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Thursday November 8 2012
There are more than half a million people with autism in the UK
“Genetic mutation discovered in people with autism,” The Daily Telegraph reports.
The newspaper goes on to say that this mutation “cuts communication between brain cells to about one-tenth of normal levels” and offers “a likely explanation” for the cognitive and behavioural difficulties experienced by people with autism.
This headline is loosely based on recent research into the impact of a previously discovered genetic mutation on the ability of brain cells to transmit signals. The Telegraph speculated that misfiring signals could cause the symptoms of autism.
The study was conducted using rat brain cells, and did not involve people with autism directly.
The researchers described the detailed molecular processes that occur between brain cells when the level of a specific protein is changed. Previous research had discovered that mutations to the gene that controls this protein occurred in people with some types of autism. The authors found that varying the level of this protein affected other proteins responsible for communication between the rats’ brain cells.
The research did not, however, examine the impact of this disrupted communication in people with autism, and should not be interpreted as offering “a likely explanation for their cognitive and behavioural difficulties” as reported by the Telegraph.
In addition, many experts think that autism may arise as the result of a combination of factors – not just genetics. Viewing autism as a purely genetic disease may well be an over-simplification.
Where did the story come from?
The study was carried out by researchers from Stanford University, the University of Auckland and Ulm University in Germany. The research was funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders, the US National Institutes of Health and other organisations throughout the US, New Zealand and Germany.
The study was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Neuroscience.
While the Telegraph appropriately pointed out that a treatment based on this research is years away, their coverage of the study is flawed. To start with, this research did not discover a genetic mutation in people with autism. That link had been previously established. The Telegraph’s coverage also fails to mention that the study was conducted in rats, and further misguides readers by picturing a scan of a human brain.
What kind of research was this?
Autism is often referred to by clinicians as Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) as there is a spectrum of autistic-type symptoms that, while sharing common features, can also vary considerably between individual cases.
This was a laboratory study that examined the impact of a genetic mutation on signalling (neural pathways) between rats’ brain cells.
Previous studies have linked several different genes to autism. This study looked specifically at one gene that contains the information used to make a protein called ProSAP2/Shank3.
People who lack one copy of this gene have a syndrome called Phelan McDermid syndrome – a syndrome with autism-like features. Other mutations in this gene have also been associated with autism.
Having three copies of the ProSAP2/Shank3 gene (rather than the usual two copies) has been associated with Asperger syndrome. This is a form of ASD that is usually associated with unaffected language development skills, but problems with social interaction and behaviour. While spoken language is unaffected in most people with Asperger syndrome, they often have difficulty understanding figures of speech (such as “it’s raining cats and dogs”).
The authors say that while the ProSAP2/Shank3 mutation has been linked to ASDs, scientists have not identified the specific functions of the protein that could account for this relationship. This study sought to characterise the protein’s function in sending signals between brain cells.
What did the research involve?
The researchers report that mutations in multiple genes have been linked to ASDs, and many of these affect proteins found in the part of nerve cells that make contact with other nerve cells and transmit signals. These connections within the nervous system are referred to as synapses.
Previous research on genetic mutations linked to ASDs suggests that these mutations may affect the synapses and how the nerve cells send signals and communicate with each other.
This study looked at how the ProSAP2/Shank3 protein affects other proteins at the synapse and how the nerve cells signal to each other. The researchers used rat brain cells grown in the laboratory and used various different methods to study the protein.
What were the basic results?
The researchers found that the levels of the ProSAP2/Shank3 protein affect the levels of other proteins at the synapse that are important in nerve cell signalling, and influence how signals are transmitted between nerve cells.
When the researchers looked at the mutated forms of ProSAP2/Shank3 that are associated with ASDs, they found that these abnormal forms of the protein disrupt nerve cell signalling.
How did the researchers interpret the results?
The researchers concluded that mutations to the ProSAP2/Shank3 gene affect a major brain cell signalling pathway. They say that: “it will be of considerable interest to determine whether other ASD-associated mutations also converge in this pathway”.
This study provides a target for future research into autistic spectrum disorders. The researchers have characterised the role that one protein plays in the signalling process of certain brain cells. But whether this research ultimately leads to the development of treatments for ASDs remains to be seen.
Even if further research reveals that the mutations to the ProSAP2/Shank3 protein play a causative role in autism, it is unlikely to account for or lead to a treatment for all ASDs. The various types of ASD suggest a complex origin of the disorders and a mutation to a single gene is unlikely to account for all the different disorders on the spectrum. There may also be environmental factors involved.
The authors say that as the number of genes found to be linked to ASDs continues to grow, the scientific community faces the challenge of explaining how mutations in so many genes could influence the development of ASDs. They suggest that multiple genetic mutations may affect the signalling pathway characterised in this study, and that further research that focuses on this pathway may be useful.
This study explored the effect of a genetic mutation on a specific signalling pathway in the brain that may be involved in some forms of autism. Contrary to the news headlines it did not discover a genetic mutation in people with autism and should not be interpreted to explain any cognitive or behavioural symptoms associated with autism or autistic spectrum disorders.
A greater understanding of the genetics and biology of ASD may eventually lead to new treatment options, but as the lead researcher is quoted as saying in The Daily Telegraph story, such treatments are likely to be years away.
Analysis by Bazian. Edited by NHS Choices. Follow Behind the Headlines on twitter.
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Hyperkalemia is higher-than-normal levels of potassium in the blood.
The kidneys normally remove excess potassium from the body. High potassium levels are more likely to occur when the kidneys are not working properly and are less able to get rid of potassium.
If your kidneys are not working well enough, taking extra potassium (for example from using salt substitutes that contain potassium or taking potassium supplements prescribed by your health care provider) could lead to problems.
Certain medicines may cause potassium levels to build up because of their effect on the kidneys, including water pills (diuretics) and blood pressure medicines.
Addison's disease is a disorder that causes an increase in total potassium.
There are often no symptoms with high levels of potassium. Symptoms that may occur include:
An ECG may show dangerous and abnormal rhythms such as:
You will need emergency treatment if your potassium level is very high, or if you have danger signs, such as changes in an ECG.
Emergency treatment may include:
Changes in your diet can help both prevent and treat high potassium levels. You may be asked to:
Your doctor may make the following changes to your medicines:
It is important to follow your health care provider's directions when taking your medicines:
Hyperkalemia; Potassium - high
Seifter JL. Potassium disorders. In: Goldman L, Schafer, AI, eds. Cecil Medicine. 24th ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Saunders Elsevier; 2011:chap 119.
Updated by: David C. Dugdale, III, MD, Professor of Medicine, Division of General Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine. Also reviewed by David Zieve, MD, MHA, Medical Director, A.D.A.M., Inc.
The information provided herein should not be used during any medical emergency or for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition. A licensed physician should be consulted for diagnosis and treatment of any and all medical conditions. Call 911 for all medical emergencies. Links to other sites are provided for information only -- they do not constitute endorsements of those other sites. Copyright 1997-2013, A.D.A.M., Inc. Duplication for commercial use must be authorized in writing by ADAM Health Solutions.
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Pigments in sixteenth-century European painting
Marika Spring, Scientific Department, National Gallery, London
Making Art in Tudor Britain
Abstracts from Academic Workshops (2007-8)
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council
Over the last few years, as part of the programme for revision of the scholarly catalogues, full technical examinations have been carried out on many of the sixteenth-century German, Netherlandish and Italian School paintings in the National Gallery. The results of analysis give a good overview of the pigments in sixteenth-century European paintings, which could provide a context in which to place the results from the Tudor paintings project. Many pigments were available all over Europe. However, it is interesting to consider whether there are distinct geographical characteristics in the way in which they were used, or whether local materials not available everywhere can be identified.
The pattern of use of blue pigments confirmed what had already been established; for example the more frequent use of high quality ultramarine in Italian paintings. It was also used extensively in Netherlandish paintings, but only three occurrences were found among the paintings in the German school catalogue. This may be for reasons of cost or availability, but it might also be because German painters had access to extremely good quality azurite. That in Saint Peter's robe in Saints Peter and Dorothy by the Master of the Saint Bartholomew Altarpiece (NG 707, 1505-10) is of an intense colour that rivals ultramarine.
John Bourchier, 2nd Baron Berners
attributed to The Master of the Brandon portrait
Another new discovery was the extensive use of colourless powdered glass. There are references to the addition of colourless powdered glass to paint in a number of documentary sources, including Richard Haydocke's 1593 translation of Lomazzo, which expands on what Lomazzo says by specifically mentioning that it was used as a drier. Several seventeenth-century documentary sources, many of them English, also suggest it should be added as a drier (see Spring 2004 for references). The presence of glass was first confirmed in paintings by Raphael, mainly mixed with red lake. In every example that has been analysed the glass contains manganese, which is known to be capable of acting as a siccative for oil; indeed it would be very suitable as a drier for the glazy transparent red paint. Further evidence that its purpose was to act a drier is the context in which it was used. It was found in the mordant gilding on the throne in Raphael's Ansidei Madonna (NG1171), where it cannot have been included for aesthetic reasons as it is hidden beneath gold leaf.
The composition of vessel glass has been extensively studied by archaeologists, and clear geographical distributions, related to the local materials that were used to make the glass, have been established. The composition of the glass in paintings follows the same geographical trends: the Italian paintings have all, so far, been found to contain glass of the soda-lime type, while no soda-lime glass has been found in the Northern European paintings. Instead, high lime or mixed alkali glass was used. It is clear that this is a material which could help to establish the geographical location in which a work was produced, in the same way that a gypsum ground usually indicates a painting from southern Europe while a chalk ground is usually found on northern European paintings. As it is widespread in European paintings of this period, it seems likely that it was also used by artists in England in the sixteenth century.
L. Campbell, S. Foister and A. Roy eds, compiled and written by R. Billinge, L. Campbell, J. Dunkerton, S. Foister, J. Kirby, J. Pilc, A. Roy, M. Spring and R. White, Early Northern European Painting, National Gallery Technical Bulletin, Vol.18, 1997.
M. Spring, 'Occurrences of the Purple Pigment Fluorite on paintings in the National Gallery', National Gallery Technical Bulletin, Vol. 21, 2000, pp. 2027.
M. Spring, 'Pigments in sixteenth-century painting of the German School', in The pictorial technique of Grünewald and his peers, ed. P. Béguerie-De Paepe and M. Menu, Musée d'Unterlinden, Colmar and C2RMF-CNRS, 2007, pp. 136144.
M. Spring, 'Raphael's materials: Some new discoveries and their context within early sixteenth-century painting', in Raphael's Painting Technique: Working Practices before Rome, Proceedings of the Eu-ARTECH workshop, London November 11th 2004, ed. A. Roy and M. Spring, Quaderni di Kermes, 2007, pp. 7786.
M. Spring, 'Perugino's painting materials: analysis and context within sixteenth century easel painting', Postprints of the workshop on the painting technique of Pietro Vannucci, called il Perugino, organised by INSTM and LabSTECH, Perugia April 14th15th 2003, Quaderni di Kermes, 2004, pp. 1724.
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Standing Bear in his formal attire
National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
On their journey westward in 1804, Lewis and Clark learned about the Ponca, a small tribe living on the west bank of the Missouri River and along what are now the lower Niobrara River and Ponca Creek in northeast Nebraska. The two did not meet as the tribe was on a hunting trip to the west.
Early Life And Movement To Reservation
Standing Bear was born around 1829 in the traditional Ponca homeland near the confluence of the Niobrara and Missouri rivers. About thirty years later, the tribe sold its homeland to the United States, retaining a 58,000-acre reservation between Ponca Creek and the Niobrara River. On this reservation the Poncas lived a life of hardscrabble farming and fear-the United States did little to protect them from attacks from the Brule Sioux.
When the federal government created the Great Sioux Reservation in 1868, the Ponca Reservation was included within its boundaries, depriving them of title to their remaining lands.
Eviction And Removal
In 1877, the federal government decided to remove the Poncas to Indian Territory. Standing Bear, a tribal leader, protested his tribe's eviction. Federal troops enforced the removal orders, with the result that the Poncas arrived in Indian Territory in the summer of 1878. Discouraged, homesick and forlorn, the Poncas found themselves on the lands of strangers, in the middle of a hot summer, with no crops or prospects for any as the time for planting was long past.
Since the tribe had left Nebraska, one-third had died and nearly all of the survivors were sick or disabled. Talk around the campfire revolved around the "old home" in the north. The death of Chief Standing Bear's sixteen-year old son in late December 1878 set in motion the event which was to bring a measure of justice and worldwide fame to the chief and his small band of followers.
Honoring A Son's Wish
Wanting to honor his son's last wish to be buried in the land of his birth and not in a strange country where his spirit would wander forever, Standing Bear gathered a few members of his tribe-mostly women and children-and started for the Ponca homeland in the north. They left in early January 1879 and trekked through the Great Plains winter, reaching the reservation of their relatives, the Omahas, about two months later. Standing Bear carried with him the bones of his son to be buried in the familiar earth along the Niobrara River.
The Court Case - Standing Bear v. Crook
Because Indians were not allowed to leave their reservation without permission, Standing Bear and his followers were labeled a renegade band. The Army, on the order of The Secretary of the Interior, arrested them and took them to Fort Omaha, the intention being to return them to Indian Territory. General George Crook, however, sympathized with Standing Bear and his followers and asked Thomas Henry Tibbles, an Omaha newspaperman, for help. Tibbles took up the cause and secured two prominent Omaha attorneys to represent Standing Bear.
The lawyers filed a federal court application for a writ of habeas corpus to test the legality of the detention, basing their case on the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. The government disputed the right of Standing Bear to obtain a writ of habeas corpus on the grounds that an Indian was not a "person" under the meaning of the law.
Death And Commemoration
The case of Standing Bear v. Crook began on May 1, 1879 before Judge Elmer S. Dundy in U.S. District Court in Omaha and continued into the evening of the following day. On May 12, Judge Dundy ruled in favor of Standing Bear, reasoning that he and his band were indeed "persons" under the law, entitled to sever tribal connections and were free to enjoy the rights of any other person in the land. The government appealed Dundy's decision, but the Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear the case, leaving Standing Bear and his followers free in the eyes of the law.
Standing Bear died in 1908 and was buried alongside his ancestors in the Ponca homeland. At the eastern end of the 39-mile reach of the Missouri National Recreational River is a relatively new bridge. It links the communities of Niobrara, Nebraska, and Running Water, South Dakota. The official name of the structure is the Chief Standing Bear Memorial Bridge.
Click here for more details on Standing Bear and the Ponca Tribe, with a list of suggested additional reading. (PDF file)
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Virginia Tech's Bill Hopkins holds a female wood duck, as part of the studies he and his colleagues are conducting to determine how the physiology and behavior of female amphibians, turtles and birds affect their offspring, and the consequences these interactions may have for population health. See more images and read more about wood ducks.
Credit: Photo by Kate Hasapes; courtesy Bill Hopkins, Virginia Tech
Gail Patricelli, an animal behaviorist at the University of California, Davis studies animal communication and sexual selection, with a focus on understanding the amazing diversity and complexity in animal signals. Check out the story in this Science Nation video. Credit: Science Nation, NSF
Research conducted by biologists at the University of Maryland, College Park shows that when two neighboring termite families meet within the same log, one or both families' kings and queens are killed and a new, merged, cooperative colony results. Check out the story in this audio slideshow and news release.
Credit: Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation
According to a study by scientists at the University of Arizona, female house finches are able to change their hormonal makeup to ensure male birds hatch later, grow faster and spend less time in the nest than their sisters. Read more in this news release.
Credit: Alex Badyaev
The Integrative Organismal Systems Division (IOS) in NSF's Directorate for Biological Sciences supports research aimed at an integrative understanding of organisms. The goal is to predict why organisms are structured the way they are and function as they do. The division particularly encourages research projects that innovatively apply systems biology approaches and that lead to new conceptual and theoretical insights and predictions about integrated organismal properties that may be experimentally verified.
Scientists studying the relationship between testosterone and natural selection in an American songbird, the dark-eyed junco, reported that extreme testosterone production puts male dark-eyed juncos at a disadvantage.
A University of California, San Diego study shows that increased environmental variation causes birds to lay more eggs at a time. In addition, increased predation pressure experienced by open-nesting birds causes them to lay smaller clutches than cavity-nesting birds, literally having fewer eggs in one basket to spread the risk.
August 23, 2010
Make Way for Ducklings
What wood ducks are revealing about threats to our fine feathered friends
Parent birds know best when it comes to taking care of their babies. But, when food gets scarce and they are forced to fly longer distances to grab a bite, "egg sitting" time drops off. What impact does this have on their brood?
"I guess everybody, from a human health perspective, knows that what a mother does during pregnancy can have all sorts of effects on her babies," says Bill Hopkins, an associate professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife Sciences at Virginia Tech. He is holding a duckling in his hand. It's one of many he and his team are studying. "We study how these little guys can be affected by the things that mom does."
A member of his research team, Sarah DuRant, examines an egg. "If you look really closely," she says, "you can see the embryo moving."
With the support of the National Science Foundation (NSF), ecologists Hopkins and DuRant are studying wood ducks to better understand the impact of mom's nesting behavior on her ducklings and their ability to survive.
"How much time a female spends on her nest is going to influence the temperature that the nest is at," notes DuRant. The researchers incubate eggs at different temperatures to simulate warmer and cooler nesting conditions. "What we're interested in are very, very subtle changes in temperature, maybe a degree Celsius at most," adds Hopkins.
DuRant says they already see differences in the developing embryo. "Our embryos in the lowest temperature are going to develop a little bit slower than embryos in our higher temperatures," she says.
And once the ducklings are hatched, researchers are finding that just a slightly cooler nest can dramatically alter the health and vitality of an individual.
"They may look healthy, but if you actually dig a little deeper, we see a number of physiological deficits. Their immune systems aren't developing as rapidly. They appear to be almost developmentally stunted," explains Hopkins. "We see that they have changes in terms of endocrine function; in terms of stress hormones. We see changes in thermoregulatory capacity and locomotor performance. They swim slower than the same individuals from the same clutch. Swimming is a critical part of their early survival. They've got to avoid predators."
This research is not just about wood ducks. It has implications for many birds living in conditions where their nesting behaviors and habitats are disrupted.
"If their immune system isn't functioning as well as it needs to be and disease wipes through, then those guys aren't going to make it," says DuRant. "For many species that are breeding earlier in the year, those young are going to be exposed to colder temperatures so if they can't regulate their body temperature, then they're also going to die."
Hopkins hopes these findings will improve future conservation strategies.
"If you have an area, say, that's subjected to ecotourism, where you may have a lot of disturbance around nesting areas, those sorts of areas may actually come at a cost," he says.
That could adversely affect the health and vigor of future generations. Hopkins and his team want to learn all they can about what it will take to keep these little guys thriving--and following in mom's footsteps.
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The coastal cactus wren builds its nests in patches of old-growth prickly pear cactus, providing itself protection from predators.
However, recent fires and past land uses have eliminated most of the mature cactus, which in turn threatens local cactus wren populations.
Irvine Ranch Conservancy Docent Lynda Armbruster plants a cactus bulb during a restoration project.
JEFFREY ANTENORE, FOR THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Organizations such as the non-profit Nature Reserve of Orange County, the city of Irvine and the Irvine Ranch Conservancy are working together to expand the wren's habitat, by connecting isolated patches of prickly pear cactus with each other to over time create a larger, contiguous habitat for the coastal cactus wren.
But why go to all this effort? It's just one bird, and one plant.
"If you think of a strong, bio-diverse ecosystem as a building and individual species as bricks, each brick you remove makes the building weaker," said Michael O'Connell, executive director of Irvine Ranch Conservancy. "If enough bricks disappear, the building crumbles. This is what happens in ecosystems too."
The conservancy works with landowners such as OC Parks and the city of Irvine and other partners to help them manage their lands and obligations under the Natural Community Conservation Plan.
One such project underway in the Shady Canyon area of Irvine is the Mule Deer Restoration Project, named for its proximity to the Mule Deer trail in the city of Irvine's Open Space Preserve.
The conservancy is restoring more than two acres of habitat, including a number of cactus plantings.
The area was grazed by cattle until the end of the last century, leaving non-native grasses and other weeds that inhibit re-growth of native plants.
The coastal cactus wren is not a strong flier, so young birds looking for their own place to live don't really fly too far from the nest. Patches of cactus have to be relatively close to each other for wrens to move among them.
This restoration project is part of an overall plan for "habitat linkages," which will eventually connect patches of existing coastal cactus wren habitat in the James Dilley Reserve off Laguna Canyon Road to these in Shady Canyon.
In addition to native grasses and shrubs, planting plans include 4,500 prickly pear cactus "pads" (oval flat segments of the cactus sometimes called "nopales"), along with 20 large, mature cactus plants to anchor the cactus islands.
By incorporating mature plants, the conservancy hopes to encourage a faster return of coastal cactus wrens and nesting.
The project includes before-and-after monitoring of both the cactus patches and coastal cactus wren to track growth and population expansion.
Along with conservancy staff, the UC Irvine Center for Environmental Biology is also partnering in the project. A UCI scientist tests soil before planting and during the project to track changes, and environmental science students are participating in planting and data collection.
The public is also welcome to join in the Mule Deer Restoration project and help build the habitat linkage. To learn more about these activities or to register, visit irlandmarks.org/activities.
- This story was submitted by Jenn Starnes of the Irvine Ranch Conservancy
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Quarrel with the King: The Story of an English Family on the High Road to Civil War : Quarrel with the King tells the story of the first four earls of Pembroke, their wives, children, estates, tenants, and allies, following their high and glamorous trajectory from the 1520s through 1650 - the most turbulent and dramatic years of English history - across three generations of change, ambition, resistance, and war. The Pembrokes were at the heart of it all: the richest family in England, with old blood and new drive, led as much by a succession of extraordinary women as by their husbands and sons. It is also the story of a power struggle, over a long century, between the family and the growing strength of the English Crown. For decades, questions of loyalty simmered: Was government about agreement and respect, or authority and compulsion? What status did traditional rights have in a changing world? Did a national emergency mean those rights could be ignored or overturned? These were the issues that in 1642 would lead to a brutal civil war, the bloodiest conflict England has ever experienced, in which the earl of Pembroke - who had been loyal till then - had no choice but to rebel against a king who he felt had betrayed both him and his country. At other times, the Pembrokes both threatened the Crown and acted as its bruisingly efficient and violent agents. They were ambivalent figures: flag bearers for an ancient England and time servers in some of the most corrupt courts England has ever known; fawning courtiers and indulgent landlords; puritanical aristocrats and rebel grandees. Nicolson's book amounts to a study in all the ambiguities involved in the exercise and maintenance of power and status.
|History & Geography||Modern|
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Malaria is a deadly disease spread by mosquitoes and is estimated to kill one person every 30 seconds, according to the World Health Organization. The majority victimized by this disease are children under the age of five, living in impoverished conditions throughout Africa . Yet, as the epidemic continues to escalate, more than 1.5 million people die from malaria disease each year, and more than 300 million cases are reported in over 90 countries worldwide.
In spite of these staggering statistics, an ancient Chinese herb known as artemisinin (also called ginghaosu) is proving to be a new weapon in the fight against this deadly disease. In recent test trials performed by the WHO, artemisinin-based drugs quickly reduced fevers and rapidly lowered blood-parasite levels, which can keep small outbreaks in mosquito-infested areas from becoming epidemics. Additional research findings showed the use of artemisinin was a cure for malaria in more than 90 percent of cases in certain countries.
It is estimated by the WHO that 40 percent of the world's population is at risk for malaria disease each year. While Westernized countries eradicated malaria back in the 1940's, third world countries constantly battle infections, primarily because they lack the medical resources to properly fight epidemic outbreaks. Countries where malaria disease can be predominately found include parts of Mexico , Central and South America , Dominican Republic , Haiti , Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia, Indian Subcontinent, China , and Oceana.
In the indigent areas where the disease runs rampant, malaria is easily transmitted from person to person by a simple mosquito bite. Once bitten by a mosquito carrying the malaria infection, the iron rich blood cells in the host are attacked by the parasite through the bloodstream. The parasite then multiplies and causes the red blood cells in the human host to rupture, thus instigating immediate malaria symptom such as extreme exhaustion, high fever, shaking, chills, and severe sweating. Additional malaria symptom can include: fatigue, dizziness, headache, dry cough, nausea/vomiting, loss of appetite, abdominal cramps, diarrhea, and body aches.
However, artemisinin is not only a treatment for the disease, but a viable solution to the epidemic, as each patient treated with artemisinin then contains a sterile form of malaria disease, reducing the diseases intensity.
According to Jack Miller, licensed acupuncturist and President of Pacific College of Oriental Medicine, "This is another example of science confirming the tremendous value of Chinese herbal medicine. It is very important that we make other herbs a part of mainstream treatments, for example antibiotic herbs. As more bacterial strains become resistant to pharmaceutical antibiotics, some reliance on herbs will become very important."
Discovery of the Healing Chinese Herb
The Chinese first extracted artemisinin from the sweet wormwood plant for medicinal use more than 2,000 years ago. In 340 AD a Taoist scribe finely grinded the wormwood plant, in order to extract the purifying agents to create an herb remedy for treating a high fever. Over a thousand years later, a Chinese sage known as Li Shizen discovered elements of the herb helped to ameliorate malaria symptom. Since this time, artemisinin's beneficial agents have continually been used by those practicing Traditional Chinese Medicine, applying the Chinese herb remedy to a variety of ailments including hemorrhoids, coughs and fevers as well as malaria.
However, Western medicine did not discover the healing properties of the herb until the 1960's. Chinese scientists became interested in the plant's reputed qualities and started to look at ancient Chinese herb remedies, only after testing traditional medicines had failed to produce an effective cure for malaria disease.
Once scientists discovered artemisinin was used as an herb remedy for fever, they set about distilling the herb into a tea, and then added chemicals trying to isolate the active compound in the plant. Next, the herb was manufactured in drug form and used to conduct tests on malaria patients in the 1980's. Their water-soluble form of artemisinin, called artesunate, was found to clear malaria parasites from patient's bodies faster than any drug in history. Before the Chinese launched their massive antimalarial drive, several million Chinese were infected with the disease each year. Now fewer than 100,000 fall victim to the disease.
Despite the success the Chinese had with transforming the herb into drug form, their accomplishments were not published outside of the country for more than two decades. Once the extraordinary powers of the herb become public information, researchers across the globe have become focused on how to manipulate artemisinin with modern synthetic drugs so they can inexpensively manufacture and mass-produce the remedy all across the world.
Providing a Crucial Cure for Malaria
In rural Africa , children suffer from as many as six bouts of malaria a year. In the past, this disease has been poorly treated, and the children affected by this disease die slowly of anemia. Those who survive are affected both mentally and developmentally in their growth. The primary reason these children are continually affected is because the current drug treatment Chloroquine, used since 1970, is practically useless as resistance is up to 90 percent in some areas and continuing to spread.
Artemisinin may prove to be the final solution to malaria disease as researchers are looking at the possibility that a patient may never develop resistance to the treatment.
According to Todd Luger, L.Ac., Director of Chinese Herb Academy, " Artemisinin shows promise in the treatment of malaria as well as other diseases as serious as cancer. It appears to affect the life cycle of the malaria parasite as well as the life cycle of cancer cells."
What makes this herb different from past remedies such as the drug Chloroquine, is that it kills the parasite before it has time to recognize the drug's structures. In order to prevent patients from becoming resistant to artemisinin, researchers are developing multi-drug cocktails. Using two drugs in conjunction with one another ensures destruction of the malaria parasite; therefore, if the virus was resistant to one drug, the other drug should prove to be effective. This has proven to be an effective method in treating other diseases that produce resistant strains such as AIDS and cancer.
Artemisinin is particularly effective because it acts like a bomb when introduced into the blood stream. The two main oxygen atoms that break apart in the presence of iron, filter into the red blood cells where the malaria parasite inhabits, and explodes, releasing lethal toxins that destroy the parasite. This process rapidly reduces the number of parasite in the blood to extremely small numbers. In fact, test trials have shown that artemisinin is an effective cure for malaria, killing 99 percent of malaria parasites within 48 hours, but to completely cure the infection the drug must be taken for week.
In a large scaled assault on the malaria epidemic, the WHO has dedicated itself to cutting the number of deaths from malaria over the next decade in half. This campaign will push the WHO to acquire more than 100 million doses of artemisinin it estimates it will need by late 2005.
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The History of Information (III)
Get flash to fully experience Pearltrees
A waste book was one of the books traditionally used in bookkeeping . It comprised a daily diary of all transactions in chronological order. [ 1 ] It differs from a daybook in that only a single waste book is kept, rather than a separate daybook for each of several categories. The waste book was intended for temporary use only; the information needed to be transcribed into a journal in order to begin to balance one's accounts. [ 2 ] The name of the book derives from the fact that, once its information was transferred to the journal, the waste book was unneeded. [ 3 ] The use of the waste book has declined with the advent of double-entry accounting .
Why Study Accounting History? The history of accounting is as old as civilization, key to important phases of history, among the most important professions in economics and business, and fascinating. Accountants participated in the development of cities, trade, and the concepts of wealth and numbers. Accountants invented writing, participated in the development of money and banking, invented double entry bookkeeping that fueled the Italian Renaissance, saved many Industrial Revolution inventors and entrepreneurs from bankruptcy, helped develop the confidence in capital markets necessary for western capitalism, and are central to the information revolution that is transforming the global economy. There are no household names among the accounting innovators; in fact, virtually no names survive before the Italian Renaissance.
John Harrison (24 March 1693 – 24 March 1776) was a self-educated English carpenter and later a clockmaker . He invented the marine chronometer , a long-sought device in solving the problem of establishing the East-West position or longitude of a ship at sea, thus revolutionising and extending the possibility of safe long distance sea travel in the Age of Sail . The problem was considered so intractable that the British Parliament offered a prize of £ 20,000 (comparable to £2.87 million in modern currency) for the solution. [ 1 ] [ 2 ]
The Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 (c.23) (also known as Chesterfield's Act after Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield ) is an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain . It reformed the calendar of England and British Dominions so that a new year began on 1 January rather than 25 March ( Lady Day ) and would run according to the Gregorian calendar , as used in most of western Europe . [ edit ] Reasons for change
A calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial, or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time , typically days , weeks , months , and years . A date is the designation of a single, specific day within such a system. Periods in a calendar (such as years and months) are usually, though not necessarily, synchronized with the cycle of the sun or the moon . Many civilizations and societies have devised a calendar, usually derived from other calendars on which they model their systems, suited to their particular needs. A calendar is also a physical device (often paper).
The Gregorian calendar , also called the Western calendar and the Christian calendar , is internationally the most widely accepted and used civil calendar . [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] It has been the unofficial global standard for decades, adopted for pragmatic interests of international communication, transportation, and commercial integration, and recognized by international institutions such as the United Nations and the Universal Postal Union . [ 4 ] The calendar was a reform in 1582 to the Julian calendar . [ 5 ] The motivation for the reform was to bring the date for the celebration of Easter to the time of the year in which the First Council of Nicaea had agreed upon in 325. Because the spring equinox was tied to the celebration of Easter, the Roman Catholic Church considered this steady movement in the date of the equinox undesirable. The reform was adopted initially by the Catholic countries of Europe.
Manuel Castells ( Spanish : Manuel Castells Oliván ; born 1942, Hellín , Albacete , Spain ) is a Spanish sociologist especially associated with research on the information society , communication and globalization . The 2000–09 research survey of the Social Sciences Citation Index ranks him as the world’s fifth most-cited social science scholar, and the foremost-cited communication scholar. [ 1 ] He was awarded the 2012 Holberg Prize , [ 2 ] for having "shaped our understanding of the political dynamics of urban and global economies in the network society." [ 3 ] [ edit ] Life
The term Network Society describes several different phenomena related to the social, political, economic and cultural changes caused by the spread of networked, digital information and communications technologies. A number of academics (see below) are credited with coining the term since the 1980s and several competing definitions exist. The intellectual origins of the idea can be traced back to the work of early social theorists such as Georg Simmel who analyzed the effect of modernization and industrial capitalism on complex patterns of affiliation, organization, production and experience. [ edit ] Origins
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (15 May 1689 – 21 August 1762) was an English aristocrat and writer. Montagu is today chiefly remembered for her letters, particularly her letters from Turkey, as wife to the British ambassador, which have been described by Billie Melman as “the very first example of a secular work by a woman about the Muslim Orient”. [ 1 ] [ edit ] Early life Lady Mary Pierrepont was born in London on May 15, 1689; her baptism took place on May 26 at St.
The first issue of the Journal des sçavans (title page) The Journal des sçavans (later renamed Journal des savants ), established by Denis de Sallo , was the earliest academic journal published in Europe. Its content included obituaries of famous men, church history, and legal reports. [ 1 ] The first issue appeared as a twelve page quarto pamphlet [ 2 ] on Monday, 5 January 1665. [ 3 ] This was shortly before the first appearance of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society , on 6 March 1665. [ 4 ] The journal ceased publication in 1792, during the French Revolution , and, although it very briefly reappeared in 1797 under the updated title Journal des savants , it did not re-commence regular publication until 1816. From then on, the Journal des savants became more of a literary journal , and ceased to carry significant scientific material. [ 1 ] [ 5 ]
Joseph Moxon (8 August 1627 - February 1691 [ 1 ] ), hydrographer to Charles II , was an English printer of mathematical books and maps, a maker of globes and mathematical instruments , and mathematical lexicographer . He produced the first English language dictionary devoted to mathematics. In November 1678, he became the first tradesman to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society . [ edit ] Life Between the ages of around 9 and 11, Moxon accompanied his father, James Moxon, to Delft and Rotterdam where he was printing English Bibles.
Cover of the first volume of Phil. Trans. , covering the years 1665 and 1666 The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society ( Phil. Trans. ) is a scientific journal published by the Royal Society of London. It was established in 1665, [ 1 ] making it the first journal in the world exclusively devoted to science, and it has remained in continuous publication ever since, making it the world's longest-running scientific journal.
John Graunt (24 April 1620 – 18 April 1674) was one of the first demographers , though by profession he was a haberdasher . Born in London , the eldest of seven or eight children of Henry and Mary Graunt. His father was a draper who had moved to London from Hampshire. In February 1641, Graunt married Mary Scott, with whom he had one son (Henry) and three daughters. Graunt, along with William Petty , developed early human statistical and census methods that later provided a framework for modern demography. He is credited with producing the first life table , giving probabilities of survival to each age.
In the philosophy of science , a protoscience is a new science trying to establish its legitimacy. [ 1 ] Protoscience is distinguished from pseudoscience by its standard practices of good science, such as a willingness to be disproven by new evidence, or to be replaced by a more predictive theory. [ citation needed ] Compare fringe science , which is considered highly speculative or even strongly refuted. [ 2 ] Some protosciences go on to become an accepted part of mainstream science . [ 3 ] All sciences would have qualified as protosciences before the Age of Enlightenment , since the scientific method still hadn't been developed, and there was no structured way to prove legitimacy. A standard example is alchemy , which from the 18th century became chemistry , or pre-modern astrology which from the 17th century became astronomy . [ edit ] Definitions
Robert Boyle , FRS , (25 January 1627 – 31 December 1691) was a 17th-century natural philosopher , chemist , physicist , and inventor, also noted for his writings in theology . He has been variously described as Irish, English and Anglo-Irish , his father having come to Ireland from England during the time of the Plantations . Although his research clearly has its roots in the alchemical tradition, Boyle is largely regarded today as the first modern chemist, and therefore one of the founders of modern chemistry , and one of the pioneers of modern experimental scientific method .
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In 1900, The Prohibition Act, sometimes called the "Scott Act", and described as "An Act Prohibiting the Sale of Intoxicating Liquor", was passed by the Provincial Legislature.
This Act replaced all previous legislation dealing with liquor and totally prohibited the use or sale of any form of liquor for beverage purposes. It did provide however, for the sale at wholesale, by persons known as "Vendors" to physicians, chemists, druggists, and persons engaged in art or trade in which alcohol was used. The physicians, chemists and druggists could in turn sell the liquor so purchased to any person presenting a physician prescription prescribing liquor for medicinal use.
The enforcement of the Act was in the hands of a Chief Inspector and such other Inspectors as were required. It would appear that these Inspectors had very broad powers to arrest, search and prosecute. It is noted in the minutes of the Council that there was a fairly large turnover in Inspectors. In a number of cases the dismissal would be based on a complaint from the Temperance Alliance or a petition from a community. During this period also, there were a number of disputes between the Alliance and the Government as to the advisability of granting vendors licenses to certain persons or in certain places.
In 1901, a further source of supply was established by an amendment to the Act permitting persons to establish themselves as dealers in liquor and to transact business both within and without the Province. As a result of this amendment, several warehouses were established - to sell to the wholesale Vendors and to export to other points.
Although a number of amendments were made to the Act in ensuing years, it was not until 1918 that any major changes took place. In that year, the Act was completely re-written. It provided for the establishments of a six-member Board of Commissioners to be appointed for a three year term by the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council to administer the Act. The Commission were given the power to license one wholesale Vendor and as many retail Vendors as were deemed necessary. These retail Vendors were to replace the physicians and druggists who, up to this time had filled the role.
The Vendors were to be paid on a commission basis varying from 10% to 50% with the percentage increasing with the volume. The retail Vendors could sell to any person presenting a prescription 24 oz of wine or spirits or 12 quarts of ale not oftener than once a day. However, this quantity could be doubled if the person lived more than ten miles from the Vendor.
In 1919, an amendment to the Act introduced what came to be known as "Scripts". These were, in effect, pre-printed prescriptions, to be supplied to the physicians by the Prohibited Commission. They were serially numbered and it is believed that the number issued to each physician was controlled as previously there had been no limit to the number of prescriptions a physician could write and abuses were creeping in to the system.
The 1919 Amendment also provided for the holding, in 1920, of a referendum on the whole question of Prohibition. However, the Government changed before the end of the year, and as the incoming Government had campaigned on a Prohibition plank, the referendum was never held.
In 1920, funds were made available to the Commission to be used by the wholesale Vendor for the purchase of liquor. Salaried retail Vendors were established at Charlottetown, Summerside, Montague and Alberton selling at prices set by the Commission.
A list of the six Commissioners in 1920, shows them all to be clergymen.
The Act was again revised in 1928. The six member Commission was abolished and in its place, a new Commission consisting of a Chairman and two members, all salaried, was established. This Commission, like the previous one, was appointed by the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council. This continued until 1937, when in another revision, the entire operation was placed under the direct control of the Attorney-General.
It was in 1945 however, that an amendment was introduced that marked the beginning of the end of Prohibition. This amendment stated that provided a physician felt that the use of liquor over an extended period would benefit the health of a patient, he could prescribe 26 oz of spirits, or 104 oz of wine, or nine full quarts of ale, to be delivered weekly over a six month period. Upon receiving such a prescription, the patient could exchange it for a warrant which had coupons on it redeemable weekly for the quantity above. These were not accumulative and had to be redeemed on the due date.
This particular amendment was refused Royal Assent at the conclusion of the Session on May 5th, but with the appointment of a new Lieutenant Governor, received the necessary assent in October, and came into effect.
This system prevailed, until a new Act, known as the "Temperance Act" was introduced in the 1948 Session. This Act provided for the repeal of the Prohibition Act and the establishment of a Government Liquor Control System similar to the other Provinces, with the rather curious difference that the Commission to be established to administer the Act, would be known as the "Temperance Commission". Under the Act, residents would require a permit to purchase liquor and a special permit would be available to visitors. The quantity an individual could purchase at any one time remained unchanged. A number of the permits were introduced for other specific uses of liquor. Among these was a permit permitting liquor in messes, canteens, Legion branches and non-profit clubs. The quantity that could be purchased was specified on the permit as were the hours of consumption.
This new Act was subject to the approval of the electorate by means of a plebiscite, held on June 28th, 1948. The result was in favour of the new Act, and the sale of liquor for beverage purposes became legal on July 6th, 1948.
The Temperance Act received a number of amendments in the next thirteen years. Two were of major significance to the public. In 1952, an amendment permitted four weekly rations to be purchased at any one time in the month; and in 1960, all quantity restrictions were removed.
