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A recent study published in the journal Cancer Causes & Control suggests there is a link between eating processed meat and breast cancer risk among Hispanic women. Study researchers combined harmonized data from two population-based case-control studies that included 1,777 cases involving 2,218 Hispanic subjects, as well as 1,982 cases involving 2,218 non-Hispanic white (NHW) women.
Among Hispanics, they observed an association between breast cancer risk and processed meat intake. For Latinas in particular, there was an association between consuming white meat and breast cancer risk (driven by poultry). Hispanic females who consumed approximately 20 grams of processed meat (i.e. a bacon strip) per day had a 42 % higher chance of being diagnosed with breast cancer compared to Hispanic women who ate no or very little processed meats.
Processed meats and poultry weren’t associated with breast cancer risk among NHW women and neither red meat nor fish were associated with breast risk in either ethnic groups. Among NHW subjects, researchers saw an association between tuna intake and risk of breast cancer.
Keep in mind that the evidence is limited and considered suggestive.
Meat-Eating Trends in the U.S.
Another study published in the journal Public Health Nutrition shows that overall meat consumption has continued to rise across the U.S. and the developed world. There’s a shift toward higher fowl consumption, but red meat represents a large proportion of meat consumed in the U.S (a whopping 58%).
Twenty-two percent of the meat eaten in the U.S. is processed, although the type and quantities of meat eaten differs by age, race, gender and education.
Just last fall, the World Health Organization declared a link between processed meat and colorectal cancer.
Sources for Today’s Article:
Kim, A.E., et al., “Red meat, poultry, and fish intake and breast cancer risk among Hispanic and Non-Hispanic white women: The Breast Cancer Health Disparities Study,” Cancer Causes Control, 2016 Feb 22; [Epub ahead of print].
Daniel, C. R., “Trends in meat consumption in the United States,” Public Health Nutrition, 2011;14(4): 575–583; doi: 10.1017/S1368980010002077. | <urn:uuid:f4e5a64b-725a-4ba3-90d3-2c10c1526607> | {
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The vampire shrimp (Atya gabonensis) is a shy and peaceful shrimp to keep in a community tank. It is also known as the Viper Shrimp, African Fan Shrimp, Giant African Filter Shrimp, African Filter Shrimp, or Gabon Shrimp.
If you have kept aquarium shrimp before, you will find it easy to rear the vampire shrimp. Keep in mind that copper is fatal for shrimps.
The vampire shrimp is indigenous to West Africa from Senegal to the Republic of Congo and the South American countries of Brazil and Venezuela. They are adapted to fast-flowing streams and rocky bottoms, and they are common in mangrove systems in their native habitats.
The shrimp will cling to rocks and use their fan-like front claws to catch floating algae and crustaceans.
Vampire Shrimp Appearance
The vampire shrimp will be about 1-3 inches in pet stores, and it will grow to a maximum length of 4.5 inches in captivity. Wild varieties can reach 5-6 inches.
This shrimp appears more heavily-built when compared to other aquarium shrimp. The vampire shrimp also features bumpy points on the sides of their legs and a large point at the end of the legs.
These points, in combination with the boxy appearance, gives the shrimp a menacing look. This appearance can be deceiving since the shrimp is docile and harmless.
The shrimp’s body has blue-ish grey tones, although its colors change over time. Other variations include white, pink, maroon, brown, and hints of green.
Your vampire shrimp will be unrecognizable after a molt, and it can even lose some of its colors. While molting will happen every 4-6 weeks, you might not spot the new shell every time.
Some aquarists can mistake the shed exoskeleton to be a dead shrimp. You can remove the exoskeleton and inspect the shell to be sure that your vampire shrimp is not dead.
Vampire Shrimp Tank Requirements
When keeping vampire shrimp, there are few things to consider such as tank size, substrate type, plants, filtration and lighting.
– Tank Size
The vampire shrimp picks food from the water, and they require a decent amount to feed. You can begin with a 20-gallon aquarium with dimensions at 30 × 12 × 12. You can keep 5 or 6 vampire shrimp in one tank.
When choosing a substrate, keep in mind that the fans on a vampire shrimp are susceptible to injury. You can use sand or fine gravel and add pebbles and large rocks. Do not keep them in bare-bottom tanks as the shrimp need something to hold onto.
– Plants and Decoration
Vampire shrimp are quite shy, and they love hiding places. Shelters are essential for shrimp because they are vulnerable after molting. Your vampire shrimp will sit in one spot as their exoskeleton hardens. The shrimp will typically create one cave that they will make bigger as they grow.
Live plants will create a jungle-like aesthetic in your aquarium and encourage the growth of the microscopic food that the shrimp will feed on. Use decorations and rocks to create places where the shrimp can retreat.
Vampire shrimp thrive in a blend of direct lighting and shade. To avoid startling your shrimp, use LED lights that have an auto sunrise and sunset setting. If you notice that your vampire shrimp only comes out at night, select an LED light with a soft moonlight glow that will encourage them to come out and feed.
Vampire Shrimp Water Conditions
Vampire shrimp will not do well with chlorinated water, and you should condition your tap water before draining it into the aquarium. The aquarium should be mature and established with water parameters around the tropical range.
The ideal temperature range is 75-85ºF with the PH at 6.6-7.5. Ensure that the KH level does not go below 3 to maintain the correct PH range.
Nitrite and ammonia are fatal to vampire shrimp, and they must be kept at 0ppm. Nitrate levels should not exceed 20 ppm.
You do not want to keep your vampire shrimp in an aquarium that is too ‘clean’ since it feeds on micro-organisms and any other edible matter in the water. This does not mean that the shrimp do not need high-quality water.
Filters are vital in a vampire shrimp tank because they love strong currents. They use their fans to capture the food particles in the currents. A Hang-on-Back filter will suit smaller setups, and you can invest in powerheads and air-stones. The shrimp hold onto rocks with their claws to withstand water currents.
Vampire Shrimp Diet and Feeding
The shrimp is omnivorous, and it does not have any specific feeding adaptation. You can use shrimp and algae tablets as the primary diet and alternate with freeze-dried foods. Release the food close to their hiding spots.
Squeeze the filter sponge into the water as the shrimp will love feeding on the floating gunk. The ideal aquarium of the vampire shrimp should have high populations of micro-organisms and diatoms. Feed the shrimp every two to three days since you cannot see microscopic foods in the water. Too much of it will result in water quality issues.
Vampire Shrimp Tank Mates
The vampire shrimp is incredibly peaceful in a community set up. A vampire shrimp will establish a ‘home’ in the aquarium, where they will spend most of their time. They can become stressed if they cannot find their favorite cave, and you should not alter the tank’s décor in any way.
The vampire shrimp is compatible with shrimp like ghost, red cherry, bamboo, amano, pearl, and bumblebee. You can couple them with peaceful tropical fish like swordtails, mollies, tetras, and platies. Avoid larger fish and bullying fish that are known to pick on shrimp.
Vampire Shrimp Breeding
Breeding vampire shrimps is incredibly tricky, and the aquarium trade relies on wild-caught species. There is almost no successful account of the successful breeding of this shrimp.
The problem is that the larvae take a long time to develop into juveniles, and this process is only successful in saltwater. They will need to be gradually moved to freshwater and any mistake will result in the death of the shrimp.
Vampire shrimp are not very common, but they are a fascinating addition to a community tank. They are mostly harvested in the wild, which has made them endangered.
If you are going to keep the shrimp, therefore, give it the best water conditions so that they thrive. | <urn:uuid:0d2c8b55-03dc-4ce1-863d-827fde359d5c> | {
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This paper was presented at the International Conference on Reproductive
Health, Mumbai (India), 15-19 March 1998, jointly organised by the Indian Society for the
Study of Reproduction and Fertility and the UNDP/UNFPA/WHO/World Bank Special Programme of
Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction.
March 18, 1998
Rights to Sexual and Reproductive Health - the ICPD and the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
by Dr. Carmel Shalev, expert member, CEDAW*
: human rights; gender discrimination; equality; autonomy; choice; informed consent; confidentiality; CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women)
The ICPD recognised womens rights to reproductive and sexual health as being key to womens health. The basis for these rights can be found in various articles of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. This paper examines the textual framework of womens rights to sexual and reproductive health as expressed in this and other international human rights documents. Rights to reproductive and sexual health include the right to life, liberty and the security of the person; the right to health care and information; and the right to non-discrimination in the allocation of resources to health services and in their availability and accessibility. Of central importance are the rights to autonomy and privacy in making sexual and reproductive decisions, as well as the rights to informed consent and confidentiality in relation to health services. The paper is illustrated by issues that reflect systemic violation of the above rights in varied forms, including maternal mortality, lack of procedures for legal abortion, inadequate allocation of resources for family planning, coercive population programs, spousal consent to sterilization, and occupational discrimination of pregnant women. Country examples are taken from States Parties periodic reports under the Womens Convention.
Materials and Methods
The ICPD Programme of Action
The Womens Convention
Health-Related Rights Under The Womens Convention
Equality, Discrimination and Difference
Social Construction of Difference
Illustrations - From the General to the Particular
Non-Discrimination in Allocation of Resources
The Right to Life
Reproductive Choice - Abortion
Reproductive Choice - Family Planning
Equality Before the Law
Women in Vulnerable Situations
The International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo in 1994 marked the acceptance of a new paradigm in addressing human reproduction and health. For the first time, there was a clear focus on the needs of individuals and on the empowerment of women, and the emergence of an evolving discourse about the connection between human rights and health, linking new conceptions of health to the struggle for social justice and respect for human dignity.
The new attention to human rights in the ICPD marked a departure from the previous approach that treated women instrumentally, as tools through which to implement population programmes and policies. The reproductive health and rights approach adopted at ICPD is premised on a view that values women intrinsically and is genuinely concerned about their health and well-being. Womens reproductive capacity was transformed from an object of population control to a matter of womens empowerment to exercise personal autonomy in relation to their sexual and reproductive health within their social, economic and political contexts. Womens health in general, and their sexual and reproductive health in particular, are determined not only by their access to health services but by their status in society and pervasive gender discrimination. The ICPD thus posits the human rights of women - their right to personal reproductive autonomy and to collective gender equality - as a primary principle in the development of reproductive health and population programs.
The purpose of this paper is to elaborate the nature and scope of rights related to womens sexual and reproductive health, by examining the legal texts from which they emanate, in particular the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. The meaning of these texts is illustrated through concrete examples of violations of the rights guaranteed thereunder, finding expression in country reports submitted within the monitoring mechanism of the Convention. The analysis is brought under two broad headings: personal autonomy, as derived from the right to liberty and including the right to life and to reproductive choice and informed consent; and gender equality as a component of social distributive justice in the allocation of resources.
Materials and Methods
The rights recognised in the ICPD are based in various international human rights treaties. This paper examines the textual framework of womens rights in relation to sexual and reproductive health as expressed in these texts. Of major importance is the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (hereinafter - the Womens Convention), which contains many provisions formulating rights that have direct and indirect bearing upon womens sexual and reproductive health.
After a brief analysis of the concepts of "autonomy" and "equality" in the context of seuxal and reproductive health, the paper illustrates some concrete instances of systemic violations of womens sexual and reproductive health rights that are indicative of contemporary patterns in different parts of the world. The examples are taken from the reports of States Parties submitted in fulfilment of their obligations under the Convention, and considered by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (hereinafter - the CEDAW Committee) at its 18th session in January 1998. At this session the Committee considered official reports submitted by governments of eight States Parties: Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, the Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Mexico and Zimbabwe. It also took note of unofficial information provided independently by international and national non-governmental organizations - known as "shadow reports" - in accordance with the practice of the Committee, as of other human rights treaty bodies.
The issues presented in these materials include equality in the allocation of resources, the right to life, reproductive choice in relation to abortion and family planning, the right to informed consent, and equality before the law. Finally, the situation of women in vulnerable situations is given separate consideration.
I must stress that this paper is not intended in any way to single out the countries under discussion. In every society there exist multiple forms of violations of human rights. The presentation of the examples in this paper illustrates merely some of this diversity, and does not even exhaust the situation in the countries under consideration. The use of reports submitted to the CEDAW Committee shows how the reporting mechanism of the human rights treaties can serve to develop standards of human rights jurisprudence in international law and to sensitize us to the meaning of the rights guaranteed under the international instruments.
I must emphasise further that the views expressed in this paper are my own, and are in no way to be taken as an official statement of the CEDAW Committee as such.
The ICPD Programme of Action
The Programme of Action adopted at the ICPD is a consensus document, the end product of a process of negotiation and compromise involving over 180 States. A separate chapter addresses gender equality and empowerment of women, placing the eradication of sex discrimination as a priority objective of the international community in relation to policies and programs of population and development. Chapter VII, entitled "Reproductive Rights and Reproductive Health", articulates the principle of autonomy and is also central.
Reproductive health is defined in paragraph 7.2 of the Programme of Action as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being ... in all matters related to the reproductive system", which "implies that people are able to have a satisfying and safe sex life and that they have the capability to reproduce and the freedom to decide if, when and how often to do so."
The ICPD referred to the term "reproductive rights" as embracing "certain human rights that are already recognized in ... international human rights documents and other consensus documents". The most mentionable "consensus documents" are the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Declaration and Programme of Action of the World Conference on Human Rights, Vienna, June 1993.
The human rights already recognized in "international human rights documents" include "the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health" as guaranteed by Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1964) (ICESCR). Other health-related human rights fall within the scope of certain fundamental freedoms protected under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1964) (ICCPR). These include the right to life, the right to liberty and security of the person, and the right to privacy, to mention just a few. In addition, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1978) (known as CEDAW and hereinafter referred to as the Womens Convention) is particularly pertinent to the enjoyment of sexual and reproductive rights.
Reproductive rights, according to the ICPD, "rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health." The language is taken from Article 16(1)(e) of the Womens Convention, which states that States Parties shall ensure on a basis of equality of men and women:
"the same rights to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children, and to have access to the information, education and means to enable them to exercise these rights."
Reproductive rights, according to the ICPD, also include the right "to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence, as expressed in human rights documents." This aspect of reproductive rights can also be derived from the Womens Convention.
Before proceeding to examine the Convention more closely, it is worth noting that a subsequent consensus document of the international community, that is, the Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women (FWCW), held in Beijing in 1995, reiterated the paradigm shift of the ICPD. One of the critical areas of concern identified at the Beijing Conference referred to inequalities and inadequacies in access to health care and related services, adopting a life cycle approach to womens health from infancy to old age. The Beijing Declaration stated that "the explicit recognition and reaffirmation of the right of all women to control all aspects of their health, in particular their own fertility, is basic to their empowerment". The Platform for Action adopted at Beijing included one notable addition to the ICPD in further explicating womens human rights in respect of their sexuality.
The Womens Convention
Both the ICPD and the FWCW acknowledged the intrinsic relation of gender equality to womens health, including sexual and reproductive health. Both of these are consensus documents, expressing political will. As opposed to this, international human rights documents - treaties or conventions - are sources of international law, and as such are considered to be legally binding. The Womens Convention is the core human rights treaty to address discrimination against women, and is sometimes referred to as the international bill of womens rights. In general, States Parties to the Convention undertake to pursue a policy of eliminating discrimination in all its forms, and to guarantee women the exercise and enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms on a basis of equality with men. Its covers all areas of womens lives in both the public and private spheres, including discrimination in relation to the right to health and health services.
The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (the CEDAW Committee) is established under article 17. It is composed of 23 expert members elected by States Parties from among their nationals and serving in their personal capacity. The Committees main function is to monitor implementation of the Convention by considering periodic reports submitted by States Parties on the measures they have adopted to give effect to the provisions of the Convention and on the progress made in this respect. The Committee may also make general recommendations based on the examination of reports and information received from the States Parties. Some of these general recommendations address formal matters, such as the reporting obligations of States Parties, while others are explications of substantive matters and constitute authoritative interpretations of the rights guaranteed under the Convention.
Health-Related Rights Under The Womens Convention
As already mentioned, article 16(1)(e) of the Convention guarantees the right to decide on the number and spacing of children, but that is only one of the articles that address
womens rights in relation to health. Article 12 is central. It formulates (in paragraph 1) States Parties obligation "to take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in the field of health care in order to ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women, access to health care services, including those related to family planning." It further stipulates (in paragraph 2) their undertaking to "ensure to women appropriate services in connection with pregnancy, confinement and the post-natal period, granting free services where necessary, as well as adequate nutrition during pregnancy and lactation."
It should be noted that the Womens Convention is the only one of the six human rights treaties in the United Nations system to mention family planning. In addition to the aforementioned articles, the right of access to specific educational information and advice on family planning is guaranteed under article 10(h). And article 14(b) specifies, in particular, the right of women in rural areas to have access to adequate health care facilities, including information, counselling and services in family planning. The Convention also refers to womens right to protection of health and to safety in working conditions, including "the safeguarding of the function of reproduction", in article 11(1)(f).
Many other provisions of the Convention have an implicit or indirect bearing on womens rights in relation to health, some of which have been explicated in the General Recommendations of the CEDAW Committee in relation to female genital mutilation; sexual violence; HIV/AIDS; and reproduction.
Before examining concrete instances of violations of health-related rights, I would like to clarify the meaning of two key concepts: autonomy and discrimination.
Autonomy means the right of a woman to make decisions concerning her fertility and sexuality free of coercion and violence. Much turns on our understanding of coercion and violence. Key to this is the notion of choice. In health care contexts, the rights to informed consent and confidentiality are instrumental to ensuring free decision making by the client. These rights impose certain correlative duties upon health care providers and deliverers of services. They are bound to disclose information of proposed treatments and their alternatives so as to obtain the informed consent of the client, and they must respect her right to refuse treatment. Likewise, they are bound to maintain secrecy so as to allow her to make private decisions without the interference of others whom she has not chosen to consult, and who might not have her best interests at heart. "Autonomy" also means that a woman seeking health care in relation to her fertility and sexuality is entitled to be treated as an individual in her own right - the sole client of the health care provider, and fully competent to make decisions concerning her own health. This is a matter, among other things, of the womans right to equality before the law as to her legal capacity.
As mentioned earlier, the human right of women to control their fertility and sexuality free of coercion is guaranteed implicitly by the Womens Convention. The right to autonomy in making health decisions in general, and sexual and reproductive decisions in particular, derives from the fundamental human right to liberty. The word "autonomy" itself is not mentioned expressly in the Convention, but the value of autonomy is certainly implicit in the fundamental freedoms it guarantees to women, on a basis of equality with men. Autonomy is intimately and intrinsically connected with many fundamental human rights, such as liberty, dignity, privacy, security of the person, and bodily integrity. These form the basis for asserting rights to informed consent and confidentiality in relation to health services and health care. Moreover, article 15 guarantees womens right to equality before the law and to full legal capacity. This includes womens right to make free and informed decisions about health care, medical treatment and research. Women have the right to be fully informed of their options in health care, including likely benefits and potential adverse effects of proposed methods of treatment and available alternatives, including the option of refusing treatment.
One of the most eloquent explications of the meaning of "autonomy" is that of Isaiah Berlin in his essay, Two Concepts of Liberty. For Berlin "liberty" in the ordinary sense is a "negative" right to freedom, in that one is entitled to be free in certain areas from the interference of others. "I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no man or body of men interferes with my activity." But "liberty" also has a "positive" sense. It is not merely freedom "from" but freedom "to". This positive right to freedom is "autonomy", in the sense that one is entitled to recognition of ones capacity, as a human being, to exercise choice in the shaping of ones life.
"This positive sense of the word liberty derives from the wish on the part of the individual to be his own master. I wish my life and decisions to depend on myself, not on external forces of whatever kind. I wish to be the instrument of my own, not of other mens, acts of will. I wish to be a subject, not an object; to be moved by reasons, by conscious purposes, which are my own, not causes which affect me, as it were, from outside. I wish to be somebody, not nobody; a doer - deciding, not being decided for, self-directed and not acted upon by external nature or by other men as if I were a thing, or an animal, or a slave incapable of playing a human role, that is, of conceiving goals and policies of my own and realizing them. This is at least part of what I mean when I say that I am rational, and that it is my reason that distinguishes me as a human being from the rest of the world. I wish, above all, to be conscious of myself as a thinking, willing, active being, bearing responsibility for my choices and able to explain them by references to my own ideas and purposes. I feel free to the degree that I believe this to be true, and enslaved to the degree that I am made to realize that it is not."
Equality, Discrimination and Difference
The second concept that deserves some explication is that of discrimination. Equality implies non-discrimination, and discrimination is violation of the right to equality. Article 1 of the Convention defines the term discrimination against women as any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field" (emphasis added - CS).
Two comments are in place. First, the Convention adopts an "effect" approach, whereby discrimination is condemned even if it is not purposeful. This is of particular significance in the area of health, where much of the discrimination is evident in differences in the health status of women and men, but is the result of certain patterns of behavior, sometimes described as "natural". These patterns persist by the mere inertia of habit if no intervention is undertaken for the removal of discriminatory barriers, or if we fail to pay attention to the factors that comprise the "real" differences - some biological or physiological, and some social - between women and men in relation to their health. It should be mentioned in this context that the Committee has noted that discrimination under the Convention is not restricted to action by or on behalf of governments. This means that states may also be responsible for acts of discrimination perpetrated in the private sphere by non-governmental actors, including health care providers.
The second comment is that the definition of discrimination under the Convention applies to all women, irrespective of their marital status. This is of significance in two respects. First, it expresses the underlying recognition of the institution of marriage as constructing womens social status, which is relevant in the health area, where women are sometimes denied care and services because they are not married. Second, it also gives expression to an underlying theme of feminist theory on gender equality - that equality is not a matter of a womans personal relations with men, but rather a matter of womens discrimination, as a group, in a society that is structured collectively by gendered patterns of power (one of which is the traditional marital relation).
The area of health is particularly interesting in terms of equality theory because of what has already been noted: "real" differences between women and men - some biological (or physiological), and some social. Womens health needs are different from mens due to both biological differences and societal factors. This is particularly true as regards womens reproductive and sexual health, not only because biological differences are of the essence, but also because discrimination against women is closely associated with prejudices and stereotypes based on patriarchal notions of womens sexual and reproductive roles and functions.
Social Construction of Difference
While the Convention acknowledges the maternal function of women, social and cultural patterns of conduct often glorify motherhood in a manner that circumscribes womens right to autonomy in exercising life choices. Cultural and religious attitudes may value women according to their ability to produce children. Their health may consequently be jeopardized by repeated pregnancies spaced too closely together, often as the result of efforts to produce male children. Women who have not borne children may be cast out of marriages on the assumption that they, rather than their male partners, are infertile. Women may be denied access to health care that is unrelated to their reproductive functions, and their health needs may be considered secondary to those of their children or, in the case of pregnant women - to the health of their fetuses.
Stereotypes of womens sexuality underlie codes of chastity that circumscribe womens freedom of movement and their participation in public life. Certain practices harmful to womens health are related to discriminatory attitudes about womens sexuality that deny them the right to a satisfying sex life. These entail unnecessary interventions, such as female genital mutilation, forced virginity examinations and hymen repair. Womens sexuality is frequently subordinated to the satisfaction of male needs, exposing them to risks of sexual abuse and violence. As a consequence of unequal power relations based on gender, women and girls are often unable to refuse sex or negotiate safe sex; they therefore face risks of contracting sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS.
While such social phenomen are clearly mediated by gender discrimination, health-related discrimination might be attributed in part to biological differences between women and men. Contemporary feminist legal theory propounds that the principle of gender equality takes into account such difference, rather than requiring women to meet standards set by a male model. Equality requires that we treat the same interests without discrimination, and also that we treat different interests in ways that respect those differences. Failure to take into account the special health needs of women, so as to ensure their access to appropriate health information and services, constitutes discrimination. Equality is not a formal matter of guaranteeing to women the same rights as men and combatting purposeful discrimination, but rather a substantive matter of ensuring the effective enjoyment of equal outcome in health status and well being. Womens rights to health and health care on a basis of equality with men encompass both comparable health needs as well as sex-specific health needs. Failure to allocate resources or to ensure the provision of services for womens special health needs, in addition to those common to women and men, is discriminatory.
Illustrations - From the General to the Particular
This then is the legal context within which we are to address womens rights in relation to reproductive and sexual health. The text of the Convention is abstract, and expresses principles that are to serve as guides for conduct. What meaning do they have in actual practice? The Convention imposes a duty under international law to respect, protect and fulfil the human rights articulated thereunder. In an ideal world the aspirations of the legal norms would be observed, but the reality is such that they are not observed. Violations of these standards take different forms at different times and in different places. As mentioned, the following examples of some contemporary patterns of rights violations are taken from reports considered by the CEDAW Committee at its 18th session.
Non-Discrimination in Allocation of Resources
The issue of distributive justice in the allocation of resources for health is of major concern throughout the world, given the rising costs of medical technology and budget cuts often associated with programs of structural adjustment. Too often womens health needs are the first to be affected. The bias against the allocation of resources necessary to provide health services to meet womens special needs, is a form of gender discrimination. This is illustrated well in those countries characterised as "economies in transition".
In Croatia, for example, contraception was the first medication to be removed from state funding in a comprehensive public health system within budget cuts resulting from economic constraints, as was abortion the first medical procedure to be removed from otherwise free health services. Similarly, in Bulgaria - where the government reported that the number of abortions was considerably higher than that of births - it was noted that family planning education was inefficient due to the economic situation in the country, with its free-of-charge health care system suffering from the economic crisis of the transition period.
Cuts in budgets in Azerbaijan resulted in a decrease in the number of maternity health centers. In addition, despite the fact that maternity care was officially provided free-of-charge by a state-funded health system, there had developed an informal fee-for-service practice which made hospital delivery unaffordable to many women and resulted in a rise in the number of home births. At the same time Azerbaijan reported that maternal mortality rates had increased five-fold between 1990 and 1995.
The Right to Life
Indeed, discrimination against women is a significant factor in the high numbers of deaths and complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. Failure to provide maternal health services often reflects the low priority attached to womens special needs in the allocation of resources. Maternal mortality and morbidity can largely be avoided through the provision of reproductive health services, including contraception, safe abortion, and essential and emergency obstetric care. The most obvious human right violated by avoidable death in pregnancy or childbirth is womens fundamental right to life itself. It is arguable that the core minimum content of governments obligations under international human rights instruments is to provide access to affordable quality health services that would prevent maternal mortality.
In Indonesia, the government appeared to be in violation of its core responsibility to provide safe maternal health services: it attributed the high maternal mortality rate to deliveries by traditional birth attendants, which amount to almost 64% of the total. The report explained that many women prefer home births "due to convenience, low cost and flexible payment arrangements, the aftercare offered and the comfortable atmosphere prevailing in home deliveries". But it is arguable that "customer preference" should not relieve government of its obligation to respect, protect and fulfil womens right to life.
