaking every day.
Don't forget to visit Taquila today for more positive insight.


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Tue, Jul 27, 2004
Constructing a Lasting Peace in India and Pakistan - a Webquest with Wiki
Constructing a Lasting Peace in India and Pakistan: A WebQuest for 10th Grade World History was designed by Dan McDowell. It provides a nice example of a conflict related webquest that requires students to draft a shared document after multiple rounds of negotiation on core ideas and drafts of their texts. It uses a "Wiki" online text editor to permit students to do their shared editing from wherever they are, with a history of changes made available at all times. The simulation's use of a wiki requires students to learn a new technology, but the learning curve is not too steep.
Page 1 of 1 pages


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Fayetteville Independent Light Infantry Company
The Fayetteville Independent Light Infantry Company (FILI) was formed on 23 Aug. 1793, when European countries were involved in a war growing out of the French Revolution. The reason for its organization may have been fear that the Spanish in Louisiana would incite the Indians to attack, but recent scholarship supports the view that alarm over slave rebellions in Haiti was more likely.
In 1825 the company attended the Marquis de Lafayette on his visit to Fayetteville (named in 1784 in honor of the French nobleman who fought with the American revolutionaries). Construction of the U.S. arsenal in Fayetteville in 1838 increased the importance of the company. When the Civil War began, the FILI joined the 1st North Carolina Volunteers, called the "Bethel" Regiment, as Company H. It was the first regiment organized in North Carolina and fought in the Battle of Bethel, the first engagement of the war. Some of its members were among the troops who surrendered at Appomattox.
Although the FILI achieved glory, its history was marked by controversy, such as when it refused to retire the gray uniform of the Confederacy, which prevented its acceptance into the State Guard. During the Spanish-American War, the FILI entered national service as Company A, 2nd Regiment, commanded by Capt. Benjamin R. Huske. Wearing their Confederate uniforms, the enlistees marched into Camp Dan Russell, where "they doffed the grays" and "donned the blues" of the United States. The company trained at Tybee Island, Ga., but did not sail to Cuba. The troops were mustered out at Macon, Ga., on 8 Feb. 1899. In 1917 the company went to Camp Stewart at El Paso, Tex., to help defend the border from raids by Mexican leader Francisco Villa.
During World War I the FILI served as Company F of the 119th Infantry Regiment, part of the Thirtieth Division, and fought in Flanders-its last military service. It has sometimes been confused with the Fayetteville Light Infantry Company, which also fought in a number of wars, including the Civil War.
After World War I, the FILI continued as a fraternal and social organization. It maintained an armory where Fort Bragg soldiers were often entertained, and it established a museum to house records and artifacts from antebellum days and from its World War I service. In the early 2000s the company functioned as a ceremonial unit with a color guard dressed in the uniform of the late antebellum period.
James C. MacRae, "The Fayetteville Independent Light Infantry Company," North Carolina Booklet (9 Apr. 1908).
Roy Parker Jr., Cumberland County: A Brief History (1990).
Joseph F. Steelman, North Carolina's Role in the Spanish-American War (1975).
North Carolina Digital Collections search results for Fayetteville Independent Light Infantry Company
(2nd) Lieutenant Charles B. Cook, Confederate, Fayetteville Independent Light Infantry, early Civil War era, in uniform showing fancy hat and sword. Image courtesy of the State Archives of North Carolina, call #: N_59_12_95.
1 January 2006 | Steelman, Lala Carr


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Sebastiano Carpi, Mihaly Weiner
July 11, 2004
A Moebius covariant net of von Neumann algebras on S^1 is diffeomorphism covariant if its Moebius symmetry extends to diffeomorphism symmetry. We prove that in case the net is either a Virasoro net or any at least 4-regular net such an extension is unique: the local algebras together with the Moebius symmetry (equivalently: the local algebras together with the vacuum vector) completely determine it. We draw the two following conclusions for such theories. (1) The value of the central charge c is an invariant and hence the Virasoro nets for different values of c are not isomorphic as Moebius covariant nets. (2) A vacuum preserving internal symmetry always commutes with the diffeomorphism symmetries. We further use our result to give a large class of new examples of nets (even strongly additive ones), which are not diffeomorphism covariant; i.e. which do not admit an extension of the symmetry to Diff^+(S^1).