The word "Temperance" finally disappeared in 1961, when the Act became "The Liquor Control Act", and the Commission, "the Liquor Control Commission".
As the result of a case in 1963, the Courts found that the special permits issued to clubs and canteens permitted possession only by the organization and any such liquor could not be re-sold. However, action was withheld until an amendment to the Act was passim in the 1964 Session providing for the regular licensing of premises as practiced in other Provinces. The outstanding special permits were then resigned and applications received and licenses issued to those qualified under the new legislation.
The last major amendment was in 1967, when the Individual and Tourist Permits were abolished.
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Inflammation of the Middle Ear and External Ear Canal in Dogs
Otitis externa and Otitis media in Dogs
Otitis externa is a chronic inflammation of a dog external ear canal. Otitis media, meanwhile, is an inflammation of the dog's middle ear. Both of these terms are used to describe clinical symptoms and are not diseases in themselves.
Otitis externa often results when a change in the normal environment of the ear canal causes the glands lining the canal to enlarge and produce excessive wax. Gradually, the outer skin (epidermis) and the inner skin (dermis) produce excessive fibrous tissue (fibrosis) and the canal becomes narrowed. It is normally a secondary symptom of another underlying disease, such as an infection. Otitis externa causes pain, itching, and redness, and when the condition is chronic, it often results in a ruptured ear drum (tympanum) and otitis media.
Otitis media typically occurs as an extension of otitis externa, causing a ruptured membrane (tympanum) that separates the external ear and the middle ear. Otitis externa and otitis media affect dogs and cats of any age and breed, but long-eared dogs, such as spaniels and retrievers, and dogs with hairy external canals, such as terriers and poodles, are more susceptible.
The two conditions described in this medical article affect both dogs and cats. If you would like to learn more about how they affect cats, please visit this page in the PetMD health library.
Symptoms and Types
The most common symptoms of otitis externa and otitis media are pain, head shaking, scratching at the external ear flaps, and bad odor. In a physical examination by a veterinarian, a dog with the condition may exhibit redness and swelling of the external ear canal, scaling skin or obstruction of the ear canal. Signs such as tilting the head, anorexia, uncoordination, and occasional vomiting may indicate the development of otitis media, or otitis interna, if the infection and inflammation spreads to the inner ear.
Otitis externa and otitis media can be caused by a variety of things. The primary causes are parasites, food allergies, drug reactions, foreign bodies (e.g., plant awns), accumulation of hair, dead skin buildup (keratinization), and autoimmune diseases.
Other factors that may contribute to the onset of the inflammatory conditions include bacterial infections, mixed infections caused by bacteria and fungal species, and progressive changes in the environment of the outer ear canal. Excessive moisture caused by swimming, or overzealous, abrasive, and improper ear cleaning may also lead to otitis externa and otitis media.
These two conditions can be diagnosed in several ways. For instance, X-rays may be used to diagnose otitis media; an magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) may also be used to identify an accumulation of fluid or soft tissue growth in the middle ear.
Other ways of diagnosing these conditions include skin scrapings from the dog's ear flaps to test for parasites, and skin biopsies to check for autoimmune diseases. However, the single most important tool for diagnosing otitis externa and otitis media is a microscopic examination of the ear discharge (aural exudate).
Inflammation of the external parts of the ear
A medical condition in which the ear becomes inflamed
Inflammation of the inner part of the ear
Inflammation of the middle parts of the ear
A type of fungus that produces buds
A bundle of fibers that are used in the process of sending impulses through the body
The outside layer of the skin
Any drug that kills organisms in an animal's tissue or prevents the growth of more.
Referring to the ear.
Loss of hearing in whole or in part.
The skin; also referred to as the corium
Used to refer to any drug or medical substance that has the ability to slow down or stop the growth of bacteria and other such organisms.
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S-1. Sunlight & Earth
S-1B. Global Climate
S-3.The Magnetic Sun
S-4. Colors of Sunlight
Optional: Doppler Effect
S-4A-1 Speed of Light
S-4A-2. Frequency Shift
S-4A-3 Rotating Galaxies
and Dark Matter
S-5.Waves & Photons
Optional: Quantum Physics
Q3. Energy Levels
Q4. Radiation from
One widely used property of waves is the shift in frequency when the source approaches or recedes. If the engine of a train blows its whistle as it passes by, a listener standing near the track cannot help but notice that the tone of the whistle drops as it passes.
Actually, the tone is already raised above its normal note as the engine approaches, and then drops below it as it recedes. This shift in frequency, also noted in electromagnetic waves such as light or radio, is named the Doppler Effect after its discoverer, the Austrian Christian Doppler, born in 1803.
Earlier, a somewhat similar phenomenon was discovered by the Dane Ole Roemer in 1676. The story deserves to be told because it also led to the first determination of the velocity of light.
Those were the times when the sailing ships of seafaring nations – especially, France, Spain, Britain and the Netherlands (Holland) – fought to dominate the oceans and to establish (and protect) trade routes and distant bases. In such a struggle, one technology was crucial: commanders of ships had to somehow know at all times their position in mid-ocean, that is, their latitude and longitude.
Latitude was relatively easy: the elevation of the celestial pole above the horizon (deduced, for instance, from the position of the pole star) gave that. Or else, the elevation of the Sun when it was most distant from the horizon ("solar noon"), i.e. made the greatest angle between it and the horizon, gave the latitude (after being adjusted for the day of the year). The cross staff, or a later more accurate instrument, the marine sextant (or the octant) allowed "shooting the Sun," i.e. finding its elevation above the horizon, and by combining several timed observations, its greatest elevation for that day could be derived.
Longitude was much harder. It required knowledge of the time at Greenwhich (longitude zero) when a cross staff or sextant determined that the Sun was passing local noon. For example, if the Sun passed local noon when it was 1 p.m. at Greenwich, the ship was 15° west of Greenwich, because
To get this information, the captain needed a clock which kept accurate time for a many months: it could be set in Greenwich (or set to Greenwich time at a location of known longitude), and used later to give "Greenwich time" of local noon. Such clocks ("chronometers") were in fact developed in the 1700s, but clocks of the 1600s were not accurate enough, especially on a ship that rolled and pitched, and their errors accumulated rapidly.
A less precise clock may be used, if somehow it can be constantly corrected, reset to the correct "Greenwich time" at frequent intervals. In a later era this was done using time signals obtained by radio, but in the 1600s accurately timed celestial phenomena held the greatest promise. One class of such phenomena were the eclipses of the four large moons of Jupiter, discovered by Galileo and easily seen through even a small telescope.
In particular, Io, the innermost moon of Jupiter, seemed suitable: being closest to Jupiter, Kepler's 3rd law assured that it had the fastest motion, making its entry into eclipses and out of them particularly rapid. With an orbital period of 1.77 days, Io also offered the largest number of eclipses, and every one of its orbits crossed Jupiter's shadow. (In the satellite age Io was found to have other unique features, such as sulfur volcanoes.)
Giovanni Domenico Cassini, an Italian astronomer who headed of the Paris Observatory, therefore assigned Roemer to make a table of the predicted times of Io eclipses, allowing sailors at sea to set their clocks (within a minute or so, deemed accurate enough). Roemer did so, but soon discovered that the period was not constant. When Earth (which moves faster than Jupiter) was approaching Jupiter, the observed period was shorter, and when it was receding, longer.
He guessed the reason: light did not spread instantly, but (like sound) did so at a certain speed. If Earth and Jupiter maintained a constant distance, the eclipses would have been spaced at regular intervals, equal to the orbital period of Io. When Earth is approaching, however, the return trip is shortened, compared to the time it would have taken if the distance stayed constant. When Earth is receding, the return trip is longer, and the time between eclipses is longer too
That gave Roemer convincing evidence that light spread in space with a certain velocity--later denoted by the letter c (lower case, not capital). However, he and his contemporaries had only a vague idea how big c was, because the dimensions of the solar system were uncertain. About that same time, the French astronomer Jean Richer used a telescope to estimate of the distance of Mars, and gradually, the value of c was obtained with increasing accuracy. Today it is known to an accuracy of 9 decimals, and has therefore been used to define the metre, the unit of length, replacing optical wavelengths or scratches on a metal bar kept in a vault (supposedly derived from the size of our globe).
And the problem of longitude?
It turned out that observing the eclipses of Io from a constantly moving ship, even in a calm sea, was a difficult task. Even a small telescope magnifies all motions tremendously, and early telescopes in particular showed only a small patch of the sky. Also, the method required a sky free of clouds. On the other hand, the method proved very useful for determining the longitude of ports, capes, islands and other features on land.
Consistent determinations of longitude from a moving ship had to wait for sophisticated clocks, using a balance wheel compensated for changes due to variation of temperature. One early model of such a "chronometer" accompanied Captain James Cook on his journey around the world.
(S-4A-2) The Frequency Shift and the Expanding Universe
(S-5) Waves and Photons
Timeline Glossary Back to the Master List
Author and Curator: Dr. David P. Stern
Mail to Dr.Stern: stargaze("at" symbol)phy6.org .
Last updated: 9 December 2006
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Mechanics: Circular Motion and Gravitation
Circular Motion and Gravitation: Audio Guided Solution
A loop de loop track is built for a 938-kg car. It is a completely circular loop - 14.2 m tall at its highest point. The driver successfully completes the loop with an entry speed (at the bottom) of 22.1 m/s.
a. Using energy conservation, determine the speed of the car at the top of the loop.
b. Determine the acceleration of the car at the top of the loop.
c. Determine the normal force acting upon the car at the top of the loop.
Audio Guided Solution
Click to show or hide the answer!
b. 30. m/s/s
c. 1.9 x 104 N
Habits of an Effective Problem Solver
- Read the problem carefully and develop a mental picture of the physical situation. If necessary, sketch a simple diagram of the physical situation to help you visualize it.
- Identify the known and unknown quantities in an organized manner. Equate given values to the symbols used to represent the corresponding quantity - e.g., m = 61.7 kg, v= 18.5 m/s, R = 30.9 m, Fnorm = ???.
- Use physics formulas and conceptual reasoning to plot a strategy for solving for the unknown quantity.
- Identify the appropriate formula(s) to use.
- Perform substitutions and algebraic manipulations in order to solve for the unknown quantity.
Read About It!
Get more information on the topic of Circular Motion and Gravitation at The Physics Classroom Tutorial.
- Mathematics of Circular Motion
- Newton's Second Law - Revisited
- Situations Involving Energy Conservation
Return to Problem Set
Return to Overview
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Article Archive >> Community
Reflections: Why was the hatter mad?
Why was the hatter mad?
By William L. Bulla
What is a Mad Hatter? He is not something we experience in our every day life. However, he is something we read about, even as children, in the story of "Alice in Wonderland", and again, "Through the Looking Glass."
Over the years we have read about both the Mad Hatter and his partner the March Hare. Both of these characters have seemed a bit mad.
Recently my friend Sean asked, "why do they say 'mad as a hatter'?" I said I thought it came from Lewis Carroll's "Alice In Wonderland". He told me I was wrong. He said it had to do with the mercury used in preserving the furs from which they made the hats. Of course, I didn't believe him so I decided I should look into the issue. Sean was right. It was the chemicals used in preserving the fur used in making hats that caused the hatter's to go "mad".
The most famous Mad Hatter, of course, is the one from the Mad Tea Party in Alice in Wonderland, the partner of the March Hare. Both mad, of course. But Lewis Carroll did not invent the phrase, although he did create the character. The phrases "mad as a hatter" and "mad as a March hare" were common at the time Lewis Carroll wrote the first publication of Alice In Wonderland in 1865. The phrase had been in common use in 1837, almost 30 years earlier. Carroll frequently used common expressions, songs, nursery rhymes, etc., as the basis for characters in his stories.
The origin of the phrase, it's believed, is that hatters really did go mad. The chemicals used in hat-making included mercury nitrate, used in curing felt. Prolonged exposure to the mercury vapors caused mercury poisoning. Victims developed severe and uncontrollable muscular tremors and twitching limbs, which became known as "hatter's shakes"; other symptoms included distorted vision and confused speech. Advanced cases developed hallucinations and other psychotic symptoms.
The victims were the hatters, not the wearers of hats. The hatters were exposed to the mercury fumes, which would have been long dissipated, or of insignificant strength, by the time the hat was worn. This use of mercury is now subject to severe legal restrictions (if not banned) in the U.S. and Europe.
The March Hare and the Hatter make a brief reappearance in Alice Through the Looking Glass as the King's messengers, "Haigha" and "Hatta." These names are the only hint as to their identities other than the illustrations from the book published in 1871.
"In that direction," the Cat said, waving its right paw round, "lives a Hatter: and in that direction," waving the other paw, "lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad."
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be, said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
So, who knows for sure? Maybe we all become a bit mad in March.
William L. Bulla is a freelance writer residing in Washington County.
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|Sat August 11, 2012 08:59PM (PDT)|
A map displaying historical seismicity within 50 Km of a queried earthquake.
Historic Map Legend
The sizes of symbols scale with earthquake magnitude, and their color with either the age of the earthquake relative to the one starred or its depth, as shown in the legend below, and selected in the panel to the right of the map. Clicking on an earthquake symbol shows its basic information and a link to a page with more details about the individual earthquake. Probable surface explosions (usually due to quarrying or road building) are shown as stars.
Historic Eqs Map Panel
Using the tools in this panel you can control the earthquakes shown on the map. The minimum magnitude to plot is selected by the slider. The "Time" and "Depth" determines whether earthquake age or depth are used to color the symbol.
- 1) To begin, click the "Draw" button
- 2) Click a point on the map, this will be the left side of the cross-section.
- 3)Click a second point on the map, this will be the right side of the cross-section.
- 4) Drag square on line to include events to plot.
- 5) Select plot type and depth constraint if any.
- 6) Click "Plot"
Events on map
|Mag||Time (Local)||Depth (Km)|
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Liquid armor has been shown to stop bullets more effectively than plain Kevlar, according to British firm BAE Systems. The material could be used to make thinner, lighter armor for military personnel and police officers, the BBC reports.
Materials scientists combined a shear-thickening liquid with traditional Kevlar to make a bulletproof material that absorbs the force of a bullet strike by becoming thicker and stickier.
Its molecules lock together more tightly when it is struck, the scientists explained -- they described it as "bulletproof custard," the BBC reports.Shear-thickening liquids are composed of hard nanoparticles suspended in a liquid, which turns rigid after being struck with a bullet or shrapnel. BAE says their tests provide the first clear evidence that it can actually protect people.
In the tests, BAE scientists used a gas gun to fire ball-bearing bullets at nearly 1,000 feet per second at two test materials -- 31 layers of regular Kevlar and 10 layers of Kevlar combined with the shear-thickening liquid.
The shear-thickening liquid stopped the bullets more quickly and prevented them from penetrating as deeply, the BBC says. British media got a preview of the materials at a BAE facility in Bristol, England.
The U.S. Army Research Laboratory has studied using liquid armor to replace traditional Kevlar armor, which is heavy and bulky.
Five amazing, clean technologies that will set us free, in this month's energy-focused issue. Also: how to build a better bomb detector, the robotic toys that are raising your children, a human catapult, the world's smallest arcade, and much more.
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Sometimes bread machines can be tricky. We were trying to help a customer whose bread did not rise enough. It seemed that he did everything right. Come to find out, he had an older model and a brand that we were not familiar with. (Bread machines are becoming more standardized but there are still different requirements for different machines.) So we tried to help him fine tune his mix to work perfectly with his machine.
Fine tuning may be required either because the mix does not perfectly match the machine or because of environmental conditions in your kitchen—humidity, temperature, or altitude. (Since temperature is a variable, make sure that both the mix and machine are at room temperature before beginning.)Bread machines work on a timer. They mix, allow time for the bread to rise, and then bake. If the dough does not rise fast enough, then the loaf is dense with poor volume. If the dough rises too fast, it collapses with a depression in the middle. To fine tune a mix, we want to adjust the rising so that it is at peak height when the baking cycle begins. In fine tuning, there are two variables to work with. The first is hydration, the ratio of water to dry ingredients. A more hydrated dough is softer and will rise easier. If it is too firm, it won't rise enough and will be dense. If it is too soft, it will rise too quickly and collapse as baking begins. A little difference in the amount of water added will change the loaf so measure carefully with a reliable measuring cup designed for liquids. Check the dough ball at the end of the kneading cycle. Poke it with your finger. It should be soft but not too sticky. If you think it is too soft or too firm, pull it out of the machine, form a loaf, let it rise, and bake it in the oven. Then next time, add or subtract water. Usually a one tablespoon adjustment is all that is needed.The other method for fine tuning is adjusting the temperature of the water. All of our bread machine mixes are developed with water at 80 degrees and a specified water temperature range of 75 to 85 degrees. As a rule of thumb, if your kitchen is chilly, use water at 85 degrees. If hot, use water at 75 degrees. Increasing or decreasing the water temperature will change the rate of the yeast growth substantially. So if the dough ball indicates the right consistency, then you can speed or retard the rising of the bread quite handily by adjusting the water temperature--warmer water will speed the rising and cooler water will slow the rising. Usually an adjustment of ten degrees is adequate. We hope this helps you fine tune any mix for your bread machine and the conditions in your kitchen. What works for one mix, should work for all mixes of that same brand. Once you find what works, stick with it. Consistently turning out perfect loaves is usually no more difficult than carefully measuring the water and controlling water temperature.
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Learn All Year Long
ReadWriteThink has a variety of resources for out-of-school use. Visit our Parent & Afterschool Resources section to learn more.
Telling My Story: Make a Bio-Cube
|Grades||3 – 5|
|Activity Time||20 to 30 minutes to create and construct the cube, plus time to write and discuss|
The Bio-Cube tool asks children to describe a person using key pieces of information. Constructing an “All About Me” cube gives children a chance to share interesting details and thoughts about themselves, including their biggest obstacles and important quotations. Get into the spirit by making a Bio-Cube about yourself before sharing the activity. Children can also use the cubes as the basis for a short writing task.
Successful students can do more than just understand what they’ve read; they can also boil it down to the essential information. The Bio-Cube tool helps children condense what they want to say about themselves. The cube activity also offers a chance for self-discovery, allowing children to see how complex they are.
This activity was modified from the ReadWriteThink lesson plan “Getting to Know You: Developing Short Biographies to Build Community.”
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The thirty-third day of the Omer, is a festival known by the phonetic sound of the number thirty-three in Hebrew, Lag b’Omer. Bonfires are lit and ecstatic dancing and mystical studies are undertaken in honor of the memory of the luminary of Jewish mysticism, Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, known by the acronym Rashbi.
Rashbi is recorded as having died on day of the thirty-third day of the Omer after telling the secrets of his mystical practices. He is traditionally considered to be the author of the primary Jewish mystical text, the Zohar, which means radiance. And that very text says that Rabbi Shimom and his home were filled with a dramatic radiance while he shared his final secrets on the day of his death. The many teachings we have in his name shed light to this day on practices which support a core tenet of Judaism: our capacity to evolve as people; which is why special customs for children and families also prevail on this day including:
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Pakistan’s National Mammal Is Making A Comeback
The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced today that the markhor – a majestic wild goat species – is making a remarkable comeback in Pakistan due to conservation efforts.
WCS-led community surveys have revealed that markhor populations in northern Pakistan’s Kargah region in Gilgit-Baltistan have increased from a low of approximately 40-50 individuals in 1991 to roughly 300 this year. These community surveys suggest that the total markhor population where WCS works in Gilgit-Baltistan may now be as high as 1,500 animals, a dramatic increase since the last government estimate of less than 1,000 in 1999.
Pakistan’s national mammal, markhor are known for their spectacular, corkscrew horns that can reach nearly five feet in length. They are an important prey species for large carnivores such as wolves and snow leopards. Markhor have been listed as Endangered by IUCN since 1994, with a 2008 global population estimate of less than 2,500 animals across five countries: Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and India. They are threatened by illegal hunting, habitat destruction, and competition from domestic goats and sheep.
“We are thrilled that markhor conservation efforts in Pakistan are paying off,” said Peter Zahler, WCS Deputy Director of Asia programs. “Markhor are part of Pakistan’s natural heritage, and we are proud to be assisting the communities of Gilgit-Baltistan and the Government of Pakistan to safeguard this iconic species.”
WCS, led by Program Manager Mayoor Khan, has developed a conservation program that helps create community conservation committees and trains wildlife rangers throughout Gilgit-Baltistan. Rangers focus on monitoring wildlife and enforcing both local and national laws and regulations related to hunting and other resource use. Illegal hunting and logging have stopped in most of the valleys where the community rangers are active. WCS has been the only conservation organization working in Diamer District of GB since the program’s inception in 1997.
Altogether, there are now 53 community conservation committees within the WCS Pakistan program covering four districts. WCS has helped many of these committees form a larger conservation institution, the Mountain Conservation and Development Programme, which brings together members from each committee with government officials to help co-manage the region’s wildlife and forests.
WCS has recently developed a new management structure called “markhor conservancies” that use markhor herd home ranges to link different village resource committees together for coordinated monitoring and protection. This ensures that markhor are safeguarded as they travel across steep-sided mountains into different areas.
WCS has been active in research and conservation of markhor dating back to Dr. George Schaller’s seminal field work in the 1970s that led to the publication of the book Mountain Monarchs in 1977. WCS opened the Pakistan Country Program in 1997 aimed at helping communities protect markhor and other wildlife in the region such as snow leopards and Asiatic black bear. WCS also works on markhor conservation in Afghanistan.
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How to Animate Photos
While several computer programs allow you to turn still photographic images into animated films, the process is also possible using simple handheld devices. Optical toys popular in the 19th century brought to life still photographic images. The thaumatrope (a card that spins), flip book, and zoetrope (a drum that spins) depend on the persistence of vision to blend individual images, thereby creating the illusion of continuous motion.
In our web resources, How to Make a Zoetrope provides detailed information to build a zoetrope drum and animation strips. You can watch examples of thaumatropes and flpbooks in Photographic Flip Books and Photographic Thaumatropes, and can view historic and contemporary stereo cards in Stereo Cards.
The Reframing Photography book provides step-by-step instructions for making thaumatropes and flip books. For additional resources and examples of pre-cinematic animation devices, check out the Pre-Cinematic Animation Devices page in our Resources > Topics section of this website.
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ABSTRACT - DELIVERABLE 196
Report on the restoration success of two lowland streams following re-meandering projects
Lowland streams are characterised by a gentle slope of terrain (zero to five per mill) and sandy soil. They occur in the flat lowland areas of the Western European plain. Lowland streams are fed by rainwater; they often lack a well-defined source. Thus, their discharge shows a smoothed relation with the amount and frequency of precipitation in the various seasons.
Lowland streams occur in the eastern and southern part of the Netherlands. Their current velocity varies from 5-30 cm s-1 in summer and early autumn and from 30-60 cm s-1 in late autumn to spring. Often the rainwater fed upper courses dry up in summer, though sometimes they are fed by a helocrene spring and then show a more constant discharge pattern (Verdonschot, 1990).
After a long period of adapting lowland streams and their catchments to agricultural, domestic, drinking water and industrial needs, awareness of the damages of these alterations has increased. In the Netherlands, only about 4% of the streams still have a natural hydro-morphology. On the last ten years, the ecological importance of streams has become more and more apparent.
Currently, stream restoration is one of the answers to the lowland stream deterioration. In order to make the proper choices in stream restoration; one firstly has to understand the complex spatial and temporal interactions between physical, chemical and biological components. The success of restoration depends on steering the appropriate key factor(s). Whichever factor this is, differs for each stream and each site.
To provide a more detailed idea of the status of the ecological effects of lowland stream restoration projects a pragmatic approach is to analyse current project. This means learning by doing!. The examples analysed examples represent an average overview of stream restoration in The Netherlands. They make clear what can be expected looking more in detail at the positive and negative aspects from an ecological point of view.
Download deliverable report [82 kB]
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Rabies is still a threat worldwide and in Missouri. In the U.S., it has been reported in nearly every state. This summer, the Missouri Health Department reported that one of the showhorses, shown in the Saddlebred Show and stabled in Barn C, had contracted the disease. The horse was noticeably sick on Aug. 17 and died two days later.
This year, U.S. experts on rabies are warning that there is more reason to be vigilant than ever. In Medical News Today, Aug. 27, 2008, Dr. Charles Rupprecht, chief of the rabies program at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, said that due to a variety of regulatory and manufacturing issues, there is, temporarily, a limited supply of rabies vaccine for humans. It is more important than ever to vaccinate pets.
“The best way to limit the need for human rabies vaccine is simply to make sure pets are vaccinated. We know that dogs and cats are not the most common animals found rabid in the United States, but they are the animals most frequently involved in multiple human exposures,” he explains. “Your local veterinarian plays a key role in controlling rabies.’
Unfortunately, cats are less likely than dogs to be vaccinated against the virus and Dr. Rupprecht added that cat owners are more likely to be exposed to rabies. The American Veterinary Medical Association’s “U.S. Pet Ownership & Demographics Sourcebook” states that only 64 percent of cats visit a veterinarian every year, compared to 83 percent of dogs.
Any mammal can get rabies, including humans. Infected bats, monkeys, raccoons, foxes, skunks, dogs or cats provide the greatest risk to humans, however the disease can also spread through exposure to infected domestic farm animals. The disease is 100 percent deadly in any species once the animal starts showing signs of the disease.
Over 90 percent of reported rabies cases in the United States are wild animals commonly seen in neighborhoods and backyards, such as raccoons, skunks and bats. (A person can be bitten by a bat and not even feel it, so awareness is important.) Pets are the barrier between those animals and loved ones. By protecting pets, individuals are also protecting their loved ones.
Besides ensuring that all dogs, cats and ferrets get vaccinated, other precautionary measures include: don’t let pets roam free, don’t feed or water pets outside as stray animals are attracted even to empty bowls, and cover your garbage cans securely to keep raccoons away.
If any animal bites your pet, take it to the veterinarian immediately and contact Animal Control if it was from a stray animal. Report any stray animals and any strange behavior among animals to city or county animal control officers. If you are bitten or scratched, wash the wound thoroughly and see your physician immediately. You should also report the bite to your local health department.
Rabies kills over 55,000 people every year, mostly in Africa and Asia. Over half of those killed are children under the age of 15. Millions of animals die after contracting the virus through a bite, or saliva from an infected animal entering a wound. The virus is 100 percent preventable and that prevention is available through getting pets vaccinated.
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What is Obesity?
According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an increase in 20 percent or more above your ideal body weight is the point at which excess weight becomes a health risk. Today 97 million Americans, more than one-third of the adult population, are overweight or obese. An estimated 5 to 10 million of those are considered morbidly obese.
Obesity becomes "morbid" when it reaches the point of significantly increasing the risk of one or more obesity-related health conditions or serious diseases (also known as co-morbidities) that result either in significant physical disability or even death.
According to the National Institutes of Health Consensus Report, morbid obesity is a serious disease and must be treated as such. It is a chronic disease, meaning that its symptoms build slowly over an extended period of time. Morbid obesity can cause many life-threatening health problems and ultimately lead to a shorter life. The risk of an early death for those who are obese is two times that of a non-obese person.
There are several medically accepted criteria for defining morbid obesity. You are likely morbidly obese if you are one or more of the following:
- more than 100 lbs. over your ideal body weight, or
- have a Body Mass Index (BMI) of over 40, or
- have a BMI of over 35 and are experiencing severe negative health effects, such as high blood pressure or diabetes, related to being severely overweight
If you are struggling with morbid obesity, and have been unable to achieve a healthy body weight for a sustained period of time, even through medically supervised dieting and exercise; gastric bypass surgery or lap band surgery may be right for you. Together, you and your bariatric surgeon take steps to determine:
- If surgery is the right treatment for you
- Which type of procedure is right for you
- If you are mentally and emotionally prepared to make lifelong lifestyle changes
- That you have, or will have, the necessary support system around you
Once you and your surgeon have determined that weight loss surgery is an option for you, you will begin the prequalification process. This includes a series of tests and meetings with a nutritionist, psychologist, and other support staff members in sessions leading up to surgery. Each healthcare professional will help you prepare for the changes and challenges that lie ahead.
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|Product #: EMC0765008_TQ|
Australia: Introduction (Resource Book Only) eBookGrade 3|Grade 4|Grade 5|Grade 6
Please Note: This ebook is a digital download, NOT a physical product. After purchase, you will be provided a one time link to download ebooks to your computer. Orders paid by PayPal require up to 8 business hours to verify payment and release electronic media. For immediate downloads, payment with credit card is required.
This geography unit for grades 3-6+ provides information and activities for students to begin learning about Australia, including thinking about what they know already, location activities, directions and forms for creating a geography center, and answer key. (Find additional units by searching 'Australia Geography.')
Submit a review
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Apr. 26, 2009 During these trying financial times, the cost of healthcare and how much we are willing to pay for it is at the top of our economic concerns. The financial value of pain has a wide ranging influence, affecting drug prices and injury compensation. But what about on an individual level — is it possible to place a value on our health, to prevent pain and suffering?
University College London psychologists Ivo Vlaev and Nick Chater, and neuroscientists Ben Seymour and Raymond J. Dolan were interested in just how much money volunteers were willing to pay to avoid pain and discomfort.
Study participants were given money, with the understanding that they could keep for themselves whatever cash remained. They experienced one pulse of electric shock and then had to indicate how much money they would pay in order to avoid receiving 15 more shocks of the same intensity.
Then, a computer program would determine how much the volunteers would actually have to pay. The program would randomly select a dollar amount — if that amount was higher than what the participants were willing to pay, then the participants would be shocked. However, if the computer's price was lower than the participant's price, then they would pay the computer's price and avoid the pain.
The volunteers were informed that the computer selection would be completely random, so it was really in their best interest to select a price that accurately reflected how they value the pain from the electric shock. For each volunteer, this process was repeated a number of times, with differing intensities of shocks.
The results, described in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reveal that demand for pain relief is almost completely dependent on pain experienced in the recent past and the available cash on hand. That is, the participants were willing to pay more money to avoid pain if that pain was more intense compared to previous trials. In addition, the price they were willing to pay was based on what they were given (money-in-the-pocket) rather than on their overall wealth.
These findings suggest that the value we place on relief from suffering is flexible and that activity of health markets cannot be predicted by the behavior of individuals. This is the first scientific study showing that our reaction towards pain is a relative judgment, based on our previous experience with that pain. The authors conclude that pain is a major health issue and with around $60 billion spent on painkillers worldwide each year, they note that these findings "are likely to have substantial economic implications."
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Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
- Ivo Vlaev, Ben Seymour, Raymond J. Dolan, Nick Chater. The Price of Pain and the Value of Suffering. Psychological Science, 2009; 20 (3): 309 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02304.x
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
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This Site is
ICRA and SafeSurf
For All Ages!
Descriptions of the Fields of Science
Chemistry is the science of matter at or near the atomic scale. (Matter is the substance of which all physical objects are made.)
Chemistry deals with the properties of matter, and the transformation and interactions of matter and energy. Central to chemistry is the interaction of one substance with another, such as in a chemical reaction, where a substance or substances are transformed into another. Chemistry primarily studies atoms and collections of atoms such as molecules, crystals or metals that make up ordinary matter. According to modern chemistry it is the structure of matter at the atomic scale that determines the nature of a material.
Chemistry has many specialized areas that overlap with other sciences, such as physics, biology or geology. Scientists who study chemistry are called chemists. Historically, the science of chemistry is a recent development but has its roots in alchemy which has been practiced for millennia throughout the world. The word chemistry is directly derived from the word alchemy.
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Download the Exhibit Descriptions in Portable Document Format (PDF)
Exhibition consists of a set of connected wall panels of different building materials in a mock "earthquake zone," setting the stage for all of the interactive components. The Shake Table is freestanding; the rest of the exhibits are attached to the wall panels.
Try to replicate the motion of any of three different historic earthquakes by bouncing up and down on a platform; see your own seismogram on the monitor in real time as you attempt to match the original seismogram. You'll even get a score! How well did you do?
How quickly can you assemble a map of the Earth according to its plate tectonic boundaries? Press the button to begin, then put the puzzle pieces in place on the big panel. Hurry, you have two minutes before the pieces fall!
Plates in Motion
Spin the dial and watch stunning tectonic motion as the plates move around, break up and reassemble. You can start at 600 million years ago, spin to the present, and then go all the way to 200 million years into the future. Go backward and forward in time. Can you find our current tectonic plate arrangement? You won't even recognize the continents as they'll be 200 million years into the future.
See a real-time display, updated every fifteen minutes, that shows the hundreds of earthquakes of the past two weeks. Look for larger-magnitude quakes with their bigger circles. Notice how the quakes cluster around the tectonic plate boundaries.
Earthquake Shake Table
Be an engineer! Design and build model structures of blocks and reinforcing rods, then turn the dial to test the results against earthquake forces on the shake table. Did your structure stand up? Can you make it safer?
Visitors can choose from five fast-paced award-winning videos of a diverse group of real engineers working to make our world safer during earthquakes. Watch footage of earthquakes and find out what can happen when the earth shakes; learn what causes earthquakes and see how engineers are using amazing tools and technology to test and improve building techniques and materials, even shaking full-size bridges or bending 16-meter (50') pipe sections. (Each video is about 1 1/2 minutes long.)
Engineering Research Centers
At this touch screen station, learn about the National Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) network, a group of fourteen university research facilities where engineers test buildings and structures with giant shake tables, centrifuges, tsunami tanks, and other large-scale equipment. See some of the different experiments that take place at each of the sites!
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IN THE TANK: The Daya Bay experiment currently employs six detectors, with a total of 120 metric tons of liquid detector material, to register passing neutrinos. Image: Roy Kaltschmidt, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Neutrinos are devious little particles. Only in the late 1990s were they shown to have mass, after decades of head-scratching hints to that effect. They can oscillate between three neutrino types, or "flavors," changing their identity on the fly. And, perhaps most famously, they were accused just last year of breaking cosmic law by traveling faster than light. (The jury is out, but an acquittal appears imminent.)
Now investigators are just a bit closer to figuring out the neutrino's modus operandi. A collaboration of physicists says it has measured one of the key descriptors of the neutrino's flavor-changing behavior—a number called theta 13 (pronounced "theta one three"). That number, known as a mixing angle, describes the probability that an electron neutrino's antiparticle, the electron antineutrino, will oscillate into another flavor over a relatively short distance. (Each of the three neutrino flavors—electron, tau and muon—has its own antiparticle partner.) Two other neutrino oscillation parameters, or mixing angles, have already been measured, but theta 13 is relatively small compared with the other two and has proved harder to pin down.
Since last year a group of physicists has been trying to measure theta 13 by tracking antineutrinos given off by a large Chinese nuclear power plant. The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment collaboration built a series of six detectors, some near the reactors and some more than a kilometer farther away, to track how electron antineutrinos morph into other flavors as they travel through space. Because the detectors are tuned to identify only electron antineutrinos, any oscillation means that the neutrinos will escape detection—that is, they will seem to disappear. Other experiments have taken the opposite tack, looking for the appearance of electron neutrinos in a beam carrying other types of neutrinos.
In just two months of data, the distant set of detectors registered more than 10,000 hits by electron antineutrinos. But that is only 94 percent as many as would be naively expected by extrapolating from the detectors closest to the nuclear reactors. That means that a substantial fraction had oscillated to another flavor on their relatively short journey. "What we're seeing now is this disappearance of [electron antineutrinos] is at the 6 percent level," says neutrino physicist Karsten Heeger of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, a member of the Daya Bay collaboration. "It's a fairly large effect." Heeger presented the experimental results March 8 at a symposium at Duke University, and the group has submitted its study to Physical Review Letters.
The experiment is not even fully built yet—a seventh and eighth detector are in the works—but already the Daya Bay team has observed enough disappearances to quantify how the process works. The new estimate, which falls within previous limits set by other experiments, establishes that theta 13 is not equal to zero, and in fact is relatively large compared with what was plausible in light of other recent results. A zero value for theta 13 would mean that electron neutrinos would not appear in beams of muon neutrinos or, in the Daya Bay case, that electron antineutrinos would not disappear by the time they reached the far detectors. Another reactor experiment, called KamLAND, has also registered the disappearance of antineutrinos over much larger distances, where the oscillation is described by the mixing angle theta 12, rather than theta 13.
"We are the first experiment that measures it and shows that it is nonzero," Heeger says of theta 13. "There have been recent indications, but none of the other results were significant enough to match what we physicists call a discovery." The Daya Bay group claims better than 5-sigma evidence in support of a nonzero value for theta 13. 5 sigma, or five standard deviations, implies that the finding has only a one-in-several-million chance of being caused by a statistical fluke.
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The Ultimate Science Project Experimenter's Catapult Kit!
With 400+ possible configurations and tuning options, this historically accurate catapult provides a hands-on example of basic physics, including mechanical advantage, levers, gravity and energy. This kit is perfect for school science fairs!
No glue required: kit assembles using rubber bands (included). You supply the counterweight material.
Completed frame is 14.5” l x 7” w x 11” h. Arm measures 20.25”. Includes 3/4" and 1" wooden projectiles, rubber bands, counterweight box, leather sling pouch, nylon sling twine, welded steel ring. Instructions feature experiments and historical information. Range is from 10 to 40 feet depending on configuration, projectile choice, etc
For a Master carpenter doing a sloppy job: about 30 minutes. A person with no kit building experience being extremely meticulous: about 1 hour.
This kit provides a real world, hands on example of many aspects of basic physics. It exposes the student to concepts of mechanical advantage, levers, gravity and energy, to name a few. It can demonstrate the storage and conversion of potential energy to kinetic energy through levers, and it is equipped with optional wheels, to demonstrate conservation of momentum. All in all, the concepts of efficiency, power and work can be demonstrated and applied.
This kit is useful for teaching engineering, science, design of experiments, problem solving and Cause/Effect relationships. It was designed to get students to think about physics in a real world, tangible context. Theories can be made and tested; this process, and analyzing why the observed results occur can ultimately lead to other, more advanced concepts in physics, mechanics and mathematics. Carrying out the experiments teaches the scientific method, and contextualizes statistics. Analyzing the data can make use of statistical methods from basic averages to much more advanced topics if desired.
With 18 pages of instructions including assembly of every basic configuration, suggested experiments, tuning guidelines, independent and dependent variables to record and measure, data tables, historical information about trebuchets and catapults, and more, it should be easy to get started with this Ultimate Science Project Kit!
WARNING! This is a representative model of a real ancient military weapon. It contains a fast moving arm that can cause injury if you make contact when firing. Use only under strict adult supervision.
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Story in the College of Arts & Sciences
Assistant Professor, Biology
Biology professor examines how the rarest plant species evolve over time in the coldest corners of Alaska.
Justen Whittall '96 is an expert on West Coast plants, particularly the ones that are hardest to find. The SCU biology professor, a native of the South Bay, studies the federally endangered Metcalf Jewelflower and California's Torrey Pines, one of the rarest pines in the world.
His early work at SCU set him on this path. "As an undergraduate, I took a course in field botany and discovered I could take what I was learning in the classroom and lab and put it to use in the field," Whittall says. "From that moment, I was hooked."
As an assistant professor in SCU's biology department, he also studies plants in the Arctic Circle; last summer, he traveled to Alaska to better understand the adaptability of plants in cold climates—an unknown factor in understanding global climate change. He and his assistants are researching the genetic basis for Arctic mustard plant adaptations. Next summer, he'll return with several undergraduates.
By putting together a genetic map of plant species, Whittall can track how plants have evolved over time. Students help in his rooftop greenhouse, making hybridizations; in the lab, isolating gene sequences; and out in the field, collecting specimens.
"I see students' eyes just light up when—instead of doing the cookbook labs taught in high school or at other institutions—at Santa Clara they get to take that information directly into a personal experience," Whittall says. "This is real science being done by Santa Clara undergraduates."
Watch a video about research in SCU's biology labs below.
This text will be replaced
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The world is on course to warm as much as 4 degrees Celsius, or 7 degrees Fahrenheit, by 2100, prompting extreme heat-waves, severe drought and major floods as sea-level rises, warns the World Bank in a new report.
All regions would suffer, but the tropics and subtropics are among the most vulnerable and the planet's poorest people would be hit the hardest, according to the study, "Turn Down the Heat," released Sunday. The study says current global efforts, aimed at keeping warming to below a 2-degree change, don't go far enough.