While the case of Azerbaijan illustrates violation of the right to affordable services, in the Dominican Republic there appeared to be a violation of the right to quality of care. The actual rate of maternal mortality was not known until recently, due to the unreliability of health statistics in general and the lack of sex-disaggregated data in particular, but in latter years there had been an increase in maternal deaths, despite the prevalence of prenatal care and hospital births. According to non-governmental sources, the high level of maternal mortality was due to the low priority accorded to womens reproductive health.
Reproductive Choice - Abortion
Unsafe abortion is also a major cause of maternal mortality and morbidity. States Parties reports to the Committee often fail to contain official data on this due to the illegal nature of abortion in many countries, but they consistently demonstrate a correlation between unsafe abortion and high rates of maternal mortality and morbidity, presented as haemorrhaging and complications of pregnancy.
Thus, Zimbabwe reported that haemorrhage and infection after abortion are major causes of death, though actual figures are not ascertainable given the illegality of abortion. The Dominican Republic, similarly, reported that "clandestine abortions" are the third leading cause of maternal death (following toxemia, and haemorrhages during childbirth), but noted "heavy underreporting".
There are grounds for the view that laws which criminalize health services that only women need - whether aimed at the persons who provide such services, or the women who receive them - are discriminatory as such. The criminalization of abortion is particularly heinous, because it not only impairs womens right to reproductive choice - to make free and responsible decisions concerning matters that are key to control of their lives - but also exposes them to the serious health risks of unsafe abortion, violating their rights to bodily integrity and, in the most extreme cases, to life itself.
In many countries there are exceptions to the criminal norm, allowing for legal abortion in limited circumstances, such as in cases of danger to the life of the mother (or the fetus), or where pregnancy has resulted from rape. In Indonesia, however, rape does not constitute grounds for legal abortion, which means that the state is effectively compounding the sexual violence targeted at the woman by forcing her to carry the resultant pregnancy.
Reproductive Choice - Family Planning
The right to reproductive choice means that women have a right to choose whether or not to reproduce, including the right to decide whether to carry or terminate an unwanted pregnancy and the right to choose their preferred method of family planning and contraception. A violation of this right was revealed by a nongovernmental report on widespread pregnancy based discrimination against women employed in Mexicos export-processing (maquiladore) sector. A fact-finding mission investigating allegations of the practice, found that all women applying for work in this sector were routinely required to undergo pregnancy testing for screening, and that employed women were forced to resign when they became pregnant. In some factories women were obliged to show sanitary napkins to company nurses as a condition of ongoing employment. The report concluded that such practices penalize women for exercising reproductive choice, and inherently compromise their ability to decide freely on the number and spacing of their children, and that the government of Mexico was responsible to ensure that such employment practices cease.
The right to family planning education, information and services is key to reproductive choice, and central to womens sexual and reproductive health, especially given the risk of maternal mortality and the illegality of abortion in many countries.
Family planning services are particularly important where abortion is illegal. In the Dominican Republic, abortion is illegal, but birth control education is provided only by non-governmental organisations. Arguably, where the state does not allow for safe legal abortion, its core obligation is to at least provide itself those family planning services that guarantee women their right to exercise reproductive choice.
Even in countries where abortion is legal, prevention of pregnancy is preferable to termination in terms of womens health. However, in many instances the legal option of abortion is not supported by adequate family planning measures. In the Czech Republic, for example, the government noted the high incidence of induced abortions as a major public health problem, mirroring the inadequate use of contraception. However, the costs of contraception are only partly covered by the general health insurance scheme (reflecting, perhaps, discrimination in the allocation of resources, considering that these are services only women need). The Government also pointed out that health care personnel sometimes lack sufficient knowledge of contraception.
In other instances, there is a gap between the de iure (legal) protection of reproductive choice and the de facto (actual) situation, and governments might be held accountable for unauthorised violations of legal rights by health care personnel. In Zimbabwe, for example, where abortion is legal in only limited circumstances, the government subsidizes the costs of contraceptives and there are no legal restrictions on the provision of family planning services to minors. Yet the governmental report stated candidly that "it is not unusual for health personnel to turn away sexually active school girls requesting contraception on the grounds that the girls are still to young to indulge in sexual intercourse or that they are not married and therefore have no need for contraceptives." Teenage pregnancy appears to be, nonetheless, a major problem. It is worth noting further in this context, that the cumulative data on the incidence of HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe show that in the 15-19 age group, infection among females accounts for 84% of the cases. Clearly, sexual and reproductive health education, information and services is essential for adolescent girls. Mexico, in its report, expanded upon the negative health and social effects of a high rate of teenage pregnancy. It noted inadequate sex education and information as one of the causes, despite an official policy to provide information and high quality services for pregnant adolescent girls.
The report from Mexico demonstrated another instance of the gap between the legal situation and actual practice, that is, between the de iure and the de facto implementation of the Convention. While the Federal Constitution recognises the right to reproductive choice, and while the law provides for family planning services as basic health services provided by the government, one study has shown that only two contraceptive methods are offered: IUD and surgical sterilization. Furthermore, while the law provides that consent to sterilization must be given freely and voluntarily in writing, according to one study, one fourth of sterilized women claimed not to have been informed of its irreversible nature or of alternative contraceptive methods, and two fifths claimed not to have signed a consent form. In addition, there was at least one case in which the ovaries of a woman suffering from an undiagnosed urinary tract infection were removed without her knowledge. Interestingly enough, the representative of the Government of Mexico stated in her oral presentation to the CEDAW Committee, that most of the complaints submitted to a newly established Medical Arbitration Board during the first year of its operation concerned gynecological care.
In extreme cases, violations of womens right to autonomy and informed consent in relation to reproductive health care amount to outright coercion. Indonesia provides an unfortunate example. There the government adopted a rigorous and effective family planning program resulting in a significant decline in fertility rates, which was presented in the State Partys report as one of the most successful in the world. According to nongovernmental sources, however, women have not been allowed choice as to contraceptive method, nor have they been given information as to side effects of methods provided by the government. Moreover, there have been recurring reports of coercive practices employed by local officials attempting to meet target quotas set by government, often involving military and police officials in rounding up women in villages and forcing them to accept contraception. According to one study, IUDs were inserted at gunpoint for those who refused.
Equality Before the Law
Indonesia also requires spousal authorisation for certain reproductive health procedures, in violation of womens right to full legal capacity in relation to informed consent and to confidentiality in health care. There a woman cannot choose to be sterilised without her spouses consent. In addition, though abortion is illegal, it may be undergone where the mothers life is in danger, except that the agreement of "the husband or the members of the family" is required in addition to that of the pregnant woman. Failure to acknowledge womens competence to consent to health care is a violation of their right to equality before the law.
Another example of violation of womens right to equality before the law relates to procedures for legal abortion. Even where there do exist grounds for lawful abortion in limited circumstances, there may not be adequate legal procedures to ensure womens enjoyment of their legal rights. In Zimbabwe, for example, there was one case of a pregnancy resulting from rape, in which the request for permission to undergo abortion dragged on in court to such an extent that the permission was eventually granted one month after the woman had given birth. In Mexico, abortion is in the jurisdiction of the several states, with varying exceptions to the criminal rule, but there are no legal procedures whatsoever for establishing the circumstances that fall within the exceptions and would allow for a legal abortion. Moreover, even though the woman herself may be liable for punishment, it appears that prosecution may be avoided by the payment of a bribe.
Women in Vulnerable Situations
In recent years there has been a growing focus in human rights work on vulnerable groups. This has been a result of a new interest in economic and social rights and the concomitant concept of social justice. Whereas the previous emphasis on civil and political rights drew mainly from the concept of liberty and focussed on individuals as such, attention is now given to violations of rights of individuals as members of vulnerable groups within a given society. Thus, health practices and policies should be examined in light of the needs of the most disadvantaged groups in society. These include, among others, rural and marginal urban groups, women in situations of armed conflict, and women in prostitution.
Mexico indicated in its report the unmet need for contraception among rural women and the urban poor, while in Zimbabwe, according to a non-governmental source, twenty percent of the population in rural areas does not have access to family planning or maternal health services despite the governments political will to provide such.
Women in situations of armed conflict are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence and torture, with the health consequences of mental harm, susceptibility to sexually transmitted disease and related reproductive health problems, including unwanted pregnancy. As a result of such abuse, women may be isolated, stigmatized and rejected by their families and communities. Women are often reluctant to report these violations because they are felt to be shameful, as indicated by a non-governmental report on women in East Timor.
Women who are internally displaced as a result of armed conflict may have limited access to reproductive health services. Thus, a study of women in five internally displaced person settlements in Azerbaijan, conducted by a United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees reproductive health field worker, found that women overwhelmingly consider family planning as a primary health concern, but that there had been bureaucratic hurdles to supplying condoms. Similarly, in Croatia, it appeared that refugee women were not legally entitled to all the services provided under the comprehensive publicly funded health care scheme.
Women in prostitution are significantly marginalised in all societies and are at an extremely high risk of suffering rape and other forms of violence. This is of increasing concern, given the alarming growth in the international trafficking in women and girls. At the same time, they are often singled out for discriminatory treatment by public health programs that fail to address the broader concerns and underlying determinants of the issue under concern. In Indonesia, for example, the Department of Social Affairs disseminates information on the danger of HIV/AIDS "in the vicinity of the location of prostitutes", while there have been reports that under sporadic urban "cleansing" programs, women detained as suspected prostitutes are at risk of being forced to undergo vaginal examinations during interrogation.
It should be noted that health professionals are often in a position to identify the health consequences of sexual violence, and should be able to respond effectively to the health needs of survivors. Bulgaria, for example, failed to include in its report any information on gender-based violence, but a non-governmental source received first hand evidence from health care professionals who considered it to be a serious problem, describing some cases as brutal.
All the above examples can be summarised as violations of one of three major human rights concepts - liberty, social justice and equality. The principle of liberty is key to notions of civil and political rights, while the principle of justice is key to notions of economic and social rights. The principle of equality is an overriding one. Questions of distributive justice arise in relation to the tragic economic choices that go to the fair allocation of scarce resources and the setting of priorities, and here we often find discrimination against women in the low priority given to their special sexual and reproductive health needs. But many of the issues raised by this paper go to the attitudes of policy makers and of health care providers in relation to their clients, and to the fundamental notion of respect for human dignity and the right to reproductive autonomy, which are not essentially a matter of economic cost.
Struggles over womens rights to sexual and reproductive health have been central in advancing womens human rights in general. Advocates of womens human rights have drawn attention to the ways in which womens status is fundamentally linked with the reduction of women, through social and political processes, to aspects of their physical selves. When reproductive health is understood to involve more than just the biological workings of a womans womb, we arrive at "women centered" approaches to sexual and reproductive health. This means trusting women as autonomous beings, able to take control over their sexual and reproductive lives and to make decisions on these matters on the basis of access to adequate information. A womans right to reproductive autonomy is often impaired because of her status in society. Enjoyment of this right depends on her right to act as an independent adult of full legal capacity to participate in civil society and to be free from discrimination in its various forms. Conversely, without the right of reproductive choice, all other human rights - civil and political, economic and social - have only limited power to advance the well-being of women.
Human rights are aspirations to full participation, equal membership and active involvement in society. Rights structure relationships of power, responsibility, trust and obligation. Rights empower people. They make us aware of our own power and of our responsibility to others less fortunate than us, especially to persons in the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups and situations. When we look around us and listen to the stories people tell, we learn ways in which we can exercise our own power and position to improve the lot of others. Thus a human rights to sexual and reproductive health is pertinent in diverse ways to policy makers, program designers, and providers.
The discourse of human rights does not provide any ready made answers to the problems and dilemmas that arise in any given context. Human rights are not absolute values in the sense that they trump all other considerations. Indeed, in some instances the rights of one person may be in conflict with the rights of another. But rights are absolute in the sense that they must be taken into consideration and balanced against other interests. In making and implementing law and policy, and in the delivery of services, the rule should be that violations of human rights may be justified only as measures of last resort, after all other possible means to achieve desired goals have been exhausted. Where several measures present themselves as comparably effective, there should be preference for that which is the least detrimental alternative in terms of its effect on the enjoyment of human rights. The process of deliberating among possible alternatives in terms of their effect on human rights, increases our sensitivity to the compromises we make in reality while aspiring to an ideal world in which human dignity is the paramount value.
The views presented in this paper are those of the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views and position of the United Nations. | <urn:uuid:fcc30393-979b-4d62-b74c-3ccd4cfbf473> | {
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Most of us have heard a variation on this story about the monkey but let’s revisit it.
Monkeys were stealing food from a village. So the natives devised gourds that would trap them. The gourds have a hole just large enough for the monkey’s hand to slip into. They then weight the gourd with sand and one piece of food. The trap is set. The monkey sticks his hand into the gourd in hope of getting the food — but with the prize in its grasp, the monkey cannot get its hand back out. The hole is too small for the monkey’s hand to pass through so long as it’s holding the treat, and the gourd is too heavy for the creature to carry. Because the monkey doubts that he can obtain this food another way that is less dangerous, it becomes trapped. The animal gives up its freedom to hold on to a small piece of food.
The monkey is the “Doubting Thomas” in this story. This is a phrase we use to describe people who are most often skeptical of what others have freely believed in and accepted.
Who is the Doubting Thomas in your life? Is it you? Are you the thumbs down at every change, adventure, or thought that goes against what’s comfortable?
“Hope is putting faith to work when
doubt would be easier.” Thomas S. Monson
When was the last time you said, “I doubt…”? Do you realize that this attitude could be removing hope from your life’s equation? By removing hope, we destine ourselves to a downward spiral – no end in sight. Without hope, there is no brighter, better future.
Most of us humans live with varying degrees of hope on any given day. Mine moves up and down although the older I get and more equipped with strategies, the less I swing on this chart.
COMMON HOPE EXAMPLES
- Our kid’s or grandkid’s sports team will win their game.
- The medical test will be negative.
- Someday we will feel loved and accepted by a significant other.
- We will have money to retire and not be a burden to our kids.
What Influences our degree of hope?
- Health/Physical well being
- The degree of acceptance we feel from others in our current situation
- Fear of being the outsider and rejected
In other words, if our physical and mental circumstances are pretty comfortable and we feel relatively healthy, accepted, and safe, our hope level will naturally be higher.
So, if our circumstances are less than where we NATURALLY feel hopeful, what can we change to get us back on the hopeful track? In other words, what’s in our control to change?
What’s in our control to change?
Change our environment
If being in your house or apartment is making you depressed, get out for a while. Get outside to a park where there’s natural beauty. Go to a museum where art is on display. Find an area where other people are in a more hopeful state-of-mind. Some examples would be a farmers market, concert, restaurant, or movie.
Reflect on better times
Talk about or physically write down times when you felt more hope.
- When you first fell in love
- Your child was young, and possibilities were endless
- You just accepted a new job or volunteer position that felt challenging but exciting and loaded with opportunity
Speaking or writing these “better times” is scientifically proven to have more significance for us than just thinking about them.
“Thoughts disentangle themselves over
the lips and through pencil tips.” Hyatt
Engage with hopeful people
This can be anyone you trust or believe is speaking truth into your life.
- Pastor – local congregation that is teaching scriptural truth
- Podcasts – people who are hopeful and uplifting
- Trusted friends and family who have your best interest at heart
Active Listening is paraphrasing, summarizing, questioning, and clarifying what you’ve heard. Its work, and it’s rewarding, and it is not auto-pilot.
In summary, there are things you can change to be more hopeful and to build faith into your life.
Hope gives us a more positive life perspective in general and gives each of us the opportunity to grow further than our current life environment and circumstances.
What one thing can you do this week to give yourself the gift of hope? Let us know in the comment box below or send us an email at [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:b5cb3c1c-cb20-4935-ad9e-584a30e84284> | {
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The Agnew Clinic is an oil painting produced in 1889 by American artist Thomas Eakins.
As the name suggests, The Agnew Clinic depicts Dr. Agnew who was performing a partial mastectomy in his Clinic. On the left-hand side of the painting, Dr. Agnew is standing holding a tool similar to a scalpel. With him, other doctors and a nurse are present around the patient. Other Doctors were Dr. J. William White, Dr. Joseph Leidy, and Dr. Ellwood R. Kirby. The first doctor is applying a bandage to the patient, the second one is taking note of the patient’s pulse while the last doctor was administering anesthetic. Mary Clymer is the nurse of Dr. Agnew who is standing between two doctors of the right observing the patient and doctors. The artist Thomas Eakins can also be found in this painting behind the nurse over the rightmost part of the painting.
This painting is very well compared with another painting of Thomas Eakins ‘The Gross Clinic’ which was painted fourteen years earlier compared to when this painting was completed. The Gross Clinic painting prospects a different scenario of the medical profession. Dr. Agnew had no blood drops on either of his white doctor’s coat or his scalpel.
Thomas Eakins earlier painting showed professionalism in the doctor’s clinic but this painting lacked this due to the fear and discomfort environment inside the clinic. Thus, the title of this painting was a hotly debated topic. It created controversy because the patient was a nude woman being watched by several other men. The dimensions of the painting The Agnew Clinic were 214 cm × 300 cm or 84 3⁄8 in × 118 1⁄8 in.
The work can be viewed at John Morgan Building at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania | <urn:uuid:a36e8fc5-6c98-45c4-8e73-ea309e9c1f59> | {
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Summary: A section of track which allows a train to reverse direction is a Reverse Loop, sometimes called a Balloon Track. These were used in place of a turntable to easily turn around a passenger train for the return trip, while maintaining the correct orientation of the cars. Electrically they represent a problem on the layout, as Rail A meets Rail B at the turnout. Careful wiring, installation of gaps, and a method of switching rail phase are required. Wyes also require this attention.
- When you heard about Digital Command Control and all its advantages they told you that you wouldn't need to worry about polarity issues and reversing sections.
- Not quite true!
Except for 3-rail track, all electric train layouts have to be specially wired when it comes to reversing sections of track. A reversing section allows an engine (or train) to enter in one direction, and leave on the same track heading back the way it came. Reversing sections include: wyes or triangles, turntables, and reversing loops.
Digital Command Control has phase issues, and a reversing section will cause a dead short if not wired correctly. With DCC, Rail B is held to ground while Rail A is Positive, which then flips (Rail A is held to ground and Rail B becomes Positive) to construct the DCC digital waveform.
Since DCC uses a digital signal on the rails to provide both commands and power to the decoders, there is no polarity issue, as the signal consists of only logical high and low values. There is no concept of polarity with digital, as there are no positive or negative values. The phase issue is that Rail A is always the logical opposite of Rail B.
In a traditional layout, a reversing section is insulated from the rest of the layout. It is powered through an independent reversing switch. The train enters the reversing section and, whilst the train was totally inside the reversing section, the power to the main line was reversed. When the train leaves the reversing section there is no display of sparks!
This must be done with DCC too. The difference is an automatic reverser can automate this process by throwing a 'soft' switch. As a train enters or leaves the reversing section, the reverser detects the short circuit caused by a train entering or leaving the isolated section and reverses the phase of the isolated reversing section of track. This happens quickly enough that the train continues on its way unimpeded. With DCC, direction of travel is determined by the decoder, not by the track.
This behavior has some side effects that bear consideration. First, a single reverser may be used to control more than one reversing section. The constraint is only one train may be entering or leaving reversing sections controlled by a single reverser at a time. Second, the reversing section must be long enough to contain all of the train that may trigger the short -- engines, cars with electrical circuitry, cars with conductive wheels. Care must also be taken that the current capacity of the booster and wiring is sufficient that the reverser detects the short in a timely manner and performs its function. If the booster or power management device acts too quickly things will not work well.
The LDT KSM-SG is different than most reverse-loop modules, the reversal phase of the reverse-loop will be performed without a short circuit due to two sensor-tracks located at the entrance and at the exit of the reverse-loop.
Application Example 1: Reverse Loop
The AR1 is Digitrax's product to provide automatic reversing of track phase whilst a train passes through a reversing section. Although the AR1 is used in these examples and diagrams, there are many other products from various manufacturers which work just as well (and some argue better) than the Digitrax AR1. We highly recommend you check out various reversing units from various manufacturers and vendors before making your final decision. A Frog Juicer can also be used in this application.
Connection is simple via the two pairs of wires: one feeds track power to the AR1 (shown on the right, above) and the other feeds from the AR1 to the loop. The gaps in the rails are essential: they isolate the two opposite phases of electric power (see DCC Tutorial (Power)). Electrical gaps must exist in both the places shown. These gaps can be made by using insulated rail joiners or cutting the rails and filling the gaps with an insulated material such as styrene. Other devices available on the market work in much the same way.
When a locomotive bridges the gap, rather than stalling or shorting out the track bus, the autoreverser switches the phase.
Application Example 2: Reversing Triangle or Wye
Whereas reversing loops are rare on full-sized railways, triangular junctions, or wyes are quite common. The AR1 can also be used for these. The triangle may connect to a separate line (as in full-sized practice) or may simply be a convenient spur siding.
A wye was often used to turn a locomotive where a turntable was not available.
The track feed connects to the AR1 input just as in the reversing loop case. The AR1 output feeds the spur. The two double gaps on the right (before the turnout) are essential to isolate the different power phases.
It is important to note that it is not possible to make any other feed connections to the spur other than via the AR1 unit.
- The double gap on the main line marked with an asterisk (*) is required if the turnout or points have a live frog.
Troubleshooting a Reverse Loop
Gaps are needed to isolate the loop from the track leading to it. They can be created using an insulated rail joiner to connect sections of track, or by cutting a gap with a razor saw.
- If the gap is created by cutting the rails, it is important to fill the gap with a non-conducting material such as styrene. Filling the gap with an appropriate thickness of styrene will prevent the gap from closing up during expansion cycles. While the expansion of your rail is not very much, it can be enough to close the gap. Movement of the benchwork during expansion and contraction can also contribute.
Carefully shaping the styrene filler can create an almost invisible gap in the rails. Just insert the spacer, use a little ACC to bond it to the rails, and shape it with files and knives.
The gaps must not be staggered to prevent other issues from occurring. Definite boundaries between the loop and the inbound/outbound track is required.
As with all trackwork, proper wiring is important. Poor wiring can impede the operation of an autoreverser by limiting the current flow. It requires a short circuit to happen before it will act, and enough current must flow to trigger it. The autoreverse unit must also be wired correctly, using the main power bus wiring. It should not be connected using light gauge wires directly to the track. Some auto reverse units may not work correctly if wired after a power management device.
Adjustments or changes may be needed to ensure it works, as some boosters may trigger faster than reverser. The reverser should be the first and only device to trigger when a phase mismatch occurs.
If the reverse loop is feed by a different booster than the lead in track, the use of a proper sized booster common is important. Limiting the current with poor wiring between the boosters could cause issues.
The auto reverser may need some adjustment to the trip point, if possible. If the trip current is too high, the unit may not react all the time, or only under certain conditions.
(Please use this area to list and provide links to devices which will handle reversing sections.)
- Digitrax PM42
- Digitrax AR1
- Lenz LK200 (In German)
- LDT KSM-SG
- MRC AD520
- OpenDCC Reverser
- Zimo MX7, MX7/3
- Power Shield X and OG-AR from DCC Specialties
- DCC Dual Frog Juicer and Auto-Reverser from Tam Valley
- KSM-SG-F by Littfinski DatenTechnik (LDT)
- NCE AR10 | <urn:uuid:4883f8ea-0e7f-4d57-80e9-0b297c6d91ab> | {
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“Good Proof.” The Evening and the Morning Star (Independence, Missouri) 2, no. 13 (June1833): 99.
NO people that have lived on this continent, since the flood, understood many of the arts and sciences, better that the Jaredites and Nephites, whose brief history is sketched in the book of Mormon. The facts following, from the Star in the West, is not only proof of their skill, but it is good proof, to those that want evidence, that the book of Mormon, IS TRUE.
In Rowan County, (N. C.) on the summit level of a piece of table land, in the first settlement of that section of the new world, a stone house was found, completely imbedded in the earth—even the funnel of the chimney was covered by the growth of the earth. This relic of antiquity, was discovered by one of the early planters in plowing up a piece of land. Finding some stone on a particular part of his farm, in a position which seemed to indicate the work of art, he fell to removing the same, and soon found he was taking off the funnel of a stone chimney. This circumstance excited the curiosity of the neighboring planters, who met and agreed to examine the edifice by excavating the earth from the stone wall. They soon found that the chimney was attached to a large stone house; by tracing the angles of the same, and digging to the very foundation, they found its dimensions to be 23 feet 11 inches, by 36 feet 3 inches, with a wall 15 feet in height, constructed with doors and windows according to the strict rules of architecture. At the foundation of this ancient edifice, which appeared to be built with much taste, was found relics of house-hold furniture, such as broken pieces of earthen pots, &c. which showed the arts of civilized life were well understood by the inhabitants of this antique dwelling place of human beings.
In Cincinnati, when excavating the earth, at the first settlement of that place, 27 feet below the surface was found an artificial peach and pear, cut out of stone, with a complete imitatiou of the stem and blossom end, which proved beyond the possibility of a doubt, that the skill of some human being had been exerted in imitation of nature’s beautiful works. | <urn:uuid:c69a72cb-ab7a-4980-9389-b399a2228444> | {
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Mathieu Orfila developed the science of modern toxicology, through his book Traite des Poisons, the examination of foodstuff and corpses for poison content. He was also the first to utilize a microscope to examine stains of blood and semen.
James Marsh, a chemist, was called in for the prosecution of a murder trial by a man named John Bodle, who had been accused of poisoning by arsenic-laced coffee. He developed a test for detecting arsenic, using ‘The Marsh Test’.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle began his release of a four-part series ‘Sherlock Homes’, which had a large influence in forensic science due to his character's use of methods such as fingerprints, serology, ciphers, trace evidence, and footprints long before they were commonly used by actual police forces.
Alphonse Bertillon provided a system of identification to be used on criminals, which comprised of using standardized data such as bodily measurements, color of eyes, hair and skin to determine an approximate appearance. This was named Photography: With an Appendix on Anthropometrical Classification and Identification, later dubbed the Bertillon system.
1892 - 1895
Francis Galton devised the first workable fingerprint classification system, using his studies of minutiae in prints to provide statistical evidence for uniqueness of individual prints. This was further developed in his two major works on the use of fingerprints in forensic investigations.
Hans Gross published Handbuch für Untersuchungsrichter, which helped to establish the science of forensics, especially in terms of a cross-transfer of evidence, such as dirt, fingerprints, carpet fibres, or hair.
Leon Lattes was an Italian scientist who was a professor at the institute of Forensic Medicine in Turin Italy. Lattes’ most prominent discovery was the use of a saline solution to restore dried blood into its original state in order to classify the blood type, this procedure is still used to this day. He also published a book based on clinical issues, heritability, paternity and grouping restored blood stains.