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Measuring the Community Impacts of Research Oriented Partnerships
The CIROP is a 33-item, generic measure of community members' (i.e., those receiving information or services from the partnership, or those involved in the partnership) perceptions of the impact of research partnerships addressing social and health issues.
In the CIROP, the focus is on how and to what extent a specific research partnership has had an influence on an individual, an organization or group, and a community. The CIROP Measure will inform research partnerships about the amount of impact, if any, they are having on their target audiences in the areas of:
CIROP Measure [99kb PDF]
King, G., Servais, M., Currie, M., Kertoy, M., Law, M., Rosenbaum, P., Specht, J., Willoughby, T., Forchuk, C., & Chalmers, H. (2003). The Community Impacts of Research Oriented Partnerships (The CIROP Measure). Available from _URL_.
Research partnerships wishing to evaluate their effectiveness may invite the intended users or beneficiaries of their partnerships knowledge sharing and education efforts to complete the CIROP. This instrument also will allow community stakeholders and advisory boards to capture the success of their collaborative research initiatives. For more ideas on possible uses of this tool, please see the journal article about the development of the CIROP Measure (details below).
Specific details about the development of the CIROP Measure are described in the following journal article
Currently, there are no psychometrically sound outcome measures by which to assess the impacts of research partnerships. This article describes the development of a 33-item, survey questionnaire measuring community members' perceptions of the impact of research partnerships addressing health and social issues. The Community Impacts of Research Oriented Partnerships (CIROP) was developed using information from the literatures on health promotion, community development, research utilization, and community-based participatory research, and from focus groups involving 29 key informants. Data from 174 community members were used to determine the factor structure, internal consistency, and test-retest reliability of the four CIROP scales, and to provide evidence of construct validity. The CIROP informs research partnerships about the extent of their impact in the areas of Personal Knowledge Development, Personal Research Skill Development, Organizational/Group Access To and Use of Information, and Community and Organizational Development, allowing them to demonstrate accountability to funding bodies. As well, the CIROP can be used as a research tool to assess the effectiveness of knowledge sharing approaches, determine the most influential activities of research partnerships, and determine structural characteristics of partnerships associated with various types of impact. The CIROP provides a better understanding of community members' perspectives and expectations of research partnerships, with important implications for knowledge transfer and uptake.
Reference for Journal Article
King, G., Servais, M., Kertoy, M., Specht, J., Currie, M., Rosenbaum, P., Law, M., Forchuk, C., Chalmers, H., & Willoughby, T. (2009). A measure of community members' perceptions of the impacts of research partnerships in health and social services. Evaluation and Program Planning, 32, 289-299.


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"Be spontaneous!" Paradoxes
A vexing communication block occurs when one person requests or demands something from another that can only be given sponta-neously - like trust, love, interest, acceptance, appreciation, desire, and respect. If the second person tries to comply, the first person may then say - "You're just doing that because I asked you to, not because you really mean it." Examples: "You never say 'I love you'"; "You must honor my wishes!"; "You need to respect the sacrifices I make for you"; and "Why won't you initiate sex more often?"
The solution: (a) mutual knowledge of this concept and process awareness, and the second person (b) asserting something like "You're asking me to (want to) give you something that has to be spontaneous," and (c) both people digging down to identify the under-lying relationship needs that are causing this situation.] Lesson 2 is about learning to communicate effectively


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ACES' Risk Management Approach
Systematic and Disciplined Approach
ACES encourages a systematic disciplined approach to energy risk management. This approach has two main components: the Energy Risk Management Cycle and Integrated Portfolio Management.
The Energy Risk Management Cycle is an iterative 6-step process that provides a foundation for identifying, understanding, and effectively managing energy risks.
Step 1. Risk Identification and Quantification
Before risks can be effectively managed, they must be identified and measured using either statistical tools or a qualitative approach.
Step 2. Establish Risk Tolerance and Risk Management Policies
After priority risks are identified, Energy Risk Management policies are developed to formalize risk objectives, risk tolerance, a decision making process, and identify authority for individuals or committees to carry out transactions.
Step 3. Develop Hedge Plans and Execution Strategies
ACES develops policies for establishing the boundaries for managing risk and execution strategies for implementation and compliance purposes.
Step 4. Implement Controls and Procedures
Risk Management Policies need to be supported by controls and procedures to ensure an appropriate level of oversight.
Step 5. Execute the Hedging Strategy
With a clear understanding of the risks being taken, Energy Risk Management policies in place, a hedging strategy developed, and controls and procedures in place, the hedging strategy can be executed.
Step 6. Risk Monitoring, Measuring, and Reporting
Existing risks should be continuously monitored and reported up through the risk management governance structure. As new risks emerge, they should be reported through a systematic process to determine if policies or strategies need to be altered.
Integrated Portfolio Management
Integrated Portfolio Management takes this cycle as a starting point and adds several components to create an approach to managing energy risks, which is complete and consistent across the entire organization.
1. All Commodities, Products, and Resources
All commodities, products, and resources (both physical and financial) need to be included in the Energy Risk Management Process.
2. Sufficiently Long Time Horizon
The time horizon for managing risk needs to be sufficiently long to capture all significant risks and opportunities.
3. Coordinated Strategy Development
Development of risk management strategies should be coordinated across all components of the power supply portfolio and should reflect a structure based on transparency, open exchange, and information sharing.
4. Sophisticated Software Tools
Sophisticated analytical tools are needed to simultaneously evaluate several major risk factors in a probabilistic fashion, allowing "what if" scenarios to be quickly analyzed in the development of risk management strategies.
5. Well-Defined Business Processes
Software tools need to be complemented with well-defined business processes to create a seamless approach to integrated portfolio management.
6. Clear, Accurate, and Timely Reporting
Clear, accurate, and timely risk and performance reporting are critical for tracking risk and risk management performance.