"We don't have time to lose," says Rachel Kyte, the World Bank's vice president for sustainable development, urging drastic action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. She says Superstorm Sandy shows "the fragility of a lot of our infrastructure" and the need for resilient agricultural, transportation and energy systems. Her organization, which promotes growth in developing countries, commissioned the report by the Germany-based Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics.
The report, based on recent climate science, says the planet could reach temperatures 4 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels as early as 2060 if governments don't meet their promises to fight climate change. Even if they are fully met, it says a 3-degree increase appears likely. Global temperatures have already risen about 0.8 degrees Celsius in the past century.
The study says coastal cities could be inundated with floods, limited food supplies could cause higher malnutrition rates, and biodiversity, including coral reefs, could be irretrievably lost. It says average summer temperatures could rise 6 degrees Celsius in parts of the United States, Mediterranean, North Africa and the Middle East, and sea levels could rise between a half-meter and a full meter, or 39 inches, by 2100.
Skeptics say the report paints an overly dire portrait. "This report is non-science," says Patrick Michaels, director of the libertarian Cato Institute's Center for the Study of Science. He says the 4-degree warming is an "implausible outlier."
David Kreutzer, an energy economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, agrees. He also says the World Bank's recommendations, including redirecting money now spent on fossil-fuel subsidies toward solar and wind energy production, could ultimately do more harm than good for developing countries.
"Proposing energy killing climate policies for the emerging economies is like telling the emaciated to start their diet now because they may become overweight in 90 years," Kretuzer says.
Yet the World Bank's call to action echoes the urgency of other major studies. Earlier this month, at the request of the CIA, a report by the National Research Council warned that climate change is accelerating and could place unprecedented strains on U.S. military and intelligence agencies. Also this month, the International Energy Agency said the world has only about five years to make changes to avert climate change's most severe impacts.
"The World Bank report confirms that the United States' recent severe storms, droughts, heat waves, and wild fires are no coincidence, but instead are the 'new normal' of unchecked climate change," says Dan Weiss, director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal-leaning think tank.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon said in a statement that the report "reminds us that climate change is happening ....now." He called on nations to honor their commitment, made last year in Durban, South Africa, to forge a new legally binding climate agreement by 2015.
The more than 190 nations participating in the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change begin a new round of talks Nov. 26 in Qatar.
Kyte says the World Bank sought the report, because its work with developing countries needs to factor in what the future will look like. She says they have the opportunity to build a more resilient infrastructure from the ground up.
"This is not rocket science," she says, adding the knowledge is there but the political will is still needed.
Copyright 2013 USATODAY.com
Read the original story: World Bank: Climate change could cause massive damage
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A view of the Pennsylvania Breaker. “Breaker Boys” remove rocks and other debris from the coal by hand as it passes beneath them. The dust is so dense at times as to obscure the view and penetrates the utmost recesses of the boys’ lungs. South Pittston, Pennsylvania. January 1911.
Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine.
From the 1906 book The Bitter Cry of the Children
by labor reformer John Spargo:
Work in the coal breakers is exceedingly hard and dangerous. Crouched over the chutes, the boys sit hour after hour, picking out the pieces of slate and other refuse from the coal as it rushes past to the washers. From the cramped position they have to assume, most of them become more or less deformed and bent-backed like old men. When a boy has been working for some time and begins to get round-shouldered, his fellows say that “He’s got his boy to carry round wherever he goes.”
The coal is hard, and accidents to the hands, such as cut, broken, or crushed fingers, are common among the boys. Sometimes there is a worse accident: a terrified shriek is heard, and a boy is mangled and torn in the machinery, or disappears in the chute to be picked out later smothered and dead. Clouds of dust fill the breakers and are inhaled by the boys, laying the foundations for asthma and miners’ consumption.
I once stood in a breaker for half an hour and tried to do the work a 12-year-old boy was doing day after day, for 10 hours at a stretch, for 60 cents a day. The gloom of the breaker appalled me. Outside the sun shone brightly, the air was pellucid, and the birds sang in chorus with the trees and the rivers. Within the breaker there was blackness, clouds of deadly dust enfolded everything, the harsh, grinding roar of the machinery and the ceaseless rushing of coal through the chutes filled the ears. I tried to pick out the pieces of slate from the hurrying stream of coal, often missing them; my hands were bruised and cut in a few minutes; I was covered from head to foot with coal dust, and for many hours afterwards I was expectorating some of the small particles of anthracite I had swallowed.
I could not do that work and live, but there were boys of 10 and 12 years of age doing it for 50 and 60 cents a day. Some of them had never been inside of a school; few of them could read a child’s primer. True, some of them attended the night schools, but after working 10 hours in the breaker the educational results from attending school were practically nil. “We goes fer a good time, an’ we keeps de guys wot’s dere hoppin’ all de time,” said little Owen Jones, whose work I had been trying to do.
From the breakers the boys graduate to the mine depths, where they become door tenders, switch boys, or mule drivers. Here, far below the surface, work is still more dangerous. At 14 or 15 the boys assume the same risks as the men, and are surrounded by the same perils. Nor is it in Pennsylvania only that these conditions exist. In the bituminous mines of West Virginia, boys of 9 or 10 are frequently employed. I met one little fellow 10 years old in Mount Carbon, West Virginia, last year, who was employed as a “trap boy.” Think of what it means to be a trap boy at 10 years of age. It means to sit alone in a dark mine passage hour after hour, with no human soul near; to see no living creature except the mules as they pass with their loads, or a rat or two seeking to share one’s meal; to stand in water or mud that covers the ankles, chilled to the marrow by the cold draughts that rush in when you open the trap door for the mules to pass through; to work for 14 hours — waiting — opening and shutting a door — then waiting again for 60 cents; to reach the surface when all is wrapped in the mantle of night, and to fall to the earth exhausted and have to be carried away to the nearest “shack” to be revived before it is possible to walk to the farther shack called “home.”
Boys 12 years of age may be legally employed in the mines of West Virginia, by day or by night, and for as many hours as the employers care to make them toil or their bodies will stand the strain. Where the disregard of child life is such that this may be done openly and with legal sanction, it is easy to believe what miners have again and again told me — that there are hundreds of little boys of 9 and 10 years of age employed in the coal mines of this state.
John Spargo, The Bitter Cry of the Children
(New York: Macmillan, 1906) | Click image for Comments.
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Aortic insufficiency is a heart valve disease in which the aortic valve does not close tightly. This leads to the backward flow of blood from the aorta (the largest blood vessel) into the left ventricle (a chamber of the heart).
Aortic valve prolapse; Aortic regurgitation
Causes, incidence, and risk factors
Aortic insufficiency can result from any condition that keeps the aortic valve from closing all the way. A small amount of blood comes back each time the heart beats.
The condition causes widening (dilation) of the left lower chamber of the heart. Larger amounts of blood leave the heart with each squeeze or contraction. This leads to a strong and forceful pulse (bounding pulse). Over time, the heart becomes less able to pump blood to the body.
In the past, rheumatic fever was the main cause of aortic insufficiency. Now that antibiotics are used to treat rheumatic fever, other causes are more commonly seen.
A chest x-ray may show swelling of the left lower heart chamber.
Lab tests cannot diagnose aortic insufficiency, but they may be used to rule out other disorders or causes.
If there are no symptoms or if symptoms are mild, you may only need to get an echocardiogram from time to time and be monitored by a health care provider.
If your blood pressure is high, then treatment with certain blood pressure medications may help slow the worsening of aortic regurgitation.
ACE inhibitor drugs and diuretics (water pills) may be prescribed for more moderate or severe symptoms.
In the past, most patients with heart valve problems were given antibiotics before dental work or an invasive procedure, such as colonoscopy. The antibiotics were given to prevent an infection of the damaged heart. However, antibiotics are now used much less often before dental work and other procedures.
You may need to limit activity that requires more work from your heart. Talk to your health care provider.
Surgery to repair or replace the aortic valve corrects aortic insufficiency. The decision to have aortic valve replacement depends on your symptoms and the condition and function of your heart.
You may also need surgery to repair the aorta if it is widened.
Aortic insufficiency is curable with surgical repair. This can completely relieve symptoms, unless severe heart failure is present or other complications develop. Without treatment, patients with angina or congestive heart failure due to aortic insufficiency do poorly.
Blood pressure control is very important if you are at risk for aortic regurgitation.
Bonow RO, Carabello BA, Chatterjee K, de Leon AC Jr, Faxon DP, Freed MD, et al; 2006 Writing Committee Members; American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force. 2008 Focused update incorporated into the ACC/AHA 2006 guidelines for the management of patients with valvular heart disease: a report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Practice Guidelines (Writing Committee to Revise the 1998 Guidelines for the Management of Patients With Valvular Heart Disease): endorsed by the Sosciety of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists, Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions, and Society of Thoracic Surgeons. Circulation. 2008;118:e523-e661.
Nishimura RA, Carabello BA, Faxon DP, et al. ACC/AHA 2008 Guideline update on valvular heart disease: focused update on infective endocarditis: a report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Practice Guidelines endorced by the Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists. Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions, and Society of Thoracic Surgeons. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2008;52:676-685.
Otto CM, Bonow RO. Valvular heart disease. In: Bonow RO, Mann DL, Zipes DP, Libby P, Braunwald E, eds. Braunwald's Heart Disease: A Textbook of Cardiovascular Medicine. 9th ed. St. Louis, Mo: WB Saunders; 2011:chap 66.
David C. Dugdale, III, MD, Professor of Medicine, Division of General Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine; and Michael A. Chen, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Division of Cardiology, Harborview Medical Center, University of Washington Medical School, Seattle, Washington. Also reviewed by David Zieve, MD, MHA, Medical Director, A.D.A.M. Health Solutions, Ebix, Inc.
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- The Enterprise
- The Recorder
They’re tiny. Minuscule. Full grown, they’re no bigger than a sesame seed.
But they can cause grief of such proportions that physicians are often left confounded.
They are deer ticks, Ixodes scapularis. They transmit a scourge called Lyme disease, a debilitating affliction that shares symptoms with so many other maladies it’s difficult to diagnose. Tests for the disease often turn up negative for as long as a year before registering positive. There is no vaccine. Antibiotics help, but only if the victim is placed on medications early. Otherwise, it’s a long, painful ride.
Sufferers become familiar with drugs like doxycycline (for adults), amoxicillin (for children), erythromycin (for pregnant women) and ceftriaxone, with treatment lasting 10 to 28 days. In later stages, the bacteria spread throughout the body and might cross the blood-brain barrier, making the infection more difficult to treat. Late-diagnosed Lyme is treated with oral or intravenous antibiotics, frequently ceftriaxone for a minimum of four weeks. Minocycline also is used for its ability to cross the blood-brain barrier.
Left untreated, Lyme disease can cause chronic joint inflammation (Lyme arthritis), particularly of the knee; neurological symptoms, such as facial palsy and neuropathy; cognitive defects, such as impaired memory; and heart rhythm irregularities. Other symptoms include chronic fatigue and severe headaches.
Borrelia bacteria belong to a phylum of bacteria called spirochetes that have flagella tiny filaments that enable them to move around, according to information on the University of California, Berkeley website. These tick-spawned microbes invade healthy cells and organs and can transform into two alternative structures inside the body. It’s little wonder treatment is as frustrating for physicians as for the patients.
To contract Lyme disease, the victim must be bitten by an infected deer tick. The bacteria enter the skin through the bite and eventually make their way into the bloodstream. Before bacteria can be transmitted, a deer tick must take a blood meal, which can take more than 48 hours of feeding. Only ticks that are attached and feeding can transmit the bacteria. An attached tick that has a swollen appearance may indicate that enough time has elapsed to transmit bacteria. Removing the tick as soon as possible might prevent infection.
While deer ticks are the primary carriers of the disease, many disagree on an assertion that all ticks might carry some form of Lyme.
Bull’s-eyeThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta features photos on its website of the dreaded “bull’s-eye,” which forms around a tick bite. Yet, in myriad cases, victims report they never see the red circle around the bite.
“I never got a rash,” said Carole Koller of Port Republic, who had her run-in with the disease five years ago. Koller has only found freedom from her symptoms in the past few months. She and her husband, Doug Poole, just had moved to Calvert when she contracted the disease. She has horses and was clearing brush along a fence line.
“I’d heard about Lyme, but I didn’t take it seriously,” Koller said. “I had lots of ticks. I was always pulling ticks off and there were a couple of them I didn’t get. They were tiny little things. I got an itchy red spot that didn’t go away.”
Within two months, Koller was experiencing chronic fatigue and joint pain.
“I attributed it to how hard we were working,” she said. “At the time, we were going seven days a week.”
She then started getting headaches that lasted “all day, every day.” Koller went to a doctor, who prescribed antibiotics.
“I’m sorry now I wasn’t more proactive,” she said. “The doctor didn’t think it was that big of a deal. He told me my chances of getting Lyme disease were one in a thousand.”
Koller persisted in telling the doctor she needed to be tested, and, as in many cases, the test came back negative. By August of the first year, the headaches had gone away, but she began experiencing numbness in her hands.
“I thought I was losing my mind,” she said. “I started thinking, ‘Maybe this is what happens to people in their 40s who have Alzheimer’s in their 80s.’”
Koller was tested for everything from multiple sclerosis to lupus to fibromyalgia.
“By then I’d been tested again and the doctor said, ‘I’m so sorry. You have Lyme,’” she recalled. “I told him, ‘I’m just glad you found out what it was.’”
Her physician initially prescribed doxycycline for three weeks. She took it for five months.
“I had gotten to that point where pain was just shooting out of my extremities,” Koller said. “I’d had six or seven different blood tests. I took antibiotics for three weeks. They weren’t doing any good. I had pain under my fingernails, pain in my fingers, shooting pain all day long in different places. As a follow-up, I went to see Dr. [Paul V.] Pomilla at Calvert Internal Medicine Group. He put me on doxy for 60 days. Everything would initially work, but then the symptoms would come back. It wasn’t going away.”
Doctors put a PICC line port in her arm and she began receiving antibiotics through an IV every day, followed by blood tests every week. Doctors had her start chronicling where the pain was in her system every day.
“It would change every day,” she said. “After a while it all runs together. You get so used to being in pain.”
Finally, after 14 months and a plethora of treatments, she got to where she was “pretty good.” But after eight or nine months, the symptoms all came back.
“But never like that first summer,” she noted.
Koller said her medications cost as much as $1,800 a month. While her insurance paid for much of it, costs associated with her treatment spiraled.
“I don’t know how people who don’t have insurance would ever be able to afford it,” she said.
Koller said infectious disease doctors in the region are overwhelmed by the volume of Lyme cases they are facing.
“One doctor I know of in St. Mary’s is full up,” she said. “They can’t take any more patients.”
The top 10 you don’t want to be in
Maryland ranks fourth in the top 10 states for number of Lyme cases per 100,000 residents, according to information from the Centers for Disease Control for 2010.
More than 95 percent of Lyme cases come from three distinct geographic regions of the United States, including the northeastern U.S. from Maryland to Maine, parts of the upper Midwest in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and parts of northern California and southern Oregon.
Since national statistics were first taken in 1982, the number of cases reported annually has risen twenty-five-fold, and the cumulative number of reported cases now exceeds 128,000. In 1998, 16,801 cases were reported, with approximately 27 percent of cases from New York, 20 percent from Connecticut, 17 percent from Pennsylvania, 11 percent from New Jersey, 5 percent from Rhode Island, and 4 percent each from Maryland, Massachusetts and Wisconsin.
The highest incidence rates in 1998 were found in Connecticut (105 per 100,000), followed by Rhode Island (79.6), New York (25.5), New Jersey (24.0), Pennsylvania (22.9), Maryland (13.1) and Wisconsin (12.8).
More than 2,200 cases of Lyme disease were reported in Maryland in 2007, almost double the number in 2006 and a record for the state. The sharpest increases in recent years occurred in Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll and Montgomery counties, but Lyme remains the top tick-borne disease in Southern Maryland. In 2008, Maryland changed its definition for Lyme disease to confirmed and probable cases.
This shifted the numbers somewhat.
Where Calvert County, for instance, registered in the top 10 counties in the state prior to 2008, its designation fell to 17th and eventually 15th place overall in the state. Charles County cases rose from 44 in 2007 to 67 cases in 2008, then spiked to 82 cases in 2009, but dropped to 33 in 2010. St. Mary’s County had 21 cases in 2008 but jumped to 67 the following year. In 2010, it registered 30 cases.
“Lyme is still a public health concern in Southern Maryland. I would say we need to be vigilant. People want to be careful and concerned,” said Sharon Nazarek, assistant director of nursing for the Calvert County Health Department.
A group formed two years ago in Southern Maryland as a networking avenue for victims of the disease. Lyme Awareness Network member and Calvert County resident Connie Sutton said they haven’t had many meetings in the past year because so many members are suffering with the debilitating effects of the disease.
“The Lyme Awareness Network is an offshoot of [a] Lyme support group that meets at Calvert Memorial Hospital,” Sutton said. “We wanted to be more active in the community, so we put a grassroots group together and would host Lyme awareness events throughout Southern Maryland. Most of us in that group have Lyme. We did pull off a few showings of the movie, ‘Under Our Skin,’ which is a Lyme documentary. We haven’t been active in the past year. A lot of people have the disease and it’s just so hard for everyone to get together and be healthy.”
Round and around“I ended up having it for five years before I even knew what it was,” said Karen Bowling of Newburg. “I went to see the doctor in 2007 for what I thought was a knee injury. The doctor took one look at me and said, ‘You have Lyme disease.’ I didn’t even know what it was. I hadn’t heard of it back then.The test she gave me was the Western blot test. It came back positive.
“I had been bitten by this tick in 2002. ... The reason I know is because I had just started working at the courthouse in St. Mary’s County. I thought it was a spider bite. It was a big, round red circle with a bite in the middle. I never saw a spider, never saw a tick. I actually went to a doctor about something else and I remember him asking me what it was on the back of my arm. I just said, ‘Oh, a spider bit me.’ By then it was almost healed. Ever since then I’ve been back and forth to the doctors. The biggest problem is finding doctors who believe in it.”
Bowling realized that if the doctors couldn’t help with the disease, she had to get help for her pain.
“I started going to pain management,” she said. “They were able to control it. I was on morphine two times a day every day. For two years I wasn’t coherent. I’m on antidepressants now, I believe, from all this crap I’ve been through. What really started it all was pain in my shoulder blade area and under my shoulder. That’s still hurting me to this day. They’ve yet to find out what that is.”
Bowling said she lost her job due to the disease. She has been denied disability by Social Security because they say there’s not enough information.
“The strange thing is, Lyme disease is in this neighborhood,” Bowling said. “I have a German shepherd, he has it also. The thing of it is, they have a vaccine for a dog. They don’t have one for humans.”
‘What chance do we have?’
Kat Cecil of Callaway knows the effects of Lyme disease all too well. Arthritis, headaches, fatigue all came to her about five years ago.
“I think I might have had it for a while before I even realized I’d been bitten by a tick,” Cecil said. “I thought I was getting early arthritis and a bunch of other things about five years ago. I had headaches forever. They would last for days. They were so debilitating I would be in bed for days at a time. I rubbed my head so hard my temples were bruised. That’s how bad they were. I was so tired, I would get up in the morning and I’d be more exhausted than I was when I went to bed. I finally went to my doctor and asked her if she could test me for Lyme. She said, ‘I don’t think you have Lyme,’ and I told her I wanted to be tested anyway. The test came back positive.”
She said she slowly recovered but still has memory loss associated with the disease.
“I’ve slowly gotten rid of the symptoms, everything except the arthritis and the memory loss — that’s the key part of it,” she said. “It’s not like I haven’t been bitten by ticks since. I have horses and a farm. ... And of course, we had ticks all through the winter, because we really didn’t have a winter.”
While Koller had one horse and one of her dogs that contracted Lyme, Cecil has managed to keep her animals free of the disease.
“I give them all their shots every year and check them every day,” she said. “None of my animals showed symptoms of having it.”
She said she put up a fence to keep out deer, which seems to have helped.
She said her cousin, who is a lawyer in Anne Arundel County, got a severe case.
“At one point they were giving him last rites,” she said. “If he, a lawyer, a man who hardly ever goes out in the wild, can get it and get that bad off with it, what chance do the rest of us have?”
Prevention is the best medicine
The Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene recommends the following precautions:
-Wear long pants and long sleeves to help keep ticks off skin.
-Wear light-colored clothing to spot ticks more easily.
-When planning to be in an environment where ticks are often found, use repellent that contains at least 20 percent Diethyl-meta-toluamide DEET on exposed skin for protection that lasts several hours. Parents should apply repellent to children; the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends products with up to 30 percent DEET for kids. Always follow product instructions.
-Treat clothing and gear, such as boots, pants, socks and tents, with the pesticide permethrin, or look for clothing pretreated with permethrin.
-Avoid areas with high grass and leaf litter, and walk in the center of trails when hiking.
-Bathe or shower as soon as possible after coming indoors to wash off and more easily find crawling ticks before they bite.
-Conduct a full-body tick check using a hand-held or full-length mirror to view all parts of the body upon returning from tick-infested areas. Parents should help children check thoroughly for ticks. Remove any ticks right away.
-Remove an attached tick with tweezers by grasping it as close to the skin as possible and pulling firmly and gently straight up and washing the area well with soap and water; and
-Talk to a veterinarian about tick-control products for pets.
Alternative formulas to fight Lyme disease:
-Synergy Formulas, 251 W. Road, Campobello, SC 29322 sells a formula called Lymesode for temporary relief associated with exposure to Lyme. Go to www.synergyformulas.com.
-Teasel root has proven beneficial for people with chronic Lyme disease. Testimonials and product information can be found at www.ladybarbara.net.
-Phyllis A. and James F. Balch’s book, “Prescription for Nutritional Healing” recommends alfalfa, dandelion root, ginseng, hawthorn, horsetail, milk thistle and red clover along with garlic, kelp, Vitamin A with mixed carotenoids, Vitamin C with bioflavonoids, Vitamin E and zinc lozenges.
Websites with more info:
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Wild: 10-13 years
Captivity: 20 years
Females: 500 lbs
Males: 710 lbs
Name of Young
- American Elk are the second largest member of the deer family. The males of one subspecies, called the Roosevelt Elk, may reach the weight of 1300 lbs. The largest member of the deer family is the moose.
- Males begin growing antlers at around 11 months of age. Their antlers are fully grown when the elk reaches 4-6 years old. The antlers are 5.6 feet across on average and can weigh up to 40 lbs.
- Newborn elk weigh about 35 lbs at birth, and they are born with spots which fade by the end of the summer. By the time they are 6 months old, they are almost the size of an adult white tailed deer.
- During the mating season male elk bugle and grunt. Females may respond to their calls with a barking noise. Males will roll in mud during the breeding season to become more attractive to the females.
Did You Know?
Elk are important to many Native American tribes. In Lakota culture the spiritual elk was a symbol of strength and courage. Another name for elk is Wapiti. This word means “White Rump” in the Shawnee language.
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A group of researchers at DTU Space is developing an observatory to be mounted on the International Space Station. Called ASIM, the observatory will among other things photograph giant lightning discharges above the clouds. The objective is to determine whether giant lightning discharges affect the Earth’s climate.
The question is whether giant lightning discharges, which shoot up from the clouds towards space, are simply a spectacular natural phenomenon, or whether they alter the chemical composition of the atmosphere, affecting the Earth’s climate and the ozone layer.
In recent years, scientists at DTU Space have studied giant lightning using high-altitude mountain cameras. From time to time, the cameras have succeeded in capturing low-altitude lightning flashes which have shot up from a thundercloud. The International Space Station provides a clear view of these giant lightning discharges, and the opportunity to study them will be significantly improved with the introduction of the observatory.
The researchers will also use ASIM to study how natural and man-made events on the ground – such as hurricanes, dust storms, forest fires and volcanic eruptions – influence the atmosphere and climate.
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What is Compression? Compression is the reduction in size of data by converting it to a format that requires fewer bits. Most often compression is used to minimize storage space (on a hard drive, for example) or for reducing transmitted data over a network.
SALARY COMPRESSION It was the consensus of the Committee that specific recommendations for salary increases could only be made after fundamental issues were addressed: 1) What is salary compression?
Using a Compression Gauge These simple devices can tell you a great deal about the health of your engine. In fact, when used properly and interpreted correctly, a compression tester will reveal just about all you could want to know about your vehicle.
An Oracle White Paper . October 2011 . Advanced Compression with Oracle Database 11g
3 Why Compression? •Raw media file sizes tend to be large-Audio •sample-based, with relatively high sampling rates-Audio example: •172.266 KB/sec => 44, 100 Hz sampling rate, 16 bit samples, stereo-Motion video/still images •stores each image (e. g. , frame) in its color space (e. g ...
DCT-based Video Quality Evaluation---Final Project for EE392J Feng Xiao Winter 2000 Abstract Lossy compression methods make the widespread distribution of digital video possible at the cost of introduction of artifacts.
Contents iv Literature Number: BPRA065 List of Figures Figure 1: A copy machine that makes three reduced copies of the input image [Y]..... 2 Figure 2: The first three copies generated on the copying machine Figure 1.
Techniques for Managing Large Data Sets: Compression, Indexing and Summarization
Table Compression in Oracle . Database 10g Release 2 . An Oracle White Paper May 2005
AJR:189, November 2007 1175 AJR 2007; 189:1175-1178 0361-803X/07/1895-1175 © American Roentgen Ray Society Choy et al. MRI of Thoracolumbar Spine Musculoskeletal Imaging•Technical Innovation Axial Compression Frame for MRI of Thoracolumbar Spine Daniel S. J. Choy 1 Gian Paolo Tassi 2 Richard ...
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learn about and because it can probably fit 5 pages. My
bibliography is on the ending of the report, my teacher helped me
with it because I didn't
know how to do it. Cancer is the name for
tumors that are malignant. Malignant tumors do not respond to
body mechanisms that limit growing. Malignant tumors show a not
normal cell structure the same functional specialized cells. Also
cancer cells growing in laboratory tissue culture do not stop
growing when they touch each other on a glass or other solid
surface but grow in masses several layers deep they are said to lack
Loss of contact inhibition accounts for two other
characteristics of cancer cells invasiveness of surrounding tissues
and metastasis spreading via the lymph system or blood to other
tissues and organs. Cells are typically controlled by growth factors
competence factors that stimulate cells to enter the beginning phase
of cell replication and progression factors that insure completion of
the replication cycle. The unrestricted growth rates of cells are due
to the activation and lack of inhibition of oncogenes. They are
cancer causing genes.
Cancer tissue that grows without limits competes with normal
tissue for nutrients kills the normal cells by nutritional deprivation.
Cancerous tissue also causes secondary effects with the symptoms
of a malignant growth caused by the pressure of the growing tumor
against surrounding tissue or the metastasis of cancer cells and
their invasion of other organs. Cancers are graded as to degree of
malignancy on a scale of one through four the distinction between
even benign and malignant neoplasms is obscure. All organs and
tissues are susceptible to cancer.
A lot of human cancers may be caused or at least triggered by
various chemical agents. Alkylating agents are thought to have a... [continues]
Cite This Essay
(1999, 10). Cancer. StudyMode.com. Retrieved 10, 1999, from http://www.studymode.com/essays/Cancer-19933.html
"Cancer" StudyMode.com. 10 1999. 10 1999 <http://www.studymode.com/essays/Cancer-19933.html>.
"Cancer." StudyMode.com. 10, 1999. Accessed 10, 1999. http://www.studymode.com/essays/Cancer-19933.html.
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Obesity means having too much body fat. It is not the same as being overweight, which means weighing too much. A person may be overweight from extra muscle, bone, or water, as well as from having too much fat.
Both terms mean that a person's weight is higher than what is thought to be healthy for his or her height.
Morbid obesity; Fat - obese
Causes, incidence, and risk factors:
Taking in more calories than you burn can lead to obesity because the body stores unused calories as fat. Obesity can be caused by:
- Eating more food than your body can use
- Drinking too much alcohol
- Not getting enough exercise
Many obese people who lose large amounts of weight and gain it back think it is their fault. They blame themselves for not having the willpower to keep the weight off. Many people regain more weight than they lost.
Today, we know that biology is a big reason why some people cannot keep the weight off. Some people who live in the same place and eat the same foods become obese, while others do not. Our bodies have a complex system to help keep our weight at a healthy level. In some people, this system does not work normally.
The way we eat when we are children can affect the way we eat as adults. The way we eat over many years becomes a habit, affecting what we eat, when we eat, and how much we eat.
We are surrounded by things that make it easy to overeat and hard to stay active.
- Many people do not have time to plan and make healthy meals.
- More people today work desk jobs compared to more active jobs in the past.
- People with less free time have less time to exercise.
The term "eating disorder" means a group of medical conditions that have an unhealthy focus on eating, dieting, losing or gaining weight, and body image. A person may be obese, follow an unhealthy diet, and have an eating disorder all at the same time.
Sometimes, medical problems or treatments cause weight gain, including:
- Underactive thyroid gland (hypothyroidism )
- Medicines such as birth control pills, antidepressants, and antipsychotics
Other things that can cause weight gain are:
- Quitting smoking. Most people who quit smoking gain 4 - 10 pounds in the first 6 months after quitting. Some people gain as much as 25 - 30 pounds.
- Stress, anxiety, feeling sad, or not sleeping well
- For women:
- Menopause -- women may gain 12-15 pounds during menopause
- Not losing the weight they gained during pregnancy
Signs and tests:
The health care provider will perform a physical exam and ask questions about your medical history, eating habits, and exercise routine.
The two most common ways to assess your weight and measure health risks related to your weight are:
Body mass index (BMI)
- Waist circumference (your waist measurement in inches)
BMI is calculated using height and weight. You and your health care provider can use your BMI to estimate how much body fat you have.
Your waist measurement is another way to estimate how much body fat you have. Extra weight around your middle or stomach area increases your risk for type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. People with "apple-shaped" bodies (meaning their waist is bigger than their hips) also have an increased risk for these diseases.
Skin fold measurements may be taken to check your body fat percentage.
Blood tests may be done to look for thyroid or hormone problems that could lead to weight gain. However, these tests are usually normal.
CHANGING YOUR LIFESTYLE
An active lifestyle and plenty of exercise, along with healthy eating, is the safest way to lose weight. Even modest weight loss can improve your health. You will need a lot of support from family and friends.
When dieting, your main goal should be to learn new, healthy ways of eating and make them a part of your daily routine.
Many people find it hard to change their eating habits and behaviors. You may have practiced some habits for so long that you may not even know they are unhealthy, or you do them without thinking. You need to be motivated to make lifestyle changes. Make the behavior change part of your life over the long term. Know that it takes time to make and keep a change in your lifestyle.
Work with your health care provider and dietitian to set realistic, safe daily calorie counts that help you lose weight while staying healthy. Remember that if you drop pounds slowly and steadily, you are more likely to keep them off. Your dietitian can teach you about:
- Healthy food choices
- Healthy snacks
- How to read nutrition labels
- New ways to prepare food
- Portion sizes
- Sweetened drinks
Extreme diets (fewer than 1,100 calories per day) are not thought to be safe or to work very well. These types of diets often do not contain enough vitamins and minerals. Most people who lose weight this way return to overeating and become obese again.
Learn new ways to manage stress, rather than snacking. Examples may be meditation, yoga, or exercise. If you are depressed or stressed a lot, talk to your health care provider.
MEDICATIONS AND HERBAL REMEDIES
You may see ads for supplements and herbal remedies that claim they will help you lose weight. Many of these claims are not true. Some of these supplements can have serious side effects. Talk to your health care provider before using them.
You can discuss weight loss drugs with your doctor. Most people lose between 5 and 10 pounds by taking these drugs. Most people also regain the weight when they stop taking the medicine, unless they have made lasting lifestyle changes.
Bariatric surgery can reduce the risk of disease in people with severe obesity. These risks include:
- Heart disease
- High blood pressure
- Some cancers
Surgery may help people who have been very obese for 5 years or more and have not lost weight from other treatments, such as diet, exercise, or medicine.
Surgery alone is not the answer for weight loss. It can train you to eat less, but you still have to do much of the work. You must be committed to diet and exercise after surgery. Talk to your doctor to learn if this is a good option for you.
Weight-loss surgeries include:
Many people find it easier to follow a diet and exercise program if they join a group of people with similar problems.
Obesity is a major health threat. The extra weight puts added stress on every part of your body and creates many risks to your health .
Dale KS, McAuley KA, Taylor RW, Williams SM, Farmer VL, Hansen P, et al. Determining optimal approaches for weight maintenance: a randomized controlled trial. CMAJ. 2009;180:E39-E46.
Jensen MD. Obesity. In: Goldman L, Schafer AI, eds. Cecil Medicine. 24th ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Saunders Elsevier; 2011:chap 227.
Schauer PR, Kashyap SR, Wolski K, et al. Bariatric surgery versus intensive medical therapy in obese patietns with diabetes. N Engl J Med. 2012:Epub March 26.
Seagle HM, Strain GW, Makris A, Reeves RS; American Dietetic Association. Position of the American Dietetic Association: weight management. J Am Diet Assoc. 2009;109:330-346.
United States Department of Agriculture. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010. Accessed April 21, 2012.
Wadden TA, Volger S, Sarwer DB, et al. A two year randomized trial of obesity treatment in primary care practice. N Engl J Med. 2011;365:1969-1979
|Review Date: 5/12/2012|
Reviewed By: David C. Dugdale, III, MD, Professor of Medicine, Division of General Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine; and Linda J. Vorvick, MD, Medical Director and Director of Didactic Curriculum, MEDEX Northwest Division of Physician Assistant Studies, Department of Family Medicine, UW Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Washington. Also reviewed by David Zieve, MD, MHA, Medical Director, A.D.A.M. Health Solutions, Ebix, Inc.
The information provided herein should not be used during any medical emergency or for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition. A licensed medical professional should be consulted for diagnosis and treatment of any and all medical conditions. Call 911 for all medical emergencies. Links to other sites are provided for information only -- they do not constitute endorsements of those other sites. © 1997-
A.D.A.M., Inc. Any duplication or distribution of the information contained herein is strictly prohibited.
| 3.916415 |
Niemann-Pick disease is a group of diseases passed down through families (inherited) in which fatty substances called lipids collect in the cells of the spleen, liver, and brain.
There are four most commonly recognized forms of the disease: Types A, B, C, and D.
Types A and B are also called Type I.
Types C and D are also known as Type II.
Each type involves different organs. It may or may not involve your nervous system and breathing. Each one can cause different symptoms and may occur at different times throughout life.
Causes, incidence, and risk factors
Niemann-Pick disease types A and B occur when cells in the body do not have an enzyme called acid sphingomyelinase (ASM). This substance helps break down (metabolize) a fatty substance called sphingomyelin, which is found in every cell in the body.
If ASM is missing or does not work properly, sphingomyelin builds up inside cells. This kills your cells and makes it hard for organs to work properly.
Type A occurs in all races and ethnicities. It is more common in the Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jew population.
Type C occurs when the body cannot properly break down cholesterol and other fats (lipids). This leads to too much cholesterol in the liver and spleen and too much of other lipids in the brain. Type C is most common among Puerto Ricans of Spanish descent.
Type D involves a defect that interferes with how cholesterole moves between brain cells. It is a variant of type C. This type has only been seen in French Canadian people in Yarmouth County, Nova Scotia.
Symptoms vary. Other health conditions may cause similar symptoms. The early stages of the disease may only cause a few symptoms. You may never have all symptoms.
Type A usually begins in the first few months of life. Symptoms may include:
Abdominal (belly area) swelling within 3 - 6 months
Cherry red spot in the eye
Loss of early motor skills (gets worse over time)
Type B symptoms are usually milder. They occur in late childhood or the teenage years. Abdominal swelling may occur in young children. There is almost no brain and nervous system involvement, such as loss of motor skills. Some patients may have repeated respiratory infections.
Type C usually affects school-aged children. However, it may occur any time between early infancy to adulthood. Symptoms may include:
A blood or bone marrow test can be done to diagnose types A and B. The test can tell who has the disease, but does not show if you are a carrier. DNA tests can be done to diagnose carriers of types A and B.
A skin biopsy is usually done to diagnose types C and D. The health care provider watches how the skin cells grow, move, and store cholesterol. DNA tests may also be done to look for the two genes that cause this type
At this time, there is no effective treatment for type A.
Bone marrow transplants have been done on a few patients with type B with encouraging results. Researchers continue to study possible treatments, including enzyme replacement and gene therapy.
There is no specific treatment for Type D. A new medicine called miglustat is available for the nervous system symptoms of type C.
A healthy, low-cholesterol diet is recommended. However, research does not show that these methods stop the disease from getting worse or change how cells break down cholesterol. However, medicines are available to control or relieve many symptoms, such as cataplexy and seizures.
For more information, visit the National Niemann-Pick Disease Foundation website: www.nnpdf.org
Type A Niemann-Pick is a severe disease. It usually leads to death by age 2 or 3.
Those with type B may live into late childhood or adulthood.
A child who shows signs of type C before age 1 may not live to school age. Those who show show symptoms after entering school may live into their mid-to-late teens. Some may live into their 20s.
McGovern MM, Desnick RJ. Lipidoses (Lysosomal Storage Diseases). In: Kliegman RM, Stanton BF, St. Geme JW III, Schor NF, Behrman RE, eds. Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics. 19th ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Saunders Elsevier; 2011:chap80.4.
NP-C Guidelines Working Group, Wraith JE, Baumgartner MR, Bembi B, et al. Recommendations on the diagnosis and management of Niemann-Pick disease type C. Mol Genet Metab. 2009;98:152-165.
David C. Dugdale, III, MD, Professor of Medicine, Division of General Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine. Also reviewed by A.D.A.M. Health Solutions, Ebix, Inc., Editorial Team: David Zieve, MD, MHA, David R. Eltz, Stephanie Slon, and Nissi Wang.
| 3.837244 |
Opportunities to prevent the infection are being missed in hospitals across Britain, charities said.
Group B Streptococcus (GBS) is the most common cause of meningitis in young babies, triggering an estimated 500 cases a year.
The infection can be prevented by giving antibiotics to at-risk mothers during delivery.
Researchers who looked at data from 202 of the 222 Neonatal Units across Britain and the Republic of Ireland insist that up to 50 per cent of case could be avoided if more mothers were given the drugs.
But they found that many women were not even warned about the infection.
The warning was made by the charities Meningitis Research Foundation (MRF) and Group B Strep Support.
Many women carry the infection without showing any symptoms.
Although there are no reliable figures for how many have GBS one in 10 people carry a form of meningitis infection at some point in their lives.
“At risk” women include those whose temperatures spike during labour, who give birth more than 18 hours after their water breaks or who have had another child who suffered from the infection.
Babies under 12 months of age are 38 times more likely to contract the infection than older children or adults.
Dr Paul Heath, from St George’s University of London, who led the team which analysed the figures, warned: “The early treatment of meningitis in babies appears to vary widely across Britain.”
Christopher Head, chief executive of the MRF, said: “(We are) very concerned by the lack of awareness of GBS infection and the potential inconsistencies in the treatment of the disease.”
The organisation is launching a new research project to improve recognition and treatment of meningitis in young babies.
Around 1,000 children under the age of one develop meningitis in Britain and the Republic of Ireland every year.
| 3.126104 |
Teacher's Resources - A Question of Ritual
For the people of the ancient Americas as for many other humans worldwide, ceremonies formed a bridge between their world and that of deities and spirits. Through sacred rituals they communicated to their gods and ancestors their hopes for a bounty of food, protection from the potential disasters wrought by nature or political enemies and general good fortune, thus forming a bridge between the living and the metaphysical.
In the Mesoamerican and Andean belief systems, many different rituals involving dances, ceremonies, festivals and games were performed to maintain a sense of order and balance and to create the conditions necessary for prosperous human cultures to unfold. Much has been made of the evidence for the practice of human sacrifice in both regions; certainly it appears to have been practiced, as it was in certain civilizations all over the world, including Imperial Rome, the early Celtic settlements of Western Europe, and many others.
What is more interesting and fruitful to pursue with students is an exploration of the possible belief systems that gave meaning to the CLOTH & CLAY objects, such as this ritual incense burner from Teotihuacan, an ancient Mexican culture.