Calvin Goddard developed the term ‘Forensic Ballistics’, the science based on firearms and projectiles. He wrote an article on the use of comparison microscope with regards to firearms investigations, and later established the Bureau of Foreign Ballistics in New York City to provide identification services (for America).
Edmond Locard’s most prominent work is the formulation of Locard’s Exchange Principle (transfer of trace evidence between objects, ‘every contact leaves a trace’). He also had many contributions to dactylography and poroscopy (study of fingerprints and pores).
Walter McCrone was an American chemist who was a leading expert in microscopy. He was extremely well known for his work in the Shroud of Turin, the Vinland map and contributions to forensic science. He is the founder of the McCrone Research Institute, an organization that teaches and researches microscopy and crystallography. He wrote more than 600 technical articles and sixteen books in microscopy. He also expanded the use of microscopes to chemists, which had previously been used by biologists exclusively. | <urn:uuid:57b36546-ae30-4ea7-b584-4a604baa7368> | {
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DUE IN 5 HOURS FROM NOW.
Please read the following instructions and write a 3 pages essay.I have attached all the required reading resources.
Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals Section 2 The Categorical Imperative
Reminder this is a reading quiz. As usual, isolate the quotes from the text FIRST and then give your exegesis of the quotes in an interpretive paragraph to follow.
Explain Kant’s tirade against making happiness or the good life the basis for ethics, explain carefully his arguments on pp. 27-28 and their relation to the Monkey’s Paw and Pickle stories (to discuss in class).
Distinguish the self-contradiction test from the moral worth test. Can you pass the first without passing the second?
Explain all four examples of the categorical imperative test, (pp. 30-32) with the following in mind. Distinguish Kan t’s self-contradiction test from Grandma’s Theory of “what if everybody did that”? Explain the difference between the perfect duties of examples 1 and 2, and the imperfect duties of 3 and 4 and show that both compel assent from a perfectly rational and free will.
What is the real pay off of the self-contradiction test? What does it reveal in us that opens up the secret of the ethical universe according to Kant?
See Attached files please. and use primary sources ONLY.
THE Book: Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals , Ellington, trans. 3 rd Edition (Hackett, 1993).
please see the previous paper and write a new one.
the paper needs to be perfect because this is my last chance. try to be more clear and explain more and clear. this paper is short paper please make it has more info. let me know if you have any questions before you write the paper.
read the comment from the prof. (remember write a paper that explain clearly ) don’t write the same as this paper because the prof refused it. | <urn:uuid:62211f25-3422-41b9-bc53-51fe7126ff27> | {
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According to a recent study, a combination of meditation and hallucinogens can be used as a form of therapy to help individuals suffering from depression.
To many, the use of psychedelic psychotherapy is a new and unwelcome treatment method. However, a new study proves that psychedelics can be beneficial to individuals suffering from anxiety and depression.
While the exact reason is still unknown, the theory suggests that hallucinogens can cause individuals to quicken the thought processes and realization of a person, and this is crucial for making therapies work.
Psilocybin: The Magic Mushroom
The focus of the recent evidence is psilocybin, commonly found in psychedelic mushrooms. It has been proven to cause individuals to ease up on their social interactions and limit their focus on themselves.
A 2016 study found that psychotherapy combined with psilocybin created an antidepressant effect in patients diagnosed with life-threatening malignancies. The findings of this study were supported by another study conducted by researchers from Imperial College London. The researchers found that depressed individuals who no longer responded to conventional treatment showed positive results when given the combination treatment. The neuroimaging findings revealed that the drug has the capacity to switch off a brain component that regulates wakefulness.
Mindful Meditation: Harnessing its Power
Mindful meditation has long been known to have positive effects on people with anxiety and depression by boosting feelings of self-transcendence. A team of researchers from the University Hospital of Psychiatry Zurich studied the impact of joint therapy. For the study, a group of 39 Buddhist meditation practitioners joined a 5-day mindfulness retreat where a Zen teacher guided them. They followed strict schedules from morning to night time. They participated in sesshin, the practice of sitting meditations, mindful physical activities, and outdoor walking meditation. The study participants remained silent during the whole process. The team then gave psilocybin to some of the participants, while the rest received a placebo.
Through mindfulness scales and questionnaires, the researchers found that those who were given psilocybin had positive changes in their self-acceptance, empathy, and even psychosocial functioning. A follow-up showed that psilocybin increased the intensity of self-transcendence. The team concluded that these positive effects could have stemmed from the skills from the mindful meditation retreat – any negative impact of psilocybin was effectively blocked.
Can a Combination of Psychedelics and Meditation Help Treat Depression and Anxiety?
Depression and anxiety have become a growing concern. In fact, acute anxiety attacks are considered an emergency case. Caregivers often need to undergo training from a reputable emergency school like Newcastle Training (newcastletraining.com).
Given this fact, it is crucial for individuals suffering from debilitating depression and anxiety to find a new treatment plan that will help them cope with their condition. With this study, the researchers believe further studies are necessary. But what they found paves the way for new avenues to explore. They suggest using the study as a baseline to examine the treatment of depression by looking at self-focus and social deficits.
In Australia, the number of individuals diagnosed with depression and anxiety disorders has increased dramatically in the span of eight years, according to the Housing Income and Labour Dynamics (HILDA) Survey. The disorders commonly affected young people, with affected young women increasing by as much as 7.3% during the same period. With this number, this finding of a new treatment method can shine a light on a host of research opportunities.
The study highlighted the need to focus more on solid research and reviews on the positive effects of psychedelic psychotherapy and meditation. Will this allow psychedelic therapies to become part of mental health conversations? Only time will tell. | <urn:uuid:11edda3b-f07f-46d0-9010-13f9601fb009> | {
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The Great Flood of 1850
We now know that Hopkin Thomas and his partner, John Ollis began erection of a machine shop and foundry in Tamaqua in 1848. The location was in the industrial district just below the tracks of the Little Schuylkill R. R. and to the right of Vine St. in the contemporary map shown below.
Tamaqua’s industrial area – as noted below, the river originally ran where the tracks are now located.
Current (2010) satellite photo of industrial area north of Broad Street. Click for enlargement.
By 1850, the business should have been stable. As was noted earlier, a possibility exists that the business was surveyed in the special census of manufacturers in 1850 which recorded with the number of people employed in each business, the type of power (water, steam, etc.) used in the manufacturing process, and other items – including the name of the business. Thus far a copy of that census has not been reviewed.
In any event, it was reported in the testimonial to Hopkin published in the Catasauqua Dispatch that the business failed and that Hopkin lost a large sum of money. The failure would seem to have occurred in about 1850. Based on the accounts of the Great Flood of 1850, it is most likely that Hopkin and his partner lost their investment when the flood wiped out the Tamaqua industrial area.
The flood has been described to a limited extent in several regional histories. Serfass’s Iron Steps contains the most best description and is reproduced here:
To realize what happened in Tamaqua in 1850, one must first understand that the town had just completed a major project that altered nature -- changing the course of the Little Schuylkill River from its natural path through downtown to a new location about 2 blocks east. The natural riverbed was in the heart of the downtown, about where the railroad tracks divide the town today. The reason for this undertaking is unclear, perhaps the river's natural course interfered with the laying of the railroad tracks. Or maybe the river occupied prime real estate in the burgeoning downtown business area. Whatever the reason, the river's path was intercepted north of town and diverted eastward in a large crescent shape to the southern tip of town, where it was allowed to return to its natural path. (Today, the river still follows this man-made path through town.)
It began as a gentle rain in Tamaqua on Sunday evening, September 1, 1850, and gradually turned into a nonstop downpour, By daylight, the trestles leading into the mines at Newkirk, just beyond the west end of town, became clogged with dirt and debris that built up so high that a massive natural dam formed on the Wabash Creek. After several hours, the dam gave way and water rushed into the valley toward Tamaqua, combining with yet another flood racing down from the north mountains as the swollen Little Schuylkill River, over its banks, roared toward town determined to return to its natural course, its path of least resistance. Two floods converged on Tamaqua in one horrific crash, destroying much of what had been built on the flatlands. For a brief time, the Little Schuylkill River had indeed returned to its natural path, and in doing so, bitterly destroyed almost everything man had erected along the way. The water's depth was beyond imagination.
One of the historical sketches indicates, "The generally accepted theory is that the flood was caused by a great water spout which burst over the valleys. In the gorge on Burning Mountain a tree 60 feet up the side marks the height of the sudden flood-everything on the flats was swept away. Dwellings, foundations and workshops were taken away by the waters. A double frame house in which 22 persons had taken shelter, was torn asunder and all were drowned The Rev. Oberfeld was caught by the water while in the act of rescuing a child and was drowned."
Accounts reveal that 62 people lost their lives during the disaster. The tracks of the Little Schuylkill Railroad were completely obliterated and the town was isolated from the outside world for six days. On September 2 and 3, everybody turned out to retrieve the dead. One procession brought in 11 bodies at one time. Mourners simply wandered the streets in disbelief, as it seemed that death had claimed a life in every home.
Many businesses never reopened and approximately 40 homes were completely swept away by the flood waters. Bridges and roads ceased to exist. People were rescued from trees. One story even tells of a gallant man galloping his horse by the water's edge trying to save struggling victims, only to be swept away himself by the erratic current.
As for the minister who died rescuing a child, there remains a stark, solemn monument in St. John's Lutheran Cemetery on Patterson Street in Tamaqua. The tallest white, thin grave marker in the cemetery's old section at one time provided an account of the rescue in English on the markers east side and in the German language on the west. Today, the inscription on the English side has surrendered to nature, but on the German side, you still can discern the words of the heroic attempt of "Rev. Peter Z. Oberfelter" (the German spelling), who gave his life to save a drowning child. The tombstone, six feet high, rests high and dry on Dutch Hill, overlooking the valley.
Sadly, the Great Flood of 1850 remains Tamaqua’s most historic single event and most noted tragedy.
One would think that a disaster of this magnitude would have been thoroughly documented by someone living in the area, but no news article has been uncovered. What were the “many businesses that never reopened”? There is no record.
The only contemporary news article that covered the tragedy that has been uncovered was that published in The Miner’s Journal And Pottsville General Advertiser on September 7. The text of section dealing with Tamaqua is as follows:
TAMAQUA. The flood reached this place about 4 o’clock A.M. Part of the town is situated on a flats in the valley of the Little Schuylkill; this was swept clean of every building, and from the suddenness of the waters rise and the hour of the occurrence, the loss of life is very great. The damage to individual property is also greater than at any other place we had heard from; about 50 lives it is supposed were lost. Up to Wednesday evening 36 bodies had been recovered. The following is a list of names of those drowned so far as we have ascertained: Wife of Thomas Foster, two girls and boy; Mrs. Edmunds, one boy, one girl, and two grand-daughters; Mrs. David Jones and child; Mrs. Gresing and child; Mr. Geo. Welsh, one boy and two girls; Mrs. Ytringham, two girls and two boys; Mrs. Heron, and four children; Catherine Williams; Mary. McCartney a young girl from Beaver Meadows; a young girl fourteen years of age, daughter of Daniel Oxrider; Rev. P. Z. Oberfelt, pastor of the German Lutheran congregation; Mary Williams.
Without further information on the specifics of this disastrous event we speculate that it was the Great Flood of 1850 that led to Hopkin’s business failure in Tamaqua.
Rev. November 2010 | <urn:uuid:121de743-ffe4-43a8-9694-2d18f6ca7b62> | {
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Ovarian cancer deaths have fallen around the world, largely because of the widespread use of the contraceptive pill, according to a major new study.
A study by Italian researchers has found that the number of people dying from ovarian cancer has dropped over the past decade due to increased use of the contraceptive pill together with a decline in the long-term use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT).
The study compared data on ovarian cancer death rates worldwide from 2002 to 2012 and found that there has been a steady decline in the number of women dying from the disease, The Guardian reported. The extent of this decline varies among countries with the highest improvements seen in Sweden where deaths from ovarian cancer dropped by 24% closely followed by the UK with 22% whilst the lowest drop was only 0.6% in Hungary. In the US death rates fell by 16% and in Australia and New Zealand, it went down by 12%.
The authors of the study believe this reduction in deaths from ovarian cancer is largely due to increased use of the contraceptive pill from an earlier age coupled with a reduction in the long-term use of HRT later in life.
The research into the change in death rates was led by Professor Carlo La Vecchia of the University of Milan. He claimed: “The large variations in death rates between European countries have reduced since the 1990s…This is likely to be due to more uniform use of oral contraceptives across the continent, as well as reproductive factors, such as how many children a woman has.”
Professor La Vecchia continued: “However, there are still noticeable differences between countries such as Britain, Sweden and Denmark, where more women started to take oral contraceptives earlier – from the 1960s onwards – and countries in Eastern Europe…where oral contraceptive use started much later and was less widespread.”
This theory is also supported by a reversal of the trend in Japan, a country which traditionally had low death rates from Ovarian cancer compared to the US and EU but now, due to infrequent oral contraceptive use, is experiencing higher death rates.
With regards to HRT, there was a significant drop in the number of women taking the medications after the publication of a large study in 2002 raised concerns over a link between HRT use and breast and ovarian Cancer. Many women took HRT for shorter periods only whilst others avoided taking it at all. This fits in nicely with the timing of the drop in death rates from ovarian cancer seen from 2002 onwards and is therefore thought to be another important contributing factor.
La Vecchia pointed out: “The problem of HRT is not the short-term use for two to three years for menopausal symptoms, the problem was the long-term use for 10 to 15 years or longer.”
Whatever the cause, a drop in death rates from ovarian cancer is good news for the many women diagnosed with the disease every year.
Interested in more cancer news? | <urn:uuid:34744c70-c13a-407b-a881-4b3ffa8c13f3> | {
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Photo: Jeremy Richardson (Flickr)
Many a kid has tried and many a kid has failed. Is it actually possible to hold your breath until you turn blue in the face? Here’s the science behind ghastly skin tones.
We get our color from the pigments in our skin and from the red blood flowing beneath its surface. When oxygen levels drop, blood turns a darker shade of red. And if oxygen levels drop 80 percent, skin would appear blue due to how our tissues absorb and reflect light.
Though hypothetically possible, you can’t turn blue out of a sheer act of will. Your body is smarter than you are and would cause you to pass out long before the oxygen level in your blood dropped enough to turn you blue. And while unconscious, you’d automatically start breathing again.
A Whiter Shade of Pale
Even in death, people don’t take on a blue tint. When you die, blood stops circulating and settles down in the blood vessels at the lowest point in the body. The skin, drained of blood, appears pale and chalky.
When it comes to turning blue, it’s easier said than done. | <urn:uuid:a2cb54f3-6c96-492c-9a4b-836bd9433771> | {
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Designers talk about empathy. A lot. But do you really know what they mean? Social psychologist Daniel Batson identifies eight different ways that people use the word “empathy,” creating more than enough opportunity for misunderstanding. For example, a recent article by another psychologist, Paul Bloom, The Case Against Empathy, frames empathy as mutually exclusive with reason, and suggests that it is analogous to feeling sorry for someone. This statement produced a number of rebuttal articles and online reactions as a misrepresentation and oversimplification.
As important as empathy is to user experience, there is no model through which we can better understand or explain what empathy is. Instead, we have countless hours of people talking past each other. Let me see if I can help.
What Is Empathy?
Empathy can be defined as an explanatory principle for our ability to experience a phenomenon of feeling as if we are embodying or understanding someone else’s experience and the related meanings from the context and vantage point of that “other.”
I didn’t define the word to claim authority over it, but a good definition can minimize misunderstandings. The word has its roots in the German word Einfühlung, coined by philosopher Robert Vischer to explain an experience he had during which he felt as though he had embodied a piece of artwork, so much so that he felt as though he was “one” with it.
The word was later imported to the United States and translated into English by Edward Titchener in 1909. As a psychologist, Titchener used the word to explain how we can experience other people. However, empathy is not limited to other humans. We can empathize with animals or plants. Most of us can empathize with characters in novels. The best computer programmers empathize with the computer—a phenomenon popularly known as “grokking.” What determines whether we can empathize is how we subjectively perceive the “other.”
It is useful to separate “empathy” as a potential, and “empathizing” as an event (see Figures 1 and 2). Otherwise, we get into situations where people say that “you have to feel empathy for her,” which more often than not confuses people by sounding similar to “feel sympathy for.” The very phrase “feel empathy” is also often used by people who wish to say that they were so affected by someone else’s emotion that they lost their “self.” That’s emotional contagion: a related but distinct phenomenon that may help us empathize. In short, using the word “empathy” as both a potential and a feeling can cause confusion and misunderstanding.
The best metaphor for empathizing I’ve been able to come up with is the concept of “metaphor” itself. In other words, when we empathize, we create a metaphor between ourselves and others, while being fully cognizant of the limitation of the metaphor.
How Does Empathy Realize?
Let’s take a closer look at the diagram in Figure 3. Point A is the event of “not empathizing,” point B is the event of “empathizing,” and “empathy” is the potential that, when realized, can empower us to travel from point A to point B. So let’s label the journey of going from one point to another as “realizing empathy.”
There are two ways empathy can be realized. First, it can be involuntary, almost as a reflex, requiring no conscious effort, like a ball pushed down a hill. Think of a friend you’ve known for a long time. Think of a time when, without her saying a single word, you were able to tell precisely what she was thinking, feeling, wanting, or needing. Maybe you finished her sentences or said exactly the thing that she needed to hear when she needed to hear it. These are all situations in which your empathy was triggered to realize almost automatically.
But that’s not the only way to realize empathy. Another way is for you to realize it voluntarily, as part of a deliberate process, requiring conscious effort, like pushing a ball up a hill (see Figure 4). Imagine yourself encountering someone you are not familiar with or find suspicious; someone who says things that you disagree with, or whose words you find difficult to understand. How would you feel? Threatened? Awkward? Confused? Frustrated? Uncomfortable? If yes, this is a situation in which your empathy will not realize until you make an effort.
It is useful to distinguish these two paths to empathy to draw attention to the second, deliberate process. Understanding why realizing empathy requires effort will be the key to developing your own empathy. There are three high-level requirements for deliberately realizing empathy:
- Awareness: Becoming aware that your empathy is not realizing in the specific moment.
- Care: Having the willingness or the desire to put in the effort to realize your empathy in the specific moment.
- Ability: Developing the sensitivity, skills, and knowledge required to realize your empathy in the specific moment.
The awareness factor is of special interest because it is often the least obvious. We have several mechanisms by which we can reframe a situation into one that is more favorable to our own biases. One mechanism for doing so is labeling. For example, if we label those we disagree with as evil or stupid, we can justify not caring enough to empathize with them. Or, if we blame someone for wearing the “wrong” kind of clothes, that can help justify our prejudice against them. These are situations that can be reframed as paradoxes, arising from our inability to resolve the conflict between two differing points of view, or between our expectations and the reality of a situation (see Figure 5).
How Can a Designer Facilitate Empathy?
Deliberately realizing empathy can be difficult, so, as designers, we should ask ourselves, “How can we make it easier for others to realize their empathy?” To help others, we have to first understand what makes it difficult.
Contrary to popular belief, empathy is not something we either have or lack. For each and every one of us, there will always be moments when we will be unable to realize our empathy because of the specific relationships that are at play. This is why I call empathy a “relational potential” as opposed to merely a “potential.”
As shown in Figure 6, we can talk about empathy in terms of:
- Space: The quality of the relationship with another person.
- Attitude: How we are predisposed to react to our thoughts and other people.
- Language: The stimuli that interact with our attitude to trigger our reactions.
It’s useful to think of the relationship dynamics in terms of two stages: first impression and ongoing impression.
The first impression is similar to going on a date for the first time. Perhaps for some reason, the space you occupy with the other person affects your attitude in such a way that you feel as if you can’t “be yourself.” As a result, you are self-conscious and the conversation feels meaningless and superficial. It’s not a very intimate relationship. On top of that, perhaps you also feel a bit intimidated or feel the need to defend yourself. Consequently, you can’t really enjoy yourself. In a relationship like this you don’t feel empowered to play. In other words, it doesn’t feel very dynamic and you have difficulty even caring enough to try to empathize.
When you are designing, you want to proactively create a space in which your product or service feels sufficiently intimate and dynamic to be appealing enough for a second date (see Figure 7).
Now let’s say you came back from your date and reflect on it. Yes, it was meaningless and intimidating, but you think maybe you should give him a second chance. Why? Because you’ve been on dates where others have gotten the wrong first impression of you. In other words, in an effort to try and empathize with him, you give him the benefit of the doubt.
The next week rolls around and you go on a second date. You enter the restaurant and sit across a table. You look at his face and you can feel that something has changed. To your surprise, he starts to apologize. He says he is sorry that he projected himself a certain way on the previous date. He tells you how nervous he was to be on a first date with you, how much pressure he felt trying to impress you, and how foolish he feels to have behaved the way he did.
His words affect you, and you feel your attitude toward him change enough that you feel comfortable opening up to him. You tell him that you felt the same way and were also projecting yourself a certain way so as not to lose your ground. He smiles. You smile back. You both start laughing about the absurdity of the situation, you connect, you empathize.
The conversation that takes place from there on has a distinctly different quality—it is an empathic conversation. You both respect each other’s differing thoughts. Without trying to win or one-up each other, you listen to each other with a sense of presence. You consider the language you use to express your thoughts, yet they are acts of spontaneity as well as honesty and sincerity. The space now feels both meaningful and creative (see Figure 8).
Design as Multi-dimensional Empathic Conversation
Your product or service has to create a space that allows empathic conversations to develop within the interaction so that users can experience the space as both meaningful and creative. As this quality is experienced across time, with integrity, the users’ level of trust in you and your product or service will also start to develop (see Figure 9).
Empathy is relevant to any and all relationships we can have at any time, whether the relationship is between us and our clients, teammates, materials, tools, friends, family, or even our own “selves.” We can never have a full understanding of any of them, so realizing empathy in relation to all of them is a lifelong pursuit.
May empathy be with you.
Retrieved from https://uxpamagazine.org/empathy/
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Please note: Quality of education greatly influences IQ scores, i.e. a lower average IQ is more indicative of lower access to wide-scale quality education rather than innate intelligence (see my explanation of the issue). Also, testing conditions influence results; wealthier countries are more likely to be able to afford better testing conditions for participants.
The data may be outdated for some countries (not all up-to-date statistical data was available for all countries). Because of inevitable statistical errors, isolated figures must be taken with a grain of salt.
Before using strong words in the comments, please consider:
My intention with the map wasn’t to advertize or ridicule any particular country (I didn’t know the numbers beforehand). I just created a visualization of statistical data based on a highly-cited scientific paper, just like I have done for dozens of other maps.Lower access to quality education anywhere in the world is in no one’s interest (maybe apart from politicians and companies wanting to conrol people). The correct question we should ask therefore is: What is the reason behind the trends we see? What can we, the European society, do to help countries with worse performing education systems?
Update: Lynn, Vanhanen (2012)
The following map has been made after one of my readers pointed out that a book based on newer data, Intelligence: A Unifying Construct for the Social Sciences by Lynn and Vanhanen, was available. See below for the original map. Note that particular figures in most countries may be slightly lower than in the original map simply because the normalization used is based on a different set of data. Numbers written in parentheses are only estimates based on demographics.
Lynn and Vanhanen (as well as Rindermann below) used not only IQ measurements available in the respective countries but also, to a great degree, various standardized student assessment studies and known correlations between IQ and results of such studies:
UPDATE for Bosnia and Herzegovina: Due to a controversy surrounding the Balkans, I reviewed the data. Lynn and Vanhanen made a numerical (or typographical) error in the case of Bosnia, which is now corrected. The data for the rest of the Balkans agrees with the available PISA and TIMSS studies (standardized student assessment studies).
It is also not without interest what the map looks like when the raw IQ data is not adjusted using student assessment studies. N/A means that the IQ shown above was based solely on student assessment studies:
To be able to better compare the maps, you can see the difference in the following picture:
The original [outdated!] map: Rindermann (2007)
Note: Since the maps above are based on more recent data, the map shown here should be considered outdated. The map is based on statistical data contained in the 2007 paper “The g-Factor of International Cognitive Ability Comparisons” by H. Rindermann. Rindermann used available IQ measurements and other available testing data in various countries, normalized the data using the so called “Greenwich IQ”, i.e. setting UK = 100, and then applied certain adjustments to estimate the average IQ of the whole population.
UPDATE for Croatia: As was pointed out by one of my readers, although Rindermann used data on Croatia from a relatively recent paper, the paper in turn used data several decades old, which I wasn’t aware of while creating the map. The caption for Croatia has been changed to N/A as there is no up-to-date data source for it consistent with the rest.
Note: Kosovo is understood as a part of Serbia and Crimea as a part of Ukraine for the purposes of these statistics. Rindermann estimated data for several countries, which were originally in the map but are now set to N/A because the map above provides actual data, so the estimates are now worthless.
The underlying blank map was made by Tindo and licensed from fotolia.com. If you want to share the maps, please share a link to this webpage instead of sharing just the pictures. | <urn:uuid:5802339e-a22c-41d7-b285-59a67475ad84> | {
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The Undiscovered Planet
Microbial science illuminates a world of astounding diversity.
Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton—these are familiar names. During a 150-year span in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they led the scientific revolution that placed the sun, rather than the earth, at the center of things astronomical. But have you ever heard of Carl Woese? He set in motion a scientific revolution in biology that, in its repudiation of anthropocentric views of life, is proving no less profound.
In 1977, Woese (pronounced “woes”), a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, drew a terrestrial family tree that showed the genetic relatedness of all living things on this planet. Using modern tools of molecular biology, he sampled the known single-celled, microscopic organisms we call microbes, and also the denizens of the human-scale world with which we are familiar: the flowers, trees, and shrubs; the animals; and the fungi. His map of all this new information revealed that taxonomists of ages past had been looking at the world through the wrong end of a telescope. The formerly great “kingdoms” of Plantae, Animalia, and Fungi almost disappeared, shrinking to fit on a small, trifurcating branch of his tree. In their place were three vast “domains”: Bacteria (single-celled microorganisms that lack a distinct nucleus and organelles); Archaea, or Archaebacteria (similar in appearance and simplicity to bacteria, but with notably different molecular organization); and Eukarya (all organisms whose cells have a distinct nucleus—or, simply put, everything else). Life on Earth, Woese’s model showed, is overwhelmingly microbial. In fact, the extent of microbial diversity is so great that scientists have difficulties estimating its actual size. Some estimates place the number of microbial species in the range of billions, exceeding the number of species of “large” organisms by several orders of magnitude.
In light of this new understanding of life, scientists with advanced research tools are focusing anew on microbes, which, following the great discoveries of penicillin and other antibiotics in the mid twentieth century, had largely been consigned to the confines of pharmaceutical research.