Flickr CC: Swamibu
A recently published patent by Microsoft reveals a unique way to provide tactility and texture to the normally flat, glassy feel of a touchscreen. If it came to fruition, your next tablet computer could morph and shape its screen to provide impromptu buttons, keyboards or textures.
The idea was invented by Microsoft's senior user experience designer, Erez Kikin-Gil. Redmond based Kikin-Gil was previously the lead interface designer on the table top touchscreen project, Microsoft Surface.
It uses pixel-sized shape-memory cells that can adjust their topography individually when struck with ultraviolet light. It's all coated with a light-induced polymer that is hard and juts out when one wavelength of UV hits it, and soft and flat when another wavelength strikes the pixel.
So by watching the users fingertips, and carefully transmitting the wavelengths at the correct pixels, the patent claims that tiny dots on the screen can slightly protrude independently from one another, giving a real sense of tactile buttons or textures.
But as the patent describes some seriously bulky technology, like a rear-projector, it's probably going to show up in large scale touchscreens like Microsoft Surface, before the next release of Windows Phone 7.
Latest on


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Any text report can be mapped and converted into CSV (EXCEL), XML, HTML, XMLXSL.
Each type of text report need only be mapped once. The entire output process can be
automated with Fraser Stream Scheduler and Desktop. Simply output your report to.txt
or.prn format and watch as Fraser Stream selects, transform, and opens your newly
Database administrators can automate the process of outputting data from your ERP
or Legacy system directly into a SQL, ACCESS, or ORACLE database.


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IZA DP No. 4057: The Impact of Education on the Subjective Discount Rate in Ugandan Villages
published in: Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2010, 58 (4), 643–669
Heterogeneity in time discounting may reinforce the existing barriers to save and invest faced by rural populations in developing countries. We elicit a subjective discount rate for a varied sample of Ugandan villagers. In accordance with other studies, we have found the discount rate to decrease with education. We examine this correlation further by testing the causal effect of education and exploit two different sources of its variation: school frequency across villages and the number of the respondents' school-going years that overlap with the era of the dictator Idi Amin's rule. For men, we find that education has a significant impact on their discount rate, similar in magnitude for both types of instruments and robust to observable characteristics. This finding highlights the importance of education in development.


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- See also: Easter Eggs (Skyrim)
The card is considerably cheap, and is suggested to be picked during the start of a game. It is not suggested to use the card on a creature with 1 health unless it is an emergency, due to the Shackle attribute of the card going to waste.
Arrow in the Knee should be used on cards with high attack powers, as it will prevent them from attacking the next turn, saving you health or your creatures' defense. If possible with the deck and cards available in your hand, the card should be used on enemies with high defenses, and combined with a wound-related card (i.e. Finish Off) to easily destroy them.
- The phrase "Arrow to the Knee" originated from Skyrim as a line of dialogue from Hold Guards, who would say "I used to be an adventurer like you. Then I took an arrow in the knee" when passing by the player. Eventually, it became a widespread meme, becoming an iconic legacy of Skyrim on modern culture. It can therefore be considered an easter egg.
- During the closed beta, the card was previously named Arrow to the Knee. However, this changed at some point before the beta opened.


The lab does research in a variety of settings
In the greenhouse
greenhouse grassesWe run some experiments in the greenhouse because it is easy to control conditions of an experiment in there. We can be sure each plant gets exactly the amount of water and nutrients we want it to, and we know all the plants live in nearly the same temperature and sunlight, and we can keep out most bugs and animals that might interfere with our results.
In the field
field plots We run some experiments in the field because the conditions in the field are more like what the plants would experience in real life. In the field it is more difficult to control some variables, sometimes it takes a lot of hard work, like putting a barrier in the ground to keep pests out.
In the lab
Angela infecting plants
In the lab we make experimental observations. We measure mass of the leaves and roots, measure the concentration of nutrients in the plants, and we run tests that detect the presence of the virus by detecting its RNA or proteins.
magnified aphid We also do a lot of work to keep our aphids healthy, keep our stock of infected plants healthy and to take care of all the equipment we need to do our research.