Classroom Activities and Projects (recommended ages are in italics and are approximate)
1. 12 -16: In groups or as individuals, students can research the symbolism of the mountain in ancient American cultures, investigating such areas as sacred geometry, layout of cities and ritual sites, pyramids, and rituals. The results of the research can result in essays, as well as drawings and 3-dimensional models.
2. 12 -16: Within a larger project comparing the beliefs of ancient peoples around the world, students can investigate those of the ancient Americas, including shamanism, use of psychotropic plants, and human sacrifice, tying these practices to the religious beliefs of the cultures practicing them. Class discussions can touch on how easy it is to sensationalize these practices, and the importance of putting them in context with the larger belief systems of the civilizations under review.
3. 12 - 16: Research on the Day of the Dead, a yearly festival in Mexico that takes place in early November, provides insight into ancient and contemporary religious beliefs and rituals. By studying this and other festivals, students who are growing up in the secular societies of the West can develop an understanding of life in a deeply religious culture. Similarly, students who are themselves rooted in a religious culture can learn about other belief systems.
In its original form, this festival took place during Miccailhuitontli (late summer) in the Aztec calendar, and celebrated the life cycle, honouring the newly dead and the ancestors. Today the day corresponds to All Saints Day in the Christian calendar.
Students working in groups can present the results of their research to the class, with each group covering different aspects of the festival such as the variety of forms taken by the festivities, the combined Christian/pre-Christian elements, and the significance of ofrendas, calaveras and other related objects.
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The use of beta-alanine to produce muscle carnosine offers a way to increase anaerobic exercise potential and is likely to add to the effects of creatine in some exercise settings. First discovered in the early 1900s, beta-alanine and histidine are the two components of carnosine. Histidine is already present in large quantity within skeletal muscles, so it is beta-alanine that acts as the rate-limiting factor in carnosine conversion.
A buildup of metabolic waste limits muscle contraction, with hydrogen ions being the worst. This is primarily true of our fast fibers, which are most sensitive to hydrogen ions and extremely susceptible to fatigue. If the hydrogen ions can be buffered, muscle strength can be maintained for a longer time before fatigue sets in. Anyone, including bodybuilders, involved in exercise where lactic acid buildup is the limiting factor stands to benefit from beta-alanine. In the gym, this benefit may translate into more reps with a given weight.
Carnosine is very effective at buffering the hydrogen ions responsible for producing the lactic acid burn. Studies have shown that increasing muscle carnosine by supplementing beta-alanine may delay fatigue and improve the muscular aspects of athletic performance.
Research also indicates that beta-alanine increases lactate threshold, improves the ability to maintain maximal power output during high-intensity exercise, and decreases neuromuscular fatigue. By elevating carnosine level, nerves fire at a faster rate. For example, instead of one’s body operating at 80% the day after exercise, carnosine may help it perform closer to the highest possible levels. Beta-alanine is mainly useful for athletes who are constantly using the same muscles,without the ability to take a break and recover for a few days.
| 3.244876 |
Pathogens put squeeze on Florida citrus industry
Government seeks new solutions after giving up on eradication of bacterial disease
State and government officials are gearing up to release a Citrus Health Response Plan
(CHRP) for Florida, after calling a halt
to efforts to eradicate the bacterial disease citrus canker
. Meanwhile, Florida's citrus growers are facing a new, potentially more devastating threat -- a bacterium called citrus greening
, which has wiped out the citrus industry in many parts of Asia.
After 2005's hurricane Wilma, which helped transmit citrus canker
, officials estimated that it would be necessary to rip out roughly a third of Florida's citrus-growing acreage to continue with eradication efforts, which require removing all trees within 1,900 feet of an infected tree. The cost: $1.7 billion. Eradication "just wasn't practical or feasible any longer," Philip Berger
, national science program leader at the USDA's Center For Plant Health Science and Technology
, told The Scientist
Now, Florida farmers are dealing with another pathogen, citrus greening. Also known as huanglongbing (Chinese for "yellow shoot disease"), the bacterium was identified for the first time in Florida in September 2005 and is now present across the southern half of the state. Spread by the citrus psyllid insect, the disease has wiped out the citrus industry in many parts of Asia, including China and Thailand, and now threatens Brazil, which has the world's largest citrus industry.
Fruit from canker-infected trees isn't pretty, but it can still be juiced and thus remains commercially valuable. But citrus greening dramatically shortens the lifespan of citrus trees, making fruit inedible as the tree sickens. "Not too many pathogens kill plants -- this one does," says Allan Dodds
of the University of California at Riverside, who moderates plant diseases on ProMed Mail
And while canker is fairly easy to detect, greening is tougher to spot. Symptoms can mimic those of nutrient deficiencies. The bacterium that causes the disease, Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus
, invades the phloem, but it is not clear where it goes after that, and it has never been cultured in the lab. PCR tests have been developed to identify the bacterium, but are only capable of detecting it in symptomatic trees, Ron Brlansky
of the University of Florida's Institute for Food and Agricultural Sciences' Citrus Research & Education Center
in Lake Alfred told The Scientist
Measures spelled out in the draft CHRP, written by USDA/APHIS and Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services' Division of Plant Industry, focus largely on ensuring that new citrus plant stock is free of both diseases, and require that citrus stock or budwood sources be grown in insect-proof structures featuring double entry doors with positive pressure air displacement. Nursery industry officials have estimated that building such a greenhouse for 175,000 young trees would cost $2.5 million.
In the meantime, scientists like Brlansky are working hard on getting the word out to growers on how to manage citrus greening, which he calls "our number one priority."
With "judicious spraying," the disease can be controlled, Chester Roistacher, an emeritus professor at the University of California-Riverside who has worked internationally on citrus greening and other citrus diseases, told The Scientist
. "Where you do not have a good control program, your trees will live anywhere from five to eight years and die." But because the disease is new to Florida, he noted, it's not yet clear how frequently groves will have to be sprayed.
Yet another danger is waiting in the wings -- citrus tristeza virus (CTV). The virus has been present in Florida for years without causing serious damage. But the brown citrus aphid
), which can spread the virus more aggressively than its standard Florida vector, Aphis gossypii
, recently arrived in Florida. "It's a much more effective vector," said Dodds. He predicts that the strains of CTV endemic to Florida will gradually become more virulent as Toxoptera
spreads. Such CTV strains can cause stem pitting, which reduces the commercial value of citrus fruit.
Links within this article
Citrus Health Response Plan
"USDA determines citrus canker eradication not feasible," Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, January 11, 2006.
J. Woodall, "Our food is dying," The Scientist
, March 2006.
Philip H. Berger
Center for Plant Health Science and Technology
Citrus Research & Education Center
Brown citrus aphid
| 3.120368 |
November 22, 2012
Infection with hepatitis C virus (HCV) and HIV causes inflammation, a natural response by the immune system as it seeks to deal with invading germs. However, sometimes the sheer number of germs overwhelms the immune system or at other times the germs are able to subvert the immune system's response to infection. In such cases, the germs spread and infection takes hold. This can be the case with viral infections and when such an infection becomes established in the body, it becomes a chronic infection.
Even in cases of chronic viral infections the immune system tries to fight the infection, but inflammation that may have been useful in the initial stages of exposure becomes a problem if it is sustained over the long-term.
The immune system and its cells are widely distributed throughout the body and found within many organ-systems such as the following:
A chronic viral infection with its associated inflammation of the immune system is likely to cause inflammation-related problems for these organ-systems.
The inflammation caused by chronic HCV infection affects the liver, causing this organ to become dysfunctional and injured. HCV can also cause other problems; for instance, some studies have found thinner-than-normal bones in some HCV-positive people.
Some researchers think that this problem of bone thinning in HCV infection arises in part because of complications of liver injury and chronic liver inflammation. An injured and inflamed liver could result in reduced levels of the hormones estrogen and testosterone. These hormones play an important role in maintaining the health of bones. Also, a dysfunctional liver may not be able to convert vitamin D to its active form. This may affect the body's ability to absorb and retain nutrients such as calcium and phosphorus, which are needed to build bones.
Potent combination anti-HIV therapy (commonly called ART or HAART) can also temporarily decrease the thickness of bones (called bone mineral density) in the first few years of use. However, after this, bone mineral density tends to stabilize. The reason for the initially decreased bone mineral density under ART is not yet clear. But the benefits of ART continue to greatly outweigh the risks.
A team of researchers in the U.S. has grown concerned about the strength of bones in the hips of people with HCV, HIV or both viral infections. Among HIV-negative people, when hip bones/joints become broken their survival subsequently decreases. Moreover, the U.S. researchers noted:
"Hip fractures cause significant pain and disability and typically require an emergency department visit, hospitalization, surgery and rehabilitation stay, resulting in substantial healthcare costs."
The U.S. research team (based at the University of Pennsylvania) conducted a massive study of three million people, both with and without different viral infections. They found that people co-infected with HIV and HCV were at greatest risk of hip fracture compared to participants with HCV infection alone (monoinfection) or to people who had neither infection.
This study underscores the need to understand why thinning bones, particularly in the hips, occur in people with HIV, HCV or both. Furthermore, ways to improve the bone health of people with chronic viral infections are needed.
Researchers at hospitals in Philadelphia and Boston collaborated on a massive cohort study, analysing health related-information collected from adults using the U.S. Medicaid program in the following states:
The research team compared data assembled on each person with HCV monoinfection, HIV monoinfection and both infections (co-infection) and compared them to health-related data collected from up to 10 randomly selected people without viral infections.
The researchers analysed data collected from more than three million people distributed as follows:
On average, participants were in their early 40s, and 60% were men and 40% women. They were monitored for up to seven years.
The study team found that it was relatively common for HCV-positive people to have been diagnosed with conditions that were either associated with severely thin bones (osteoporosis) or a risk of falling, including the following:
They also found that participants with HCV monoinfection were more likely than other groups in the study to have received medicines associated with thinning bones, including the following drugs:
Overall, HCV-positive people had a 47% increased risk of hip fracture compared to uninfected people. However, it is important to note that this risk varied, in some cases, by factors such as age and gender among HCV-positive people, as follows:
No comments have been made.
| 3.482652 |
During the REBELLIONS OF 1837, the bank annoyed local commercial interests and, partly as a result, the Commercial Bank of the Midland District expanded more rapidly in the 1840s. During the 1850s, the bank held the government account, provided significant short-term capital for railway development and, in the boom years, recklessly speculated in land and railways. The bank never recovered from the 1857 economic collapse, losing the government account in 1864 and entering trusteeship in November 1866. Despite its great contribution to the development of Canadian commerce, it became a casualty of the very process it had helped facilitate: the transition from MERCANTILISM to an industrial economy.
Author PETER A. BASKERVILLE
| 3.157822 |
The term Roman Catholic first appeared in the English language in the 16th century to differentiate specific groups of Christians in communion with the Pope from others. It has continued to be widely used in the English language ever since, although its usage has changed over the centuries. It is now even used to distinguish different groups of Catholics who recognize the Pope, e.g., those who belong to the Western (i.e., Latin Rite) Church from those who belong to the Eastern Catholic Churches.
The Catholic Church consists of 23 autonomous Churches — one "Western" and 22 "Eastern" — governed by two sets of Codes of Canon Law. To refer to all 23 autonomous Churches together, official Church documents often use the term "Catholic Church" or, less frequently, the term "Roman Catholic Church". The usage that makes the term "Roman Catholic" mean members of the Latin Rite or Western Church to the exclusion of those who belong to the Eastern Catholic Churches does not appear in recent documents of the Holy See.
In popular usage, "Catholic Church" is usually understood to mean the same as "Roman Catholic Church". In some compound forms such as "Roman Catholic Worship", the term is used to differentiate Western practices.
The roots of the term Roman Catholic may be traced to the differences between English Catholics who remained loyal to the Pope from those who acknowledged the Elizabethan Settlement which re-established the Church of England’s independence from Rome in 1559.
The terms "Romish Catholic" and "Roman Catholic", along with "Popish Catholic", were probably originated in the English language by Protestants (who at times called themselves Protestant Catholics) who were not willing to concede the term Catholic to their opponents without qualification.
The reign of Elizabeth I of England at the end of the 16th century was marked by conflicts in Ireland. Those opposed to English rule forged alliances with those against Protestant reformation, making the term Roman Catholic almost synonymous with being Irish during that period, although that usage changed significantly over time.
Like the term Anglican, the term Roman Catholic came into widespread use in the English language only in the 17th century. The terms "Romish Catholic" and "Roman Catholic" were both in use in the 17th century and "Roman Catholic" was used in some official documents, such as those relating to the Spanish Match in the 1620s. There was, however, significant tension between Anglicans and Roman Catholics at the time (as reflected in the Test Act for public office). Even today, the Act of Settlement 1701 still prohibits Roman Catholics from becoming English monarchs.
The official and popular uses of the term Roman Catholic in the English language grew in the 18th century. Up to the reign of George III, Catholics in Britain who recognized the Pope as head of the Church had generally been designated in official documents as "Papists". In 1792, however, this phraseology was changed and in the Speech from the Throne, the term "Roman Catholic" was used.
By early 19th century, the term Roman Catholic had become well established in the English-speaking world. As the movement that led to Catholic Emancipation through the Catholic Relief Act of 1829 grew, many — though not all — Anglicans and Protestants generally began to accept that being a Roman Catholic was not synonymous with being disloyal to the British government. While believing that in the past the term Roman Catholic may have been synonymous with rebel, they held that it was by then as indicative of loyalty as membership in any other Christian denomination. The situation had been very different two centuries before, when Pope Paul V forbade English members of his Church from taking an oath of allegiance to King James I, a prohibition that not all of them observed.
Also in the 19th century, prominent Anglican theologians such as Palmer and Keble supported the Branch Theory, which viewed the universal Church as having three principal branches: Anglican, Roman and Eastern. The 1824 issue of The Christian Observer defined the term Roman Catholic as a member of the Roman Branch of the Church. By 1828, speeches in the English parliament routinely used the term Roman Catholic and referred to the "Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church".
In the United States, the use of the term Roman Catholic and indeed the number of Roman Catholics began to grow only in the early 19th century, given that in 1790 there were only 100 Roman Catholics in New York and some 30,000 in the whole United States, with 29 priests. As the number of Roman Catholics in the United States grew rapidly from 150,000 to 1.7 million between 1815 and 1850 — mostly by way of immigration from Ireland and Germany — the clergy followed the people to serve them, and Roman Catholic parishes were established. The terms "Roman Catholic" and "Holy Roman Catholic" thus gained widespread use in the United States in the 19th century, both in popular usage and within official documents. In 1866 President Andrew Johnson attended a meeting of the Council of the Roman Catholic Church.
American Catholics, who by the year 1900 were 12 million people and had a predominantly Irish clergy, objected to what they considered the reproachful terms Popish and Romish and preferred the term Roman Catholic.
In the early 20th century, the use of the term Roman Catholic continued to spread within the United States and Canada, to refer to individuals, parishes and their schools. For instance, the 1915 Report of the Commissioner of Education of the United States had a specific section for "Roman Catholic Parish Schools". By 1918, legal proceedings in state supreme courts (from Delaware to Minnesota) and laws passed in the State of New York used the term "Roman Catholic parish".
By the middle of the 20th century the use of the term Roman Catholic was widely established in the United States and a 1957 survey by the United States Census Bureau determined that 25% of the US population applied the term Roman Catholic to themselves.
The term Roman Catholic is generally used on its own to refer to individuals, and in compound forms to refer to worship, parishes, festivals, etc. Its usage has varied, depending on circumstances. It is sometimes identified with one or other of the terms "Catholic", "Western Catholic" (equivalent to "Latin Catholic"), and "Roman-Rite Catholic".
In popular usage, "Catholic" usually means "Roman Catholic", a usage decried by some, including some Protestants. "Catholic" usually refers to members of any of the 23 constituent Churches, the one Western and the 22 Eastern. The same meaning is attributed also to "Roman Catholic" in documents of the Holy See, talks by Popes and in newspapers.
When used in a broader sense, the term Catholic is distinguished from "Roman Catholic" which has connotations of allegiance to the Bishop of Rome, i.e. the Pope. In this broader sense, "Catholic" also refers to many other Christians, especially Eastern Orthodox and Anglicans, but also to others, including Old Catholics and various independent Catholic Churches, who consider themselves to be living within the "catholic" tradition. They describe themselves as "Catholic", but not "Roman Catholic" and not under the authority of the Pope.
"...the individual becomes Eastern Catholic, not Roman Catholic".
Similarly the Catholic Faith Handbook for Youth states that
"...not all Catholics are Roman Catholics and there are other Catholic Churches",
using the term "Roman Catholic" to refer to Western Church members alone. The same distinction is made by writers in the Eastern Catholic Churches. That this view is not the only one, especially perhaps at popular level, is shown by the use of terms such as "Byzantine Roman Catholic" and "Maronite Roman Catholic" as self-identification by individuals or as the name of a church building. Additionally, in other languages, the usage varies significantly.
Although the Catholic Church has Western and Eastern branches, many, even Catholics, are unaware, or only dimly aware of this fact, partly because, outside the Middle East, Eastern Catholics are a small fraction of the total number of Catholics.
When referring to worship, the term Roman Catholic is at times used to refer to the "Roman Rite", which is not a church but a form of liturgy. The Roman Rite is distinct from the liturgies of the Eastern Catholic Churches and also from other Western liturgical rites such as the Ambrosian Rite, which have a much smaller following than the Roman Rite.
An example of this usage is provided in the book Roman Catholic Worship: Trent to today states:
"We use the term Roman Catholic Worship throughout to make it clear that we are not covering all forms of Catholic worship. There are a number of Eastern Rite churches that can justly claim the title Catholic, but many of the statements we make do not apply to them at all.".
Compared to the Roman Rite, the other Western liturgical rites have little following. Hence, the Vatican department that deals with forms of worship (including music) in the Western Church often issues documents that deal only with the Roman Rite. Any involvement by the Holy See in questions of Eastern liturgies is handled by a different department.
Some of the writers who draw a contrast between "Roman Catholics" and "Eastern Catholics" may perhaps be distinguishing Eastern Catholics not from Latin or Western Catholics in general, but only from those (the majority of Latin Catholics) who use the Roman liturgical rite. Adrian Fortescue explicitly made this distinction, saying that, just as "Armenian Catholic" is used to mean a Catholic who uses the Armenian rite, "Roman Catholic" could be used to mean a Catholic who uses the Roman Rite. In this sense, he said, an Ambrosian Catholic, though a member of the Latin or Western Church, is not a "Roman" Catholic. He admitted, however, that this usage is uncommon.
When the term "Roman Catholic" is used as part of the name of a parish it usually indicates that it is a Western parish that follows the Roman Rite in its liturgy, rather than, for instance, the less common Ambrosian Rite, e.g. St. Dominic Roman Catholic Church, Oyster Bay, New York. The shorter term "Catholic" may also appear in parish names and "Roman Catholic" sometimes even appears in the compound name of Eastern Catholic parishes, e.g. St. Mary's Byzantine Roman Catholic Church.
All Catholic parishes are part of an ecclesiastical jurisdiction, usually a diocese (called an eparchy in the canon law of the Eastern Catholic Churches). These jurisdictions are usually grouped in ecclesiastical provinces, headed by a metropolitan archdiocese. All dioceses and similar jurisdictions — Eastern and Western — come under the authority of the Pope.. The term "Roman Catholic archdiocese" is formally used to refer to both Western and Eastern Churches. As of January 2009, there were 630 Roman Catholic archdioceses, Western and Eastern.
The terms "Catholic Church" and "Roman Catholic Church" are names for the entire church that describes itself as "governed by the successor of Saint Peter and by the bishops in communion with him". In its formal documents and pronouncements the church most often refers to itself as the Catholic Church or simply the Church. In its relations with other churches, it frequently uses the name "Roman Catholic Church", which it uses internally also, though less frequently. Some writers such as Kenneth Whitehead and Patrick Madrid argue that the only proper name for the Church is "the Catholic Church".
Some Catholic writers such as Kenneth Whitehead argue that the proper name of the Church is the "Catholic Church" rather than the "Roman Catholic Church". Kenneth Whitehead and Patrick Madrid argue that the term "Roman Catholic" has Anglican origins and that the term is used to leave open the possibility that there are other "Catholic" churches.
The name "Roman Catholic Church" is occasionally used by popes, bishops, other clergy and laity, who do not see it as opprobrious or having the suggested overtone. The use of "Roman", "Holy" and "Apostolic" are accepted by the Church as descriptive names. Some US states and the country of England require the Church to use the legal name "Roman Catholic Church". At the time of the 16th-century Reformation, the Church itself "claimed the word catholic as its title over Protestant or Reformed churches". It believes that it is the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.
Throughout the years, in various instances, official Church documents have used both the terms "Catholic Church" and "Roman Catholic Church" to refer to the worldwide Church as a whole, including Eastern Catholics, as when Pope Pius XII taught in Humani Generis that "the Mystical Body of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same thing". However, some Easterners, though in communion with the Bishop of Rome, apply the adjective "Roman" to the Latin or Western Church alone. Representatives of the Catholic Church are at times required to use the term "Roman Catholic Church" in certain dialogues, especially in ecumenical milieu, since some Protestants consider themselves authentic instances of Catholic faith.
In the 21st century, the three terms Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Catholic Church continue to appear in various books and publications, and scholarly debates on the proper form of reference to the Catholic Church within specific contexts continue. For instance, the Catechism of the Catholic Church does not contain the term "Roman Catholic Church", referring to the Church only by names such as "Catholic Church" (as in its title), while the Advanced Catechism Of Catholic Faith And Practice states that the term Roman is used within the name of the Church to emphasize that the center of unity of the Church is the Roman See.
There is controversy about the name "Roman Catholic Church" because of its use by some outside the Church to suggest that the Church in Rome is only one part of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. This argument is linked especially with the Anglican Branch Theory, (i.e., that the Church in communion with the Pope is only one branch of a divided Catholic Church, of which the Eastern Orthodox Church and Anglicanism are the other two branches).
In 1864, the Holy Office rejected the Branch Theory, affirming in a letter written to the English Bishops that the Roman Church is not just a part of the Catholic Church and stating that "there is no other Catholic Church except that which is built on the one man, Peter ...." In 1870, English bishops attending the First Vatican Council raised objections to the expression "Holy Roman Catholic Church" which appeared in the schema (the draft) of the Council's Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith. These bishops proposed that the word "Roman" be omitted out of concern that use of the term "Roman Catholic" would lend support to proponents of the Branch Theory. While the Council overwhelmingly rejected this proposal, the text was finally modified to read "The Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church".[note 1]
The Second Vatican Council did not use the term "Roman Catholic Church", and in one important passage replaced it with an equivalent phrase, "the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in union with that successor", while also giving in a footnote a reference to two earlier documents in which the word "Roman" was used explicitly.
The Second Vatican Council's dogmatic constitution Lumen gentium declares that the phrase "Roman Church" has been applied in the Tridentine Profession of Faith to the Church itself, the Church "governed by the successor of Saint Peter and by the bishops in communion with him". Even as far back as 1208 the adjective "Roman" was applied to the Church "outside which we believe that no one is saved".
While the phrase "Roman Catholic Church" does not appear in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Advanced Catechism of Catholic Faith and Practice states that the term "Roman" is used within the name of the Church to emphasize that the centre of unity of the Church is the Roman See.
Some Eastern-rite Catholics reject the description of themselves as "Roman", even though they're a part of the Catholic Church. Others are proud to call themselves Roman Catholics, and "Roman Catholic" sometimes even appears in the compound name of Eastern Catholic parish churches, e.g. St. Mary's Byzantine Roman Catholic Church.
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The Jewish Museum, one of the world's largest and most important institutions devoted to exploring the remarkable scope and diversity of Jewish culture, was founded in 1904 in the library of The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where it was housed for more than four decades. In 1944, Frieda Schiff Warburg, widow of the prominent businessman and philanthropist, Felix Warburg, who had been a Seminary trustee, donated the family mansion at 1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street to the Seminary for use as the Museum.
Located along New York's Museum Mile, this elegant former residence has been the home of the Museum since 1947. A sculpture court was installed alongside the Mansion in 1959, and the Albert A. List Building was added in 1963 to provide additional exhibition and program space. In 1989, a major expansion and renovation project was undertaken. Upon completion in June 1993, the expansion doubled the Museum's gallery space, created new space for educational programs, provided significant improvements in public amenities, and added a two-floor permanent exhibition called Culture and Continuity: The Jewish Journey . The expanded Jewish Museum preserves the French Gothic chateau-style exterior of the original Warburg Mansion, which was designed by architect Charles P.H. Gilbert and completed in 1908.
Judge Mayer Sulzberger donated the first gift of 26 objects of fine and ceremonial art to the library of The Jewish Theological Seminary of America with the suggestion that a Jewish museum be formed. Subsequent gifts and purchases have helped to form the Museum's distinguished collection and develop the concept of the institution, whose mission has been to preserve, study and interpret Jewish cultural history through the use of authentic art and artifacts, linking both Jews and non-Jews to a rich body of values and traditions. Today, The Jewish Museum's permanent collection, which has grown to more than 26,000 objects -- paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, ethnographic material, archaeological artifacts, numismatics, ceremonial objects, and broadcast media materials -- is the largest and most important of its kind in the world.
The Jewish Museum regularly presents large temporary exhibitions of an interdisciplinary nature. Such exhibitions often employ a combination of art and artifacts interpreted through the lens of social history in order to explore important ideas and topics. The Museum's highly successful The Dreyfus Affair: Art, Truth and Justice (1987), Gardens and Ghettos: The Art of Jewish Life in Italy (1989), From Court Jews to the Rothschilds: Art, Patronage and Power 1600-1800 (1996), ASSIGNMENT: RESCUE, The Story of Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee (1997) and Berlin Metropolis: Jews and the New Culture 1890-1918 (1999) are examples of this type of exhibition.
The Museum is also known for its exhibitions of fine arts interpreted in the context of social history, such as Painting a Place in America: Jewish Artists in New York, 1900-1945 (1991) ; social history exhibitions such as Bridges and Boundaries: African Americans and American Jews (1992); and monograph shows of significant artists such as Camille Pissarro (1995), Marc Chagall (1996), Chaim Soutine (1998) and George Segal (1998). The Museum also regularly presents the works of contemporary artists in group exhibitions such as Too Jewish? Challenging Traditional Identities (1996) and one-person shows like Bordering on Fiction: Chantal Akerman's "D'Est" (1997). Its education department presents a diverse and wide-ranging array of programs for individuals, groups, families and schools.
For nearly a century, The Jewish Museum has illuminated the Jewish experience, both secular and religious, demonstrating the strength of Jewish identity and culture. Its unparalleled collection and unique exhibitions offer a wide range of opportunities for exploring multiple facets of the Jewish experience, past and present, and for educating current and future generations. It is a source of education, inspiration and shared human values for people of all cultures.
Explore The Jewish Museum's history in 100 Years at The Jewish Museum: A Timeline (1904 - 2004).
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Until the Aswan High Dam was built, Egypt received a yearly inundation - an annual flood - of the Nile. The ancient Egyptians did not realise this, but the flood came due to the heavy summer rains in the Ethiopian highlands, swelling the different tributaries and other rivers that joined and became the Nile. This happened yearly, between June and September, in a season the Egyptians called akhet - the inundation. This was seen by the Egyptians as a yearly coming of the god Hapi, bringing fertility to the land.
The first signs of the inundation were seen at Aswan by the end of June, reaching its swelling to its fullest at Cairo by September. The flood would then decrease in size around two weeks later, leaving behind a deposit of rich, black silt. The amount of silt left behind due to the height of the Nile determined the amount of crops that the Egyptians could grow - if the inundation was too low, it would be a year of famine.
The Egyptians learned a method of measuring the height of the Nile known as the Nilometre.
Although all Nilometres used by the Egyptians had a single obvious purpose, to mark the highest point of Inundation, they were constructed in one of three different formats -- a slab or pillar, a well or a series of steps. All three were calibrated using the same unit of measurement, the cubit; the Egyptians broke the cubit into smaller units, which allowed them to keep remarkably accurate records, perhaps more accurate than would have been warranted for the purposes of merely agriculture and taxation.
The Nilometre on Elephantine Island near the First Cataract deep in southern Egypt always held supreme importance. It was the first outpost where the floods exerted themselves and the first to know when they were over, but the religious significance of the might might have overshadowed its strategic location. It was the home-place of Khnum, the ram-headed god of Inundation. During the Eleventh Dynasty a sanctuary was built on the island specifically to celebrate Inundations. A new Nilometre replaced a much older one at the edge of Khnum's Temple during the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty; somewhat later, in Dynasty Thirty, a riverside terrace and another Nilometre was added to the nearby Temple of Satet, one of Khnum's celestial consorts. When Egypt fell to Rome, that did not mean an end to Nilometres on Elephantine Island, for Khnum's Nilometre received a new calibrated staircase and a granite roof from the Romans.
-- Ralph Vaughan, Nilometers: Measuring the Universe
The Nilometres were usually a series of steps by the Nile, where the water level against the steps would show how high the Nile would rise and records of the maximum height of the inundation could be taken. There are Nilometres at the temples at Elephantine, Philae, Edfu, Esna, Kom Ombo and Dendera. These were build through pharaonic times up until Roman times. There was even a Nilometre built during early Islamic times at el-Rhoda in Cairo, which was possibly the site of an ancient Nilometre, though it used a pillar rather than the usual steps.
The ancient Egyptians viewed Sirius as the bringer of new life. This was because Sirius was newly visible in the sky at the time of the flooding of the Nile River, the life-giving inundation which yearly fertilised their crops.
The inundation was also around the time that the Egyptians noticed the rising of the 'dog star' Sirius. The goddess Sopdet (Sothis) was the personification of this star, represented as a woman with a star as her headdress, or as a seated cow with a plant between her horns (just as Seshat's hieroglyph might have been a flower or a star.) Her star was the most important of the stars to the ancient Egyptians, and the rising of this star came at the time of inundation and the start of the Egyptian new year. She was linked closely with Isis, just as her husband Sah (the star Orion) and son Soped were linked with Osiris and Horus.
Isis' sister Nephthys is also somewhat linked to the inundation - in one particular tale, she represents the desert while Osiris represents the inundation itself. When the Nile flood is high enough to reach the desert, flowers bloom in the barren red land. In the story, Osiris and Nephthys have a drunken union, where Osiris leaves behind his garland of melilot flowers. As the inundation was a sign of fertility, Osiris and Nephthys were thought to have had a child - Anubis, god of mummification.
Now because the Ancient Egyptian calendar was slightly out of step with the solar and lunar year - the Egyptian calendar was out by 6 hours. As time went on, the inundation came occasionally during the season of akhet, so the Egyptians relied on the star, rather than the season, as the herald of both the new year and the yearly flood.
The other two seasons were peret (growing) and shemu (harvest). During the growing season (after the inundation had receded, if not exactly in the season according to the calendar) the Egyptians planted their crops - around October and November - and tended to the fields. The Egyptians watered their crops using an irrigation system of canals or by bringing water to the fields in basins or by using the shaduf, which is still in use in Egypt today, to raise water from the river to the bank of the Nile. By the time the Nile reached its lowest level, some time around March or April, the crops would be ready for the harvest.
During the inundation, though, there was nothing to do for the Egyptian farmer. Rather than doing nothing for a whole season, the Egyptians would do other tasks rather than paying tax. (Tax was usually taken out of the crops that the farmers grew, and during inundation, the farmland was covered by water!) During the Old Kingdom, this work took on the form of working on building pyramids.
This was not done, as originally and incorrectly thought, by slave labour. In fact, it was done by Egyptian citizens who had little else to do for one season a year. These men were also 'paid' for their work - workmen at the pyramids of the Giza Plateau were given beer, thrice daily - five kinds of beer and four kinds of wine!
If Egypt had a drought or a year of plenty, it was the will of the Nile god Hapi. The Egyptians gave him offerings and worship to hopefully bring a good flood that wasn't too high or too low. They celebrated the 'Arrival of Hapi', hoping that their houses wouldn't be washed away, or that the Nile would rise enough to provide both water and silt for the farmland. But the Egyptians, despite being able to measure the flood, couldn't change the situation if the Nile's waters weren't at the required level. To them, the inundation was truly in the hands' of the gods.
Who are we?
Tour Egypt aims to offer the ultimate Egyptian adventure and intimate knowledge about the country. We offer this unique experience in two ways, the first one is by organizing a tour and coming to Egypt for a visit, whether alone or in a group, and living it firsthand. The second way to experience Egypt is from the comfort of your own home: online.
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August 10, 2010 > Free vision curriculum guides available
Free vision curriculum guides available
Submitted By Natalie Wolfrom
In today's economy, educational tools are expensive for both students and educators. School textbook prices have risen alarmingly in recent years; depending on the subject, a single elementary textbook can range in price from $30 to $100.
For 30 years, the Foundation of the American Academy of Ophthalmology's Museum of Vision has provided educational materials for physicians, teachers, and parents interested in teaching children about the eye, vision, and ophthalmology. The museum has created an entire curriculum to teach children about the fascinating and spectacular science of vision. The museum's materials are suitable for ages 10-14, but can be adapted for other age groups.
The free teacher workbooks created by the museum focus on the human eye, the differences between human and animal vision, perspective, and how the brain processes images like optical illusions and 3D. The guides are filled with discussion points and fun interactive activities. Each guide can be downloaded at www.museumofvision.org/education and is free of charge:
Eye Openers: Exploring Optical Illusions is designed to help educators teach basic concepts of vision including binocular vision, persistence of vision, and eye-brain connection. It includes activities for youngsters and provides appropriate handouts.
Animal Eyes(r) describes the basic concepts of vision and explores the amazing eyes of the animal kingdom. The booklet teaches about the human visual system, how human eyes differ from animal eyes, seeing in the dark, and color vision.
Art and Vision: Seeing in 3D(r) describes the concepts of vision and special visual techniques that help to create the illusion of depth. It includes sections on size scaling, overlapping, atmospheric perspective, and linear perspective.
"I am very appreciative of the [educational] materials. I know that they would be very helpful for me in teaching my students about the eye and its wonders," said Scott A. Blanchard, teacher at the Biscotti Educational Center, in Macomb, Michigan.
Those interested in getting the curriculum guides can download the free PDF version online by visiting www.museumofvision.org/education. Once there, click on the link "Read More" found under any of the three booklets. A new page will open with the appropriate booklet information. Scroll to the bottom of the page to find a free downloadable version of the booklet.
The Museum of Vision is an educational program of The Foundation of the American Academy of Ophthalmology. It is the only institution in the United States whose sole purpose is to preserve the history of ophthalmology and celebrate its unique contributions to science and health. For more information on the Museum of Vision, visit www.museumofvision.org.
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M. K. Hurd, ASCE Member
Back to "For the Record"
Civil engineering students from Illinois and Purdue universities in May staged what is believed to be the world's first concrete canoe on the Inland Sea, a tiny lake in east-central Illinois. The Illinois canoe weighted in at 360 lb (163 kg) compared to a mere 125 lb (57 kg) for the Purdue canoe. Although pre-race odds heavily favored Purdue, Illinois emerged the victor winning three of five heats on the 1240 ft (317 m) course. (Note that the conversion is incorrect. But, since 317 m translates to 1040 ft, the "2" was probably a typo.) Fastest time for an individual heat was 2 minutes, 46 seconds. (We travel this distance today in approximately one half that time.) The two schools were about evenly matched as to the number of students dunked in the lake but the Illinois win was attributed to greater expertise with the paddles.
Both canoes were made of ferro cement, a special form of reinforced concrete, made of several layers of small-gage wire-mesh reinforcement embedded in a thin section of rich mortar. (Sounds pretty much like the "adaptive reinforcement" that we use today.) Differing from ordinary reinforced concrete, its behavior approaches that of a homogeneous material, and some designs have been made based on the assumption of equal tensile and compressive strength. (Why didn't we read this before we started in 1986? This is the assertion that we made in our 2001 design report; it only took us 15 years to come to that conclusion.)
The whole affair began nearly two years ago when University of Illinois civil engineering students under the guidance of Professor Clyde Kesler, a fellow of ASCE, built the "Mis-Led." They used #3 reinforcing bars bent and welded at each end of the canoe to make the gunwales and keel. A single rib of #3 bar was welded to the gunwales and keel at mid-length. Four layers of chicken wire (At least we referred to this in the late '80s as a "poultry restraining device" to give our reinforcement's name a high-tech ring.) were placed over this frame.
A stiff mortar was troweled onto the wire mesh. Final thickness of the the hull averaged 0.5 in. (13 mm). No forms were used.
When Professor John McLaughlin, member of ASCE and head of civil engineering at Purdue, told his students of the Illinois achievement, they decided to build their own canoe and to challenge Illinois to a race. With guidance from Charles H. Scholer, and Robert H. Lee, members of ASCE and civil engineering professors at Purdue, the ASCE Student Chapter took on the project, adapting plans for a conventional racing canoe. Unlike the Illinois team, Purdue created a mold of insulating foam plastic to the exact contours of the canoe's interior and covered it with thin plastic sheeting. (Wait a minute! I know a lot of schools who claim to have done this first.) Over this they assembled their reinforcement to the desired shape. They also used four layers of chicken wire netting (There they go again stealing our claim to multi-layered "adaptive reinforcement."), with supplementary reinforcement of #2 bars laid along the keel and gunwales. Their lightweight mortar was plastered onto the mesh to create an average shell thickness of 0.375 in. (10 mm).
Foamed polystyrene plastic blocks, built in at each end and encased within the mortar shell, provided positive buoyancy for the Purdue canoe. (Well, at least we've made some progress in this regard. But, after 30 years, I guess that we should.)
First prize was a slender shaft of exposed aggregate concrete, mounted on a sawed concrete base and topped by a plaster-of-paris canoe model. Another trophy, created by the Purdue ASCE group, was a concrete "life preserver" made of normal weight concrete so heavy that two men were required to lift it. (Hey, I want one of these babies in our trophy case. To heck with those shiny gold cups that they give out now. - Maybe I can get Illinois or Purdue to put them on e-bay and get ASCE to make a bid. These keepsakes would certainly make nice trophies for the 150th anniversary.)
Cheered by the success of this first race, the two student groups expressed the hope that the concrete canoe race might become an annual event with participation by other ASCE Student Chapters within canoe-hauling distance of a point halfway between West Lafayette and Champaign-Urbana. How about it Rose, Notre Dame, Northwestern, etc. (No one could have imagined how far we would come.)
Back to "For the Record"
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Narrator: This is Science Today. Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives. In fact, the genetic codes of chimps and humans are 99 percent identical.
Pollard: One percent difference doesn't sound like a lot, but then you have to remember that there's about 3 billion letters in the genome, so 1 percent is still millions of letters.
Narrator: Katie Pollard is an associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco's Institute for Human Genetics.
Pollard: Fifteen million human-specific changes have happened in the last 6 million years. So, it's not completely trivial to go through each of those and think about what difference it might have made.
Narrator: Pollard and her colleagues are comparing the genetic sequences of humans and chimps more closely than ever to find out what is it about our genes that enables us to develop uniquely human capabilities. In fact, Pollard created a software program that can tease out such information from DNA.
Pollard: We want to use these techniques to try to figure out which of those 15 million changes are the ones that most likely made a difference.Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
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Viral arthritis is swelling and irritation (inflammation) of the joints from a viral infection.
Causes, incidence, and risk factors
Arthritis may be a symptom of many virus-related illnesses. It usually disappears on its own without any lasting effects.
It may occur with:
It may also occur after immunization with the rubella vaccine. This is a common form of childhood joint discomfort.
While many people are infected with these viruses or receive the rubella vaccine, only a few people develop arthritis. No risk factors have been established.
The main symptoms are joint pain and swelling of one or more joints.
Signs and tests
A physical examination shows joint inflammation. A blood test (serology) for viruses may be performed. In some cases, a small amount of fluid may be removed from the affected joint to determine the cause of the inflammation.
Your doctor may prescribe pain medicines to relieve discomfort. You doctor may also prescribe antiviral or anti-inflammatory medications.
If joint inflammation is severe, aspiration of fluid from the affected joint may relieve pain.