“Our planet has been shaped by an invisible world,” says Roberto Kolter, a professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at Harvard Medical School (HMS). He and Jeffrey professor of biology Colleen Cavanaugh of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) together co-direct Harvard’s Microbial Sciences Initiative, which serves as a focal point for researchers in the field from all over the University. “Microbes mediate all the important element cycles on Earth, and have played a defining role in the development of the planet,” says Kolter. They form clouds, break down rocks, deposit minerals, fertilize plants, condition soils, and clean up toxic waste. Among their ranks, explains Cavanaugh, are the photosynthetic “primary producers” that use sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide to form the broad base of the food chain, and together with plants make up the earth’s largest source of biomass. The earliest life on our planet was entirely microbial, and if life exists on other planets, it is surely microbial there as well.
In the realm of human health, microbes help us digest food and produce vitamins, protect us against infection, and are the main source of antibiotic medicines. The human cells in your body number 10 trillion, but that pales by comparison to the estimated 100 trillion microbial cells that live in and on you. “Without them, you would be in trouble,” Kolter says: animals experience abnormal growth and become sick if deprived of their microflora during development. Although a few microbes are known to cause disease, the precise role played by the vast majority is essentially unknown.
The same could be said for microbes around the planet. There are a billion of them in a gram of soil, and a billion per liter of seawater, but we know neither what they are nor what they do.
In the poetic conclusion to his 1994 autobiography, Naturalist, the great sociobiologist and Pellegrino University Professor emeritus E.O. Wilson mused on what he would do, “[i]f I could do it all over again and relive my vision in the twenty-first century. I would be a microbial ecologist...,” he wrote. “Into that world I would go with the aid of modern microscopy and molecular analysis. I would cut my way through clonal forests sprawled across grains of sand, travel in an imagined submarine through drops of water proportionately the size of lakes, and track predators and prey in order to discover new life ways and alien food webs. All this, and I need venture no farther than ten paces outside my laboratory building. The jaguars, ants, and orchids would still occupy distant forests in all their splendor, but now they would be joined by an even stranger and vastly more complex living world virtually without end.”
The Limits of Cultures
As a practical matter, the Microbial Sciences Initiative (MSI) began in 2002 as a grass-roots effort among faculty members who recognized the unexplored ecology and potential of these organisms and wanted to share information about microbial research across diverse disciplines: biology, medicine, chemistry, engineering, geology, astronomy, and evolutionary and planetary history. The group held informal “chalk-talks” weekly, and in 2004 staged a day-long symposium with speakers from around the world. When President Lawrence H. Summers issued a call that year for initiatives that would bring people together from across the science and engineering disciplines, MSI was a perfect candidate, says Cabot professor of biology Richard Losick, a member of its steering committee. “I think there are few disciplines that lend themselves better to cross-disciplinary approaches,” he says, “and few subjects that have implications across a wider spectrum of sciences than is true for microbiology.” As a result, in 2006 MSI received four years of support, totaling $2.7 million, from the provost’s office.
“It kills me that people think only that bacteria are disease-causing,” says Cavanaugh, who studies the chemosynthetic symbiotic bacteria that make life possible for giant clams and tubeworms dwelling near deep ocean hydrothermal vents. Far from sunlight, they operate by mechanisms both similar to and much different from the photosynthetic organisms we see every day. “Although intracellular, these bacteria are helpful to their animal hosts,” she adds. “Like chloroplasts in plants [which evolved from symbiotic photosynthetic bacteria], the chemosynthetic symbionts turn carbon dioxide into sugars and proteins, feed- ing their hosts internally.”
But most people do associate microbes with disease. “Antibacterials” have been incorporated into all kinds of consumer products: soaps, sponges, toilet paper, towels, and cutting boards—even clothing. Kolter traces the origins of this “ludicrous” antimicrobial “scorched-earth policy” to the time of Louis Pasteur, who formulated germ theory, and Robert Koch, who developed methods for culturing bacteria. “Medical microbiology for almost 150 years has been driven by the idea that germs are the causative agents of disease. And there is no doubt that Koch and Pasteur were right, that Mycobacterium tuberculosis causes tuberculosis and Vibrio cholerae causes cholera,” says Kolter. But microbes have also led to most of our antibiotics, a development that Kolter calls “the most important advance in medical history.”
Scientists had known that there are more microbes in an ounce of soil than humans alive on Earth, but that was just a measure of abundance. Pace’s discovery demonstrated something new, a previously unfathomed repository of biodiversity. Scientists began sequencing DNA from all sorts of environments. After looking at human gut microflora, they learned that each individual has his or her own characteristic set of a thousand species. “These represent three million genes that you carry,” points out Kolter, “as compared to the estimated 18,000 genes of the human genome. So you are living and exchanging [metabolites] constantly with a diverse pool of some three million genes.” Microbiologists continue to find new taxonomic divisions of microbes far faster than they can figure out how to culture them.
The formerly limited view of the microbial world arose from what has turned out to be an inherently constrained approach to the study of bacteria: the practice of culturing them. For more than a hundred years, scientists had been mystified by what was called the “plate count paradox.” Whenever they tried to grow a sample of bacteria from the environment on a nutrient medium in a petri dish (an agar plate), only a few microorganisms grew and multiplied to form colonies, when there should have been at a minimum thousands of such colonies (based on the number of different species discernible just by looking through a microscope). Various explanations were offered—that 99.9 percent of the bacteria in the sample were dead, or that they must all be the same bacterium because they looked similar.
“But then in 1990,” says Kolter, “scientists showed that the DNA complexity in a typical soil sample meant that there had to be thousands of times more diversity than was being plated.” Norman Pace, a professor at the University of Colorado, began to wonder if scientists simply lacked the basic knowledge needed to grow most of the bacteria on the planet—if perhaps we were so ignorant of these bacteria that we could not culture them. He hit on the idea that he could instead analyze a sample of soil or water for its DNA content in order to ascertain how many species it contained. “Pace went to Yellowstone National Park, to some of its famous hot springs, where the water was nearly boiling, and collected a sample of sediment,” Kolter explains. “He extracted the DNA, cloned it, and put it into a little bacterium that he knew how to grow.” Then he sequenced the genes. “In that one little gram of sediment,” Kolter notes, “Pace discovered more diversity than we ever knew existed before, when using our traditional, century-old techniques for cultivating bacteria.”
The world of animals—from elephants to ants—is divided into 13 phyla (vertebrates are one phylum, insects another). In the microbial world, their equivalents are called, for the time being, “deep-rooting branches.” In 1987, 13 of these big divisions were known in the bacterial domain: Woese sampled these to create his tree of life. But by 1997, there were almost three times as many: 36 in all. “Twelve of them we had never cultivated, and the others we began to learn how to cultivate,” Kolter explains. “By 2003, there were 53 divisions, but the more we discovered, the more we found representative microbes that we could not cultivate. We learned how to cultivate microbes from only two of these in six years and by 2004 we had found 80 such divisions from which we couldn’t cultivate even a single representative.” Each of these deep-branching divisions is thought to represent millions, if not hundreds of millions, of species. “That means there are lots of genes out there, and we have no clue what they are doing,” Kolter says. “So when you think about biodiversity, and the extent of diversity on the planet, you really get a sense of how little we know about this undiscovered world. We are at the stage of discovery where, everywhere we look, we see new species.
“The reason we are so excited about preserving diversity,” he continues, “is because that is how we preserve the richness of the planet.” Where does that richness lie? Traditionally, taxonomists classified life according to morphology (by appearance, form, or pattern): one finch’s beak resembles that of another, but is nothing like that of hummingbird. Bats fly, but are more like mice with wings than like birds. Microbes, on the other hand, often appear similar to one another to the human eye. Plants, animals, and fungi may seem wildly diverse from a morphological perspective, but in fact, Kolter explains, there is “far less genetic difference between [a human being] and a potato” than there is between, say, “the bacterium that causes tuberculosis and the one that causes cholera. So as magnificent as is the diversity of the tropical rainforest, it pales by comparison to the microbial world.”
In the interests of human health, researchers have begun to hunt among all this newfound microbial diversity for new antibiotics. Says Richard Losick, “I have many wonderful colleagues in the chemistry department, but without question the champion synthetic organic chemists on the planet are the microbes.”
“The majority of our antibiotics and many anticancer compounds come from soil-dwelling bacteria,” notes Jon Clardy, a professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at HMS. Unfortunately, he says, due to the spread of antibiotic resistance, “we are running out of effective antibiotics.” For economic reasons, pharmaceutical companies are not investing as much as they used to in the development of new ones, which has left physicians looking for an antibiotic of last resort to be held in reserve for the one patient once a year who has a resistant strain of tuberculosis or pneumonia, explains Kolter. “That drug would be the billion-dollar blockbuster that nobody buys, because doctors shouldn’t be prescribing it widely. Nobody in the corporate world will develop it.” He believes that “there may be a role for the University in research that is not going to be as profitable for corporations to pursue: the development of targeted, ecologically sound antibiotics.”
Whole-genome studies of microbes suggest that only a small fraction of the natural products that come from even well-known bacteria have been discovered. A prime example is Streptomyces avermitilis, the bacterium from which researchers derived a drug called Ivermectin. “Ivermectin,” says Clardy, “is grown on the ton scale because it is used against river blindness in Africa, for treating almond trees in California, and for getting rid of all kinds of parasites” (equine worms, for example). “Here you have a ‘bug’ that is producing a useful molecule grown on a huge scale, and intensively so.” Once the genome was sequenced, he says, “Just looking at it casually, you could see where Ivermectin is made, but you could also see [other gene sequences]—over 30 of these clusters—that it seems should each make a small molecule. We know only three molecules that come from that bug,” he adds—one of them the source of Ivermectin. “That means we know only 10 percent of what it can potentially make.”
But probing those secrets is far from easy. When grown in a lab in pure culture, microbes apparently don’t need to activate all their genetic machinery to survive. In their natural setting, by contrast, microbes live in a complex ecology: they interact with their environment and with other microbes by using a vast array of virtually unknown small-molecule products. These organic compounds often play multiple roles: a small molecule used for signaling among bacteria engaged in mutually beneficial metabolite exchange (one microbe’s metabolic waste is another’s meal) might also be used to kill competitors trying to gain a foothold in the same ecological niche. Such compounds, if researchers could identify them, produce them, and figure out how they work, might form the next generation of medical antibiotics.
At Harvard, an MSI-facilitated collaboration between Kolter and Clardy uses creative methods for prompting even unculturable microbes to yield such genetic secrets. Clardy was among the earliest researchers to use “metagenomics,” which involves sampling the environment—your gut, a lake, or in his case, the soil—and collecting the “metagenome,” or composite genome, of all the individual organisms dwelling there. After extracting the many strands of DNA, Clardy screens for sequences that make compounds. He can isolate these sequences and transfer them into E. coli (or another “tame” bacterium that he knows how to cultivate) in order to get them to express the target compounds. Kolter, meanwhile, has been creating controlled ecological settings, exploring whether certain bacteria behave differently in the context of other species, as they do in their natural environment. He has given Clardy a tool that indicates when a bug responds to a microbial signal, and Clardy has developed other tools for figuring out what that signaling compound is. These organic molecules, often antibiotic, frequently “turn out to be something new that nobody has ever seen before,” says Kolter, “often with properties that are chemically very interesting.”
Photographs by Ann Pearson
To show that their method works in principle, the team in 2006 published an early discovery using the bacterium Bacillus subtilis, which has been studied for more than 100 years. The compound they identified, bacillaene, may or may not turn out to be useful in medicine, they caution. But it is a highly complex, resource-intensive structure for any single-celled organism to make, and that suggests that it plays an important biological role. Two new MSI postdoctoral fellows arriving at the medical school this year will use the collaborative techniques Kolter and Clardy have developed to facilitate further discoveries. They will enter a universe of seemingly endless therapeutic possibility, between the small-molecule products of bacteria yet undiscovered, and the 90 percent of untapped coding sequences from the bugs we thought we knew.
Bacterial Biomarkers of Ancient Earth
Within FAS, Ann Pearson, Cabot associate professor of earth and planetary sciences, also became interested in bacteria for what they might reveal about Earth’s early history. Pearson, a biogeochemist, has collaborated with Richard Losick, who during the last 35 years has elucidated in great detail the molecular mechanisms that control life cycle and differentiation in the bacterium Bacillus subtilis. She “does wonderful research,” Losick says, “on [the origins of] biological molecules that can be recovered from hundreds of millions, if not billions, of years ago, reflecting the earliest evidence for life on Earth.”
“If you have very highly preserved, organic-rich, sedimentary rocks that haven’t been deeply buried and heated in their geologic history,” Pearson says, “you can extract measurable amounts of lipids or fats that make up some cell membranes. We call these ‘molecular fossils’ because they have structure, they can be identified, and occasionally you can tell what type of organism they might have come from—for example, there are certain molecules that are produced only by archaea.”
“Ann had the idea,” Losick explains, “that maybe we could learn something from similar molecules found in contemporary microbes.” It turned out that the bacterium that Losick’s lab studies has genes similar to those known to produce a certain type of these molecular fossils. Their shared MSI-sponsored postdoctoral fellow, Tanja Bosak (now an assistant professor at MIT), learned the microbial genetics techniques Losick’s lab uses and obtained evidence that in the contemporary bacterium, these molecules help to protect its spores from damage by oxygen. (Although many life forms need oxygen, it can also cause a lot of damage.) Bacillus subtilis, Losick explains, creates a “particularly macho type of spore, maybe the most sturdy kind of dormant cell on the planet. It can survive extremes of time and temperature and radiation.” What might this molecule have been doing two billion years ago? “The exciting implication,” Losick replies, “is that these molecules may have appeared as a response to the rise of oxygen in the atmosphere, so the timing of their appearance in the rock record may bear on the issue of when oxygen levels first rose.”
“The planet is about 4.5 billion years old,” elaborates another of Pearson’s collaborators, paleontologist Andrew Knoll, Fisher professor of natural history and professor of earth and planetary sciences. “The oldest rocks we can look at are 3.8 billion years old.” Chemical evidence suggests that life was already present then, but certainly “by 3.5 billion years ago there were active microbial communities on the earth’s surface.” These microbes were a little different from those we know today because there was still no oxygen. (Even today, he says, oxygen is just a “veneer on the surface of the planet. If you put your shovel in the mud of a marsh and dig a centimeter beneath the surface you are down to anaerobic microbial ecosystems, which remain critical for most of the biologically important element cycles on the earth’s surface.”) By 2.4 billion years ago, the chemistry of sedimentary rocks suggests that there was “at least a little bit of oxygen in the atmosphere and surface ocean.” Then, “for a period of about eighteen hundred million years, oxygen levels hovered at maybe a couple of percent of today’s levels. Only in the last 600 million years or so do we have environments with enough oxygen to support the biology of large animals, and only in that interval do large animals actually appear,” Knoll says. That is also when the algae first become ecologically important, joining and eventually displacing photosynthetic bacteria as the basis of early food chains in the world’s oceans. “So there is a time coincidence,” he says, “between major events in the history of life and major events in the history of the planet.” Following those threads might also suggest how life could arise, and what it might look like, elsewhere in the universe.
“Everybody is interested in finding the perfect molecule to trace cyanobacteria,” Pearson reports, in order to trace the origins of oxygenic primary production (cyanobacteria use a type of photosynthesis that releases oxygen, and this process is responsible for our oxygen-rich atmosphere). More broadly, she hopes to “figure out how to relate the incredible diversity of microbes that are out there to the kinds of preservable organic molecules—or biomarkers—that they make...and that we can find in the sedimentary record.” Because individual species of microbes are mutable (“They evolve quickly and we have no idea if there is phylogenetic integrity over billions of years”), she is trying to relate particular preserved molecules to their functions in the environment, rather than to species, in order to try to get an idea of what the ecosystem looked like as life evolved on Earth and, in turn, shaped Earth’s environment—oxygenating the atmosphere, detoxifying the oceans, breaking down rock and organic matter to form soils. “MSI has been absolutely essential to building the bridges that I have needed to other research groups,” Pearson says. “Although my questions are geology- and earth-history-driven, the work that I do in order to answer those questions is all biology and chemistry. I don’t practice field geology,” she says, “so building bridges with other parts of the University has been critical.”
Historically, says Knoll, “there have been a few of us in FAS who have been interested in microorganisms, but there wasn’t anything as tangible as a Museum of Comparative Zoology, which has provided a focal point for people interested in animals for 150 years, [or] the Herbarium, which has done the same thing for people interested in plants” (which Knoll calls, half-joking, “green algae with a graduate degree”). He continues, “Because of Harvard’s good fortune in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, we built up these really quite remarkable facilities for studying plants and animals...and, not surprisingly, we then populated our faculty with people who study [them]. These areas are not unimportant now,” he explains, “but so many horizons have opened up for studying microorganisms that the simple identification through the MSI of a community of people concerned about microbiology has been tremendously important. Many of the basic biological processes that underlie the nature of changes in the environment are microbial, so in a world where the environment may be changing faster than our ability to understand it, having a better process-oriented idea of what microbial communities are actually doing in nature has practical importance as well.”
For his part, geochemist Daniel Schrag, professor of earth and planetary sciences and a member of the MSI steering committee, emphasizes that “almost all the reactions on the earth’s surface are catalyzed by microbes—in soils, in waters, in swamps. If you don’t know what microbes are doing, you don’t really know what is going on.”
Photograph by Colleen Cavanaugh
“It is clear that this field will not reach its maturity, in the sense that it becomes less exciting, during my research lifetime or probably the research lifetimes of my students,” Knoll says. “We have whole new horizons in the nature and treatment of disease; whole new horizons in simply understanding the diversity of life as it actually exists—not what we thought existed because we could see it; whole new horizons in the nature of the relationship between organisms and the environment both today and in the future, and on the timescale of the whole development of the planet. These are wonderfully large, exciting questions and MSI gives us a forum to discuss them. You do find, every once in a while, someone who has actually thought about the same problem in a very different way”—and that can be the most important sort of catalyst: the kind that leads to new discoveries.
All images courtesy of Roberto Kolter, unless otherwise noted
Jonathan Shaw ’89 is managing editor of this magazine. | <urn:uuid:d0142d4c-56d4-480a-b5e3-e3cf54bc26d3> | {
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By Katie Blawie, Intern in the SNDatUN Office
The adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the UN General Assembly in 1948 signified a major milestone in the international fight for human rights and dignity. Still upheld today, this document of 30 articles transcends differences in religion, culture, politics, and other divisive issues, and represents worldwide unity. http://bit.ly/1e0ELb2
Given the current migration crisis in Europe, I found Article 14 to be particularly interesting. Article 14(1) states: “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” Dangerous conflict and violence in Syria, Afghanistan, and Eritrea, as well as other countries in the Middle East and Africa, have led to hundreds of thousands of people fleeing to Europe to seek asylum. This is considered a crisis both because of the divide among EU countries over how to handle the burden, and because of how many people are losing their lives attempting to make this migration.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), more than 650,000 migrants and refugees have been detected crossing EU borders so far this year, with over 500,000 seeking asylum (BBC News). Tensions in Europe are high because certain countries have taken on a much greater burden than others, and there is disagreement over how to solve this problem.
The journey to get to Europe is extremely dangerous, but migrants and refugees are willing to take the risk to flee the violence and human rights abuses in their countries. According to the UN Refugee Agency, over 3,000 people have died so far this year trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea. There have been multiple tragedies in 2015 involving shipwrecks and drownings.
Given that the UN predicts one million migrants will reach Europe by the end of 2016 (EuroNews), this human rights crisis needs to be thoroughly addressed immediately. Keeping in mind Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, these refugees must be granted asylum. They have fled their homes and all they have ever known, and should be welcomed with care and concern. The European Union countries need to work harmoniously to remedy this devastating situation in the short term, but also come up with a concrete, sustainable long-term plan. In addition, the root cause of this refugee crisis – the ongoing violence and conflict in these war-torn countries – must be addressed and prevented.
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Is the Universe older than expected?
09 July 2002An analysis of 13.5 thousand million-year-old X-rays, captured by ESA's XMM-Newton satellite, has shown that either the Universe may be older than astronomers had thought or that mysterious, undiscovered 'iron factories' litter the early Universe.
ESA's Norbert Schartel and colleagues from the Max-Planck-Institut f|r extraterrestrische Physik,Germany, found more iron than anyone thought possible in the extremely distant celestial object, APM 8279+5255. The object is a quasar, that is, a young galaxy containing an incredibly bright central region, caused by gas falling into a giant black hole.
APM 8279+5255 is 13.5 thousand million light years away. Scientists know this because they have estimated a property of its light known as the red shift, which is caused by the expansion of the Universe stretching the wavelengths of light emitted by the celestial object. XMM-Newton's data showed that iron was three times more abundant in the quasar than in our Solar System.
Since iron is released by exploding stars, according to precise physical phenomena, and scientists think it builds up across the Universe gradually with time. The Solar System formed just 5 thousand million years ago, so it should contain more iron than the quasar, which formed over 13.5 thousand million years ago. The fact that the quasar contains three times more iron than the Sun is therefore a major puzzle.
One possible explanation is that something is wrong with the way astronomers measure the age of objects in the Universe. The almost-holy red shift-distance-age conversion would therefore be wrong. Fred Jansen, ESA's project scientist for XMM-Newton, explains that this would mean rewriting the textbooks. "If you study the evolution of the Universe, one of the basic rules is that we can tie redshift to age. One distinct possibility to explain these observations is that, at the redshift we are looking at, the Universe is older than we think."
If the older-Universe interpretation is wrong, there is only one other, stranger possibility, according to Jansen. Somewhere in the early Universe there must be undiscovered 'iron factories', producing the metal by unknown physical means. Understandably, Jansen is cautious about this, saying, "This is the less likely solution in my opinion."
If such mysterious objects exist, perhaps XEUS (a next-generation X-ray satellite currently under study by ESA for launch sometime in the next decade) will discover them, because it will have the ability to see the very first galaxies.
In the shorter term, ESA is launching INTEGRAL, a gamma-ray-detecting satellite, in October 2002. It will observe exploding stars to study the formation of chemical elements and may explain the anomalous iron observations.
The paper containing these results is published on 10 July 2002, in Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 573, L77. The authors were G. Hasinger and S. Komossa at the Max-Planck-Institut f|r Extraterrestrische Physik and N. Schartel at the European Space Agency.
For more information, please contact:
Dr Norbert Schartel
Dr Fred Jansen
Prof. Guenther Hasinger | <urn:uuid:54f813d3-be00-4ce1-bc48-ccf3ed11481f> | {
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The world's largest geothermal power installation would be the Geysers in California, with a rated potential of 750 MW. Brazil has among the most important renewable energy applications on this planet, involving production of ethanol fuel from sugar cane, and ethanol now supplies 18% of your country's automotive fuel. Ethanol fuel is likewise widely obtainable during the USA.
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Molten salt may be used like a thermal energy storage technique to keep thermal energy gathered by a solar tower or solar trough of the concentrated solar power plant, to make sure that it can be utilized to make electricity in bad weather or at night. It was shown inside the Solar Two project from 1995–1999. The system is predicted to obtain an yearly efficiency of ninety nine%, a reference into the energy retained by storing warmth ahead of turning it into electricity, compared to converting heat instantly into electricity.
In Texas, need for power peaks in the summer, which also takes place being when solar power is at its most efficient....
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Biomass could be converted to other usable sorts of energy like methane gasoline or transportation fuels like ethanol and biodiesel. Rotting garbage, and agricultural and human squander, all release methane gasoline – also known as landfill fuel or biogas. Crops, for instance corn and sugarcane, is usually fermented to generate the transportation gasoline, ethanol. Biodiesel, An additional transportation gas, is often developed from still left-about meals products like vegetable oils and animal fats.[sixty eight] Also, biomass to liquids (BTLs) and cellulosic ethanol are still less than study. You can find an excessive amount of research involving algal gas or algae-derived biomass as a consequence of the fact that it's a non-food stuff useful resource and might be manufactured at premiums five to ten occasions Individuals of other types of land-based mostly agriculture, for example corn and soy.
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In 1897, Frank Shuman, a U.S. inventor, engineer and solar energy pioneer, constructed a small demonstration solar motor get more info that labored by reflecting solar energy onto sq. bins crammed with ether, that has a reduced boiling level than water, and have been fitted internally with black pipes which consequently powered a steam engine. In 1908 Shuman fashioned the Sunshine Power Firm Using the intent of making larger solar power plants.
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Despite a major cold spell that brought snow and freezing temperatures to many areas of the country this past week, it’s important to remember that Spring 2016 is just a few weeks away. This means it’s time for growers to finalize plant availability for their customers.
The National Garden Bureau reminds the industry that it’s more important than ever to include pollinator-friendly plants on grower availability listings this year. Not only are home gardeners and garden-retailer customers demanding them, but pollinators and the plants on which they depend have become a top federal priority.
In an unprecedented move to protect a key component of our nation’s agriculture system and the biodiversity needed to sustain it, the White House in 2015 presented a call to action to support pollinator health. With one in three bites of food Americans eat each day dependent on the actions of pollinators, a declining pollinator population becomes a challenge for everyone to help solve.
The Pollinator Challenge
In June 2015, a group of national gardening and habitat organizations led by American Public Gardens Association, National Gardening Association, National Wildlife Federation, and Pollinator Partnership joined with industry organizations AmericanHort, American Seed Trade Association, Home Garden Seed Association, and the National Garden Bureau to form the National Pollinator Garden Network. This collaborative effort, with more than 25 other organizations and eight federal agencies, established the Million Pollinator Garden Challenge (MPGC) to encourage Americans to plant pollinator-beneficial plants. Whether it’s a window box, a home garden, or a large-acreage landscape planting, every pollinator-friendly planting contributes to pollinator survival. The MPGC encourages Americans to grow seeds and plants for the benefit of pollinators and to register those plantings to reach the goal of 1 million pollinator gardens by December 2016.
Why Availability Matters
With the Million Pollinator Garden Challenge hitting consumer awareness full force this spring via both the mainstream and garden media, demand at the retail level for seeds and plants beneficial to pollinators will be unmatched. It makes both environmental and economic sense to fill the growing need. Not only do bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, and dozens of other pollinators need these plants for survival, consumers are stepping up to the challenge and asking for the horticulture industry’s help by making pollinator-beneficial plants and seeds available.
Tips for Getting Started
Growers have at the ready multiple resources and ways to provide plants and seeds that can be used as forage or habitat for pollinator species. Determine demand and appropriate species for a given location by:
• Contacting local and regional botanic gardens, zoos, and wildlife centers for a listing of their recommended pollinator plants. Remember, annuals, perennials and woody trees, shrubs, and vines are all important.
• Reaching out to garden retailer customers to assess which species they suggest to customers and also which species customers are requesting
• Connecting with breeders and brokers for information on native and pollinator plant programs
• Consulting the resources available through the Million Pollinator Garden Network Partners.