to gradients, but this is not the same as Gradient clipping. Gradient clipping involves setting predetermined cutoffs beyond which the gradients cannot go.
Discuss RNNs in the context of Bayesian Machine Learning.
Traditional RNNs and Similarity to Bayes Rule In essence, Bayesian means probabilistic. The specific term exists because there are two approaches to probability (bayesian and frequentist). Bayesians think of it as a measure of belief, so that probability is subjective and refers to the future. Specificaly, Bayesians use Bayes' Rule to update a probability based on a predictor prior probability, likelihood, and class prior probability using the sum rule (p(X)=Yp(X,Y)p(X)= \sum_Y p(X, Y)) and product rule (p(X,Y)=p(YX)p(X)p(X, Y) = p(Y | X)p(X)) of probability. Changing probabilities with new updates through time is similar to what RNNs do.
For example, if we want to predict a given category cc of data XX (contains data points x1,....,xnx_1,...., x_n)that will be chosen from a sample next (for example, cc could be one of a variety of words from a dictionary), after already having done nn samples (or having passed through nn words already), we could use Bayes rule as follows:
P(cx))Posterior Probability=P(xc)likelihoodP(c)Class Prior ProbabilityP(x)predictor prior probability\underset{\text{Posterior Probability}}{P(c | x))} = \frac{\overset{\text{likelihood}}{P(x|c)} \overset{\text{Class Prior Probability}}{P(c)}}{\underset{\text{predictor prior probability}}{P(x)}}
p(cX)=p(x1c)×p(x2c)×...×p(xnc)×p(c)p(c | X) = p(x_1 | c) \times p(x_2 | c) \times... \times p(x_n | c) \times p(c)
In short, the way classical RNNs update (and by extension LSTMs and GRUs) is very similar to how Bayes' rule would be applied to time-series data.
Bayesian RNNs
It is also possible to update RNNs through variational Bayes. This is discussed further in a paper out of DeepMind: "Bayesian Recurrent Neural Networks"
Can we do Batch Normalization in RNNs? If not, what is the alternative?
No, you cannot use Batch Normalization on a recurrent neural network, as the statistics are computed per batch, this does not consider the recurrent part of the network. Weights are shared in an RNN, and the activation response for each "recurrent loop" might have completely different statistical properties
Other techniques similar to Batch Normalization that take these limitations into account have been developed, for example Layer Normalization. There are also reparametrizations of the LSTM layer that allow Batch Normalization to be used, for example as described in Recurrent Batch Normalization by Coijmaans et al. 2016.
Some DL frameworks make it seem like you can use batch normalization in RNNs, but these typically involve reparametrized LSTMs and not vanilla recurrent networks (which need modifications or a different form of batch normalization)
What is an Autoencoder? What does it "auto-encode"?
In machine learning, Autoencoding is reducing the dimensions of the dataset while learning how to ignore noise. An Autoencoder is an unsupervised artificial neural network used for learning. Specifically, it learns how to compress data then reconstructing it back to a representation close to the original form.
What were Autoencoders traditionally used for? Why there has been a resurgence of Autoencoders for generative modeling?
Autoencoders were traditionally used for pre-training of Artificial Neural Networks. According to the history provided in Schmidhuber, "Deep learning in neural networks: an overview," Neural Networks (2015), auto-encoders were proposed as a method for unsupervised pre-training in Ballard, "Modular learning in neural networks," Proceedings AAAI (1987). It's not clear if that's the first time auto-encoders were used, however; it's just the first time that they were used for the purpose of pre-training ANNs.
Generative models typicaly fall into either unconditional models (sampling xx from a probability distribution p(x)p(x)) or conditional models (sampling xx from a probability distribution p(xy)p(x | y)). In both cases, being able to generate complex outputs from a learnable function (or learnable latent variables) is extremely useful. Autoencoders are useful for generating these lower-dimensional representations from which diverse-yet-realistic outputs can be obtained.
What is recirculation?
Unlike general feedforward networks, autoencoders may also be trained using recirculation (Hinton and McClelland, 1988), a learning algorithm based on comparing the activations of the network on the original input to the activations on the reconstructed input. Recirculation is regarded as more biologically plausible than back-propagation but is rarely used for machine learning applications. Specific recirculation algorithms vary between some autoencoder types
What loss functions are used for Autoencoders?
Many autoencoders work well with loss functions like the mean squared error loss function. Adding regularization to the loss is useful for giving the autoencoder other properties besides the ability to directly copy its input to its output. Many other regression loss functions also work well with autoencoders.
Cross-entropy and other classification loss functions are generaly poor choices for most autoencoders.
What is a linear autoencoder? Can it be optimal (lowest training reconstruction error)? If yes, under what conditions?
In its simplest form, the autoencoder is a three layers net, i.e. a neural net with one hidden layer. The input and output are the same, and we learn how to reconstruct the input.
Such an architecture can be optimal (i.e., lowest training error for a given hidden layer size) if it has the following properties:
 - Tied Weights
 - Weight Orthognoality
 - Feature non-correlation
 - Unit norm of the weights being 1
What is the difference between Autoencoders and PCA?
PCA is restricted to a linear map, while auto encoders can have nonlinear enoder/decoders.
A single layer auto encoder with linear transfer function is nearly equivalent to PCA, where nearly means that the WW found by an autoencoder and PCA won't be the same—but the subspace spanned by the respective WW's will.
What is the impact of the size of the hidden layer in Autoencoders?
We can an autoencoder very powerful by increasing the size of the hidden layers. Increasing these hyperparameters will let the autoencoder learn more complex codings. But, we should be careful to not make it too powerful, otherwise the autoencoder will simply learn to copy its inputs to the output, without learning any meaningful representation. It will just mimic the identity function. The autoencoder will reconstruct the training data perfectly, but it will be overfitting without being able to generalize to new instances, which is not what we want. This is why we use a "sandwich" architecture with hidden layer sizes smaller than the inputs or outputs (also known as a "bottleneck" architecture).
What is an undercomplete Autoencoder? Why is it typically used for?
An undercomplete autoencoder has no explicit regularization term - we simply train our model according to the reconstruction loss. Thus, our only way to ensure that the model isn't memorizing the input data is the ensure that we've sufficiently restricted the number of nodes in the hidden layer(s). As such, it is typically used in dimensionality reduction cases.
What problems might a nonlinear undercomplete Autoencoder face?
If too much of the input to the undercomplete autoencoder is random noise or irrelevant data, the autoencoder might not be able to learn any meaningful representations of the data.
What are overcomplete Autoencoders? What problems might they face? Does the scenario change for linear overcomplete autoencoders?
In overcomplete autoencoders, where the dimension of the latent representation is greater than the input. In these cases, even a linear encoder and linear decoder can learn to copy the input to the output without learning anything useful about the data distribution.
Discuss the importance of regularization in the context of Autoencoders.
We can regularize the autoencoder by using a sparsity constraint such that only a fraction of the nodes would have nonzero values, called active nodes. In particular, we add a penalty term to the loss function such that only a fraction of the nodes become active. This forces the autoencoder to represent each input as a combination of small number of nodes, and demands it to discover interesting structure in the data. This method works even if the code size is large, since only a small subset of the nodes will be active at any time.
Why does generative autoencoders not require regularization?
The generative section of a generative autoencoder (i.e., the decoder) mimics the process by which the input data was created. Rather than reconstructing input data as closely as possible, the training process forces the generative autoencoder to produce outputs that fit within a distribution of the traning data features. As such, regularization through sparsity constraints is redundant.
What are sparse autoencoders?
A sparse autoencoder is simply an autoencoder whose training criterion involves a sparsity penalty. In most cases, we would construct our loss function by penalizing activations of hidden layers so that only a few nodes are encouraged