The outcome is usually good. Most viral arthritis disappears within several days or weeks when the virus-related disease goes away.
There are usually no complications.
Calling your health care provider
Call for an appointment with your health care provider if arthritis symptoms last longer than a few weeks.
There is no known way to prevent viral arthritis.
Espinoza LR. Infections of bursae, joints, and bones. In: Goldman L, Ausiello D, eds. Cecil Medicine. 23rd ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Saunders Elsevier; 2007:chap 293.
Ohl CA. Infectious arthritis of native joints. In: Mandell GL, Bennett JE, Dolin R, eds. Principles and Practice of Infectious Diseases. 7th ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Churchill Livingstone Elsevier; 2009:chap 102.
Last reviewed 12/6/2011 by David C. Dugdale, III, MD, Professor of Medicine, Division of General Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine; Jatin M. Vyas, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Assistant in Medicine, Division of Infectious Disease, Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital. Also reviewed by David Zieve, MD, MHA, Medical Director, A.D.A.M., Inc.
- The information provided herein should not be used during any medical emergency or for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition.
- A licensed medical professional should be consulted for diagnosis and treatment of any and all medical conditions.
- Call 911 for all medical emergencies.
- Links to other sites are provided for information only -- they do not constitute endorsements of those other sites.
Any duplication or distribution of the information contained herein is strictly prohibited.
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Here's the buzz on bugs this summer: Because of all the rain we've had, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is predicting one of the worst mosquito seasons in recent history. So how do you protect your children from being a mosquito snack? Parents can decrease a child's risk of being bitten by using insect repellent.
"The most effective type of repellent on the market contains DEET, a pesticide that works by masking our release of carbon dioxide and body odor. That's what mosquitoes are attracted to," says Robert Edelman, M.D., professor of medicine and pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and director of the Travelers' Health Clinic at the University of Maryland Medical Center. "When putting insect repellent on children, use a product with a DEET concentration of no more than 10 percent," adds Dr. Edelman.
DEET was developed by the U.S. government in the 1940's. Its chemical name is N,N-diethyl-m-toluamide. Some people worry about the toxicity of DEET. Therefore, they may opt to use insect repellents that contain plant oils, like citronella, soybean or eucalyptus, as the active ingredients. Studies of these products, however, show they are not as effective as DEET in preventing mosquito bites.
Repellents vary, they come in many different forms, including liquids, creams, lotions and sticks. They also have different concentrations of the active ingredient. "It's important to read the label and closely follow the directions," says Dr. Edelman.
It is not necessary to put insect repellent on children every time they venture outdoors. Dr. Edelman says mosquitoes are most active in the early morning and late evening, making these good times to consider repellent. Also, he says it is a good idea to use repellent when children play in a wooded area or near water. "Avoid applying the repellent to a child's face or hands to reduce eye and mouth contact, and never put it on a cut or irritated skin," he says.
Mosquitoes are attracted to dark colors. Dressing children in light colors, like white or tan as opposed to navy blue or black, may decrease their chance of being bitten. In addition, pants, long sleeve shirts and socks reduce the amount of exposed skin, cutting the risk of getting a mosquito bite.
In the United States, mosquitoes are mostly just a nuisance, but in much of the world, their bite can cause serious illnesses and even death. Overseas, almost 700 million persons are infected each year with mosquito-borne illnesses like malaria, dengue fever and encephalitis.
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Published in The Huffington Post
16 November 2009 – Today, nearly 200 million children under the age of five who live in the developing world suffer from stunted growth as a result of chronic maternal and childhood undernutrition.
Undernutrition steals a child's strength and makes illnesses that the body might otherwise fight off far more dangerous. But far more devastating is the fact that more than one-third of the children who die from pneumonia, diarrhea and other illnesses could have survived had they not been undernourished.
The 1,000 days from conception until a child's second birthday are the most critical for a child's development. Nutritional deficiencies during this critical period can reduce the ability to fight and survive disease, and can impair their social and mental capacities.
Those who survive often suffer poorer physical health throughout their lives, and damaged cognitive abilities that limit their capacity to learn and to earn a decent income. They become trapped in an intergenerational cycle of ill-health and poverty.
Stunted growth is a consequence of chronic poor nutrition in early childhood. Stunting is associated with developmental problems and is often impossible to correct once it has occurred. A child who is stunted is likely to experience a lifetime of poor health and underachievement, so the answer lies in prevention.
According to a report released last week by UNICEF, "Tracking Progress on Child and Maternal Nutrition," reducing and even eliminating undernutrition is feasible. Of all the proven interventions, exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months - together with nutritionally adequate foods from six months- can have a significant impact on child survival and stunting.
Good progress has been made in the delivery of cost-effective solutions to undernutrition, including micronutrients, to vulnerable populations worldwide. An example is providing more children access to iodized salt and vitamin A supplements. In the world's least developed countries, the percentage of children under five years receiving essential doses of vitamin A supplements has more than doubled, from 41 percent in 2000 to 88 percent in 2008. This has contributed to reduced infant and child mortality.
While 90 per cent of children who are stunted live in Asia and Africa, progress has been made on both continents. In Asia the prevalence of stunting dropped from about 44 percent in 1990 to an estimated 30 percent in 2008, while in Africa it fell from around 38 per cent in 1990 to an estimated 34 percent in 2008.
Global commitments on food security, nutrition and sustainable agriculture are part of a wider agenda that will help address the critical issues raised in this report. Unless attention is paid to addressing the causes of child and maternal undernutrition today, the costs will be considerably higher tomorrow.
Ann Veneman is the Executive Director of UNICEF. UNICEF is on the ground in over 150 countries to help children survive and thrive, from early childhood through adolescence. For more information about the report, "Tracking Progress on Child and Maternal Nutrition," go to www.unicef.org.
About the UNICEF Executive Director
Ann M. Veneman assumed the leadership of UNICEF on 1 May 2005, becoming the fifth Executive Director to lead UNICEF in its 60-year history. Prior to joining UNICEF, Veneman served as Secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture.
At UNICEF, Veneman directs a global agency of over 10,000 staff and annual total resources of more than $3 billion, funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of governments, businesses, foundations and individuals. Since assuming the position of Executive Director, she has traveled around the world, witnessing firsthand the work of UNICEF, speaking at meetings and conferences, and visiting heads of state or government and other partners.
For further information, please contact:
Christopher de Bono, UNICEF NY,
Tel + 1 212 303 7984;
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Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter
Currently, astronomers have two competing models for planetary formation. In one, the planets form in a single, monolithic collapse. In the second, the core forms first and then slowly accretes gas and dust. However, in both situations, the process must be complete before the radiation pressure from the star blows away the gas and dust. While this much is certain, the exact time frames have remained another matter of debate. It is expected that this amount should be somewhere in the millions of years, but low end estimates place it at only a few million, whereas upper limits have been around 10 million. A new paper explores IC 348, a 2-3 million year old cluster with many protostars with dense disks to determine just how much mass is left to be made into planets.
The presence of dusty disks is frequently not directly observed in the visible portion of the spectra. Instead, astronomers detect these disks from their infrared signatures. However, the dust is often very opaque at these wavelengths and astronomers are unable to see through it to get a good understanding of many of the features in which they’re interested. As such, astronomers turn to radio observations, to which disks are partially transparent to build a full understanding. Unfortunately, the disks glow very little in this regime, forcing astronomers to use large arrays to study their features. The new study uses data from the Submillimeter Array located atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii.
To understand how the disks evolved over time, the new study aimed to compare the amount of gas and dust left in IC 348′s disc to younger ones in star forming regions in Taurus, Ophiuchus, and Orion which all had ages of roughly 1 million years. For IC 348, the team found 9 protoplanetary disks with masses from 2-6 times the mass of Jupiter. This is significantly lower than the range of masses in the Taurus and Ophiuchus star forming regions which had protoplanetary clouds ranging to over 100 Jupiter masses.
If planets are forming in IC 348 at the same frequency in which they form in systems astronomers have observed elsewhere, this would seem to suggest that the gravitational collapse model is more likely to be correct since it doesn’t leave a large window in which forming planets could accrete. If the core accretion model is correct, then planetary formation must have begun very quickly.
While this case don’t set any firm pronouncements on which model of planetary formation is dominant, such 2-3 million year old systems could provide an important test bed to explore the rate of depletion of these reservoirs.
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Semiconductor companies are whipping up a new generation of chips to bring richer video and better battery life to personal computers and help them hold off threats from tablets and increasingly powerful smart phones.
Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., whose processors are the "brains" of PCs, are unveiling significant changes to their chips' designs at this week's International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Tablet computers and other gadgets have taken on many of the tasks once performed by PCs, and there are already signs that those devices - led by Apple Inc.'s iPad - are eating away at PC sales.
Intel and AMD are responding with new chips designed to make people think twice before picking a tablet over a new PC. The new chips won't dampen the success of tablets, but they will make traditional, low-cost computers more competitive - by making them better at doing graphics-intensive tasks and playing video.
The improvements that Intel and AMD make to their products are felt with every keystroke or click of a mouse, even if most computer buyers aren't paying attention to the intricacies of chip design.
For example, people have come to expect the benefits of Moore's Law, even if they don't know the technical specifics underlying the prediction that computer processors' performance will double every two years. The principle has guided the industry for more than 40 years, and is a key reason why computers have gotten smarter even as they've gotten smaller.
One major change in chip design that Moore's Law enabled and consumers felt came several years ago. That's when Intel and AMD took chips known as "memory controllers," which have historically been separate from a computer's main processor, and put them on the same piece of silicon as the processor itself.
The controllers act as middlemen between the processor and a computer's memory. Shortening the distance between the parts cuts the amount of time they needed to talk to each other, helping the computers work faster.
A similar thing is happening in the new generation of chips.
This time, Intel and AMD have thrown another feature - graphics, which too had historically been handled by a separate chip - also onto the same silicon as the computer's main, general-purpose processor.
And by coupling graphics more tightly with a computer's main processor, there's another benefit besides faster communication. The power the parts need to talk to each other is also reduced, leading to longer battery life.
Think of what's happening in chips like what's happened with cell phones: Technical innovations mean more stuff can fit into a smaller space. In the case of computer processors, Moore's Law is driven by the fact that transistors, the tiny on-off switches that regulate the flow of data in computer chips, keep getting smaller.
"It's a natural evolution of integration," said Jon Peddie, who studies the semiconductor industry as president of Jon Peddie Research. "We keep putting more and more stuff into the processor - now it's graphics' turn to get shoved into the processor along with all the stuff that previous generations have shoved in. The big difference this time is because of the processors' smaller size, the capability of the graphics is significantly better."
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Children need to know that their parents and adults close to them think homework is important. If they know their parents care, children have a good reason to complete assignments and turn them in on time. There is a lot that you can do to show that you value education and homework.
Set a Regular Time.
Finding a regular time for homework helps children finish assignments. The best schedule is one that works for your child and your family. What works well in one household may not work in another. Of course, a good schedule depends in part on your child's age, as well as individual needs. For instance, one youngster may work best in the afternoon after an hour of play, and another may be more efficient after dinner (although late at night, when children are tired, is seldom a good time).
Outside activities, such as sports or music lessons, may mean that you need a flexible schedule. Your child may study after school on some days and in the evening on others. If there isn't enough time to finish homework, your child may need to drop some outside activity. Homework must be a high priority.
You'll need to work with your elementary school child to develop a schedule. An older student can probably make up a schedule independently, although you'll want to make sure it's a good one. It may help to write out the schedule and put it in a place where you'll see it often, such as the refrigerator door.
Some families have a required amount of time that children must devote to homework or some other learning activity each school night (the length of time can vary depending upon the child's age). For instance, if your seventh-grader knows she's expected to spend an hour doing homework, reading, or visiting the library, she may be less likely to rush through assignments so that she can watch television. A required amount of time may also discourage her from "forgetting" to bring home assignments and help her adjust to a routine.
Pick a Place.
A study area should have lots of light, supplies close by, and be fairly quiet.
A study area doesn't have to be fancy. A desk in the bedroom is nice, but for many youngsters the kitchen table or a corner of the living room works just fine.
Your child may enjoy decorating a special study corner. A plant, a brightly colored container to hold pencils, and some favorite artwork taped to the walls can make study time more pleasant.
Turn off the television and discourage social telephone calls during homework time. (A call to a classmate about an assignment may, however, be helpful.)
Some youngsters work well with quiet background music, but loud noise from the stereo or radio is not OK. One Virginia junior high school history teacher laments, "I've actually had a kid turn in an assignment that had written in the middle, `And George Washington said, "Ohhhhh, I love you."' The kid was so plugged into the music that he wasn't concentrating."
If you live in a small or noisy household, try having all family members take part in a quiet activity during homework time. You may need to take a noisy toddler outside or into another room to play. If distractions can't be avoided, your child may want to complete assignments in a nearby library.
Provide Supplies and Identify Resources.
For starters, collect pencils, pens, erasers, writing paper, an assignment book, and a dictionary. Other things that might be helpful include glue, a stapler, paper clips, maps, a calculator, a pencil sharpener, tape, scissors, a ruler, index cards, a thesaurus, and an almanac. Keep these items together in one place if possible. If you can't provide your child with needed supplies, check with the teacher, school guidance counselor, or principal about possible sources of assistance.
For books and other information resources, check with the school library or local public library. Some libraries have homework centers designed especially to assist children with school assignments (there may even be tutors and other kinds of individual assistance).
These days many schools have computers in classrooms, and many households have personal computers. However, you don't have to have a computer in your home in order for your child to complete homework assignments successfully.
You may want to ask the teacher to explain school policy about the use of computers--or typewriters or any special equipment--for homework. Certainly, computers can be a great learning tool and helpful for some assignments. They can be used for word processing and on-line reference resources, as well as educational programs and games to sharpen skills. Some schools may offer after-school programs where your child can use the school computers. And many public libraries make computers available to children.
Set a Good Example.
Children are more likely to study if they see you reading, writing, and doing things that require thought and effort on your part. Talk with your child about what you're reading and writing even if it's something as simple as making the grocery list. Tell them about what you do at work. Encourage activities that support learning--for example, educational games, library visits, walks in the neighborhood, trips to the zoo or museums, and chores that teach a sense of responsibility.
Show an Interest.
Make time to take your child to the library to check out materials needed for homework (and for fun too), and read with your child as often as you can. Talk about school and learning activities in family conversations. Ask your child what was discussed in class that day. If he doesn't have much to say, try another approach. For example, ask your child to read aloud a story he wrote or discuss the results of a science experiment.
Another good way to show your interest is to attend school activities, such as parent-teacher meetings, shows, and sports events. If you can, volunteer to help in the classroom or at special events. Getting to know some classmates and other parents not only shows you're interested but helps build a network of support for you and your child.
(This information is provided by the U.S. Department of Education.)
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Martin De Biasio
Recycling materials prevents waste of potentially useful materials; however, manual sorting is labor intensive and can cause health problems. These limitations led to a demand for fully automated waste-sorting technologies based on machine-vision technologies that can sort tons of waste material every hour and operate for 24 hours a day.
However, there are certain materials that cannot be discriminated with sufficient accuracy using standard off-the-shelf vision components. To properly recycle glass, for example, different types of glasses must be individually sorted. If not, the different glass types each with a different melting point will result in an uncontrolled mixture that when melted will result in recovered glass that is prone to cracking during cooling.
Raman spectroscopy solution
In traditional machine-vision systems, glass materials may be sorted with visible-light camera systems or x-ray fluorescence systems. However, visible-light systems exhibit limited selectivity, and x-ray-based systems are expensive. These limitations can be overcome by using a classical nondestructive laboratory method known as Raman spectroscopy.
The Raman effect occurs when light interacts with the chemical structures in a material. If a material is illuminated with high-energy, monochromatic light—typically a laser light source—the incident light is scattered. Most of this light is elastically scattered by Rayleigh scattering, at the wavelength of the excitation light source, and does not provide any information about the material. However, a small part of the incident light interacts with the material and is inelastically scattered. This causes an energy difference called a Raman shift. The energy shift between the incident laser light and the inelastically scattered light is typically expressed in wavenumbers (cm-1) and is unique to the molecular composition of the material.
Until recently, Raman spectroscopy was considered unsuitable for most industrial imaging applications as it requires long measurement times and is sensitive to stray light. However, advances in camera and spectrometer technology now allow Raman signals to be acquired with high spatial and spectral resolution.
In cooperation with TOMRA Sorting Solutions, Carinthian Tech Research AG has developed a prototype of an industrial inspection system for sorting glass that is based on real-time Raman mapping spectroscopy. An OEM Raman spectrometer is used in combination with a Raman SuperHead fiber-optic probe that was integrated into a TOMRA Autosort scanner housing (see Fig. 1).
|FIGURE 1. In cooperation with TOMRA Sorting Solutions, Carinthian Tech Research AG has developed a prototype of an industrial inspection system based on real-time Raman mapping spectroscopy for sorting glass. A 532-nm laser is moved over the conveyor belt and the Raman spectrometer measures the Raman signal of fireproof and mineral glass samples.|
The spectrometer can measure Raman shifts between -230 cm-1 and 3300 cm-1 with a spectral resolution between 10 cm-1 to 15 cm-1. To enhance signal intensities, a 16-bit thermoelectrically cooled, back-thinned line array CCD sensor with 58 × 1024, 24 × 24-µm pixels is used in the spectrometer.
As glass samples have a high thermal destruct limit, a 532-nm laser with an output power of 2 W is used for the excitation of the glass. The SuperHead probe consists of a laser line filter that filters additional sidebands of the excitation laser, and a Rayleigh filter that blocks the Rayleigh scattered intensity in the Raman spectrum.
A custom lens with a diameter of 3 in. focuses the laser spot to a size of approximately 750 µm2 on the measurement samples at a distance of 250 mm. The front lens focuses the laser spot and collects the Raman scattered light from the measurement samples. A polygonal scanning mirror—i.e., a mirror with multiple facets—that rotates at a constant user-defined speed reflects the laser spot onto the different spatial positions on the conveyor belt and collects the Raman signal at these positions. A specially designed f-theta scanning lens is placed in the beam path after the scanning mirror. This optic ensures that the axis of the focused laser beam is perpendicular to the scanning plane.
To evaluate the system, mineral glasses and fireproof glasses approximately 1-2 cm in diameter were extracted from an industrial recycling process. Mineral glasses were divided into green glass, flint glass, and amber glass. Fireproof glasses were divided into peach glass, caramel glass, faint yellow glass, yellow glass, and honey glass (see Fig. 2).
|FIGURE 2. Mineral glasses and fireproof glasses approximately 1-2 cm in diameter were extracted from an industrial recycling process and used to evaluate the glass sorting system.|
The Raman system operates with a chemometric model, which is stored in the evaluation unit, to discriminate between glass types. Using the fingerprint in the Raman spectrum of the material, mineral glass and fireproof glass can be discriminated. Figure 3 shows typical Raman spectra of fireproof and mineral glass in the fingerprint range between 200 cm-1 and 1200 cm-1.
|FIGURE 3. Individual Raman spectra of glasses are compared with captured values to discriminate between glass types.|
In Fig. 3, there are three characteristic Raman peaks. These are used as features F1, F2, and F3 to discriminate between the glass types. Due to the low readout times for the measurement of the Raman spectrum of each measurement sample, there is spectral noise on the features.
Because of this, each spectrum is smoothed with a Savitzky-Golay smoothing filter and L1-normalized. As the peak position of the features F1, F2, and F3 are stable, the Raman system uses Fn = (I(A) + I(B))/2 - I(C) to calculate the local peak intensity, where I(A) and I(B) are intensities next to the maximum of the peak amplitude and I(C) is the maximum peak intensity of F1, F2, and F3. A linear classifier is then used to discriminate between glass types.
When deploying the system, the Raman spectrometer is interfaced to a PC via USB interface. The PC is also used to interface to a rotating mirror controller from Maxon Motor AG that scans the laser across the field of view of the conveyor. A graphical user interface (GUI) displayed on the PC shows the status of these devices (see Fig. 4). Once connected, the operator closes the aperture of the Raman SuperHead fiber-optic probe and takes a dark spectrum. The dark spectrum is stored in the evaluation unit to compensate for sensor noise and the influence of stray light. Once this is done, the operator opens the aperture, sets the conveyor belt speed and the integration time of the spectrometer, and starts the program.
|FIGURE 4. A graphical user interface (GUI) displayed on the PC shows the status of the spectrometer, the speed of the conveyor, and the status of the rotating motor.|
Depending on the conveyor belt speed, the laser beam is moved over the belt and measures the Raman signals of the glass samples with a minimal readout time of 8 msec. A feedback sensor that is connected to the motor controller provides information when a new facet of the polygonal scanning mirror is in position. The time between two pulses of the feedback sensor is then used to estimate the position on the conveyor belt at which the Raman signal is measured. This position is essential for the subsequent automated sorting process, which is performed with air nozzles that blow out the glass samples into the appropriate container.
To further analyze the measured data, the operator can save all the data to a hard disk. Therefore, he or she simply has to set the data file path and push the save button.
Currently, the Raman system is still in the prototype phase; before it can be applied to industrial glass recycling facilities, the speed of the system must be improved. State-of-the-art sorting systems working in the near-infrared (NIR) scan between 40 and 320 kHz—the Raman spectroscopy system currently operates at a maximum speed of 100 Hz.
Further research will include enhancing the output power of the laser, improving the optical design of the sensor, using larger optics to collect more of the Raman signal, and attaining readout times in the microsecond range. Once the speed of the system has been sufficiently improved, it will be applied to glass sorting in an industrial recycling facility.
Martin De Biasio, Dipl.-Ing., is with Carinthian Tech Research (CTR) AG (Villach, Austria; (www.ctr.at).
Carinthian Tech Research AG
Maxon Motor AG
TOMRA Sorting Solutions
Vision Systems Articles Archives
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HISTORY OF SCULPTURE
Chronological summary of major movements, styles, periods and artists that have contributed to the evolution and development of visual art.
STONE AGE ART (c.
2,500,000 - 3,000 BCE)
ORIGINS OF ART
STONE AGE ART
BRONZE AGE ART
IRON AGE ART
DARK AGES/MEDIEVAL ART
QUESTIONS ABOUT FINE ARTS
Prehistoric art comes from three epochs of prehistory: Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic. The earliest recorded art is the Bhimbetka petroglyphs (a set of 10 cupules and an engraving or groove) found in a quartzite rock shelter known as Auditorium cave at Bhimbetka in central India, dating from at least 290,000 BCE. However, it may turn out to be much older (c.700,000 BCE). This primitive rock art was followed, no later than 250,000 BCE, by simple figurines (eg. Venus of Berekhat Ram [Golan Heights] and Venus of Tan-Tan [Morocco]), and from 80,000 BCE by the Blombos cave stone engravings, and the cupules at the Dordogne rock shelter at La Ferrassie. Prehistoric culture and creativity is closely associated with brain-size and efficiency which impacts directly on "higher" functions such as language, creative expression and ultimately aesthetics. Thus with the advent of "modern" homo sapiens painters and sculptors (50,000 BCE onwards) such as Cro-Magnon Man and Grimaldi Man, we see a huge outburst of magnificent late Paleolthic sculpture and painting in France and the Iberian peninsular. This comprises a range of miniature obese venus figurines (eg. the Venuses of Willendorf, Kostenky, Monpazier, Dolni Vestonice, Moravany, Brassempouy, Garagino, to name but a few), as well as mammoth ivory carvings found in the caves of Vogelherd and Hohle Fels in the Swabian Jura. However, the greatest art of prehistory is the cave painting at Chauvet, Lascaux and Altamira.
These murals were painted in caves reserved as a sort of prehistoric art gallery, where artists began to paint animals and hunting scenes, as well as a variety of abstract or symbolic drawings. In France, they include the monochrome Chauvet Cave pictures of animals and abstract drawings, the hand stencil art at Cosquer Cave, and the polychrome charcoal and ochre images at Pech-Merle, and Lascaux. In Spain, they include polychrome images of bison and deer at Altamira Cave in Spain. Outside Europe, major examples of rock art include: Ubirr Aboriginal artworks (from 30,000 BCE), the animal figure paintings in charcoal and ochre at the Apollo 11 Cave (from 25,500 BCE) in Namibia, the Bradshaw paintings (from 17,000 BCE) in Western Australia, and the hand stencil images at the Cuevas de las Manos (Cave of the Hands) (from 9500 BCE) in Argentina, among many others.
Against a background of a new climate, improved living conditions and consequent behaviour patterns, Mesolithic art gives more space to human figures, shows keener observation, and greater narrative in its paintings. Also, because of the warmer weather, it moves from caves to outdoor sites in numerous locations across Europe, Asia, Africa, Australasia and the Americas. Mesolithic artworks include the bushman rock paintings in the Waterberg area of South Africa, the paintings in the Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka in India, and Australian Aboriginal art from Arnhem Land. It also features more 3-D art, including bas-reliefs and free standing sculpture. Examples of the latter include the anthropomorphic figurines uncovered in Nevali Cori and Göbekli Tepe near Urfa in eastern Asia Minor, and the statues of Lepenski Vir (eg. The Fish God) in Serbia. Other examples of Mesolithic portable art include bracelets, painted pebbles and decorative drawings on functional objects, as well as ceramic pottery of the Japanese Jomon culture. The greatest Mesolithic work of art is the sculpture "Thinker From Cernavoda" from Romania.
The more "settled" and populous Neolithic era saw a growth in crafts like pottery and weaving. This originated in Mesolithic times from about 9,000 BCE in the villages of southern Asia, after which it flourished along the Yellow and Yangtze river valleys in China (c.7,500 BCE) - see Neolithic Art in China - then in the fertile crescent of the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys in the Middle East (c.7,000), before spreading to India (c.5,000), Europe (c.4,000), China (3,500) and the Americas (c.2,500). Although most art remained functional in nature, there was a greater focus on ornamentation and decoration. For example, calligraphy - one of the great examples of Chinese art - first appears during this period. Neolithic art also features free standing sculpture, bronze statuettes (notably by the Indus Valley Civilization), primitive jewellery and decorative designs on a variety of artifacts. The most spectacular form of Neolithic art was architecture: featuring large-stone structures known as megaliths, ranging from the Egyptian pyramids, to the passage tombs of Northern Europe - such as Newgrange and Knowth in Ireland - and the assemblages of large upright stones (menhirs) such as those at the Stonehenge Stone Circle and Avebury Circle in England. (For more, please see: megalithic art.) However, the major medium of Neolithic art was ceramic pottery, the finest examples of which were produced around the region of Mesopotamia (see Mesopotamian art) and the eastern Mediterranean. Towards the close of this era, hieroglyphic writing systems appear in Sumer, heralding the end of prehistory.
The most famous examples of Bronze Age art appeared in the 'cradle of civilization' around the Mediterranean in the Near East, during the rise of Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), Greece, Crete (Minoan civilization) and Egypt. The emergence of cities, the use of written languages and the development of more sophisticated tools led the creation of a far wider range of monumental and portable artworks.
Egypt, arguably the greatest civilization in the history of ancient art, was the first culture to adopt a recognizable style of art. Egyptian painters depicted the head, legs and feet of their human subjects in profile, while portraying the eye, shoulders, arms and torso from the front. Other artistic conventions laid down how Gods, Pharaohs and ordinary people should be depicted, regulating such elements as size, colour and figurative position. A series of wonderful Egyptian encaustic wax paintings, known as the Fayum portraits, offer a fascinating glimpse of Hellenistic culture in Ancient Egypt. In addition, the unique style of Egyptian architecture featured a range of massive stone burial chambers, called Pyramids. Egyptian expertise in stone had a huge impact on later Greek architecture. Famous Egyptian pyramids include: The Step Pyramid of Djoser (c.2630 BCE), and The Great Pyramid at Giza (c.2550 BCE), also called the Pyramid of Khufu or 'Pyramid of Cheops'.
In Mesopotamia and Ancient Persia, Sumerians were developing their own unique building - an alternative form of stepped pyramid called a ziggurat. These were not burial chambers but man-made mountains designed to bring rulers and people closer to their Gods who according to legend lived high up in mountains to the east. Ziggurats were built from clay bricks, typically decorated with coloured glazes.
For most of Antiquity, the art of ancient Persia was closely intertwined with that of its neighbours, especially Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), and influenced - and was influenced by - Greek art. Early Persian works of portable art feature the intricate ceramics from Susa and Persepolis (c.3000 BCE), but the two important periods of Persian art were the Achaemenid Era (c.550-330 BCE) - exemplified by the monumental palaces at Persepolis and Susa, decorated with sculpture, stone reliefs, and the famous "Frieze of Archers" (Louvre, Paris) created out of enameled brick - and the Sassanid Era (226-650 CE) - noted for its highly decorative stone mosaics, gold and silver dishes, frescoes and illuminated manuscripts as well as crafts like carpet-making and silk-weaving. But, the greatest relics of Sassanian art are the rock sculptures carved out of steep limestone cliffs at Taq-i-Bustan, Shahpur, Naqsh-e Rostam and Naqsh-e Rajab.
The first important strand of Aegean art, created on Crete by the Minoans, was rooted in its palace architecture at Knossos, Phaestus, Akrotiri, Kato Zakros and Mallia, which were constructed using a combination of stone, mud-brick and plaster, and decorated with colourful murals and fresco pictures, portraying mythological animal symbols (eg. the bull) as well as a range of mythological narratives. Minoan art also features stone carvings (notably seal stones), and precious metalwork. The Minoan Protopalatial period (c.1700 BCE), which ended in a major earthquake, was followed by an even more ornate Neopalatial period (c.1700-1425 BCE), which witnessed the highpoint of the culture before being terminated by a second set of earthquakes in 1425. Minoan craftsmen are also noted for their ceramics and vase-painting, which featured a host of marine and maritime motifs. This focus on nature and events - instead of rulers and deities - is also evident in Minoan palace murals and sculptures.
Named after the metal which made it prosperous, the Bronze Age period witnessed a host of wonderful metalworks made from many different materials. This form of metallugy is exemplified by two extraordinary masterpieces: The "Ram in the Thicket" (c.2500 BCE, British Museum, London) a small Iraqi sculpture made from gold-leaf, copper, lapis lazuli, and red limestone; and The "Maikop Gold Bull" (c.2500 BCE, Hermitage, St Petersburg) a miniature gold sculpture of the Maikop Culpture, North Caucasus, Russia. The period also saw the emergence of Chinese bronzeworks (from c.1750 BCE), in the form of bronze plaques and sculptures often decorated with Jade, from the Yellow River Basin of Henan Province, Central China.
For Bronze Age civilizations in the Americas, see: Pre-Columbian art, which covers the art and crafts of Mesoamerican and South American cultures.
The Iron Age saw a huge growth in artistic activity, especially in Greece and around the eastern Mediterranean. It coincided with the rise of Hellenic (Greek-influenced) culture.
Although Mycenae was an independent Greek city in the Greek Peloponnese, the term "Mycenean" culture is sometimes used to describe early Greek art as a whole during the late Bronze Age. Initially very much under the influence of Minoan culture, Mycenean art gradually achieved its own balance between the lively naturalism of Crete and the more formal artistic idiom of the mainland, as exemplified in its numerous tempera frescoes, sculpture, pottery, carved gemstones, jewellery, glass, ornaments and precious metalwork. Also, in contrast to the Minoan "maritime trading" culture, Myceneans were warriors, so their art was designed primarily to glorify their secular rulers. It included a number of tholos tombs filled with gold work, ornamental weapons and precious jewellery.
Ancient Greek art is traditionally divided into the following periods: (1) the Dark Ages (c.1100-900 BCE). (2) The Geometric Period (c.900-700 BCE). (3) The Oriental-Style Period (c.700-625 BCE). (4) The Archaic Period (c.625-500 BCE). (5) The Classical Period (c.500-323 BCE). (6) The Hellenistic Period (c.323-100 BCE). Unfortunately, nearly all Greek painting and a huge proportion of Greek sculpture has been lost, leaving us with a collection of ruins or Roman copies. Greek architecture, too, is largely known to us through its ruins. Despite this tiny legacy, Greek artists remain highly revered, which demonstrates how truly advanced they were.
Like all craftsmen of the Mediterranean area, the ancient Greeks borrowed a number of important artistic techniques from their neighbours and trading partners. Even so, by the death of the Macedonian Emperor Alexander the Great in 323 BCE, Greek art was regarded in general as the finest ever made. Even the Romans - despite their awesome engineering and military skills - never quite overcame their sense of inferiority in the face of Greek craftsmanship, and (fortunately for us) copied Greek artworks assiduously. Seventeen centuries later, Greek architecture, sculptural reliefs, statues, and pottery would be rediscovered during the Italian Renaissance, and made the cornerstone of Western art for over 400 years.
Greek pottery developed much earlier than other art forms: by 3000 BCE the Peloponnese was already the leading pottery centre. Later, following the take-over of the Greek mainland by Indo-European tribes around 2100 BCE, a new form of pottery was introduced, known as Minyan Ware. It was the first Greek type to be made on a potter's wheel. Despite this, it was Minoan pottery on Crete - with its new dark-on-light style - that predominated during the 2nd Millennium BCE. Thereafter, however, Greek potters regained the initiative, introducing a series of dazzling innovations including: beautifully proportioned Geometric Style pottery (900-725), as well as Oriental (725-600), Black-Figure (600-480) and Red-Figure (530-480) styles. Famous Greek ceramicists include Exekias, Kleitias, Ergotimos, Nearchos, Lydos, the Amasis Painter, Andokides, Euthymides, and Sophilos (all Black-Figure), plus Douris, Brygos and Onesimos (Red-Figure).
In Etruria, Italy, the older Villanovan Culture gave way to Etruscan Civilization around 700 BCE. This reached its peak during the sixth century BCE as their city-states gained control of central Italy. Like the Egyptians but unlike the Greeks, Etruscans believed in an after-life, thus tomb or funerary art was a characteristic feature of Etruscan culture. Etruscan artists were also renowned for their figurative sculpture, in stone, terracotta and bronze. Above all Etruscan art is famous for its "joi de vivre", exemplified by its lively fresco mural painting, especially in the villas of the rich. In addition, the skill of Etruscan goldsmiths was highly prized throughout Italy and beyond. Etruscan culture, itself strongly influenced by Greek styles, had a marked impact on other cultures, notably the Hallstatt and La Tene styles of Celtic art. Etruscan culture declined from 396 BCE onwards, as its city states were absorbed into the Roman Empire.
From about 600 BCE, migrating pagan tribes from the Russian Steppes, known as Celts, established themselves astride the Upper Danube in central Europe. Celtic culture, based on exceptional trading skills and an early mastery of iron, facilitated their gradual expansion throughout Europe, and led to two styles of Celtic art whose artifacts are known to us through several key archeological sites in Switzerland and Austria. The two styles are Hallstatt (600-450) and La Tene (450-100). Both were exemplified by beautiful metalwork and complex linear designwork. Although by the early 1st Millennium CE most pagan Celtic artists had been fully absorbed into the Roman Empire, their traditions of spiral, zoomorphic, knotwork and interlace designs later resurfaced and flourished (600-1100 CE) in many forms of Hiberno-Saxon art (see below) such as illuminated Gospel manuscripts, religious metalwork, and High Cross Sculpture. Famous examples of Celtic metalwork art include the Gundestrup Cauldron, the Petrie Crown and the Broighter gold torc.
Unlike their intellectual Greek neighbours, the Romans were primarily practical people with a natural affinity for engineering, military matters, and Empire building. Roman architecture was designed to awe, entertain and cater for a growing population both in Italy and throughout their Empire. Thus Roman architectural achievements are exemplified by new drainage systems, aqueducts, bridges, public baths, sports facilities and amphitheatres (eg. the Colosseum 72-80 CE), characterized by major advances in materials (eg. the invention of concrete) and in the construction of arches and roof domes. The latter not only allowed the roofing of larger buildings, but also gave the exterior far greater grandeur and majesty. All this revolutionized the Greek-dominated field of architecture, at least in form and size, if not in creativity, and provided endless opportunity for embellishment in the way of scultural reliefs, statues, fresco murals, and mosaics. The most famous examples of Roman architecture include: the massive Colosseum, the Arch of Titus, and Trajan's Column.
If Roman architecture was uniquely grandiose, its paintings and sculptures continued to imitate the Greek style, except that its main purpose was the glorification of Rome's power and majesty. Early Roman art (c.200-27 BCE) was detailed, unidealized and realistic, while later Imperial styles (c.27 BCE - 200 CE) were more heroic. Mediocre painting flourished in the form of interior-design standard fresco murals, while higher quality panel painting was executed in tempera or in encaustic pigments. Roman sculpture too, varied in quality: as well as tens of thousands of average quality portrait busts of Emperors and other dignitaries, Roman sculptors also produced some marvellous historical relief sculptures, such as the spiral bas relief sculpture on Trajan's Column, celebrating the Emperor's victory in the Dacian war.
Early Art From Around the World
Although the history of art is commonly seen as being mainly concerned with civilizations that derived from European and Chinese cultures, a significant amount of arts and crafts appeared from the earliest times around the periphery of the known world. For more about the history and artifacts of these cultures, see: Oceanic art (from the South Pacific and Australasia), African art (from all parts of the continent) and Tribal art (from Africa, the Pacific Islands, Indonesia, Burma, Australasia, North America, and Alaska).
Constantinople, Christianity and Byzantine Art
With the death in 395 CE, of the Emperor Theodosius, the Roman empire was divided into two halves: a Western half based initially in Rome, until it was sacked in the 5th century CE, then Ravenna; and an eastern half located in the more secure city of Constantinople. At the same time, Christianity was made the exclusive official religion of the empire. These two political developments had a huge impact on the history of Western art. First, relocation to Constantinople helped to prolong Greco-Roman civilization and culture; second, the growth of Christianity led to an entirely new category of Christian art which provided architects, painters, sculptors and other craftsmen with what became the dominant theme in the visual arts for the next 1,200 years. As well as prototype forms of early Christian art, much of which came from the catacombs, it also led directly to the emergence of Byzantine art. See also: Christian Art, Byzantine Period.
Byzantine art was almost entirely religious art, and centred around its Christian architecture. Masterpieces include the awesome Hagia Sophia (532-37) in Istanbul; the Church of St Sophia in Sofia, Bulgaria (527-65); and the Church of Hagia Sophia in Thessaloniki. Byzantine art also influenced the Ravenna mosaics in the Basilicas of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, San Vitale, and Sant' Apollinare in Classe. Secular examples include: the Great Palace of Constantinople, and Basilica Cistern. As well as new architectural techniques such as the use of pendentives to spread the weight of the ceiling dome, thus permitting larger interiors, new decorative methods were introduced like mosaics made from glass, rather than stone. But the Eastern Orthodox brand of Christianity (unlike its counterpart in Rome), did not allow 3-D artworks like statues or high reliefs, believing they glorified the human aspect of the flesh rather than the divine nature of the spirit. Thus Byzantine art (eg. painting, mosaic works) developed a particular style of meaningful imagery (iconography) designed to present complex theology in a very simple way. For example, colours were used to express different ideas: gold represented Heaven; blue, the colour of human life, and so on.
After 600 CE, Byzantine architecture progressed through several periods - such as, the Middle Period (c.600-1100) and the Comnenian and Paleologan periods (c.1100-1450) - gradually becoming more and more influenced by eastern traditions of construction and decoration. In Western Europe, Byzantine architecture was superceded by Romanesque and Gothic styles, while in the Near East it continued to have a significant influence on early Islamic architecture, as illustrated by the Umayyad Great Mosque of Damascus and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.
In the absence of sculpture, Byzantine artists specialized in 2-D painting, becoming masters of panel-painting, including miniatures - notably icons - and manuscript illumination. Their works had a huge influence on artists throughout western and central Europe, as well as the Islamic countries of the Middle East.