Using these tips and their own ingenuity, growers can be sure they are well equipped to meet the needs of garden retailers and consumers alike. | <urn:uuid:1b7d93bf-9d0f-4001-9b7a-c0d8a19023ff> | {
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Lebanese Constitution no Model for the Arab World
Author: annahar Posted February 15, 2012
In hearing the Lebanese people, leaders, chieftains and political and religious authorities talk about the "Lebanese experience," one might think that Lebanon before the war was Plato's Republic, or perhaps something even better. [One could imagine that] Lebanon before the war was a democratic parliamentary republican system, with a civil government free of religious divisions or sectarianism. [One might surmise that] the constitution was free of any reference to those two ailments. According to the constitution, Article 95 - which distributes government positions and jobs on the basis of religion and sect - should have been temporary. But, as with everything else in Lebanon, practice made it permanent. In spite of this, the Lebanese have prided themselves on their constitution, and thus on their civil state. But in so doing, they were lying to themselves, to their Arab neighbors and to the world. How often have we heard legal and political "geniuses" audaciously and confidently praise [the Lebanese constitution and the Lebanese civil state] in front of the diplomats of major countries, even though they knew - or perhaps they didn’t - that [these diplomats] were already knowledgeable about Lebanon and would not be fooled by their rhetoric?
In hearing the Lebanese talk about Lebanon during the wars they endured between 1975 and 1990, one would think that the Lebanese were angels and that they only experienced these disasters either due to an externally-imposed "curse"; Arab or foreign envy; the greed of outsiders; or Israel's desire to annihilate the exemplary [Lebanese model] of democratic pluralistic coexistence, which runs contrary to its own racist and intolerant model. [The Lebanese civil war has also been blamed on] the Palestinian refugees' desire to establish an alternative homeland; the international community's wish to give Lebanon to [those refugees]; or [Jordan’s] pushing of [the Palestinians] towards Lebanon out of fear that it [Jordan] would be faced with a similar scenario. In making [these excuses], the Lebanese have been lying to themselves and to others. The wars in Lebanon were only partially "other peoples’ wars." For the most part, they were rather the Lebanese peoples' wars against each other. The foreign interventions were to a certain extent a response to the requests for help voiced by each [of the Lebanese factions]. [This is not to say that the foreign interventions were also not partially motivated by] the protection of outside interests and strategies. [These outside powers] have considered Lebanon and its peoples as, at best, the battleground and means by which to fight wars against their enemies. At worst, [these states see Lebanon as] their rightful property, and under their direct or indirect control.
In hearing the Lebanese talk - since the end of the war in 1990 - about the current precarious times, one realizes that they have learned nothing and that they will once again be in danger, if they are not in it already. Their political leaders are praising Lebanese pluralism, democracy and respect for human rights. What’s more, their diverse religious leaders are ascribing Lebanon qualities that have nothing to do with reality. [Maronite Patriarch Bechara al-Ra’i] called Lebanon the country of "partnership and love." Partnership does not build a country, although it can build a commercial enterprise capable of dissolving at any moment as a result of greed. And - with all due respect to the one who [uttered these words] - to say that the Lebanese love each other is a big lie. [The “love”] among the people depends on interests, ambitions, desires and foreign and domestic agendas.
Why am I raising that issue today? It is not to "insult" the eternal, secular, free and democratic country I belong to or its "peoples." [My words are] meant to come as a warning - although this warning may have already made its way through the mire of propaganda - to the Arab countries similar to Lebanon in terms of their [sectarian] divisions, in which each [sect] considers itself a nation. [I am raising this issue] to warn the "peoples" of every Arab state against falling into the trap of convincing themselves that "Lebanon is a [positive] model." Because [were they to do so], they would be condemning their nations to constant [instability] and conflict. Applying that model to Iraq will revive its civil war, and employing it in Syria will [result in disaster]. The same applies to Yemen, and even to Egypt. Dividing up the Arab countries' authorities, governments, institutions, and high and low state positions [according to sect] could fracture those countries. This is what Israel wants. Is it what the incorrigible Arabs want?
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Thursday, 31 December 2009
Today the cinema is as vibrant as ever(financially if not creatively) but in the years immediately following 1946 movie moguls were convinced they were witnessing the death of cinema. Not only were they selling less and less tickets each year as the new medium of Television worked its way into more and more homes but the industry was altered by new laws which created distrust and paranoia in the creative camps. Between 1946 and 1948 movie attendances dropped by 16.9% but what was worse for the major American studios was the interest the government was showing in the cosy cartels that controlled Hollywood. From the mid-Thirties, the Department of Justice had been trying to break the stranglehold the major studios had over independent cinemas. The aim was to force the majors into selling off their highly lucrative cinema chains. But as the majors made most of their money from distribution they resisted. AS far back as the early Thirties the Department of Justice had brought legal cases against the major studios but these were delayed by the war. However in 1946 the Department of Justice started to strip away the powers of the major studios.
The war years had already seen Hollywood have to make major changes in the films they produced - their foreign markets, with the exception of Britain, had become out of bounds. Attempts had been made to create a larger market in South America with the Carmen Miranda films but this would never replace the loss suffered by the closing of the lucrative French, German and Italian markets. When the war ended and the markets opened back up it would seem Hollywood was once again onto a certain winner but soon the way they did business would be gone forever. Old Hollywood and the so called studio system was about to die, killed by the Department of Justice and their anti-trust laws.
When the world market opened up after the war it was only the US that had an abundance of film stock - in 1946 20 films were made in the Soviet Union, 54 in Italy and 432 in America. Films from the US dominated Europe with most of the profits coming back to the Hollywood studios. In 1948 France would rebel against the system and only allow only $3.6 million of a $14 million take to go back to America. The UK for their part would only allow £17 million to go to the US while $40 million remained tied up under foreign exchange regulations.
The next problem for Hollywood was with their labour. Post war prices meant that wage structures had to be improved. There was a major strike at Warner Brothers in 1946 and now that the unions were being closely scrutinised by the government it made the earlier practice of the studios paying off union bosses impractical. Ronnie Reagan was a union leader during this period.
The movie industry was in a state of turmoil when in the late 40's the House Un-American Activities Committee starting to take an interest in the film industry. The flimsy alliance between the US and Russia broke down after the war and there was paranoia that movies made in America, by American were spreading communist propaganda. At the infamous hearings Jack Warner, eager to explain several pro-Soviet movies made during the war, said that communist writers were poking fun at the US political system and picking on rich men. Blacklists were quickly drawn up of actors, writers and directors suspected of having communist leanings. It was revealed by the committee that Danny Kaye's real name was Daniel Kamirsky and June Havoc was actually June Hovick. This was enough to stop these two performers finding work for a long while and of course there was the jailing of the infamous Hollywood Ten
Communist paranoia entered the American psyche. John Wayne played Big Jim Mclain, an heroic investigator for the committee in 1952. And such was the paranoia felt by the studios that by the time McCarthy arrived on the scene in 1951 Hollywood was politically clean.
At the end of the 50's Television had gained a place as the entertainment of choice for the masses. However more films were made in 1950 than 1946 as a leaner and fitter Hollywood emerged.
Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol," the long-awaited follow-up to the mega-bestseller "The DaVinci Code," was part of the good news. The novel was the year's top seller.
Paperbacks in fiction were mixed -- trade paperback sales were up by 2%, but mass-market paperbacks, which have been struggling, were down.
Overall, the year's tallies have book sales down about 3% overall. That's because adult nonfiction did not perform well -- sales were down by 7% since last year.
* Amazon have been boasting of their recent eBooks sales but Sarah Weinmen thinks it is all a smokescreen - For the past two years, Amazon has been exciting consumers and frustrating book industry types with its puffed-up press releases about the strength of Kindle and e-book sales. The level of self-congratulation appears to have reached a new high with the most recent release, which boldly claimed that the Kindle has become the most gifted item in the company's history FULL STORY
It just so happens that Mel Gibson's production company Icon Entertainment has just announced that it will be co-producing the new film. Does this mean that we are getting closer to Gibson reprising his role?
The Archive predicts that by the time this film goes before the lens it will be Gibson playing an aged Mad Max. Well - stranger things have happened.
This will be the last post of 2009 - well, other than a few newsy items to come later today. New Year's Eve is always a day for reflecting on the past year but more importantly it's a day for looking forward with hope to the next twelve months.
2009 will always be a special one for me since it was during the past year that I became a professionally published author - The Tarnished Star, written under the pen-name of Jack Martin did remarkably well and it's still out there folks, still in print. Also I completed Arkansas Smith, my second novel, which it to be published this coming March. Pre-order HERE to ensure your copy.
2010 - has got to top that. And I'm sure it will (I'm an optimist if I'm anything). There have been big developments this week concerning my crime novel, provisionally titled A Policeman's Lot. The title will change, though as the publisher doesn't like it. I've got a full month or so worth of revisions to do on the manuscript and also come up with a different title but I'm really excited about this. The book looks set to come out with a major international publisher - I will of course keep all Archive readers informed.
I had a four page letter suggesting revisions from my editor yesterday but here's a short snippet of praise -
"You take the reader to a fascinating time and place. The addition of Buffalo Bill Cody’s touring show enhances the setting, and provides extra conflict and an exotic framework for the tale. Overall, the story is excellent. You weave the major and minor conflicts in with the various characters and their motivations quite skillfully. The Ripper tie-in is brilliant, as are the “red herring” murders. "
I'm really excited about this novel - it's set in my home turf of Pontypridd and I love the character of Police Inspector Frank Parade - he's got legs, you know. This book takes place in 1904 but I've got a story arc worked out for subsequent books that will take the character up to the outbreak of World War 1.
Anyway when that's all done and delivered and I've spent my advance, I intend to start work on my third western for the Black Horse range. So it's all go for the start of the year. Then during March or possibly April I plan to take my dream trip - I will, at last, visit America. I'm planning on touring the West, seeing the real landscape that has for so long dominated my dreams. So watch out America, here I come.
After the holiday I'll complete the third western and then plan to kick straight into my second Frank Parade novel. It's good to have a clear goal in mind, I think.
The Archive will also continue to develop - in January 2010 we run our Black Horse Western Weekend - with involvement from many of the Black Horse writers. I'm starting work on this weekend tomorrow and hope to have it ready to run by mid-month. So all those who have promised to become involved then expect some serious badgering from me over the next week or so. There are also other themed weekends in the pipeline and more news and interviews. All in all I want to keep the Archive entertaining but somehow reach the status of essential. Ahh well, aim high - as Granddad used to say, "In life aim for the sky. If your reach the shithouse roof at least you've tried."
This looking forward mood always puts me in mind of a John Lennon lyric - Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.
So let's raise a glass and say goodbye to 2009 and hello 2010 - bring it on.
Wednesday, 30 December 2009
Radio Four raised the bar today with their afternoon play. What did I say by Mark Lawson starred Neil Pearson as a man suspended from work after making some offensive remarks. The problem is that he has no idea what it is he has said, not to whom he said it.
'Do we really want to live in a world where jokes are dangerous?' Max Coleman (Pearson) asks his wife, only to be told that we already do.
It's pretty powerful stuff and looks at this modern politically correct age with a slicing satirical edge - the play can be listened to HERE for the next seven days.
Pipe smoking is a different beast altogether - Ok now that we've got our designated smoking areas, can you please just leave us alone. Yeah tobacco consumption is not particularly good for you, no matter how you use it, but pipe smoking is far less of a danger than cigarettes. And I'll be dammned if I'll cast aside my beloved pipes.
Far from a habit, pipe smoking is a hobby and one that has its origins in ancient history - The Indians of North and South America over the course of a thousand years were only able to craft crude pipes made out of stone or clay. However, the European craftsmen were able to perfect the art of pipes in only a couple of centuries. Pipes themselves can be beautiful works of art. Craftsmen from all over the world have done wonders with simple pieces of briar or many of the other materials used in modern pipe making.
"When love grows cool, thy fire still warms me;
When friends are fled, thy presence charms me.
If thou art full, though purse be bare,
I smoke, and cast away all care!"
There are pipes to suit any pocket but the very best can cost several hundreds of pounds. They are precision instruments that must be smoked carefully and skilfully. Pipe historian John Loring's website HERE is well worth a visit. There is a vast worldwide community of pipe smokers and there is an interesting pipe smoking podcast put together by the Old Toby people which will give you the latest news on legal issues regarding pipe smoking as well as interviews with some of the world's most noted pipe carvers. Find the podcast HERE.
Smokingpipes.com is a wonderful website where second hand pipes are traded and sold - yep you heard correct - secondhand pipes or to give them their proper title, estate pipes. These pipes are renovated, cleaned and sterilised by professionals and they end up looking and tasting as good as new. Often the only way to afford one of the more pricey pipes is to buy used pipes. I got myself a Dunhill on Ebay for £40 which I then treated and cleaned up myself. Everytime I smoke it I am aware that new it would cost several hundreds of pounds.
Pipe tobacco can be likened to fine wines in the way they tease that palette and there are many varieties and blends available - Burley, virginian, cavendish, oriental,latakia...the list is endless. There are plain tobaccos, aromatic tobaccos and just about every other kind of tobacco.
Me I'm off to smoke a pipe of Dark Cavendish and read some pipe poetry:
ODE TO MY PIPE.
O Blessed pipe,
That now I clutch within my gripe,
What joy is in thy smooth, round bowl,
As black as coal!
So sweetly wed
To thy blanched, gradual thread,
Like Desdemona to the Moor,
Thou pleasure's core.
What woman's lip
Could ever give, like thy red tip,
Such unremitting store of bliss,
Or such a kiss?
Oh, let me toy,
Ixion-like, with cloudy joy;
Thy stem with a most gentle slant
I eye askant!
Thy dreamy nectar is transferred,
The while serenity astride
Thy neck doth ride.
A burly cloud
Doth now thy outward beauties shroud:
And now a film doth upward creep,
Cuddling the cheek.
And now a ring,
A mimic silver quoit, takes wing;
Another and another mount on high,
Then spread and die.
They say in story
That good men have a crown of glory;
O beautiful and good, behold
The crowns unfold!
How did they live?
What pleasure could the Old World give
That ancient miserable lot
When thou wert not?
Oh, woe betide!
My oldest, dearest friend hath died,--
Died in my hand quite unaware,
Oh, Baccy rare!
ANDREW WYNTER. From Pipe and Pouch: The Smokers own poetry (now in the public domain and available on prject gutenberg)
Arrogant, rain-sodden, narrow minded, old fashioned, white skinned pacifist toffs. This is the British through the eyes of American students surveyed by the British Council. Most of the students couldn't name the four components of the British isles and one said, 'I think they kill each other less than we do.' THE TIMES NEWSPAPER
A financial report into publisher Dora Kingsley in 1993 revealed that in American its most successful books were The Ultimate Sex Guide and the Magic of Sex. In the UK its biggest seller was the Royal Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Gardening. THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
For sale - Artificial Leg (Left). Suit tallish person with right leg only...The FREEAD'S NEWSPAPER
Remove cap and push up bottom - Instructions on a roll up deodorant
The M61 in Lancashire was closed off after a four car collision. All of the cars were driven by policemen on a training exercise. SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
These are just a few of the hundreds of amusing entries in this book. You Absolutely Couldn't Make it Up by Jack Crossley. The link here is for Amazon which is included because they allow you a peek inside the book at the first few pages. If you like
Tuesday, 29 December 2009
Amazon sold more electronic books than physical books on Christmas Day, due to the popularity of the Kindle e-reader, the online retailer reported. It was the first time e-books had led in sales.
In addition, the Kindle has become the most gifted item ever on Amazon, according to the company, which did not release sales numbers.
The latest four titles from Commando Books are now on
Two of the titles are set in the Ardennes - Friends or Foes, written by Peter Grehan with art by John Ridgeway is set during 1944 with the German offensive using special units dressed in Allied uniform. The Winter Warriors, written by Ferg Handley and drawn by Garijo is set during the Battle of the Bulge.
It's back to 1940 for Battling Rust Bucket. The story written by Ian Clark with art by Gordon Livingstone tells of the Dunkirk evacuation and of the clapped out old paddle steamer's part in the operation.
Last but not least is Never Volunteer written by C.G. Walker, art by Ibanez and set during the North African conflict.
The books are priced at £1.35 each and are quite unique in the current market - well told, war stories just like your Dad used to read.
Seth Harwood made a splash by podcasting his novel, Jack Wakes Up - so successful was the podcast that he secured a major publishing deal. Well now Seth's moving into eBooks and he wants our help with his first tentative steps into the murky worlds of ePublishing.
Over to you, Seth
Now is the time to go to the Amazon Kindle store
to help me with my Kindle Publishing Experiment
I've released my short story collection
A Long Way from Disney on the Kindle for just $.99
and am rushing the charts today to let the world
know that it's here.
Please help me by forwarding and spreading this email,
and/or going here to Amazon to buy the
Note: You DO NOT need a Kindle to buy!
You can use these software downloads to set yourself
up as a Kindle reader with any iPhone/iPod Touch or PC computer! Easy-peasy.
Get software: Kindle App for iPhone http://www.facebook.com/l/85f08;bit.ly/5B8aCt
Kindle PC software. http://www.facebook.com/l/85f08;bit.ly/73FTcM
Monday, 28 December 2009
The big news for June was the publication of my debut western, The Tarnished Star. The novel had been sitting at the top of the Amazon pre-orders for westerns for the best part of four months. And I was nervous as people started receiving their books - thankfully the feedback was good and I was interviewed on many websites. The month also saw a Jack Martin weekend on the Blasck Horse forum and I spent an enjoyable few days answering questions. I did a book signing at my local Borders and was dismayed to find gaps in their usually packed shelves. As the year went on the gaps would become wider. The month saw the death of Michael Jackson and the Archive gave its own tribute to the troubled singer.
The big news in July was the first stirrings of a UK version on the Kindle. And in the western genre we had the launch of a new paperback imprint, BHE Books - western author Chap O'keefe had decided to launch his own imprint to allow him greater creative freedom. The Tarnished Star reviews kept coming and the Archive featured a student movie I'd starred in - Kenny Constricted. Marcus Galloway and James D Best were interviewed to keep up the western flavour. And silent movies were the order of the day with the Archive reviewing a number of Chaplin films as well as several Laurel and Hardy movies and the odd Harold Lloyd. And we posted the winners of the Bristol Short Story Prize. It was great to see a western amongst the winning entries - The Archive was thanked for its support of the competition with a free copy of the wonderful anthology. And we also launched a new social network for western fans.
August -Saw the announcement that Disney were to buy Marvel. The Archive ran a Paul McCartney feature which argued that he wasn't just the sloppy one. We also interviewed Chantel Foster who at age sixteen saw a story accepted for the Fistful of Legends Anthology - truly remarkable that one so young should feature alongside such seasoned western scribes. Well done Chantel. Horror master Shaun Hutson popped in for a chat and we looked at the history of horror magazines in the UK. Elsewhere the excitement for A Fistful of Legends grew as a full line up was announced which included yours truly with a story called, The Gimp. We ended the month with an interview with president of the Western Writers of America Johnny D Boggs. We were saddened this month to hear of the death after a long illness of western legend, Elmer Kelton.
September saw the Archive investigating the Jack the Ripper case. And we posted scans of some rare old comic books. The big thing this month was our Saint Weekend which saw us interview many luminaries connected in one way or another to The Saint. We also ran the digital first publication of an old Saint strip by Keith Chapman AKA Chaps O'keefe and the hits went through the roof. The big media news this month was the release of The Beatles past cataloug in new remastered format. The Archive were well impressed and there were many Beatle centric posts.
October saw 128 posts in total - the greatest majority of them western based. There was a lack of interviews this month but we did manage to talk to Nik Morton about the Fistful of Legends anthology. The news was given about our upcoming Sherlock Holmes weekend and in a major feature we asked, What's so good about these Black Horse westerns? The cover image for Arkansas Smith was posted for the first time. And overall the month was filled with varied items on popular culture. It was noted that the eBooks news was increasing as the Ereaders became more and more popular. The Archive also bemoaned the demise of Borders which we felt was on the way to destruction.
November - saw the Sherlock Holmes weekend repeat the success of the earlier Saint weekend. So successful were these two ventures that Jan 2010 will see the Black Horse Western weekend - believe me there is much to look forward to here. We interviewed Lee Walker and talked about his debut western - Gun Law which I'd had on preorder from Amazon for some months. The book did not disappoint and will be reviewed on the ARchive during the Black Horse weekend. We also interviewed the editor of the Commando comic book range Calum Laird and David Whitehead who writes for the line was also questioned. And of course no little thing but November saw another successful Wild West Monday. There'll be another some time in 2010.
December - saw us interview James Bond author, Raymond Benson. As well as post more news on the Fistful of Legends anthology - we even ran a special offer which you can still take advantage of....
To find any of the past year's features either look in the sidebar or type the required material in the search box at the top of the blog. I hope you enjoy looking back at the Archive's 2009.
Which leads us to... The future of the Archive. I hope the Archive continues to develop as a sort of mixture of a blog and a magazine - a blogozine so to speak. I hope to provide content that equals much of the paid for content out there. You regular readers can help by telling me what you like in the comments to this post.
Here's to the future....2010 and beyond
At one point there were rumours he was making a spaghetti type western and in many ways these rumours were correct. Inglorious Basterd may be set during World War II but its structured like an Italian oater - shit the opening in the French farm even looks as if Leone was behind the camera. There are long shots, swooping operatic music and extreme lingering close ups on the actors faces.
The trademark Tarantino dialogue is also present and correct and the sudden extreme violence is never far away. Brad Pitt is excellent,playing it light which makes his character all the more chilling, particularly in the way he wisecracks as he carves a swastika in another German's forehead. It is Christopher Waltz as the sadistic Colonel Hans Landa who takes the top acting honours and he steals every scene with his seething Nazi. Hitler is presented as a maniac whose intensity almost takes him into the realms of comic book character which is perfect for the film as Tarantino's vision of the war is very much like an extreme comic book,one of those that hold the warning, "for mature readers".
I very much enjoyed this film - equal parts art film as all out action-pic and the plot involving film nerds and the Third Reich could only exist in Tarantino's own universe. The film has made the most money of any Tarantino film since Pulp Fiction and it sits far easier alongside his early classics than either Kill Bill or the Grindhouse project.
The DVD is poor in terms of special features which will allow for the inevitable Special Edition. If extras are your thing - all you get here are several alternative scenes and the full cut of the film within a film, Pride of a Nation - you may be better off renting and waiting for the supplemental material packed special edition.
As 2010 approaches, the Archive nears the milestone of 100,000 hits - The Archive started 2009 off with several interviews in January - Beau L'amour, son of western legend Louis L'amour and Celia Hayes, Max Allen Collins, Charles Ardai, Jim Griffin, David Cranmer, Mark Billingham and Patricia Gott were all grilled by the Archive in that first month. That month we also pointed readers to a free copy of a computer game, Operation Thunderbowel which I originally wrote for the ZX Spectrum platform back in the 1990's. We also revealed the artwork for my, then forthcoming, western novel Tarnished Star. And we were there early with our article on the future of reading which looked at the novelty of eReaders. And Steve M. of Western Fiction Review became the first guest blogger of the year with his review of Endworld - Doomsday.
It's fitting that there were so many interviews in January because January 2010 is set to mirror that with our Black Horse Western weekend in which we will be chatting with heaps of western creators.
February saw us pushing the Wild West Monday initiative which was due on March 2nd. Terry James was interviewed about her debut novel, The Long Shadows. And fellow Black Horse scribes David Whitehead and Chap O'keefe were also available at the campfire for a friendly chat. We also gave news of a digital publishing first and announced the the full novel of Chap O'Keefe's The Sheriff and the Widow would be published online for the world to read. The book would go onto be published in four weekly instalments (all of which can still be found in the Archive sidebar) during the build up to Wild West Monday. We also ran a competition in which lucky readers could win a copy of Chap O'keefe's Misfit Lil Gets Even. All in all Feb was a successful month of western posts leading up to Wild West Monday.
March saw Wild West Monday come and go with a bang and the instalments of The Sheriff and the Widow received record daily hits. The month saw us chat with Gillian F. Taylor and look at the birth of the western movie. And with the first reviews of Tarnished Star starting to appear we made the first mention of Arkansas Smith (out March 2010). The month saw us looking at current films, with reviews of many new DVD's during the month.
April saw an interview with Seth Hardwood and we announced Wild West Monday III which would follow in June - the first push saw some publishers announcing a small rise in western sales. I posted about the time I spent working on Doctor Who and we ran several non fiction old west articles, the piece on Billy the Kid is still our most revisited post. We ran some pictures of PC Case mods which brought some computer enthusiasts to the Archive for perhaps the first time. And we started our Deadwood episode guide which is a project we have yet to finish. Mind you I plan an all new episode guide, all original reviews, for sometime in 2010. And the month also saw us interview the lovely Laurie Powers, a pulp historian and someone who has become a good and cherished friend to myself. Her own Blog is cooking at the moment.
May saw another month of western posts as we moved towards June which would see another Wild West Monday as well as the publication of The Tarnished Star. It was very much a month of guest blogs with many other people from all over the wild west web contributing posts in the build up to Wild West Monday III. WE ran the Paul D Brazil story, A Tissue of Webs. And sadly we also reported of Elmer Kelton's illness that month . Elmer would sadly pass away later in the year. The western field lost a legend with his passing.
Next we will look at June to December on The Tainted Archive
It was dark backstage and strangely it seemed as if it would be even darker when I swished through the curtains and took to the battlefield. It's been over two years since I last did a stand up gig and now thanks to a friend I'm the third act at a charity fund-raiser at the Buff-Club.
I was worried I'd be rusty - and those worries were proved right. I had cartwheels in my stomach as I heard the MC say, "And now ladies and gentlemen, Dai Bando."
And then, there I was again, standing on a small stage, blank faces staring back at me. I looked into those faces, raised the mic to my mouth and said, "F**K O*F. That got the first laugh, admittedly only a small one but then I was off, rabbiting through a routine that contained something old and something new. I read the audience and knew the blue stuff would go down well and so I went through the routine about pulling a bird at Blackpool in the summer..." It was only when the fresh air hit me that I realised this was the biggest f***ing bird I'd ever seen. I took her knickers down and her arse was still in them. She asked if I'd taken precautions and I told her I'd tied my feet to a lamppost.."
From there it was senior citizen sex, politics (this went down better than I expected), the smoking ban, and of course Dai Bando's old favourite, the alluring qualities of the average Welsh sheep. It all went well and to think the last time I did a comedy gig I was knocked out cold by an irate punter. The only part of the show I was worried about was where I talked about the late great George Carling and then, as if I was a singer doing a cover version, I performed his excellent Modern Man monologue. The audience loved it. Oh and I also got to plug Tarnished Star and Arkansas Smith to end the show.