RTX shows bigger calculation difference with CPU than GTX?
I have source codes to solve 2-dimensional shallow water equation using C++ and Cuda 11.2.
I have tested the exe file on GTX970, GTX1080Ti, RTX2070, RTX2080, RTX2080Super.
The results of calculation difference with CPU are as below.
GPU ====> Max. value of calculation result difference with CPU
GTX970 ====> 0.001
GTX1080Ti ====> 0.001
RTX2070 ====> 0.204
RTX2080 ====> 0.261
RTX2080Super ====> 0.221
The question is "Why RTXs have bigger difference than GTXs? "
Are there any build options for RTXs?
I use Visual studio 2019, Cuda Toolkit 11.2, and C++.
I applied sm_52 and compute_52( or sm_75 and compute_75), and "Use Fast Math : false" options.
My PC OS is Windows10 64bit.
Please help me.
calculation difference with CPU
This is not a valid measure of correctness or accuracy.
Since code generation has an architecture-dependent component, on both CPUs and GPUs, numerical differences can result. For example, the compiler may re-arrange code to increase instruction-level parallelism, or apply fusion of FMUL and dependent FADD into an FMA (fused multiply-add) differently, or some math functions may have slightly different accuracy within the stated accuracy bounds.
If you want to assess accuracy, the easiest (but not entirely foolproof) way is to compute reference results in (much) higher precision, then compare against that.
If you merely need the issue to go away, try compiling with -fmad=false. Note: this will in all likelihood decrease both performance and accuracy of the GPU implementation.
Thanks njuffa,
You are right, it is not about accuracy.
So I have changed the title of this issue.
Previous title : RTX shows lower floating point accuracy than GTX?
New title: RTX shows bigger calculation difference with CPU than GTX?
I think its unlikely that anyone can give you a complete answer unless either you provide a complete code example, or someone decides to write a lengthy tutorial for you.
The only "build options" specific to RTX that come to mind are the ones you already mentioned: it's always good practice to compile for the architecture(s) you intend to run on, e.g. compute_75/sm_75 for a cc7.5 GPU.
Here is a brief tutorial. I would say there are two general categories of issues here.
 1. Those arising from machine calculation methods. For example comparing float to double, or with or with FMA contraction, are a couple examples. Such differences can easily give rise to differences in results, whether we are talking about comparing CPU to GPU or some other comparison. In addition, other more complex operations such as sin(), cos(), and other "library" match functions may simply be implemented differently on two different "machines" giving rise to different results.
 2. Those arising from order of operations (algorithm calculation methods). Floating point operations don't always have all the characteristics of basic math operations that we learned about in grade school/middle school. If you compare a serial algorithm/realization to a parallel algorithm/realization, its often the case that the math doesn't get done in exactly the same order. This can give rise to differences. A possible item to read here is this floating point whitepaper
Because the two GPUs you mention generally have different sizes (e.g. differing numbers of SMs, for example) a nice ninja-tuned parallel reduction that scopes out the size of the GPU being run on, then uses e.g. a grid-stride loop to size the grid to match the GPU, and then doing a parallel reduction, will likely give at least slightly different results depending on the GPU it is run on.
I doubt that is actually the issue in your case; I don't know what the issue is in your case. You're welcome to discuss it further, but I'm unlikely to provide any further response unless you provide a short, complete example that demonstrates the issue.
There are many questions on various forums that fit this general description (CPU/GPU differences), here is one example. Yes, I'm aware that one doesn't specifically focus on GPU-GPU differences. Here is one that discusses GPU-GPU results differences, in a general way. I'm sure you can find others.
Thank you, Robert_Crovella
I will review my codes carefully about your comments.
And if I have any positive results, I will let you know.
Thank you, Robert_Crovella.
I have reviewed my codes in detail, and it seems I have found the solution.
The summaries of my review are as follows.
 1. __syncthreads() function acted more strictly in RTX than GTX.
 (e.g. At a __syncthreads() in a "if" statement, RTX was hung but GTX was not.)
 2. GTX was more sensitive on the value of thread per block (TPB).
 When the TPB was changed, the calculation results from GTX were less sensitive than RTX.
 (** My calculation includes iteration process (implicit method).)
 3. When I applied larger value of TPB(e.g. 32, 64, 128, 256, 512), the calculation results from RTX became closer to the results using CPU. I think, this may be, larger TPB can sync more control volumes in a block even though cudaDeviceSynchronize() is not applied.
 (** The control volume is minimum calculation unit when using finite volume method (FVM).)
 4. When I applied TPB as 256 or a larger value to RTXs and 32 to GTXs, the calculation results from all the GPUs were very close to the results using CPU.
 (** In my first posting of May 27, TPB 32 was applied to all RTXs and GTXs.)
Again, thank you for your comments and encouraging.