Located on the remote periphery of Western Europe, Ireland remained free of interference from either Rome or the barbarians that followed. As a result, Irish Celtic art was neither displaced by Greek or Roman idioms, nor buried in the pagan Dark Ages. Furthermore, the Church was able to establish a relatively secure network of Irish monasteries, which rapidly became important centres of religious learning and scholarship, and gradually spread to the islands off Britain and to parts of Northern England. This monastic network soon became a major patron of the arts, attracting numerous scribes and painters into its scriptoriums to create a series of increasingly ornate illuminated gospel manuscripts: examples include: the Cathach of Colmcille (c.560), the Book of Dimma (c.625), the Durham Gospels (c.650), the Book of Durrow (c.670), and the supreme Book of Kells (also called the Book of Columba), considered to be the apogee of Western calligraphy. These gospel illuminations employed a range of historiated letters, rhombuses, crosses, trumpet ornaments, pictures of birds and animals, occasionally taking up whole pages (carpet pages) of geometric or interlace patterns. The creative success of these decorated manuscripts was greatly enhanced by the availability of Celtic designs from jewellery and metalwork - produced for the Irish secular elite - and by increased cultural contacts with Anglo-Saxon craftsmen in England.
Another early Christian art form developed in Ireland was religious metalwork, exemplified by such masterpieces as the Tara Brooch, the Ardagh Chalice, the Derrynaflan Chalice, and the Moylough Belt Shrine, as well as processional crosses like the 8th/9th century Tully Lough Cross and the great 12th century Cross of Cong, commissioned by Turlough O'Connor. Finally, from the late eighth century, the Church began commissioning a number of large religious crosses decorated both with scenes from the bible and abstract interlace, knotwork and other Celtic-style patterns. Examples include Muiredach's Cross at Monasterboice, County Louth, and the Ahenny High Cross in Tipperary. These scripture high crosses flourished between 900 and 1100, although construction continued as late as the 15th century.
Unfortunately, with the advent of the Vikings (c.800-1000), the unique Irish contribution to Western Civilization in general and Christianity in particular, began to fade, despite some contribution from Viking art. Thereafter, Roman culture - driven by the Church of Rome - began to reassert itself across Europe.
A Word About Asian Art
In contrast to Christianity which permits figurative representation of Prophets, Saints and the Holy family, Islam forbids all forms of human iconography. Thus Islamic art focused instead on the development of complex geometric patterns, illuminated texts and calligraphy.
In East Asia, the visual arts of India and Tibet incorporated the use of highly coloured figures (due to their wide range of pigments) and strong outlines. Painting in India was extremely diverse, as were materials (textiles being more durable often replaced paper) and size (Indian miniatures were a specialty). Chinese art included bronze sculpture, jade carving, Chinese pottery, calligraphic and brush painting, among other forms. In Japan, Buddhist temple art, Zen Ink-Painting, Yamato-e and Ukiyo-e woodblock prints were four of the main types of Japanese art.
On the continent, the revival of medieval Christian art began with Charlemagne I, King of the Franks, who was crowned Holy Roman Emperor, by Pope Leo III in 800. Charlemagne's court scriptoriums at Aachen produced a number of magnificent illuminated Christian texts, such as: the Godscalc Evangelistary, the Lorsch Gospels and the Gospels of St Medard of Soissons. Ironically, his major architectural work - the Palatine Chapel in Aachen (c.800) - was influenced not by St Peter's or other churches in Rome, but by the Byzantine-style Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna. The Carolingian empire rapidly dissolved but Carolingian Art marked an important first step in the revitalization of European culture. Furthermore, many of the Romanesque and Gothic churches were built on the foundations of Carolingian architecture. Charlemagne's early Romanesque architectural achievements were continued by the Holy Roman Emperors Otto I-III, in a style known as Ottonian Art, which morphed into the fully fledged "Romanesque." (In England and Ireland, the Romanesque style is usually called Norman architecture.)
The Church Invests in Art to Convey Its Message
The spread of Romanesque art in the 11th century coincided with the reassertiveness of Roman Christianity, and the latter's influence on secular authorities led to the Christian re-conquest of Spain (c.1031) as well as the Crusade to free the Holy Land from the grip of Islam. The success of the Crusaders and their acquisition of Holy Relics triggered a wave of new cathedrals across Europe. In addition to its influence over international politics, Rome exercised growing power via its network of Bishops and its links with Monastic orders such as the Benedictines, the Cistercians, Carthusians and Augustinian Canons. From these monasteries, its officials exercised growing administrative power over the local population, notably the power to collect tax revenues which it devoted to religious works, particularly the building of cathedrals (encompassing sculpture and metalwork, as well as architecture), illuminated gospel manuscripts, and cultural scholarship - a process exemplified by the powerful Benedictine monastery at Cluny in Burgundy.
Romanesque Architecture (c.1000-1200)
Although based on Greek and Roman Antiquity, Romanesque architecture displayed neither the creativity of the Greeks, nor the engineering skill of the Romans. They employed thick walls, round arches, piers, columns, groin vaults, narrow slit-windows, large towers and decorative arcading. The basic load of the building was carried not its arches or columns but by its massive walls. And its roofs, vaults and buttresses were relatively primitive in comparison with later styles. Above all, interiors were dim and comparatively hemmed in with heavy stone walls. Even so, Romanesque architecture did reintroduce two important forms of fine art: sculpture (which had been in abeyance since the fall of Rome), and stained glass, albeit on a minor scale. (For details of sculptors, painters, and architects from the Middle Ages, see: Medieval Artists.)
Largely financed by monastic orders and local bishops, Gothic architecture exploited a number of technical advances in pointed arches and other design factors, in order to awe, inspire and educate the masses. Thus, out went the massively thick walls, small windows and dim interiors, in came soaring ceilings ("reaching to heaven"), thin walls and stained glass windows. This transformed the interior of many cathedrals into inspirational sanctuaries, where illiterate congregations could see the story of the bible illustrated in the beautiful stained glass art of its huge windows. Indeed, the Gothic cathedral was seen by architects as representing the universe in miniature. Almost every feature was designed to convey a theological message: namely, the awesome glory of God, and the ordered nature of his universe. Religious Gothic art - that is, architecture, relief sculpture and statuary - is best exemplified by the cathedrals of Northern France, notably Notre Dame de Paris; Reims and Chartres, as well as Cologne Cathedral, St Stephen's Cathedral Vienna and, in England, Westminster Abbey and York Minster.
Strongly influenced by International Gothic, the European revival of fine art between roughly 1300 and 1600, popularly known as "the Renaissance", was a unique and (in many respects) inexplicable phenomenon, not least because of (1) the Black Death plague (1346), which wiped out one third of the European population; (2) the 100 Years War between England and France (1339-1439) and (3) the Reformation (c.1520) - none of which was conducive to the development of the visual arts. Fortunately, certain factors in the Renaissance heartland of Florence and Rome - notably the energy and huge wealth of the Florentine Medici family, and the Papal ambitions of Pope Sixtus IV (1471-84), Pope Julius II (1503-13), Pope Leo X (1513-21) and Pope Paul III (1534-45) - succeeded in overcoming all natural obstacles, even if the Church was almost bankrupted in the process.
Renaissance art was founded on a new appreciation of the arts of Classical Antiquity, a belief in the nobility of Man, as well as artistic advances in both linear perspective and realism. It evolved in three main Italian cities: first Florence, then Rome, and lastly Venice. Renaissance chronology is usually listed as follows:
Renaissance architecture employed precepts derived from ancient Greece and Rome, but kept many modern features of Byzantine and Gothic invention, such as domes and towers. Important architects included: Donato Bramante (1444-1514) the greatest exponent of High Renaisance architecture; Baldassare Peruzzi (1481-1536), an important architect and interior designer; Michele Sanmicheli (1484-1559), the leading pupil of Bramante; Jacopo Sansovino (1486-1570), the most celebrated Venetian architect; Giulio Romano (1499-1546), the chief practitioner of Italian Late Renaissance-style building design; Andrea Palladio (1508-1580), an influential theorist; and of course Michelangelo himself, who helped to design the dome for St Peter's Basilica in Rome.
Among the greatest sculptors of the Northern Renaissance were: the German limewood sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider (1460-1531), noted for his reliefs and freestanding wood sculpture; and the wood-carver Veit Stoss (1450-1533) noted for his delicate altarpieces.
It was during this period that the Catholic Counter-Reformation got going in an attempt to attract the masses away from Protestantism. Renewed patronage of the visual arts and architecture was a key feature of this propaganda campaign, and led to a grander, more theatrical style in both areas. This new style, known as Baroque art was effectively the highpoint of dramatic Mannerism.
Baroque architecture took full advantage of the theatrical potential of the urban landscape, exemplified by Saint Peter's Square (1656-67) in Rome, in front of the domed St Peter's Basilica. Its architect, Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) employed a widening series of colonnades in the approach to the cathedral, conveying the impression to visitors that they are being embraced by the arms of the Catholic Church. The entire approach is constructed on a gigantic scale, to induce feelings of awe.
In painting, the greatest exponent of Catholic Counter-Reformation art was Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) - "the Prince of painters and the painter of Princes". Other leading Catholic artists included Diego Velazquez (1599-1660), Francisco Zurbaran (1598-1664) and Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665).
In Protestant Northern Europe, the Baroque era was marked by the flowering of Dutch Realist painting, a style uniquely suited to the new bourgeois patrons of small-scale interiors, genre-paintings, portraits, landscapes and still lifes. Several schools of Dutch Realism sprang up including those of Delft, Utrecht, and Leiden. Leading members included the two immortals Rembrandt (1606-1669) and Jan Vermeer (1632-1675), as well as Frans Snyders (1579-1657), Frans Hals (1581-1666), Adriaen Brouwer (1605-38), Jan Davidsz de Heem (1606-84), Adriaen van Ostade (1610-85), David Teniers the Younger (1610-90), Gerard Terborch (1617-81), Jan Steen (1626-79), Pieter de Hooch (1629-83), and the landscape painters Aelbert Cuyp (1620-91), Jacob van Ruisdael (1628-82) and Meyndert Hobbema (1638-1709), among others.
This new style of decorative art, known as Rococo, impacted most on interior-design, although architecture, painting and sculpture were also affected. Essentially a reaction against the seriousness of the Baroque, Rococo was a light-hearted, almost whimsical style which grew up in the French court at the Palace of Versailles before spreading across Europe. Rococo designers employed the full gamut of plasterwork, murals, tapestries, furniture, mirrors, porcelain, silks and other embellishments to give the householder a complete aesthetic experience. In painting, the Rococo style was championed by the French artists Watteau (1684-1721), Fragonard (1732-1806), and Boucher (1703-70). But the greatest works were produced by the Venetian Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770) whose fantastic wall and ceiling fresco paintings took Rococo to new heights. See in particular the renaissance of French Decorative Art (1640-1792), created by French Designers especially in the form of French Furniture, at Versailles and other Royal Chateaux, in the style of Louis Quatorze (XIV), Louis Quinze (XV) and Louis Seize (XVI). As it was, Rococo symbolized the decadent indolence and degeneracy of the French aristocracy. Because of this, it was swept away by the French Revolution which ushered in the new sterner Neoclassicism, more in keeping with the Age of Enlightenment and Reason.
In architecture, Neoclassicism derived from the more restrained "classical" forms of Baroque practised in England by Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723), who designed St Paul's Cathedral. Yet another return to the Classical Orders of Greco-Roman Antiquity, the style was characterized by monumental structures, supported by columns of pillars, and topped with classical Renaissance domes. Employing innovations like layered cupolas, it lent added grandeur to palaces, churches, and other public structures. Famous Neoclassical buildings include: the Pantheon (Paris) designed by Jacques Germain Soufflot (1756-97), the Arc de Triomphe (Paris) designed by Jean Chalgrin, the Brandenburg Gate (Berlin) designed by Carl Gotthard Langhans (1732-1808), and the United States Capitol Building, designed by English-born Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764-1820), and later by Stephen Hallet and Charles Bulfinch. See also the era of American Colonial Art (c.1670-1800).
Neoclassicist painters also looked to Classical
Antiquity for inspiration, and emphasized the virtues of heroicism, duty
and gravitas. Leading exponents included the French political artist Jacques-Louis
David (1748-1825), the German portrait and history painter Anton Raphael
Mengs (1728-79), and the French master of the Academic
art style, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867). Neoclassical
sculptors included: Antonio Canova (1757-1822),
In contrast to the universal values espoused by Neo-Classicism, Romantic artists expressed a more personal response to life, relying more on their senses and emotions rather than reason and intellect. This idealism, like Neoclassism, was encouraged by the French Revolution, thus some artists were affected by both styles. Nature was an important subject for Romantics, and the style is exemplified, by the English School of Landscape Painting, the plein air painting of John Constable (1776-1837), Corot (1796-1875) along with members of the French Barbizon School and the American Hudson River School of landscape painting, as well as the more expressionistic JMW Turner (1775-1851). Arguably, however, the greatest Romantic landscape painter is arguably Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840). Narrative or history painting was another important genre in Romanticism: leading exponents include: Francisco Goya (1746-1828) Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), James Barry (1741-1806), Theodore Gericault (1791-1824) and Eugene Delacroix (1798-63), as well as later Orientalists, Pre-Raphaelites and Symbolists.
As the 19th century progessed, growing awareness of the rights of man plus the social impact of the Industrial Revolution caused some artists to move away from idealistic or romantic subjects in favour of more mundane subjects, depicted in a more true-life, style of naturalism. This new focus (to some extent anticipated by William Hogarth in the 18th century, see English Figurative Painting) was exemplified by the Realism style which emerged in France during the 1840s, before spreading across Europe. This new style attracted painters from all the genres - notably Gustave Courbet (1819-77) (genre-painting), Jean Francois Millet (1814-75) (landscape, rural life), Honore Daumier (1808-79) (urban life) and Ilya Repin (1844-1930) (landscape and portraits).
History of Modern Art
French Impressionism, championed above all by Claude Monet (1840-1926), was a spontaneous colour-sensitive style of pleinairism whose origins derived from Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot and the techniques of the Barbizon school - whose quest was to depict the momentary effects of natural light. It encompassed rural landscapes [Alfred Sisley (1839-1899)], cityscapes [Camille Pissarro (1830-1903)], genre scenes [Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), and Berthe Morisot (1841-95)] and both figurative paintings and portraits [Edouard Manet (1832-83), John Singer Sargent (1856-1925)]. Other artists associated with Impressionism include, James McNeil Whistler (1834-1903) and Walter Sickert (1860-1942).
Impressionists sought to faithfully reproduce fleeting moments outdoors. Thus if an object appeared dark purple - due perhaps to failing or reflected light - then the artist painted it purple. Naturalist "Academic-Style" colour schemes, being devised in theory or at least in the studio, did not allow for this. As a result Impressionism offered a whole new pictorial language - one that paved the way for more revolutionary art movements like Cubism - and is often regarded by historians and critics as the first modern school of painting.
In any event, the style had a massive impact on Parisian and world art, and was the gateway to a series of colour-related movements, including Post-Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism, Pointillism, Divisionism, Fauvism, Intimism, the American Luminism or Tonalism, as well as American Impressionism, the Newlyn School and Camden Town Group, the French Les Nabis and the general Expressionist movement.
Essentially an umbrella term encompassing a number of developments and reactions to Impressionism, Post-Impressionism involved artists who employed Impressionist-type colour schemes, but were dissatisfied with the limitations imposed by merely reproducing nature. Neo-Impressionism with its technique of Pointillism (an offshoot of Divisionism) was pioneered by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac (1863-1935), while major Post-Impressionists include Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Cezanne. Inspired by Gauguin's synthetism and Bernard's cloisonnism, the Post-Impressionist group Les Nabis promoted a wider form of decorative art; another style, known as Intimisme, concerned itself with genre scenes of domestic, intimate interiors. Exemplified by the work of Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) and Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940), it parallels other tranquil interiors such as those by James McNeil Whistler, and the Dutch Realist-influenced Peter Vilhelm Ilsted (1861-1933). Another very important movement - anti-impressionist rather than post-impressionist - was Symbolism (flourished 1885-1900), which went on to influence Fauvism, Expressionism and Surrealism.
For more about art politics in France, see: the Paris Salon.
The term "Fauves" (wild beasts) was first used by the art critic Louis Vauxcelles at the 1905 Salon d'Automne exhibition in Paris when describing the vividly coloured paintings of Henri Matisse (1869-1954), Andre Derain (1880-1954), and Maurice de Vlaminck (1876-1958). Other Fauvists included the later Cubist Georges Braque (1882-1963), Raoul Dufy (1877-1953), Albert Marquet (1875-1947) and Georges Rouault (1871-1958). Most followers of Fauvism moved on to Expressionism or other movements associated with the Ecole de Paris.
Sculptural traditions, although never independent from those of painting, are concerned primarily with space and volume, while issues of scale and function also act as distinguishing factors. Thus on the whole, sculpture was slower to reflect the new trends of modern art during the 19th century, leaving sculptors like Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) free to pursue a monumentalism derived essentially from Neoclassicism if not Renaissance ideology. The public dimension of sculpture also lent itself to the celebration of Victorian values and historical figures, which were likewise executed in the grand manner of earlier times. Thus it wasn't until the emergence of artists like Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) and Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916) that sculpture really began to change, at the turn of the century.
Expressionism is a general style of painting that aims to express a personal interpretation of a scene or object, rather than depict its true-life features, it is often characterized by energetic brushwork, impastoed paint, intense colours and bold lines. Early Expressionists included, Vincent Van Gogh (1853-90), Edvard Munch (1863-1944) and Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944). A number of German Expressionist schools sprang up during the first three decades of the 20th century. These included: Die Brucke (1905-11), a group based in Dresden in 1905, which mixed elements of traditional German art with Post-Impressionist and Fauvist styles, exemplified in works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Erik Heckel, and Emil Nolde; Der Blaue Reiter (1911-14), a loose association of artists based in Munich, including Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, August Macke, and Paul Klee; Die Neue Sachlichkeit (1920s) a post-war satirical-realist group whose members included Otto Dix, George Grosz, Christian Schad and to a lesser extent Max Beckmann. Expressionism duly spread worldwide, spawning numerous derivations in both figurative painting (eg. Francis Bacon) and abstract art (eg. Mark Rothko). See also: History of Expressionist Painting (c.1880-1930).
Art Nouveau (Late 19th Century - Early 20th Century)
Art Nouveau (known as Jugendstil in Germany, Sezessionstil in the Vienna Secession, Stile Liberty in Italy, and Modernista in Spain) derived from William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain, and was also influenced by both the Celtic Revival arts movement and Japanonisme. It's popularity stemmed from the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, from where it spread across Europe and the United States. It was noted for its intricate flowing patterns of sinuous asymetrical lines, based on plant-forms (dating back to the Celtic Hallstatt and La Tene cultures), as well as female silhouettes and forms. Art Nouveau had a major influence on poster art, design and illustration, interior design, metalwork, glassware, jewellery, as well as painting and sculpture. Leading exponents included: Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939), Aubrey Beardsley (1872-98), Eugene Grasset (1845-1917) and Albert Guillaume (1873-1942). See also: History of Poster Art.
The Bauhaus School (Germany, 1919-1933)
Derived from the two German words "bau" for building and "haus" for house, the Bauhaus school of art and design was founded in 1919 by the architect Walter Gropius. Enormously influential in both architecture and design - and their teaching methods - its instructors included such artists as Josef Albers, Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Oskar Schlemmer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Anni Albers and Johannes Itten. Its mission was to bring art into contact with everyday life, thus the design of everyday objects was given the same importance as fine art. Important Bauhaus precepts included the virtue of simple, clean design, massproduction and the practical advantages of a well-designed home and workplace. The Bauhaus was eventually closed by the Nazis in 1933, whereupon several of its teachers emigrated to America: Laszlo Moholy-Nagy settled in Chicago where he founded the New Bauhaus in 1937, while Albers went to Black Mountain College in North Carolina.
Art Deco (1920s, 1930s)
The design style known as Art Deco was showcased in 1925 at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris and became a highly popular style of decorative art, design and architecture during the inter-war years (much employed by cinema and hotel architects). Its influence was also seen in the design of furniture, textile fabrics, pottery, jewellery, and glass. A reaction against Art Nouveau, the new idiom of Art Deco eliminated the latter's flowing curvilinear forms and replaced them with Cubist and Precisionist-inspired geometric shapes. Famous examples of Art Deco architecture include the Empire State Building and the New York Chrysler Building. Art Deco was also influenced by the simple architectural designs of The Bauhaus.
Invented by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Georges Braque (1882-1963) and considered to be "the" revolutionary movement of modern art, Cubism was a more intellectual style of painting that explored the full potential of the two-dimensional picture plane by offering different views of the same object, typically arranged in a series of overlapping fragments: rather like a photographer might take several photos of an object from different angles, before cutting them up with scissors and rearranging them in haphazard fashion on a flat surface. This "analytical Cubism" (which originated with Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon") quickly gave way to "synthetic Cubism", when artists began to include "found objects" in their canvases, such as collages made from newspaper cuttings. Cubist painters included: Juan Gris (1887-1927), Fernand Leger (1881-1955), Robert Delaunay (1885-1941), Albert Gleizes (1881-1953), Roger de La Fresnaye (1885-1925), Jean Metzinger (1883-1956), and Francis Picabia (1879-1953), the avant-garde artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), and the sculptors Jacques Lipchitz (1891-1973), and Alexander Archipenko (1887-1964). (See also Russian art.) Short-lived but highly influential, Cubism instigated a whole new style of abstract art and had a significant impact the development of later styles such as: Orphism (1910-13), Collage (1912 onwards), Purism (1920s), Precisionism (1920s, 1930s), Futurism (1909-1914), Rayonism (c.1912-14), Suprematism (1913-1918), Constructivism (c.1919-32), Vorticism (c.1914-15) the De Stijl (1917-31) design movement and the austere geometrical style of concrete art known as Neo-Plasticism.
Largely rooted in the anti-art traditions of the Dada movement (1916-24), as well as the psychoanalytical ideas of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, Surrealism was the most influential art style of the inter-war years. According to its chief theorist, Andre Breton, it sought to combine the unconscious with the conscious, in order to create a new "super-reality" - a "surrealisme". The movement spanned a huge range of styles, from abstraction to true-life realism, typically punctuated with "unreal" imagery. Important Surrealists included Salvador Dali (1904-89), Max Ernst (1891-1976), Rene Magritte (1898-1967), Andre Masson (1896-1987), Yves Tanguy (1900-55), Joan Miro (1893-1983), Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978), Jean Arp (1886-1966), and Man Ray (1890-1976). The movement had a major impact across Europe during the 1930s, was the major precursor to Conceptualism, and continues to find adherents in fine art, literature and cinematography.
American painting during the period 1900-45 was realist in style and became increasingly focused on strictly American imagery. This was the result of the reaction against the Armory Show (1913) and European hypermodernism, as well as a response to changing social conditions across the country. Later it became a patriotic response to the Great Depression of the 1930s. See also the huge advances in Skyscraper architecture of the early 20th century. For more, see: American architecture (1600-present). Specific painting movements included the Ashcan School (c.1900-1915); Precisionism (1920s) which celebrated the new American industrial landscape; the more socially aware urban style of Social Realism (1930s); American Scene Painting (c.1925-45) which embraced the work of Edward Hopper and Charles Burchfield, as well as midwestern Regionalism (1930s) championed by Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton and John Steuart Curry.
The first international modern art movement to come out of America (it is sometimes referred to as The New York School - see also American art), it was a predominantly abstract style of painting which followed an expressionist colour-driven direction, rather than a Cubist idiom, although it also includes a number of other styles, making it more of a general movement. Four variants stand out in Abstract Expressionism: first, the "automatic" style of "action painting" invented by Jackson Pollock (1912-56) and his wife Lee Krasner (19081984). Second, the monumental planes of colour created by Mark Rothko (1903-70), Barnett Newman (1905-70) and Clyfford Still (1904-80) - a style known as Colour Field Painting. Third, the gestural figurative works by Willem De Kooning (19041997). Four, the geometric "Homage to the Square" geometric abstracts of Josef Albers (1888-1976).
Highly influential, Abstract Expressionist painting continued to influence later artists for over two decades. It was introduced to Paris during the 1950s by Jean-Paul Riopelle (1923-2002), assisted by Michel Tapie's book, Un Art Autre (1952). At the same time, a number of new sub-movements emerged in America, such as Hard-edge painting, exemplified by Frank Stella. In the late 1950s/early 1960s, a purely abstract form of Colour Field painting appeared in works by Helen Frankenthaler and others, while in 1964, the famous art critic Clement Greenberg helped to introduce a further stylistic development known as "Post-Painterly Abstraction". Abstract Expressionism went on to influence a variety of different schools, including Op Art, Fluxus, Pop Art, Minimalism, Neo-Expressionism, and others.
The bridge between modern art and postmodernism, Pop art employed popular imagery and modern forms of graphic art, to create a lively, high-impact idiom, which could be understood and appreciated by Joe Public. It appeared simultaneously in America and Britain, during the late 1950s, while a European form (Nouveau Realisme) emerged in 1960. Pioneered in America by Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) and Jasper Johns (b.1930), Pop had close links with early 20th century movements like Surrealism. It was a clear reaction against the closed intellectualism of Abstract Expressionism, from which Pop artists sought to distance themselves by adopting simple, easily recognized imagery (from TV, cartoons, comic strips and the like), as well as modern technology like screen printing. Famous US Pop artists include: Jim Dine (b.1935), Robert Indiana (b.1928), Alex Katz (b.1927), Roy Lichtenstein (1923-97), Claes Oldenburg (b.1929), and Andy Warhol (1928-87). Important Pop artists in Britain were: Peter Blake (b.1932), Patrick Caulfield (1936-2006), Richard Hamilton (b.1922), David Hockney (b.1937), Allen Jones (b.1937), RB Kitaj (b.1932), and Eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005).
From the early works of Brancusi, 20th century sculpture broadened immeasurably to encompass new forms, styles and materials. Major innovations included the "sculptured walls" of Louise Nevelson (1899-1988), the existential forms of Giacometti (1901-66), the biomorphic abstraction of both Barbara Hepworth (1903-75) and Henry Moore (1898-1986), and the spiders of Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010). Other creative angles were pursued by Salvador Dali (1904-89) in his surrealist "Mae West Lips Sofa" and "Lobster Telephone" - by Meret Oppenheim (1913-85) in her "Furry Breakfast", by FE McWilliam (1909-1992) in his "Eyes, Nose and Cheek", by Sol LeWitt (b.1928) in his skeletal box-like constructions, and by Pop-artists like Claes Oldenburg (b.1929) and Jasper Johns (b.1930), as well as by the Italians Jonathan De Pas (1932-91), Donato D'Urbino (b.1935) and Paolo Lomazzi (b.1936) in their unique "Joe Sofa".
For more about the history of painting, sculpture, architecture and crafts during this period, see: Modern Art Movements.
History of Contemporary Art
The word "Postmodernist" is often used to describe contemporary art since about 1970. In simple terms, postmodernist art emphasizes style over substance (eg. not 'what' but 'how'; not 'art for art's sake', but 'style for stye's sake'), and stresses the importance of how the artist comunicates with his/her audience. This is exemplified by movements such as Conceptual art, where the idea being communicated is seen as more important than the artwork itself, which merely acts as the vehicle for the message. In addition, in order to increase the "impact" of visual art on spectators, postmodernists have turned to new art forms such as Assemblage, Installation, Video, Performance, Happenings and Graffiti - all of which are associated in some way or other with Conceptualism- and this idea of impact continues to inspire.
Painters since the 1970s have experimented with numerous styles across the spectrum from pure abstraction to figuration. These include: Minimalism, a purist form of abstraction which did little to promote painting as an attractive medium; Neo-Expressionism, which encompassed groups like the "Ugly Realists", the "Neue Wilden", "Figuration Libre", "Transavanguardia", the "New Image Painters" and the so-called "Bad Painters", signalled a return to depicting recognizable objects, like the human body (albeit often in a quasi-abstract style), using rough brushwork, vivid colours and colour harmonies; and the wholly figurative styles adopted by groups such as "New Subjectivity" and the "London School". At the other extreme from Minimalism is the ultra-representational art form of photorealism (superrealism, hyperrealism). Conspicuous among this rather bewildering range of activity are figure painters like Francis Bacon, the great Lucien Freud (b.1922), the innovative Fernando Botero (b.1932), the precise David Hockney (b.1937), the photorealists Chuck Close (b.1940) and Richard Estes (b.1936), and the contemporary Jenny Saville (b.1970). See also: Contemporary British Painting (1960-2000).
Sculpture since 1970 has appeared in a variety of guises, including: the large scale metal works of Mark Di Suvero (b.1933), the minimalist sculptures of Walter de Maria (b.1935), the monumental public forms of Richard Serra (b.1939), the hyper-realist nudes of John De Andrea (b.1941), the environmental structures of Anthony Gormley (b.1950), the site-specific figures of Rowan Gillespie (b.1953), the stainless steel works of Anish Kapoor (b.1954), the high-impact Neo-Pop works of Jeff Koons (b.1955), and the extraordinary 21st century works by Sudobh Gupta (b.1964) and Damian Ortega (b.1967). In addition, arresting public sculpture includes the "Chicago Picasso" - a series of metal figures produced for the Chicago Civic Centre and the architectural "Spire of Dublin" (the 'spike'), created by Ian Ritchie (b.1947), among many others.
The pluralistic "anything goes" view of contemporary art (which critics might characterize as exemplifying the fable of the "Emperor's New Clothes"), is aptly illustrated in the works of Damien Hirst, a leading member of the Young British Artists school. Renowned for "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living", a dead Tiger shark pickled in formaldehyde, and lately for his diamond encrusted skull "For the Love of God", Hirst has managed to stimulate audiences and horrify critics around the world. And while he is unlikely ever to inherit the mantle of Michelangelo, his achievement of sales worth $100 million in a single Sotheby's auction (2008) is positively eye-popping.
On a more sobering note, in March 2009 the prestigious Georges Pompidou Centre of Contemporary Art in Paris staged an exhibition entitled "The Specialisation of Sensibility in the Raw Material State into Stabilised Pictorial Sensibility". This avant-garde event consisted of 9 completely empty rooms - in effect, a reincarnation of John Cage's completely silent piece of "musical" conceptual art entitled "4.33". If one of the great contemporary art venues like the Pompidou Centre regards nine completely empty spaces as a worthy art event, we are all in deep trouble.
For more about the history of postmodernist painting, sculpture, and avant-garde art forms, see: Contemporary Art Movements.
One might say that 19th century architecture aimed to beautify the new wave of civic structures, like railway stations, museums, government buildings and other public utilities. It did this by taking ideas from Neo-Classicism, Neo-Gothic, French Second Empire and exoticism, as well as the new forms and materials of so-called "industrial architecture", as exemplified in factories along with occasional landmark structures like the Eiffel Tower. In comparison, 20th century architecture has been characterized by vertical development (skyscrapers), flagship buildings, and post-war reconstruction. More than any other era, its design has been dominated by the invention of new materials and building methods. It began with the exploitation of late 19th century innovations developed by the Chicago School of architecture, such as the structural steel frame, in a style known as Early Modernism. In America, architects started incorporating Art Nouveau and Art Deco design styles into their work, while in Germany and Russia totalitarian architecture pursued a separate agenda during the 1930s. Famous architects of the first part of the century included: Louis Sullivan (1856-1924), Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), Victor Horta (1861-1947), Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926), Peter Behrens (1868-1940), Walter Gropius (1883-1969) and Le Corbusier (1887-1965). After 1945, architects turned away from functionalism and began creating new forms facilitated by reinforced concrete, steel and glass. Thus Late Modernism gave way to Brutalism, Corporate Modernism and High Tech architecture, culminating in structures like the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris, and the iconic Sydney Opera House - one of the first buildings to use industrial strength Araldite to glue together the precast structural elements. Since 1970, postmodernist architecture has taken several different approaches. Some designers have stripped buildings of all ornamentation to create a Minimalist style; others have used ideas of Deconstructivism to move away from traditional rectilinear shapes; while yet others have employed digital modeling software to create totally new organic shapes in a process called Blobitecture. Famous post-war architects include: Miers van der Rohe (1886-1969), Louis Kahn (1901-74), Jorn Utzon; Eero Saarinen (1910-61), Kenzo Tange (1913-2005), IM Pei (b.1917), Norman Foster (b.1935), Richard Rogers, James Stirling (1926-92), Aldo Rossi (1931-97), Frank O. Gehry (b.1929), Rem Koolhaas (b.1944), and Daniel Libeskind (b.1946). Famous architectural groups or firms, include: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (est 1936); Venturi & Scott-Brown (est 1925); the New York Five - Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey, John Hejduk, Richard Meier; and Herzog & de Meuron (est 1950).
For our main index, see: Art Encyclopedia.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ART
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World pork production is back on track to set new records for its annual volume after a period of pauses in growth. On figures from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, the quantity of pork produced globally reached around 106.5 million metric tons in 2009 and seems likely to total between 108.5-109 million tons this year.
See in our accompanying Figure 1 how these estimates and forecasts fit with the pattern seen since 1990. The peak output in any year had been 103.5 million tons in 2005, before the new high recorded in 2009.
But see also Figure 2, extracted from a bulletin by the foreign agricultural service of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). It confirms the contrasting trends that are being observed between annual production in China, as the world’s largest single pork-producing country, and all other producers globally.
Our data analysis last year had blamed the turmoil then occurring in world economies as complicating any attempt to forecast the outlook for meat. To prove the point since then, even the estimates of recent production have needed to be revised. We already knew that global output in 2006 and 2007 had been over-estimated. It now seems that a total of 280 million metric tons of all meats was produced worldwide in 2008 and that this increased slightly in 2009, to about 281.5 million tons.
This would mean pork accounted for 37.8% of last year’s all-meats total (up from almost 37.3% the year before), compared with 32.6% for poultry meat (down marginally from 32.8%) and 22.8% for beef/ruminant (down from a previous 23.2%). In 2007, on FAO data, approximately 36% of world meat output had been in the form of pork, compared with nearly 33% for poultry and nearly 24% for beef.
The pattern of production country by country for the 20 largest national producers of pork is shown in Table 1, taken from our database. As usual, it compares the position of each country on the lists for 2009 and 2000. Worth noting, however, are the positional changes that have occurred since the 2008 list. Russia moves up because of its expanded output, for example, while Denmark and Italy swap places and Korea has moved to a lower position.
After the cost difficulties presented to producers everywhere by the record-high feed grain prices of 2007, the question for pork since 2008 has been whether the demand for the meat from consumers would be affected severely by the widespread economic crisis and by the mis-naming of a variant H1N1 influenza virus, suggesting that it was transmitted by pigs. In particular, any significant alteration in sales would be reflected in the trade between countries.
Table 1 --- recently updated on the strength of new FAO figures --- could give part of the answer, where it suggests that imports/exports of pork did indeed slow last year. However, it also spotlights swings in output for the various world regions.
Table 2: Changes in regional production and trade
The Asia-Pacific area is shown to have produced 6% more pork in 2009 than in 2008. Europe recorded virtually a standstill year by producing only 0.7% less than previously. In North America there was also a reduction, but of 1.4% --- the same rate of cutback recorded for Africa. But Latin America’s production was down by almost 9.1%.
Although exports of pork apparently fell back in 2009, a graph compiled by the Food and Agriculture Research Institute (FAPRI) in the US (Figure 3) makes clear that this was a correction in line with longer-term trends. FAPRI’s graph also advises that a more normal pattern of world trade will return this year while the volume of pork produced globally continues to rise.
Figure 4 has been extracted from the same source as a reminder of who are the major exporters of the meat. On this analysis, therefore, the European Union has exported more pork in the past five years than any other country or trading bloc.
A view from within the European Union has been given by a European Commission document in which recent changes to the size of the EU-27 pig sector were described as a continuation of structural adjustments at an accelerated pace. Producers had relatively low feed costs last year, it added, but the average price at €1.41 (US$1.74) per kilogram carcase weight was 1.2 Euros less than in 2008.
Prices struggled to be stronger because of an upset in trade flows in and out of the union, it said. Exporting pork became more difficult not only due to a removal of export refunds that had helped sales rise by 34% in 2008, but also because of currency devaluations in several countries including Russia, and enhanced competition from North America in trying to sell to Japan.
The overall result was a 19% reduction for EU exports to non-member countries in 2009. This contraction especially concerned shipments to Japan (lower by 21%), to Korea (down by 18%) and to Hong Kong (reduced by 11%). According to FAPRI, the outlook is for the European Union to lose market share in the pork export business in the coming years. The institute said a period of decline is in prospect for Europe’s export sales, commenting that “the long-term competitiveness of the EU is not very promising, given its strict animal welfare and environmental regulations”.
The suggested winners in terms of export market share are named as Brazil and the USA. It projects, by the year 2019, a gain of 13.2 percentage points for the US share and of 4.4 points for percentage held by Brazil. However, Canada’s share is seen as decreasing by 6.4 percentage points.
New employee will develop, manage marketing of foodservice equipment, products
Willardsen to be replaced by president of Cargill Salt
Growth can be achieved during times of weak consumer demand
The study analyzes the costs and benefits of surgical castration alternatives through the whole EU pig meat chain.
The industry and the food supply chain need to educate consumers on the welfare standards already in place.
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Interface with computers using gestures of the human body, typically hand movements. In gesture recognition technology, a camera reads the movements of the human body and communicates the data to a computer that uses the gestures as input to control devices or applications. For example, a person clapping his hands together in front of a camera can produce the sound of cymbals being crashed together when the gesture is fed through a computer.
One way gesture recognition is being used is to help the physically impaired to interact with computers, such as interpreting sign language. The technology also has the potential to change the way users interact with computers by eliminating input devices such as joysticks, mice and keyboards and allowing the unencumbered body to give signals to the computer through gestures such as finger pointing.
Unlike haptic interfaces, gesture recognition does not require the user to wear any special equipment or attach any devices to the body. The gestures of the body are read by a camera instead of sensors attached to a device such as a data glove.
In addition to hand and body movement, gesture recognition technology also can be used to read facial and speech expressions (i.e., lip reading), and eye movements.
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New rope bridges helping to save endangered Golden langurs in India22/11/2012 23:19:46 Connecting canopies - ropeways to save the endangered langurs - Courtesy of The Wildlife Trust of of India
November 2012: As humans make an ever increasing indelible mark on the work, wildlife is constricted into smaller and small, and more and more fragmented habitats. In a few places, some allowance is now being made for the needs of wildlife when major obstacles are constructed. Wildlife over and under passes are becoming more common on major roads, fish ladders have been around for many years, and ropeways, already in use in Africa and Australia, have now been installed in a small corner of India to allow endangered Golden langurs to cross a large highway.
Golden langurs - endemic to the Indo-Bhutan region, have been using ropeways to safely cross a 500-m stretch of road near Chakrasila Wildlife Sanctuary (WLS). The stretch of road had claimed numerous golden langurs in the last few years, but since the installation of the ropeways in January this 2012, no death due to accidents on the road has been reported.
On the northern boundary of Chakrasila, the 500-m road separates the sanctuary from plantation forests used by the resident langurs as an extension of their habitat. The langurs were compelled to descend on to the ground and cross the road risking accidents, attacks by feral dogs or even poaching.
"Golden langurs are essentially arboreal and are not agile on ground. What we know is that there were 10 cases of these magnificent animals killed in this stretch since 2005 as per our records. Who knows how many cases went undetected, or how many other individuals lost to other causes due to this fragmentation," said Dr Bhaskar Choudhury of the International Fund for Animal Welfare - Wildlife Trust of India (IFAW-WTI).
As part of their Greater Manas Conservation Project, the Bodoland authorities and IFAW-WTI initiated a Rapid Action Project (RAP) in January this year to help save the langurs. Ropeways of bamboo and ropes were created and strategically placed between canopies of trees in areas regularly used by the langurs to cross over. These ropeways were placed at a height of 60 m from the ground.
"Initially, understandably the langurs hesitated to use these bridges. But now they appear to have been habituated and are frequently seen to use them," said Dr Panjit Basumatary, IFAW-WTI veterinarian who brought the issue to light.
"This shows the extent of fragmentation of natural habitats and the difficulties faced by wildlife. Nothing would be better than natural contiguous canopy, but such interventions are becoming more and more common and the only way out in many of the cases," said primatologist Mayukh Chatterjee.
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Dinosaurs dying at the end of the Cretaceous Period. Volcanism is thought to be one of the main causes of the dinosaurs dying out.
Click on image for full size
Courtesy of NSF
K-T Extinction (Why Did the Dinosaurs Go Extinct?)
Why did the dinosaurs go extinct? No one knows for sure, but there
are some explanations that seem to make sense.