I know the show was video recorded by several people and I've been promised a disc of my fifteen minute slot. When I get it I'll post it here on the Archive.
Dai Bando is alive and well and looking for more gigs and sheep.
Project: THE TAINTED ARCHIVE
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Saturday, 26 December 2009
There have been four new recordings of classic shows, all with new casts. The episodes have been The Blood Donor with Paul Merton in the title role, Impasse with Mitchell and Webb, I tell you it was Burt Reynolds with Rik Myall and You'll Never Walk Alone with Frank Skinner. But the highlight was a documentary hosted by Stephen Merchant that charter the partnership from them meeting in a TB hospital to their present standing as comedy gurus.
All are still available to listen to on the BBC Radio 2 listen again page - HERE
I've been watching a lot of their work lately - I got DVD box sets of The Complete Hancock (well the surviving episodes at least )and The Complete Steptoe and Son for Christmas. Together these two shows represent the best of the teams work.
Hancock's Half Hour was the first real sitcom, the seed from which the genre developed. Tony Hancock was a comic genius and like many of his ilk he was a troubled man. Although his talent was immense he was often egotistical and it was this that finally ended the show rather than the writers having run out of steam.
"Galton and Simpson showed us that the sitcom could contain real drama." Ben Elton
After Hancock ended Galton and Simpson came up with Steptoe and Son ( I believe the Americans developed Sanford and Son from this series) which was the first true sitcom - tragic true to life situations from which they dragged out the comedy, all of it natural rather than forced. Steptoe and Son became a national institution that regularly topped the ratings. The show went on for eight seasons and remained at the top of its game throughout. Even now it still looks fresh and stands above most all other sitcom from anywhere in the world.
But back to the radio series - if you like comedy that I urge you to listen to these shows, they are available for a few more days.
"They were far more ground breaking than any other writers working at the time." Dennis Norden
The Guardian Newspaper were left underwhelmed:
It is, as the great sleuth might have said, a three-pipe problem. How does cackling Ritchie keep getting away with it? How on earth did he manage to perpetrate those two egregious crimes Revolver and RocknRolla without getting his collar felt?
This lordly super-villain is well known as a master of disguise, donning a pearly cap and smearing himself with odorous jellied eels to pass as a cockney rapscallion, in which garb this patrician scofflaw carries out his dastardly acts in film studios, before changing back into tweeds and vanishing away to his country estate.
Now he has managed to steal hours of precious time belonging to cinemagoers everywhere for his latest silly escapade. It's a souped-up Victorian romp with Holmes and Watson reinvented as wisecracking action heroes, a two-man league of pretty ordinary gentlemen.
As ever, Ritchie has some bareknuckle fighting in slow-motion interspersed with very-quick-speeded-up-motion and there's plenty of diddly-diddly Irish folk music in the background. I fear producer Joel Silver may feel like grabbing Ritchie and plunging with him down the Reichenbach Falls.UNDERWIRE.COM found much to enjoy in the movie:
London is in an uproar as the ritual killings resume. Enter mystery woman Irene Adler, portrayed by saucer-eyed Rachel McAdams, who has her own agenda as she alternately teases and torments her old rival Holmes. Meanwhile, Holmes’ constant companion Dr. John Watson (played by Jude Law) becomes increasingly cranky in his role as faithful assistant, due in part to the distractions offered by fiancée Mary (Kelly Reilly).
This Sherlock Holmes turns as much on the frayed friendship between crime fiction’s most durable odd couple as it does on Lord Blackwood’s evil conspiracy. Writers Michael Robert Johnson, Anthony Peckham and Simon Kinberg (who penned Mr. & Mrs. Smith) invest Holmes and Watson’s bickering exchanges with a brittle tension that hints at a vulnerable heart beating beneath Holmes’ ever-commanding persona.
Sherlock Holmes is Ritchie’s first big Hollywood movie, and he’s taken full advantage of the budget to hire first-rate collaborators. Cinematographer Philippe Rousselot (A River Runs Through It) evokes turn-of-the-century London with stunning exterior shots. Costume designer Jenny Beavan (A Room With a View) dresses Downey in sensationally cool outfits that ignore the deerstalking-cap-and-cape iconography in favor of dapper cravats and fedoras. Production designer Sarah Greenwood (Atonement, Pride & Prejudice) finesses the period details.
Amid all this Masterpiece Theater finery, some action sequences feel a tad cartoony — can a woman really fall 40 feet, appear limp, then perk up, without a scratch, only to fire off a completely coherent witticism? And Sherlock Holmes fans accustomed to genteel crime scenes may wince at the sight of a young woman spread-eagled on a ritual murder table three minutes into the film.
But this umpteenth on-screen incarnation of Sherlock Holmes remakes the template in promising fashion. Armed with an impeccably crisp British accent, Downey presents Holmes as a neurotic, slightly batty, genius crime-solver well-suited for 21st century audiences. Case closed.
Friday, 25 December 2009
The Filth and the Fury, directed by Julian Temple, makes up for the mess that was The Great Rock and Roll Swindle Movie. Not that I don't enjoy Rock and Roll Swindle (when I'm in the mood, at least) but this documentary is far more truthful and the juxtaposition of performance video and news clips of the times gives full context to the revolutionary band the Pistols truly were.
If you listened to the press it was all about spitting and vulgarity but it was more than that - it was about individualism, about questioning authority and not accepting the status quo. Deep down, at it's very core, the punk ethos was a healthy one.
The punk movement was born out of the way the mainstream music was getting further and further away from the rreality of life for the average teenager of the day. There was no glamour, spangled trousers and sweetness on the streets of 1970's Britain. What there was were race riots, industrial conflict and a default status of general crap.
The documentary shows that the band eventually became the victims of the big business they sought to destroy. And this rock and roll story really did end in tragedy as in the case of Sid Vicious. There is a moving moment when John Lyndon, interviewed present day, brings up his regrets over Sid's tragic and sordid death.
Now these days the Pistols are almost mainstream - they've reformed several times and given stadium concerts just like those rock bands they once called dinosaurs. But John Lyndon is still an interesting man who refuses to toe the line, even if he is now the voice of a certain brand of butter but then I suppose it was inevitable - they're the Pistols and they don't care.
The Filth and the Fury DVD (VCD 00067).
Thursday, 24 December 2009
We know you'll like it.
Just my luck, snow had started to fall the day before I left and, by the time I drove my Seat into the mountains, it was lying thick. Not the most auspicious start to the Christmas holidays, I thought, as the windscreen wipers beat a monotonous rhythm. STORY CONTINUES ON NIK'S SITE HERE
And if you're looking for some great new year reading then might I point you to both the anthology, A Fistful of Legends and the new all guns blazing paperback from BHE Books, Liberty and a Law Badge.
And don't forget 2010 is the year of Arkansas Smith - who is Arkansa Smith? Don't ask me - find out for yourself and ensure your copy by pre-ordering now. And of course my debut novel, The Tarnished Star is still available but in short supply. Amazon are currently offering this hardcover book for a mere £8.30.
Wednesday, 23 December 2009
There are seven surviving episodes from The Likely Lads. The series ran from 1964 - 1966, three seasons and 21 episodes. The episode Double Date which is on the BBCDVD The Likely Lads was the second episode of the first season. In fact the first episode is another of those that escaped being wiped and so the viewer gets a sense of the characters developing.
The series was written by Dick Clement and Ian La Franais, a celebrated writing team who were responsible for many hit shows including the sequel to this series, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads.
I enjoyed this episode - I know these early episodes by reputation rather than familiarity and I think I've only ever seen this once before. I love the way it's written, dialogue driven and flipping from scene to scene with the conversation being played out separately by two different couples. On one hand we have Bob and Terry and on the other the two girls who served as the lad's dates.
We don't actually see the night out, other than as a photographic montage which was probably a cost cutting exercise but its works brilliantly. Then we are in the aftermath of the night out with Bob and Terry stranded on a bus stop, they begin a conversation, Bob moaning that's he spent two quid and Terry snapping, 'I've spent three.' And from there the scene shifts to the girls, safe and warm back home, as they continue the thread started by the lads - we get the same events from two widely differing viewpoints.
It's all so 1960's working class comedy, so well observed that it serves as an example of the lifestyles of the British youth during the period. The episode, together with the other surviving six episodes are on the BBC DVD The Likely Lads (BBCDVD1879). There are no special features which is a pity but these episodes are superb examples of the new wave of 1960's British comedy and still as enjoyable as ever.
Last night on “The Late Show With David Letterman,” Robert Downey Jr. stopped by to promote Sherlock Holmes, in theatres on Friday, and bantered with Dave about the possibility that Arthur Conan Doyle’s great detective and his long-suffering sidekick Dr. Watson were more than just mates. Or, as Downey reportedly put it on ‘Letterman:’ “They were homos.”
WHO IS ARKANSAS SMITH? FIND OUT MARCH 2010
Privacy watchdogs at the Electronic Frontier Foundation claim that electronic reader technologies such as Google Book Search, Amazon.com's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook threaten consumer privacy. Noting that e-readers collect a lot of information about their users' reading habits and locations and convey it to the companies that build or sell these technologies, the EFF has created a Buyer's Guide to E-Book Privacy to shed some light on what information existing e-readers collect and share.
Ed Bayley, an adjunct attorney for the EFF, in a blog post Dec. 21 said e-readers collect "substantial information about their users' reading habits and locations" and report back to the companies that build or sell these technologies.
The Google Book Search project is Google's broad effort to scan out-of-print books and offer them to users online for fees. The project is on hold while the search engine and the New York District Court hash out a renegotiation, and won't be finalized until 2010.
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
And now The story with no name continues...
'They're scattering,' Arnside yelled, whooping and hollering. It wasn't like Apaches but they had turned tail and were running.
'Guess they know what's good for them,' Sawtell screamed with joy and let of a shot towards the retreating Indians. One of them threw his arms up and with a scream pitched forward into sand.
'I'm enjoying this,' Gabe yelled, holding onto his camel for grim death. He was jostled about on the beast and several times he always lost his grip but each time he managed to keep his balance.
'There's Lola.' Arnside yelled.
'We separate,' Choo How yelled. ' Sawtell and me we chase off the Indians. Don't need to kill them just make sure they run far enough away.'
'Sounds good to me,' Sawtell said and set off another shot but hit nothing. 'Just as long as I get my share of what's coming.'
'That's a certainty.' Arnside said and sped his own camel forward as the two men set off in pursuit of the fleeing Indians.
Below standing before the ship Lola felt Bourbon's grip loosen and then she was thrown to the ground, face down so that she didn't see which way Bourbon had run and when she managed to turn around she saw that he had vanished. She lay there, eyes directed at the magnificent wreck that was the ship. She was still staring when she felt an arm lifting her to her feet.
'Lola,' Arnside said and looked at her, his eyes never once leaving her face.
'The ship.' Lola said, dreamily as if her words had been uttered deep within a trance. 'There's the ship, Walt. It's real.'
Arnside nodded and only now did he look at the wreck before them. It sat there, as if it had been deposited in the desert. Its timbers were impossibly aged and most of its rigging had snapped so that planks of splintered wood, like dead fingers, reached for the sky. There was a gaping hole in the hull, looking almost like a rictus mouth, and through which could be seen the darkness within the nautical tomb.
'I say we go take us a look see.' Gabe had joined them and he stood looking at the ancient wreck.
'Shall we untie them?' Arnside asked, pointed back to Rodan and Hassen. Both men were rolling about in the sand, their hands still bound behind their backs and their feet tied together.
'Yes.' Lola said but she seemed to be answering some inner thoughts rather than Arnside's question. She walked towards the ship as if led by some ethereal force. Gabe followed just behind her and seemed to be in a somnolent state himself.
'Sorry fellas.' Arnside said and set off after them. Together the three of them entered the fractured hull of the ship.
1953 Directed by Robert Wise
Starring Richard Burton
The film is based on the Australian 9th Division, the Anzacs, who were charged with the defence of Tobruk under the command of General Leslie Morshead. Hoping to survive against overwhelming odds for two months, the garrison held off the best of Rommel's Afrika Korps for over eight months. The film's title is a little misleading as The Desert Rats were actually the British 7th Armoured division, whilst this Australian division were known as the Rats of Torbruk after German propaganda said they were trapped like rats by the advancing Rommel.
Richard Burton plays Captain McRoberts, a British soldier put in charge of the Australian unit which immediately brings him into conflict with several of the men under his command. James Mason, who had played Rommel in the 1951 movie, The Desert Fox reprises the role here though his performance is really several cameos.
The film was made in black and white in order that actual footage from the real battles could be depicted and this adds considerably to the documentary feel of the picture. The fact that the scenes with the Germans and Italians are in their native tongue, without subtitles also heightens the sense that we are watching real events. There are some stunning shots - the bit where the beleaguered commandos advance across the harsh desert landscape with flashes in the horizon is eerie in the extreme. And the film cranks up the tension. All in all it's an excellent film that depicts both the horror of war and the incredible acts of individual heroism that sheer terror can inspire.
COMMANDO: ANZACS AT WAR
THE BEST 12 ANZAC STORIES
This book collects together the twelve best Anzac stories from the long running comic book's history. The stories were selected by the then Commando editor, George Low who also provides an introduction.
The twelve stories collected here take place in all the theatres of war, most are World War II based but there is one story involving an ANZAC soldier set during the Veitnam war and another set in the immediate post-war period.
The book is a great collection of the best in British comic book storytelling.
And in reality: Tobruk
The siege of Tobruk was no different to the sieges of ancient castles and forts in that the major issue was supply. A besieging army need do nothing strenuous in the way of attacking if they know the people within the walls only have enough water for a few days. It was lucky for the Allies that supplies could reach Tobruk by sea, with the strategically vital island of Malta sending support to help the ships get through.
JAN 21-22 1941 - Australians assault and take Tobruk. 27,000 Italians surrender
Feb 12 1941- Rommel arrives in tripoli
Nov 18th 1941 - Beginning of Operation Crusader
Nov 20th 1941- Heavy fighting around Rezegh. Tobruk garrison begins breakout
Nov 28th - 30 1941- German armour attempts to break up Allied Link-up. Casualties are heavy on both sides.
Dec 8th 1941 -Rommel abandons the fight with only 40 tanks left. Tobruk relieved.
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The Battle Of Rome, Caesar, 3
This well-explained Discovery Channel documentary is suitable for high school students and is told through narration and re-enactments. The Roman Empire lasted a thousand years but like most ancient civilizations, the great empire fell under the guidance of many emperors.
Homeschooling Tips : How to Deal With Socialization
Homeschool students are encouraged to join a homeschool support group in order to meet other kids and deal with socialization issues. opportunities with help from a homeschool teacher in this free video on education. Linda Wooldridge has been homeschooling since 1998, and she has been on the PPEA board for three years as the orientation coordinator for Pinellas County.
Filmmaker: Christopher Rokosz
Reading : What Is Story Resolution?
Story resolution occurs after the climax of a story in order to
tie up the loose ends of what happens in the story. Find out about less
traditional story resolution with information from a writing instructor
in this video.
Computer Typing Lessons : Proper Posture When Typing On A Computer Keyboard
Learn proper typing posture in this free instructional video. Expert: Jenifer Cononico. English Captions. (1:07)
The Progressive Era
Video discusses the Progressive Era in the United States. It was period of reform which lasted from the1890s to the 1920s. Video discusses the presidents during this time period, the muckrakers, political reform, and amendments established. This is a great video that gives a lot of information.
Jason and the Argonauts
This is an animation based on the mythical tale, Jason and the Argonauts. Jason and his band of Argonaut warriors as they fight the evil skeletons.
The Crash of 1929
This video discusses the crash of the stock market, what caused it and how it affected people.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the only man elected four times as President of the United States. His legs paralyzed by polio, he led a crippled nation through the dark days of the Great Depression and World War II with eternal optimism and lifted the spirits of millions of Americans, offering a "New Deal" to the American people, he forever changed the role of the Federal government and left a profound mark on the 20th century. (2 minutes)
Hard drive in action
This video illustrates how a hard drive works by showing it in action. The narrator also describes what the hard drive is doing. (2:20)
What is a Cloud?
In this NASA video segment learn about the different types of clouds and cloud formation. Find out more about the relationship between clouds and weather on Earth. Run time 02:40.
How To Classify Clouds
Classifying clouds is crucial to understanding weather systems, learn how to become a meteorologist and predict the weather in this free video. Part of the series: How To Predict The Weather. Run time 01:52.
Solving Literal Equations
Sometimes we need to use methods for solving literal equations to rearrange formulas when we want to find a particular parameter or variable. This video explains how solving literal equations is often useful in real life situations. For example, we can solve the formula for distance, d=rt, for r to produce an equation for rate. (1:50)
20/20 Fidel Castro Interview - Barbara Walters [4 of 6]
Elian Gonzales - Walter's view on Cuban Society, Tourism, & prostitution Barbara Walters interviews Fidel Castro from Havana, Cuba -- 25 years after her first interview with the Cuban leader. Her original interview made a little history because people got their first real look at the man. Although Castro is known for very long speeches, he rarely does interviews. Fidel Castro, 76 at the time of this interview, has outlasted nine US presidents. His rule continues to inspire both fear and
United States Constitutional Principles
Visuals of US Constitutional Principles is the subject of this one minute video. It moves too rapidly to stand by itself and the terms are shown on the screen without narration. At best a quick overview for older students.
How to install custom firmware on all psp slim and fat
This video will teach you how to install custom firmware on all psp slim and fat. Step by step instructions are given.
Surface Area of a Cylinder
The instructor demonstrates how to solve for the surface area of a cylinder. The formula for the surface area of a cylinder is given and examples model determining the radius and height to plug in to the formula. The instructor then walks the learner through the computation process step by step.
Dark Chocolate Health Benefits - www.MyChocolateMedicine.com
Dr. Steve Warren talks about the health benefits of cold processed dark chocolate. He explains the function of anti-oxidants and bioflavonoids and the fact that cold processed dark chocolate is the #1 superfood in the world. There is only one company in the entire world that makes cold processed dark chocolate and has the worldwide patent on this process.
Nori Diesel - Modern Dance Improvisation 1
Nori Diesel Potts's modern dance improvisation at Ballet School of Chapel Hill. (1:21)
Sumerian Origin Of Humans
The Sumerians knowledge of the solar system 4600 years ago drew the solar system as it is today. This video explains this and about a planet that only returns every 3600 years. A very interesting video for students studying this group as well as for those studying astonomy. This video may be somewhat frightening to some students as to it refers to possible dramatic events in the future.
Early American Literature (1700 - 1800) and Famous Americans
A brief look at the Colonial Period (also known as the Age of Reason,
Enlightenment, and Naturalism) in this non-narrated seven minute video. It is essentially an encyclopedia of famous people, events, and movements during this time period. Some of the topics in the video include: the Triangular Trade, Kepler, Galileo, deism, dawn of liberalism, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and Phyllis Wheatly. This video is not limited to literature. (07:40) | <urn:uuid:8e0d7613-f9d4-42e4-94c5-e302a8859924> | {
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Informal Geometry Explorations
More than 75 motivational problem-solving activities explore geometry in the natural and human worlds: counting, area, construction, congruence, visualization, symmetry, tiling, and dissection. These versatile problems introduce new topics, reinforce and review ideas, or simply serve as a change of pace. Blackline masters and answer key.
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angle apothem backcourt centimeters Challenge complete the table concave polygon congruent equilateral triangles congruent regions congruent right triangles congruent triangles copies deltahedron diagonal different-size triangles Dissection envelope floral clock golden ratio golden triangles hexomino shapes Informal Geometry interior points intersection points isometric dot paper least number line of symmetry line segment maximum number minimum surface area number of intersection number of lines number of segments number of toothpicks number of triangles nx nwhen pentomino shapes Perimeter of original Perimeter of square Pick's Rule points of intersection rectangle rectangular pieces regular hexagon Regular polygons rhombus Select any point separate sheets service court shaded sheets of paper side total sketch sq ft square feet square miles square region square units table to predict tangram tape three congruent threesomes toothpicks needed total number tracing paper trapezoids triangles per side tromino shape turn symmetry unit cubes vertices Visualization XXX XXX | <urn:uuid:f78a92ea-990d-4463-aac5-87dfd1423ba1> | {
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The terrible Literacy rate which was around 12% during the time of Independence, is now 75%, India has made decisive steps in a specified direction of educating its citizens.
Many states such as Kerala and Himachal succeed in achieving their goal in this field. But many lags behind, among them is Jharkhand. But in this state one of the village had 100 % literacy rate.
Ghusra village is located in the Maoist affected region of Patamda and has a population comprising mainly tribal’s. According to the 2011 census, the village had an estimated literacy rate of only 41%. The villagers, numbering around 1000, have put themselves to achieve 100% literacy in the village by November 15th.
For that The villagers have got a simple yet effective plan going. Every educated person in the village will be tutor for an illiterate person. Additionally, school going children will teach their parents and grandparents.
The district officers have played their part as well in this literacy scheme. The District Relations Officers, Sanjay Kumar, was one of the main driving forces behind the programme. The administration will provide all necessary resources, such as pens, pencils, Hindi alphabet books, etc., to the villagers. | <urn:uuid:25cee20a-92e0-4079-9226-967cce544b3d> | {
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How might we improve our trust in public spaces so that we feel the freedom and comfort of having private conversations in public?
Conversations in public places: Using an understanding of people to inform design decisions is a foundation of people centred design. In collaboration with external stakeholders, we gained first-hand experience with field research techniques, team-based synthesis, persona and model-making, co-creation and insight generation.
Research Topic: After several small workshops and group exercises we were asked to organise and run a series of interviews and observations around the theme of “Trust”, using the people-centered research techniques we had developed. The following questions formed the base for our research questions.
Research Analyses: We used a series of research analysis tools and processes to discover key insights and design opportunities within the data we had collected. These design opportunities were discussed and presented to the entire class along with key statements and evidence. We discovered that there are three main influences that affect how much trust a person has when discussing a specific topic: Location, Channel and People. When interviewing people we found that trust is a willingness to rely on another person for unbiased assistance, advice and help with a specific topic.
We set ourselves the following design challenge: How might we provide people with a way to discuss personal/work topics with trustworthy neutral parties using public transport and public spaces?
We presented our initial design concepts and received the following feedback.
- It would be very suitable as a mobile app.
- Tourism and travellers might find the service very suitable.
- It could be a great tool for organised group activities such as dating.
- A band that flashes or vibrates isn’t very discreet and could lead to awkward situations.
- Probably used for short periods of activity but not every day.
Based on the feedback above, we developed our concept further to create the GoLocal service. Which would collect and organise your online networks so you can meet new people easily. Learn about new contacts instantly and decide whether you trust them with the topic you’d like to discuss.
Team: Shu Yang Lin, Luke Sturgeon
Advisors: Shelley Evenson, Amy Bickerton, Christena Nippert-Eng | <urn:uuid:03f9ef36-d6c1-442b-879d-ad39d3278e89> | {
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Phenylalanine and tyrosine have important functions in the body
It can strengthen memory and curb appetite. Phenylalanine is also required for the kidneys and bladder to clear pollutants.
The American pharmacologist Earl Mindell, also known in Germany for his excellent reference work "Die Vitamin Bibel" (Heyne Taschenbuch), writes about DLPA:
"This form of the essential amino acid is a mixture of equal parts synthetic (D) and natural (L) phenylalanine. By producing and activating morphine-like hormones called endorphins, it amplifies and prolongs the body's natural analgesic effect in the event of injury or accident and disease.
Certain enzyme systems in the body are constantly destroying endorphins, but DLPA effectively hinders these enzymes so that the pain relieving endorphins can do their job.
Many people who do not respond to the usual pain relievers will respond to DLPA. Endorphin activity in the blood and spinal fluid is decreased in people with chronic pain. Because DLPA can restore endorphin levels to normal, it can also help the body relieve pain naturally without the use of medication.
And because DLPA is able to selectively block pain, it can effectively ameliorate chronic, protracted disorders while not interfering with the body's natural defense mechanisms for acute pain (burns, cuts, and the like).
The effects of DLPA are often equal to or greater than those of morphines and other opium derivatives, but DLPA differs from them in that
it is not addictive;
the pain relief becomes more effective over time (without ingesting larger amounts);
it works strongly against depression;
it can provide constant pain relief for up to a month without additional medication;
it is not poisonous;
it can be combined with any other drug or therapy in order to increase the positive effect and without causing harmful reactions.
DLPA can act as a natural pain reliever for conditions such as sharp pain, arthritis, lower back pain, migraines, leg and muscle cramps, postoperative pain, and neuralgia.
DLPA is generally available in 375 mg and 750 mg tablets. The right dosage varies depending on how the individual feels the pain.
Six tablets of 375 mg or 3 tablets of 750 mg daily (2 to 375 mg or 1 to 750 mg about a quarter of an hour before each meal) are the best way to start treatment with DLPA. Pain relief should occur within the first four days, although in some cases it can take up to three or four weeks. If there is no significant improvement in the first three weeks, double the initial amount again for two or three weeks. If this still doesn't work, cancel. It has been found that five to fifteen percent of people do not respond to the pain relieving effects of this substance.
Caution: DLPA must not be used during pregnancy or by patients with Fölling's disease (hereditary metabolic abnormality). Because it can increase blood pressure, people with heart problems or high blood pressure should speak to a doctor before taking this substance. Generally they are allowed to take DLPA, but only after eating.
With DLPA, the pain generally goes away in the first week. Then the dosages can be gradually reduced until there is only a minimal need. However much you take, the individual doses should be evenly distributed throughout the day.
Some people only need to take DLPA once a month for a week; others need it all the time. I find it interesting to discover that some of the people who do not respond to the usual pain relievers respond to them. "
50/50 Blend of D-Phenylalanine & L-Phenylalanine
Use only as directed. Take one vegetarian capsule daily with a glass of water. For best results take on an empty stomach.
Cellulose and vegetable cellulose capsule.
Solaray guarantees that NO ingredients other than those listed on this label have been added to this product.
Store in a cool, dry place. | <urn:uuid:bf175721-a97e-4906-8c4a-b7dbd28b03dd> | {
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“…Originating from sources, whether fished or farmed, that can maintain or increase production in the long term without jeopardizing the structure or function of affected ecosystems.” The David Suzuki Foundation
“In simple terms, a particular seafood product is sustainable if it comes from a fishery whose practices can be maintained indefinitely without reducing the target species’ ability to maintain its population. In addition, it must not adversely impact any other species within the marine ecosystem by removing their food sources, accidentally killing them, or damaging their environment.” Greenpeace
Seafood Watch, a program of the Monterey Bay Aquarium began about 10 years ago to help raise consumer awareness and promote business practices to protect the ocean’s fish populations from overfishing, pollution, and native habitat destruction. Seafood Watch, in addition to compiling up to-date, and reliable information on marine life and the ocean’s ecosystems, produces a series of small pocket seafood guides, organized by region, to help consumers make informed choices about the fish they purchase in restaurants and in grocery markets.