Spatial + Temporal Scope [MGD Sections]
REDD+ Activities [MGD Sections]
Forest Definition [MGD Sections]
Carbon Pools [MGD Sections]
5.2 Emissions/removals factors Previous topic Parent topic Child topic Next topic
This section is mainly about emissions and removals factors used in REDD+ estimation. In some cases modelling is involved, to establish allometrics, or more complex Tier 3 models. The section also refers to the model parameters relevant in these cases which are used for emissions and removals estimation but are not part of the activity data estimation. These parameters can be regarded as emission or removals factors in a general sense, although the equations in which they are used may be more complicated than a simple activity data x emission factor product.


Charles N. Haskell
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Charles Nathaniel Haskell
Governor haskell.JPG
1st Governor of Oklahoma
In office
November 16, 1907 – January 9, 1911
Lieutenant George W. Bellamy
Preceded by Frank Frantz
as Territorial Governor
Succeeded by Lee Cruce
Personal details
Born (1860-03-13)March 13, 1860
Leipsic, Ohio
Died July 5, 1933(1933-07-05) (aged 73)
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Resting place Muskogee, Oklahoma
Political party Democratic
Spouse(s) Lucie Pomeroy Haskell
Lillian Gallup Haskell
Profession teacher, lawyer
Religion Methodism
Charles Nathaniel Haskell (March 13, 1860 – July 5, 1933) was an American lawyer, oilman and the first governor of Oklahoma. As a delegate to Oklahoma's constitutional convention, he played a crucial role in drafting the Oklahoma Constitution and gaining Oklahoma's admission into the United States as the 46th state in 1907. A prominent businessman in Muskogee, Oklahoma, he helped the city to grow in importance. He represented the city as a delegate in both the Oklahoma convention and an earlier convention that was a failed attempt to create a U.S. state of Sequoyah.
During Oklahoma's constitutional convention, Haskell succeeded in pushing for the inclusion of prohibition and blocking the inclusion of women's suffrage in the Oklahoma Constitution. As governor, he was responsible for moving the state capital to Oklahoma City, establishing schools and state agencies, reforming the territorial prison system, and enforcing prohibition.
Lee Cruce succeeded Haskell, who died of a stroke in 1933.
Early life and education[edit]
Born in West Leipsic, Ohio on March 13, 1860, Charles Haskell was the son of George R. Haskell, a cooper who died when the boy was three years old. His mother, Jane H. Reeves Haskell, worked for the local Methodist church as a bell ringer and custodian to support the six children.[1] At the age of 10, he started working as a farm boy for a farmer named Miller in Putnam County, Ohio, where he lived and worked for eight years as he grew into adulthood. Miller was a school teacher, but as the young Haskell had to work, he did not have time to attend school. Instead, Miller's wife taught him at home and Haskell earned a teaching certificate at age 17.
Private career[edit]
Haskell became a teacher at age 18 and taught for three years in Putnam County. On December 6, 1880, he passed the bar exam, and became a practicing attorney at age 20 despite having no academic training in the field. In his work as an attorney, Haskell became one of the most successful lawyers in Ottawa, Ohio, the county seat, as well as one of the most prominent members of the Democratic Party in northwestern Ohio. In 1888, Haskell started work as a general contractor; for the next 16 years, his business career gave him an understanding of American industrialism. During this time, he lived in New York City and in San Antonio, Texas.[1]
Marriage and family[edit]
Haskell married Lucie Pomeroy, daughter of a prominent Ottawa family, on October 11, 1881. After they had three children together, she died in March 1888. Their children were Norman, who became a Muskogee lawyer; Murray, a bank cashier; and Lucie.[1]
Haskell remarried in 1889, to Lillie Elizabeth Gallup. They also had three children together: Frances, Joe and Jane.[1]
Move to Muskogee[edit]
Haskell moved to Muskogee, Oklahoma, where he would become a prominent resident.
With the Land Run of 1889 and the passage of the Organic Act in 1890, Oklahoma Territory was gaining importance on the national scene. Haskell moved his family to Muskogee, the capital of the Creek Nation, in March 1901. When he arrived, Haskell found Muskogee a dry, sleepy village of some 4,500 people. Upon his arrival a movement of building business blocks began and he built the first five-story business block in Oklahoma Territory.
Haskell organized and built most of the railroads running into Muskogee. He is said to have built and owned 14 brick buildings in the city. Through his influence, Muskogee grew to be a center of business and industry with a population of more than 20,000 inhabitants.[1] Haskell often told others that he hoped Muskogee would become the "Queen City of the Southwest."