At the time the dinosaurs and lots of other species died out (which is sometimes called the K-T
extinction), there were lots of active volcanos on Earth. There were also some large asteroids or comets that struck the Earth around
then. Together, volcanos and asteroid impacts may have thrown dust
into the atmosphere, blocking sunlight and making it very hard for the
dinosaurs to survive.
Other things might have helped cause the dinosaurs’
extinction. We know that the atmosphere and the oceans both went
through large changes at the end of the Cretaceous Period, and the
Earth's climate probably
changed a lot, too.
Scientists around the world are still doing
research in order to test different theories
and try to learn what made the dinosaurs go extinct.
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During the week of May 13th, the CO2 level at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii topped 400 ppm repeatedly. Daily levels of CO2 can vary due to weather, and there are seasonal trends as well. The level of atmospheric greenhouse gases continues to increase, now over 120 ppm since the Industrial Revolution began. For more on the Keeling Curve, see http://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/. Find out more about greenhouse gases and warming.
The week of May 19 brings dozens of tornadoes to Tornado Alley in the states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Illinois and Missouri. On May 20th, a massive tornado struck Moore, Oklahoma, devastating communities - destroying over 100 homes and hitting two elementary schools and a hospital - with many casualties and deaths. Our thoughts are with our friends and colleagues suffering from these storms. For more on the May 20th storms, see the NOAA Storm Prediction Center Storm Report.
Did you know that individuals donít evolve, but populations do?
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Earth and Space Science Concept of the Day
Do you know what this word or phrase means?
xDip-slip fault : Dip-slip faults are inclined fractures where the blocks have mostly shifted vertically. If the rock mass above an inclined fault moves down, the fault is termed normal, whereas if the rock above the fault moves up, the fault is termed reverse.
Tiny variations in the isotopic composition of silver in meteorites and Earth rocks are helping scientists put together a timetable of how our planet was assembled, beginning 4.568 billion years ago. Results...Read more
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Traffic lights that act locally can improve traffic globally, new research suggests. By minimizing congestion, the approach could save money, reduce emissions and perhaps even quash the road rage of frustrated drivers.
The new approach makes traffic lights go with the flow, rather than enslaving drivers to the tyranny of timed signals. By measuring vehicle inflow and outflow through each intersection as it occurs and coordinating lights with only their nearest neighbors, a system-wide smoothness emerges, scientists report in a September Santa Fe Institute working paper.
“It’s very interesting — the approach is adaptive and the system can react,” says mechanical engineer Gábor Orosz of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “That’s how it should be — that’s how we can get the most out of our current system.”
An ultimate goal in traffic regulation is “the green wave,” the bam, bam, bam of greens that allows platoons of vehicles to move smoothly through intersection after intersection. When that happens, no drivers have to wait very long and sections of road don’t become so filled with cars that there’s no room for entering vehicles when the light does go green.
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Term: bilge (maritime)
1. Part of the underwater body of a ship between the flat of the bottom and the straight vertical sides. 2. Internally, the lowest part of the hull, next to the keelson.
View pictures related to boating at Wisconsin Historical Images.
[Source: "Glossary." Wisconsin's Great Lakes Shipwrecks (http://www.wisconsinshipwrecks.org/)]
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American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Pollinated by insects.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Literally, insect-loving: applied to flowers in which, on account of their structure, fertilization can ordinarily be effected only by the visits of insects.
- In phytogeography, parasitic on insects: said of a class of fungi.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. (Bot.) Fertilized by the agency of insects; -- said of plants in which the pollen is carried to the stigma by insects.
- adj. of flowering plants (especially orchids etc) that are pollinated by insects
“Relationship between flowering time and fruit set of the entomophilous alpine shrub, '' Rhododendron aureum '' (Ericaceae), inhabiting snow patches.”
“On the other hand, the slender filaments, versatile anthers, powdery pollen, and elongated protogynous style are features of other species indicating anemophily; while the presence of a degraded corolla shows its ancestors to have been entomophilous.”
“_Poterium sanguisorba_ is anemophilous; and _Sanguisorba officinalis_ presumably was so formerly, but has reacquired an entomophilous habit; the whole tribe Poterieae being, in fact, a degraded group which has descended from Potentilleae.”
“Mr. Allen maintains that "insects are bright where bright flowers exist in numbers, and dull where flowers are rare or inconspicuous;" and he urges that "we can hardly explain this wide coincidence otherwise than by supposing that a taste for colour is produced through the constant search for food among entomophilous blossoms, and that this taste has reacted upon its possessors through the action of unconscious sexual selection.”
“Gramineae among monocotyledons may be ranked with Amentiferae among dicotyledons, as representing orders which have retrograded very far from the entomophilous forms from which they were possibly and probably descended "(p. 266).”
“_P. media_, therefore, illustrates, not a primitive entomophilous condition, but a return to it; just as is the case with _Sanguisorba officinalis_ and _Salix Caprea_; but these show no capacity of restoring the corolla, the attractive features having to be borne by the calyx, which is purplish in Sanguisorba, by the pink filaments of Plantago, and by the yellow anthers in the Sallow willow ”
“The genus Plantago, like _Thalictrum minus_, Poterium, and others, well illustrate the change from an entomophilous to the anemophilous state.”
These user-created lists contain the word ‘entomophilous’.
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A hodgepodge, jumble, jambalaya, *gallimaufry, circus and tent revival of plant anatomy and morphology terms and phrases - its a big tent, and no tickets are required.
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American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Causing fermentation.
- adj. Capable of causing or undergoing fermentation.
- adj. Relating to or of the nature of fermentation.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Causing or having power to cause fermentation.
- Of the nature of, consisting in, or produced by fermentation.
- Also fermentive.
- adj. Of, pertaining to, causing or undergoing fermentation
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Causing, or having power to cause, fermentation; produced by fermentation; fermenting.
“Flour, when well boiled, though infinitely better than arrowroot, is still only a kind of fermentative paste, that counteracts its own good by after-acidity and flatulence.”
“It is much easier to conceive from this doctrine of associated or sympathetic motions of distant parts of the system, how it happens, that the variolous infection can be received but once, as before explained; than by supposing, that a change is effected in the mass of blood by any kind of fermentative process.”
“They have a rumen hence, ruminant, the first in a series of multiple stomachs that acts as a fermentative vat.”
“Essences can be divided according to these activities: antispasmodic or spasmolytic, stimulatory, hormonal and anti-fermentative.”
“Many people have the personal experience of the anti-putrefactive and anti-fermentative uses of certain essential oil-producing plants such as funnel, coriander and anise, which are especially effective remedies against such complaints as gastritis and colitis.”
“As for what I am, I'm a non-fermentative Gram negative rod, like my buddy Pseudomonas.”
“You can call me a non-fermentative rod, meaning I don't ferment glucose.”
“The albuminoids or nitrogenous substances are of the nature of white of egg; and, when in small proportion, are necessary for the due performance of the fermentative process.”
“The temperature of the must soon begins to rise, and the fermentative agencies break up its glucose into alcohol and carbonic acid gas.”
“Proteolytic, lipolytic and fermentative properties of yeasts isolate from ayib, a traditional Ethiopian cottage cheese.”
These user-created lists contain the word ‘fermentative’.
A list of words which yield surprising, beautiful, amusing, or otherwise noteworthy images here on Wordnik.
Looking for tweets for fermentative.
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Whether you are a teacher, golf instructor or a volunteer for The First Tee, we trust that "The Science of Golf" will be a great addition to your program curriculum.
"The Science of Golf I" introduces physics to students who will see the principles demonstrated through experiments they can do in the classroom. This program is geared for grades 4-8.
"The Science of Golf II" deals with aspects of earth science related to golf courses including water, soil, plants & trees and grass. Activities within each of the modules are geared towards two grade levels, K-2 and 3-5.
For downloadable study guides and more information, click here.
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The Philippines had suffered under the Japanese occupation. A highly effective guerilla campaign controlled sixty percent of the islands, mostly jungle and mountain areas. MacArthur had supplied them by submarine, and sent reinforcements and officers. Filipinos remained loyal to the United States, partly because of the American guarantee of independence, and also because the Japanese had pressed large numbers of Filipinos into work details and even put young Filipino women into brothels.
MacArthur returned to the Philippines in force on October 20, 1944. He waded in with Philippine President Sergio Osmeña, restaging the landing a second time for the newsreel cameras. The US Army forces met resistance, but steadily advanced, until the landings at Ormoc on December 7, 1944. Most of the fighting was at sea during the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
Ormoc saw the widespread use of kamikazes while the Americans ran into fortified positions and heavy artillery. MacArthur fought north through the Philippines all through the Fall of 1944, reaching Manila and the main island of Luzon in January 1945. The initial landing in Lingayen Gulf was unopposed, sparing the Japanese a prolonged bombardment as they retreated inland. The Japanese had a network of caves, pillboxes, and artillery. The defenders hoped to prevent an invasion of the home islands by offering a stiff resistance in the Philippines.
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The German aircraft industry excelled in producing efficient aircraft for high altitude reconnaissance duties and pioneered the use of aircraft specifically designed for the ground attack role.
The Albatros C.XII was a German military reconnaissance aircraft which saw service during the late period of World War I. It differed markedly from previous Albatros C-type aircraft by adopting an elliptical-section fuselage similar to that of the Albatros D.V. The C.XII also featured a tailplane of reduced area, but it retained the wings of the earlier Albatros C.X.
The aircraft was powered by a single 260 hp (190 kW) Mercedes D.IVa, inline water-cooled engine. The aircraft's armament consisted of: a single 0.312 in (7.92 mm) "Spandau" LMG 08/15 machine gun, fixed downward, and a single trainable 0.312 in (7.92 mm) Parabellum MG14 machine gun in the observer's cockpit
The Albatros C.XII was a sleek aircraft with clean lines. Despite the aerodynamic advantages of the design, there was no significant increase in performance achieved over the C.X. Examples remained in service until the end of the War.
The Albatros C.XV was a German military reconnaissance aircraft developed during World War I. It was essentially a refinement of the C.XII put into production in 1918. The war ended before any examples became operational, however some found their way into civilian hands and flew as transport aircraft in peacetime under the factory designation L 47. Others saw service with the air forces of Russia, Turkey, and Latvia.
The Halberstadt CL.IV was one of the most effective ground attack aircraft of World War I, relying on its good maneuverability to avoid ground fire. It appeared on the Western Front towards the end of the German offensives in 1918. Karl Thies, chief designer of the Halberstädter Flugzeugwerke, G.m.b.H., designed the CL.IV as a replacement for the CL.II, which was very successful in harassing Allied troops. Purpose of an improved version was to create a superior ground attack aircraft.
The new CL.IV featured a shorter, strengthened fuselage and a horizontal stabilizer of greater span and higher aspect ratio than that of the CL.II. These changes, along with a one-piece, horn-balanced elevator, gave the CL.IV much greater maneuverability than the CL.II. After tests were completed of the prototype in April 1918, at least 450 were ordered from Halberstadt, and an additional 250 aircraft from a subcontractor, LFG (Roland).
As with the CL.II, the CL.IV was powered by a single 160 hp (120 kW), 6 cylinder in-line, watercooled Mercedes aircraft engine. The aircraft was armed with a fixed forward-firing 0.312 in (7.92 mm) LMG 08/15 “Spandau” synchronized machine gun, and a single trainable 0.312 in (7.92 mm) “Parabellum” MG14 machine gun, on a ring mount in the observer's cockpit.
The Halberstadt C.V was a German single-engined photo-reconnaissance biplane designed by Karl Theis. The C.V was built by Halberstädter Flugzeugwerke G.m.b.H. The first flight was in March of 1918, it proved very manoeuverable and superior to other type aircraft in its class. The C.V entered service in late 1918 where it saw limited service with the Luftstreitkräfte during the final months of the war.
The C.V was developed as a refinement of the Halberstadt C.III. The aircraft was fitted with a more powerful supercharged 160 kW (220 hp) Benz Bz.IV engine modified for high altitude flying by raising the compression in the cylinders. Armament consisted of a foreward firing 0.312 in (7.92 mm) LMG 08/15 machine gun operated by the pilot, and a trainable parabellum machine gun operated by the observer. It could also carry up to 110 pounds (50kgs) of bombs. Initially a 250mm camera was mounted in the observer's cockpit floor. An electrical generator driven by the engine powered heated flying suits worn by the crew, and radio equipment.
The design was not without a problematic safety issue. Take offs and especially landings could be dangerous due to the C.V's very short fuselage length and a lack of structural strength in the undercarriage struts. Because of the short fuselage, the aircraft had a tendency to bounce when landing damaging the undercarriage which could collapse and in some cases flip the aircraft over. In spite of this flaw the pilots who flew the aircraft, liked it very much. They were willing to trade off the risky landings for the C.V's excellent flight characteristics and the protection provided by the deep fuselage sides. The design provided a good visibility an field of fire for the observer mounted parabellum machine gun.
Late in the war one Halberstadt C.V was captured in Estonia. The aircraft was modified for use as a float plane and operated by the Estonian Air Force in 1919. A single C.V (S/No. 3471/18) survives at the Musée Royal de l'Armée et d'Histoire Militaire in Brussels, Belgium.
The Junkers CL.I was a ground-attack monoplaine aircraft developed in Germany during World War I. Its construction was undertaken by Junkers under the designation J 8. as proof of Hugo Junkers' belief in the monoplane, after his firm had been required by the Idflieg to submit a biplane (the J 4) as its entry in a competition to select a ground-attack aircraft.
The J 8 design took the J 7 fighter as its starting point, but had a longer fuselage to accommodate a tail gunner, and larger wings. The prototype flew in late 1917 and was followed over the next few months by three more development aircraft.
The Idflieg was sufficiently impressed to want to order the type, but had misgivings about Junkers' ability to manufacture the aircraft in quantity and considered asking Linke-Hoffmann to produce the type under licence. Finally, however, Junkers was allowed to undertake the manufacture as part of a joint venture with Fokker, producing a slightly modified version of the J 8 design as the J 10. Like the other Junkers designs of the period, the aircraft featured a metal framework that was skinned with corrugated duralumin sheets. 47 examples were delivered before the Armistice, including three built as floatplanes under the designation CLS.I (factory designation J 11). After the war, one or two CL.Is were converted for commercial service by enclosing the rear cockpit under a canopy.
LVG C.VI was a German two-seat reconnaissance and artillery spotting aircraft used during World War I.
The aircraft was designed by Willy Sabersky-Müssigbrodt and developed by Luft-Verkehrs-Gesellschaft (LVG) in 1917. The C.VI was a further development of the C.V, which Sabersky-Müssigbrodt had made for his former employer DFW. It was lighter, smaller and aerodynamically refined, although its fuselage seemed more bulky. It was a biplane of mixed, mostly wooden construction. It featured a semi-monocoque fuselage, plywood covered. Rectangular wings of wooden and metal construction, canvas covered. Upper wing of slightly greater span, shifted some 25 cm (10 in) towards front. Vertical fin plywood covered, rudder and elevators of metal frame canvas covered, stabilizers (tailplanes) of wooden frame canvas covered. Straight uncovered engine in the fuselage nose, with a chimney-like exhaust pipe. Two-blade Benz wooden propeller, 2.88 m (9.45 ft) diameter. Flat water radiator in central section of upper wing. Fixed conventional landing gear, with a straight common axle and a rear skid. Aircraft were equipped with a radio (morse send only); transmissions were by means of an antenna which could be lowered below the aircraft when needed. The crew had parachutes and heated flying suits. A total of 1,100 aircraft of the type were manufactured.
Most LVG C.VIs were used by the German military aviation in last operations of World War I, mostly on Western Front, for close reconnaissance and observation.
After the war, Deutsche Luft-Reederei (DLR) used several C.VIs to provide mail and passenger transport service. The Polish Air Force used several aircraft during Polish-Soviet war (the first was left by the Germans, another was completed from parts in 1920, and several were bought abroad). Suomen ilmailuliikenne Oy purchased two C.VIs from a Swedish airline in 1923. The company went bankrupt in 1922, but would be a predecessor to Aero O/Y, in turn a predecessor of Finnair. The Finnish Air Force purchased two aircraft. One was destroyed in a spin in Santahamina in 1923. The other was used until the end of 1924. Several (at least eight) were used by Lithuania, two last ones survived until 1940. Three were used in Czechoslovakia, two in Switzerland (1920-1929), several in the USSR.
Today, there are three surviving C.VIs. One is on display at the RAF Museum in Hendon, one at the Brussels Air Museum in Belgium and the one at the Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace in Paris
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Architecture in Ancient China
For most visitors to China, sightseeing means a daily encounter
with Chinese architecture of one type or another ranging from
temples through gardens, mausoleum, pagodas, imperial palaces
to residential houses.
The Forbidden City in Beijing best exemplifies the elements of palace architecture. Imposing buildings, like the three great Halls of Harmony, stand well-spaced along the central axis. Facing south and rising from a terrace, these buildings represent the supreme power and authority emperors enjoyed during the feudalistic dynasties. The living accormdations of the imperial dfamily are found at the back of the City. Clustered around the Great Halls at a distance are numerous smaller buildillgs where the more influential eunuches and concubines were locked in struggle for power and influence.
To the south of the Forbidden City is the Temple of Heaven,
an exquisite example of what foreigners might call religious architecture,
for it was here that the emperor would go twice a year to carry
out ritual ceremonies of sacrifice, expressing gratitude to Heaven
for the previous harvest and praying for the next harvest. Constructed
without the use of a single nail, the round 39-meter-high Hall
of Prayer for Good Harvests has a three-tier roof, whose tiles
are painted deop blue, symbolizing the colour of heaven. The roof
is supported by 28 pillars, of which the four most massive ones
represent the four seasons. The double ring consisting of two
circles Of twelve pillars represent the 12 months, plus the traditional
divisions of the Chinese day, each comprising of two hours.
Visitors who see Chinese buildings Will invariably notice the extensive use of timber as a building material in addition to bricks and tiles. That is because timber was not only easily available and transportable but also was very practical. Heavy posts are capable of carrying the roof while the wood could be carved for decoration and embellishment. After all, Who would fail to be impressed by the highly elaborate decorations and embellishments in those buildings?
Pagdas are as much a part of Chinese scenery as churches are in England. Tall or low, massive or slender, pagodas dot China's landscape as evidence of Buddhist influence on and merge with Chinese culture. The oldest existing pagoda, also built of wood, is located in Yingxian County in north Shanxi. That the 67. l3 meter-high pagoda should have survived all the vicissitudes of life for more than 900 years, including some strong earthquakes, was a miracle. Because it is out of the way, most visitors do not see this pagoda. More frequently visited pagodas are the Great Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi'an, the Pagoda of Six Harmonies in Hangzhou, and the Forest of Pagodas near Shaolin Monastery in Henan, central China, to name just a few.
What is it that gives China's building unmistakable Chinese characteristics? It is the ombination of the massive, often curved roof, the predominant use of timber, the terrace, the corbel construction, and the dazzlingly colourful decoration.
The roofs of Chinese temples and palaces lend an air of weightlessness to the generally large and massive buildings. The eaves, of ten slightly upturned, seem to let the entire roof float above the building as if carried on invisible columns. Another way of achieving this illusion of floating is the double roof. Here the roof is constructed in two stages and the low wall separating the two suggests a small additional storey. A practical funciton of uptumed roof gutters is to ensure enough light inside the building while making it easy to carry off rain-water. Additionally, the roofs of palaces are covered with glazed tiles. As the emperor's colour was yellow, those of the impe rial palace are in yellow. The Temple of Heaven, on the other hand, is appropriately covered ln blue tiles, the colour of the sky.
Buildings in China, be they temples or palaccs or pagodas, rise invariably from a terrace. That is as it should br, for the wooden frame, however flexible it is, has to be protected from any ingress
of water. OId texts, however, point to a symbolic cosmlogical meaning when they state "the Heaven covers and the Earth carries". The terrace in these terms represents the Earth and the roof the Heaven. Thus we come to the recurrent theme of ancient Chinese philosophy, which is a complete harmony between man and nature.
No discussion of traditional Chinese buildings can be completed without a mention of the corbel construction. Developed by Chinese craftsmen over the centuries, it is the ultimate form or style of Chinese architecture that is the pride of the Chinese nation and the admiration of foreigners. While posts and beams satisfy structural requirements and are often built without the benefit of glue or nails, corhels and brackets are artfully combined into incredibly complex and visually intriguing structures to support the roof. These corbel systems also give a clue to the social status of the owner of a house because ordinary people were not permitted to have them: they were the prerogative of people of rank.
Decorations for ancient Chinese buildings are largely of two types, i. e., colourful paintings and decorative sculptures. The former plays a decorative, symbolic or protective role. A classic exam-
ple is that found in the Long Corridor of the Summer Palace in Beijing. Decorative sculptures, which are found both inside and outside the main buildings, range from brick sculptures on walls, stone sculptures on balustrades, to the small sculptures of mythological beasts atop a palace or temple roof ridge and the large ones of men and beasts in front of a mausoleum. For example, in front of the Hall of Preserving Harmony there is 200-ton stone on the terrace which is an intricate1y carved design of dragon and pheonix.
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The heaviest known insects are the Goliath beetles of equatorial Africa. One fully grown male was found to weigh 3.5 ounces. (almost as much as a handful of quarters)
The heaviest human in medical history was Jon Brower Minnoch, who weighted 392 lbs. in 1963, 700 lbs. In 1966, and 975 lbs. in 1976. After being admitted to a hospital in 1978 from heart and respiratory failure, a doctor estimated that Jon weighted over 1300 pounds. When he died in 1978, he weighed more than 798 pounds.
The larva of the Polyphemus moth consumes an amount equivalent to 86,000 times it own birth weight in the first 56 days of life. In human terms, this would be like a 7 pound baby taking in 301 tons of nourishment. That is a lot of baby food!
Highest g Force
The click beetle averages 400g when "jack-knifing" into the air to escape predators. One specimen that jumbed to a height of 11.75 inches was calculated to have endured a peak brain deceleration of 2300g by the end of the movement. A recorded human example is that of David Purley, a race car driver who survived a deceleration from 108 mph to 0 in 26 inches in England in 1977. His g force was estimated to 179.8g. He suffered 29 fractures, 3 dislocations, and 6 heart stoppages!
Female mosquitoes hold the record in this category. They need a lot of protein in order to lay eggs. They obtain this protein by drinking the blood of reptiles, birds, or mammals. Sometimes a mosquito will triple her body weight with just one meal of blood. For a 100 pound human to imitate this feat, he would have to consume 36 gallons of liquid at one sitting.
The fastest moving insects are certain large tropical cockroaches. The record is 3.36 mph, or 50 body lengths per second. Tiger beetles are also quite fast, as they scurry after their prey. They can often be seen zipping across a road, their bright metallic colors flashing in the sun. The fastest human ever recorded was Carl Lewis, who ran 100 meters in 9.86 seconds in 1991 in Tokyo, Japan.
The champion jumper among insects is the common flea. In one experiment, a flea performed a long jump of 13 inches, and a high jump of 7.75 inches. If a human could jump like a flea, we would be able to jump 853 feet, which would be like jumping from street level to the 70th floor of the Empire State Building. The champion human high jumper is Javier Sotomayor of Cuba, who jumped 8 ft. 0 in. in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The ant may be tiny, but for his size he is one of the "giants" of the insect world. With his strong jaws he is able to carry 50 times his own weight. That would be like a human trying to carry a baby elephant. Among human strongmen, the record is held by Leonid Taranenko of Russia, who lifted a whopping 1,047 pounds in Australia in 1988.
The monarch butterfly is capable of flying 2,000 miles from Canada to Mexico and parts of California. Millions migrate every autumn, often stopping in the same rest spots each year. In early spring and summer, returning females travel north in relays, new generations replacing old, laying their eggs along the way. In comparison, the longest human-powered flight ever documented was when Kanellos Kanellopoulos averaged 18.5 mph in his 112 foot wingspan machine from Crete to the island of Santorini, Greece, flying 74 miles.
Other Interesting Tid-bits
Loudest Insect - The loudest of all insects is the male cicada. At 7,400 pulses per minute, its tymbal organs produce a sound detectable over a quarter of a mile away.
Best Stunt Flyer - Large dragonflies are not only super fast flyers, they are also masters of maneuverability! Many kinds of dragonflies can hover, fly backward, turn around quickly in mid-air, and land in an instant.
Longest Insect - The longest insect in the world is the tropical walking stick. Females have been measured at 13 inches in body length. It looks just like a slender twig, which is how it blends in with its surroundings.
Fastest Flyer - Modern experiments have established that the highest maintainable air speed of any insect, including the deer bot-fly, hawkmoths, and horseflies is 24 mph, rising to a maximum of 36 mph for short bursts by some large dragon flies.
Official State Insects and Butterflies of the United States
Many states have adopted official state insects and/or butterflies in recent years. They have done this to remind citizens of the vital role that insects play in our lives. As of December 31, 1995, 34 states have officially designates state insects and/or butterflies, and this information is summarized below. You will find an alphabetic list of the states that have official state insects and/or butterflies (along with the name of the insect), as well as a list of insects (and the states that have adopted them s their official symbols).
State Insects and Butterflies Listed by States
Alabama monarch butterfly Arkansas honey bee California California dogface butterfly Colorado Colorado hairstreak butterfly Connecticut European praying mantis Delaware convergent ladybird beetle Florida giant swallowtail butterfly Georgia honey bee (insect); tiger swallowtail (butterfly) Illinois monarch butterfly Iowa ladybug Kansas honey bee Kentucky viceroy butterfly Louisiana honey bee Maine honey bee Maryland Baltimore checkerspot butterfly Massachusetts ladybug Mississippi honey bee (insect); spicebush swallowtail (butterfly) Missouri honey bee Nebraska honey bee New Hampshire Ladybug New Jersey honey bee New Mexico tarantula hawk wasp New York nine-spotted ladybird beetle North Carolina honey bee Ohio ladybug (insect); tiger swallowtail (butterfly) Oregon Oregon swallowtail butterfly Pennsylvania firefly South Carolina Carolina mantis South Dakota honey bee Tennessee ladybug and firefly Utah honey bee Vermont monarch butterfly Virginia tiger swallowtail butterfly Wisconsin honey bee Wyoming western swallowtail butterfly
State Insects and Butterflies Listed by Species
Baltimore checkerspot butterfly Maryland California dogface butterfly California Carolina mantis South Carolina Colorado hairstreak butterfly Colorado European praying mantis Connecticut Firefly Tennessee and Pennsylvania Honey bee Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Dakota, Utah and Wisconsin Ladybird beetles/ladybugs Delaware (convergent), Iowa, Massachusetts, New York (nine-spotted). and Ohio Swallowtail butterflies Florida (giant), Georgia (tiger), Mississippi (spicebush), Ohio (tiger), Oregon (Oregon), Virginia (tiger), and Wyoming (western) Tarantula hawk wasp New Mexico Viceroy butterfly Kentucky
Is your state on the list? If not, you might want to help initiate a campaign to have a representative insect and/or butterfly designated as one of your official state symbols.
The first step is to collect "nominations" from friends, family, and classmates. Have them think of an insect and/or butterfly that would make a good symbol for your state. After a while you should have a list of possible candidates and an idea of how popular each nominee is. Now comes the hard part - selecting one candidate to present to state legislators. Perhaps you might narrow the field to two or three of the most popular nominees and have a run off "election."
Once you have the possibilities narrowed down to a single candidate you will need to begin building a rationale for designating your insect candidate as the official state insect (or butterfly). Why is your insect candidate the best choice? How does it fit into your state's history or culture? How popular is the choice (collect signatures on a petition). All of this information will be useful to you when you go looking for a legislative sponsor or sponsors to help you introduce a commemorative bill into the house and senate (start with the representative for your district first). The commemorative bill will most likely go to a committee first, at which time you (and others will have an opportunity to speak for or against the bill), but if you are persistent and well prepared you might be responsible for your state adopting an official state insect or butterfly!
The Amazing Animal Quiz
Introduction - Insects and their relatives (arthropods) are some of the most amazing animals that inhabit our world, yet most of us rarely give them credit for their incredible abilities. The "Amazing Animal Quiz" can help you and your students "tune in" to the incredible world of arthropods and open their eyes and minds to learning more about them. Hopefully after students complete this exercise they will have a better appreciation for the amazing abilities of arthropods.
Getting started - This quiz is really quite simple and makes a great introduction to a unit on insects and other arthropods. Before starting, have students number a piece of paper from 1-25 down the left-hand side. Tell the students that you are going to read a series of statement that describe animal activities (don't bias them by mentioning insects or arthropods at this time) and that you want them to right down the name of any one animal that they can think of that fits the description you have given.
Name An Animal That...
- ...raids the garbage
- ...is cold blooded
- ...hides from other animals by using camouflage
- ...changes shape as it grows
- ...is poisonous and covered with scales
- ...lives in the ground
- ...is capable of flying
- ...attacks and devours (eats) other animals
- ...migrates long distances
- ...gathers and stores food
- ...sings to attract a mate
- ...hibernates as an adult
- ...eats wood
- ...lives longer than 40 years
- ...is striped
- ...lives on another animal
- ...spends part of its life cycle in the water
- ...drinks nectar from flowers
- ...lays eggs
- ...has big back legs and is a good hopper
- ...catches their prey with traps
- ...is active mostly at night
- ...is brightly colored
- ...is covered with hairs
- ...gives off a foul odor
Scoring the quiz. After administering the quiz, have the students score themselves in the following manner: 1 point for each mammal named, 3 points for each bird, reptile, amphibian, or fish names, and 5 points for each arthropod (insect, spider, etc.) names. As you can see in this exercise you get more points when you answer with arthropod names. A few of the possible arthropod (insect/spider) answers are:
- fly/maggot, carrion beetle
- any insect or other arthropod
- walkingstick, underwing moth, crab spider
- any insect or other arthropod
- monarch butterfly
- ant, yellowjacket, white grub/beetle
- fly, bee, wasp, ant, moth, butterfly, beetle, bug, grasshopper, dragonfly, mayfly, caddisfly, in fact most adult insects.
- Praying mantis, ladybird beetle, aphidlion, wolf spider, tarantula, centipede
- Monarch butterfly, painted lady butterfly, green darner dragonfly, leafhopper
- Ant, honey bee
- Cicada, cricket, katydid
- Morning cloak butterfly, ladybird beetles
- Termite, wood-boring beetle (not ants)
- Queen termite
- Bee, monarch (caterpillar), swallowtail (caterpillar), beetle
- Louse, flea, tick
- Dragonfly, damselfly, mosquito, stonefly, mayfly, caddisfly
- Butterfly, moth, bee, fly
- Any insect or other arthropod (except a few aphids and roaches)
- Grasshopper, cricket, leafhopper, flea, flea beetle
- Antlion, spider
- Moth, most beetle
- Many butterflies and beetles
- Mosquito, caddisfly, and many caterpillars
- Stink bug, bombardier beetle, black swallowtail caterpillar
Source:Young Entomologists' Society, Inc., Minibeast World of Insects and Spiders, by Gary A. Dunn, M.S., F.R.E.S., Director of Education
- During a single meal, a female mosquito can drink her own weight in blood.
- Some mayflies live 24 hours or less as adults.
- The smallest insect ever discovered is a hairy-winged beetle from the tropics. It measures 1/100 of an inch (.25 mm) in length.
- The longest insect ever found is a tropical stick insect from Asia. Some of the females get to be over a food (30cm) in length.
- Over one million different kinds of insects have been discovered. This is twice the total of all other kinds of animals put together.
- A swarm of desert locusts (of the grasshopper family), containing over 1000 million insects, has covered an estimated area of 2000 square miles (5200 KM2). Swarms of locusts have been seen at sea 1200 miles from land (1920 km).
- Bombardier beetles can shoot a hot, smelly liquid from their abdomen that is 212 ° F (100° C).
- Fireflies aren't the only light-producing insects. Some click beetles, springtails, and gnats also light up.
- There is a fly in California called the petroleum fly that lives and breeds in petroleum.
- The largest animal in Antarctica that lives strictly on land is a wingless fly less than 1/4 of an inch (6 mm) long.
- The color a head louse will be as an adult can depend on the color of the person's hair is living in. For example, a louse living in blond hair would most likely be alight color; one living in black hair would be dark.
- A cockroach can live nine days without its head.
- Fleas can jump 200 times the length of their bodies.
- Some queen termites live as long as 50 years.
- The atlas moth of India is one of the world's largest insects. It measures 12 inches (30 cm) from wingtip to wingtip.
- A tiny insect called a biting midge can beat its wings 1000 times a second.
- How many flowers must honey bees tap to make one pound of honey?
- Two million
- How far does a hive of bees fly to bring you one pound of honey?
- Over 55,000 miles
- How much honey does the average worker honey bee make in her lifetime?
- 1/12 teaspoon
- How fast does a honey bee fly?
- About 15 miles per hour
- How much honey would it take to fuel a bee's flight around the world?
- About one ounce
- Why are honey bees sometimes called "white man's flies?"
- North American natives called honey bees this because they were brought to North America by European colonists.
- What is mead?
- Honey wine
- How long have bees been producing honey from flowering plants?
- 10-20 million years
- What Scotch liqueur is made with honey?
- How many sides does each honeycomb cell have?
- What is the U.S. per capita consumption of honey?
- What state is known as the beehive state?
- How many wings does a honey bee have?
- How many beekeepers are in the United States?
- An estimated 211,600
- How many honey-producing colonies of bees are there in the United States?
- The USDA estimates that there are approximately 3 million honey producing colonies. This estimate is based on beekeepers who manage five or more colonies.
- Hall of Fame Trivia Bugs
- How many flowers does a honey bee visit during one collection trip?
- 50 to 100
- How do honey bees communicate with one another?
- "Dancing." Honey bees do a dance which alerts other bees where nectar and pollen was located. The dance explains directions and distance. Bees also communicate with pheromones.
- What does "super" mean to a beekeeper?
- The super is the hive box in which honey is stored.
Source:National Honey Board
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Annual Report to Congress FY 2004
|MS Word (417 KB)|
OVERVIEW OF OCR COMPLIANCE AND ENFORCEMENT PROGRAM
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in the U.S. Department of Education (ED) is responsible for enforcing five federal civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability and age by recipients of federal financial assistance. These laws are:
- Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (prohibiting discrimination based on race, color and national origin);
- Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (prohibiting sex discrimination);
- Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (prohibiting disability discrimination);
- The Age Discrimination Act of 1975 (prohibiting age discrimination); and
- Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (prohibiting disability discrimination by public entities, e.g., public elementary and secondary school systems, postsecondary schools, and vocational education programs, whether or not they receive federal financial assistance).
In addition, OCR enforces the Boy Scouts of America Equal Access Act. This law addresses equal access for the Boy Scouts of America and other designated youth groups to meet in public schools that receive federal funds from the Department of Education.
These civil rights laws represent a national commitment to end discrimination in education programs. Since most educational institutions receive some type of federal financial assistance, these laws apply throughout the nation.
Coverage of these civil rights laws extends to:
- 14,559 school districts;1
- 4,168 colleges and universities;2
- 5,059 institutions conferring certificates below the associate degree level, such as training schools for truck drivers and cosmetologists;3 and
- thousands of other entities, such as libraries, museums, and vocational rehabilitation agencies.
Consequently, these civil rights laws protect millions of students attending or seeking to attend our educational institutions. In certain situations, the laws also protect persons who are employed or seeking employment at educational institutions. Overall, these laws protect:
- nearly 54.5 million students attending elementary and secondary schools;4 and
- nearly 16.5 million students attending colleges and universities.5
Enforcing these laws is critical to carrying out the mission of the U.S. Department of Education—ensuring equal access to education and promoting educational excellence throughout the nation.
In FY 2004, OCR's budget was $88,305,000, with full-time equivalent (FTE) staff of 655. See Figure 1 on historical funding and FTE.
Figure 1: U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil RightsAppropriations, FTE & Workload Data FY 1994– FY 2004
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The IEP Team recommends services in the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) appropriate to your child's needs. This means that the IEP Team, of which you are a member, must consider how special education services can be provided to your child that will allow him or her to be educated with children who do not have disabilities, to the maximum extent appropriate.
The IEP Team will first consider whether your child's needs may be met in a general education class with supports, aids and services provided to your child.
If it is determined that your child cannot participate in general education classes, even with appropriate Supplementary Aids and Services, Special Education Teacher Support Services, Related Services or in a Collaborative Team Teaching/Integrated Co-Teaching class, other settings such as Special Classes or special schools will be considered.
Keep in mind that your child should be provided the opportunity to participate in extracurricular and nonacademic activities (e.g., physical education, recess, after-school activities) with non-disabled children, unless his or her disability makes such participation inappropriate.
Also, your child should be educated in the school that he or she would attend if not disabled, unless the IEP requires that other arrangements are made.
Our goal is to educate children with disabilities in their zoned schools alongside their more typically developing peers whenever possible.
Read More »
Individualized Educational Programs often combine services to achieve the right balance. Educators agree that students usually do better when they get the supports they need in the context of classroom work (instead of being "pulled out"). More and more, you will find that specialists come into the classroom and collaborate with teachers, aides, and other adults to support students.
Some children will qualify for additional services such as paraprofessional services, assistive technology devices and services, adapted physical education, etc
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Soap may hold a dirty little secret in the form of a chemical called triclosan. Used in antiseptic hand soaps, shaving gel, toothpaste, deodorant and other hygiene products, a new study has found the chemical can weaken muscle contraction.
When researchers at the University of California at Davis exposed the individual muscle fibers of fish and mice to triclosan, they found it impaired the normal contraction mechanism. Both skeletal muscle and cardiac muscle no longer operated normally, and this was true when the mice and fish were tested themselves, or their muscle fibers were examined individually in a test tube.
Mice showed up to a 25 percent reduction in heart function measured within 20 minutes of exposure to the chemical, as well as an 18 percent reduction in grip strength -- yes, mice have grip strength -- for up to 60 minutes after exposure. Fish that swam in triclosan-tainted water for seven days performed worse on swimming tests than those that did not.
While the evidence for toxicity is largely based on animal studies, some experts have said that it might affect humans too.
"This is an interesting and potentially concerning finding, said Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, dean of global health in the department of preventive medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. "Many synthetic chemicals now known to be toxic to humans were first recognized as toxic in animal studies."
Landrigan said that exposure in the womb is of particular worry. "Early development is a time of particular vulnerability to toxic chemicals. Minute exposures at the wrong moment in embryonic or fetal development can have devastating effects. The great complexity of early human development creates windows of vulnerability, periods of heightened sensitivity to toxic chemicals that exist only in early life and have no counterpart in adulthood," he said.
Adding to the potential worry, previous studies have found that triclosan may alter hormone regulation in laboratory animals, or cause antibiotic resistance.
Not all experts believe the chemical is a problem because in it remains bound to blood proteins, which should in theory diminish its impact on humans. And manufacturers are adamant that there is no real proof triclosan is dangerous for humans. They're also quick to point out several recent studies that demonstrated its effectiveness in rd killing germs.
But some consumer groups and members of Congress have called for a ban on antiseptic soap products.
"If we adopted the precautionary principle, then we should remove it from consumer products. However, the United States chemical policy is included the Toxic Substances Control Act and calls only for voluntary testing of chemicals; therefore, the burden of proof of health effects falls on researchers, consumers and the chemical industry," said Dr. Adam Spanier, an assistant professor of pediatrics and public health sciences at the Penn State University Hershey Medical Center.
Both the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency are currently reviewing the chemical's safety, but the FDA said it didn't have sufficient evidence for a ban.
"If studies continue to demonstrate adverse health effects of triclosan, then the FDA should call for its removal from consumer products," Spanier said.
Originally developed as a pesticide, tricolsan has also been added to common household items such as bedding, clothing, toys and trash bags, and has been for more than 40 years. Trace amounts of the chemical have been detected in waterways, as well as a wide variety of living organisms. In tests on humans it shows up in urine, blood, even breast milk. It is so prevalent that a survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found the chemical present in the urine of 75 percent of Americans over the age of 5.
This latest study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
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What is Apprenticeship?
Apprenticeship is a training program that combines on-the-job training, work experience and technical training in a trade. From day one, apprentices earn a salary for their time on the job. An apprenticeship training program lasts one to four years depending on the trade.
Are You Interested in Becoming an Apprentice?