As consumers take active charge in searching for better information about the fish they choose to purchase, food retailers, restaurants, and seafood suppliers face growing pressure to serve the needs of a more enlightened public. [For those tech savvy consumers, there’s also an iPhone Seafood Watch application that provides the same information as the complete set of individual pocket guides.]
The point Alison Barratt makes is our food choices as consumers can produce a real difference; the key is to take charge in finding the right sources for information about sustainability, and then making our voices heard in the marketplace. When it comes to seafood, programs like Seafood Watch provide a one-stop shop for finding the right answers.
This Week: June 3; June 5— Cooking Up a Story: Food News show: State of the Oceans Health: In Crisis -Part 1: Alison Barratt, from the Seafood Watch Program describes the general condition of our oceans, and the growing concerns over their fate. In Part2- Barratt offers additional suggestions for consumers to help relieve the pressure on fish populations, and restore the natural balance of the ocean’s ecosystems.
From our friends at National Geographic, check out this wonderful video about the oceans, and their critical importance to the survival of the planet: | <urn:uuid:22a8b026-cddb-4b92-a2f9-f5b90d006513> | {
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Prove that this figure is a rhombus
I am working through Serge Lang's book on geometry, and I am having trouble for some reason on this proof:
Given that AC is on the perpendicular bisector of BD, and that BD lies on the perpendicular bisector of AC. Prove that quadrilateral ABCD is a rhombus (a rhombus is a parallelogram whose four sides have the same length).
It is easy to prove that the four sides are of equal length, but I don't know how to prove that the pairs of sides are parallel. I think I should prove that the interior angles are supplementary, but I'm not sure how to do that. Any tips? | <urn:uuid:5ccd5428-9532-4591-9329-533de91df08a> | {
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Rare Southern White Rhino Born At San Diego Safari Park
Friday, May 19, 2017
Credit: San Diego Zoo Safari Park
A southern white rhinoceros calf was born at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park to a mother who had gone nearly a decade without being able to get pregnant, zoo officials announced Thursday.
The female calf was born April 30 to mother Kiazi and father Maoto. Zoo officials said Kiazi has mated regularly since her arrival at the park in 2008, but had never before conceived. At 16 years old, she is past the average age that most southern white rhinos have their first calf.
Zoo researchers say the answer could be involve a diet change.
Christopher Tubbs, a senior scientist in reproductive sciences at the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research, has been working with colleagues for nine years to discover why zoo-bred southern white rhinos don't bear offspring as often as their wild relatives. The problem is not found in other species of rhinos living in zoos.
They discovered that the animals may be sensitive to compounds called phytoestrogens — found in soy and alfalfa — that are a component of their diets in zoos. During their 16-month gestation, female calves could be exposed to the compounds through their mother's diet, resulting in infertility issues later in their life, according to the researchers.
"The birth of Kiazi's calf gives us a great deal of hope that by feeding low phytoestrogens at our institution and others, we can once again have a healthy, self-sustaining captive southern white rhinoceros population," Tubbs said.
"With the high level of poaching currently happening in Africa, having a healthy (off-site) population of rhinos is as important as ever," Tubbs said. "This calf is an example of how we are using cutting-edge laboratory science to lead the fight against extinction."
San Diego Zoo Global changed the diet for southern white rhinos three years ago, to include less phytoestrogens and more nutrients to support reproduction. Since then, there have been three pregnancies in females that had not successfully reproduced before, which resulted in the birth of two healthy calves, according to the zoo.
Kiazi's calf is the 96th southern white rhino calf born at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park since 1972. Zoo officials often wait a few weeks before announcing animal births.
Estimated to weigh around 125 pounds at birth, the calf will nurse from her mother for up to 14 months — and she is expected to gain about 100 pounds a month in her first year. When full grown, at around 3 years of age, she could weigh 4,000 to 5,000 pounds.
The rhino calf and her mother can best be seen roaming their habitat from the Africa Tram Safari or a caravan safari.
Southern white rhinos are listed as "nearly threatened" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species, while three other types of rhinos are critically endangered.
To view PDF documents, Download Acrobat Reader. | <urn:uuid:e749c3c4-9068-462f-bdef-bc3b57f4334c> | {
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semi detailed lesson plan grade 2
Level: First Year High School Subjects: Mathematics, Geometry, Transformations I. Saved by James Ambalgan. 2. The comprehensive lesson plans outlined below provide a detailed list of the Time4Learning second grade math curriculum. Article from academia.edu. I. 8.
Ann Corrine Villanueva Codera. THE USE OF COHESIVE DEVICES IN STUDENTS' WRITING. Give reactions based on observing the pictures that represents the scenes from the story. Discuss the operation in taking body temperature
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3. The spider has long legs. The major sections of the earth … OBJECTIVES At the end of the lesson, the students will be able to: a. Semi-Detailed Lesson Plan Semi-Detailed Lesson Plan. FOR GRADE THREE PUPILS
C. Express the significance of the story through group dynamics. 7. Lesson 2: Equal Parts of a Group – 2 Activities. Read and Understand the story entitled “My parents were not there for me” by Mark in Parents – children Relationship stories. Hello Teachers in this page we will share Deped K-12 Detailed Lesson Plan [DLP] in Mathematics for Grade 8, 9, 10 and 11 for FREE.. 2. GRADE 6 Detailed Lesson Plans. Banghay-Aralin sa Araling Panlipunan Para sa Ika-Siyam na Baitang. SUBJECT MATTER To appreciate the way earth is designed to harbor life; and c. To name the boundaries among the earth’s layers II. I. III.
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Just click images to go to your respective grade level. The pupils will read the word which has letter Bb or letter Pp. To differentiate between the characteristics of the earth’s structural layers; b. A If your copyrighted work is found here and wish to be removed or taken down, please email us at [email protected], and we will take necessary action. A Semi-Detailed Lesson Plan in Grade 10 English. Health Lesson ... body. Identify the use of the Three Degree of Comparison of Adjectives. Basic writing skills Module. StudyMode - Premium and Free Essays, Term Papers & Book Notes. OBJECTIVES a.
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A Semi – Detailed Lesson Plan in Grade 7 I. ...Objectives
Discover great essay examples and research papers for your assignments. first grade and second grade and elementary education resources. Leave a Reply Cancel reply. Unknown Tingnan ang aking … Lesson planning is one way of planning instruction. Show an acteate of the earth’s structure and ask students to identify the layers. The monster is very strong. Subject Matter
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II. Semi detailed lesson plan parts of the body. Objectives:
SEMI-DETAILED LESSON PLAN In PHYSICS FORCE, MOTION AND ENERGY Target year Level: Grade 7 Learning Area: Science Time Allotment: 1 hour Module: No. Distinguish Constant speed and … At the end of the lesson the pupils are expected to: 1. introduce oneself. A typical DLP contains the following parts: Objectives, Content, Learning Resources, Procedures, Remarks and Reflection. c. Make a slogan campaigning against water pollution. Detailed Lesson Plan / Download Files Here. To differentiate between the characteristics of the earth’s structural layers; b. Symbolic interactionism is interested not simply in socialization but in interactions between students and students and between students and teachers. REFERENCE Science for Daily use Textbook Science- Grade 4 . Ready made DepEd K-12 lesson plans from that you can download immediately and use as template for creating your own daily lesson plans.
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Bank Of Texas Ppp Loan Application, | <urn:uuid:df72e7a6-0c31-4c7b-b74a-f22a55121cea> | {
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Rip Rap is medium to large sized angular pieces of stone placed as a permanent, erosion resistant ground cover. The material is usually classified as either graded or uniform. Graded rip rap is a mixture of stone varying in size, uniform rip rap is all of similar size. Rip Rap protects channels, stream banks, slopes, or areas exposed to wave action. It also protects the underlying soil from erosion as a result of concentrated runoff. It stabilizes slopes that are unstable due to ‘seepage’ and also slows the velocity of runoff which helps infiltration. Rip Rap can also be found at culvert inlets/outlets, bridges, and slope drains. Rip Rap can also improve the drainage water quality by decreasing velocity and catching/settling sediment.
Some disadvantages of rip rap are:
- lesser habitat enhancement properties
- less economical than vegetative slopes.
A common crew required for installing Rip Rap stone is a laborer and an operator. The equipment required will be a an excavator with a 3-6 ton lifting capacity as being productive with Rip Rap material will require a machine and bucket that can handle sizable scoops of material for placement. Some hand work is typically required. If the engineer or inspector is present, some things he will likely be looking for are good quality stones, correct stone size, and proper thickness. Also, it is typical that a bed of stabilization/separation fabric or smaller aggregate is placed under the rip rap to keep the soil underneath from ‘pumping’ up through the rip rap.
A keyway is typically excavated at the toe for reinforcement. The depth of the keyway is typically at least 1.5 times the thickness of rip rap specified. The inspector will typically want the rip rap installed as soon as possible after the grade is correct below to reduce the amount of time the soil is exposed to erosion. Graded Rip Rap is typically the most common type installed. Filter fabric if used should be heavy duty. The common thickness of the rip rap specified should be at least 1.5 time the maximum stone diameter. | <urn:uuid:90d6c683-632e-48d3-b671-c71657741575> | {
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ISBN10: 1481938495 ISBN13: 9781481938495 Contributors: Alcott, Louisa May Publisher: Createspace Indie Pub Platform Published: Jan 8 2013 Pages: 674 Weight: 2.44lbs. Height: 9.00" Width: 6.00" Depth: 1.52" Language: English
Little Women is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott. The book was written and set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts. It was published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869. The novel follows the lives of four sisters - Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March - and is loosely based on the author's childhood experiences with her three sisters. Louisa May Alcott (November 29, 1832 - March 6, 1888) was an American novelist best known as author of the novel Little Women and its sequels Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). Raised in New England, she grew up among many of the well-known intellectuals of the day such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau. Nevertheless, her family suffered severe financial difficulties and Alcott worked to help support the family from an early age. She began to receive critical success for her writing in the 1860s. | <urn:uuid:45264baa-563c-4bd9-b5f6-a1d5c046c0d5> | {
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The human hand is a machine-honed by millions of years of evolution, transforming from bony fish fin to a grasper that relies on the delicate interplay of mechanoreceptive neurons and fine motor coordination.
In contrast, the rigidity of components and less sensitive feedback loops hobble robot hands. But soft robotics — that is, using something that can squish in lieu of tougher materials — could offer a solution, as shown in a recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology demonstration.
An egg? No problem:
As MIT researchers will present at this week’s the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in Hamburg, Germany, the soft hand gripper has conquered all delicate ‘90s artifacts: It snatches Beanie Babies, compact discs, and white printer paper with ease.
Soft robots are more flexible than their hard-bodied compatriots, not only in their components, but in the way they approach tasks. To pick up an egg, a hard robot would first have to calculate how much force it could use or else risk crushing the object. The MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory developed its soft robot with sensors in the fingers. The robot fingers assess the shape of an object and compare that shape to items it’s already picked up.
MIT PhD student Robert Katzschmann likened the robot, in a press release, to a blindfolded human, who can still pick things up without seeing it.
Humanity draws ever closer to realizing its ultimate goal of robot masseuses. | <urn:uuid:2f3975fa-461c-4a49-aeec-ab4997c95008> | {
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Computers are amazing tools. In the hands of a skilled, knowledgable engineer, they make wondrous creations possible. CAD/CAE programs have enabled the building and testing of machinery without ever cutting a chip or tightening a screw. Cool stuff! The problem is, computers live in a perfect world. That's not the world of engineering that we live in.
I cannot count the number of times I have reviewed drawings with tolerances impossible to achieve in real-world manufacturing. When asked about them, the designer usually responds with, "That's what our CAD system uses."
News flash: The real world is not perfect.
In the real world, plastics do not hold tolerances of one ten-thousandth of an inch. Six-foot-long lead screws do not have length tolerances of two-thousandths. Even if you could afford the cost to manufacture to such tolerances, normal environmental fluctuations would blow them out of the water.
So just because your CAD software is set to default to four decimal places, don't assume that is the right thing to use. And just because your modeling software can evaluate your creation with line-to-line fits and perfect (nominal) dimensions, don't let it!
Many years ago, when I took a finite element analysis (FEA) class to learn how to use computer modeling for my designs, the instructor made a simple statement that stuck with me. He said to never use the software to do something we couldn't do ourselves.
That, of course, raises this question: If we can do it ourselves, why have the software?
The answer: The computer can do it faster, with fewer mistakes. In other words, the computer can do it better and cheaper.
If that's so, then why do I have to know how to do the calculations too? There is a four-letter answer: GIGO. Garbage In, Garbage Out! Unless I can do the work AND anticipate what the answer should be, I have no way to evaluate the software output. Having the requisite knowledge has saved my butt many times. The computer didn't care when I slipped a decimal place on the input. It still gave me an answer and a pretty picture. But the results did not make sense, and I knew that because I had done a rough calculation beforehand. Doing it myself first saved both embarrassment and catastrophe.
So here is my suggestion. Don't sign off on a design until you know how it will be built and that the design allows for real-world limitations. Perform your modeling and analysis at the extremes of the processess, not at the nominals only. Ask yourself, "Will this be cut with an end mill, a laser, or a hack-saw? Will this be wired with hand-picked components or a Radio Shack® variety pack?"
But most important, ask yourself, "Could I make this myself? Could I get out the handbook and calculator and perform the analysis by hand? Do I really understand how this will be made?" If the answer is, "No!", get some help. Don't count on your vendors to read your mind or perform miracles. Remember that computers are tools that amplify the skills of the operators, good or bad!
Tom Solon is a licensed PE with degrees in mechanical engineering and economics from Brown University. E-mail him at [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:dc64bbb9-d08a-46f0-9f30-c1935aa577ba> | {
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PepsiCo develops first PET plastic bottle made completely from plant-based material
Mountain Dew's green bottles could become even "greener" with an announcement from PepsiCo claiming it has developed the world's first polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic bottle made entirely from plant-based, fully renewable resources including switch grass, pine bark and corn husks. The bottle not only offers a significantly reduced carbon footprint compared to petroleum-based PET, but is also 100 percent recyclable.
The company says that by combining biological and chemical processes it has come up with a way to create a molecular structure that is identical to petroleum-based PET using plant-based materials, resulting in a bottle that looks and feels identical to current PET bottles. In the future, PepsiCo hopes to expand the renewable resources used to create the bottles to include orange peels, potato peels, oat hulls and other agricultural byproducts from its food business.
"PepsiCo is in a unique position, as one of the world's largest food and beverage businesses, to ultimately source agricultural byproducts from our foods business to manufacture a more environmentally-preferable bottle for our beverages business," said PepsiCo Chairman and CEO, Indra Nooyi.
With the announcement PepsiCo gets some bragging rights over its main competitor. In comparison, Coca-Cola currently produces bottles that use 30 percent plant-based materials although it says it has produced a 100 percent plant-based bottle in the lab that is still undergoing testing. With both companies producing billions of PET bottles between them each year, the switch from petroleum-based to plant-based PET could have significant environmental impacts.
Over 60 percent of the world's petroleum-based PET production is used as polyester for textile applications, while bottle production – usually for soft drinks – accounts for around 30 percent of global PET demand.
The plant-based bottle isn't the first effort by PepsiCo to move towards more environmentally sustainable packaging. Its Frito-Lay division was also responsible for the world's first fully compostable bag made from plant-based polylactic acid for its SunChips snacks in the U.S. and Canada.
PepsiCo says it will pilot production of the new bottle in 2012 and upon the expected successful completion of the pilot intends to move directly into full-scale commercialization. | <urn:uuid:7e0a4d34-cbd8-4692-a00e-2b0d80da36ab> | {
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On Tuesday, October 20, 2015, the United States Senate considered Senator David Vitter’s (R-LA) “Stop Sanctuary Policies and Protect Americans Act” (S. 2146). The Senate rejected the motion to proceed on the bill. The vote would have required 60 “Yea” votes to begin debate; the motion failed 54-45.
So-called “sanctuary cities” are those cities that limit coordination between state and local police and federal immigration authorities. The bill would have punished “sanctuary cities” by taking away millions of dollars in federal funding for any city that did not comply with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) detainer requests or that prohibited the collection of immigration information. The bill also would have added five-year mandatory minimum sentences for illegal reentry to the United States.
Policies limiting entanglement between local police and ICE officials – like those policies implemented by “sanctuary cities” – have a positive impact on the community by increasing communication and trust between the police and residents without imposing any restrictions on ICE’s ability to enforce immigration laws. The policies also ensure that local police do not violate the law or the Constitution by illegally detaining a person without the authority to do so.
With respect to the proposed mandatory minimum sentences, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, if the mandatory minimum sentences had become law, the federal prison population would increase by approximately 57,000 individuals. According to Families Against Mandatory Minimums, this increase could cost taxpayers over $2 billion per year.
Rather than punish “sanctuary cities” for their policies, the federal government should focus on comprehensive immigration reform, so that immigration laws can be enforced in a manner that safeguards due process.
How did we do?
Note: Your review may be shared publicly. | <urn:uuid:50613e13-a448-49ac-a150-a5b40c5ceea2> | {
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The Romans were constructing the mosaics with small pieces so called teselas, of there that refiriesen to them also like opus tessellatum.
The teselas are pieces, made of cubic form of calcareous rocks or material of glass or ceramics, very elegant and elaborated and of different sizes.
The artist was arranging them on the surface, as a puzzle, distributing the color and the form and agglomerating them with a cement mass.
The mosaics were for the Romans a decorative element for the architectural spaces. It managed to be such a valued and spread art that in the 3rd century
the emperor Diocleciano promulgated a decree in the one that established the price that the artists could give to his works, according to the degrees of
previous qualification. When in the year 330 the emperor Constantino moved the capital of the Roman Empire of East to Byzantium, it granted enough
facilities and favored the exodus to the Greek teachers and Roman manufacturers of mosaics (called mosaistas). In Byzantium the art of the mosaic
joined with the oriental tradition and gave place to an evolution that differed especially for the use very generalized of big quantities of gold
Critiques | Translate
Gustaw (21670) 2007-08-02 1:41
It is interesting view from Rome. Rome have very good and very old art. Good composition and nice colours. I like your small stones.
nithin1 (242) 2007-08-02 1:49
Hi Pablo, Nice work. Informative notes too :)
I wish there was more light on the mosaic though. And if the margins were even, it would have been better looking too. I would have maybe tried to keep the camera below the mosaic and tried to capture an upward lookinn shot. I mean upwards from the pea-cocks' feat ..
And I think this image of pea-cocks shows they had contacts with Indian sub-continent maybe.. Anyhow, a nice piece of photography. Keep it up always, Look fwd to see more of this kind. | <urn:uuid:245b5460-69da-48e5-a08a-de47ae7e67ae> | {
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John Jay was the first and youngest Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and as of 2015, John Roberts is the Chief Justice. Between these two men, 15 others have served in this capacity, including John Marshall, William Howard Taft and Earl Warren.Continue Reading
President George Washington appointed John Jay as chief justice, an office he held from Oct. 19, 1789, until June 29, 1795. He was only 44 when he took office but had already proven himself to be a leader, serving as a delegate in the first Continental Congress and the first chief justice of New York. Prior to the appointment, he was a minister to Spain and the secretary of Foreign Affairs.
John Marshall was the fourth chief justice and the longest to serve in that office. His term lasted more than 34 years, from Feb. 4, 1801, to July 6, 1835, and spanned six presidents. Under his leadership, the Supreme Court became more powerful and established itself as an equal to the other two government branches.
William Howard Taft is the only chief justice to have been president of the United States as well. Appointed by President Warren Harding as the 10th chief justice, serving from 1921 to 1930. Taft was also the 27th president.
Appointed by Dwight Eisenhower as the 14th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren was a former governor of California. Despite his nomination by a conservative Republican president, he and the court he led rendered many decisions considered liberal for the day. One of the most famous, Brown v. the Board of Education, banned school segregation. He also chaired the committee investigating the death of President John F. Kennedy.Learn more about Branches of Government | <urn:uuid:a0c366b2-8c8f-4f31-aaa5-527ae2dc6afe> | {
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When working with sound amplification equipment, we often misuse these terms. Probably because you’ll see them often, and two or three on the same piece of equipment! That can seriously make your brain want to go flip upside-down and jump into a pool of boiling acoustic particle velocity soup. On top of that, you might have channel volume, master volume, guitar volume, fader levels, guitar amp gain, mixer board gain … etc. But, it’s pretty important stuff to understand if you want to get a good sound from your equipment.
Gain is one of the harder terms to define, mainly because its used in a lot more places than just the audio world. Quite simply it means an increase in some kind of value. So for example, you can have a power gain, voltage gain, or current gain; and they all increase those respective values. Typically when referring to gain, we refer to transmission gain, which is the increase in the power of the signal. This increase is almost always expressed in dB (decibels). This could be the increase in the raw signal from your guitar or microphone before it goes into any of the other electronic components. For the curious, here’s the equation to calculate gain:
Gain = 10 x log (Power out/Power in)
expressed in dB.
通常我们说增益的时候,都指的是传输增益, 指的是信号功率的增加. 这个增加通常用dB (分贝)表示.
它的计算公式是: Gain = 10 x log (输出功率/输入功率).
Practical Use of Gain 增益的应用实践
For all non-rocket scientist purposes, you’re probably going to see a gain control in two places. One of them is on your mixer board or PA(Power Amplifier, 功放), and the other is on a guitar amp. These both mean the same thing as far as electronics go, but serve different purposes in each.
On the mixer board, you’ll see the gain at the top of the board. It’s the first control that the raw mic signal sees, and it will boost the signal to a sufficient level for the rest of the controls to work properly. You’ll want to set this gain level high enough to bring up the level of the signal, but not so high that you’ll get clipping (削波) or distortion(失真) in the signal. For this purpose, many boards come with a PFL (Pre-Fader Listen, 衰前监听) button. This button will let you see the actual signal strength by looking at the LEDs on the board. Use the mic at normal sound levels and set the gain knob so that the peaks in sound don’t send the signal into the red, and you’re good to go.
On a guitar amp, the gain’s main intention is to create distortion (as my blood tingles with ground shaking delight). You already know what it does, so there’s no point in telling you, but I do have a small tip – turn your gain down! Yes, I also love the gut wrenching melodies of face-meltifying solos, but you seriously don’t need your gain sitting on 10 all the time. Novices will go into the recording studio thinking their sound is redonkulously awesome, only to have the sound engineer take their distortion down to a 5 or 6 cause they sound terrible. The distortion shouldn’t hide your skills, but accentuate them. IMHO(in my humble opinion, 恕我直言).
Besides defining three dimensional space, volume can also be used to describe the power level of a signal. So when you turn up the “master volume” knob on your amp, it simply means you’re increasing the amount of power used by the amp to increase the signal. This term is quite ambiguous since it’s used in so many different places, mainly to mean the actual sound you perceive in your ears, which is not exactly true. Use with caution.
Ps:很多时候是从整个系统的角度来描述, 我喜欢理解成为系统上限, 是一个乘数关系.
This term is used to describe the magnitude of the sound in reference to some arbitrary reference. More specifically we use SPL (Sound Pressure Level, 声压级) to describe sound waves. SPL is a term calculated from the log of the rms(Root Mean Square,均方根) sound pressure of a measured sound related to a reference value. Basically meaning we create a measurement scale with zero starting at the lowest threshold of human hearing. The SPL scale is shown in dB and goes up to 130 dB (well, infinity, but whatever), which is the threshold of pain for the human ear. Now I just need to find a way to rock as loud as Krakatoa (180 dB standing 100 miles away).
Loudness, even though similar to volume and level, is another whol’nother monster. Since human ears are not able to hear each frequency at the same level, perceived loudness is different as we move up and down in frequency. The following graph shows the level that a human ear “thinks” its hearing, which as you can see is not correct most of the time. The lower frequencies, like the bass guitar at 40-220 Hz, need more sound pressure for us to believe it’s equally as loud as a sound at 1 kHz.
Equal Loudness Contours (等响度曲线)
Here we introduce a term called a “phon“, which is used to describe loudness. 2 You can see on the graph that the phon contour is different for each dB level. The 120 phon contour requires less boost in the low frequencies than the 10 phon contour. Mostly because of the shape of the ear, you can also see from the graph that we hear the 3-4 kHz range the best, which happens to be on the slightly higher end of human speech. If you lost it, you’d have a hard time understanding people.
120 phon轮廓比10 phon轮廓在低频段需要的增强要小。
In Conclusion 结论
Now the whole point of this article is to get you all learned up about music terminology, and how to use it. But don’t go around hitting people on the head with your “terminology hammer” and pretending like you own the universe now that you know this stuff. Know-it-alls are annoying. The point is the ideas behind the words, so don’t get so hung up on the specific words unless you have to go writing text someplace.
So that’s it, no more. I was gonna say “As always, yada yada”, but realized that this is only the second article I’ve written so far, so I can’t exactly say “As always”. Well, hold on a sec. Why the heck not? Yeah. There’s no rules for writing blogs right?
As always, stay cool, and hash it up in the comments.
今天的文章Gain, Volume, Level, 和Loudness的概念比较分享到此就结束了，感谢您的阅读。
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A major collecting project being undertaken by the National Folklore Collection has been recently established. What makes it so uniques is that it focuses on Irish Protestants as a cultural group. This raises a number of questions as we mark the ‘decade of centenaries’. For example, what does the project tell us about Protestants in independent Ireland? Did the new state live up to the non-sectarian ideals of the 1916 Proclamation (‘cherishing the children of the nation equally)? History Ireland Hedge School series looks to examine these issues in more detail with particular focus on the Protestant Folklore Project, a major folklore, and oral history initiative.
History Ireland editor, Tommy Graham, will chair a lively and enlightening round-table discussion with Deirdre Nuttall (National Folklore Collection), Niall Meehan (Griffith College), Críostoir MacCartaigh (National Folklore Collection) and Malachy Hand (Loughcrew Megalithic Centre). It takes place on Thursday, 14th September at Cavan County Museum, Virgina Road, Ballyjamesduff, Co Cavan. The event is free of charge and no booking is required.
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Address:990 East Blvd.
History & Design:
The Italian Cultural Garden was conceived and designed in the spirit of the Italian Renaissance with large walkways, balustrades, benches and two large winding staircases leading down to a lower level amphitheater. It was dedicated October 12, 1930 as “a symbol of the contribution of Italian culture to American democracy”
A large Renaissance fountain modeled after the fountain in the Villa Medici in Rome, Italy sits in the center piazza. A bust of the Roman poet Virgil, a large bronze of Dante Alighieri (dedicated in 2012), extensive plantings and wide walkways grace the upper level. A Pantheon structure with a statue of Galileo is in the planning stage that will finish the original plans of 1930 never completed.