His success earned him clout in the politics of Indian Territory and the attention of the Creek Nation. During this time, the Native American nations in Indian Territory were talking of creating a state and joining the Union under the name of the State of Sequoyah. The Creeks selected Haskell as their official representative to the conventions, in the position of vice-president for the Five Civilized Tribes, held in Eufaula, Oklahoma in 1902 and Muskogee in 1905. Of the six delegates at the Muskogee convention, all were of Native American descent, save two: Haskell and William H. Murray. Even though U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt blocked the attempt to create Sequoyah, Haskell wrote a large portion of the proposed state's constitution. Though Haskell publicly worked for a separate state for Indian Territory, privately, he was thrilled to see the Sequoyah proposal defeated. Haskell believed it would force the Indian leaders to join in statehood with Oklahoma Territory.
The United States Congress and President Roosevelt agreed that Oklahoma and Indian Territories could only enter the Union as one state, the State of Oklahoma. After the federal passage of the Enabling Act in 1906, Haskell was elected as a delegate by the largest margin in the new state, representing the seventy-sixth district, which included Muskogee. Traveling to Guthrie and the Oklahoma Constitutional convention on November 20, 1906, Haskell would meet William H. Murray from the Muskogee convention and Robert L. Williams. Because of their meetings at both conventions, Haskell would gain a friendship with Murray that would last until the end of his life.
The delegates to the Guthrie convention included many of those who had served in the Sequoyah convention in Muskogee, and a number of the ideas proposed for the new constitution were based upon the rejected Sequoyah constitution. Haskell owned the New State Tribune, and through its editorial columns advocated for the propositions he wanted in the new constitution, most of which were incorporated into the document, in substance if not in form. While Murray served as the convention's president, delegates recognized Haskell's power in the body. A local newspaper during the time, the Guthrie Report, called Haskell "the power behind the throne."
Haskell had a perfect attendance and voting record during the session. He advocated for provisions that affected both territories' labor problems and avocation for representatives of organized labor. Haskell also drafted a report drawing up county boundaries, led the crusade for state prohibition, introduced Jim Crow laws and successfully kept female suffrage out of the state constitution.
Gubernatorial campaign[edit]
William Jennings Bryan supported Haskell in his 1907 campaign.
At Tulsa on March 26, 1907, during the recess before the final adoption of the constitution by the convention, Haskell held a large Democratic Party banquet at the Brady Hotel, attended by between 500 and 600 of the leading Democrats of the new state. During this banquet, the first campaigns for governor were formally inaugurated. It was during the course of that evening that Haskell was presented by his friends with the honors of the Democratic gubernatorial candidacy. Among the other potential candidates were Thomas Doyle of Perry and Lee Cruce of Ardmore. Haskell, like other prominent Democrats at the time, had the strong support of labor and agriculture leaders.[2]
Unfortunately for Haskell, the primaries for governor were set for June 8, and Doyle and Cruce had already been campaigning; Haskell had little time. During his campaign, Haskell made 88 speeches in 45 days, and reached nearly every county, while the lieutenants of the respective candidates were vigorously working in the school districts and securing support in every community. Haskell's hard working nature led him to win the Democratic nomination. Haskell's victory in the primaries was carried by a more than 4,000-vote majority. He immediately confronted a new opponent in the opposite party, the Republican territorial governor, Frank Frantz, who was nominated by the Republican caucus at Tulsa.
Frantz, the current territorial governor, a former Rough Rider, a friend of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, and with the federal prestige and support backing him, was the strongest candidate the Republican party could have presented to face Haskell. Haskell challenged his opponent to joint public discussions throughout the state, and every problem concerned with the administration of the new state came up in debate during the campaign.
During the course of the campaign, two nationally prominent figures spoke at various locations: Republican presidential nominee William Howard Taft and Democratic presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan. Unfortunately for the Republicans, Taft's disapproval of Oklahoma's proposed constitution and his advice that the people vote against it caused the voters to react in favor of the Democrats. Haskell won the gubernatorial race by more than 30,000 votes on September 17, 1907.[1] On the same day, the voters ratified the Oklahoma Constitution.
After Haskell's election