Check out these resources:
- Apprenticeship in Alberta —This tip sheet introduces apprenticeship and includes tips on choosing a trade, finding an employer and applying to an apprenticeship program.
- Trade Secrets —This Alberta Apprenticeship and Industry Training website offers information about training, certification, scholarships, financial assistance and more as well as resources for employers, employees and apprentices.
- Registered Apprenticeship Program (RAP) for high school students —This program allows high school students to earn credits toward an apprenticeship program and a high school diploma at the same time.
For Apprentices and Journeypersons
Are you a journeyperson who wants to move from Alberta to another province or country or from another province or country to Alberta?
If so, you’ll want to know about these programs:
Red Seal Program This interprovincial standards program makes it easier for skilled workers to move and work across Canada.
Apprenticeship and Labour Mobility This multi-level initiative helps ensure that qualified, skilled Canadian workers can practise their respective trades across Canada.
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Government, Politics, and Reform - Overview
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln are all represented in the Museum's collections—by a surveying compass, a lap desk, and a top hat, among other artifacts. But the roughly 100,000 objects in this collection reach beyond the possessions of statesmen to touch the broader political life of the nation—in election campaigns, the women's suffrage movement, labor activity, civil rights, and many other areas. Campaign objects make up much of the collection, including posters, novelties, ballots, voting machines, and many others. A second group includes general political history artifacts, such as first ladies' clothing and accessories, diplomatic materials, ceremonial objects, national symbols, and paintings and sculptures of political figures. The third main area focuses on artifacts related to political reform movements, from labor unions to antiwar groups.
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Getting To The Bottom Of Dyscalculia—And Of Our Number Sense
Mathematician Brian Butterworth is on a crusade to understand the number deficit called dyscalculia—and to help those who have it, reports Ewen Callaway in the journal Nature:
“Researchers estimate that as much as 7% of the population has dyscalculia, which is marked by severe difficulties in dealing with numbers despite otherwise normal intelligence.
That combination has attracted neuroscientists such as Butterworth, who believe that the disorder illuminates the inner workings of the brain’s number sense—the ability to understand and manipulate quantities. This sense is every bit as innate as vision or hearing, yet scientists disagree over its cognitive and neural basis, a debate that dyscalculics may help to settle.
For Butterworth, scientific curiosity eventually gave way to advocacy. “I thought, it’s not enough to just try to identify the cause,” he says. In the past decade, he has crusaded to get dyscalculia recognized—by parents, teachers, politicians and anyone who will listen. And he is using his scientific insights into the condition to help dyscalculic children. ‘What’s the point of telling someone they have dyscalculia if you can’t help them?’ he says.
By developing treatments for dyscalculia, Butterworth hopes to test competing theories about the cognitive basis of numeracy. If, as he believes, dyscalculia is at heart a deficiency of basic number sense and not of memory, attention or language, as others have proposed, then nurturing the roots of number sense should help dyscalculics. ‘It may be the case that what these kids need is just much more practice than the rest of us,’ Butterworth says.” (Read more here.)
So interesting that research on dyscalculia may not only help those afflicted with the condition, but also help illuminate how an understanding of numbers and math develops in the human brain in general.
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Evidence from caves in Siberia indicates that a global temperature increase of 1.5° Celsius may cause substantial thawing of a large tract of permanently frozen soil in Siberia. The thawing of this soil, known as permafrost, could have serious consequences for further changes in the climate.
Permafrost regions cover 24 percent of the land surface in the northern hemisphere, and they hold twice as much carbon as is currently present in the atmosphere. As the permafrost thaws, it turns from a carbon sink (meaning it accumulates and stores carbon) into a carbon source, releasing substantial amounts of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. Both of these gasses enhance the greenhouse effect.
By looking at how permafrost has responded to climate change in the past, we can gain a better understanding of climate change today. A team of international researchers looked at speleothems, such as stalagmites, stalactites, and flowstones. These are mineral deposits that are formed when water from snow or rain seeps into the caves. When conditions are too cold or too dry, speleothem growth ceases, since no water flows through the caves. As a result, speleothems provide a detailed history of periods when liquid water was available as well as an assessment of the relationship between global temperature and permafrost extent.
Using radioactive dating and data on growth from six Siberian caves, the researchers tracked the history of permafrost in Siberia for the past 450,000 years. The caves were located at varying latitudes, ranging from a boundary of continuous permafrost at 60 degrees North to the permafrost-free Gobi Desert.
In the northernmost cave, Lenskaya Ledyanaya, no speleothem growth has occurred since a particularly warm period around 400,000 years ago—the growth at that time suggests water was flowing in the area due to a melt in the permafrost. The extensive thawing at that time allows for an assessment of the warming required globally to cause a similar change in the permafrost boundary. Global temperatures at that time were only 1.5°C warmer than today, suggesting that we could be approaching a critical point at which the coldest permafrost regions would begin to thaw.
Not only will increasing global temperatures cause substantial thawing of permafrost, but it may also create wetter conditions in the Gobi Dessert, based on data from the southern-most cave obtained for the same time period. This suggests a dramatically changed environment in continental Asia.
Aside from changes in temperature and precipitation, thawing permafrost enables coastal erosion and the liquefaction of ground that was previously frozen. This poses a risk to the infrastructure of Siberia, including major oil and gas facilities.
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In 1957 the French government initiated the creation of a new dictionary of the French language, the Trésor de la Langue Française. In order to provide access to a large body of word samples, it was decided to transcribe an extensive selection of French texts for use with a computer. Twenty years later, a corpus totaling some 150 million words had been created, representing a broad range of written French -- from novels and poetry to biology and mathematics -- stretching from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries.
It soon became apparent that this corpus of French texts was an important resource not only for lexicographers, but also for many other types of humanists and social scientists engaged in French studies - on both sides of the Atlantic. The result of this realization was American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language (ARTFL) -- a cooperative project established in 1981 by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and the University of Chicago.
The ARTFL project has focused on three objectives over its long history:
* to include a variety of texts so as to make the database as versatile as possible; * to create a system that would be easily accessible to the research community; * to provide researchers with an easy-to-use but effective tool.
At present, ARTFL's main corpus, ARTFL-FRANTEXT, consists of nearly 3,000 texts, ranging from classic works of French literature to various kinds of non-fiction prose and technical writing. The eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries are about equally represented, with a smaller selection of seventeenth century texts as well as some medieval and Renaissance texts. Genres include novels, verse, theater, journalism, essays, correspondence, and treatises. Subjects include literary criticism, biology, history, economics, and philosophy. In most cases standard scholarly editions were used in converting the text into machine-readable form, and the data contain page references to these editions. The FRANTEXT corpus is updated as new high-quality digital texts become available.
In addition to FRANTEXT, ARTFL has built hundreds of databases for researchers and students working in specialized disciplines and languages other than French. Please see our Databases, Resources, and Collaborations pages for links to these projects.
New Opportunities for Research
ARTFL's stable of databases is one of the largest of its kind in the world. The number, variety and historical range of its texts allow researchers to go well beyond the usual narrow focus on single works or single authors. The databases permit both rapid exploration of single texts and inter-textual research of a kind virtually impossible without the aid of a computer. For a description of the latest research developments underway at ARTFL, please visit our Research Blog.
PhiloLogic is a tool for ARTFL text research which provides a menu driven system featuring a sophisticated help program that can be accessed at any time. PhiloLogic does not require any specialized knowledge of computers -- in fact, this system provides an excellent opportunity to become acquainted with the possibilities of computer-assisted research and teaching. The ARTFL Project has written full documentation for PhiloLogic, available here.
PhiloLogic provides several ways for users to select the texts they wish to analyze. Users may search a single text, texts by a single author, texts from a particular time period, texts with a particular word in the title, or all the texts in the database. For example, one might wish to work with all the texts of Balzac in the database, or all the texts published between 1750 and 1789. A single command will select these texts for further analysis.
ARTFL's PhiloLogic system supports a number of searching options. A user may search for a single word, a word root, prefix, suffix or a list of words created by the user. For example, one might search for the word liberté in the texts published between 1789 and 1794, or all of the words associated with "artist" -- artiste, artistes, écrivain, écrivains, poète, poètes, etc -- in the works of Zola. In many cases a researcher will not merely be interested in the occurrences of single words or lists of words, but where words occur in texts. Philologic allows the user to search for logical combinations of words and word lists. One might, for example, search for all the occurrences of words associated with "artist" where words beginning with "fem" -- femme, femmes, feministe, etc. -- are found in the same sentence in the works of Zola.
Several display formats are available to the Philologic user. Results can be displayed on screen line by line, with the search word highlighted or centered. The user may also browse through the full context of any result, examining many sentences or paragraphs around the target of the search. Philologic displays the bibliographic information and page number for each occurrence and can sort the results on screen by date, author name, keywords and other fields.
Access To The ARTFL Database
Access to the databases is organized through a consortium of user institutions, in most cases universities and colleges, each of which pay an annual subscription fee. In 2009, this fee is $500 (US) for PhD granting institutions and $250 (US) for other universities and colleges. All scholars and students at affiliated institutions have access to the database. Our Subscription Information page contains more on database access.
Both the CNRS and the University of Chicago are committed to the future growth of the ARTFL Project. These activities include expansion of the size of the database, correction of texts already in the database, and continued development of access and analysis software. The Project has obtained many important texts from other scholars and welcomes new contributions and proposals for collecting more texts. ARTFL expects to continue improving its research systems and plans to develop new analytical tools as well. We welcome joint projects with other institutions and invite you to contact us to discuss possible collaborations. Users at member universities will continue to play an important role in providing direction to the future development of the ARTFL Project. Please consult the ARTFL news page for updates concerning newly available texts and tools.
The ARTFL Project is supported by a full-time staff at the University of Chicago. We encourage you to contact us with any questions you may have about the project, such as the availability of texts, operation of the system, or the costs of using the database.
The ARTFL Project Department of Romance Languages and Literatures Division of the Humanities University of Chicago 1115 East 58th Street Chicago, IL 60637 tel: 773-702-8488 | email: artfl[at]artfl[dot]uchicago[dot]edu
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Padraic Colum (18811972). The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived before Achilles. 1921.
Part II. The Return to Greece
Chapter V. Medea Comes to Circe
THEY sailed up the River Ister until they came to the Eridanus, that river across which no bird can fly. Leaving the Eridanus they entered the Rhodanus, a river that rises in the extreme north, where Night herself has her habitation. And voyaging up this river they came to the Stormy Lakes. A mist lay upon the lakes night and day; voyaging through them the Argonauts at last brought out their ship upon the Sea of Ausonia.
It was Zetes and Calais, the sons of the North Wind, who brought the Argo safely along this dangerous course. And to Zetes and Calais Iris, the messenger of the gods, appeared and revealed to them where Circes island lay.
Deep blue water was all around that island, and on its height a marble house was to be seen. But a strange haze covered everything as with a veil. As the Argonauts came near they saw what looked to them like great dragonflies; they came down to the shore, and then the heroes saw that they were maidens in gleaming dresses.
The Argonauts would have drawn the ship close and would have sprung upon the island only that Medea cried out to them. She showed them the beasts that whimpered around the maidens, and then, as the Argonauts looked upon them, they saw that these were not beasts of the wild. There was something strange and fearful about them; the heroes gazed upon them with troubled eyes. They brought the ship near, but they stayed upon their benches, holding the oars in their hands.
Medea sprang to the island; she spoke to the maidens so that they shrank away; then the beasts came and whimpered around her. Forbear to land here, O Argonauts, Medea cried, for this is the island where men are changed into beasts. She called to Jason to come; only Jason would she have come upon the island.
They went swiftly toward the marble house, and the beasts followed them, looking up at Jason and Medea with pitiful human eyes. They went into the marble house of Circe, and as suppliants they seated themselves at the hearth.
Circe stood at her loom, weaving her many-colored threads. Swiftly she turned to the suppliants; she looked for something strange in them, for just before they came the walls of her house dripped with blood and the flame ran over and into her pot, burning up all the magic herbs she was brewing. She went toward where they sat, Medea with her face hidden by her hands, and Jason, with his head bent, holding with its point in the ground the sword with which he had slain the son of Æetes.
When Medea took her hands away from before her face, Circe knew that, like herself, this maiden was of the race of Helios. Medea spoke to her, telling her first of the voyage of the heroes and of their toils; telling her then of how she had given help to Jason against the will of Æetes, her father; telling her then, fearfully, of the slaying of Apsyrtus. She covered her face with her robe as she spoke of it. And then she told Circe she had come, warned by the judgment of Zeus, to ask of Circe, the daughter of Helios, to purify her from the stain of her brothers blood.
Like all the children of Helios, Circe had eyes that were wide and full of life, but she had stony lipslips that were heavy and moveless. Bright golden hair hung smoothly along each of her sides. First she held a cup to them that was filled with pure water, and Jason and Medea drank from that cup.
Then Circe stayed by the hearth; she burnt cakes in the flame, and all the while she prayed to Zeus to be gentle with these suppliants. She brought both to the seashore. There she washed Medeas body and her garments with the spray of the sea.
Medea pleaded with Circe to tell her of the life she foresaw for her, but Circe would not speak of it. She told Medea that one day she would meet a woman who knew nothing about enchantments but who had much human wisdom. She was to ask of her what she was to do in her life or what she was to leave undone. And whatever this woman out of her wisdom told her, that Medea was to regard. Once more Circe offered them the cup filled with clear water, and when they had drunken of it she left them upon the seashore. As she went toward her marble house the strange beasts followed Circe, whimpering as they went. Jason and Medea went aboard the Argo, and the heroes drew away from Circes island.
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Storytelling in the Classroom
Storytelling is not the same as reading aloud because it requires greater interaction between the teller and the listener. Therefore, storytelling is a great tool for improving children's communication skills, as well as developing language skills, comprehension, and self-awareness. (Reading and Communication Skills)
To help students use storytelling to foster creativity and to develop social skills and language skills—speaking, listening, and comprehension
Print out selected Building Blocks Character Cards, Know-Kit Cards, character bios, and ABC Coloring Book pages.
If you're going to use the Optional Activity for Older Students, gather a variety of at least 10 to 12 everyday items (pencil, spoon, umbrella, pair of shoes, tape, etc.).
- Gather the students in a large group. Choose a Building Blocks character picture and introduce him or her as a new student in the class. Tell the students some important things to know about their new friend based on the character cards and biography. We will use Ali Rabbit for our example.
Ali Rabbit is 5 years old. He lives with his mom, dad, grandparents, and great grandpa. He has six brothers and sisters. The oldest is aged 17 and the youngest is 5. His favorite sport is soccer. He likes to play on the computer and make music. His good friend is Thurgood Turtle.
- Now, start a story about Ali Rabbit's first day in your classroom. Include specific places and people in the story—the bus driver, the media specialist, etc. Model good storytelling practices for the students to remind them to speak clearly and loudly and to express feelings as they tell the story. Is Ali excited, frightened, or shy about his first day at a new school?
- Then, pass the picture of Ali to a student and have him or her add to the story. Continue passing the picture around the class until Ali's first day at school is complete. You may need to ask questions to prompt the children’s imaginations.
- Next, divide the class into small groups. Select several Know-Kit Cards and/or ABC Coloring Book pages that show Ali Rabbit. For example: Ali asleep on the soccer field, Ali playing the keyboard, Ali crying when someone took away his keyboard, Ali eating peanut butter and apples, Ali at his fifth birthday party, or Ali with his friends.
- Let the group talk about the pictures as they put them into a sequence and begin to make up a story that goes with the pictures. Depending on the age of your students, you may have to help them decide on the sequence of the pictures they will use.
- Have each group come to the front of the class with their pictures and share their story. Have others in the class participate by asking questions about the story or the characters.
- Finally, mix up all the pictures and distribute them around the class. Start a story based on the picture you hold. Then, call on a child to add to your story, using the character in the picture he or she holds. Go around the room and call on students to add to the class story.
- Have the students talk about the different stories and tell what they liked best. Was it more fun to have planned a story with their small group or to mix and match stories as a whole group? Why?
Optional: For Older Students
Place all the everyday items you’ve gathered into a big box. Be sure not to let the students see what's in the box. Then, tell the students that they're going to tell a story using the props in the box. Pass out one prop to the first student and have him or her start the story. Then, in the middle of the story, pass out another prop to a different student, which is the cue to jump into the story. Continue this until all the props are given out. The stories should make everyone laugh with the mismatched items and complicated storyline.
You can start again using the same props, but in a different order. Or, you can have students find their own props to tell an add-on group story.
Please note—to view documents in PDF format, you must have Adobe’s free Acrobat Reader software. If you do not already have this software installed on your computer, please download it from Adobe's Web site.
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- Dysbarism is a collective term for all illnesses resulting from changes in ambient pressure that occur at a rate exceeding the capacity of the person to adapt safely. Conditions such as decompression sickness (the bends), arterial gas embolism (AGE), and barotrauma may result.
- Decompression illness is a term that refers to both decompression sickness and AGE.
- Diagnosis of dysbarism can usually be made on history and examination alone.
- Gas coming out of solution and forming bubbles is the prime cause of decompression sickness, whereas gas contraction and expansion causes barotrauma.
- Any body tissue can be affected, resulting in a wide variety of clinical presentations. Any new symptom with a close temporal relation to diving should be presumed due to dysbarism until shown to be otherwise.
- The unpredictability of ultimate outcome at the onset of any decompression illness requires each case to be managed as a medical emergency.
- Recompression is the mainstay of treatment for decompression illness. Early administration improves outcome.
- Oxygen administration plays a key role in all cases of decompression illness, both as emergency treatment and during recompression.
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Actualizado por última vez: oct 23, 2012
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What's the Latest Development?
Using location data gathered by personal mobile phones, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University have created the first map that tracks the spread of malaria by examining movement patterns among Kenya's population. Between 2008 and 2009, researchers followed the movement of 15 millions Kenyans, out of a total population of close to 40 million. Then they combined the data with "maps of population distribution and malaria prevalence over the same period to create, for the first time, a map that correlates large-scale trends in movement to the spread of the disease."
What's the Big Idea?
Because of how malaria spreads, the disease is particularly sensitive to the movement of affected populations. "Malaria is usually associated with the bite of infected female mosquitoes. But once humans contract the disease, they can act as a vector if they are bitten by uninfected insects, which then spread the parasite to other people." Tom Scott of the Mosquito Research Laboratory at the University of California, Davis, said the research will be essential in finding and targeting the human transmission routes of the parasites that cause malaria.
Photo credit: Shutterstock.com
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Using Energy2D to simulate Trombe wallsFebruary 26th, 2013 by Charles Xie
A Trombe wall is a sun-facing wall separated from the outdoors by glass and an air space. It consists a solar absorber (such as a dark surface) and two vents for air in the house to circulate through the space and carry the solar heat to warm the house up. In a way, a Trombe wall is like a machine that uses air as a convey belt of thermal energy harvested from the sun. Trombe walls are very simple and easy to make and are sometimes used in passive solar green buildings.
Hiding sophisticated power of computational fluid dynamics behind a simple graphical user interface, our Energy2D software can easily simulate how a Trombe wall works. The two images in this blog post show screenshots of a Trombe wall simulation and its closeup version. You can play the simulation on this page and download the models there. If you open the models using Energy2D, you should be able to see how easy it is to tweak the models and create realistic heat flow simulations.
Solar chimneys operate based on similar principles. Energy2D should be able to simulate solar chimneys as well. Perhaps this would be a good challenge to you. (I will post a solar chimney simulation later if I figure out how to do it.)
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When the father of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas was dying, it inspired Thomas to write one of his most famous works, “Do not go gentle into that good night.” The poem encourages Thomas’s father, and its readers, to fight for their lives when they approach death. The constant refrain in the poem is “Rage, rage against the dying of the light,” meaning that one should defy death as much as possible. Similarly, in the opening stanza, Thomas states, “Old age should burn and rave at close of day” (2), continuing his theme of staying strong, as well as the metaphor of nighttime as death.
Thomas isn’t necessarily negative in his attitude toward death. He writes, “…wise men at their end know dark is right” (4). By this he means that smart people realize that death is the next logical step, and they acknowledge that it must happen. The rest of the poem offers examples of people who come to realize their misconceptions about life, and how this makes them reluctant to die. One of these instances is, “Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight/Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,/Rage, rage against the dying of the light” (13-15). “Grave,” or sad, men, that are dying are finally able to see with astounding clarity (“blinding sight”) how even people in unfortunate situations are capable of being happy. Even people with “blind eyes” can “be gay.” In these stanzas Thomas conveys the notion that our regrets in life tend to make us feel that we are not ready for death.
The last stanza of the poem is a direct plea from Thomas to his father: “And you, my father, there on the sad height,/Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears…” (16-17). Thomas refers to his father’s near-death state as “the sad height”; it is an achievement to have made it through to the end of our lives, but it is obviously bittersweet. Dylan Thomas’s appeals to his father to “curse” and “bless” him with his “fierce tears,” mean that although Thomas will be saddened by his father’s death, he wants his father to make him appreciate life. The tears have to be “fierce” in order to display how passionate his father was about life. The poet then entreats his father to follow the commands he’s been making throughout the piece: “…I pray,/Do not go gentle into that good night./Rage, rage against the dying of the light” (17-19). These instructions are made more powerful by the fact that Thomas includes the phrase, “I pray.” He is begging his father to do what he asks. Above all else, Thomas wants his father to fight for his life, rather than just give up, because Thomas sees the value in his father’s, and all, life.
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NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory has had virtually unbroken coverage of the sun’s rise toward solar maximum, the peak of solar activity in its regular 11-year cycle. This video shows those three years of the sun at a pace of two images per day.
These noteworthy events appear at the following times in the video:
00:30;24 Partial eclipse by the moon
00:31;16 Roll maneuver
01:11;02 August 9, 2011 X6.9 Flare, currently the largest of this solar cycle
Video description: The Sun unleashed a medium-sized solar flare that is visually spectacular. The large cloud of particles mushroomed up and fell back down looking as if it covered an area of almost half the solar surface.
Two NASA spacecrafts observed this event from three different view-points.
Image description: At the end of August, a filament from the sun suddenly erupted into space. The filament had been held up for days by the Sun’s ever changing magnetic field and the timing of the eruption was unexpected. Learn more about the eruption.
Image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Image description: Should you put sunscreen on infants? Not usually. The best approach is to keep infants under 6 months out of the sun, especially between 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM.
But when you are outside together, here are some of the most important ways to protect your infant from the harmful rays of the sun: an umbrella and brimmed hat for shade, a cooler for liquids, a bottle for hydration, and clothing for covering the skin.
Image description: These images show a solar flare as observed on January 23. You can see the sun’s surface brighten as gas was superheated and magnetically supercharged. In the far right image, there is a stream of solar material flowing into space, likely solar protons and a coronal mass ejection.
Solar flares and coronal mass ejections are not a danger to humans on Earth. The planet’s magnetic field and atmosphere deflect and absorb the energy. Sun storms can pose some risks to astronauts, and upset science, military, and communications satellites.
| 3.400948 |
In July 2006, Andy Carvin, host of the PBS blog learning.now, examined the attitude of teachers toward using Wikipedia in the classroom. He asked: “Are educators hostile to Wikipedia?”. The answers ranged from one high school teacher who told Andy “Most colleagues had never seen Wikipedia, never intended to go there, and some had already warned their students that they were not to use Wikipedia for class projects” to another teacher who objected “I use Wikipedia all the time as a quick way to get a first pass on a subject I’m not familiar with, and I don’t see any reason why students shouldn’t be taught to use it the same way.” Most of the participants were arguing about whether their students should use Wikipedia as a source of information, not whether the students should contribute to it.
Carvin had already pointed out in 2005 that asking students to actively contribute to Wikipedia might be a model worth exploring . Now, he stated: “It may be just a matter of time before we see highly organized educational activities, with teams of students from around the world working together to improve the quality of content on Wikipedia.”
- The past year
The past year has shown that those educational activities that Andy Carvin was envisioning in 2005 can be an effective means of improving Wikipedia’s quality. Building on the experiences of teachers like Jon Beasley-Murray (Was introducing Wikipedia to the classroom an act of madness leading only to mayhem if not murder?) and others, the Wikimedia Foundation started an experimental pilot project (the Public Policy Initiative) to explore the challenges and opportunities of student-based Wikipedia-editing on a larger scale. More than 800 students from 22 U.S. universities contributed about 5,600 pages of high quality content to the English Wikipedia. Articles written by those students improved by an average of 140 percent. Moreover, our pilot project sparked a high level of interest from media and teachers around the world.
Over the initial 12 months of the pilot project, we have built a strong knowledge base about running a class-based program as well as the tools needed to implement it (training handbooks, brochures on how to start editing, how-to videos, sample syllabi, etc.) We have also recruited and trained Wikipedia Ambassadors, whose role is to teach students about the basics of Wikipedia and to support them with their first edits. We are now at a point to make these investments pay off.
- The Global Education Program and the year ahead
Beginning in 2011, we will expand Wikipedia editing in university classrooms to institutions around the world. That’s what we call the “Global Education Program”. It will support the Wikimedia Foundation’s strategic goal to grow, strengthen, and increase the Wikipedia editor community. It will also improve Wikipedia’s quality and increase Wikipedia’s credibility within academia.
Our priorities for expansion in year one will be India and Brazil, and we will also start activities in a couple of other countries. Whereas the Public Policy Initiative had a narrow topical focus, the new Global Education Program will encourage teachers from all disciplines to engage their students in Wikipedia editing.
What are the big challenges we are going to tackle in year one?
- Scalability. Based on the current growth, we are planning to have more than 10,000 students enrolled in our program by 2013. That means that we will need a much larger number of Wikipedia Campus and Online Ambassadors to support teachers and students. Therefore, we are planning to move the Ambassador training online and explore new models of letting volunteers take ownership of the program.
- Standards and guidelines. For a global volunteer-driven program like ours, it will be important that all participants have a shared understanding of what the goals are and how we are planning to achieve these goals. That’s where standards and guidelines come into play. The education systems and the culture of education varies from country to country, and we aim at being as flexible as possible in the implementation of our model. At the same time, we need to make sure that the quality of our support for teachers and students meets the same standards globally.
- Communication. At the Wikipedia in Higher Education Summit last month, we have seen how powerful it can be when participants of our program share their experiences and learnings with each other. Our goal for the next year will be to give volunteers a stronger voice in storytelling and also to develop tools that enable participants to share their materials and best practices more effectively.
For me, the year ahead is the next step toward the vision that Andy Carvin outlined in 2005. Wikipedia belongs in Higher Education. And it’s not a matter of time anymore that students from around the world will work together to improve the quality of content on Wikipedia. The future of Wikipedia in Education is now.
Global Education Program Director
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Over 4 billion years ago the young and barren Earth was being buffeted by meteor strikes, and that violent bombardment could have created the first amino acids that then gave rise to the origin of life on the planet, a new study suggests. The hellish temperatures and pressures generated when an extraterrestrial object strikes Earth at speeds of several kilometers per second are enough to shatter and vaporize rock…. Yet part of such an immense burst of energy can trigger chemical reactions that generate complex organic substances from basic inorganic ingredients, says Takeshi Kakegawa [Science News].
Previously, researchers have suggested that organic molecules may have been created elsewhere in the universe and were brought to Earth by meteors. But the new study, in which researchers simulated the impact of meteorites in the primordial ocean, argues that the organic molecules could have been synthesized from the inorganic molecules already present on the planet when the meteorites crashed into the ocean. Other researchers have suggested similar processes for the creation of organic molecules on Earth, including lightning strikes or chemical reactions surrounding hot, volcanic vents in the deep sea.
In the study, published in Nature Geoscience [subscription required], the researchers fired meteorite-like balls of iron and carbon into a mixture of water and ammonia, meant to resemble the oceans billions of years ago. In the experiment, the researchers found that the iron and carbon were heated by the impact and reacted with hydrogen and nitrogen to form biomolecules, including fatty acids, amines and the amino acid glycine [Cosmos Online]. Amines are the building blocks for more complex amino acids, and fatty acids are found in cell membranes.
While experts describe the results as plausible, the research hasn’t won over everyone. “It’s neat to show that you could harness the energy of impacts to create organic bonds,” says Jennifer Blank, an astrobiologist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. But she fears that theories of life’s origin may never move beyond the hypothetical. “As someone in the general field, one of the frustrations, of course, is that we’re never going to know the answer,” she says. “But as another mechanism for contributing to the inventory of organic compounds, this is cool” [Scientific American].
80beats: New Results from a 1953 Experiment Offer Hints to the Origin of Life
80beats: The Earth’s Oldest Diamonds May Show Evidence of Earliest Life
DISCOVER: Life’s Fifth Element Came From Meteors
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Douglass Jacobs, an associate professor of forestry and natural resources, found that American chestnuts grow much faster and larger than other hardwood species, allowing them to sequester more carbon than other trees over the same period. And since American chestnut trees are more often used for high-quality hardwood products such as furniture, they hold the carbon longer than wood used for paper or other low-grade materials.
"Maintaining or increasing forest cover has been identified as an important way to slow climate change," said Jacobs, whose paper was published in the June issue of the journal Forest Ecology and Management. "The American chestnut is an incredibly fast-growing tree. Generally the faster a tree grows, the more carbon it is able to sequester. And when these trees are harvested and processed, the carbon can be stored in the hardwood products for decades, maybe longer."
At the beginning of the last century, the chestnut blight, caused by a fungus, rapidly spread throughout the American chestnut's natural range, which extended from southern New England and New York southwest to Alabama. About 50 years ago, the species was nearly gone.
New efforts to hybridize remaining American chestnuts with blight-resistant Chinese chestnuts have resulted in a species that is about 94 percent American chestnut with the protection found in the Chinese species. Jacobs said those new trees could be ready to plant in the next decade, either in existing forests or former agricultural fields that are being returned to forested land.
"We're really quite close to having a blight-resistant hybrid that can be reintroduced into eastern forests," Jacobs said. "But because American chestnut has been absent from our forests for so long now, we really don't know much about the species at all."…
Douglass Jacobs examines a young hybrid of the American chestnut. He expects the trees could be reintroduced in the next decade. (Purdue University file photo/Nicole Jacobs)
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int WidthInInches(int feet);
// Initialize variables by calling functions.
int feet = WidthInFeet();
int wd = WidthInInches(feet);
// Display results.
std::cout << "Width in inches = " << wd;
std::cout << "Enter width in feet: ";
std::cin >> feet;
int WidthInInches(int feet)
return feet * 12;
I'm a new to C++ and I understand that it reads up to down. However, I don't understand how the last part could return a number and then that number is returned to the out line in the main function. Can someone please explain this?
| 3.145994 |
This is the day that … Lyman Beecher was born in Connecticut, in 1775.
He has been described as “the father of more brains than any other man in America”, a reference to his 13 children. These included the famous preacher, Henry Ward Beecher, and the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe. As a matter of fact, “all his sons were well known as preachers” (Concise Universal Biography, page 222).
But Rev. Lyman Beecher was a giant among giants himself. He was educated at Yale in the days when it was barely above a secondary school in its facilities. The students were of dubious character at times.
Beecher was appalled by the example of his peers, but found his ideal in Timothy Dwight, the new President of Yale. It was Dwight who stirred Yale into a religious fervor that led to many revivals in the next twenty-five years. Lyman graduated in 1797 and spent the next year in Yale Divinity School under the tutelage of Dwight as his mentor.
Ordained to the Presbyterian ministry in 1797, he pastored three large churches (Litchfield, Connecticut; Boston; and Cincinatti), was well known as a revivalist, an educator and a social reformer. He brought revival but also controversy. His preaching on temperance was just one of the themes that offended his parishioners at times.
He was one of the founders of the American Bible Society and President of Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinatti.
Initially he opposed Charles Finney’s new revival techniques and theology, but a few years later he admitted his worth and even invited Finney to hold meetings in Boston. Lyman Beecher found himself in ‘hot water’ with his Presbyterian brethren who had little time for the famous revivalist. After all, Finney taught “man was able to repent in response to God’s grace” (Dictionary of American Biography, page 38).
As a result Beecher was actually tried for heresy … but acquitted.
He was already one of America’s best known preachers by the age of 50, when he moved to Boston, seeking better payment for his skills and status.
His next move, to Cincinatti, was motivated by his concern to sure up protestant preaching where the Catholics and Unitarians had already made inroads. His years there were controversial. He used his Presidency of Lane Theological Seminary to train ministers to win the West for Protestantism.
An inveterate opponent of Roman Catholicism and Unitarianism, it is said that one of his fiery sermons apparently helped incite a mob “that resulted in the burning of a convent”.
During those years he was charged with acts of heresy, slander and hypocrisy by opposing religious factions. He resigned from Lane in 1850 and went to live with his son, Henry Ward Beecher, in Brooklyn, where he died on 10 January, 1863, after a long and stormy ministry.
This post is based on the work of my late friend Donald Prout whose love for books and Christian history led him to collate a daily Christian calendar. I continue to work with Don’s wife, Barbara, to share his life work with the world. I have updated some of these historical posts and will hopefully draw from Don’s huge files of clippings to continue this series beyond Don’s original work. More of Don’s work can be found at www.donaldprout.com. I am indebted to Don for awakening in me an interest in Church History, which I previously considered to be a little stuffy and of little practical value. I find in the process of updating Don’s Christian Diary that I am being constantly refreshed, illuminated or challenged by the lives of those who have gone before.
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Chapter 5 takes place an estimated 9 years after Nebuchadnezzar’s death and about 36 years after the previous chapter. Belshazzar was Nebuchadnezzar’s grandson who took control of the kingdom as his father was on extended leave fighting the Persians. It appears that Daniel had retired from his high place in government. He would have been pretty old at this point, though he also could have lost his position when Nebuchadnezzar died.
The walls of Babylon were 87 feet thick and 100 feet high
It was fairly common for the kings to dine with such large numbers of people as you can see in Esther 1. In this case though, the invading armies are right outside the city walls. This would seem to be incredible arrogance similar to his grandfather, but Herodotus tells us that Babylon had two walls surrounding the city with a moat in between. The walls were 87 feet thick and 100 feet high, so conquering Babylon was not something that happened easily. At the end of the chapter we find out that this would be the night it was captured. Herodotus corroborates the Bible and mentions a festival was going on the night the city was conquered.
Regardless of the city’s security, it was a bad decision to get drunk in front of your lords with an invading army outside. Even worse to taunt a god by desecrating sacred items collected from a temple. Maybe he was doing this to instill a sense of pride to his lords reminding them of past victories, though Daniel seems be very specific about his lack of sobriety.
The handwriting on the wall has always stood out to me as a bizarre miracle by God (bizarre by miracle standards that is). This seems like something you would see in a horror movie. The best interpretation I found of the Aramaic writing said it literally translated to “numbered, numbered, weighed, divided.”
Belshazzar was not given a message of repentance but rather a proclamation of impending judgement. It is evident to us that although the king is just informed of his doom, God had been moving the Medes and Persians in place to execute his plan for some time.
Extra-biblical writings tell us that the Persians blocked the flow of the Euphrates and walked on the riverbed to an unguarded portion of the wall where they climbed up without opposition. Since so many were gathered at the festival, the Babylonians were defeated with relative ease.
Numbered, numbered, weighed, divided
Darius the Mede is not found anywhere else in extra-biblical writings and is a serious point of contention for Bible critics. Cyrus was definitely the king of Persia, so Darius could either be a Babylonian nickname or title similar to Caesar or Pharoah. It also could be referring to the local ruler that Cyrus put in charge of that area. There is no evidence to identify Darius the Mede, but there is also no hard evidence contradicting it.
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A wage is an amount of money to be paid for a job. There is usually a correlation between the wage paid and the experience of the person to do the job and the level of skill necessary for the job.
Like all market forces, wages are payed based on interactions between the supply curve (how much workers are willing to supply a particular type of labor at a certain wage) and a demand curve (how many workers of a particular type a firm is willing to hire at a particular wage). Wages are typically set at equilibrium. If a minimum wage is imposed that is above this equilibrium, it leads to structural unemployment. If a minimum wage is set below the equilibrium point, it is unlikely to affect that jobs wage unless a complement or substitute job's equilibrium wage is less than the minimum wage (causing ripple effects throughout the related markets).
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Presidential Timeline of the Twentieth Century
|Collection homeCompact list of all itemsSearch this collection's 32 items|
|Title:||Presidential timeline of the twentieth century|
"The Presidential Timeline was designed and developed by the Learning Technology Center in the University of Texas at Austin College of Education, in conjunction with the Presidential Libraries and Terra Incognita Productions. The Presidential Timeline project was made possible through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities with additional support from The Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation and The University of Texas Libraries." -- About the Project page.
An interactive timeline of Presidential history, presenting materials drawn from the Presidential Libraries. The Presidential Timeline provides a single point of access to an ever-growing selection of digitized assets from the collections of the twelve Presidential Libraries of the National Archives. These assets include document, photographs, audio recordings and video relating to the events of the president' lives. Civil rights materials cover the integration of Central High School in Little Rock and President Johnson's activities related to civil rights.
The Civil Rights Digital Library received support from a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute of Museum and Library Services for the aggregation and enhancement of partner metadata.
|Types:||Instructional materials | Timelines (chronologies) | Photographs | Government records|
|Subjects:||Hoover, Herbert, 1874-1964 | Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945 | Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972 | Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 | Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 | Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973 | Nixon, Richard M. (Richard Milhous), 1913-1994 | Ford, Gerald R., 1913-2006 | Carter, Jimmy, 1924- | Reagan, Ronald | Bush, George, 1924- | Clinton, Bill, 1946- | Presidents--United States | Presidents--United States--Archives | Presidential libraries--United States | Civil rights movements--United States | African Americans--Civil rights | School integration--Arkansas--Little Rock | Segregation in education--United States | United States | Little Rock (Ark.) | Pulaski County (Ark.)|
|Institution:||Lyndon Baines Johnson Library|
|Contributors:||Lyndon Baines Johnson Library | Terra Incognita Productions | University of Texas Libraries | National Endowment for the Humanities|
|Online Publisher:||Austin, Tex. : The University of Texas at Austin, Learning Technology Center|
|Persistent Link to Item:||http://www.presidentialtimeline.org|
| 3.008657 |
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Our genes are like a recipe for a human. It's a very complicated recipe, determining how much of this protein and how much of that enzyme need to be added into the mix in order for us to function properly, but our genes are pretty good at getting it right. Although we are still learning how the recipe works, what ingredients (gene products) are involved, and when are they are produced, our knowledge is growing fast.
For example, a master regulator gene has been identified that tells an embryonic cell whether or not to become a pancreas cell. Dr. James Wells and his team at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine have determined that a gene called Sox17 acts like a toggle switch in mouse embryonic development. "In normal embryonic development, when you have an undecided cell, if Sox17 goes one way the cell becomes part of the biliary system. If it goes the other way, the cell becomes part of the pancreas," said Dr. Wells in a press release from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. The results of Dr. Wells' study were published in the July 21 issue of Developmental Cell.
Dr. Wells and his colleagues are hoping that because Sox17 can tell undecided embryonic cells whether or not to become pancreatic tissue, it might also be able to tell stem cells (cells that can become almost anything in the body) to become pancreatic beta cells. If we could induce a cell to become an insulin-producing beta cell, we would be one step closer to treating and possibly curing type 1 diabetes. When the immune system attacks the beta cells in type 1 diabetes, it is often the case that most beta cells are destroyed before the disease has even been diagnosed. So creating new beta cells, possibly in a laboratory dish, and implanting them in patients is one possibility for treatment.
Preventing beta cell destruction in the first place is another avenue of research that is underway, and genes that are involved in protecting beta cells from the immune system are being studied as well.
0 comments - Aug 28, 2009
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Word Origin & History
1605, the "East Goths," who conquered Italy late 5c. and established, under Theodric, a kingdom there that lasted from 493 to 555 C.E., from L.L. Ostrogothæ, lit. "eastern Goths" from P.Gmc. *aust(a)r- "east" (for second element, see Goth, also Visigoth), but according to some this is a folk corruption
of an earlier Austrogoti, from a Gmc. compound, the first element of which means "shining" or "splendid," from P.Gmc. *austr-, from PIE *ausr- (see aurora
), which is also, via "sunrise," the root of the L. word for "east."
| 3.136552 |
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