The Monte Grappa Boulder – Sent by the Italian government the boulder and hewn from the side of the Monte Grappa mountain in northern Italy to honor Ohio veterans of the 332nd Regiment who fought on Italian soil in World War I.
Italo Balbo Plaque – Honors aviator Italo Balbo’s transatlantic flight from Rome to Cleveland. He was given the Distinguished Flying Cross by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Two large winding staircases lead to the lower level amphitheater and a large Renaissance fountain with images of great Italian cultural figures: Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Giuseppe Verdi, Giotto, Petrarca and Guglielmo Marconi.
Listing of Cultural Figures in the Italian Garden
Dante Alighieri – 1265 – 1321 – Florence, Italy. Known as the Supreme Poet and author of the Divine Comedy, Dante is considered as one of the greatest poets of Western civilization and the father of the modern Italian language.
Virgil – 70 BC,- 19 BC. Rome, Italy. Ancient Roman poet who wrote the “Aeneid.” Known as one of the most important poets in Western literature.
Leonardo da Vinci – 1452-1519 Florence, Italy. Known as the Renaissance Man Leonardo da Vinci was a Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, scientist, inventor, musician, mathematician, writer, engineer, anatomist, geologist, botanist. Known as one of the greatest painters of all time and called one of the most diversely talented persons ever to have lived. Paintings: Mona Lisa, The Last Supper.
Michelangelo – 1475-1564 – Arezzo, Tuscany. Called “The Divine One” Michelangelo was one of the greatest living artists of all time: painter, sculptor, architect, poet and engineer with an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. Famous works: the Pieta in the Vatican, David in Florence, Genesis painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the Last Judgement on the altar. The architect of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Italy.
Petrarch – 1304-1374 – Arezzo, Tuscany. Italian scholar, poet-diplomat, early humanist in Renaissance Italy and the father of Humanism. His discovery of Cicero’s letters is often credited for initiating the 14th century Renaissance.
Giotto – 1267-1337 – Vicchio, Florence, Italy. Painter, architect, Giotto is is credited with initiating the great art of painting as we know it today.
Guglielmo Marconi – 1874-1937 – Bologna, Italy. Inventor and electrical engineer winning the Nobel prize in Physics in 1909. Known for his wireless telegraphy and development of Marconi’s law and the radio telegraph system.
Giuseppe Verdi – 1813-1901 – Le Roncole, Parma, Italy. Considered one of the two preeminent opera composers of the 19th century some of the most famous being Rigoletto, Aida, La Traviata and Il Trovatore, Otello, Falstaff and the Verdi Requiem.
The large upper level Renaissance fountain is modeled after the fountain in Villa Medici in Rome, Italy. The lower level Renaissance fountain is carved with images of Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Giuseppe Verdi, Giotto, Petrarch, and Guglielmo Marconi.
Rose garden, salvia, catnip along the main paths. Old growth gingko trees. 1000 daffodils. Boxwood planned for main paths.
Discovery of the original plans of a Pantheon structure that was not completed is in the planning stage with a statue of Galileo, plaques honoring 100 famous Italians and additional monikers of cultural figures.
Tax deductible donations for the ongoing restoration may be sent to:
Italian Cultural Garden Foundation
1284 SOM Center Rd. # 316
Cleveland, OH 44124 | <urn:uuid:25102a76-da66-42e7-94d2-8bb4691cee69> | {
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I recently wrote about a visit I made to Proa, a contemporary art space in Buenos Aires, and included images of the striking ceiling. As you can see in this photo, there's quite a contrast between the old pillars in the building and the very modern feeling fluorescent lighting.
A reader wondered if American museums will ever try lighting contemporary art this way. There are many ways to address this question and one, for starters, is to explore when and why fluorescents are used. I spoke with Terry Schaeffer in LACMA's Conservation Center on the subject and she told me that U.S. museums do indeed sometimes use fluorescent lights but that they're utilized less than tungsten, which is the mainstay, because fluorescents emit more UV light, which can be damaging to objects. The decision to light via fluorescent or tungsten is influenced by three primary factors: conservation requirements (works on paper and costume may be particularly light-sensitive), lighting that ensures a correct representation of the color of an object, and curator preference. Not surprisingly, contemporary curators are more inclined to choose fluorescent lighting, which lends a crisp, blue effect; and curators in fields that study art prior to the modern and contemporary periods most often prefer tungsten, which emits a warmer, cozier feel and evokes the experience of fire light. | <urn:uuid:175996fd-0a9d-43c7-92f6-c0c23a4ff8b3> | {
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Forecasting disease risk for increased epidemic preparedness in public health.
Myers MF., Rogers DJ., Cox J., Flahault A., Hay SI.
Emerging infectious diseases pose a growing threat to human populations. Many of the world's epidemic diseases (particularly those transmitted by intermediate hosts) are known to be highly sensitive to long-term changes in climate and short-term fluctuations in the weather. The application of environmental data to the study of disease offers the capability to demonstrate vector-environment relationships and potentially forecast the risk of disease outbreaks or epidemics. Accurate disease forecasting models would markedly improve epidemic prevention and control capabilities. This chapter examines the potential for epidemic forecasting and discusses the issues associated with the development of global networks for surveillance and prediction. Existing global systems for epidemic preparedness focus on disease surveillance using either expert knowledge or statistical modelling of disease activity and thresholds to identify times and areas of risk. Predictive health information systems would use monitored environmental variables, linked to a disease system, to be observed and provide prior information of outbreaks. The components and varieties of forecasting systems are discussed with selected examples, along with issues relating to further development. | <urn:uuid:7f60b23d-0b05-4801-be5c-97a78c2940eb> | {
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ISRO's PSLV-C38 mission had 31 satellites on board. The CartoSat-2 series satellites was the main payload, with the remaining satellites piggybacking on the ride or being accommodated in the rocket because there was additional capacity available. Piggybacking on the satellites itself were six small prototypes of interstellar spacecraft, the first by man to be launched into orbit. These spacecraft are among the smallest ever built and are known as sprites.
Two sprites were attached to the sides of the Venta-1, an academic nanosatellite from the Ventspils University College in Latvia. Four sprites were attached to the Max Valier satellite, a collaboration between teams from Germany and Italy.
According to a report in New Scientist, one of the two satellites deployed by the Venta-1 has managed to establish contact with ground stations. This is the smallest spacecraft ever to establish a link. The Max Valier satellite has not communicated to its controllers, possibly because of issues with the antenna. When the link is established, the remaining four satellites will be deployed.
The launch of the prototypes is a big step for Breakthrough Starshot, an ambitious initiative to send a fleet of interstellar spacecraft to Alpha Centauri, driven by lasers. Zac Manchester, a lead designer of the sprites, told Gizmodo, "The distances are immense and it’s a big challenge. We’re a long way out to the eventual goals [of Breakthrough Starshot], but we’re setting the early precedent here."
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John Glenn – A short biography
John Glenn was named as one of the seven Mercury astronauts in 1959. This followed a career as a fighter pilot, which had seen him serve in the Second World War and the Korean War, and as a test pilot setting the record for coast-to-coast flight in the USA of 3 hours 23 minutes in 1957. Glenn became an advocate for the American Space program, hiding his disappointment at not being allowed a chance to go to the moon: it is claimed Kennedy would not risk the life of America’s first space hero. Glenn left the space program in 1964 and retired from the Marine Corps a year later.
In 1974 John Glenn was elected U.S. Senator from Ohio in a landslide victory. His political aspirations saw him run for President in the1984 primaries, but he failed and was re elected to the senate in 1986. As a senator he served on the Senate Special Committee on Aging and it was this interest that saw him return to space at the age of 77 aboard the space shuttle Discovery in October 1998. This was a fitting circle: from trying to find out what the effects on zero gravity would be to the human body in 1962 to finding out the effects on aging in 1998. In fact Scott Carpenter, as he did in 1962, addressed John Glenn (and the Discovery crew) just before lift off in 1998.
For some reason the charismatic Glenn seems to have been taken to the heart of most Americans: Launch Commentator hailed the 1998 lift off of Discovery was “with a crew of 6 astronaut heroes and one American legend”. But we must remember that he was neither the first man in space or the first to orbit the earth, the Russian Yuri Gagarin was in 1961, nor was he the first American in space, Alan Shepherd and Gus Grissom had achieved that with their 15 minute sub-orbital flights. Yet many see John Glenn as the embodiment of the USA Space Race and as a national hero.
John Glenn’s Details – Third flight in Mercury program
Capsule name – Friendship 7
August 27 1961 – Capsule arrived at Cape Canaveral
January 27 1962 – Countdown starts – Launch cancelled due to adverse weather
February 15 1962 – Flight Safety Review
February 20 1962 – 2.20 a.m. Glenn woken and told mission is a “go”
February 20 1962 – Launch at 9:47:39 am EST
February 20 1962 – Lands at 14:43:02 pm EST
Orbits – 3
Altitude – between 99 and 162 miles
Total flight time – 4 hours 56 minutes
Total time weightless – 4 hours 38 minutes
Total miles flown – 81 000
Acceleration force – Launch, 8 G. Re entry, over 8 G
During John Glenn’s mission the recovery area was nicknamed “Area Hotel” and during his second orbit Glenn reported “This is Friendship 7, checking down in Area Hotel on the weather, and it looks good down that way. Looks like we’ll have no problem on recovery” to which Grissom in Bermuda responded “Very good. We’ll see you in Grand Turk”.
Broadcast between John Glenn and the Bermuda Tracking Station
(Flight time on left)
03 12 32 – Glenn This is Friendship Seven, checking down in Area Hotel on the weather and it looks good down that way. Looks like we’ll have no problem on recovery.
03 12 32 – Bermuda Station Very good. We’ll see you in Grand Turk
03 12 43 – Glenn Yes sir.
03 12 48 – Glenn In fact I can see clear down, see all the islands clear down the whole chain from up here, can see way beyond them and Area Hotel looks excellent for recovery.
Prior to re entry ground instruments indicated that the heat shield had become loose. As a precaution mission controllers did not jettison the retrorocket package, which was attached just below the heat shield. Even with this problem Friendship 7 landed a few miles short of the planned target, 800 miles southeast of Bermuda.
After landing and being brought to Grand Turk there were various press releases and in one Robert Voas, Mercury Training Officer, recalled Glenn’s account of returning in “a shooting star”.
Lookouts on the destroyer USS Noa sighted the main parachute at an altitude of 5,000 ft from a range of 5 nautical miles. The USS Noa had the spacecraft aboard 21 minutes after landing and astronaut John Glenn remained in the spacecraft during pickup. Original plans had called for Glenn to exit through the top hatch but he was becoming uncomfortably warm and it was decided to exit by the easier side hatch. Glenn was transferred by helicopter from the USS Noa to the USS Randolph, and then flown to Grand Turk for his debriefing and medical as planned. The capsule joined him later when it was delivered to Grand Turk by ship.
On Grand Turk
On February 21st Colonel Glenn attended a party given in his honour at the clubhouse of the USAF Missile tracking Station. Most of this time was taken up with signing autographs and going through the details of his flight. He went to bed at midnight, and woke at 6 am to continue with the debriefing process.
The Return to America
When the US Vice President arrived at 4am to take John Glenn home, a large part of the population was waiting for him at the airport and greeted him with great enthusiasm in spite of the early hour. The records state “Of all the receptions which the Vice-President and the astronaut were later to receive, perhaps none would be smaller but certainly none would be warmer or more sincere that that given by the people of Grand Turk on their departure in the early morning of 23 Feb”.
On 26th February 1962, John Glenn, with wife Annie were greeted by thousands who lined Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue. In the car with them was Vice President Lyndon B Johnson, Chairman of the Nautical Aeronautics and Space Council. | <urn:uuid:df822bc6-2e98-4287-91c4-2a8cc871ad21> | {
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Once they set foot on the other side of the Boshporus, the motley crew marched with Peter the Hermit south to Nicomedia, an abandoned Byzantine camp, plundering and pillaging every village in their path. Greater trouble broke out once the rabble-rousing crusaders reached Nicomedia. This time, conflict broke out between the Germans, Italians and the French. Peter lost a significant amount of control over his followers after the Italians and Germans broke away from his command and elected the Italian lord, Rainald, as their leader in his place. Then, the French troops elected Geoffrey Burel as their commander.
The French departed from the main army and marched westward along the Gulf of Nicomedia until they came to Civetot, a fortified camp placed strategically on fertile land near the Gulf of Nicomedia. They were supposed to wait there for the rest of the army and for supplies from Constantinople, but they were impatient. They marched into Turkish territory, pillaging and killing Greek Christians in the worst ways imaginable. “They dismembered some of the babies; others they put on spits and roasted over a fire; those of advanced years, they subjected to every form of torture,” Anna Comnena wrote about forty years after she encountered the crusaders.
The French grew wealthy off their booty, which aroused great jealously amongst the Germans and Italians. Sometime at the end of September, Rainald led a force of about six thousand men–including some priests and bishops–deeper into the heart of Turkish held territory. These men had well perfected the art of plunder and pillage, but they failed to read their enemy; the Turks.
Rainald and his force took the castle of Xerigordon, a castle that was well stalked with provisions and located high on a hill, directly above a small stream. From there, they planned on how they were going to raid the surrounding countryside.
News of the crusaders’ brutal exploitation reached the Seljuk Sultan, Klij Arslan, probably from a Turkish spy who witnessed their acts of pillage and murder from a safe distance. Kilij Arslan immediately sent an army to take back the castle of Xerigordon. His troops quickly surrounded the castle, blocking off water supplies and entrapping the crusaders.
“Soon the besieged grew desperate from thirst. They tried to suck moisture from the earth; they cut the veins of their horses and donkeys to drink their blood; they even drank each other’s urine,” Steven Runciman wrote.
After eight days of agonizing suffering and realizing he could not defeat this Turkish army, Rainald surrendered. Many of his men were slaughtered and those who were spared were taken into captivity, including Rainald himself. After his swift defeat, “he (Kilij Arslan) instructed two energetic men to go to Peter’s camp and announce that the forces had captured Nicaea and were dividing up the spoil from the city,” Anna Comnena wrote.
Upon hearing this news, Peter’s followers prepared at once to march on Nicaea. They were so determined to have their share in the booty that they forgot all matters of discipline and training. As they underwent preparations for the march, Peter hastened back to Constantinople and appealed to Alexius for more help. Peter also hoped that Alexius would somehow restore his control over his followers, but it was too late for that.
Walter Sans Avoir, one of the few knights who remained tightly loyal to Peter, advised the troops to wait for Peter’s arrival, but they ignored him. At the end of October 1096, the entire crusading army marched out of Civetot, leaving behind the elderly, women and children.
The Turks were a foe to be greatly admired and respected; they were fearless, valiant and lions in battle. The Turks were probably most renowned for their skill as bowmen; they used light, composite bows, designed to release arrows at amazing speeds. They shot arrows from foot, but also while riding on top their horses. Their armor, unlike that of the Europeans, was made of a lighter material, yet protective, giving them the ability to move swiftly. That’s likely one reason why the Turks were able to fire their arrows while charging the enemy on horseback.
The Turks also used hills and woodlands to their advantage; they hid and waited ever so silently until the enemy was within their midst and then…
The road between Civetot and Nicaea ran through a narrow, thickly wooded valley. On Kilij Arslan’s instructions, the Turkish army hid in those woods and waited.
The crusaders, thinking that the Turkish army had been roundly defeated at Nicaea, marched on, not suspecting anything until, out of nowhere, a hail of arrows whished through the air and fell upon them, wounding and killing knights and horses. The Turks emerged from their hiding spots and descended upon the crusaders. The knights fought hard and bravely, but a great many of them were slaughtered. Those who did survive fled back to Civetot, but they were hotly pursued by the Turks. When the non combatants saw their knights racing into camp, their eyes ablaze with terror, they attempted escape, but were massacred mercilessly. Young children–only those who the Turks considered as physically appealing–were taken as slaves. The few people who managed to escape the wrath of the Turks, fled back to Constantinople by way of sea and told Peter and the emperor of the horrid news.
No evidence had been recorded of Peter’s reaction to the demise of his followers, his Crusade. However, one thing was for sure: the massacre at Civetot marked a tragic end to the People’s Crusade.
Did Peter’s followers deserve to meet such a cruel fate? Given all the trouble they caused on their journey to Constantinople; all the food, money and pack animals they stole from benevolent townspeople; all of the innocent people–men, women and children–they ruthlessly murdered, yes, Peter’s followers deserved what came to them. Moreover, the atrocities they committed caused several Europeans to question the validity of the decree, “God wills it,” that was made by their Pope in Clermont. Yet, crusading enthusiasm throughout Western Europe was so strong that nothing quenched it.
Carey, Brian T., Joshua B. Allfree and John Cairns. Road to Manzikert: Byzantine and Islamic Warfare 527-1071. Barnsley, South Yorkshire; Pen & Sword, 2012.
Runciman, Steven. A History of the Crusades: The First Crusade. Vol.1. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1951.
Various contributors. Chronicles of the Crusades: Eye-Witness Accounts of The Wars Between Christianity and Islam. Bramley Books; Portugal, 1997. | <urn:uuid:addf28b6-7b05-43d0-b46e-2f4f987c59db> | {
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The board game Cranium has been around since 1998 making it fairly young as far as classic board games go. Its young age however is no reflection on the fun factor that can be had when playing. Since its inception, Cranium has fast become a massive hit, with spin-off games being released and a large following of fans enjoying the game regularly.
Playing CraniumThe creators of Cranium (Whit Alexander and Rich Tait) suggest that Cranium is a game that uses your whole brain (thus the name one would assume). Playing Cranium involves various activities including logic, puzzle solving, creation, trivia and more. It is this great amalgamation of gameplay elements that mean the game of Cranium has something for everyone. Cranium is playable by four or more players (usually an even number). Players get into teams of two (or more – see variations) and choose who goes first, usually by whoever has the next birthday. Alternatively, the dice is rolled to see who goes first, though this is not the usual numbered dice, but a dice of colour panels, so for example the first person to roll red would go first. The board is set up and four different boxes of cards are placed in each of the four sections, these include Creative Cat (blue), Data Head (red), Word Worm (yellow) and Star Performer (green). Players (teams) advance around the colourful Cranium board with the overall aim being to get to the centre and thus win the game.
Players advance clockwise in Cranium by landing on a space and choosing a card of the corresponding colour, completing the task on the card within the time limit and moving on. A team that completes the activity stated on the card correctly gets to roll again and this is the space they begin on the next turn (each turn only lasts for a total of one activity card per team). Rolling purple means they move to the next available Planet Cranium space. The Planet Cranium space is handy because a team successfully completing their task can then take the fast track, which means moving faster on fewer spaces than those on the regular track. Failure to succeed at the task when on a purple space means the team must continue along the regular course.
Other gameplay factors within the structure of Cranium include the Club Cranium cards. If a card is drawn on anyone’s turn and it has a Club Cranium symbol on it, then all teams must take part in the activity. Clues such as sketches, sculptures and acting are shared amongst all teams and players guessing can use any or all players to gain them the answer. Whichever team wins the Club Cranium round gets to roll and move their playing piece, if you happened to be on a purple space ‘Planet Cranium’, you can move onto the fast track.
Finishing Cranium sees a team make it to Cranium Central. This is the centre area of the board which looks like a large cartoon brain. To get to Cranium Central, the team must first do all activities on the black spaces at the centre of the board, again moving clockwise until all activities are achieved and they make it to Cranium Central itself. Once there the other team(s) choose an activity for your team, (usually one they think you are bad at) and you must complete this task to win the game. Winning this final task wins the game, failure means they will have another task chosen for them on their next turn and so on until they get the activity correct.
Scoring in CraniumThere are many different facets to the Cranium board game and scoring in each of the differing main categories is dependent on specific tasks as outlined below.
Creative Cat – This is the ‘artistic’ activity and will usually mean a player must draw or sculpt an answer for their team-mate. Creative Cat includes the activities of ‘Cloodle’ which sees the player draw the answer as in Pictionary. ‘Sensosketch’ sees the player draw with their eyes closed and finally ‘Sculptorades’ which asks the player to sculpt the answer out of the included play dough. No gestures as in charades, speaking, numbers or letters are allowed.
Data Head – This is the ‘trivia’ activities and usually means a question and answer, multiple choice or true or false. Activities in this section include ‘Factoid’ which sees players conferring to answer a basic trivia question, ‘Polygraph’ which sees players answering a true or false statement and finally ‘Selectaquest’ which requires players to choose a response from four possible correct answers.
Star Performer – As it would suggest, this is the performance part of the game. Sections include ‘Cameo’ which sees a player act out like charades, though no word counts and letters are allowed. ‘Copycat’ requires players to act as a famous person by imitating them in some manner without using names and ‘Humdinger’ sees the player hum a famous tune.
Word Worm – language and spelling skills are what is important in this section. It includes ‘Blankout’ in which players must fill in the blanks of a word or phrase, ‘Gnilleps’ in which players must spell a word backwards out loud, ‘Lexicon’ players must choose the correct definition of a given word, ‘Spellbound’ one person out of the team is chosen to spell the word out loud and finally ‘Zelpus’ sees the players unscramble an anagram (clue given).
Cranium VariantsThough the game itself doesn’t really feature any game-play variants, the popularity of Cranium since its launch in 1998 has meant numerous add-ons and spin offs. These include boxes of refresher cards with all sections getting new puzzle cards. Cadoo is a children’s version of the game (though it should be noted Cranium is fun for the whole family), Hullabaloo is a movement game, Zigity is a card game, played on plastic cards so you can even play it in the pool! Hoopla, yet another card game like Zigity only more based on Cranium. Bumparena sees players designing a board by using various pieces in the aim of getting a marble from one position to another. | <urn:uuid:c0e8cd08-8017-4b86-a61f-b441d5c537f9> | {
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People wearing face masks stand in a line to enter a metro station amidst the spread of the COVID-19, in New Delhi. Photo: Reuters/Anushree Fadnavis.
Singapore: The COVID-19 pandemic could end if at least 70% of the people wore face masks in public consistently, according to a review of studies which suggests that the type of material used and the duration of mask use play key roles in their effectiveness.
The research, published in the journal Physics of Fluids, assessed studies on face masks and reviewed epidemiological reports on whether they reduce the number of people an infected person spreads the pathogen to – the reproduction number of the virus.
“The highly efficacious facemask, such as surgical masks with an estimated efficacy of around 70%, could lead to the eradication of the pandemic if at least 70% of the residents use such masks in public consistently,” the scientists, including Sanjay Kumar from the National University of Singapore, wrote in the study.
“Even less efficient cloth masks could also slow the spread if worn consistently,” Kumar added.
According to the scientists, one key aspect of face mask function involves the size of fluid droplets expelled from the nose and mouth when a person talks, sings, sneezes, coughs, or even simply breathes.
They said larger droplets, with sizes around 5-10 microns, are the most common, adding that smaller droplets below 5 microns are possibly more dangerous.
In comparison, the scientists said the human hair is about 70 microns in diameter.
Among the many types of facemasks in use, such as cloth masks, surgical masks, and N95 masks, they said only the latter can filter out aerosol-sized droplets.
The performance of face masks worn for many hours, such as by health care or other essential workers, impact how effective overall mask wearing can be, the researchers added.
They found that face masks made of hybrid polymer materials could filter particles at high efficiency while simultaneously cooling the face since the fibres used in these allow heat to escape from beneath the mask.
“There could be some relation between breathing resistance and the flow resistance of the face mask which will need to be studied for a face mask-wearing interval,” said Heow Pueh Lee, another co-author of the study.
“Also, the environmental condition in the compartmental space within the face mask will need to be more accurately quantified using miniaturised sensors and the development of human replicas for such studies,” Lee said.
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Value for a quilter means the lightness or darkness of a fabric, especially in relation to the fabrics that surround it. Contrast is the amount of difference between the fabrics. The ideas of value and contrast go hand in hand.
It’s worth your time to learn about value and contrast in your quilts—so take time to experiment, to make mistakes and to play.
When Ruth Wasmuth made her Linkin’ Logs quilt (see this post), she demonstrated a good understanding of value and contrast. Here is Ruth’s first version of the quilt.
She wasn’t happy with the amount of contrast in the interlocking rings. You can see that while there is some contrast, there are places where the rings almost become lost because the values are very close.
Ruth decided to make a second version, seen below. When you’re working with just one color, you have to s-t-r-e-t-c-h your definition of that color to get enough different values.
When we began the Linkin’ Logs project, I pulled some golds from our stash to send to Ruth. At the time, I was surprised by how much variety there was to the idea of “gold.” I pulled fabrics that seemed to be brown, tan, taupe, copper, sunshine and butter, to name a few. I wondered if some of them would even be useful, they seemed so far off from “gold.” But I sent them anyway, knowing that Ruth could choose to include them or not. As it turned out, many of them were useful—the lesson here is to expand your thinking around any color you are using.
How do you expand your thinking? Like this:
Blue includes sky blue, navy blue, ocean, gray-blue, Williamsburg blue, baby blue, midnight and so on.
Just for practice, choose a color from these basics: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple.
• Think of all the variations of that color you can, as I did above for red and blue.
• Think of how the variations look and list descriptive words.
• Visit a paint department and pull some color chips for further inspiration.
• Dig into your fabric stash and pull every fabric that might qualify for this group.
• Leave the fabrics laying or stacked together for a few days and observe how they interact. • Use everything you’re seeing in your next quilt project.
Be brave with your color and fabric choices, as Ruth was. In the end, her quilt would still be readily described as black and gold. She understood that “gold” (or any color) means a lot of different things when it comes to fabric, and her quilt works beautifully because of that. | <urn:uuid:f41fde1f-e9ee-49c9-9ad6-708abff2cab4> | {
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To link to this resource use: https://libraries.indiana.edu/resources/wwi-visual
Features material from the holdings of Imperial War Museums. Includes visual and documentary resources, such as official and personal photographs, manuscripts, rare printed material, artwork, objects and film.
Presents international perspectives on the conflict, the Home Front, the role of women during the war, and more. Contains material from Imperial War Museums, a family of five museums: IWM London; IWM North in Trafford, Greater Manchester; IWM Duxford near Cambridge; the Churchill War Rooms in Whitehall, London; and the historic ship HMS Belfast, moored in the Pool of London on the River Thames.
Coverage: Varies - Updates vary
Vendor: Adam Matthew Digital
Producer: Adam Matthew Digital
Interlibrary Loan Type: Secure Electronic Transmission Permitted
Simultaneous User Limit: Unlimited simultaneous users | <urn:uuid:af38bcf7-8f20-49da-ab16-1f459e78f724> | {
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"language": "en",
"language_score": 0.8368550539016724,
"token_count": 192,
"score": 2.640625,
"int_score": 3
} |
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