text:
Data from the Meteosat satellite 36,000 km from Earth, has been used to measure the temperature of lava at the Nyiragongo lava lake in the Democratic Republic of Congo. An international team compared data from the Spinning Enhanced Visible and InfraRed Imager (SEVIRI) on board Meteosat with data collected at the lava lake with thermal cameras. Researchers say the technique could be used to help monitor volcanoes in remote places all over the world, and may help with the difficult task of anticipating eruptions.
Data from the Meteosat satellite has been used to measure the temperature of lava at a remote volcano in Africa.
The scientists compared data from the Spinning Enhanced Visible and InfraRed Imager (SEVIRI) on board Meteosat with ground data from a thermal camera, to show the temperature of the lava lake at Nyiragongo, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The technique was pioneered in Europe, and the researchers say it could be used to help monitor volcanoes in remote places all over the world.
"I first used the technique during a lava fountain at Mt Etna in August 2011," says Dr. Gaetana Ganci, who worked on the study with colleagues Letizia Spampinato, Sonia Calvari and Ciro Del Negro from the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) in Italy.
"The first time I saw both signals I was really surprised. We found a very similar radiant heat flux curve — that's the measurement of heat energy being given out — from the ground-based thermal camera placed a few kilometres from Etna and from SEVIRI at 36,000km above the Earth."
Transferring the technique to Nyiragongo was important — partly because the exposed lava lake can yield data important for modelling shallow volcanic systems in general, but more importantly because advance warning of eruptions is necessary for the rapidly expanding city of Goma nearby.
The research, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth is the first time in which Nyiragongo's lake has been studied using ground-based thermal images in addition to satellite data to monitor the volcano's radiative power record.
Dr. Ganci and her colleagues developed an algorithm they call HOTSAT to detect thermal anomalies in the Earth's surface temperature linked to volcanoes. They calculate the amount of heat energy being given out in a target area based on analysis of SEVIRI images.
Combining the frequent SEVIRI images with the more detailed but less frequent images from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), they showed that temperature anomalies could be observed from space before an eruption is underway. They believe that space-based observations can be a significant help in the difficult task of predicting volcanic eruptions, but that providing advance warning will never be easy.
"Satellite data are a precious means to improve the understanding of volcanic processes. There are cases of thermal anomalies being observed in volcanic areas just before an eruption," says Ganci. "Combining different kinds of data from the ground and from space would be the optimal condition — including infra-red, radar interferometry, seismic measurements etc. But even in well-monitored volcanoes like Mt. Etna, predicting eruptions is not a trivial thing."
The team developed HOTSAT with a view to making an automatic system for monitoring volcanic activity. They are now developing a new version of HOTSAT. This should allow the processing of all the volcanic areas that can be monitored by SEVIRI in near-real time.Continuing ground-based observations will be needed for validation.
"For remote volcanoes, such as Nyiragongo, providing reliability to satellite data analysis is even more important than in Europe. Thanks to ground-based measurements made by Pedro Hernández, David Calvo, Nemesio Pérez (ITER, INVOLCAN Spain), Dario Tedesco (University of Naples, Italy) and Mathieu Yalire (Goma Volcanological Observatory), we could make a step in this direction," says Ganci.
"This study shows the range of science that can be done with Meteosat," says Dr. Marianne Koenig, EUMETSAT's atmospheric and imagery applications manager for the Meteosat Second Generation satellites, "And opens up the possibility of monitoring isolated volcanoes."
Note : The above story is based on materials provided by European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT).