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Experts from across the board joined together recently to discuss the effects that oil and natural gas drilling will have in Columbiana and Mahoning counties, the state, and even the nation.
The experts, representing Youngstown State University, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Ohio Environmental Council, and Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program, spoke during a seminar at the university.
The purpose of the seminar was to generate more understanding about the drilling process and topics covered included its history-which dates back to the early 1900s, whether injection wells are related to earthquakes, whether enough water is available to continue the hydraulic fracturing process, and how the process affects the environment and economy.
University Professor Dr. Jeffrey Dick, who specializes in engineering geology, hydrogeology, geophysics, and petroleum geology, said drilling has only recently "skyrocketed" over the last two years.
He said there have been more than 270,000 natural gas and crude oil wells drilled in Ohio, and of those, 64,000 are currently active.
In what he called the Eastern Ohio Utica Fairway, there are 367 wells permitted and 137 wells already drilled. Of those, 33 are producing and 30 are still in the drilling stage.
Columbiana County is included in that fairway, and according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), one well is currently producing in Knox Township.
Dick said the big issue isn't necessarily hydraulic fracturing, but what will become of the brine once the fracking is completed. Fracking is a process used in drilling in which water, sand and other fluids are injected into the shale to extract the oil and gas stored there. The force of the injection causes the rock to break up, or fracture, releasing the oil and gas.
Dick said that due to the extent of wells being drilled the state is looking at "billions of gallons of brine and throwback" - the fluids left over as a result of fracking a natural gas well. The fluids are treated as wastewater and stored in injection wells, which have gained considerable attention from those who believe the wells have been linked to earthquakes, including those that occurred in Youngstown in late 2011.
He said there are approximately 190 injection wells in the state and doesn't believe the well in Youngstown caused the local earthquakes but did play a role in triggering them.
The underground disposal well owned by Northstar Disposal Services was shut down by the ODNR shortly after two earthquakes happened within 24 hours. The 4.0 earthquake was the 11th to occur there since March of 2011, and the shut down was requested so officials could analyze data and see if a link existed.
"You shut off a well and the earthquakes stop, you gotta think" there could be a link, Dick said.
He pointed out that Ohio receives billions of gallons of brine and flowback from Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The states have bans on the wastewater recycling or disposal, despite having operational class 2 injection wells.
"Ohio has been a no risk dumping ground for a lot of stuff, including demolition and debris," Trent Dougherty, director of legal affairs for the Ohio Environmental Council, said.
Dick said that, in his opinion, class 2 injection disposal will be more difficult in the future. He said technology already exists for brine treatment facilities but the money is lacking.
With regard to fracking, he said there have been no cases in which the process was found to have caused water contamination. Surface spills, however, could cause contamination.
"Several fluids are dangerous and you are looking at potential spills. Spills are major environmental issues. A spill is going to happen," he said.
Senate Bill 315 enacted by Gov. John Kasich this summer allowed for more safeguards for the disposal of the fluids, he noted.
Rhonda Reda, executive director of the state's oil and gas energy education program, said the Utica Shale play in Ohio is bigger than that found in Saudi Arabia.
By 2015, the program expects output sales of oil and gas to be at nearly $23 billion. Most of the activity will occur in 2014 and 2015, and royalties paid on oil and gas are expected to reach $1.6 billion in 2015.
"We are drilling smarter and we are drilling better wells," she said.
She cautioned that the state, and the nation, should not rely solely on one energy source, however.
In 2009, the world used 100 quadrillion British thermal units of energy. By 2030, that is expected to jump to 124 quadrillion, she said.
She explained that a "large chunk" of the energy being used can be traced back to technology such as laptops, iPads, and other items.
"All these things require energy and our energy consumption is absolutely enormous," she said.
The state is currently the fourth largest energy consumer in the nation, she added.
University Professor Michael Costarell, who specializes in civil and mechanical engineering and is a certified energy manager, said that although alternatives exist, or are in the preliminary stages, people continue to use what is convenient.
He explained that a 40-minute drive in a car would take longer in a solar-powered vehicle that needs to be charged after every so many miles. He said that it would take 18 hours of charge time for a natural gas car to reach the same distance as a car on eight gallons of fuel.
Dougherty said there should be less dependence on fossil fuels.
As for how much water is being used in the drilling process, Dick said that six million gallons were used by oil and gas exploration company Chesapeake Energy on one well in Carroll County. Three-hundred tons of sand were also used with the water in the fracking process on that well.
Although water use is significant, Dick doesn't believe water sources will run dry as a result of the drilling.
Dougherty said that although there are risks to drilling, he didn't necessarily want to see it stopped.
"Our hope is we get more enforcement dollars to make sure this is done correctly," he said.
The seminar was hosted by the Ohio Newspaper Association and Youngstown Vindicator.
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Rose Marie Pinon was a 19-year-old, well-educated, middle class girl when she married the 35-year-old Louis in 1814. In September 1817 she joined her husband on the Uranie disguised as a man until they left port. She was the first woman to complete an account of the three-year circumnavigation in a ‘series of intimate letters which took the form of a diary’. Rose recorded life aboard ship, observations of the people and places they visited, scientific work of the expedition, relationships between men and women, and the work of artist Jacques Arago. She had a keen eye for detail and created vivid descriptions of the strange and exotic places they visited.
Rose and her ‘diary’ survived the dangers of the voyage and the shipwreck in the Falkland Islands. Her life was tragically cut short when she died of cholera in 1834, aged 38 years, after nursing Louis through the same illness.
It was not until 1927 that an account of her journey appeared in a French publication of her letters, with the first English translation in 1962.
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The Thick-tailed Gecko, Underwoodisaurus milii, can be recognised by its large head and colour pattern of dark background with numerous yellowish spots. The original tail is narrow at the base, then broadens and tapers over its length. It has a snout vent length of around 100 mm.
Photographer: Peter Robertson / Source: Wildlife Profiles Pty. Ltd.
Distribution and habitat
The Thick-tailed Gecko is widespread across the northwest of the state southwards to the Castlemaine area. It often lives in holes in the ground, although is also common in rocky outcrops in north central Victoria, where it hides under rocks.
A terrestrial species, its diet mainly consists of small invertebrates. Females of this species lay 2 eggs per clutch.
Cogger, H. 2000. Reptiles and Amphibians of Australia. Reed Books.
Wilson, S. & Swan, G. 2003. Reptiles of Australia. Princeton University Press.
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Published on March 5, 2013 by Amy
Moccasin, skin shoe worn by indigenous people of North America, excepting the sandal wearers of the Southwest area. There were two general types of moccasins, the hard-soled, which was used in the Eastern woodlands and the Southeast cultural areas, and the soft-soled, used in the Plains area. The hard-soled moccasin was made by sewing, with sinew thread, a rawhide sole to a leather upper piece; the soft-soled moccasin was one piece of soft leather with a seam at the instep and the heel. Boot or legging moccasins (sometimes reaching the hip) were worn from Alaska to Arizona and New Mexico, but they were generally part of the woman’s costume. The moccasins of certain tribes were distinctive, and sometimes a moccasin track could indicate the tribe of the wearer. Moccasins were usually symbolically decorated with porcupine quills and, after the coming of the Europeans, with glass beads. Special moccasins were used for ceremonies such as the Iroquois adoption service, which required that a recruit put on Iroquois moccasins to indicate that he would follow Iroquois ways.
native art, native american jewelry, native american rings, turquoise crafts, student loans, debt financing, native american astrology, native horoscopes, student debt, Indian Genealogy Records, family tree, native heritage, native jobs, native study, native students, native american university, grant, native ancestry, dna test
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With the tragic events that have unfolded in Japan following the catastrophic earthquake off the country's coast, some have raised the idea of using robotics to aid human efforts within disaster zones.
According to Antonio Espingardeiro, a robotics expert at the IEEE, more could have and should be done to use the possibilities offered by robots to help limit the effects of the Japanese disaster and the effects of the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
“In this situation, if there was better preparation with the appropriate technology then perhaps circumstances could already be improved,” he told TechEye.
Espingardeiro believes that risks could be lowered through the increased use of robots such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) which can, for example, be equipped with radiation sensors for the purposes of monitoring and analysing air quality.
However it is a predominantly human crew that is working in the radioactive atmosphere to deal with the disaster, although preparations are being made to introduce more robotic devices for tasks such as inspecting underwater infrastructure.
“More needs to be done in the future to ensure that the relevant robotic technologies are available in disaster zones such as that of Japan,” said Espingardeiro.
“Japan has had to call for international help in order to provide appropriate robotics that can be used in the situation, with the US providing the main supply of hardware with its thermal imaging UAVs and other robotic technology.”
According to Espingardeiro, it is up to governments across the world to put more emphasis on the use of robotics in such situations to mitigate risks in the future.
“There is certainly a culture of change within views towards the use of robotics, but there needs to be more done to ensure that the relevant quality and quantity of hardware is available when it is needed.
“Many governments are just starting to realise the potential of robotics in such situations.”
Espingardeiro believes that the problem lies in the lack of suitable equipment available, alongside a lack of investment in the relevant training of personnel in the operation of robots on a large scale.
One of the stumbling blocks lies in the fact that the majority of cutting edge robotics technologies are the sole preserve of militaries, which account for large numbers of the hardware.
“While there are maybe 10-15 units in use in the Japanese disaster, there were for example 6,000 robots used in the Iraq war,” he said.
Espingardeiro thinks it's necessary that production is moved away from the military sphere so that commercialisation will allow current technologies to become more cost effective and not just for the defence budget-backed militaries.
“It is natural that technologies are more expensive initially, for example a number of years ago GPS was only used by the military, but I expect that robotics technology will also become more easily accessible.
“This will mean that rather than having a small number of units available in a particular situation which may cost over a million dollars, you might have one hundred.
“Therefore the inherent dangers that can be found in an environment such as in Japan, which could easily damage the cameras or sensors of a robot, would not cause any hesitation in use of a robot for a specific task.
"But it is very difficult to get your hands on a robot currently, even if you have the money."
Of course as Espingardeiro notes, the reduction in costing is something that will gradually come down due to market prices for relevant chips, sensors and motors, but with more investment in direct development of robotics technologies he believes that the timescale for the next generation of robots could be reduced from the expected ten to fifteen years.
In the longer term this will enable the use of significantly more sophisticated technology which would mean improved effectiveness in high risk situations.
“There are already examples of robots that have greatly increased dexterity compared to the gripper mechanisms of the current robots which are used in search and rescue missions,” he says.
One example Espingardeiro points to is NASA’s ‘Robonaut’ which utilises highly sophisticated dexterous touch that would enable precise control far away from dangerous areas, with particular use in the Japanese case.
Again, while this remote technology is available to some degree, more research needs to be done to solve bug problems and to make it more attainable.
As another longer term contingency plan, Espingardeiro believes that future nuclear reactors should place much more emphasis in their design on facilitating the use of robots.
The ideas can't be implemented in immediate or even short term time scales, but Espingardeiro says that as governments begin to fully realise the potential for robotics in disaster situations more can be done to use the technology to save lives - by sending in the robots straight away.
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A Great American Historical Moment Is Auctioned
Bidder Pays $2.1 Million for a Pivotal U.S. Document
By Jay Zimmer
There were 48 original copies of the great Emancipation Proclamation, all signed by President Abraham Lincoln in the closing months of 1862. The Civil War was raging, and at that point in the conflict, things were not going well for the Union forces.
Lincoln’s proclamation stated that as of the first day of 1863, all slaves in states then in rebellion were free, and that all offices of the United States including the federal government and the military were mandated to protect that freedom. It was pivotal in American history. Politically, Lincoln had no authority in the South; those states in rebellion had declared their own government, much as the original 13 colonies had done “fourscore and seven years” before.
Lincoln’s action was meant to sting and unsettle the Confederate government, concentrate their forces on finding and returning slaves who would run away upon hearing of the measure, and become an irritant to the South’s ability to wage war. Eventually it would lead to Army companies composed of African American troops who would fight their former masters in the blue uniform of the United States.
A hundred years later – almost exactly – another president, Lyndon Johnson, invoked the power of his predecessor’s proclamation saying that equality between the races was still an unfulfilled promise, as he sent his proposed the Voting Rights Act to Congress.
The Emancipation Proclamation was Lincoln’s defining moment, much as the firing of the air traffic controllers was for Reagan, the Cuban Missile Crisis for Kennedy, the China trip for Nixon, the Camp David Accord for Carter.
The forty-eight original copies were given by Lincoln to the Sanitary Commission, which later morphed into the Red Cross. The Commission sold the documents privately and used the money to care for Union soldiers during the war.
About half of those original copies survive, including one that was owned by the late Senator Robert Kennedy, which was auctioned by his family several years ago.
This latest copy was purchased for $2.1 million dollars by David Rubenstein, a managing director of the investment firm, The Carlyle Group. The seller’s name was not disclosed. The price paid was the second highest (after the $3.8 million paid for Kennedy’s copy) ever paid for a copy of this document.
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Did you miss our G+ Hangout with a National Geographic inventor? Watch our video, then check out TH Culhane’s blog for detailed instructions on how to make your own motor and generator!
What could you make with a scouring pad, a paper towel, drain cleaner, and an aluminum can tab?
How about enough electricity to power a flashlight?
Join us for our next Google+ Hangout with NG Explorer and Google Science Fair judge TH Culhane at his laboratory in Germany for a do-it-yourself build-along event! In support of Girlstart’s DeSTEMber focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, we’re building an electric motor, a lemon battery, and a soda can tab that produces electricity with materials mostly found at home. The best part? You can build along with TH!
Here is the list of what you will need to get beforehand:
Safety First… Gloves and goggles!
1. Super Simple Electric Motor
C cell battery (any battery will do, AA, or AAA or D, but C is easy to hold)
A dry wall screw
A round neodymium magnet (get the big one, splurge, they only cost 3 bucks but they spin better)
A piece of wire
2. Lemon Battery
A penny (for copper)
A nail (for zinc)
Various low voltage LEDs
3. Joule Thief
A Blue or White LED (Other colors are fine, too)
2N3904 Transistor or equivalent
1k Resistor (Brown-Black-Red)
Thin wire, two colors (magnet wire works, .6mm)
Alligator clips and/or a breadboard
4. Electricity From a Soda Can Tab
Aluminum can tab (or aluminum foil)
Stainless steel scouring pad
A paper towel or a thin cleaning sponge to separate the stainless steel and the aluminum
Some drain cleaner
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Creature Feature: The Bald Eagle!
If you've ever seen a bald eagle, you'll have probably noticed something a little bit strange - they aren't bald! This is because the name actually comes from an old English word, "balde", meaning white.
Bald Eagles are found in North America, and have been the national symbol of the United States since 1782. But did you know that these beautiful birds were once on the brink of extinction because of hunting and pollution? Luckily, laws created almost 50 years ago have helped protect them, and they've made a comeback. Yeah!
One of the most awesome sights in nature is a bald eagle swooping down from the sky to grab a fish. They can soar over a 3,048m high (that's over nine times the height of the Eiffel tower!), and their great eyesight lets them see fish up to 1.6km away. When they attack, they drop down, glide just above the water, snag a fish with their feet, and fly off to eat it.
Babies, called eaglets, are born light grey then turn brown as they get older. When they are four to five years old, they develop their normal white heads and tails.
Eagle nests are called aeries. Bald eagles build their nests at the very top of tall trees so the eggs will be safe. Some parents come back year after year to the same nest, adding more sticks, twigs and grass each time.
- These carnivorous birds can only lift about half their body weight. If they catch a fish that weighs more than that, they might hang onto it with their claws and "swim" to shore using their huge wings.
- The average female bald eagle has a wingspan of 1.8m to 2.4m, and weighs 4kg.
- In the wild, bald eagles can live up to 35 years old.
- Female bald eagles are larger than males. Their bodies can grow up to 1m long, and their wingspan can be up to 2.4m across (that's about the distance from the floor to the ceiling!).
Adapted from text by Scot Hoffman.
Images: Getty Images UK.
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is Concept Attainment?
Attainment is an indirect instructional strategy that uses a structured
inquiry process. It is based on the work of Jerome Bruner. In concept
attainment, students figure out the attributes of a group or category
that has already been formed by the teacher. To do so, students
compare and contrast examples that contain the attributes of the
concept with examples that do not contain those attributes. They
then separate them into two groups. Concept attainment, then, is
the search for and identification of attributes that can be used
to distinguish examples of a given group or category from non-examples.
is its purpose?
attainment is designed to clarify ideas and to introduce aspects
of content. It engages students into formulating a concept through
the use of illustrations, word cards or specimens called examples.
Students who catch onto the idea before others are able to resolve
the concept and then are invited to suggest their own examples,
while other students are still trying to form the concept. For this
reason, concept attainment is well suited to classroom use because
all thinking abilities can be challenged throughout the activity.
With experience, children become skilled at identifying relationships
in the word cards or specimens. With carefully chosen examples,
it is possible to use concept attainment to teach almost any concept
in all subjects.
make connections between what students know and what they will
how to examine a concept from a number of perspectives
how to sort out relevant information
their knowledge of a concept by classifying more than one example
of that concept
go beyond merely associating a key term with a definition
concept is learned more thoroughly and retention is improved
do I do it?
of Concept Attainment:
and define a concept
positive and negative examples
the process to the students
the examples and list the attributes
a concept definition
the process with the class
the teacher chooses a concept to developed. (i.e. Math facts that
by making list of both positive "yes" and negative "
no" examples: The examples are put onto sheets of paper or
Examples: (Positive examples contain attributes of the concept
to be taught) i.e. 5+5, 11-1, 10X1, 3+4+4, 12-2, 15-5, (4X2)+2,
Examples: (for examples choose facts that do not have 10 as
the answer) i.e. 6+6, 3+3, 12-4, 3X3, 4X4, 16-5, 6X2, 3+4+6, 2+(2X3),
one area of the chalkboard for the positive examples and one area
for negative examples. A chart could be set up at the front of
the room with two columns - one marked YES and the other marked
the first card by saying, "This is a YES." Place it
under the appropriate column. i.e. 5+5 is a YES
the next card and say, "This is a NO." Place it under
the NO column. i.e. 6+6 is a NO
this process until there are three examples under each column.
the class to look at the three examples under the YES column and
discuss how they are alike. (i.e. 5+5, 11-1, 2X5) Ask "What
do they have in common?"
the next tree examples under each column, ask the students to
decide if the examples go under YES or NO.
this point, there are 6 examples under each column. Several students
will have identified the concept but it is important that they
not tell it out loud to the class. They can however show
that they have caught on by giving an example of their own for
each column. At this point, the examples are student-generated.
Ask the class if anyone else has the concept in mind. Students
who have not yet defined the concept are still busy trying to
see the similarities of the YES examples. Place at least three
more examples under each column that are student-generated.
the process with the class. Once most students have caught on,
they can define the concept. Once they have pointed out that everything
under the YES column has an answer of 10, then print a new heading
at the top of the column (10 Facts). The print a new heading for
the NO column (Not 10 Facts).
can I adapt it?
activity can be done on the chalkboard, chart paper or overhead
projector to a large or small group. It also works well as one-on-one
work. Rather than starting with the teacher's concept, use a student's
concept. Concept attainment can be used to introduce or conclude
a unit of study.
on the Concept Attainment Model
all of the positive examples to the students at once and have
them determine the essential attributes.
all of the positive and negative examples to the students without
labeling them as such. Have them group the examples into the two
categories and determine the essential attributes.
the students define, identify the essential attributes of, and
choose positive examples for a concept already learned in class.
the model as a group activity.
and Evaluation Considerations
write the definition from memory.
positive and negative examples from a given group.
their own examples of the concept.
a learning log
an oral presentation
a web, concept map, flow chart, illustrations, KWL chart, T chart
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Early foragers and farmers made wine from wild grapes or other fruits. According to archaeological evidence, by 6000 BC grape wine was being made in the Caucasus, and by 3200 BC domesticated grapes had become abundant in the entire Near East. In Mesopotamia, wine was imported from the cooler northern regions, and so came to be known as ‘liquor of the mountains’. In Egypt as in Mesopotamia, wine was for nobles and priests, and mostly reserved for religious or medicinal purposes. The Egyptians fermented grape juice in amphorae which they covered with cloth or leather lids and then sealed up with mud from the Nile. By biblical times, wine had acquired some less dignified purposes. According to the Old Testament, Noah planted a vineyard, and ‘drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent’ (Genesis 9:21). Skip to the New Testament and here is Jesus employed as a wine consultant: ‘And no man putteth new wine into old wineskins: else the wine bursts the skins, and the wine is lost as well as the skins: but new wine must be put into new skins’ (Mark 2:22).
Many of the grape varieties that are cultivated in modern Greece are similar or identical to those cultivated there in Ancient times. Wine played a central role in Ancient Greek culture, and the vine—which, as in the Near East, had been domesticated by the Early Bronze Age—was widely cultivated. The Minoans, who flourished on the island of Crete from c.2700 to c.1450 BC, imported and exported different wines, which they used not only for recreational but also for religious and ritual purposes. Wine played a similarly important role for the later Myceneans, who flourished on mainland Greece from c.1600 to 1100 BC. In fact, wine was so important to the Greeks as to be personified by a major deity, Dionysus or Bacchus, and honoured with a number of annual festivals. One such festival was the Anthesteria, which, held in February each year, celebrated the opening of wine jars to test the new wine. Active in the 9th century BC, the poet Homer often sung of wine, famously alluding to the Aegean as the ‘wine dark sea’. In the Odyssey, he says that ‘wine can of their wits the wise beguile/ Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile’. In the Works and Days, the poet Hesiod, who lived in the 7th or 8th century BC, speaks of pruning and even of drying the grapes prior to fermentation. The Greeks plainly understood that no two wines are the same, and held the wines of Thassos, Lesbos, Chios, and Mende in especially high regard; Theophrastus, a contemporary and close friend of Aristotle, even demonstrated some pretty clear notions of terroir.
In Ancient Greece, vines were left to their own devices, supported on forked props, or trained up trees. In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder describes the Ancient Greek practice of using partly dehydrated gypsum prior to fermentation, and some type of lime after fermentation, to remove acidity—but this was no doubt a relatively recent or infrequent practice. The wine was neither racked nor fined, and it was not uncommon for the drinker to want to pass it through a sieve or strainer. Additives such as aromatic herbs, spice, honey, or a small part of seawater were often added both to improve and preserve the wine—which could also be concentrated by boiling. Finished wine was stored in amphorae lined with resin or pitch, both substances that imparted some additional and characteristic flavour. Generally speaking, wine was sweeter then than it is today, reflecting not only prevalent tastes, but also the ripeness of the grapes, the use of natural yeasts in fermentation, and the lack of temperature control during fermentation. At the same time, wine did come in a wide variety of styles, some of which were markedly austere. To drink undiluted wine was considered a bad and barbarian practice—almost as bad as drinking beer like the Babylonian or Egyptian peasant classes. Wine was diluted with two or three parts of water to produce a beverage with an alcoholic strength of around 3-5%. The comedian Hermippus, who flourished in the golden age of Athens, described the best vintage wines as having a nose of violets, roses, and hyacinths; however, most wine would have turned sour within a year and specific vintages are never mentioned.
Together with the sea-faring Phoenicians, the Ancient Greeks disseminated the vine throughout the Mediterranean, and even named southern Italy Oenotria or ‘Land of Vines’. If wine was important to the Greeks, it was even more so to the Romans, who thought of it as a daily necessity of life and democratized its drinking. They established a great number of Western Europe’s major wine producing regions, not only to provide steady supplies for their soldiers and colonists, but also to trade with native tribes and convert them to the Roman cause. In particular, the trade of Hispanic wines surpassed that even of Italian wines, with Hispanic amphorae having been unearthed as far as Britain and the limes Germanicus or German frontier. In his Geographica (7 BC), Strabo states that the vineyards of Hispania Beatica (which roughly corresponds to modern Andalucia) were famous for their great beauty. The area of Pompeii produced a great deal of wine, much of it destined for the city of Rome, and the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD led to a dramatic shortage. The people of Rome panicked, uprooting food crops to plant vineyards. This led to a food shortage and wine glut, which in 92 AD compelled the emperor Domitian to issue an edict banning the planting of vineyards in Rome.
The Romans left behind a number of agricultural treatises that provide a wealth of information on Roman viticulture and winemaking. In particular, Cato the Elder’s De Agri Cultura (c. 160 BC) served as the Roman textbook of winemaking for several centuries. In De Re Rustica, Columella surveyed the main grape varieties, which he divided into three main groups: noble varieties for great Italian wines, high yielding varieties that can nonetheless produce age-worthy wines, and prolific varieties for ordinary table wine. Pliny the Elder, who also surveyed the main grape varieties, claimed that ‘classic wines can only be produced from vines grown on trees’, and it is true that the greatest wines of Campania, such as Caecuban and Falernian, nearly all came from vines trained on trees—often elms or poplars. Both Caecuban and Falernian were white sweet wines, although there also existed a dry style of Falernian. Undiluted Falernian contained a high degree of alcohol; so high that a candle flame could set it alight. It was deemed best to drink Falernian at about 15-20 years old, and another classed growth called Surrentine at 25 years old or more. The Opimian vintage of 121 BC, named after the consul in that year Lucius Opimius, acquired legendary fame, with some examples still being drunk more than 100 years later.
The best wines were made from the initial and highly prized free-run juice obtained from the treading of the grapes. At the other end of the spectrum were posca, a mixture of water and sour wine that had not yet turned to vinegar, and lora, a thin drink or piquette produced from a third pressing of grape skins. Following the Greek invention of the screw, screw presses became common on Roman villas. Grape juice was fermented in large clay vessels called dolia, which were often partially sunk into the ground. The wine was then racked into amphorae for storing and shipping. Barrels invented by the Gauls and, later still, glass bottles invented by the Syrians vied as alternatives to amphorae. As in Ancient Greece, additives were common: chalk or marble to neutralize excess acid; and boiled must, herbs, spice, honey, resin, or seawater to improve and preserve thin offerings. Maderization was common and sought after; at the same time, rooms destined for wine storage were sometimes built so as to face north and away from the sun. Following the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Church perpetuated the knowledge of viticulture and winemaking, first and foremost to provide the blood of Christ for the celebration of Mass.
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Members of the Department of Paleobiology have
been leading vertebrate paleontology expeditions since before the
museum was built. The first dinosaur expeditions were led by
Othniel Marsh, then at Yale University , who collected most of the
dinosaurs on display in the main exhibit hall. He was followed by
Charles Gilmore, who served as Curator of Reptiles and Amphibians
for more than 20 years. His expeditions added dinosaurs such as
Brachyceratops tour collections.
A long hiatus in dinosaur collecting followed
Gilmore’s death in 1945, which would not end until Dr. Michael
Brett-Surman began his field work in the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming
in 1992. Today the work of finding and collecting new dinosaurs
continues, with the addition of a new Curator of Dinosaurs, Dr.
Matthew Carrano. We invite you to take a tour of some of our recent
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(PhysOrg.com) -- 'Fossil viruses' preserved inside the DNA of mammals and insects suggest that all viruses, including relatives of HIV and Ebola, could potentially be stowaways transmitted from generation to generation for millions of years, according to new research.
A team from Oxford University and the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center built on earlier work at Oxford that discovered the fossilised remains of an ancient HIV-like virus in the genomes of animals including sloths, lemurs and rabbits.
The teams new research, reported in this weeks PLoS Genetics, shows that many more different types of viruses are endogenous capable of being transmitted from generation to generation with fossil viruses turning up in the genomes of creatures as different as mosquitoes, wallabies, and humans.
Many of these viruses, such as the ancestors of Ebola, are far more ancient and spread across many more animal groups than anyone ever suspected, said Dr Aris Katzourakis of Oxford Universitys Department of Zoology, an author of the report. Weve demonstrated that viruses have been integrating within animal genomes for at least 100 million years.
Weve also shown that, in some cases, viral genes have been domesticated by their hosts, and put to use by the hosts for their own purposes, demonstrating that captured viral sequences may have played a larger than expected role in animal evolution.
Understanding the historical conflict between viruses and animal immune systems could lead to new approaches to combating existing viruses such as HIV and Ebola. It could also help scientists to decide which viruses that cross species are likely to cause dangerous pandemics in the future.
These viruses represent the tip of the iceberg of endogenous viral diversity, said Dr Katzourakis. We have discovered a large and diverse set of virus sequences preserved in animal genomes, which together include representatives of all known viral groups. This demonstrates a potential for endogenisation for any virus, and illustrates that viral fossil records may be uncovered for many elusive viral groups.
Explore further: New formula invented for microscope viewing, substitutes for federally controlled drug
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(Phys.org)—Controlling "mixing" between acceptor and donor layers, or domains, in polymer-based solar cells could increase their efficiency, according to a team of researchers that included physicists from North Carolina State University. Their findings shed light on the inner workings of these solar cells, and could lead to further improvements in efficiency.
Polymer-based solar cells consist of two domains, known as the acceptor and the donor layers. Excitons, the energy particles created by solar cells, must be able to travel quickly to the interface of the donor and acceptor domains in order to be harnessed as an energy source. Researchers had believed that keeping the donor and acceptor layers as pure as possible was the best way to ensure that the excitons could travel unimpeded, so that solar cells could capture the maximum amount of energy.
NC State physicist Harald Ade and his group worked with teams of scientists from the United Kingdom, Australia and China to examine the physical structure and improve the production of polymer-based solar cells. In findings published in two separate papers appearing this month online in Advanced Energy Materials and Advanced Materials, the researchers show that some mixing of the two domains may not be a bad thing. In fact, if the morphology, or structure, of the mixed domains is small, the solar cell can still be quite efficient.
According to Ade, "We had previously found that the domains in these solar cells weren't pure. So we looked at how additives affected the production of these cells. When you manufacture the cell, the relative rate of evaporation of the solvents and additives determines how the active layer forms and the donor and acceptor mix. Ideally, you want the solvent to evaporate slowly enough so that the materials have time to separate – otherwise the layers 'gum up' and lower the cell's efficiency. We utilized an additive that slowed evaporation. This controlled the mixing and domain size of the active layer, and the portions that mixed were small."
The efficiency of those mixed layers was excellent, leading to speculation that perhaps some mixing of the donor and acceptor isn't a problem, as long as the domains are small.
"We're looking for the perfect mix here, both in terms of the solvents and additives we might use in order to manufacture polymer-based solar cells, and in terms of the physical mixing of the domains and how that may affect efficiency," Ade says.
Explore further: Femtosecond 'snapshots' reveal a dramatic bond tightening in photo-excited gold complexes
More information: "From Binary to Ternary Solvent: Morphology Fine-tuning of D/A Blend in PDPP3T-based Polymer Solar Cells", Advanced Materials, 2012.
In the past decade, great success has been achieved in bulk hetero-junction (BHJ) polymer solar cells (PSCs) in which donor/acceptor (D/A) bi-continuous interpenetrating networks can be formed and in some recent reports, power conversion efficiency (PCE) even approach 8%. In addition to the intrinsic properties of active layer materials, such as band gaps and molecular energy levels, morphological properties of the D/A blends including crystallinity of polymers, domain size, materials miscibility, hierarchical structures, and molecular orientation, are also of great importance for photovoltaic performance of the devices. Therefore, several strategies including slow growth, solvent annealing, thermal annealing, selection of solvent or mixed solvent have been applied to modify or control of the morphology of the D/A blends. Among these, binary solvent mixtures have been successfully used in morphology control. For example, the dichlorobenzene (DCB) or chlorobenzene (CB)/1, 8-diiodooctane (DIO) binary solvent system has been widely applied in PSC device fabrication process. By mixing a few volume percent of DIO with the host solvent (DCB or CB), efficiencies of many kinds of polymers can be improved dramatically. Besides DIO, other solvents, like 1, 8-octanedithiol (OT), N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP), 1-chloronaphthalene (CN), chloroform (CF), can also be used. According to these works, it can be concluded that crystallinity, as well as domain size in the blends can be tuned effectively by using binary solvent mixtures, and thus binary solvent mixtures play a very important role in high performance PSCs.
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Newton's first law states that an object will keep doing what it is doing if left alone, in other words - The natural state of an object is static - unchanging - motion.
Newton's second law clarifies the first. Acceleration, or any change in motion, is an unnatural state for an arbitrary object left to its laurels, however it is a state that clearly exists all around us. Newton defines the "thing" that forces an object to change its state of being - a force.
In this most rigorous sense, a force is defined to be that which causes a change in motion.
The observation of a change in momentum necessitates that there is some force driving that change, so in this sense the two are equivalent (there is an equals sign there after all) - wherever you see a (net) force you will see an acceleration, wherever you see an acceleration you will find a force responsible for it. However, going back to the first law, acceleration is a change in the (kinetic) state of an object, an objects natural tendency is to statically maintain its state. The observation of an unnatural state of being would logically imply that there is a cause.
Intuitively it seems unnatural that accelerations would happen spontaneously and that the universe will invent a force just to balance the books if you will.
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Contrary to popular belief, astronauts still have weight while they are orbiting the earth. In fact, Shuttle astronauts weigh almost as much in space as they do on the earth's surface. But these astronauts are in free fall, together with their ship, and their downward accelerations prevents them from measuring their weights directly.
Instead, astronauts make a different type of measurement—one that accurately determines how much of them there is: they measure their masses. Your weight is the force that the earth's gravity exerts on you; your mass is the measure of your inertia, how hard it is to make you accelerate. For deep and interesting reasons, weight and mass are proportional to one another at a given location, so measuring one quantity allows you to determine the other. Instead of weighing themselves, astronauts measure their masses.
They make these mass measurements with the help of a shaking device. They strap themselves onto a machine that gently jiggles them back and forth to see how much inertia they have. By measuring how much force it takes to cause a particular acceleration, the machine is able to compute the mass of its occupant.
Answered by Lou A. Bloomfield of the University of Virginia
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Defects combine to make perfect devices
Jun 26, 2002
Faulty components are usually rejected in the manufacture of computers and other high-tech devices. However, Damien Challet and Neil Johnson of Oxford University say that this need not be the case. They have used statistical physics to show that the errors from defective electronic components or other imperfect objects can be combined to create near perfect devices (D Challet and N Johnson 2002 Phys. Rev. Lett. 89 028701).
Most computers are built to withstand the faults that develop in some of their components over the course of the computer’s lifetime, although these components initially contain no defects. However, many emerging nano- and microscale technologies will be inherently susceptible to defects. For example, no two quantum dots manufactured by self-assembly will be identical. Each will contain a time-independent systematic defect compared to the original design.
Historically, sailors have had to cope with a similar problem – the inaccuracy in their clocks. To get round this they often took the average time of several clocks so that the errors in their clocks would more or less cancel out.
Similarly, Challet and Johnson consider a set of N components, each with a certain systematic error – for example the difference between the actual and registered current in a nanoscale transistor at a given applied voltage. They calculated the effect of combining the components and found that the best way to minimize the error is to select a well-chosen subset of the N components. They worked out that the optimum size of this subset for large numbers of devices should equal N/2.
On this basis, the researchers say that it should be possible to generate a continuous output of useful devices using only defective components. To find the optimum subset from each batch of defective devices, all of the defects can be measured individually and the minimum calculated with a computer. Alternatively, components can be combined through trial and error until the aggregate error is minimized. Once the optimum subset has been selected, fresh components can be added to replenish the original batch and the cycle started over again.
Challet and Johnson point out that this process and the wiring together of the components will add to the overall cost of making the device. But they believe that these extra costs are likely to be outweighed by the fact that defective components can be produced cheaply en masse. Hewlett Packard, for example, has already built a supercomputer – known as Teramac – from partially defective conventional components using adaptive wiring.
“Our scheme implies that the ‘quality’ of a component is not determined solely by its own intrinsic error,” write the researchers. “Instead, error becomes a collective property, which is determined by the ‘environment’ corresponding to the other defective components.”
About the author
Edwin Cartlidge is News Editor of Physics World
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Individual differences |
Methods | Statistics | Clinical | Educational | Industrial | Professional items | World psychology |
"Social style" is the behavior that one exhibits when interacting with others. Being aware of your own social style helps a person develop relationships, particularly at work.
"Social Styles" is the name of a particular psychometric instrument that helps people to better understand and work with others through appreciation of their basic decision making and control needs.
Originally, Social Styles was determined by having respondents say "yes" or "no" to 150 adjectives measuring three scales: Assertiveness, Responsiveness, and Versatility.
Assertiveness: The effort a person makes to influence the thinking and actions of others. Or - the measure of whether a person appears to ask or tell in interactions with others.
Responsiveness: The extent to which a person reacts readily to influence or stimulation with a display of feelings.
Versatility: A type of social endorsement based, in part, on the extent to which others see the individual as competent, adaptable, and behaving appropriately. Versatility measures the extent to which a person appears to be working to make relationships mutually productive.
The first two trace back to Robert R. Blake and Jane Mouton's Managerial Grid Model. The two Social Style scales revealed that by combining the two dimensions, Assertiveness and Responsiveness, four patters of behavior, or "Social Styles", can be identified.
Driving: (Tell Assertive + Control Responsive) These individuals are seen as strong willed and more emotionally controlled.
Expressive: (Tell Assertive + Emote Responsive) These individuals are described as outgoing and more dramatic.
Amiable: (Ask Assertive + Emote Responsive) These individuals are seen as easy going and supportive.
Analytical: (Ask Assertive + Control Responsive) These individuals are described as serious and more exacting.
In 1964 Dr. David W Merrill and Roger Reid began research to create a model that could predict the success in selling and management careers . What the partners ended up discovering was that people's behaviors and actions are consistent. The original Social Style model was worked on by Dr. James W. Taylor, who at the time was a staff psychologist at Martin Corporation (later Martin Marietta) in Denver. Dr. Merrill obtained the rights to use the Social Styles ModelTM (whose rights are now owned by The TRACOM Group, a workplace performance company specializing in Interpersonal Skills Training and Performance Consulting, formerly a division of Reed Business Information, whose parent company is Reed Elsevier).
New Developments Edit
In 2004 The TRACOM Group created a new survey that used behavior-based statements instead of an adjective checklist - because it proved to be more valid and reliable. It continues to use the Assertiveness, Responsiveness and Versatility scales but can now provide an even greater depth of information about an individual's behavior - especially his/her Versatility - and is much more accurate, especially when translated into a variety of languages.
Robert Bolton, and Dorothy Grover Bolton (President and vice president of Ridge Consultants) wrote on and expanded upon the Social Style model, and introduced four subtypes for each style, which are blends with other styles ("Amiable-Analytical", etc.) This results in 16 types that closely match the 16 types of the MBTI.
There are a number of other similar "four type" instruments, using the same two factors of expressiveness and task/people orientation. One is The Platinum Rule Personality or "Behavioral Styles" of Dr. Tony Alessandra. Its two factors are "Indirect/Direct", corresponding to assertiveness, and "Open/Guarded" corresponding to responsiveness. The resulting four types are "the Director", "the Socializer", "the Relater", and "the Thinker". (Alessandra also similarly blended the styles into 16 types).
Another is the Interaction Styles of Dr. Linda V. Berens, PhD: "In Charge", "Get Things Going", Behind the Scenes", and "Chart the Course". These are mapped to the MBTI 16-types model by pairing Introversion and Extroversion with a factor called "Informing and Directing" which loosely corresponds to Thinking and Feeling, and also indicates people vs. task focus.
Others include FIRO-B and a Five Temperaments theory based on it. Both use scales of "expressed" and "wanted" or "responsive" behavior, but the two factors span three areas, called Inclusion, Control and Affection. Both five-temperament theory and Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (which also uses the "assertiveness" scale along with "cooperativeness") add an additional "moderate" score in both dimensions, creating a fifth behavioral or personality type.
- ↑ Reid, Roger H. and Merril, David, W. Personal Styles & Effective Performance. ISBN 0-8019-6899
- ↑ Alessandra, Tony. The Platinum Rule
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Methods | Statistics | Clinical | Educational | Industrial | Professional items | World psychology |
A word is a unit of language that carries meaning and consists of one or more morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together. Typically a word will consist of a root or stem and zero or more affixes. Words can be combined to create phrases, clauses and sentences. A word consisting of two or more stems joined together is called a compound.
Difficulty in defining the term Edit
The precise definition of what a word is depends on which language the definition is for, and the dividing line between words and phrases is not always clear. In most writing systems, a word is usually marked out in the text by interword separation such as spaces or word dividers used in some languages such as Amharic. In other languages such as Chinese and Japanese, and in many ancient languages such as Sanskrit, word boundaries are not shown.
Even in writing systems that use interword separation, word boundaries are not always clear; for example, even though ice cream is written like two words, it is a single compound because it cannot be separated by another morpheme or rephrased like iced cream or cream of ice. Likewise, a proper noun is a word, however long it is. A space may not be even the main morpheme boundary in a word; the word New Yorker is a compound of New York and -er, not of New and Yorker. In English, many common words have historically progressed from being written as two separate words (e.g. to day) to hyphenated (to-day) to a single word (today), a process which is still ongoing, as in the common spelling of all right as alright.
Words in different classes of languages Edit
In synthetic languages, a single word stem (for example, love) may have a number of different forms (for example, loves, loving, and loved). However, these are not usually considered to be different words, but different forms of the same word. In these languages, words may be considered to be constructed from a number of morphemes (such as love and -s).
In polysynthetic languages, the number of morphemes per word can become so large that the word performs the same grammatical role as a phrase or clause in less synthetic languages (for example, in Yupik, angyaghllangyugtuq means "he wants to acquire a big boat"). These large-construction words are still single words, because they contain only one content word; the other morphemes are grammatical bound morphemes, which cannot stand alone.
Matters seem easier for analytic languages. For these languages, a word usually consists of only a root morpheme, which is often single-syllable. However, it is common even in those languages to combine roots into a compound stem.
Complexity of word boundaries in speech Edit
In spoken language, the distinction of individual words is even more complex: short words are often run together, and long words are often broken up. Spoken French has some of the features of a polysynthetic language: je ne le sais pas ("I do not know it") tends towards /ʒənələsepa/. As the majority of the world's languages are not written, the scientific determination of word boundaries becomes important.
Determining word boundaries Edit
There are five ways to determine where the word boundaries of spoken language should be placed:
- Potential pause
- A speaker is told to repeat a given sentence slowly, allowing for pauses. The speaker will tend to insert pauses at the word boundaries. However, this method is not foolproof: the speaker could easily break up polysyllabic words.
- A speaker is told to say a sentence out loud, and then is told to say the sentence again with extra words added to it. Thus, I have lived in this village for ten years might become I and my family have lived in this little village for about ten or so years. These extra words will tend to be added in the word boundaries of the original sentence. However, some languages have infixes, which are put inside a word. Similarly, some have separable affixes; in the German sentence "Ich komme gut zu Hause an," the verb ankommen is separated.
- Minimal free forms
- This concept was proposed by Leonard Bloomfield. Words are thought of as the smallest meaningful unit of speech that can stand by themselves. This correlates phonemes (units of sound) to lexemes (units of meaning). However, some written words are not minimal free forms, as they make no sense by themselves (for example, the and of).
- Phonetic boundaries
- Some languages have particular rules of pronunciation that make it easy to spot where a word boundary should be. For example, in a language that regularly stresses the last syllable of a word (like Hebrew), a word boundary is likely to fall after each stressed syllable. Another example can be seen in a language that has vowel harmony (like Turkish): the vowels within a given word share the same quality, so a word boundary is likely to occur whenever the vowel quality changes. However, not all languages have such convenient phonetic rules, and even those that do present the occasional exceptions.
- Semantic units
- Much like the abovementioned minimal free forms, this method breaks down a sentence into its smallest semantic units. However, language often contains words that have little semantic value (and often play a more grammatical role), or semantic units that are compound words.
In practice, linguists apply a mixture of all these methods to determine the word boundaries of any given sentence. Even with the careful application of these methods, the exact definition of a word is often still elusive.
- Function word
- Lexical access
- Lexical decision
- Morphology (language)
- Nonsense word
- Word recognition
- Word meaning
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The poems translated here belong to the category of padams —short musical compositions of a light classical nature, intended to be sung and, often, danced. Originally, they belonged to the professional caste of dancers and singers, devadasis or vesyas (and their male counterparts, the nattuvanar musicians), who were associated with both temples and royal courts in late medieval South India. Padams were composed throughout India, early examples in Sanskrit occurring in Jayadeva's famous devotional poem, the Gitagovinda (twelfth century). In South India the genre assumed a standardized form in the second half of the fifteenth century with the Telugu padams composed by the great temple-poet Tallapaka Annamacarya, also known by the popular name Annamayya, at Tirupati. This form includes an opening line called pallavi that functions as a refrain, often in conjunction with the second line, anupallavi . This refrain is repeated after each of the (usually three) caranam verses. Padams have been and are still being composed in the major languages of South India: Telugu, Tamil, and Kannada. However, the padam tradition reached its expressive peak in Telugu, the primary language for South Indian classical music, during the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries in southern Andhra and the Tamil region.
In general, Telugu padams are devotional in character and thus find their place within the wider corpus of South Indian
bhakti poetry. The early examples by Annamayya are wholly located within the context of temple worship and are directed toward the deity Venkatesvara and his consort, Alamelumanga, at the Tirupati shrine. Later poets, such as Ksetrayya, the central figure in this volume, seem to have composed their songs outside the temples, but they nevertheless usually mention the deity as the male protagonist of the poem. Indeed, the god's title—Muvva Gopala for Ksetrayya, Venugopala for his successor Sarangapani—serves as an identifying "signature," a mudra , for each of these poets. The god assumes here the role of a lover, seen, for the most part, through the eyes of one of his courtesans, mistresses, or wives, whose persona the poet adopts. These are, then, devotional works of an erotic cast, composed by male poets using a feminine voice and performed by women. As such, they articulate the relationship between the devotee and his god in terms of an intensely imagined erotic experience, expressed in bold but also delicately nuanced tones. Their devotional character notwithstanding, one can also read them as simple love poems. Indeed, one often feels that, for Ksetrayya at least, the devotional component, with its suggestive ironies, is overshadowed by the emotional and sensual immediacy of the material.
The Three Major Poets of the Padam Tradition
Tallapaka Annamacarya (1424-1503), a Telugu Brahmin, represents to perfection the Telugu temple-poet. Legend, filling out his image, claims he refused to sing before one of the Vijayanagara kings, Saluva Narasimharaya, so exclusively was his devotion focused upon the god. Apparently supported by the temple estab-
lishment at Tirupati, located on the boundary between the Telugu and Tamil regions, Annamayya composed over fourteen thousand padams to the god Venkatesvara. The poems were engraved on copperplates and kept in the temple, where they were rediscovered, hidden in a locked room, in the second decade of this century. Colophons on the copperplates divide Annamayya's poems into two major types—srngarasankirtanalu , those of an erotic nature, and adhyatmasankirtanalu , "metaphysical" poems. Annamayya's sons and grandsons continued to compose devotional works at Tirupati, creating a Tallapaka corpus of truly enormous scope. His grandson Cinatirumalacarya even wrote a sastra -like normative grammar for padam poems, the Sankirtanalaksanamu .
We know next to nothing about the most versatile and central of the Telugu padam poets, Ksetrayya (or Ksetraya). His god is Muvva Gopala, the Cowherd of Muvva (or, alternatively, Gopala of the Jingling Bells), and he mentions a village called Muvvapuri in some of his poems. This has led scholars to locate his birthplace in the village of Muvva or Movva, near Kucipudi (the center of the Kucipudi dance tradition), in Krishna district. There is a temple in this village to Krishna as the cowherd (gopala ). Still, the association of Ksetrayya with Muvva is far from certain, and even if that village was indeed the poet's first home, he is most clearly associated with places far to the south, in Tamil Nadu of the Nayaka period. A famous padam by this poet tells us he sang two thousand padams for King Tirumala Nayaka of Madurai, a thousand for Vijayaraghava, the last Nayaka king of Tanjavur, and fifteen hundred, composed in forty days, before the Padshah of Golconda. This dates him securely to the mid-seventeenth century. Of these thousands of poems, less than four hundred survive. In addition to
Muvva Gopala, the poet sometimes mentions other deities or human patrons (the two categories having merged in Nayaka times). Thus we have poems on the gods Adivaraha, Kañci Varada, Cevvandi Lingadu, Tilla Govindaraja, Kadapa Venkatesa, Hemadrisvami, Yadugiri Celuvarayadu, Vedanarayana, Palagiri Cennudu, Tiruvalluri Viraraghava, Sri Rangesa, Madhurapurisa, Satyapuri Vasudeva, and Sri Nagasaila Mallikarjuna, as well as on the kings Vijayaraghava Nayaka and Tupakula Venkatakrsna. The range of deities is sometimes used to explain this poet's name—Ksetrayya or, in Sanskritized form, Ksetrajna, "one who knows sacred places"—so that he becomes yet another peripatetic bhakti poetsaint, singing his way from temple to temple. But this explanation smacks of popular etymology and certainly distorts the poet's image. Despite the modern stories and improvised legends about him current today in South India, Ksetrayya belongs less to the temple than to the courtesans' quarters of the Nayaka royal towns. We see him as a poet composing for, and with the assumed persona of, the sophisticated and cultured courtesans who performed before gods and kings. This community of highly literate performers, the natural consumers of Ksetrayya's works, provides an entirely different cultural context than Annamayya's temple-setting. Ksetrayya thus gives voice, in rather realistic vignettes taken from the ambience of the South Indian courtesans he knew, to a major shift in the development of the Telugu padam .
If Ksetrayya perhaps marks the padam tradition at its most subtle and refined, Sarangapani, in the early eighteenth century, shows us its further evolution in the direction of a yet more concrete, imaginative, and sometimes coarse eroticism. He is linked with the little kingdom of Karvetinagaram in the Chittoor district of
southern Andhra and with the minor ruler Makaraju Venkata Perumal Raju (d. 1732). Only some two hundred padams by this poet survive in print, nearly all of them addressed to the god Venugopala of Karvetinagaram. A few of the poems attributed to Sarangapani also appear in the Ksetrayya collections, despite the palpable difference in tone between the two poets.
These names by no means exhaust the list of padam composers in Telugu. The Maratha kings of Tanjavur figure as the patron-lovers in a rich literature of padams composed at their court. Similar works were sung in the palaces of zamindars throughout South India right up to modern times. With the abolition of the devadasi tradition by the British, padams , like other genres proper to this community, made their way to the concert stage. They still comprise a major part of the repertoire of classical vocal music and dance, alongside related forms such as the kirttanam (which is never danced).
A Note on the Translation
We have selected the poems that follow largely on the basis of our own tastes, from the large collections of padams by Annamayya, Ksetrayya, and Sarangapani. We have also included a translation of Kandukuri Rudrakavi's Janardanastakamu , a poem dating from the early sixteenth century and linked thematically (but not formally) with the emerging padam tradition. An anonymous padam addressed to Konkanesvara closes the translation. To some extent, we were also guided by a list prepared by T. Visvanathan, of Wesleyan University, of padams current in his own family tradition. Some of the poems included here are among the most popu-
lar in current performances in South India; others were chosen because they seemed to us representative of the poets, or simply because of their lyrical and expressive qualities.
In general, we have adhered closely to the literal force of the Telugu text and to the order of its sentences. At times, though, because of the colloquial and popular character of some of these texts, we have allowed ourselves to paraphrase slightly, using an English idiom or expression. We have also frequently removed, as tedious in translation, the repeated vocatives that dot the verses—as when the courtesan speaks to her friend, who is habitually referred to by conventional epithets such as vanajaksiro , "woman with lotus-eyes," or komaliro , "delicate lady." Telugu is graced with a truly remarkable number of nouns meaning "woman," and these are amply represented in our texts. The heroine is sometimes referred to by stylized titles such as kanakangi , "having a golden body," epithets that could also be interpreted as proper names. For the most part, this wealth of feminine reference, so beautifully evocative in the original, finds only pale and reductive equivalents in the English.
The format we have adopted seeks to mirror the essential features of the original, above all the division into stanzas and the role of the pallavi refrain. While we have always translated both pallavi and anupallavi in full, we have usually chosen only some part of these two lines—sometimes in connection with a later phrase—for our refrains. We hope this will suggest something of the expressive force of the pallavi and, in some cases at least, its syntactic linkage with the stanzas, while eliminating lengthy repetition. The headings provide simple contexts for the poems. We have attempted to avoid heavy annotation in the translations, preferring to let the
poems speak for themselves. Where a note seemed necessary, we have signaled its existence by placing an asterisk in the text. The source for each poem, as well as its opening phrase in Telugu and the raga in which it is sung, appear beneath the translation.
Editions Used as Base Texts
P. T. Jagannatha Ravu, ed., Srngara sankirtanalu (annamacarya viracitamulu ), vol. 18 of Sritallapakavari geyaracanalu . Tirupati: Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam Press, 1964.
Gauripeddi Ramasubbasarma, ed., Srngara sankirtanalu (annamacarya viracitamulu ), vol. 12 of Tallapaka padasahityamu . Tirupati: Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam Press, 1976. (Cited as GR.)
Vissa Apparavu, ed., Ksetrayya padamulu . 2d ed. Rajahmundry: Saraswati Power Press, 1963. (Unless otherwise noted, all the Ksetrayya texts are taken from this edition.)
Mancala Jagannatha Ravu, ed., Ksetrayya padamulu . Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh Sangita Nataka Akadami, 1978.
Gidugu Venkata Sitapati, ed., Ksetraya padamulu . Madras: Kubera Printers Ltd., 1952. (Cited as GVS.)
Srinivasacakravarti, ed., Ksetrayya padalu . Vijayavada: Jayanti Pablikesansu, 1966.
Veturi Prabhakara Sastri, ed., Catupadyamanimanjari . Hyderabad: Veturi Prabhakara Sastri Memorial Trust, 1988 .
Nedunuri Gangadharam, ed., Sarangapani padamulu . Rajahmundry: Saraswati Power Press, 1963.
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Launch Date: December 02, 1997
Mission Project Home Page - http://www.mpe-garching.mpg.de/EQS/eqs_home.html
EQUATOR-S was a low-cost mission designed to study the Earth's equatorial magnetosphere out to distances of 67000 km. It formed an element of the closely-coordinated fleet of satellites that compose the IASTP program. Based on a simple spacecraft design, it carries a science payload comprising advanced instruments that were developed for other IASTP missions.
Unique features of EQUATOR-S were its nearly equatorial orbit and its high spin rate. It was launched as an auxiliary payload on an Ariane-4, December 2nd, 1997. The mission was intended for a two-year lifetime but stopped transmitting data on May 1, 1998.
The idea of an equatorial satellite dates back to NASA's GGS (Global Geospace Science) program, originally conceived in 1980. The equatorial element of the program was abandoned in 1986 and several subsequent attempts to rescue the mission failed, leaving a significant gap in both NASA's GSS and the international IASTP programs.
The Max-Planck-Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik (MPE) decided to fill this gap because of its interest in GSS and the opportunity for a test of an advanced instrument to measure electric fields with dual electron beams. In addition to MPE-internal funds and personnel, the realization of EQUATOR-S was possible through a 1994 grant from the German Space Agency DARA (meanwhile part of DLR).
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The Bigger Picture: Visual Archives and the Smithsonian
Now Open to the Public (in 1922) - Museum of the American Indian
On November 14, 1922, George Gustav Heye opened to the public the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation in New York City to display his collection of Native American artifacts. Heye, a mining engineer, began collecting Native American artifacts while working in Arizona in 1896. The museum, founded in 1916, was located at Audubon Terrace and there was also a research branch in the Bronx where collections were available for research and study.
After Heye's death in 1957, the future of the museum was in doubt. Some thoughts were to transfer the collection to the American Museum of Natural History in New York or possibly for it to be purchased by businessman, H. Ross Perrot. Neither of these options came to pass.
It was not until the 1980s when discussions began with the Smithsonian that a home would be found for the Museum of the American Indian. On November 18, 1989, President George H. W. Bush signed legislation creating the National Museum of the American Indian as part of the Smithsonian. Today the museum consists of the George Gustave Heye Center in New York City (unfortunately because of Hurricane Sandy the Heye Center is temporarily closed), the Cultural Resources Center facility in Maryland, and the museum on the Mall in Washington, D.C.
- History of the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution Archives
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The cerebral cortex, a layer of neural tissue surrounding the cerebrum of the mammalian brain, has been known to play various roles in memory, language, thought, attention, and consciousness. Up until now, no invertebrate equivalent
to the cerebral cortex has been encountered, but Detlev Arendt, Raju Tomer, and colleagues may have found an evolutionary counterpart. The obvious answer is hidden in one simple creature– the worm. Wait, what? Yeah, you heard me. The marine ragworm, found at all water depths, has been shown to possess a tissue resembling that of our mysterious cerebral cortex.
Arendt and his colleagues used a technique called cellular profiling to determine a molecular footprint for each kind of cell in this particular type of ragworm. By utilizing this technique, they were able to uncover which genes were turned on and off in each cell, providing a means for cellular categorization. Surprisingly, mushroom bodies, regions of the ragworm’s brain that are thought to control olfactory senses, show a striking similarity to tissue found in our cerebral cortex. This intriguing discovery may provide remarkable insight into the evolutionary basis of what has developed into an incredibly important cerebral structure.
Read more about this review here, or see the original article in Cell.
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Note on ω: You may also hear omega pronounced like long o in English go.
Note on ῳ: This is a so-called long diphthong, because it is a combination of long vowel ω and ι. The recommended pronunciation reflects postclassical practice. In the fifth century this was a true diphthong, but the iota part of the sound weakened during the fourth century to a glide and then disappeared. Click on the image of inscription ΟΙ to hear an approximation of the original diphthong and the weakened diphthong.
The iota in the three long diphthongs is presented in most texts as a subscript under the long vowel (iota subscript: ᾳ, ῃ, ῳ), a convention developed in medieval Greek manuscripts and imitated in the typographic conventions of Greek since the Renaissance. The earlier practice was to write iota in normal position at normal size after the vowel (iota adscript: αι, ηι, ωι). (For a short time around the 12th century some scribes wrote a slightly smaller iota just to the right of the vowel and slightly lowered.) In some modern editions you will see iota adscript.
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Beat the Heat: Heat Illness in Children
It has been an extremely hot summer so far in all parts of the United States. Record highs are being set all over the country. Today we will discuss exertional heat illness in children so you can be better prepared to identify and prevent this in our children as they continue to be active throughout the summer months.
Why is temperature regulation important?
Our bodies are made to function at an optimal core temperature of 98.6°F (37°C). The “thermal neutral” zone in which we operate is 36.5 – 37.5°C . When the temperature deviates too much from that, temperature sensitive structures such as body enzymes and other proteins begin to denature, and essential processes start to fail. Extreme cold slows down metabolic processes and at temperatures below 33°C we lose consciousness. In extreme heat, temperatures above 42°C are not compatible with life.
How do we temperature regulate?
Even without activity, our body is generating heat at a rate that would increase our core temperatures by over 1°C per hour. When we are exercising hard, that heat generation can increase 10-fold. Therefore our bodies are equipped under normal circumstances to dissipate the heat. The main methods of heat dissipation are: radiation, convection, conduction, and evaporation. Radiation is the primary way in which heat is dissipated when the skin temperature is greater than air, but when air temperature exceeds the skin temperature, evaporation becomes the primary method of cooling. This happens in the form of sweating (humans), and panting (dogs). When normal functions of heat dissipation are not working correctly, or when heat generation exceed heat loss, the body is in danger of a spectrum of heat-related illnesses from heat cramps, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke.
Why are children at greater risk than adults?
Children are more susceptible to heat illness because they have:
1. Greater surface area to body mass ratio
2. Lower rate of sweating
3. Higher temperature at initiation of sweating
4. Slower rate of acclimatization to heat
Tips on beating the heat?
1. Stay indoors or in a shaded area during the hottest part of the day. Schedule practices or events before 11am and after 6pm.
2. Pre-hydrate! Dehydration increases the risk of EHI.
3. Hydrate on a regular schedule during and after exercise. Thirst is a poor indication of hydration status, especially in children. A good starting point is 4 to 6 ounces of fluid every 15 minutes for a 90-lb child.
4. Check the weight! Checking your child’s weight before and after exercise will give you an idea if hydration was adequate. Weight loss of greater than 2.5% indicates dehydration.
5. Get acclimatized. The body can take 1-2 weeks to get adjusted to the heat, so avoid strenuous practices in the beginning. Start light and gradually increase.
6. Wear appropriate clothing. Keep it light on the hottest days.
7. Know the symptoms of heat exhaustion and heat stroke:
Heat exhaustion: Athletes can be sweaty, ashen in color and complaining of weakness, headache, dizziness, irritable, nauseous or vomiting.
Heat stroke: Athletes can have similar symptoms as heat exhaustion, but can also be dry, hot, and flushed, and will also have confusion, delayed response or other change in mental status. Rectal temperature if taken will be >104°F.
8.If your child has any medical problems that may affect their ability to temperature regulate, discuss with your pediatrician.
What should you do if you suspect heat exhaustion or heat stroke?
1. Get the athlete out of the sun, and indoors or into a shaded area.
2. Oral hydration and cooling with active cooling techniques such as removing excess clothing, drinking cool water, sponging the body with cool water, placing ice pack in the armpits, and groin.
3. Have the athlete evaluated by a medical professional as soon as possible.
4. If there is any change in responsiveness or other mental status change, be concerned about heat stroke. Call 911 and initiate rapid cooling if possible.
Wishing everyone a safe, happy, and fun summer!
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Heel Bursitis is another type of heel pain. The sufferer of this kind of heel pain experiences pain at the back of the heel when the patient moves his joint of the ankle. In the heel bursitis type of heel pain there is swelling on the sides of the Achilles’ tendon. In this condition the sufferer may experience pain in the heel when his feet hit the ground. Heel bruises are also referred as heel bumps they are usually caused by improper shoes. The constant rubbing of the shoes against the heel.
What is bursitis?
Bursitis is the inflammation of a bursa. Normally, the bursa provides a slippery surface that has almost no friction. A problem arises when a bursa becomes inflamed. The bursa loses its gliding capabilities, and becomes more and more irritated when it is moved.
When the condition called bursitis occurs, the normally slippery bursa becomes swollen and inflamed. The added bulk of the swollen bursa causes more friction within an already confined space. Also, the smooth gliding bursa becomes gritty and rough. Movement of an inflamed bursa is painful and irritating.
“Itis” usually refers to the inflammation of a certain part of the body, therefore Bursitis refers to the constant irritation of the natural cushion that supports the heel of the foot (the bursa). Bursitis is often associated with Plantar Fasciitis, which affects the arch and heel of the foot.
What causes bursitis?
- Bursitis and Plantar Fasciitis can occur when a person increases their levels of physical activity or when the heel’s fat pad becomes thinner, providing less protection to the foot.
- Ill fitting shoes.
- Biomechanical problems (e.g. mal-alignment of the foot, including over-pronation).
- Rheumatoid arthritis.
Bursitis usually results from a repetitive movement or due to prolonged and excessive pressure. Patients who rest on their elbows for long periods or those who bend their elbows frequently and repetitively (for example, a custodian using a vacuum for hours at a time) can develop elbow bursitis, also called olecranon bursitis. Similarly in other parts of the body, repetitive use or frequent pressure can irritate a bursa and cause inflammation.
Another cause of bursitis is a traumatic injury. Following trauma, such as a car accident or fall, a patient may develop bursitis. Usually a contusion causes swelling within the bursa. The bursa, which had functioned normally up until that point, now begins to develop inflammation, and bursitis results. Once the bursa is inflamed, normal movements and activities can become painful.
Systemic inflammatory conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis, may also lead to bursitis. These types of conditions can make patients susceptible to developing bursitis.
- Cold presses or ice packs.
- Anti-inflammatory tablets.
- Cushioning products.
- Massaging the foot / muscle stimulation.
- Stretching exercises.
- Insoles or orthotics.
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This tree diagram shows the relationships between several groups of organisms.
The root of the current tree connects the organisms featured in this tree to their containing group and the rest of the Tree of Life. The basal branching point in the tree represents the ancestor of the other groups in the tree. This ancestor diversified over time into several descendent subgroups, which are represented as internal nodes and terminal taxa to the right.
You can click on the root to travel down the Tree of Life all the way to the root of all Life, and you can click on the names of descendent subgroups to travel up the Tree of Life all the way to individual species.close box
Insects have a large number of unique, derived characteristics, although none of these are externally obvious in most species. These include (Kristensen, 1991):
- lack of musculature beyond the first segment of antenna.
- Johnston's organ in pedicel (second segment) of antenna. This organ is a collection of sensory cells that detect movement of the flagellum.
- a transverse bar forming the posterior tentorium inside the head
- tarsi subsegmented
- females with ovipositor formed by gonapophyses from segments 8 and 9
- annulated, terminal filament extending out from end of segment 11 of abdomen (subsequently lost in most groups of insects)
One notable feature linking Thysanura + Pterygota is the presence of two articulations on each mandible. Archaeognathans have only one mandibular condyle or articulation point; they are "monocondylic". Thysanura + Pterygota, with their two mandibular condyles, are sometimes called Dicondylia. The many other apomorphies linking Dicondylia are described in Kristensen (1991).
It is possible that the thysanurans are not themselves monophyletic; Thysanura (exclusive of the family Lepidothricidae) plus pterygotes may be monophyletic, with lepidothricids sister to this complex (Kristensen, 1991).
Beutel, R. G. and S. N. Gorb. 2001. Ultrastructure of attachment specializations of hexapods, (Arthropoda): evolutionary patterns inferred from a revised ordinal phylogeny. Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research 39:177-207.
Bitsch, J. and A. Nel. 1999. Morphology and classification of the extinct Archaeognatha and related taxa (Hexapoda). Annales de la Société entomologique de France 35:17-29.
Boudreaux, H. B. 1979. Arthropod Phylogeny with Special Reference to Insects. New York, J. Wiley.
Carpenter, F. M. 1992. Superclass Hexapoda. Volumes 3 and 4 of Part R, Arthropoda 4 of Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology. Boulder, Colorado, Geological Society of America.
Carpenter, F. M. and L. Burnham. 1985. The geological record of insects. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 13:297-314.
Caterino, M. S., S. Cho, and F. A. H. Sperling. 1999. The current state of insect molecular systematics: a thriving tower of Babel. Annual Review of Entomology 45:1–54.
Chapman, R. F. 1998. The Insects: Structure and Function. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K., New York.
Daly, H. V., J. T. Doyen, and A. H. Purcell III. 1998. Introduction to Insect Biology and Diversity, 2nd edn. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Dindall, D. L. 1990. Soil Biology Guide. New York, John Wiley & Sons.
Engel, M. S. and D. A. Grimaldi. 2004. New light shed on the oldest insect. Nature 427:627-630.
Evans, H. E. 1993. Life on a Little-Known Planet. New York, Lyons & Burford.
Gereben-Krenn, B. A. and G. Pass. 2000. Circulatory organs of abdominal appendages in primitive insects (Hexapoda : Archaeognatha, Zygentoma and Ephemeroptera). Acta Zoologica 81:285-292.
Grimaldi, D. 2001. Insect evolutionary history from Handlirsch to Hennig, and beyond. Journal of Paleontology 75:1152-1160.
Grimaldi, D. and M. S. Engel. 2005. Evolution of the Insects. Cambridge University Press.
Hennig, W. 1981. Insect Phylogeny. New York, J. Wiley.
Kjer, K. M. 2004. Aligned 18S and insect phylogeny. Systematic Biology 53(3):506-514.
Klass, K. D. 1998. The proventriculus of the Dicondylia, with comments on evolution and phylogeny in Dictyoptera and Odonata (Insecta). Zoologischer Anzeiger 237:15-42.
Kristensen, N. P. 1975. The phylogeny of hexapod "orders". A critical review of recent accounts. Zeitschrift für zoologische Systematik und Evolutionsforschung 13:1–44.
Kristensen, N. P. 1981. Phylogeny of insect orders. Annual Review of Entomology 26:135-157.
Kristensen, N. P. 1995. Forty years' insect phylogenetic systematics. Zoologische Beiträge NF 36(1):83-124.
Kukalová-Peck, J. 1987. New Carboniferous Diplura, Monura, and Thysanura, the hexapod ground plan, and the role of thoracic lobes in the origin of wings (Insecta). Canadian Journal of Zoology 65:2327-2345.
Labandeira, C. C., and J. J. Sepkoski, jr. 1993. Insect diversity in the fossil record. Science 261:310–315.
Larink, O. 1997. Apomorphic and plesiomorphic characteristics in Archaeognatha, Monura, and Zygentoma. Pedobiologia 41:3-8.
Merritt, R. W. and K. W.Cummins, eds. 1984. An Introduction to the Aquatic Insects of North America, Second Edition. Kendall-Hunt.
Naumann, I. D., P. B. Carne, J. F. Lawrence, E. S. Nielsen, J. P. Spradberry, R. W. Taylor, M. J. Whitten and M. J. Littlejohn, eds. 1991. The Insects of Australia: A Textbook for Students and Research Workers. Volume I and II. Second Edition. Carlton, Victoria, Melbourne University Press.
Pass, G. 2000. Accessory pulsatile organs: Evolutionary innovations in insects. Annual Review of Entomology 45:495-518.
Snodgrass, R. E. 1935. Principles of Insect Morphology. McGraw-Hill, New York. 667 pp.
Snodgrass, R. E. 1952. A Textbook of Arthropod Anatomy. Comstock Publishing Associates, Ithaca, N.Y. 363 pp.
Stehr, F. W. 1987. Immature Insects, vol. 1. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendal/Hunt. 754 pp.
Stehr, F. W. 1991. Immature Insects, vol. 2. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendal/Hunt. 974 pp.
Wooton, R. J. 1981. Paleozoic insects. Annual Review of Entomology 26:319-344.
- Smithsonian Institution Department of Entomology.
- Entomology Department of Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology
- Entomology Department. California Academy of Sciences.
- The Essig Museum of Entomology. Berkeley, California.
- Insect Division. University of Michigan Museum of Zoology.
- Bishop Museum Hawaii Entomology Home
- Introduction to Insect Biology & Classification. The University of Queensland.
- Virtual Exhibit on Canada's Biodiversity: Insects.
- Entomological Data Information System (EDIS). Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Stuttgart, Germany.
- Compendium of Hexapod Classes and Orders. North Carolina State University.
- Nomina Insecta Nearctica. A Checklist of the Insects of North America.
- Common Names of Insects in Canada. Entomological Society of Canada.
- The Canadian National Collection (CNC) of Insects, Arachnids and Nematodes.
- Singing Insects of North America. By Thomas J. Walker (crickets and katydids) and Thomas E. Moore (cicadas).
- Entomology Database KONCHU. Species Information Database on Japanese, East Asian and Pacific Insects, Spiders and Mites.
- A Catalogue of the Insects of South Africa.
- CSIRO Entomology Home Page.
- General Entomology Resources from Scientific Reference Resources:
- Entomological Society of America.
- Chemical Ecology of Insects. John A. Byers, USDA-ARS.
- elin. Entomology Libraries and Information Networks.
- Entomological Glossary.
- Popular Classics in Entomology. Colorado State University.
- Forensic Entomology Pages, International.
- Book of Insect Records. University of Florida.
- Alien Empire. Companion piece to a PBS Nature program.
- Entomology Index of Internet Resources. Iowa State University.
- Entomology on the WWW. Colorado State University.
- Entomology on the WWW. Michigan State University.
- BIOSIS BiologyBrowser: Insecta.
Images and Other Media:
- BugGuide.Net. An online community of naturalists who enjoy learning about and sharing observations of insects, spiders, and other related creatures.
- Hawaiian Insect Image Galleries. Bishop Museum.
- Entomology Image Gallery. Iowa State University.
- Very Cool Bugs.
- Dennis Kunkel's Microscopy.
- The Virtual Insectary.
- Thais in 2000: Entomology.
- Reference Library of Digitized Insect Sounds. Richard Mankin, Center for Medical, Agricultural and Veterinary Entomology, Gainesville, Florida.
- Meganeura. Palaeoentomological Newsletter.
- Eocene Fossils.
- Fossil insects from Florissant (Colorado). Peabody Museum of Natural History.
- Stewart Valley Fossil Insects. California Academy of Sciences.
- Amber and Copal: Their Significance in the Fossil Record. Hooper Virtual Natural History Museum.
- The Natural History of Amber. 3 Dot Studio.
- Frozen Dramas. Swedish Amber Museum.
- Nature's Preservative--Organic Flypaper: Amber Gives a Green Light to Study of Ancient Life. The Why files. University of Wisconsin.
- Amber Home. Gary Platt.
- Baltic Amber Inclusions. Wolfgang Wiggers.
- Dominican Amber Fossils. ESP Designs.
- The Amber Room. Steve Kurth.
- Thomas Say (1787-1834), father of American entomology.
- Charles Darwin (1809-1882), AboutDarwin.com.
- Jean-Henri Fabre (1823-1915) e-museum.
- Famous Entomologists on Postage Stamps.
For young entomologists:
- bugbios. Shameless promotion of insect appreciation by Dexter Sear.
- O. Orkin Insect Zoo. National Museum of Natural History. Smithsonian Institution.
- Bug Camp. Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.
- Insectclopedia. Links to websites about insects.
- Bugscope. Educational outreach project of the World Wide Laboratory.
- The Bug Club for Young Entomologists. UK Amateur Entomologists' Society.
- The Wonderful World of Insects.
- Class: Insecta. Spencer Entomological Museum at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Page copyright © 2002
All Rights Reserved.
Citing this page:
Tree of Life Web Project. 2002. Insecta. Insects. Version 01 January 2002 (under construction). http://tolweb.org/Insecta/8205/2002.01.01 in The Tree of Life Web Project, http://tolweb.org/
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5th Grade Oral Language Resources
Students will:• Learn about the concept of whales.
• Access prior knowledge and build background about whales.
• Explore and apply the concept of whales.
Students will:• Demonstrate an understanding of the concept of whales.
• Orally use words that describe different types of whales and where they live.
• Extend oral vocabulary by speaking about terms that describe whales and whale body parts.
• Use key concept words [inlet, humpback, ocean, fins, underwater; submerge, ascend, Baleen, mammal].
Explain• Use the slideshow to review the key concept words.
• Explain that students are going to learn about:
• Where whales live.
• Parts of a whale's body.
Model• After the host introduces the slideshow, point to the photo on screen. Ask students: What kind of animal do you see in this picture? (whale). What do you know about these animals? (answers will vary).
• Ask students: What are the dangers facing whales? (too much hunting, polluted environment).
• Say: In this activity, we're going to learn about whales. How can we protect whales? (not pollute the environment, join groups that are concerned with their safety).
Guided Practice• Guide students through the next two slides, showing them examples of whales and the way whales live. Always have the students describe how people are different from whales.
Apply• Play the games that follow. Have them discuss with their partner the different topics that appear during the Talk About It feature.
• After the first game, ask students to talk about what they think a whale's living environment is like. After the second game, have them discuss what they would like and dislike about having the body of a whale.
Close• Ask students: How do you move in the water?
• Summarize for students that since whales are mammals, they have to come above water to breathe. Encourage them to think about how they breathe underwater.
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Authors: Glen Gilchrist
Comments: 6 Pages.
The impact of video games on adolescent behaviour is well studied, with literature reporting both negative and positive relationships. This paper demonstrates a link between video game playing and time to complete a manual task. We conclude that the playing of 1 hour of video games has a dramatic effect on assembly time, more than halving the time to assemble the equipment, from 8 seconds to 4 seconds.
Category: General Science and Philosophy
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There are two types
of logical argument, inductive and deductive.
In an inductive argument, the reader holds up a specific
example, and then claims that what is true for it
is also true for a general category. For instance,
"I have just tasted this lemon. It is sour.
Therefore, all lemons are probably sour." Deductive
reasoning works in the opposite manner; it begins
with a general or universal rule accepted by most
people ("all lemons are sour") and then applies that
claim to a specific example. ("That is a lemon. Therefore,
it too must be sour.") A third type of logic is reductive or eliminatory logic, in which a conclusion is reached by a process of elimination. For example, "The only ways out of the building are the front door, the window, and the fire escape. Since the burglar did not take the front door or the window, he must have used the fire escape."
The other types of
persuasive appeal are pathos
Click here to return
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Injectable nanogel can monitor blood-sugar levels and secrete insulin when needed.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.-In work that recasts archaeologists' thinking aboutpeoples living in the western region of ancient Mexico, MIT researchershave shown that these people had a significant impact on other culturalgroups by producing large numbers of metal artifacts and distributing themto centers as far south as Belize.
Because the majority of these artifacts, such as bells andtweezers, were symbols of sacred and political power, by exporting them theWest Mexican peoples not only affected economic systems but also influencedreligious and ritual behavior.
"They were exporting a religious ideology," said Dorothy Hosler,Associate Professor of Archaeology and Ancient Technology in the Departmentof Materials Science and Engineering. Professor Hosler and Andrew W.Macfarlane, a research affiliate in the department and an associateprofessor at Florida International University, are authors of an article onthe work in the September 27 issue of Science.
West Mexican peoples were one of many cultural groups, includingthe Aztec and Maya, who lived in a region archaeologists call Mesoamerica.This region encompassed central and southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize,western Honduras, and El Salvador. Until now, archaeologists had thoughtthat the West Mexicans were relatively isolated and had little impact onother Mesoamerican peoples.
The new work, which links copper and bronze artifacts excavated atmany sites in Mesoamerica to West Mexican ore deposits, "is the firstevidence we have that West Mexican peoples were interacting intensivelywith other Mesoamerican groups," Professor Hosler said. "So it alters ourthinking about the economic and social networks in this period [~A.D.1200-1521]."
In the summer of 1995 Professor Hosler spent two months in Mexicocollecting ore samples from 15 deposits in West Mexico, Oaxaca, and EasternMexico (Veracruz). With a permit granted by Mexico's National Institute ofAnthropology and History, she also took samples of 171 copper artifactsfrom a variety of Mesoamerican archaeological sites. "I came back to MITwith boxes and boxes of artifact and ore samples," said Professor Hosler,who is also a member of the MIT Center for Archaeological Materials.
The researchers then determined the ratios of lead isotopes in eachsample (isotopes of an element have different atomic weights). Lead isotopeanalysis, a standard technique, "can be used to identify ore sources forartifacts made from copper and copper alloys by matching the isotopicsignatures of ore lead to those of the artifacts," the researchers write inScience.
Professor Hosler notes that MIT undergraduate Jennifer Pinson, nowa junior in materials science, played a key role in the analysis. "Sheworked all last year on the project; at one point she went to Florida tohand-deliver ore samples to Professor Macfarlane because we were afraid wemight lose them if we shipped them." (The samples were analyzed atProfessor Macfarlane's lab.)
The lead-isotope results showed that most of the Mesoamericanartifacts sampled were indeed made of metal smelted from West Mexican ores.These analytical data combined with historical and archaeological evidencetherefore show that the West Mexicans were exporting artifacts throughoutthe Mesoamerican region.
Among the archaeological evidence that supports this conclusion isthat "as far as we know, other Mesoamerican peoples did not develop thetechnical expertise to make these artifacts," Professor Hosler said. Shenoted that West Mexican bells, for example, are difficult to cast. "Last January, MIT Professors Sam Allen, Linn Hobbs, and I led a class in ancientMexican bell casting. The students spent two weeks trying to cast copies ofthese bells, and we don't have it exactly right yet."
Professor Hosler concluded that although she had suspected that theWest Mexicans played a major role in the production and distribution ofmetal artifacts, "until the lead isotope analysis we had no way ofsubstantiating what we thought might be true."
For more information about MIT research on the history ofmaterials, go to:<http://tantalum.mit.edu/dmse_research/CRAbrochure/History_of_Materials.html>.
The work reported in Science was supported by a grant from GrupoMexico (Industrial Minera Mexico), American Smelting and Refining Company,and Southern Peru Copper.
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Influenza pandemics are natural phenomenon that have occurred from time to time for centuries – including three times during the last century. They present a real and daunting challenge to the economic and social wellbeing of any country, as well as a serious risk to the health of its population.
There are important differences between 'ordinary' winter flu and pandemic flu. These differences explain why we regard pandemic flu as such a serious threat.
Pandemic influenza is one of the most severe natural challenges likely to affect the UK, but sensible and proportionate preparation and collective action by the Government, essential services, businesses, the media, other public, private and voluntary organisations and communities can help to mitigate its effects.
These inter-pandemic years provide a very important opportunity to develop and strengthen our preparations for the potentially devastating impact of an influenza pandemic, and the Government will continue to take every practical step to prepare for and mitigate its health and wider socio-economic effects.
The Department of Health (DH) [External website] is the lead department for planning for a human influenza pandemic. However, given the wide impacts of a pandemic all government departments are involved in planning to mitigate its impacts.
This website brings together available information on a possible influenza pandemic in order to support planning at all levels of society.
However well developed, plans are unlikely to be successful without the active support of individuals and communities. Therefore, a key part of the response will be to encourage the public to follow government advice and adopt basic hygiene measures to manage or reduce their own risk of catching or spreading the virus. Ensuring that all of us are fully aware of the necessary precautionary and response measures, are prepared to cooperate actively with them and accept responsibility for helping themselves and others must therefore be an integral part of our overall preparedness strategy.
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Embrace mistakes in your artwork.
Wade Guyton created Untitled with the help of an Epson inkjet printer, similar to but larger than printers you may have in your classroom or home. Guyton used black ink to print the large rectangles onto linen, and although the large black and white spaces dominate the painting, there are also faint lines that are a result of Guyton folding or feeding the fabric through the printer. Guyton embraces these mistakes, considering them to be integral parts of his work.
In preparation for this project, have your students save all the artwork they make in your class, including the ones upon which they feel that they’ve made mistakes. After discussing Guyton’s work as a class, ask your students to pull out their collection of work. What kind of mistakes did they think they made? Thinking about Guyton’s strategy of embracing mistakes, have your students embrace a mistake in one of their works. How can that mistake become an important part of the work? How does it change the work?
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By Chris Wickham
LONDON (Reuters) - Large-scale engineering projects aimed at fighting global warming could radically reduce rainfall in Europe and North America, a team of scientists from four European countries have warned.
Geoengineering projects are controversial, even though they are largely theoretical at this point. They range from mimicking the effects of large volcanic eruptions by releasing sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere, to deploying giant mirrors in space to deflect the sun's rays.
Proponents say they could be a rapid response to rising global temperatures but environmentalists argue they are a distraction from the need to reduce man-made carbon emissions.
Critics also point to a lack of solid research into unintended consequences and the absence of any international governance structure for such projects, whose effects could transcend national borders.
A small geoengineering experiment in the UK was recently abandoned due to a dispute over attempts by some of the team involved to patent the technology.
In this new study scientists from Germany, Norway, France and the UK used four different computer models that mimic the earth's climate to see how they responded to increased levels of carbon dioxide coupled with reduced radiation from the sun.
Their scenario assumed a world with four times the carbon dioxide concentration of the preindustrial world, which lead author Hauke Schmidt says is at the upper end, but in the range of what is considered possible at the end of this century.
They found that global rainfall was reduced by about 5 percent on average using all four models.
"Climate engineering cannot be seen as a substitute for a policy pathway of mitigating climate change through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions," they said in the study, published in Earth System Dynamics, an open access journal of the European Geosciences Union.
Under the scenario studied, rainfall diminished by about 15 percent, or about 100 millimeters per year, compared to pre-industrial levels, in large areas of North America and northern Eurasia.
Over central South America, all the models showed a decrease in rainfall that reached more than 20 percent in parts of the Amazon region.
(Editing by Mark Heinrich)
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ExplorationCounting Consonants!Think about some of the words you know how to read or write. Look at them in a book or write them down on a piece of paper.Count the number of vowels and the number of consonants in each word you examine. What do you notice about the number of consonants versus the number of vowels? Do some words have lots of consonants, while others have lots of vowels? Do most words seem to have at least a few of each?? What do you think would be different if there were more or fewer consonants in each word?
Sources & links
Bickford, J. Albert and David Tuggy. “The principle organs of articulation.” The Summer Institute of Linguistics in Mexico. 05 Sep. 2009 <http://www.sil.org/mexico/ling/glosario/E005bi-OrgansArt.htm> "vocal tract." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 05 Sep. 2009. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/vocal tract>. "consonant." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2009. ”¨<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consonant> "consonant." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 05 Sep. 2009 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/133627/consonant>
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From LawGuru Wiki
Template:CrimPro In United States constitutional law, the exclusionary rule is a legal principle holding that evidence collected or analyzed in violation of the U.S. Constitution is inadmissible for a criminal prosecution in a court of law (that is, it cannot be used in a criminal trial). The exclusionary rule does not apply to all violations of the Fourth, Fifth, or Sixth Amendments. An example of this is the 2006 Supreme Court ruling Hudson v. Michigan,
The Exclusionary Rule is designed to provide a remedy and disincentive, short of criminal prosecution, for prosecutors and police who illegally gather evidence in violation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments in the Bill of Rights, which provide for protection from unreasonable searches and seizure and compelled self-incrimination.
The Exclusionary Rule applies to all citizens or aliens (illegal or documented) that reside within the United States. It is not applicable to aliens residing outside of U.S. borders. United States v. Alvarez decided that property owned by aliens in a foreign country is admissible in court. Certain persons in the U.S. receive limited protections, such as prisoners, probationers, parolees, and persons crossing U.S. borders. Corporations, by virtue of being, also have limited rights under the Fourth Amendment (see corporate personhood).
The fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine holds that any evidence discovered indirectly through an illegal search or seizure is inadmissible in court. The rationale is that the evidence would not have been found were it not for the violation of the Fourth Amendment and therefore must be suppressed because it is the "fruit of the poisonous tree." If the prosecution can prove that the evidence in question would have been discovered even without the illegal search, then this evidence is admissible. This principle is known as inevitable discovery.
History of the Rule
The exclusionary rule was created in 1914 in the case of Weeks v. United States. This decision, however, created the rule only on the federal level. It was not until Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961) that the exclusionary rule was also held to be binding on the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees due process. This landmark decision was considered by former Justice Potter Stewart as "the most important search and seizure decision in [American] history."
The Court's rationale for its holding in Hudson is that a search whose only illegality is the failure to announce cannot uncover any evidence that would not have been uncovered if the announcement had been properly made, and therefore the suppression of evidence is not an appropriate remedy.
Exceptions to the Rule
The exclusionary rule does not apply in a civil case, in a grand jury proceeding, or in a parole revocation hearing. In any of these circumstances, illegally obtained evidence will not be barred by the rule. Furthermore, such evidence can be admitted to impeach the credibility of the defendant's trial testimony; however, this exception applies only if the defendant testifies, and the evidence is relevant to call into question the truthfulness of the defendant's testimony.
The inevitable discovery doctrine was adopted first by the United States Supreme Court in Nix v Williams in 1984. It holds that evidence obtained through an unlawful search or seizure is admissible in court if it can be established, to a very high degree of probability, that normal police investigation would have inevitably led to the discovery of the evidence. This decision was upheld because given the fact that the exclusionary rule was created specifically to deter police and state misconduct, excluding evidence that would inevitably (hypothetically) have been discovered otherwise would not serve to deter police misconduct. In People v. Stith, the Court stated that this doctrine may not be used to admit primary evidence but only secondary evidence, i.e. evidence found as a result of the primary evidence.
The attenuation exception to the exclusionary rule is that evidence may be suppressed only if there is a clear causal connection between the illegal police action and the evidence. The evidence must result from the unlawful conduct. A three-pronged test was created in People v. Martinez to determine whether there was sufficient attenuation of this connection (i.e. the lack of connection between the disputed evidence and the unlawful conduct): (1) the time period between the illegal arrest and the ensuing confession or consensual search; (2) the presence of intervening factors or event; and (3) the purpose and flagrancy of the official misconduct.
The independent source exception allows evidence to be admitted in court if knowledge of the evidence is gained from a separate, or independent, source that is completely unrelated to the illegality at hand. This rule was formally accepted in People v. Arnau.
The good-faith exception may allow some evidence gathered in violation of the Constitution if the violation results in only a minor or technical error. If a magistrate is erroneous in granting a police officer a warrant, and the officer acts on the warrant in good faith, then the evidence resulting in the execution of the warrant is not suppressible. However, there are a number of situations in which the good faith exception will not apply:
- No reasonable officer would have relied on the affidavit underlying the warrant.
- The warrant is defective on its face for failing to state the place to be searched or things to be seized.
- The warrant was obtained by fraud on the part of a government official.
- The magistrate has "wholly abandoned his judicial role."zh:證據排除法則
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The atoll is closed to the public and travel to the island is not allowed.
Both the US and the Kingdom of Hawaii annexed Johnston Atoll in 1858, but it was the US that mined the guano deposits until the late 1880s. Johnston and Sand Islands were designated wildlife refuges in 1926. The US Navy took over the atoll in 1934, and subsequently the US Air Force assumed control in 1948. The site was used for high-altitude nuclear tests in the 1950s and 1960s, and until late in 2000 the atoll was maintained as a storage and disposal site for chemical weapons. Munitions destruction is now complete. Cleanup and closure of the facility was completed by May 2005. Toxic waste from both operations is buried on the island.
The Fish and Wildlife Service and the US Air Force are currently discussing future management options, in the interim Johnston Atoll and the three-mile Naval Defensive Sea around it remain under the jurisdiction and administrative control of the US Air Force.
Tropical, but generally dry; consistent northeast trade winds with little seasonal temperature variation.
Strategic location in the North Pacific Ocean; Johnston Island and Sand Island are natural islands, which have been expanded by coral dredging; North Island (Akau) and East Island (Hikina) are manmade islands formed from coral dredging; egg-shaped reef is 34 km in circumference some low-growing vegetation. Highest point: Summit Peak, at 5 meters
Get in
By plane
There is an abandoned airstrip on Johnston Island.
By boat
[add listing] Buy
There is currently no economic activity on Johnston Atoll.
[add listing] Sleep
There are no public accommodations on Johnston Atoll.
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This brightly colored salamander can be locally abundant where forested habitat remains intact, but quickly declines or disappears when woodlands are cleared or disturbed by cutting or invasive species. Moist, closed canopy woodlands are preferred habitat. They tend to avoid swamp forests subject to flooding, and are absent in disturbed forests that have been recently grazed, burned, or harvested for timber. Temporary or semi-permanent ponds either within or adjacent to the woods are critical habitat elements. Spotted Salamanders spend most of their time in burrows underground – up to four feet below the surface. They are occasionally found under or within rotting logs, leaf litter, and other moist places. Hibernation occurs on land, usually near breeding ponds. They have granular glands that produce secretions which can repel some predators. Most glands are located behind the eyes and on the tail.
Reproduction and Growth
Migration to breeding ponds occurs in late May to mid-April, and is triggered by thawing of the ground and higher humidity. This species returns to the same breeding ponds each year, and uses established routes when traveling to and from breeding ponds – even entering and leaving ponds at same point each time. Eggs are laid one to several days after sperm transfer. The female can lay 50-300 eggs in one large mass or several smaller clusters attached to sticks or vegetation, egg masses form a symbiotic relationship with some types of algae – algae provide larvae with additional oxygen, while benefiting from carbon dioxide released by embryos.
Eggs hatch in 20-60 days and metamorphose in 60-90 days, although some larvae may over-winter. Females reach sexual maturity at 3-5 years old, while males reach maturity at 2-3 years old. They may live more than 20 years.
Their future depends on presence of undisturbed woodlands and associated temporary and semi-permanent ponds Any human activity that opens forest canopies (i.e. elective logging) can lower humidity creating unsuitable conditions Construction of roads running between wooded uplands and lowland breeding sites can lead to mass mortality of migratory salamanders. Sometimes collected for biological supply and the pet trade, persistent exploitation could threaten local populations. Acidic precipitation is another concern as eggs and larvae may be sensitive to pond acidification.
- Ephemeral wetlands.
- Permanent wetlands.
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BACKGROUND: A new type of stethoscope relies on ultrasound to enable doctors to hear the sounds of the body in extremely loud situations, such as during the transportation of patients in MedEVAC helicopters, or wounded soldiers in Blackhawk helicopters.
HOW IT WORKS: These new ultrasound models transmit a sound signal into the patientıs body. This sound is reflected back to the stethoscope at a slightly different frequency because it bounces off the internal organs, changing the sound wave patternı essentially, the Doppler effect. The difference in frequencies between the transmitted sound wave and the returning sound wave received by the instrument can be computed to determine the motion of the internal organs. This difference in frequency is then converted into audible sound. Ultrasound stethoscopes produce a markedly different sound than conventional ones. An acoustic stethoscope yields a ılub-dubı sound from a heartbeat with the first beat being the strongest. An ultrasound stethoscope yields a ıta-da-taı pattern with the second beat being the strongest.
THE PROBLEM: Traditional stethoscopes transmit and amplify sound within the range of human hearing: from 20 hertz to 20,000 hertz. Most body sound, such as that of the heart and lungs, fall into the 100 to 200 hertz range. Current acoustic stethoscopes detect and amplify vibrations that allow doctors to hear the heart and lungs better. However, they become difficult to use around 80 decibels ı a noise level comparable to an alarm clock or a busy street, -- and are useless above 90 decibels. Modern electronic stethoscopes improved that threshold to 95 decibels by replacing the earpieces with loudspeaker inserts, which provide a better seal over the ear canal. They also have electrical cables instead of the conventional tubing, decreasing acoustic noise. But this is still not sufficient to make the instruments useful in very noisy environments. The ultrasound stethoscope is nearly impervious to loud noise and can make accurate readings at noise levels up to 120 decibels, similar to the volume experienced in the front row at a rock concert.
THE DOPPLER EFFECT: Both sound waves and light waves exhibit the Doppler Effect. Just as a train whistle will sound higher as it approaches a platform and then become lower in pitch as it moves away, light emitted by a moving object is perceived to increase in frequency (a blue shift) if it is moving toward the observer; if the object is moving away from us, it will be shifted toward the red end of the spectrum.
The Acoustical Society of America contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.
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Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
William Bligh (September 9, 1754 - December 7, 1817) was an officer of the British Royal Navy and colonial administrator. He is best known for the famous mutiny that occurred against his command aboard HMAV Bounty. After the Bounty mutiny he became Governor of New South Wales, where his stern administration engendered another insurrection, the Rum Rebellion led by John Macarthur.
Bligh was born in Plymouth, a seaport in south-west England, and went to sea at the age of eight. In 1776, he was selected by Captain James Cook for the crew of the Resolution and, in 1787, selected as commander of the HMAV Bounty. He would eventually rise to the rank of Vice Admiral in the British Navy.
William Bligh's naval career consisted of a variety of appointments and assignments. A summary is as follows:
- July 1, 1762: Ship's Boy and Captain's Servant, HMS Monmouth
- July 27, 1770: Able Seaman, HMS Hunter
- February 5 1771: Midshipman, HMS Hunter
- September 22, 1771: Midshipman, HMS Crescent
- September 2, 1774: Able Seaman, HMS Ranger
- September 30, 1775: Master's Mate, HMS Ranger
- March 20, 1776: Master, HMS Resolution
- February 14, 1781: Master, HMS Belle Poule
- October 5, 1781: Lieutenant, HMS Berwick
- January 1, 1782: Lieutenant, HMS Princess Amelia
- March 20, 1782: Lieutenant, HMS Cambridge
- January 14, 1783: Joined Merchant Service as Lieutenant
- 1785: Commanding Lieutenant, Merchant Vessel Lynx
- 1786: Lieutenant, Merchant Vessel Brittania
- 1787: Returns to Royal Navy active service
- August 16, 1787: Commanding Lieutenant, HMAV Bounty
- November 14, 1790: Captain, HMS Falcon
- December 15, 1790: Captain, HMS Medea
- April 16, 1791: Captain, HMS Providence
- April 30, 1795: Captain, HMS Calcutta
- January 7, 1796: Captain, HMS Director
- March 18, 1801: Post Captain, HMS Glatton
- April 12, 1801: Post Captain, HMS Monarch
- May 8, 1801: Post Captain, HMS Irresistible
- May 2, 1804: Post Captain, HMS Warrior
- May 14, 1805: Governor of New South Wales
- September 27, 1805: Post Captain, HMS Porpoise
- July 31, 1808: Commodore, HMS Porpoise
- April 3, 1810: Commodore, HMS Hindostan
- July 31, 1810: Appointed Rear Admiral of the Blue
- June 4, 1814: Appointed Vice Admiral of the Blue
The voyage of the Bounty
In 1787, Bligh took command of the Bounty. He first sailed to Tahiti to obtain breadfruit trees, then set course for the Caribbean, where the breadfruit were wanted for experiments to see if breadfruit would be a successful food crop there. The Bounty never reached the Caribbean, as mutiny broke out onboard shortly after leaving Tahiti. In later years, Bligh would repeat the same voyage that the Bounty had undertaken and would eventually succeed in delivering the breadfruit to the West Indies. Bligh's mission may have introduced the akee to the Caribbean as well, though this is uncertain. (Akee is now called Blighia sapida in binomial nomenclature after Bligh).
The mutiny, which broke out during the return voyage, was led by Master's Mate Fletcher Christian and supported by a quarter of the crew. The mutineers provided Bligh and the eighteen of his crew who remained loyal with a 23 foot (7 m) launch, provisions sufficient to reach the most accessible ports, a sextant and a pocket watch, but no charts or compass. Bligh disdained the obvious course of action, which would have been sailing for nearer Spanish ports where they would be repatriated to Britain after delays. Bligh was confident in his navigational skills and considering his first responsibility to be getting word of the mutiny as soon as possible to British vessels that could pursue the mutineers, so he embarked instead on a 3618 nautical mile (6701 km) voyage to Timor. In the successful 41 day voyage, the only casualty was one crewman killed by hostile natives.
To this day, the reasons for the mutiny are a subject of considerable debate. Some feel that Bligh was a cruel tyrant whose abuse of the crew led members of the crew to feel that they had no choice but to take the ship from Bligh. Others feel that the crew, after having been exposed to freedom and sexual excess on the island of Tahiti refused to return to the "Jack Tars" existence of a seaman. They hold that the crew took the ship from Bligh so that they could return to a life of comfort and pleasure on Tahiti.
After the Bounty
Bligh was buried in a family plot at Lambeth. This church is now the Museum of Garden History. His gravestone is topped by a breadfruit. Bligh's house is marked by a plaque a block east of the Museum.
- Caroline Alexander, The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty, Viking Penguin, 2003, hardcover, 512 pages, ISBN 067003133X
- A Voyage to the South Sea by William Bligh, 1792, from Project Gutenberg. The full title of Bligh's own account of the famous mutiny is: A Voyage to the South Sea, undertaken by command of His Majesty, for the purpose of conveying the bread-fruit tree to the West Indies, in his majesty's ship the Bounty, commanded by Lieutenant William Bligh. Including an account of the Mutiny on board the said ship, and the subsequent voyage of part of the crew, in the ship's boat, from Tofoa, one of the friendly islands, to Timor, a Dutch settlement in the East Indies. The whole illustrated with charts, etc.
- Portraits of Bligh in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
- There is a display devoted to Bligh at the Museum of Garden History.
The contents of this article is licensed from www.wikipedia.org under the GNU Free Documentation License. Click here to see the transparent copy and copyright details
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• excruciate •
Part of Speech: Verb, transitive
Meaning: To torment, to torture, to inflict severe physical or mental on someone.
Notes: Today's Good Word is probably most often heard in the redundant phrase excruciating pain, in other words, extremely painful pain. The participle, excruciating, is used freely as an adjective, but there is an independent noun, excruciation. The agent noun, excruciator, is very rarely used but stands ready if needed.
In Play: While torture applies to systematic physical maltreatment, today's word refers to more casual torment: "Mallory seemed to enjoy excruciating his guests with his accordion." The torment may be mental or physical: "Although Pamela felt quite fashionable at the cotillion, her new shoes excruciated her toes all night."
Word History: Today's word comes from the past participle of Latin excruciare "to torture out, crucify". It is based on ex "out" + cruciare "to crucify", a verb based on crux (cruc-s) "cross", also used by English as the crux of a problem. Since the original root behind crux meant "bent, crooked", we might think crux related to English crook. However, the [k] sounds would have been reduced to [h] or have vanished entirely in English, so no connection can be drawn. (We must be straight with Luis Alejandro Apiolaza, however, and thank him for suggesting today's Good Word, lest our oversight in any way excruciate him.)
Come visit our website at <http://www.alphadictionary.com> for more Good Words and other language resources!
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Restrictions of freedom
The Act on Protection against Family Violence of 2003 covers the issue of violence perpetrated within families and therefore covers the case of violence towards a relative with dementia. The definition of violence is very comprehensive and includes restriction of freedom of movement and presumably various coercive measures.
“Family violence is any use of physical force or psychological pressure against the integrity of a person; any other behaviour of a family member which can cause or potentially cause physical or psychological pain; causing feelings of fear or being personally endangered or feeling of offended dignity; physical attack regardless of whether or not it results in physical injury, verbal assaults, insults, cursing, name-calling and other forms of severe disturbance; sexual harassment; stalking and other forms of disturbance; illegal isolation or restriction of the freedom of movement or communication with third persons; damage or destruction of property or attempts to do so.” (Cited by the United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women, 2009).
United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women (2009), The UN Secretary-General’s database on violence against women: extract on Croatia. Accessed online on 20 October 2011 at: http://webapps01.un.org/vawdatabase/searchDetail.action?measureId=6015&baseHREF=country&baseHREFId=388
Last Updated: mercredi 14 mars 2012
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Spiders: True or False?
Spiders evolved more than 300 million years ago, long before dinosaurs walked the Earth.
- True. Those ancient spiders didn't build webs but sought the safety of burrows dug underground. There, they were shaded from the Sun and protected from predators.
There are as many species of mammals as there are spiders.
- False. While there are about 6,000 mammal species, scientists have identified over 43,000 spider species so far. There may be at least as many still out there to be discovered.
Every spider sheds its exoskeleton, the inflexible outer shell, several times during its life.
- True. Most stop molting once they reach maturity, though females from some relatively primitive families of spiders continue to do so throughout their lives.
Spiders have poor eyesight.
- True. Nearly all have eight simple eyes--consisting of one lens and a retina--arranged in different ways but, for the most part, don't see very well. In most cases, spiders use other senses, like touch and smell, to help capture prey.
All spiders make webs.
- False. Only about 50 percent of known spider species do. Others hunt their prey or burrow underground. One species, Argyroneta aquatica, lives underwater.
All spider silk is the same.
- False. Spiders make many different kinds of silk, each with a property--toughness, flexibility, stickiness--specific to the task it performs.
Spiders are important predators.
- True. By one estimate, the spiders on one acre of woodland alone consume more than 80 pounds (36 kg) of insects a year! Those insect populations would explode without predators.
Not all spiders have venom.
- True. Those in the group Uloboridae don't. Instead of subduing their prey with venom, they wrap it tightly with silk.
I'm very likely to be bitten by a spider.
- False. With a few exceptions, spiders are very shy. They almost always run away rather than bite. In addition, misdiagnosis of insect bites as spider bites is very common.
Spiders don't care for their offspring.
- False. Many spiders do. For instance, a female wolf spider may carry an egg sac containing her young for weeks. Once the spiderlings hatch, she hauls as many as 100 or more of them on her back for another week or so.
Like many animals, spiders are threatened by habitat destruction and introduced species.
- True. Despite these threats, spiders and other non-vertebrates can be overlooked in conservation planning, in part because they're so small.
| 3.39434 |
Search through the catalogue of ancient history books:
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The Hittites were an ancient Anatolian people who spoke a language of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family and established a kingdom centered at Hattusa in on the central Anatolian plateau in the 18th century BC. The Hittite empire reached its height around 1285 BC, encompassing a large part of Anatolia, north-western Syria about as far... [continue reading]
The word civilization is related to the Latin word, civitas ”city”. The term is used in several ways, generally denoting complex human cultural development. Some scholars restrict the use of the term to urbanized societies, in other words, cultures that have achieved a development that has allowed them to create large and permanent settlements... [continue reading]
Babylon was probably the most famous city of ancient Mesopotamia. Until today the city is a symbol for wealth, power, and sin (largely due to its treatment in the Bible). The name Babylon is the Greek form of Babel of Babili, which means "the gate of the god" in Semitic, which again is the translation of the original Sumerian name Ka-dimirra... [continue reading]
Sumer (Sumerian: ki-en-ĝir "Land of the Lords of Brightness", Akkadian: Šumeru; possibly Biblical Shinar) was a civilization and historical region in southern Mesopotamia, Iraq. It is the earliest known civilization in the world and is known as the Cradle of Civilization. The Sumerian civilization spanned over 3000 years and began with... [continue reading]
The term “Aryan” has had a complicated history. The Sanskrit word ārya, the source of the English word, was mainly the self designation of the Vedic Indic people although during time it developed some secondary meanings. It has a cognate in Iranian arya, where it is also a self designation. Both the Indic and Iranian terms descend from a form ārya... [continue reading]
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Created on Day 5
April 5, 2012
Part of this creature’s defense mechanism is its bright coloring. Also, when laying its eggs, the female Spanish dancer deposits a toxin with them, which keeps predators from eating the undeveloped Spanish dancers. The information for these habits was given to this creature by its Creator.
- The Spanish dancer’s flattened body is brightly colored in shades of red, pink, or orange.
- Some are a solid color and some are patterned, depending on the location.
- This is the only nudibranch family that has six gills.
- This creature gets its name from the appearance of its swimming motion. It resembles the flaring skirt of a Spanish dancer.
- The male Spanish dancer enters dance competitions to win its mate.
- This creature is one of the most colorful in the world.
- This species was first described in the Red Sea, where its solid red form is found.
GENUS/SPECIES: Hexabranchus sanguineus
Size: Up to 1.5 ft (0.45 m)
Habitat: Shallow waters of tropical Indian Ocean and western Pacific, on coasts and reefs
| 3.195275 |
One half of optics was missing
At optical frequencies, electromagnetic waves interact with an ordinary optical material (e.g., glass) via the electronic polarizability of the material. In contrast, the corresponding magnetizability is negligible for frequencies above a few THz, or in other words, its magnetic permeability is identical to unity (μ(ω)=1). Consequently, the optical properties of an ordinary optical material are completely characterized by its electric permittivity ε(ω) (or dielectric function). As a result, we can only directly manipulate the electric component of light with an appropriate optical device while we have no immediate handle on the corresponding magnetic component. One half of optics has been missing.
Artificial magnetism at optical frequencies
Photonic metamaterials open up a way to overcome this constraint. The basic idea is to create an artificial crystal with significantly sub-wavelength periods. Analogous to an ordinary optical material, such a photonic metamaterial can approximately be treated as an effective medium characterized by effective material parameters ε(ω) and μ(ω). However, the proper design of the elementary building blocks (or "artificial atoms" or "meta-atoms") of the photonic metamaterial allows for a non-vanishing magnetic response and even for μ<0 at optical frequencies – despite the fact that the constituent materials of the photonic metamaterial are completely non-magnetic.
Negative refractive index …
Much of the early excitement in the field has been about achieving a negative index of refraction n<0 by simultaneous ε<0 and µ<0 at near-infrared or even at visible frequencies. A negative refractive index means that the phase velocity of light is opposite to the electromagnetic energy flow (the Poynting vector). This unusual situation has inspired fascinating ideas like the so-called "perfect lens", which employs the fact that the optical path length between two spatially separate points can be made equal to zero, rendering the two points equivalent for the purpose of optics.
… and beyond
Artificial magnetism is also a necessary prerequisite for obtaining strong optical activity and circular dichroism. These phenomena are based on magnetic dipoles excited by the electric component of the light field and vice versa. Three-dimensional metal helices have been a corresponding paradigm building block in optical textbooks, but their nanofabrication has not been possible until quite recently. Such gold-helix metamaterials can be applied as compact and broadband (more than one octave) circular polarizers - the circular analogue of the good old wire-grid linear polarizer (already used by Heinrich Hertz in his pioneering experiments on electromagnetic waves in Karlsruhe in 1887) and possibly a first down-to-earth application of the deceptively simple but far-reaching ideas of photonic metamaterials.
Transforming optical space
Further flexibility for achieving certain functions arises from intentionally spatially inhomogeneous optical metamaterials. Such structures can be designed using the concepts of transformation optics, which is inspired by Albert Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. In essence, distortions of actual space (e.g., due to heavy masses) can equivalently be mimicked by distortions of optical space, i.e., by tailoring the local index of refraction. Invisibility cloaking structures have been a demanding benchmark example for the strength of transformation optics because invisibility cloaks would have been considered "impossible" just five years ago. Today, direct laser writing has allowed for the first three-dimensional invisibility cloaking structures. Lately, even visible operation frequencies have become accessible.
A complete list of publications can be found here.
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Animal Species:Striped Dolphin
The Striped Dolphin is a small sleek compact dolphin with a striking body pattern that gives it its name.
The Striped Dolphin is a small sleek compact dolphin with a long well defined beak, prominent dorsal fin and short tapering flippers. It is the striking body pattern that gives it its name. A bold black stripe runs the full length of the body from behind the eye to the anus. This separates the bluish grey flank from the white ventral surface. A second smaller stripe runs from the front of the eye to the behind the flipper. A third section of dark grey covers the top of the head, the dorsal fin and on towards the back of the body.
The distribution of the Striped Dolphin is confined to warm tropical and temperate waters, where it occurs in schools of many hundreds of animals. These groups are highly visible as they stir the surface with displays of high speed swimming and aerial acrobatics.
Feeding and Diet
A widely distributed species such as this tends to include a high diversity of organisms in its diet. These include a variety of shoaling fish and cephalopods (squid and octopus) concentrating on those species occurring in large dense schools.
These animals form very socially cohesive groups of between 100 and 500 individuals however the age structure varies. Some are composed of adults only, others consist of adults and juveniles. Calving occurs in late summer in smaller mixed aged schools numbering about 30 animals. The gestation period lasts about one year with the interval between such events around of four years.
The Striped Dolphin is an abundant species. It has had some regional population losses such as those stemming from the drive fisheries practiced in Japan, and the mysterious die off of more than 1000 individuals in the Mediterranean. Fishing industry practices still cause some deaths through entanglement and indirectly impact on some populations by depletion of their food resource.
- Baker, A. N. 1999. Whales and Dolphins of Australia and New Zealand: an identification guide. Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, Australia.
- Bryden, M., Marsh, H. and Shaughnessy, P. 1998. Dugongs, Whales, Dolphins and Seals. A guide to the sea mammals of Australasia. Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, Australia.
- Menkhorst, P. 2001. A Field Guide to Mammals of Australia. Oxford University Press, Melbourne, Australia.
- Reeves, R. R., Stewart, B. S., Clapham, P. J. and Powell, J. A. 2002. National Audubon Society Guide to Marine Mammals of the World. Chanticleer Press, Inc New York, USA.
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Guest Author - Preena Deepak
Music and dance rituals were an important aspect of temple worship in ancient India. In this pretext it was also a common Hindu tradition to dedicate or commission young girls to gods. These girls called ‘Devadasis’ were then separated from their families and trained in music, dance and a unique lifestyle within temple gates unlike their counterparts outside. Their life was from then on, one of service to the gods.
When a Devadasi attained puberty, she was married to the deity in a religious ceremony. From then on she would become a temple prostitute. Indian temples always had the patronage of Kings who ruled the country and in many instances devadasis became the concubines of the kings. In other cases, devadasis lived with their patron who provided them with property and wealth.
Marriage was forbidden for Devadasis who were eternally bound to the deity. However Devadasis became available to anyone who was able to ‘afford’ their keep.
The word ‘Devadasi’ means ‘Servant of God’. The girls dedicated to become Devadasis were mostly from poor, lower caste families for whom devoting one child to the god only meant less pressure on the family’s meager finances. Devadasis were considered blessed as entering into wedlock with the god protected them from widowhood. As a result of these reasons several young girls were pushed into prostitution, under the safe banner of religion.
Traces of the Devadasi system can be seen in many parts of India, particularly in South Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. It is believed that the Devadasis of Orissa, called ‘Mahari’ did not practice prostitution but devoted themselves to temple service and had special duties assigned to them.
With the decline of monarchy in India and with the invasion of Moghul and British rulers, the Devadasi system began to deteriorate. Christian Missionaries who worked in India, Social Activists and Reformers also had a share in putting an end to this grotesque Indian custom. The Indian Government banned the Devadasi system in 1988. However in spite of this, the Devadasi system continues under cover in India.
Under the burden of poverty, many young girls are still commissioned as Devadasis though Indian temples no longer have music and dance rituals or dedication ceremonies. These girls are married to the god and then sent for prostitution in red light areas. Unlike olden days, most of these girls do not have regular patrons and suffer under many men before succumbing to AIDS and other venereal diseases.
The children born to Devadasis are forced to follow along the footsteps of their mothers, since they live alienated from main stream life and are rejected from social institutions. This creates a vicious circle in which many young girls in India get trapped even today.
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| Risk Factors
is a chronic, severe, disabling brain disorder. It interferes with the way a person interprets reality. People with schizophrenia may:
- Hear voices or see things that others do not
- Become paranoid that people are plotting against them
- Experience cognitive deficits
- Withdraw socially
These and other symptoms make it difficult for people with schizophrenia to have positive relationships with others.
Regions of the Brain
Copyright © Nucleus Medical Media, Inc.
The cause of schizophrenia is unknown but it is associated with problems in brain structure and chemistry. There may be some genetic role.
Schizophrenia does not develop because of one factor. You may have a gene that increases your chance of schizophrenia, but you may not develop the disease based on your environment. Environment means any outside factor like stress or infection.
Factors that increase your risk of schizophrenia include:
- Having a parent or sibling with schizophrenia
- Marijuana use or other drug use
- Father being of older age
- Other factors, like problems during pregnancy or birth such as infection
Men typically develop symptoms in their late teens or early twenties. Schizophrenia in women tends to occur in their twenties or thirties. In rare cases, it is seen in childhood.
Symptoms often appear slowly. They may become more disturbing and bizarre over time or occur in a matter of weeks or months.
Symptoms may include:
- Hallucinations—seeing or hearing things/voices that are not there
- Delusions—strong but false personal beliefs that are not based in reality
- Disorganized thinking
- Disorganized speech—lack of ability to speak in a way that makes sense
- Catatonic behavior—slow movement, repeating rhythmic gestures, pacing, walking in circles, refusal to do things, repetitive speech
- Emotional flatness—flat speech, lack of facial expression, and general disinterest and withdrawal
- Inappropriate laughter
- Poor hygiene and self-care
Your doctor will ask you about your symptoms and medical history. A physical exam will be done.
Schizophrenia is diagnosed by certain symptoms that:
- Exist most of the time during a period of one month
- Cause a decreased level of functioning
- Continue for at least six months (certain symptoms)
The doctor will rule out other causes, such as drug use, physical illness, or other mental health conditions.
Schizophrenia is not curable, but it is highly treatable. Hospitalization may be required during acute episodes. Symptoms are usually controlled with antipsychotic medicine.
Talk to your doctor about the best treatment plan for you. Options may include one or more of the following:
Antipsychotic medicines work by blocking certain chemicals in the brain. This helps control the abnormal thinking that occurs in people with schizophrenia. Determining a medicine plan can be a complicated process. Often medicines or dosages need to be changed until the right balance is found. This can take months or even years. The right balance of medication will have the least amount of side effects possible with the greatest benefit.
It is important to continue taking the medication even if you are feeling better. Symptoms will return once the medication has been stopped. A long-acting injection instead of daily pills may be used if you have difficulty taking regular medication.
Antipsychotic medication also have side effects that may make it difficult to stick to a medication routine. Common side effects include:
- Slow and stiff movements
- Facial tics
- Protruding tongue
atypical antipsychotics have fewer side effects and are better tolerated over long periods of time. However, these medication may cause weight gain, high blood sugar levels, and
Medications for Coexisting Conditions
anxiety can often occur with schizophrenia. They may be treated with:
- Anti-anxiety medicine
- Mood stabilizers
Schizophrenia is a lifelong condition. It can be confusing and frightening for the person with the disease and for family members. Individual and family therapy can address:
- Social skills
- Vocational guidance
- Community resources
- Family issues
- Living arrangements
- Emotional support
If you are diagnosed with schizophrenia, follow your doctor's
There are no guidelines for preventing schizophrenia because the cause is unknown. But studies show that early, aggressive treatment leads to better outcomes.
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Cyberattacks on IT systems are increasing at an exponential rate. From 2006 to 2009, organizations reported that the number of security incidents grew more than 400 percent. According to reports, many of these security breaches were introduced at the user level.
Along with an increase in attacks, there has also been an increase in the quantity and type of data stored on networks. Given the number of staff members with varying security levels who require access to networks, organizations have had to redouble efforts to protect data and systems. Yet securing the desktop, a major access point to the network, is often overlooked.
Following are some simple and effective ways to protect desktops — ensuring that they do not become gateways for unauthorized access to the agency network.
Although it's common practice in many organizations to limit the use of flash drives and other devices that utilize USB ports, many others do not do this. Flash drives open organizations to data theft, and an infected USB device can introduce viruses. If it's necessary to use flash drives, it's best to select a secure drive with on-board antivirus software.
Typically, antivirus software is already installed on PCs when they arrive from the factory. This is often the first line of defense against viruses attempting to gain access via individual client devices. Whether scanning e-mail attachments or preventing intrusions from infected websites, antivirus software should not be ignored. Many users, however, disable their antivirus software or do not update it. These actions render the software ineffective or obsolete.
Scheduling automatic updates and maintaining the software are both necessary for it to remain effective and serve as a defense against the barrage of viruses that attack networks every day.
Most malware that enters a desktop, and ultimately the network, comes from users who have downloaded infected software or applications. Restricting the ability of staff to automatically download software or applications reduces vulnerabilities at the desktop and limits the ways in which malware can access an organization's systems.
Secure KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) switches let users access both secure and nonsecure networks through a single set of peripherals. By keeping various networks isolated from one another, secure KVM switching devices eliminate potential data breaches.
Authorized workers can then access secure data with neither the threat of introducing harmful data to the secure network nor any risk of accidentally copying or transferring classified data to systems outside the secure network. Additionally, many secure KVM switches can lock down USB devices, allowing only authorized devices — such as keyboards, mice and Common Access Card readers — to connect to the network.
Threats are on the rise, with company data and systems as prime targets for hostile foreign governments, terrorists and cybercriminals. The threat posed to federal systems must be addressed using a variety of security solutions; but don't overlook the desktop, which represents one of the most vulnerable access points in any organization's infrastructure.
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Log Boat is an uncommon type of boat that is made with a unique part of hollowed wood, Called “Monoxylon” is the oldest type of boat than have been found by the archeologist, these boats are similar in many countries, but the denomination is very different for example in Germany is called “einbaum” and in South America are called Canoas.
Its construction considers several basic steps:
The uses that people gave to this boat were very diverse, for example:
In South Africa: In Africa was there was many types of fishing boats, Log-Boat were very common in Limpopo River, and many rivers. Log Boat in South Africa used to be used for transport, fishing and hunting.
In Europe: If we talk about Log Boat in Europe we will find a big history around these boats. For example Byzantine Empire has used this boat to attack Constantinople, and many people gave different uses such as transport, fishing and hunting.
In North America: In North America these boats were famous, with different uses. These boats were used for ceremonial purposes.
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|© 1999-2013 BrainPOP. All rights reserved.|
In this movie, children will learn about different seasons and different types of weather. They'll learn how Earth is tilted on its axis, and how as our planet orbits the Sun, seasons change in different parts of the world!
Review with children that we divide the year into seasons, or sets of consecutive months that have similar weather patterns and length of days. There are four seasons in many parts of the world: winter, spring, summer, and fall (also called autumn). Other parts of the world have two seasons: wet and dry. Children should observe that seasons happen in the same cycles year after year and that different types of weather occur during different seasons.
Which is the coldest season? Which is the hottest? Children should know that temperature is how hot or cold something is, and this can be measured with a thermometer. Though temperatures and amount of precipitation varies across different areas, winter typically has lower temperatures than the rest of the year. Snow, sleet, hail, and rain are common forms of precipitation in the winter. In snowy areas, many animals have difficulties finding food and some will even hibernate to conserve energy. Children can learn more about hibernation by watching the Hibernation movie. December, January, and February are considered winter months in the northern hemisphere, though some countries acknowledge November to be a part of winter. Children should understand that during winter they may wear heavier clothing like coats, hats, and scarves and participate in cold-weather activities such as sledding or skiing.
As the winter ends, spring begins and temperatures slowly rise as the days get longer. Snow and ice melt and more rain tends to fall during this season. Flowers and plants grow and bloom, and animals become active again. Many animals will have their young in the spring when food is plentiful. Furthermore, their young will have time to grow before experiencing a cold winter themselves. The United States marks the beginning of spring with the vernal equinox in March and the end of spring with the summer solstice in June. Children should understand that in spring they may wear lighter coats and rain gear, and also begin outdoor activities like baseball, softball, or gardening.
After spring is summer, which begins in June and ends around September in the United States. Summer is the warmest season and has the longest days, because our part of Earth is tilted toward the Sun throughout the season. Most areas receive the least amount of precipitation during this season. Children should understand that in summer they may wear shorts, skirts, shirts, hats, and sunglasses and go swimming or take a vacation. The Sun stays high in the sky during the summer and children should understand the importance of using sunscreen and staying covered and cool.
As the summer ends, the weather gets cooler again and the days get shorter. In the northern hemisphere, fall (or autumn) begins in September and ends in December with the Winter Solstice. During fall, leaves of some trees will turn colors and fall off. Some plants bear fruit, such as apple and pear trees. Autumn squash or gourds ripen, too, which is why pumpkins are abundant at Halloween. Some animals will begin to migrate, or move to warmer areas for the coming winter. You may want to watch the Migration movie for further exploration and extension of the topic. Other animals will store and eat food to prepare for hibernation or dormancy. Football is a common fall sport in many schools and community programs, and other fall activities include apple-picking or collecting autumn leaves. Children should understand that in fall they may wear coats and sweaters.
Seasons change because as the Earth orbits, its hemispheres are titled towards or away from the Sun. It takes Earth 365 days, or one year, to go around the Sun. When the northern hemisphere is tilted toward the Sun, the southern hemisphere is tilted away from the Sun. During this time, the northern hemisphere experiences summer, while the southern hemisphere experiences winter. The areas near the Equator, the imaginary line around the middle of the Earth that separates the two hemispheres, do not tilt much toward or away from the Sun. This means their weather is more consistent throughout the year, and usually is quite warm. Tropical countries in South America such as Ecuador, Colombia, and Brazil, are good examples of areas that do not vary much in temperature during the year.
Because of the Earth’s tilt and orbit around the Sun, different constellations can be seen during different seasons. While people living in the northern hemisphere might see a particular constellation in the summer, people living in the southern hemisphere might see the same constellation in the winter.
For children who want to learn more information about the seasons, we recommend watching other movies in the Weather unit.
|© 1999-2013 BrainPOP. All rights reserved.|
Season to Season
As a long-term project, have your students observe and record the weather each week of the school term or year. Students can take the temperature outdoors and measure the amount of precipitation with a rain or snow gauge. (Simply take a waterproof ruler and place it in a clear plastic container to create a homemade gauge.) If possible, students can use a wind sock or anemometer to measure the amount of wind. You can have students record their observations in their notebooks or use a large class calendar or datebook. Different small groups could also be responsible for recording the weather conditions each week, and reporting their findings to the class. As the seasons change, have students look at the data and make inferences about the weather. How does the weather change throughout the year? What patterns do they see?
Bring in examples of travel guides and brochures to your students. Explain that many guides have descriptions of the weather and activities available each season. Have your students pick a city or country from around the world and create a travel guide or poster. You may wish to break up the students into small groups so they can research together. Students should find out about average temperatures for each season, kinds of precipitation, historical landmarks, as well as fun activities or festivals that occur during each season. If possible, hold a “travel fair” where students can share their work and make recommendations about which season is preferable to visit their chosen country. For example, students might like to recommend Mexico in the fall to see the migrating monarch butterflies arrive or Holland in the spring to view the tulips. Students will learn how people have always celebrated the seasons' annual cycle.
Seasonal Fashion Show
Hold a seasonal fashion show with your students. Students can bring in outfits that they wear during the winter, spring, summer, and fall and model them with the class. Teach students the correlation between temperature and proper attire: At 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius), students might wear an autumn jacket over their clothes. At 80 degrees (27 Celsius), they might be dressed in shorts and a shirt. You can encourage students to bring in athletic jerseys and equipment that they use during each season. Have student volunteers describe their outfits and discuss why they are appropriate for each season. (Make sure children understand dress codes and wear appropriate cover-ups for any beachwear.)
As the World Turns
Have small groups of students make models of Earth and the Sun and show how Earth orbits around the Sun. Remind students that Earth tilts at an angle as it orbits the Sun. Students can paint Styrofoam balls to model the Earth and Sun (take care to use relative sizes of balls) or use different colors of clay. Students can put in a paper clip or pencil at the poles of the Earth to show the tilt, and draw a horizontal line to show the Equator. Modeling the Earth and Sun will help students visualize how the tilt and orbit cause the seasons to change.
|© 1999-2013 BrainPOP. All rights reserved.|
Remind your child that different plants grow in different seasons. For example, apple trees bear fruit in the fall while orange trees bear fruit in the winter. Despite this, your child may notice that apples and oranges are available in the grocery store all year round. Why do they think that is? Research the fruits and vegetables to find out the season those plants bear fruit. Look for stickers and labels on the fruits and vegetables that identify the country or place of origin. How do we get apples in early summer if trees bear fruit in the fall? Explain that because of Earth’s tilt and orbit around the Sun, different parts of the world have different seasons. Explain to students that these fruits and vegetables are flown around the world. If possible, visit a local farmer’s market to explore seasonal produce together, and see if you can create a seasonal meal made from locally-grown produce.
‘Tis the Season For…
Together with your child, set goals that are appropriate for each season. For example, the goal for the summer might be to go camping for a weekend, remember to wear sunscreen, or learn how to dive. A goal for the spring might be to spot a nest of eggs or hatchlings, plant flowers, spring clean, or go see a baseball game. Find goals that you and your family can do together and are realistic and able to be fulfilled. Have your child write them down in his or her notebook or create a list to post in your home. Then as each goal is accomplished, she or he can cross it off the list.
See all Topics and Lesson Plan Ideas
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| 3.517947 |
augmented sixth chord
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dissonance and harmonic colour
...and a functionally ambiguous quality; for example, a chord that became of prime importance as a means of thickening the harmonic sound and of blurring the exact tonality of a musical passage was the augmented sixth chord. This is an altered chord, or one built by taking a chord normally occurring in its key and chromatically altering it. In this case, two of its notes are changed by a half step....
What made you want to look up "augmented sixth chord"? Please share what surprised you most...
| 3.213075 |
San AntonioArticle Free Pass
San Antonio, city, seat (1837) of Bexar county, south-central Texas, U.S. It is situated at the headwaters of the San Antonio River on the Balcones Escarpment, about 80 miles (130 km) southwest of Austin. The second most populous city in Texas, it is the focus of a metropolitan area that includes Alamo Heights, Castle Hills, Converse, Kirby, Leon Valley, Live Oak, Schertz, Terrell Hills, Universal City, and Windcrest. Inc. 1809. Area city, 412 square miles (1,067 square km). Pop. (2000) 1,144,646; San Antonio Metro Area, 1,711,703; (2010) 1,327,407; San Antonio Metro Area, 2,142,508.
Spanish explorers first visited the site, then a camp of the Payaya Indians, in 1691. San Antonio was founded May 1, 1718, when a Spanish expedition from Mexico established the Mission San Antonio de Valero. The mission, later called the Alamo (Spanish: “Cottonwood”), was one of five founded in the area and was named for St. Anthony of Padua. On May 5 a presidio (military garrison) known as San Antonio de Béxar was established nearby. The site, on the river’s west bank, was a stopping place on the trail through the Texas wilderness between missions on the Rio Grande and those in East Texas.
In 1731 settlers from the Canary Islands laid out the town of San Fernando de Béxar near the presidio, where a civilian community had been planned when the presidio and mission were established. During its early years the settlement suffered from raids by Apache and Comanche tribes. The mission was secularized in 1793 and became a military post. San Fernando de Béxar functioned as provincial capital from 1773 to 1824, but in subsequent years its political authority waned. By 1837, when it became a county seat of the Republic of Texas, it had been renamed San Antonio.
At the time of Mexican independence in 1821, San Antonio was, along with Goliad and Nacogdoches, one of three established Spanish communities in Texas. In the summer of that year, Stephen Austin arrived in the city (then seat of the Spanish government in Texas) to follow through on a permit obtained by his father for the admission of 300 U.S. families into the territory. In December 1835, at the outset of the Texas revolution, Texan forces occupied the Alamo. They remained there until March 1836, when they were massacred by Mexican troops under General Antonio López de Santa Anna following a 13-day siege. The presidio ceased to exist with the independence of Texas in April.
In 1836 San Antonio was still the foremost city of Texas, with some 2,500 inhabitants. It grew rapidly after independence, led by large numbers of German immigrants. During the last decades of the 19th century, San Antonio, as the starting point for the Chisholm Trail, became a major cattle centre, where herds were assembled for the overland drives to the railheads in Kansas.
The city quickly became the commercial hub of the Southwest. The arrival of the first railroad in 1877 brought migrants from the American South, and Mexican immigrants settled there after the start of the Mexican Revolution in 1910. San Antonio was a major military centre during World Wars I and II, a factor that continued to dominate its economy in subsequent decades. In 1968 a world’s exposition, known as HemisFair, was held there to commemorate the city’s 250th anniversary and to celebrate its cultural ties with Latin America. In 1981 Henry Cisneros was elected the city’s first Hispanic mayor since the mid-19th century; Cisneros served until 1989, and in 2001 Ed Garza was elected the city’s second modern-era Hispanic mayor.
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This is a "self delivery" pack which has been designed specifically for National Science and Engineering Week 2013. The science behind fingeprints is well known! What is not so well known is the link between fingerprints and footprints. Right Angle Events have launched a new education pack called ‘Toes for Turf’ comprising at least 4 hours of fun teaching material linked to Key Stage 1-4 Mathematics.
We have designed a fantastic scheme especially for National Science & Engineering Week called "Toes For Turf". The science behind fingerprints is well known. What is not so well known is the science behind footprints or "feet prints". This activity enables students to take, classify and "lift" both fingerprints and foot prints. As the research on footprints is meagre, this scheme will allow students to make some discoveries about the correlation or otherwise between fingerprints and feet prints.
Barbara Hepworth: The Hospital Drawings, taking place at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, (16 February - 2 June 2013) reveals the remarkable series of drawings and paintings made by Barbara Hepworth during the late 1940s, illustrating surgeons at work in operating theatres within Post-War Britain. Featuring over 30 works, including Hepworth’s sketchbook, the exhibition is the most significant presentation of this extraordinary series to date, comprising key loans from national, public and private collections.
Saturday, 16 February, 2013 - 10:00 to Sunday, 5 May, 2013 - 16:30
Scottish Fisheries Museum
An exhibition investigating the existence of sea monsters and exploring the science behind the myths. Curated by Dr Charles Paxton of the University of St Andrews, the exhibition looks at various sea monster legends and tests them scientifically to see whether such monsters could actually exist – with sometimes surprising conclusions. The exhibition comprises display panels, natural history specimens from the University and the museum’s collections, and interactive activities.
All our students will be making their own enclosed garden in a plastic bottle or a plastic container. They will be doing this to demonstrate how the water cycle works on our planet. Over the coming weeks the students will be able to make their own observations about what is happening in their enclosed gardens.
Come and take a tour around the museum to learn about five Victorians who were responsible for making great advances in science and technology in the region. The tour will focus on the lives and inventions of William Armstrong, Charles Parsons, Joseph Swan and George and Robert Stephenson.
Discover how Stanley Mills was using renewable energy over 200 years ago. Learners will find out about different types of waterwheels then work in teams to build working model waterwheels and test them out to find out how the power can be used.
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& Entertainment > The
1956 Melbourne, Australia
It was the first time that blood was drawn in the Olympic Games. During the water polo game between the USSR and Hungary, the Russian athlete Valentin Propokov cried out Fascist Hungarians and then punched the Hungarian Ervin Zantor. This action was followed by a massive brawl between the two teams. The referee stopped the game in favor of Hungary.
On the other hand a romantic story was created between the American athlete Harold Connely and the Chechoslovakian athlete Olga Figotova which ended in marriage. Later on Figotova completed in four more Olympiads as an American and in 1972 she was the standard bearer for the US team.
In these Olympics
we see for the first time the signs of boycott since several nations did
not participate, mainly for political reasons. The Suez war resulted in
the withdrawal of Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon. The Russian invasion in Hungary
caused many countries to demonstrate their opposition to this action.
These were Switzerland, Holland and Spain. 112 athletes made up the Hungarian
team but only 44 returned to Hungary after the Games. Finally the Chinese
withdrew from the Games one day before they started because of the recognition
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How can we "green" our schools to make them more environmentally sustainable? What kinds of choices should we make, and which choices will actually have an impact? How do we know that our choices are making a difference?
These are the questions that frame a unique collaboration between the Rhinebeck school district and educators from the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. Through a grant from the Rhinebeck Science Foundation, we designed and implemented the Eco-Initiative, a three-year program that builds scientific and environmental literacy through all grades by mapping the ecological footprint of elementary, middle and high schools.
Our guiding principle was to think of the school as an ecosystem, which allows students to chart the inputs and outputs of energy and materials in a familiar system. Students know they use energy, water, food and other raw materials every day, and they can see how those are transformed to wastes, such as trash and heat. But the students are less aware of where the food, water and energy come from and where their waste goes, as well as what lives in and around the grounds of their schools.
Through a series of meetings and workshops with Rhinebeck teachers, we identified key topics for each grade level or class and developed age-appropriate investigations that would help everyone understand their impact on the environment. For example, students in fifth grade and in high school biology classes are conducting schoolyard "Eco-Blitzes," where they catalog all the living things they find outside. The younger students excel at finding and identifying the insects, while the older students can work with math teachers to analyze the data.
Because the Eco-Initiative is a multiyear program, we can develop a database of organisms that live in the Rhinebeck schools' lawns, playgrounds and athletic fields, and we can start to ask questions about enhancing biodiversity and supporting ecosystem function. And as students advance through each grade, they can build on knowledge or investigations from previous years.
At the end of each year, we publish an Environmental Scorecard, which will include all the collected student data and work. See last year's scorecard by going to www.rhinebeckcsd.org. As classes and teachers begin to make changes to their daily habits at school, we hope to see a response in our data. We are looking forward to seeing the benefits of a composting program to reduce waste output, and the impact of weekly "Power Down" days started by the Environmental Clubs to reduce energy usage.
An easier path might have been to ask for the energy and water bills and call it a day, or to plant a few trees and declare our "greening" mission complete. But we wanted the students, teachers, and administrators to take ownership of the process, to figure out what their impact is, and decide what kind of sustainability initiatives made sense.
By modeling an iterative process, we are showing students how science can inform their actions and lead to lasting change. We are also helping them think through some of the really difficult questions that relate to any greening initiative, such as whether it really is more "green" to purchase compostable lunch trays made from corn if we're unable to compost them on site, or whether we should install energy-efficient lightbulbs when most of the energy in the school is being used for heating and cooling.
Engaging in this process is complex, but we believe such engagement develops a citizenry that is thoughtfully dedicated to understanding their local environment. We are thrilled that we have been able to undertake this long-term project with the Rhinebeck school district and look forward to expanding this effort to other districts.
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What Brain Tumors Are Common in Children?
Most recently updated on April 10, 2013
Most childhood tumors (more than 60%) are located in the posterior fossa (the back compartment of the brain). This area is separated from the cerebral hemispheres by a tough membrane called the tentorium. The posterior fossa includes the cerebellum, the brainstem, and the fourth ventricle. Tumors in this area include medulloblastomas (also called primitive neuroectodermal tumors, or PNETs), cerebellar astrocytomas, brainstem gliomas, and ependymomas. Although less common, other rare types of tumors have also been observed in this area, such as rhabdoid tumors and ganglioglioma; these are not discussed in detail below.
The remaining 30% to 40% of brain tumors occur within one of the two cerebral hemispheres or in the spinal cord. Tumors of the hemispheres include astrocytomas, oligodendrogliomas, craniopharyngiomas, choroid plexus carcinomas, ependymomas, supratentorial PNETs, pineoblastomas, and germ cell tumors. The most common tumors of the spinal cord are astrocytomas and ependymomas.
Names of tumors can be confusing. One large family of tumors—comprising half of all pediatric tumors—are gliomas, meaning they arise from glial cells or the supporting cells of the nervous system. Glial cells consist of astrocytes, ependymal cells, and oligodendrocytes (myelin-forming cells). Some tumors take their names from these cells. For example, an astrocyte is a type of glial cell from which astrocytomas arise, so doctors may refer to the tumor as a glioma or as an astrocytoma. One term is simply more specific than the other. Tumors may also take their names from their location, such as the brainstem glioma.
The sudden influx of medical terminology into your life can be intimidating. Health care professionals are familiar with such terminology through years of training and experience. But these terms are new to you, so ask your child’s doctor to explain them. There are many types of brain tumors and many names for them—often even more than one name for the same tumor. The descriptions that follow include only the most common types of brain tumors found in children, divided into two broad groups according to their location.
Tumors of the Posterior Fossa
Medulloblastomas: Medulloblastomas (PNETs) are the most common malignant brain tumor in children (20% of all pediatric tumors) and usually occur in children between the ages of 4 and 10 years. Medulloblastomas occur more often in boys than in girls. These tumors typically arise in the middle of the cerebellum, interfering with the flow of CSF and causing hydrocephalus. A child may have headaches, vomit, or walk unsteadily. Sometimes there is pain at the back of the head. Medulloblastomas can spread to other parts of the brain through the CSF. Treatment is usually surgical removal, followed by radiation therapy of the entire head and spinal cord and/or chemotherapy.
Cerebellar Astrocytomas: Cerebellar astrocytomas are benign glial tumors of the cerebellum. They are the second most common childhood tumor (15% to 20% of all pediatric tumors). They can occur at any time in childhood or adolescence and have the same symptoms as medulloblastomas. Treatment is surgical removal, which is the cure in most cases if the tumor is totally removed. If the tumor has grown into the brainstem, radiation therapy or chemotherapy (depending on the child’s age) is sometimes needed.
Brainstem Gliomas: Approximately 10% to 15% of childhood brain tumors are brainstem gliomas, which most commonly affect children between the ages of 5 and 10 years. Because of their location, brainstem gliomas may cause sudden dramatic symptoms, such as double vision, clumsiness, difficulty swallowing, and weakness. These are often referred to as diffuse pontine gliomas. In these cases, surgery is not usually an option. Radiation therapy, with or without chemotherapy, is the preferred option. A small percentage of slow-growing tumors that cause slowly progressive symptoms can be treated surgically or with chemotherapy.
Ependymomas: Ependymomas make up 8% to 10% of pediatric tumors and occur at any time during childhood. They are a type of glioma involving cells lining the cerebral ventricles. Seventy percent of ependymomas develop in the posterior fossa. These tumors are not always distinguishable, on scans, from medulloblastomas. They cause similar symptoms, and hydrocephalus is often involved. Surgical removal of the tumor is the usual treatment of choice, followed by radiation therapy to the site of the resection.
Tumors of the Cerebral Hemispheres
Supratentorial Gliomas: About 30% of pediatric brain tumors are gliomas that grow in regions of the cerebral hemispheres. Treatment and prognosis depend on their exact location and how quickly they are growing. Some of the names for tumors in these areas are juvenile pilocytic astrocytoma, optic glioma or hypothalamic glioma (see below), oligodendroglioma, hemispheric astrocytoma, and ganglioglioma. Many of these tumors cause seizures. Surgical removal is the treatment of choice, unless the tumor is in an area that controls speech, movement, vision, or cognition. The tumor may be partially removed, with radiation therapy and/or chemotherapy as additional therapy.
Optic Pathway Gliomas: A small percentage (5%) of pediatric tumors are gliomas involving the optic nerves and the hypothalamus. These are usually slow-growing and can be treated successfully with surgery, radiation therapy, or chemotherapy. Because visual pathways and/or the hypothalamus are affected, children with these tumors often have vision and hormone problems.
Craniopharyngiomas: Craniopharyngiomas, which are nonglial growths, account for 5% of childhood brain tumors, usually causing growth failure because of their location near the pituitary gland. They often affect vision. Treatment is often controversial because complete surgical removal may be curative but can also cause memory, vision, behavioral, and hormonal problems. Partial surgical removal plus radiation therapy is an alternative. Children treated for these tumors usually need long-term follow-up care for visual and/or hormonal problems.
Germ Cell Tumors: A small percentage of childhood brain tumors arise in the pineal or suprasellar regions, above the pituitary gland. They are most often diagnosed around the time of puberty and are more likely to affect boys than girls. These tumors often respond favorably to chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy, following surgery.
Choroid Plexus Papillomas: The choroid plexus is located within the ventricles in the brain and produces CSF. Choroid plexus papillomas (benign) and choroid plexus carcinomas (malignant) account for 1% to 3% of pediatric brain tumors. These types of tumors usually arise in infants and often cause hydrocephalus. The treatment of choice is surgery and, if the tumor is malignant, chemotherapy, and/or radiation therapy.
Supratentorial PNETs/Pineoblastomas:Supratentorial PNETs and pineoblastomas account for approximately 5% of pediatric brain tumors. Their symptoms depend on location and proximity to the CSF spaces. Treatment involves maximal surgical resection, radiation therapy to the brain and spine, and chemotherapy.
- Related Topics
- Brain Tumor Facts and Glossary
- Research News and Reports
- CBTF Publications
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The UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (IGME) was formed in 2004 to share data on child mortality, harmonize estimates within the UN system, improve methods for child mortality estimation, report on progress towards the Millennium Development Goals and enhance country capacity to produce timely and properly assessed estimates of child mortality. The IGME, led by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO), also includes the World Bank and the United Nations Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs as full members.
The IGME's independent Technical Advisory Group (TAG), comprising leading academic scholars and independent experts in demography and biostatistics, provides guidance on estimation methods, technical issues and strategies for data analysis and data quality assessment.
The IGME updates its child mortality estimates annually after reviewing newly available data and assessing data quality.
The Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (IGME) is constituted by representatives of UNICEF, WHO, The World Bank and the United Nations Population Division. The child mortality estimates presented in this database have been reviewed by IGME members. As new information becomes available, estimates in the database will be updated more frequently than those appearing in official publications and reports produced by IGME members. Differences between the estimates presented in the database and those in particular publications may also arise because of differences in reporting periods or in the availability of data during the production process of each publication and other evidence.
Levels and Trends in Child Mortality: Reports
Levels and Trends in Child Mortality Report 2012
Levels and Trends in Child Mortality Report 2012 Annex - Technical Notes
Levels and Trends in Child Mortality Report 2011 Levels and Trends in Child Mortality Report 2010
PLoS Medicine Collection: Child Mortality Estimation Methods
(Also available on http://www.ploscollections.org/childmortalityestimation.)
Child Mortality Estimation: Accelerated Progress in Reducing Global Child Mortality, 1990-2010
Kenneth Hill, Danzhen You, Mie Inoue, Mikkel Z. Oestergaard, Technical Advisory Group of the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation
Child Mortality Estimation: Methods Used to Adjust for Bias due to AIDS in Estimating Trends in Under-Five Mortality
Neff Walker, Kenneth Hill, Fengmin Zhao
Child Mortality Estimation: A Global Overview of Infant and Child Mortality Age Patterns in Light of New Empirical Data
Michel Guillot, Patrick Gerland, Français Pelletier, Ameed Saabneh
Levels and Trends of Child Mortality in 2006: Estimates developed by the Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (Working Paper)
UNICEF, WHO, The World Bank and UN Population Division
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How the Earth Was Made: Everest
Explores the tallest and biggest mountain on Earth. Even though Everest is as far removed from sea level as possible, it's sedementary layers contain fossils that were once sea creatures. This episode explores how the Himalayas were formed when India smashed into Asia propelled by plate tectonics.
For a study guide from History Classroom, click here.
60-minute runtime; two-year copyright clearance.
Dec 12 at 6:00am ET/PT
Related Tools & Resources
This program explores the natural wonder that is nearly 300 miles long and over a mile deep.
Companion website to the History series that showed how the continents were formed, canyons were carved, and why the world's animals live where they do. Includes streaming video of full episodes.
This documentary unearths new evidence that the largest desert in the world may have once been underwater and the site of ancient human settlements.
The Atacama desert is considered the driest place on Earth, this documentary uncovers how this extraordinary dry landscape was created.
This companion website to the Science Channel television series has video clips showing how things are made, from speed skates to bacon to globes.
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Without sensors, a robot is just a machine. Robots need sensors to deduce what is happening in their world and to be able to react to changing situations. This chapter introduces a variety of robotic sensors and explains their electrical use and practical application. The sensor applications presented here are not meant to be exhaustive, but merely to suggest some of the possibilities. Please do not be limited by the ideas contained in this chapter! Assembly instructions for the kit sensors are given in Section 2.6.
The basic function of an electronic sensor is to measure some feature of the world, such as light, sound, or pressure and convert that measurement into an electrical signal, usually a voltage or current. Typical sensors respond to stimuli by changing their resistance (photocells), changing their current flow (phototransistors), or changing their voltage output (the Sharp IR sensor). The electrical output of a given sensor can easily be converted into other electrical representations.
There are two basic types of sensors: analog and digital. The two are quite different in function, in application, and in how they are used with the RoboBoard. An analog sensor produces a continuously varying output value over its range of measurement. For example, a particular photocell might have a resistance of 1kin bright light and a resistance of 300k in complete darkness. Any value between these two is possible depending on the particular light level present. Digital sensors, on the other hand, have only two states, often called "on" and "off." Perhaps the simplest example of a digital sensor is the touch switch. A typical touch switch is an open circuit (infinite resistance) when it is not pressed, and a short circuit (zero resistance) when it is depressed.
Some sensors that produce a digital output are more complicated. These sensors produce pulse trains of transitions between the 0 volt state and the 5 volt state. With these types of sensors, the frequency characteristics or shape of this pulse train convey the sensor's measurement. An example of this type of sensor is the Sharp modulated infrared light detector. With this sensor, the actual element measuring light is an analog device, but signal-processing circuitry is integral to the sensor produces a digital output.
The RoboBoard contains input ports for both analog and digital sensors. While both types of ports are sensitive to voltage, each type interprets the input voltage differently and provides different data to the microprocessor. The analog ports measure the voltage and convert it to a number between 0 and 255, corresponding to input voltage levels between 0 and 5 Volts. The conversion scale is linear, so a voltage of 2.5 volts would generate an output value of 127 or 128. The digital ports, however, convert an input voltage to just two output values, Zero and One. If the voltage on a digital port is less than 2.5 Volts, the output will be 0, while if the input is greater than 2.5 Volts, the output will be 1. Thus, the conversion is very nonlinear.
The C library function analog(port-#) is used to return the value of a particular analog sensor port. For example, the IC statement
sets the value of the variable val equal to the output of port #27.
Many devices used as digital sensors are wired to be active low, meaning that they generate 0 Volts when they are active (or true). The digital inputs on the RoboBoard have a pull-up resistor that makes the voltage input equal to 5 Volts when nothing is connected. A closed or depressed touch switch connected to a digital port would change that voltage to 0 Volts by shorting the input to ground. The resulting outputs: open switch , and closed switch , are the logical opposite of what we usually want. That is, we would prefer the output of the digital port to have value 0 or False normally, and change to 1 or True only when the switch hit something (like a wall or another robot) and was depressed. The IC library function digital(port-#), used to read a True-or-False value associated with a particular sensor port, performs this logical inversion of the signal measured on a digital port. Hence, the depressed touch switch (measuring 0 Volts on the hardware) causes the digital() function to return a 1 (logic true) or logical True value.
For example, the C statement
returns a True value (the number 1) and calls the function do_it() if the value at port #2 was zero volts (indicating a depressed switch).
The standard plug configuration used to connect sensors to the RoboBoard is shown in Figure 9.1. Notice that the plug is asymmetric (made by removing one pin from a four-pin section of male header), and is therefore polarized. The plug can only be inserted in the RoboBoard port in one orientation, so once the plug is wired correctly, it cannot be inserted into a sensor port backwards. This makes the plug much easier to use correctly, but, of course, if you wire it incorrectly, you must re-wire it since you cannot turn the plug around.
Generally the sensor is connected to the plug with three wires. Two of the wires supply 5 Volt power from the RoboBoard, labeled "+5v" and "Gnd." The third wire, labeled "Signal" is the voltage output of the sensor. It is the job of the sensor to use the power and ground connections (if necessary) and return its "answer", as a voltage, on the Signal wire.
Figure 9.2 shows a diagram of circuitry associated with each sensor. This circuitry, residing on the RoboBoard, is replicated for each sensor input channel. The key thing to notice is the pull-up resistor wired from the sensor input signal lead to the 5 Volt power supply.
There are two reasons why this resistor is used. First, it provides a default value for the sensor input -- a value when no sensor is plugged in. Many ICs, such as those on the board that read and interpret the sensor voltage, do not perform well when their inputs are left unconnected. With this circuit, when nothing is plugged into the sensor port the pull-up resistor provides a 5 Volt bias voltage on the sensor input line. Thus, the default output value of an analog port is 255, while the default output value of a digital port is 0 or logic False. (Remember that the 5 Volt default input value would lead to a digital value of 1 except that this value is inverted by the digital() library function, as explained earlier.)
Second, the pull-up resistor is also used as part of the voltage divider circuit required for some of the analog sensors, as explained in Section 9.2.4. The resistors on the RoboBoard eliminate the need for an additional resistor on each of the sensors.
Most of the sensors used in the RoboBoard kit make use of the voltage divider circuit shown in Figure 9.3. In the voltage divider, the voltage measured at the common point of the two resistors,
In ELEC 201 applications, has a fixed or constant value (as shown in Figure 9.2), while is the variable resistance produced by the sensor. is the positive voltage supply, fixed at 5 volts. Thus the signal can be directly computed from , the resistive sensor. From looking at the equation, it is easy to see that if is large with respect to , the output voltage will be large, and if is small with respect to , the output voltage will be small. The minimum and maximum possible voltage values are 0 and 5 Volts, matching the RoboBoard input circuitry range.
The primary sensors in the ELEC 201 kit used to detect tactile contact are simple push-button or lever-actuated switches. Microswitch is the brand name of a variety of switch that is so widely used that the brand name has become the generic term for this type of switch, which now manufactured by many companies. A microswitch is housed in a rectangular body and has a very small button (the "switch nub") which is the external switching point. A lever arm on the switch reduces the force needed to actuate the switch (see Figure 9.4). Microswitches are an especially good type of switch to use for making touch sensors.
Often, the switch is simply mounted on a robot so that when the robot runs into something, the switch is depressed, and the microprocessor can detect that the robot has made contact with some object and take appropriate action. However, creative mechanical design of the bumper-switch mechanism is required so that contact with various objects (a wall, a robot, etc.) over a range of angles will be consistently detected. A very sensitive touch bumper can be made by connecting a mechanism as an extension of the microswitch's lever arm, as illustrated in Figure 9.5.
Touch sensors can also serve as limit switches to determine when some movable part of the robot has reached the desired position. For example, if a robot arm is driven by a motor, perhaps using a gear rack, touch switches could detect when the arm reached the limit of travel on the rack in each direction.
Figure 9.6 shows how a switch is wired to a sensor input port. When the switch is open (as it is shown in the diagram), the sensor input is connected to the 5 Volt supply by the pull-up resistor. When the switch is closed, the input is connected directly to ground, generating a 0 Volt signal (and causing current to flow through the resistor and switch).
Most push-button-style switches are "normally open," meaning that the switch contacts are in the open-circuit position when the switch has not been pressed. Microswitches often have both normally open and normally closed contacts along with a common contact. When wiring a microswitch, it is customary to use the normally open contacts. Also, this configuration is the active-low mode expected by the standard library software used to read the output values from digital sensor ports. However, you can wire the switch differently to perform some special function. In particular, several switches can be wired in series or parallel and connected to a single digital input port. For example, a touch bumper might have two switches, and the robot only needs to know if either of them (#1 OR #2) are closed. It takes less code and less time to check just one digital port and to use parallel switch wiring to implement the logic OR function in hardware.
As the name suggests, a mercury tilt switch contains a small amount of mercury inside a glass bulb. The operation of the switch is based on the unique properties of mercury: it is both a conductor and a liquid. When the switch tilts mercury flows to the bottom of the bulb closing the circuit between two metal pins.
The mercury tilt switch can be used in any application to sense inclination. For example, the tilt switch could be used to adjust the position of an arm or ramp. Most thermostats contain a mercury tilt switch mounted on a temperature sensitive spring. Changes in temperature tilt the switch, turning the furnace or air conditioner on or off.
A potentiometer (or "pot," for short) is a manually-adjustable, variable resistor. It is commonly used for volume and tone controls in stereo equipment. On the RoboBoard a 10k pot is used as a contrast dial for the LCD screen, and the RoboKnob of the board is also a potentiometer.
In robotics, a potentiometer can be used as a position sensor. A rotary potentiometer (the most common type) can be used to measure the rotation of a shaft. Gears can be used to connect the rotation of the shaft being measured to the potentiometer shaft. It is easiest to use if the shaft being measured does not need to rotate continuously (like the second hand on a clock), but rather rotates back and forth (like the pendulum on a grandfather clock). Most potentiometers rotate only about 270 degrees; some can be rotated continuously, but the values are the same on each rotation. By using a gear ratio other than 1:1, the position of a shaft that rotates more than 270 degrees can be measured.
A potentiometer connected to a shaft and a lever can also be used to determine the distance to a wall and to make the robot follow a path parallel to the wall. The lever, perhaps with a small wheel on the end, would extend from the side of the robot and contact the wall; a rubber band would provide a restoring force. If the robot moved closer to the wall, the lever would pivot, turning the shaft and the potentiometer. The control program would read the resulting voltage and adjust the robot steering to keep the voltage constant.
Potentiometers have three terminals. The outer two terminals are connected to a resistor and the resistance between them is constant (the value of the potentiometer). The center terminal is connected to a contact that slides along the resistance element as the shaft is turned, so the resistance between it and either of the other terminals varies (one increases while the other decreases).
The assembly instructions suggest wiring the potentiometer in the voltage divider configuration, with the on-board pull-up resistor in parallel with one of the potentiometer's two effective resistances (Figure 9.7). This will yield readings of greater precision (although they will not be linear) than if the pot were used as a two-terminal variable resistor. You may want to try different circuits to determine which works best for your application.
Measurement of light provides very valuable information about the environment. Often, particular features of the game board (such as goals) are marked by a strong light beacon. The board surface has contrasting lines that can be detected by the difference in the amount of light they reflect. A variety of light sensors are provided in the ELEC 201 kit:
Photocells are made from a compound called cadmium sulfide (CdS) that changes in resistance when exposed to varying degrees of light. Cadmium sulfide photocells are most sensitive to visible red light, with some sensitivity to other wavelengths.
Photocells have a relatively slow response to changes in light. The characteristic blinking of overhead fluorescent lamps, which turn on and off at the 60 Hertz line frequency, is not detected by photocells. This is in contrast to phototransistors, which have frequency responses easily reaching above 10,000 Hertz and more. Therefore, if both sensors were used to measure the same fluorescent lamp, the photocell would show the light to be always on and the photo-transistor would show the light to be blinking on and off.
Photocells are commonly used to detect the incandescent lamp that acts as a contest start indicator. They are also used to find the light beacons marking certain parts of the board, such as the goals. While they can be used to measure the reflectivity of the game board surface if coupled with a light source such as a red LED or an incandescent lamp, the IR reflectance sensors are usually better at this function. Photocells are sensitive to ambient lighting and usually need to be shielded. Certain parts of the game board might be marked with polarized light sources. An array of photocells with polarizing filters at different orientations could be used to detect the polarization angle of polarized light and locate those board features.
The photocell acts as resistor in the voltage divider configuration discussed in Section 9.2.4. The resistance of a photocell decreases with an increase in illumination (an inverse relationship). Because of the wiring of the voltage divider (the photocell is on the lower side of the voltage divider), an increase in light will correspond to a decrease in sensor voltage and a lower analog value.
The infrared reflectance sensor is a small rectangular device that contains a phototransistor (sensitive to infrared light) and an infrared emitter. The amount of light reflected from the emitter into the phototransistor yields a measurement of a surface's reflectance, for example, to determine whether the surface is black or white. The phototransistor has peak sensitivity at the wavelength of the emitter (a near-visible infrared), but is also sensitive to visible light and infrared light emitted by visible light sources. For this reason, the device should be shielded from ambient lighting as much as possible in order to obtain reliable results.
The amount of light reflected from the emitter into the phototransistor yields a measurement of a surface's reflectance (when other factors, such as the distance from the sensor to the surface, are held constant). The reflectance sensor can also be used to measure distance, provided that the surface reflectance is constant. A reflectance sensor can be used to detect features drawn on a surface or segments on a wheel used to encode rotations of a shaft. It is important to remember that the reflectivity measurement indicates the surface's reflectivity at a particular wavelength of light (the near-visible infrared). A surface's properties with respect to visible light may or may not be indicators of infrared light reflectance. In general, though, surfaces that absorb visible light (making them appear dark to the eye) will absorb infrared light as well.
The sensor part (the phototransistor) can be used alone as a light sensor, for example to detect the starting light, and it is usually much more sensitive than the photocell.
The light falling on a phototransistor creates charge carriers in the base region of a transistor, effectively providing base current. The intensity of the light determines the effective base drive and thus the conductivity of the transistor. Greater amounts of light cause greater currents to flow through the collector-emitter leads. Because a transistor is an active element having current gain, the phototransistor is more sensitive than a simple photoresistor. However, the increased sensitivity comes at the price of reduced dynamic range. Dynamic range is the difference between the lowest and highest levels that can be measured. The RoboBoard analog sensor inputs have a range of 0-5 Volts, and relatively small variations in light can cause the phototransistor output to change through this range. The exact range depends on the circuit used.
As shown in Figure 9.8, the phototransistor is wired in a configuration similar to the voltage divider. The variable current traveling through the resistor causes a voltage drop in the pull-up resistor. This voltage is measured as the output of the device.
The light emitting element (an LED) uses a resistor to limit the current that can flow through the device to the proper value of about 10 milliamps. Normally the emitter is always on, but it could be wired to one of the LED output ports if you wanted to control it separately. In this way you could use the same sensor to detect the starting light (using the phototransistor with the emitter off) and then to follow a line on the board (normal operation with the emitter on).
The infrared slotted optical switch is similar to the infrared reflectance sensor except that the emitter is pointed directly at the phototransistor across a small gap. As the name implies, the slotted optical switch is a digital sensor, designed to provide only two output states. The output of the switch changes if something opaque enters the gap and blocks the light path. The slotted optical switch is commonly used to build shaft encoders, which count the revolution of a shaft. A gear or other type of wheel with with holes or slots is placed in the gap between the emitter and detector. The light pulses created by the turning wheel can be detected and counted with special software to yield rotation or distance data. This detector also might be used to detect when an arm or other part of the robot has reached a particular position by attaching a piece of cardboard to the arm so that it entered the gap at the desired arm position.
The slotted optical switch operates in the same fashion as the infrared reflectance sensor, with the exception that a different value of pull-up resistor must be added externally for the particular model of optical switch we use.
The modulated infrared light detector is a device that combines an infrared phototransistor with specialized signal processing circuitry to detect only light that is pulsing at a particular rate. The ELEC 201 kit includes the Sharp GP1U52 sensor, which detects the presence of infrared light modulated (pulsed) at 40,000 Hz. Normal room light, which is not modulated, does not effect the sensor, a big advantage. This type of sensor is used for the remote control function on televisions, VCRs, etc. In ELEC 201 this sensor is used to detect the specially modulated infrared light emitted by the beacon on the opponent robot. The software can distinguish different pulse patterns in order to distinguish between the beacons on the two robots. (In a television remote, different pulse patterns would correspond to different functions, such a changing the channel up or down.)
The principles of operation and use are explained further in Section 5.8, which also discusses the circuit used to create the modulated infrared light for the beacon. An explanation of the software interface to the Sharp sensors is given in Section 10.11.2.
The ELEC 201 kit contains both an analog sensor that provides information about the strength of the magnetic field and a digital sensor, a magnetic switch.
A device called a Hall effect sensor can be used to detect the presence and strength of magnetic fields. The Hall effect sensors have an output voltage even when no magnetic field is present, and the output changes when a magnetic field is present, the direction of change depending on the polarity of the field.
The digital magnetic sensors are simple switches that are open or closed. Internally the switches have an arm made of magnetic material that is attracted to a magnet and moves to short out the switch contacts. These switches are commonly used as door and window position sensors in home security systems. The switch will close when it comes within 1'' of its companion magnet.
Either sensor can be used to detect magnets or magnetic strips that may be present on the ELEC 201 game board table. With the magnets typically used on the game board, the Hall effect sensor output voltage changes only a small amount when a field is present. The no-field voltage varies between sensors, but it is very stable for a particular sensor, so the small changes can be detected reliably to determine the presence of a magnet. Hall effect sensors can be used to make magnetic shaft encoders, by mounting a small piece of magnet on a wheel that rotates past the sensor element. Hall effect sensors can also be used to build a proximity sensor or bounce-free switch, which detects a magnet mounted on a moving component when it is near the sensor element.
Magnetic switches are used in much the same way as a touch switch, except the switch closes when it is near a magnetic, instead of when it contacts something. The digital nature of the switch makes it easier to use than the Hall effect sensors, but it may be less sensitive. You should try both.
They can also be used to make an inclination sensor by dangling a magnet above the sensor.
The Hall effect sensor included in the ELEC 201 kit is a digital device that operates from a 5 volts power supply. It uses about 6 mA of current for standard operation. It can sink 250 mA of current into its output, creating a logic low. The sensor cannot drive a logic high and therefore requires a pullup resistor for proper operation.
The motor output drivers of the ELEC 201 RoboBoard contains circuitry that produces an output voltage related to the amount of current being used by a motor. Since the motor current corresponds to the load on the motor, this signal can be used to determine if the motor is stalled and the robot is stuck. The voltage signal depends on a number of factors, including battery voltage, and must be calibrated for each application. This application is explained further in Section 5.4.1.
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Cascading Style Sheets and themes development
Cascading Style Sheets, commonly referred to as CSS, is commonly used to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML, but can be used together with any kind of XML document. It is a style sheet language used to describe the look and formatting (presentation semantics) of a document written in a markup language.
The primary use of CSS is to separate document content from document presentation, such as layout, fonts and colors. This allows for tableless web design, gives the web designer more flexibility and control, and makes it possible for multiple pages to share the same formatting.
The CSS specifications are maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
CSS History – the beginning
Before CSS was developed, the presentational attributes of HTML documents were almost always contained within the HTML markup. The web designer had to explicitly describe all backgrounds, font colors, borders, element alignments, etcetera. The aim of CSS was to allow web designers to move most of this information to a separate style sheet.
Style sheets have been round since the early days of SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), i.e. since the 1970s. As HTML became more and more widely used, HTML came to encompass a wide variety of stylistic possibilities to meet the demands of increasingly complex web page designs. The designers' gained more and more control, but in the process, HTML became more and more complicated to write and maintain.
Robert Cailliau, the Belgian informatics engineer who together with Tim Berners-Lee developed the World Wide Web, wanted to find a way to separate the structure from the presentation. He also wanted to give the user the option of choosing between three different kinds of style sheets: one for screen presentation, one suitable for printing and one for the editor.
Eventually, nine different style sheet languages was presented to the World Wide Web Consortium. Two of them was chosen: Cascading HTML Style Sheets (CHSS) and Stream-based Style Sheet Proposal (SSP). CHSS had been suggested by Norweigan web pioneer Håkon Wium Lie, while SSP was the brainchild of Dutch computer scientist Ber Bos. Lie teamed up with computer scientists Yves Lafon and Dave Raggett to make Raggett's Arena browser support CSS, while Lie and Bos worked together to turn CHSS into the CSS standard. (The letter H was removed since their style sheets was to be applied to more than just HTML).
CSS History – CSS level 1 and level 2 Recommendations
In 1994, CSS was presented at the Mosaic and the Web conferenece in Chicago. Unlike existing style language such as DSSSL and FOSI, CSS made it possible to use multiple style sheets for the same document and allow the design to be controlled by both designer and user.
In December 1996, CSS became official through the publishing of the CSS level 1 Recommendation. In May 1998, the World Wide Web Consortium published the CSS level 2 Recommendation. The CSS level 3 Recommendation has not yet been published, even though it has been in the works since 1998.
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Ohio snakes slither into summer sun
Photo courtesy of Metro Parks
The Eastern garter snake is one of three garter snakes in the state. The cold-blooded reptile can be found all around central Ohio, even in backyard gardens. It is one of five snakes that can be found in the area.
The weather is warming up and humans are not the only ones basking in the sun. The snakes have slithered out too.
The cold-blooded reptile has always been feared or revered. Now is the time of year when encounters with them are common but is there really a reason to fear them?
Peg Hanley, spokeswoman for Metro Parks, said none of the snakes in this part of the state are poisonous.
“Many people think all snakes are poisonous,” said Hanley. “They just don’t know how great they really are.”
Hanley said another myth about snakes is that they are slimy and scaly.
“They are actually completely dry,” she remarked.
Contrary to what movie makers will have you believe, snakes will not chase you. In fact, Hanley said they will do their best to avoid you. They can feel the vibrations from an approaching animal and will likely hide until the perceived threat is gone.
“If you don’t bug them, they won’t bug you,” said Hanley. “Not all snakes have fangs either.”
For some snakes, it’s mating season. For others, they just want to warm up in the sun. Hanley said soaking up the rays helps digestion in the reptile.
The following are facts on the five snakes people most commonly encounter in central Ohio.
Northern water snake
According to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), this is one of the most widely distributed and abundant snakes in Ohio. They can live in just about any permanent body of water.
The Northern water snake is usually 24 to 42 inches in size and has extreme variation in color. It is sometimes confused with the poisonous water moccasin or the cottonmouth.
This species will try to steer clear of humans but can be aggressive if aggravated. It will bite and its bite can be painful and leave deep lacerations.
Eastern garter snake
This snake is one of three garters in the state but is the most common. It is recognized by its color pattern of three yellow stripes on a black or brown body.
It is usually about four inches long and can be found in nearly every habitat, including backyard gardens. The garter gets its name from its resemblance to stripes on old fashioned sock garters.
If the snake bites, some people experience swelling or a rash.
Black rat snake
The black rat is Ohio’s largest snake, ranging between 47 to 72 inches in length. It is the most commonly killed snake due to human fear. It is all black, except for a small light patch under its chin.
This kind of snake prefers the forest. It is an accomplished climber and can be found high in trees or in woodpecker holes.
Hanley said the black rat is sometimes mistaken for a rattlesnake because it can vibrate its tail.
“Normally, it is a pretty shy creature,” said Hanley. “It even plays possum when threatened.”
If cornered or captured, the snake will likely vibrate its tail and strike repeatedly. It can also coil around something tightly and discharge a foul-smelling substance.
According to the ODNR, the black rat snake is one of the state’s most beneficial reptiles. It plays an essential role in controlling destructive rodents.
The queen snake sounds like a big one but it actually measures just 15 to 24 inches in length.
This snake is normally encountered when flat stones or boards are overturned. It is found along waterways and feeds on soft-shelled crayfish instead of rodents.
The queen snake is dark brown with a yellow stripe on the lower side of its body. The belly is yellow with brown stripes.
The queen snake has such small teeth, it barely pierces the skin if it bites.
Black racer snake
The black racer is the state snake of Ohio. It is normally 36 to 60 inches long and can reach speeds of up to 10 miles per hour.
Hanley said this snake is very shiny and prevalent in the area.
“The racer is great to Ohio farmers,” she noted because of its speedy hunting of rodents.
The black racer snake becomes nervous around humans and can be aggressive if captured. With small but numerous teeth, its bite can be painful.
Snakes around you
“Snakes are good at what they do,” said Hanley, “and that’s finding and hunting rodents.”
The reptiles also have natural predators including hawks, eagles and humans.
Hanley said the snake has always had a myth imprinted on it but said the snakes in central Ohio are not dangerous to humans.
To learn more about snakes, attend Battelle Darby Creek’s “Cold Blooded Critters” event on May 25 from 1 to 4 p.m. Interested persons are asked to meet at Indian Ridge Lodge.
For more information about reptiles or additional events, call Metro Parks at 895-6365 or log onto metroparks.net.
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This paper, submitted to Astronomy Education Review, describes a series of activities in which students investigate and use the models of planetary motion introduced by the Hellenistic astronomer Claudius Ptolemy in the 2nd Century, by the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus in the mid-16th Century, and by the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe in the late16th Century. The activities involve the use of open source software to help students discover important observational facts, learn the necessary vocabulary, understand the fundamental properties of different theoretical models, and relate the theoretical models to observational data. Once they understand the observations and models, students complete a series of projects in which they observe a fictitious solar system with four planets orbiting in circles around a central star and construct both Ptolemaic and Copernican models for that system.
Activities on Using Stellarium to Observe Solar and Planetary Motions
This zip archive contains two activity handouts that guide students through using open source planetarium software (Stellarium, available at… more... download 211kb .zip
Published: January 4, 2013
Modeling the History of Astronomy Poster
A poster describing the same material, presented at the Winter Meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers, January 2013, New Orleans, LA. download 370kb .pdf
Published: January 11, 2013
%A Todd Timberlake %T Modeling the History of Astronomy: Ptolemy, Copernicus and Tycho %D January 10, 2013 %U http://www.compadre.org/Repository/document/ServeFile.cfm?ID=12579&DocID=3173 %O application/pdf
%0 Report %A Timberlake, Todd %D January 10, 2013 %T Modeling the History of Astronomy: Ptolemy, Copernicus and Tycho %8 January 10, 2013 %U http://www.compadre.org/Repository/document/ServeFile.cfm?ID=12579&DocID=3173
Disclaimer: ComPADRE offers citation styles as a guide only. We cannot offer interpretations about citations as this is an automated procedure. Please refer to the style manuals in the Citation Source Information area for clarifications.
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More Clues About Why Chimps and Humans Are Genetically Different
Contact: Jason Maderer
Aug 23, 2012 | Atlanta, GA
Ninety-six percent of a chimpanzee’s genome is the same as a human’s. It’s the other four percent, and the vast differences, that pique the interest of Georgia Tech’s Soojin Yi. For instance, why do humans have a high risk of cancer, even though chimps rarely develop the disease?
In research published in September’s American Journal of Human Genetics, Yi looked at brain samples of each species. She found that differences in certain DNA modifications, called methylation, may contribute to phenotypic changes. The results also hint that DNA methylation plays an important role for some disease-related phenotypes in humans, including cancer and autism.
“Our study indicates that certain human diseases may have evolutionary epigenetic origins,” says Yi, a faculty member in the School of Biology. “Such findings, in the long term, may help to develop better therapeutic targets or means for some human diseases. “
DNA methylation modifies gene expression but doesn’t change a cell’s genetic information. To understand how it differs between the two species, Yi and her research team generated genome-wide methylation maps of the prefrontal cortex of multiple humans and chimps. They found hundreds of genes that exhibit significantly lower levels of methylation in the human brain than in the chimpanzee brain. Most of them were promoters involved with protein binding and cellular metabolic processes.
“This list of genes includes disproportionately high numbers of those related to diseases,” said Yi. “They are linked to autism, neural-tube defects and alcohol and other chemical dependencies. This suggests that methylation differences between the species might have significant functional consequences. They also might be linked to the evolution of our vulnerability to certain diseases, including cancer.”
Yi, graduate student Jia Zeng and postdoctoral researcher Brendan Hunt worked with a team of researchers from Emory University and UCLA. The Yerkes National Primate Research Center provided the animal samples used in the study. It was also funded by the Georgia Tech Fund for Innovation in Research and Education (GT-FIRE) and National Science Foundation grants (MCB-0950896 and BCS-0751481). The content is solely the responsibility of the principal investigators and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NSF.
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When agricultural researchers in the Southwest look into the future, one issue stays near the top of the list as a major priority. No matter what happens in any other ag-related area, all roads lead back to this one fact.
Without this one resource, farming doesn’t exist. And nowhere has this become a bigger issue than in the Southwest part of the Cotton Belt where droughts have become a way of life through the years.
In Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, this has always been a major topic of discussion dating back to the Dust Bowl days of the 1920s and 1930s. Nobody is seriously comparing today’s environment to what moviegoers saw in that famous 1940 movie, “Grapes of Wrath,” which starred Henry Fonda.
However, when drought and new water restrictions become part of the conversation, it’s only natural for producers to become concerned.
Even though water issues can be found in all parts of the Cotton Belt, they seem to receive additional attention in the Southwest where more than half of the country’s cotton is produced in Texas.
It is not surprising that New Mexico State University and the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (SARE) will co-host a conference in Santa Fe, N.M., on Aug. 7 to address this issue.
Serious Impact Of Drought
The drought of 2011 had an impact on all of the Southwest, but particularly in Texas where cotton yields were reduced by about 50 percent to 3.5 million bales.
Since last summer, several national stories have called attention to the growing water crisis in the region. One report published by the National Academy of Science says the shortage of water in California and Texas could eventually have dire consequences because of a continued reliance on irrigated agriculture.
Stephanie Walker of the New Mexico State University Extension Plant Sciences Department is helping coordinate the conference, which will have attendees from 13 states and several Pacific Island countries. While the theme of the conference will center on water and the future of agriculture in the Southwest, Walker expects a healthy exchange of ideas beneficial to all parties.
“I won’t hold my breath that we will all get on the same page on this issue,” she says. “But we’ll know what we have to do.
“Not only do we have serious water concerns here in the Southwest, but on island nations they have similar water issues. Water resources are very important throughout the world.”
Some of the topics at the conference include: Balancing ag and urban water use, rainwater harvesting, low-water-use crops, low-tech irrigation strategies and renewable-energy technology for water pumping.
Although the water battle between rural and urban interests has been going on for many years, Walker is convinced that common ground must be achieved.
“Long-term water conservation and use efficiency are in everyone’s best interests,” she says. “Whether you are involved in the agricultural industry or living in a city, everyone needs to come together on this for the long-term benefit of our society.”
Those are optimistic words to describe an issue that pits expanding urban population needs against farming interests. Both sides need reliable water sources.
Finding agreement can be one of the most challenging exercises imaginable. An outsider only has to look at the San Joaquin Valley of California to see how volatile emotions can become. In the SJV, water issues are often influenced by factors such as winter snowpack, water allocations, politics and even the preservation of a small species of fish called the delta smelt.
Proactive Attitudes Persist
Nobody in the Southwest – and particularly Texas – is being complacent.
Rick Kellison, project director for the Texas Alliance for Water Conservation (TAWC), has been involved in water issues since 2005, and he is hopeful that producers across the state are more informed on how to implement water conservation measures.
“My first thought is that producers here and elsewhere in the United States are the best conservationists and environmentalists anywhere,” he says. “They have to be that way because that’s their mechanism for living on the farm.”
Kellison says it’s a necessity that a farmer know what the water and nutrient needs are for the crop.
“Producers do a great job in this regard and have always done a great job,” he says. “Having said that, I think we are at a pivotal point in this discussion because we’ve been in the middle of a serious drought, and there has definitely been a decrease in the finite water source.”
It’s interesting to see how this issue has changed in just two years. For example, in the June 2010 issue of Cotton Farming, many Texas ag officials discussed how the Ogallala Aquifer’s water levels must be protected by implementing efficient water-use policies on the farm.
As it turns out, there were no major drought problems in 2010, and a recordbreaking cotton crop was produced in Texas. Kellison says nobody felt any urgency to deal with water conservation. Not surprisingly, the mood changed during and after the drought-plagued 2011 crop season.
“I see a greater awareness about things we can do better in water conservation,” he says. “And I’m not just talking about irrigation application. I’m talking about the entire thought process in areas such as tillage practices and anything that can seriously affect water use.”
Kellison is particularly excited about new broad-based irrigation technology that will impact genetics, tillage, irrigation methods and timing. He also foresees other scientific breakthroughs that can help determine the rooting depth of the crop, fertility zones and identify where moisture depletion has occurred in a field.
Technology will once again help solve an important problem that confronts agriculture.
Contact Tommy Horton at (901) 767-4020 or [email protected].
Last Year’s Drought Was A Wakeup Call For Ag
The recordbreaking drought in Texas in 2011 is remembered in different ways.
For the farmer, it was a matter of survival. For Jim Bordovsky, Texas AgriLife research scientist and engineer, it presented an opportunity for a “teaching moment.”
He isn’t suggesting that producers haven’t always been aware of water efficiency on their farms. But, he’s confident that those same farmers now realize how important even small amounts of early season rain are for irrigated production.
Bordovsky is also seeing more situations where producers are considering different irrigation systems such as LEPA and subsurface drip and trying not to spread water too thinly by going to half-circle irrigation.
“I think everyone is being more careful on when to apply water,” he says. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t seen any continuous irrigation. That in itself tells me that producers are quite concerned.”
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Osteoporosis is a disease, more common in women, that causes bones to become fragile and more susceptible to breaking.
The disease can have serious effects on women's health and quality of life. Some women - most commonly those who don't have good access to health care - experience fractures that could have been prevented if their osteoporosis had been treated. At the same time, not every woman who is warned about bone thinning needs to be worried.
What is Osteoporosis?
Osteoporosis literally means porous bone. Throughout life, natural process breaks down bones and builds them back up again at the microscopic level. Pregnant women release bone to transfer needed minerals to the developing fetus and then build their own bone strength up again after giving birth.
After age 35-40 all adults begin to lose bone as the breaking down process overwhelms the building process. For a few years around the time of menopause, women lose bone more quickly, possibly because they no longer need extra stores of minerals to support a developing fetus.
Osteoporosis occurs when the natural process of aging goes too far and bones become weak and fragile. Osteoporosis has several causes - age alone can be a cause of osteoporosis, especially in people who didn't build up their bones to their fullest potential during childhood and young adulthood. Removing women's ovaries increases their risk of getting osteoporosis. People who have osteoporosis are at greater risk for fracturing their bones, especially in the hip, vertebrae ( spine) and wrist. Hip fractures lead to hospitalization, can take a long time to heal, and many women never fully recover from them.
The most common screening tool is a DEXA X-ray scan, which measures bone mineral density in the hip or spine. DEXA results compare a woman's bone density to that of a healthy young adult (almost guaranteeing the scan will reveal bone loss, since everyone loses bone with age). If a woman's bone density is significantly lower than a young adult's, she is diagnosed with osteoporosis.
Women diagnosed with osteoporosis are usually told they need to take prescription medication to prevent further bone loss and reduce the risk of fractures. The most common drugs are:
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved estrogen and progestin treatment to prevent osteoporosis -- but not to treat it. Both estrogen alone and combinations of estrogen and progestin reduce women's risk of osteoporosis and bone fracture.
Calcitonin has been shown to prevent fractures of the spine but not of the hip and wrist. It is approved to treat women with osteoporosis, but its approval was based on weaker evidence than more recently approved drugs, and its use is not generally recommended.
The FDA has approved six bisphosphonates to prevent bone loss and fractures in post-menopausal women: alendronate (Fosamax), etidronate (Didronel), ibandronate (Boniva), risedronate (Actonel), tiludronate (Skelid), and zoleldronic acid (Reclast, Zometra). Some are taken daily, others are formulated for weekly or monthly use. Bisphosphonates seem to have fewer risks than hormones, at least in the first five years.
Selective Estrogen Receptor Modulators:
The FDA has approved raloxifene (Evista) to prevent and treat osteoporosis. The drug has been tested more extensively than biophosphonates and although it reduces the risk of spine fractures, it doesn't seem to reduce hip fracture risk.
Alternatives to drugs exist for making and keeping bones strong. The National Institutes of Health's Consensus Statement on Osteoporosis reviewed the research on osteoporosis prevention and treatment and found strong scientific evidence that calcium and Vitamin D intake are crucial to develop and preserve strong bones. Regular exercise (especially resistance and high-impact activities) contributes to the development of bone mass. Other promising interventions focus on preventing fractures: balance training reduces the risk of falling, which is often responsible for broken bones in older people.
In addition to thinking carefully about their own risk of experiencing a serious fracture, women need to consider safety issues when deciding whether to take osteoporosis drugs.
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The transmission of TV programs into the home and office via coaxial cable. The first cable TV dates back to the late 1940s, when antennas were located at the highest point in a community to deliver TV to areas that had difficulty receiving over-the-air broadcasts (see CATV).|
From TV to Internet to Telephony
Since the cable companies were already wired into millions of homes, they had great success selling Internet access to its subscribers, starting in the late 1990s. Unlike the telephone company's DSL service, Internet access via the cable infrastructure does not have distance limitations. Cable TV companies later added telephone service to offer the "triple play" (data, voice and video service). See cable Internet.
Many Analog and Digital Channels
Cable TV typically transmits 125 6 MHz channels using frequency division multiplexing (FDM) to its subscribers. Each channel can hold one analog TV program, three high-definition (HD) digital programs or 10 standard definition (SD) digital programs. The digital channels provide 40 Mbps of digital bandwidth, 38 of which is the actual payload.
The channels are also used for video-on-demand, Internet access and voice over IP (VoIP) telephone service. Upstream channels use from 0 to 50 MHz, while downstream channels use 50 MHz to 750 MHz. See FDM, CMTS and digital TV transition.
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Hydraulic head distribution in the Plover aquifer system, Vulcan sub-basin
Petroleum hydrogeology reveals oil leakage from traps
CSIRO’s team of hydrogeologists have developed techniques to help solve problems in Australia’s oil industry and identify safe storage options to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
30 November 2009 | Updated 14 October 2011
In the field of hydrogeology, most scientists work on shallow water resources, groundwater contamination and soil salinity problems.
CSIRO has developed a team of hydrogeologists that have adapted special techniques for understanding hydrodynamic processes of the deep subsurface where oil and gas is generated and trapped and where CO2 can be safely stored for thousands of years.
This unique application of expertise helps geologists and engineers to understand why some hydrocarbon traps have leaked their oil while others have retained oil fields for millions of years.
When an oil company starts producing oil and gas from a deep reservoir, only a portion of the oil can be extracted, leaving the remainder in the pore space of the rocks.
CSIRO petroleum hydrogeologists study new ways that we can improve the percentage of oil that can be extracted from a reservoir.
CSIRO uses this knowledge to provide services to the oil and gas industry to help understand:
CSIRO has a team of hydrogeologists who have developed enabling technologies for understanding hydrodynamic processes of the deep subsurface.
oil migration and trapping
compartmentalisation of hydrocarbon deposits on production
the effects of aquifer pressure depletion
to evaluate geological sequestration of CO2.
Improvement in oil recovery could greatly reduce the need to find new hydrocarbon fields.
By understanding geological conditions that have retained hydrocarbons for millions of years we can then identify deep geological structures that are capable to safely store CO2 for long periods of time.
Deep underground storage of CO2 in abandoned oil fields not only provides an alternative to atmospheric emission, but also provides and opportunity to increase oil production.
Learn more about CSIRO's work in Energy from Oil & Gas.
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A visual arts lesson combined with language arts, where the students will create a visual poem using crayons. Students are asked to make a connection to an important aspect or event their lives.
Have you ever wondered why children are so afraid to express themselves through poetry? Possibly it is because they think a poem has to rhyme, have a certain pattern, or look a certain way. This lesson will allow children to use their imagination to create a visual poem. They will be encouraged to think independently. Through this exposure to writing poems and making visual representations of their poems, the children will learn how to respond emotionally and verbally to different visual poems. In addition to this, the students will develop an appreciation for poetry and other forms of expression.
Creative Expression: Each student will create a visual poem, using colored crayons, which will illustrate an important aspect of his or her life.
Aesthetic Valuing: The students will share their visual poems with the class, which will help them to appreciate the variations in poetry and recognize the different styles of visual poetry.
1. Direct instruction- teacher will explain different types of visual poems and give examples.
2. Guided discovery- students will create their own unique visual poem.
3. Group process- student will share their poems with a partner.
Introduction- First, the teacher will read a poem to the students, and ask them if they liked the poem. What things did you like/dislike? Then, the teacher will share 3-4 different examples of visual poems (done by 3rd graders) with the kids, which will show them a couple different styles. These examples will be shown on transparencies.
1. As a beginning activity to expose children to poetry, the teacher will provide the students with a worksheet. The worksheet will have 3 sentences on it, each one starting with "I wish...". The students will be asked to respond with 3 things they wish for. Then, the students will be told that they just created a poem.
2. The teacher will engage the students in a brainstorming activity (using a large sheet of white butcher paper) where they discuss some of their favorite things from favorite colors, to hobbies, to important people, etc. 3. The teacher will instruct the students to create a visual poem, which illustrates something which is very important to them.
4. A piece of plain white paper will be passed out, along with a box of crayons. Watercolors will be available at the art table if children elect to use them.
5. Soft instrumental music will be played in the background, as the students create their visual poems.
6. Students will be paired up with a partner to share their visual poem. They will be instructed to tell the person at least 1 thing they liked about the visual poem.
Have the students do a poetry reading (on a volunteer basis), which gives them the opportunity to share their creations in front of an audience. Collect the visual poems and put them together into a book. Here is an example title of a book, Ms. Hiltel's 3rd grade classes' wonderful creations!
Teacher collects the visual poems, and checks for visual evidence of completion of the assignment including use of color and connection to important event or aspect of students' lives. After poems are shared in partners, each student critiques peer's visual poem, by stating one aspect which is particularly liked. Teacher also listens to students' comments during sharing.
1. overhead projector
2. copies of 3-4 poems on transparencies
3. 1 poem to read aloud
4. 1 box of crayons (per student)
5. watercolors, paintbrushes, plastic cups, paper towels (for optional use)
6. white paper (1 sheet per student)
7. large piece of white butcher paper
8. soft instrumental music
Assigned students will collect crayons and return them to the proper place. Students who used the watercolors at the art table will be responsible for cleaning up that area and putting away the watercolor boxes.
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Schizophrenia is a mental illness characterized by disturbances in mood, behavior and thinking (psychosis). The thinking disturbance shows up as a distortion of reality, sometimes with delusions and hallucinations, and fragmented thinking that results in disturbances of speech. The mood disturbance includes ambivalence and inappropriate or constricted display of emotions. The behavior disturbance may show up as apathetic withdrawal or bizarre activity. Schizophrenia is NOT the same thing as ‘split or multiple personalities’ which is Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).
TYPES OF SCHIZOPHRENIA
DISORGANIZED Characterized by wild or silly behavior or mannerisms, inappropriate display of emotions, frequent hypochondriacal complaints and delusions and hallucinations that are transient and unorganized.
CATATONIC Typically a state of stupor, usually characterized by muscular rigidity, resistance to movement or opposite behavior to what is being asked. Occasionally catatonic excitement occurs which is excited, uncontrollable motor activity.
PARANOID Characterized by unwarranted suspicion and thinking that others have evil motives, and/or an exaggerated sense of self-importance (delusions of grandeur).
UNDIFFERENTIATED Psychotic symptoms are prominent but do not fall into any other subtype.
RESIDUAL No longer psychotic but still shows some symptoms of the disorder.
Typically, schizophrenia is treated with antipsychotic medications. When the older medications such as Mellaril, Prolizin, Trilafon and Thorazine are used for an extended period of time a sometimes-permanent condition called tardive dyskinesia can result. Symptoms may include involuntary movements of face, mouth, tongue or limbs. Stopping the medication may cause the symptoms to disappear in some but not all. Medications can treat the side effects but not the tardive dyskinesia.
There is a new generation of antipsychotic medications which have very little risk of tardive dyskinesia including Seroquel, Zyprexa, Risperdal and Clozaril.
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Cows get tracking collars as scientists try to work out how they make friends
By Mark Prigg
How cows make friends is to be investigated in a bizarre three-year study.
Scientists want to understand more about 'social networking' within dairy herds.
The aim is to help farmers improve the health and welfare of their cows, thereby increasing milk yields.
Social animals: Researchers hope to find out how cows interact with each other and form social groups using tracking collars
For the first stage of the research, high-tech 'proximity collar's' have been fitted to cows on a farm in Cullompton, Devon.
The collars use radio signals to determine how close one cow is to another, allowing scientists to map the animals’ social interactions.
Study leader Dr Darren Croft, from the University of Exeter’s Animal Behaviour Research Group, said: 'Emerging evidence on wild animal populations supports the idea that the group structure and relationships between the animals affect their health and wellbeing.
'Cows are social animals that form important group structures, and the addition or removal of animals from an established group can significantly alter its dynamics.
'We want to find out just how important these group structures are.
'Dairy farmers take a range of factors into account when deciding how to structure groups of cows.
'We hope that the results of our study may contribute towards a blueprint for herd management that will help farmers continue to improve the health and welfare of their cows.'
Researcher Natasha Boyland, another member of the Exeter team, said: 'We will look at the nature of the interactions to see just how relationships are formed and maintained within the herd.
Animals in the study will wear a special collar to track their movements around fields
'In combination with the proximity data findings and other information about the animals, such as their health status, we hope to gather evidence that can be translated into practical advice for farmers when it comes to herd management.'
The study is funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and DairyCo, the levy-funded organisation that works on behalf of British dairy farmers.
Researchers know cows are extremely social animals, and now hope to find out how they make friends and how their social groups operate in a bid to improve farming techniques
Amanda Ball, head of communications at DairyCo, said: 'This study could help dairy farmers understand more about their cows, improve their health and welfare and may even contribute towards helping to secure the future supply of milk to consumers.
'The dairy industry is worth £8 billion a year to the UK economy and it is important to support research that can help farmers continue to provide consumers with top quality dairy products whilst putting the health and welfare of their cows first.'
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....that indigo is one of the oldest dye stuffs in the world? For millennia this dye provided the only color fast and light fast clear blue that there was for fabrics. It was very valuable for trade and recipes were often closely guarded secrets. It has been used all over the world to make everything from intricate Japanese kimonos to Levi Jeans for the original 49ers.
The thing that is special about indigo is that in its normal state the dye molecules are insoluble in water, they will just sink to the bottom of the vat unless a chemical reducing agent is added. Reducing agents steal a hydrogen atom from the dye molecule, this allows it to try and form lose bonds with the hydrogen in the water so it dissolves and creates the vat. There are all kinds of reducing agents that can be used, from yeast or live bacteria in a fermentation vat to dangerous chemicals like Lye (Sodium Hydroxide). We have a somewhat safer and effective recipe using our Dye House Color remover (Thiorea Dioxide) and Soda Ash. In Europe, one of the oldest reducing agents, and the cheapest, was stale urine. Oral dye history is full of stories about European dye houses that would put out pots for people to donate their urine and dye houses that would be built next to taverns, which provided a steady supply. It is purported that due to the smell of the dye houses they where often restricted to the outskirts of town.
This amazing dyestuff naturally occurs in indigo containing plants of the tropical genus Indigofera, which grows in many countries, as well as a less concentrated form in a plant called Woad, which is native to temperate Europe. The most well known, indigofera tinctoria, was native to India, which may have been the earliest major player in the lucrative indigo trade. The name of the compound that makes up the dye is called indican. It is extracted from the plants buy crushing the leaves and soaking them until they ferment and release the indican, which was precipitated and dried in cakes. The cakes were than ground to a powder by the user.
Designs on indigo cloth are achieved with various tying techniques, such as traditional Shibori and tie-dye techniques. Other types of resist such as rice paste and wax are also used to protect areas of the fabric to create intricate patterns. Indigo was also be used for printing and painting with use of different chemicals like Arsenic trisulfide, or iron sulfate and thickeners.
When indigo is in solution it is a yellow green color but often the top layer of the vat is blue because it is exposed to the air. Indigo is sometimes called a magic dye because of the way the fabric changes color from a yellow green to the deep blues as the air oxidizes the dye. As the dye molecules oxidize they become insoluble in water again so they don't wash out of the fabric. The fabric is dipped in the indigo vat to soak up some dye, and then hung in the air to oxidize where it turns blue. Another feature of indigo is the ability to build up the depth of color by repeated dippings into the bath. Successive dippings and airings give you darker and darker blues. Shades can thus range from pale sky blue to deepest dark navy indigo.
We are all familiar with the characteristic way in which indigo fades as the fabric is used and worn, such as the fade lines on your favorite jeans. This is because indigo does not actually chemically bond to the fabric. Instead it becomes insoluble in water again when it reacts with the air and becomes lodged in the small spaces with the fiber. Over time as the fibers are rubbed with wear it rubs out some of the dye creating faded lines.
Indigo dyed fabric can also do something called crocking where it rubs off on things, and you, if not properly laundered before use. If you dont want to try out for the Blue Man Group, be sure and wash newly dyed or store bought Indigo dyed fabric and clothing with hot water and Synthrapol. Our Dharma Dye Fixative or Retayne in a hot soak can cause the fabric to retain more of the Indigo before washing, so you will get less fade on the first washing, and still no crocking after.
Since indigo was one of the only natural blue dyes, and the best, it was often used to over dye yellow fabrics to make greens. In museum tapestries you will often see that many plants are very bluish, this is because natural yellow dyes are more sensitive to fading from UV light than indigo and over time the indigo has become the predominate color in the fibers.
These days most indigo dye in commercial use is made synthetically, but you can still enjoy the magic of true indigo with our wonderful natural indigo. Granted it is a little more work then pre-reduced synthetics but it also has greater depth and variation which is all part of the magic.
| 3.1619 |
A waxy substance found in all of the body’s cells. The body uses cholesterol for a number of important functions, such as manufacturing certain hormones. As most people know, however, too much cholesterol in the blood can be damaging to the heart and blood vessels.
The liver manufactures most of the body’s cholesterol, but we also get it directly from the foods we eat. Cholesterol travels through the bloodstream in the form of complex molecules called lipoproteins. There are several varieties of lipoproteins, including low-density lipoproteins (LDL’s) and high-density lipoproteins (HDL’s).
LDL cholesterol, nicknamed the “bad” cholesterol, tends to mix with other substances in the blood and form buildups called plaques on the inner walls of blood vessels. These blood vessels can become hard and narrowed, decreasing blood flow, a condition known as atherosclerosis.
Plaques can also break off, form clots, and block key blood vessels, causing heart attacks and strokes.
HDL’s carry cholesterol away from the arteries to the liver, where it can be removed from the body. This keeps cholesterol from building up inside blood vessels, earning HDL cholesterol the nickname “good” cholesterol.
Doctors use the levels of HDL and LDL cholesterol to help determine a person’s risk of heart disease. The more LDL cholesterol and less HDL cholesterol a person has, the greater his risk of developing heart disease.
According to the cholesterol guidelines of the American Diabetes Association (ADA), adults with diabetes who have LDL cholesterol levels of 130 mg/dl or greater are at high risk of heart disease, those with levels of 100-129 mg/dl are at borderline risk, and those with levels below 100 mg/dl are at low risk. Men with HDL cholesterol levels under 35 mg/dl are at high risk, those with levels of 35-45 mg/dl are at borderline risk, and those with levels over 45 mg/dl are at low risk. Women with HDL levels under 45 mg/dl are at high risk, those with levels of 45-55 mg/dl are at borderline risk, and those with levels greater than 55 mg/dl are at low risk.
Even small improvements in blood cholesterol levels have been shown to significantly lower a person’s risk of heart attack. One way to lower your LDL cholesterol and raise your HDL cholesterol is through diet. For example, the ADA recommends consuming no more than 300 milligrams of cholesterol per day, and under 200 milligrams if you have high LDL cholesterol levels. (Foods high in dietary cholesterol include eggs, shellfish, and organ meats such as liver.) The amount of fat you eat, especially saturated fat, also affects your cholesterol level, so the ADA and other health organizations recommend getting no more than 30% of your daily calories from fat and limiting saturated fat intake to 10% or less of your daily calories. In fact, most of a person’s fat intake should come from monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. To achieve these goals, the best diet is one that emphasizes fruits, vegetables (including beans and other legumes), and whole grains.
Regular aerobic exercise, at least three to four times a week, can also improve blood cholesterol levels, especially when performed in conjunction with a low-fat diet. Walking briskly and jogging are good aerobic exercises. Losing weight if you’re overweight and stopping smoking may also help by raising your HDL cholesterol levels. There are also a number of highly effective drugs for improving cholesterol levels.
Everyone with diabetes should have their blood cholesterol levels checked regularly. Speak with your doctor and dietitian about ways to improve your blood cholesterol levels and reduce your risk of heart disease.
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The Common Loon (Gavia immer) is a highly aquatic, migratory bird distributed across North America, Greenland, and Iceland. The common loon is 66 cm to 91 cm in length and weighs between 2.5 kg and 6.1 kg. They have an average wingspan of 130 cm to 140 cm (McIntyre and Barr, 1997).
The geographic location of the common loon during the breeding season is in forested areas surrounding freshwater, oligotrophic lakes in the northern region of North America, Greenland, and Iceland. During the winter months, the common loon migrates to coastal marine habitats in the southern portion of North America. Migration for the winter occurs between September and December and migration for the summer occurs between March and June. Migration groups can be composed of thousands of irregularly spaced individuals, a small group of individuals, or a single individual (McIntyre and Barr, 1997).
The common loon is high specialized for swimming and diving (Perrins and Middleton, 1985; McIntyre and Barr, 1997). Individuals spend most of their lives in the air or in water and only come to land to copulate, nest, or when ill (McIntyre and Barr, 1997). Although most dives underwater last under a minute, the common loon is capable of remaining underwater for several minutes (Perrins and Middleton, 1985).
The species diet primarily consists of live fish, although other aquatic vertebrates and vegetation are also consumed. Predators of the common loon most commonly attack young and include crows, ravens, gulls, skunks, weasels, bald eagles, and snapping turtles (McIntyre and Barr, 1997).
The common loon is monogamous and mates typically remain together throughout the breeding season. Mate replacement occurs after the death of one individual. The age at first breeding varies between four and seven years of age and breeding is annual. Adults are highly aggressive in territorial defense. Both sexes are capable of severely injuring or even killing conspecifics that invade their territory (McIntyre and Barr, 1997).
Clutch size is two eggs and the incubation period is about 28 days (McIntyre and Barr, 1997). Both parents participate in incubation of the eggs. Young are precocial, or well-developed, after hatching. Young eat fresh food caught by the parents as opposed to food that has been regurgitated. Additionally, young are capable of leaving the nest and even diving the day after hatching (Perrins and Middleton, 1985)!
Additional Information on the Skull
Click on the thumbnails below for labeled images of the skull in standard anatomical views.
Baumel, J. J., A. S. King, J. E. Breazile, H. E. Evans, and J. C. Vanden Berge (eds.). 1993. Handbook of Avian Anatomy: Nomina Anatomica Avium, Second Edition. Publication of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, number 23. Nuttall Ornithological Club, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 779 pp.
McIntyre, J. W. and J. F. Barr. 1997. Gavia immer. The Birds of North America: Life Histories for the 21st Century 313:1-32
Perrins, C. M. and A. Middleton. 1985. The Encyclopedia of Birds. Facts on File, Inc., New York, NY. pp 447.
Gavia immer page on the Animal Diversity Web (University of Michigan Museum of Zoology)
Gavia immer on the USGS Patuxent Bird Indentification InfoCenter.
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Marching for women’s right to vote
This photograph of the fourth annual suffrage parade in New York City in 1913 shows some of the march’s 10,000 participants. In the early 20th century, suffragists marched, petitioned, lobbied, and were even arrested in their pursuit of voting rights for women. In 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted women the right to vote.
National Archives, Records of the Office of War Information
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Meds for Autism Not Well Understood: Study
THURSDAY Feb. 23, 2012 -- Children with autism may benefit from medications to treat children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other related disorders, but clearer guidelines are needed, a new study shows.
Researchers analyzed data from more than 1,000 U.S. teens enrolled in special education programs, to assess the use of psychiatric medications in those with autism, ADHD and both conditions.
Patients with both autism and ADHD had the highest rates of medicine use (about 58 percent), followed by those with ADHD only (around 49 percent) and those with autism only (about 34 percent), according to study author Paul Shattuck, an assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis, and colleagues.
Black teenagers with autism only or with autism and ADHD were less likely to receive medications than whites.
"Observations from the present study reinforce the complexity of pharmacologic treatment of challenging behavior in kids with [autism spectrum disorders] and ADHD," Shattuck said in a university news release. "There needs to be a clearer guide for treating kids with both an [autism spectrum disorder] and ADHD."
He noted that drug treatment for autism reflects a trial-and-error approach based on associated symptoms, and there is a poor understanding of overall medication use for children with autism.
"Also striking are the high rates of antipsychotic, antidepressant/anti-anxiety and stimulant medication use in these youths," Shattuck said. "Additional studies examining the treatment of core and associated [autism spectrum disorder] symptoms are needed to guide the treatment of these kids."
It is estimated that one in 110 people have autism, with the majority being boys. Signs of autism include problems with communication and social interactions.
The study appears in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology.
The U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke has more about autism.
Posted: February 2012
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Reconnecting children and natureThink back to your favorite childhood experience. For many, it’s being outside on a quest to build a fort in the woods, ride your bike, or freely explore the neighborhood.
By: Amy Reineke, Public Health Educator, Alexandria Echo Press
Think back to your favorite childhood experience. For many, it’s being outside on a quest to build a fort in the woods, ride your bike, or freely explore the neighborhood.
Today, instead of hiking, biking and climbing trees, children are more likely to have limited direct experience with the outdoors and nature. If they are outside, it is more likely to be in organized sports, on playground equipment or being shuttled from activity to activity.
Research indicates that one of the best medicines to a stressful lifestyle is to spend time in a natural setting outdoors. Children who spend time outdoors are likely to be happier, healthier, smarter, more cooperative and more creative.
Children need leisurely, unscripted and exploratory hours to find the wonders in their own backyards and neighborhoods. Children should be discovering the beauty of the stars in the night sky to watching bugs on a warm summer’s day.
According to recent research, there is evidence to suggest that the disconnect from nature creates diminished health; obesity; reduced cognitive, creative and problem-solving capacities; lower school achievement; lower self esteem, less self discipline; and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
I recently got ahold of a book called Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv. He writes about a phrase he coined, nature deficit disorder, which isn’t a medical term but a social phenomenon.
In his book, he brings together a new and growing body of research indicating that direct exposure to nature is essential for healthy childhood development and for the physical and emotional health of children and adults.
“There is very little that children do in their lives that compares with their first experience in nature,” Louv says.
Children are the stewards of the future. It’s a simple solution. Get kids outside more often so they can discover the adventure of the natural world.
Actions to reconnect children to nature
• Take a child outside and create the opportunity for children to have unstructured time to play outdoors every day.
• Create a nature club for families and plan monthly outings with other families in your community.
• Start a new kind of neighborhood watch so children can play within sight of adults while still experiencing the wonder and learning inspired through free range play.
• Ride your bike or walk to school with your children and others in the neighborhood.
• Make reconnecting children and nature a priority.
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Response to Intervention (RtI) in Iowa is an every-education decision-making framework of evidence-based practices in instruction and assessment that addresses the needs of all students starting in general education.
As an every-education process, RtI allows educators to judge the overall health of their educational system by examining data on all students (general and special education) as well as identifying students who need additional supports. Those supports are provided in both small group and individual settings, and measured to determine if these supports are making a difference to ensure all learners demonstrate proficiency in the Iowa Core standards and leave school ready for life.
Many Iowa schools are successfully implementing components of RtI. Together, we will move RtI to consistent statewide implementation in every Iowa classroom.
Video: Readiness Survey for Scale Up of Response to Intervention (RtI) in Iowa - A brief video describing the survey being used to gather information for the introduction and scale-up of Iowa's Response to Intervention system.
RtI Key Components
The Iowa RtI framework is made up of five components:
- Evidence-Based Curriculum and Instruction shall be provided at the Universal level
- Universal Screening shall be used three times per year
- Evidence-based, instructional interventions at the Targeted and Intensive levels shall be provided to each student who needs them
- Progress Monitoring Data shall be collected and used to guide instruction
- Data-Based Decision Making
To be fully implementing the Iowa RtI framework, schools must be implementing the full range of practices associated with each of these components with fidelity.
Response to Intervention: Key Components - More information about each component.
RtI & Continuous Improvement
Implementation of the Iowa RtI framework should use the continuous school improvement process of (a) defining the problem, (b) diagnosing the problem, (c) developing a plan, (d) implementing the plan, and (e) evaluating the results of plan implementation. We use a ten-question framework to help schools engage in this process. Those ten questions are:
- Is our Universal program sufficient?
- If the Universal program is not sufficient, why isn’t it sufficient?
- How will needs identified in the Universal program be addressed?
- How will the sufficiency and effectiveness of the Universal program be monitored over time?
- Have improvements to the Universal program been effective?
Targeted and Intensive Levels
- For which students is Universal instruction sufficient and not sufficient, and why?
- What specific Targeted and Intensive instruction is needed?
- How will specific Targeted and Intensive instruction be delivered?
- How will the effectiveness of Targeted and Intensive instruction be monitored?
- Which students need to move to a different level of instruction?
This process helps educators think about their local needs within a data-based decision-making framework.
Response to Intervention (RtI) Guidance (2011-12-16) - This document contains foundational information about and guidance on Iowa’s RtI framework. It will be updated as needed. It is recommended that you bookmark this document so you always have access to the most recent guidance.
Data Systems and Assessments Overview Webinar - This is a 30 minute webinar that was recorded on March 6th, 2013. It was recorded by consultants at the Department of Education. Topics addressed include an overview of Iowa RtI framework, as well as Iowa’s recently-purchased RtI database, universal screeners, and progress monitoring assessments.
Data Systems and Assessments Overview Presentation Slides - This presentation was used during the Overview webinar conducted by the Iowa Department of Education on March 6th, 2013.
FAQ for Data System and Assessments - This FAQ addresses a wide range of issues related to RtI. If you have a question not already addressed in the FAQ, you can submit a question using the Post Questions form. Questions will be reviewed weekly and responses posted shortly thereafter.
- Literacy Assessment Reviews Overview: This video provides a brief description of how the review process for universal screening and progress monitoring assessments in early literacy was conducted.
Literacy Assessment Review Overview Presentation Slides
- Iowas Timeline of Assessment Review
- Summary Tables Overview: This video provides a brief description of how to read and interpret the reviews of the universal screening and progress monitoring assessments.
A Summary Report of Iowa’s Review of PreK-6 Reading Assessments for Universal Screening and Progress
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Adult Acute Myeloid Leukemia Treatment (Patient)
General Information About Adult Acute Myeloid Leukemia
Adult acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a type of cancer in which the bone marrow makes abnormal myeloblasts (a type of white blood cell), red blood cells, or platelets.
Adult acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a cancer of the blood and bone marrow. This type of cancer usually gets worse quickly if it is not treated. It is the most common type of acute leukemia in adults. AML is also called acute myelogenous leukemia, acute myeloblastic leukemia, acute granulocytic leukemia, and acute nonlymphocytic leukemia.
Normally, the bone marrow makes blood stem cells (immature cells) that develop into mature blood cells over time. A blood stem cell may become a myeloid stem cell or a lymphoid stem cell. The lymphoid stem cell develops into a white blood cell. The myeloid stem cell develops into one of three types of mature blood cells:
In AML, the myeloid stem cells usually develop into a type of immature white blood cell called myeloblasts (or myeloidblasts). The myeloblasts in AML are abnormal and do not become healthy white blood cells. Sometimes in AML, too many stem cells develop into abnormal red blood cells or platelets. These abnormal white blood cells, red blood cells, or platelets are also called leukemia cells or blasts. Leukemia cells can build up in the bone marrow and blood so there is less room for healthy white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets. When this happens, infection, anemia, or easy bleeding may occur. The leukemia cells can spread outside the blood to other parts of the body, including the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord), skin, and gums.
This summary is about adult AML. See the following PDQ summaries for information about other types of leukemia:
There are different subtypes of AML.
Most AML subtypes are based on how mature (developed) the cancer cells are at the time of diagnosis and how different they are from normal cells.
Acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) is a subtype of AML that occurs when parts of two genes stick together. APL usually occurs in middle-aged adults. Symptoms of APL may include both bleeding and forming blood clots.
Anything that increases your risk of getting a disease is called a risk factor. Having a risk factor does not mean that you will get cancer; not having risk factors doesn't mean that you will not get cancer. People who think they may be at risk should discuss this with their doctor. Possible risk factors for AML include the following:
Possible signs of adult AML include fever, feeling tired, and easy bruising or bleeding.
The early signs of AML may be like those caused by the flu or other common diseases. A doctor should be consulted if any of the following problems occur:
Tests that examine the blood and bone marrow are used to detect (find) and diagnose adult AML.
The following tests and procedures may be used:
Certain factors affect prognosis (chance of recovery) and treatment options.
The prognosis (chance of recovery) and treatment options depend on:
It is important that acute leukemia be treated right away.
eMedicineHealth Public Information from the National Cancer Institute
This information is produced and provided by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The information in this topic may have changed since it was written. For the most current information, contact the National Cancer Institute via the Internet web site at http://cancer.gov or call 1-800-4-CANCER
This information is not intended to replace the advice of a doctor. Healthwise disclaims any liability for the decisions you make based on this information.
Some material in CancerNet™ is from copyrighted publications of the respective copyright claimants. Users of CancerNet™ are referred to the publication data appearing in the bibliographic citations, as well as to the copyright notices appearing in the original publication, all of which are hereby incorporated by reference.
Find out what women really need.
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Like prokaryotes, eukaryotic organisms do not want to express all of their genes all of the time. Given the complexity of multicellular eukaryotes, gene regulation in these organisms needs to be very complex. This module provides a brief overview of the various levels of regulation of gene expression in eukaryotes, and takes a look at the basics of transcriptional regulation; a detailed look at eukaryotic transcriptional regulation is beyond the scope of this course.
The Need for Gene Regulation in Eukaryotes
Eukaryotes need to regulate their genes for different reasons than prokaryotes. In prokaryotes, gene regulation allowed them to respond to their environment efficiently and economically. While eukaryotes can respond to their environment (we'll see an example of this later), the main reason higher eukaryotes need to regulate their genes is cell specialization. Whereas prokaryotes are (relatively speaking) simple, unicellular organisms, multicellular eukaryotes consist of hundreds of different cell types, each differentiated to serve a different specialized function. Each cell type differentiates by activating a different subset of genes. (For more on this, see the module on developmental genetics.) Because of the multitude of cell types, the regulation of gene expression required to bring about such differentiation is necessarily complex. One way this complexity is demonstrated is in multiple levels of regulation of gene expression.
Levels of Regulation
Before we discuss the specifics of regulation, it is necessary to understand that "gene expression" covers the entire process from transcription through protein synthesis. The final measure of whether or not a gene is "expressed" is if the protein is produced, because it is protein that will ultimately carry out the function specified by the gene.
We've seen numerous examples of how eukaryotic cells are more complex than prokaryotic cells. One obvious example of this is the presence of a nucleus in eukaryotic cells, which separates transcription from translation in a way not seen in prokaryotes. Furthermore, eukaryotic transcripts must be processed before they can be translated. Here is a diagram outlining the steps involved in the production of a protein in eukaryotic cells:
Regulation can occur at any point in this pathway; specifically, it occurs at the levels of transcription, RNA processing, mRNA lifetime (longevity), and translation. Each of these types of regulation will be considered in turn.
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May 16, 2011 / ENERGY GLOBE Award
Project presentation - "River from Sky"
With only 45 days of rain annually, Rajasthan (northwest India, 56 million residents) is the most arid region of India. In 2003 "Sustainable Innovations", a non-profit organization, initiated the development of the water project "Aakash Gangaist" (translated "river from sky").
The principle is simple: Rainwater is collected from roofs in drains and accumulated in subterranean networked tank system. The success strategy for implementing the project is to focus on long-range economic viability via public/private partnerships (PPP). The system has already been installed in six Indian villages to serve some 10,000 residents.
The government of Rajasthan has now signed a document of intent that provides for extending the project to 70 villages and 250,000 people. The costs of water per liter amount to $0.002 (based on a lifetime of 25 years). By comparison, the price of water from drilled wells comes to $0.04/liter. Additional pilot projects like this are planned for China already.
Find more information here: www.sustainableinnovations.us
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Teams and Individuals Guided by Engineering Resources (TIGERs) Camps is a resident summer camp designed to expose rising 11 and 12 graders to the world of engineering. Engineers make the world a better place by designing things that make life easier, safer or that protect the environment. Yet, studies show that middle and high school students know very little about careers in engineering.
The camp will be conducted by faculty, staff, and students from the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering, ensuring that students receive a broad overview of the engineering profession. Camp activities include workshops, tours, a number of hands-on activities, lectures guided by engineers, and students will learn what courses they need to take in high school to prepare them for a successful and fulfilling career in engineering.More information regarding this camp can be found online at http://www.eng.auburn.edu/outreach/k-12/tigers.html.
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Oil Shale Development
Oil shale, which is an organic-rich fine-grained sedimentary rock, contains significant amounts of kerogen (a solid mixture of organic chemical compounds) from which liquid hydrocarbons can be extracted. Kerogen requires more processing to use than crude oil, which increases its cost as a crude-oil substitute both financially and in terms of its potential environmental impact. US Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Bureau of Land Management Director Bob Abbey announced today that they will take a fresh look at commercial oil shale rules and plans issued under the previous Administration and, if necessary, update them based on the latest research and technologies, to account for expected water demands in the arid West and to ensure they provide a fair return to taxpayer.
The largest deposits of oil shale in the world occur in the United States in the Green River Formation, which covers portions of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming; about 70% of this resource lies on land owned or managed by the United States federal government.
Mining oil shale involves a number of potential environmental impacts, more pronounced in surface mining than in underground mining. They include acid drainage induced by the sudden rapid exposure and subsequent oxidation of formerly buried materials, the introduction of metals into surface-water and groundwater, increased erosion, sulfur-gas emissions, and air pollution caused by the production of particulates during processing, transport, and support activities.
There are also concerns over the oil shale industry's use of water. Depending on technology, above-ground retorting uses between one and five barrels of water per barrel of produced shale-oil. A 2008 programmatic environmental impact statement issued by the US Bureau of Land Management stated that surface mining and retort operations produce 2 to 10 US gallons of waste water per 1 short ton of processed oil shale. In situ processing, according to one estimate, uses about one-tenth as much water.
"For more than a century, and through many busts, we in the West have been trying to unlock oil shale resources to help power our country," said Secretary Salazar. "If we are to succeed this time, we must continue to encourage RD&D, determine whether the technologies would be viable on a commercial scale, and find a way to develop the resources in a way that protects water supplies in the arid West. With commercial oil shale technologies still years away, now is the time to ensure that our rules and plans reflect the latest information and will deliver a fair return to the American taxpayer."
In November 2008, the previous Administration amended 8 of the land use plans in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming to make public lands available for potential commercial-scale oil-shale development, and two other land use plans to expand the acreage available for potential tar-sands leasing in Utah, where these resources are located. These actions made nearly 2 million acres available for potential development. It also issued regulations that fix the royalty rate for oil shale at 5% for the first 5 years of commercial production, rising 1% every year thereafter until the rate reaches a possible maximum of 12.5%.
Abbey said that over the coming months, the public will have an opportunity to provide input on whether to update the existing commercial oil shale regulations. As more is known about emerging oil shale technologies, there may be specified resource protection plans as an example.
Secretary Salazar noted that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently determined that several fundamental questions about oil shale technologies remain unanswered, including critical questions about water demands. An October, 2010 GAO report determined that: "Oil shale development could have significant impacts on the quality and quantity of water resources, but the magnitude of these impacts is unknown because technologies are years from being commercially proven, the size of a future oil shale industry is uncertain, and knowledge of current water conditions and groundwater flow is limited."
Director Abbey said the BLM will also conduct further environmental analysis to determine whether to amend existing land use plans for oil shale and tar sands resources. The public process associated with the planning initiative will allow the Department to take a fresh look at what public lands are best suited for this kind of development.
For further information: http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/info/newsroom/2011/february/NR_02_15_2011.html
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The shipwrecks of HMAS Sydney II and HSK Kormoran and associated debris fields are located 22 kilometres apart, 290 kilometres west south west of Carnarvon, off the coast of Western Australia in 2500 metres of water.
HMAS Sydney II sank after a battle with the German raider HSK Kormoran off the Western Australian coast on the 19 November 1941. HMAS Sydney II was Australia's most famous warship of the time and this battle has forever linked the stories of these warships to each other.
The HMAS Sydney II and the HSK Kormoran were added to the National Heritage List on 14 March 2011.
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- foot (n.)
- Old English fot, from Proto-Germanic *fot (cf. Old Saxon fot, Old Norse fotr, Dutch voet, Old High German fuoz, German Fuß, Gothic fotus "foot"), from PIE *ped- (cf. Avestan pad-; Sanskrit pad-, accusative padam "foot;" Greek pos, Attic pous, genitive podos; Latin pes, genitive pedis "foot;" Lithuanian padas "sole," peda "footstep"). Plural form feet is an instance of i-mutation. Of a bed, grave, etc., first recorded c.1300.
The linear measurement of 12 inches was in Old English, from the length of a man's foot. Colloquial exclamation my foot! expressing "contemptuous contradiction" [OED] is first attested 1923, probably a euphemism for my ass, in the same sense, which dates back to 1796. The metrical foot (Old English, translating Latin pes, Greek pous in the same sense) is commonly taken as a reference to keeping time by tapping the foot.
To get off on the right foot is from 1905; to put one's best foot foremost first recorded 1849 (Shakespeare has the better foot before, 1596). To put one's foot in (one's) mouth "say something stupid" is attested by 1942; the expression put (one's) foot in something "make a mess of it" is from 1823.
- foot (v.)
- c.1400, "dance, move on foot," from foot (n.). To foot a bill is attested from 1848, from the process of tallying the expenses and writing the figure at the bottom ("foot") of the bill.
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Thuringia - Sachsen Schwarzburg Rudolstadt – Fürstentum (principality)PopulationEdit This Page
From FamilySearch Wiki
Huldigung translates into English as oath of allegiance. During feudal times when German lords governed over their people in a mixture between arbitrary action and patriarchal hegemony, the oath of allegiance on the part of the subservient population was of utmost importance. Perfidy was one of the greatest crimes and was punishable. Therefore, the expostulation of loyalty, faith, honor and morals served as a constant spur among the community members. When a new manor lord was installed, he required of his subjects “Land und Erbhuldigung”. With such an oath the lordship made sure of recognition and willing subordination. The oath was to be “treu, hold und gewärtig zu sein“. This kind of oath stems from the feudal law (Lehnsrecht). He who was in a relationship of dependence was obligated to swear an oath of allegiance. That concerned almost everybody. Huldigung was as important as any act of state. With time the act of Huldigung became more a formality but did not disappear until the 19th century when constitutional law was established.
Records can be found in “Huldigungslisten” of urban and rural administrations. An “Amt” (local administration) kept lists of the population obligated to swear the oath of allegiance. Often such lists only contain names of male villagers with no additional information, other than that they may have been the heads of households, swearing the oath of allegiance for the entire family. Where the male head of household was deceased, the widow may have sworn allegiance.
For Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt Huldigungslisten are in the Landesarchiv Rudolstadt of varied content. In the 17th century they are ordinarily lists of names. Then there are tabulations with age, occupations and number of children. Sometimes there are lists of people who did not participate in oaths of allegiance. People from faraway places, often whole villages, were counted into this category. On the other hand, one can find indexes with names of people who already pledged allegiance at some other place. People absent from their villages were listed and also people who usually were not registered such as members of the nobility, administrators, ministers, teachers and miners. If two manor lords were owner of a village, two Huldigungslisten were established.
Source: Huschke, Wolfgang. Schwarzburg-Rudolstädtische Huldigunslisten des 17. Und 18. Jahrhunderts in Mitteldeutsche Familienkunde, Band I, Jahrgang 5, Heft 4, page 177 pp.
Some Huldigungslisten are available for Schwarzburg Rudolstadt through www.familysearch.org , catalog: Keyword Search: Huldigungslisten and can be ordered through the Family History Center network.
- This page was last modified on 28 November 2012, at 21:56.
- This page has been accessed 177 times.
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2 December 2008, Rome - Ocean warming, frequent tropical cyclones, flash floods and droughts are likely to have a devastating impact on food production systems in Pacific island countries, FAO warned today.
Climate change-related disasters are already imposing serious constraints on development in the islands, which appear to be in a "constant mode of recovery," according to a new report entitled Climate Change and Food Security in Pacific Island Countries, jointly published by FAO, the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme and the University of the South Pacific.
"Climate projections for the Pacific island countries are bleak and indicate reduced food security, especially for households," said Alexander Müller, FAO Assistant Director-General, Natural Resources Management and Environment Department.
"It is critical to build resilience of food systems to avoid enormous future economic losses in agriculture, fisheries and forestry. Countries will have to assess how vulnerable their food systems are and how they can adapt agriculture, forestry and fisheries to future climate-related disasters. There is a need to act urgently," he added.
Climate change threats
Agricultural production in the Pacific island countries depends heavily on summer rains. Climate change predictions for the region suggest prolonged variations from normal rainfall with devastating effects on agriculture, including water stress, more pests and weeds, erosion and loss of soil fertility.
Increasing coastal inundation, salinization and erosion as a consequence of sea-level rise and human activities may contaminate and reduce the size of productive agricultural lands and thereby threaten household and local food security, the report said.
The projected sea-level rise and sea surface temperature changes will most likely result in the decline of fisheries productivity and food security. Most of the ecosystems on which coastal fisheries depend will be adversely affected. Fish consumption in Pacific island countries is very high, with an average of 70 kilogram per person per year. Fish exports account for as much as 70 percent of total exports in some countries.
Adapting to change
Pacific island countries have already committed to a number of international and regional agreements (UNFCCC, Kyoto Protocol and the Pacific Plan) for addressing climate change impacts within the context of their sustainable development strategies. But overall, the report said, the response of Pacific island countries to climate change "can be described as being project-based, ad hoc and heavily dependant on external resources."
"Integrating climate change adaptation into national policies, strategies, programmes and budgets related to agriculture, forestry and fisheries, should become a major priority," Alexander Müller said.
The report calls for a more systematic approach to climate change, with national development plans serving as the basis of adaptation measures involving governments, the private sector and civil society. Pacific island countries need to review their agriculture, forestry, fisheries and drinking water development policies seriously, in light of new information on climate change.
Farmers should receive the best available information and guidelines on the choice of crop varieties, soil and water management options under changed environmental conditions to avert the risk of crop failures.
"Nations that have pushed for monoculture crop production for foreign markets will need to assess their food security potential. It is well established that diversified agricultural systems will fare better under climate change scenarios," the report said.
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Following a major disaster, first responders who provide fire and medical services will not be able to meet the demand for these services. Factors such as number of victims, communication failures and road blockages will prevent people from accessing emergency services they have come to expect at a moment's notice through 911. People will have to rely on each other for help in order to meet their immediate life saving and life sustaining needs.
One also expects that under these kinds of conditions, family members, fellow employees and neighbors will spontaneously try to help each other. This was the case following the Mexico City earthquake where untrained, spontaneous volunteers saved 800 people. However, 100 people lost their lives while attempting to save others. This is a high price to pay and is preventable through training.
If we can predict that emergency services will not meet immediate needs following a major disaster, especially if there is no warning as in an earthquake and people will spontaneously volunteer, what can government do to prepare citizens for this eventuality?
First, present citizens the facts about what to expect following a major disaster in terms of immediate services. Second, give the message about their responsibility for mitigation and preparedness. Third, train them in needed life saving skills with emphasis on decision making skills, rescuer safety and doing the greatest good for the greatest number. Fourth, organize teams so that they are an extension of first responder services offering immediate help to victims until professional services arrive.
The Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) concept was developed and implemented by the Los Angeles City Fire Department (LAFD) in 1985. The Whittier Narrows earthquake in 1987 underscored the area-wide threat of a major disaster in California. Further, it confirmed the need for training civilians to meet their immediate needs. As a result, the LAFD created the Disaster Preparedness Division with the purpose of training citizens and private and government employees.
The training program that LAFD initiated makes good sense and furthers the process of citizens understanding their responsibility in preparing for disaster. It also increases their ability to safely help themselves, their family and their neighbors. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recognizes the importance of preparing citizens. The Emergency Management Institute (EMI) and the National Fire Academy adopted and expanded the CERT materials believing them applicable to all hazards.
The CERT course will benefit any citizen who takes it. This individual will be better prepared to respond to and cope with the aftermath of a disaster. Additionally, if a community wants to supplement its response capability after a disaster, civilians can be recruited and trained as neighborhood, business and government teams that, in essence, will be auxiliary responders. These groups can provide immediate assistance to victims in their area, organize spontaneous volunteers who have not had the training and collect disaster intelligence that will assist professional responders with prioritization and allocation of resources following a disaster. Since 1993 when this training was made available nationally by FEMA, communities in 28 states and Puerto Rico have conducted CERT training.
We recommend a number of steps to start a CERT:
Identify the program goals that CERT will meet and the resources available to conduct the program in your area.
Gain approval from appointed and elected officials to use CERT as a means to prepare citizens to care for themselves during a disaster when services may not be adequate. This is an excellent opportunity for the government to be proactive in working with its constituency.
Identify and recruit potential participants. Naturals for CERT are community groups, business and industry workers and local government workers.
Train CERT instructor cadre.
Conduct CERT sessions.
Conduct refresher training and exercises with CERTs.
The CERT course is delivered in the community by a team of first responders who have the requisite knowledge and skills to instruct the sessions. It is suggested that the instructors complete a CERT Train-the-Trainer (TTT) course conducted by their State Training Office for Emergency Management or the Emergency Management Institute in order to learn the training techniques that are used successfully by the LAFD.
The CERT training for community groups is usually delivered in 2 1/2 hour sessions, one evening a week over a 7 week period. The training consists of the following:
Session I, DISASTER PREPAREDNESS: Addresses hazards to which people are vulnerable in their community. Materials cover actions that participants and their families take before, during and after a disaster. As the session progresses, the instructor begins to explore an expanded response role for civilians in that they should begin to consider themselves disaster workers. Since they will want to help their family members and neighbors, this training can help them operate in a safe and appropriate manner. The CERT concept and organization are discussed as well as applicable laws governing volunteers in that jurisdiction.
Session II, DISASTER FIRE SUPPRESSION: Briefly covers fire chemistry, hazardous materials, fire hazards and fire suppression strategies. However, the thrust of this session is the safe use of fire extinguishers, sizing up the situation, controlling utilities and extinguishing a small fire.
Session III, DISASTER MEDICAL OPERATIONS PART I: Participants practice diagnosing and treating airway obstruction, bleeding and shock by using simple triage and rapid treatment techniques.
Session IV, DISASTER MEDICAL OPERATIONS, PART II: Covers evaluating patients by doing a head to toe assessment, establishing a medical treatment area, performing basic first aid and practicing in a safe and sanitary manner.
Session V, LIGHT SEARCH AND RESCUE OPERATIONS: Participants learn about search and rescue planning, size-up, search techniques, rescue techniques and, most important, rescuer safety.
Session VI, DISASTER PSYCHOLOGY AND TEAM ORGANIZATION: Covers signs and symptoms that might be experienced by the disaster victim and worker. It addresses CERT organization and management principles and the need for documentation.
Session VII, COURSE REVIEW AND DISASTER SIMULATION: Participants review their answers from a take home examination. Finally, they practice the skills that they have learned during the previous six sessions in disaster activity.
During each session participants are required to bring safety equipment (gloves, goggles, mask) and disaster supplies (bandages, flashlight, dressings) which will be used during the session. By doing this for each session, participants are building a disaster response kit of items that they will need during a disaster.
When participants have completed this training, it is important to keep them involved and practiced in their skills. Trainers should offer periodic refresher sessions to reinforce the basic training. CERT teams can sponsor events such as drills, picnics, neighborhood clean up and disaster education fairs which will keep them involved and trained.
CERT members should receive recognition for completing their training. Communities may issue ID cards, vests and helmets to graduates.
First responders need to be educated about the CERT and their value to the community. Using CERT as a component of the response system when there are exercises for potential disasters can reinforce this idea.
FEMA supports CERT by conducting or sponsoring Train-the-Trainer and Program Manager courses for members of the fire, medical and emergency management community. The objectives of the TTT are to prepare attendees to promote this training in their community, conduct TTT's at their location, conduct training sessions for neighborhood, business and industry and government groups and organize teams with which first responders can interface following a major disaster.
CERT is about readiness, people helping people, rescuer safety and doing the greatest good for the greatest number. CERT is a positive and realistic approach to emergency and disaster situations where citizens will be initially on their own and their actions can make a difference. Through training, citizens can manage utilities and put out small fires; treat the three killers by opening airways, controlling bleeding, and treating for shock; provide basic medical aid; search for and rescue victims safely and organize themselves and spontaneous volunteers to be effective.
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On This Day - 15 April 1918
Theatre definitions: Western Front comprises the Franco-German-Belgian front and any military action in Great Britain, Switzerland, Scandinavia and Holland. Eastern Front comprises the German-Russian, Austro-Russian and Austro-Romanian fronts. Southern Front comprises the Austro-Italian and Balkan (including Bulgaro-Romanian) fronts, and Dardanelles. Asiatic and Egyptian Theatres comprises Egypt, Tripoli, the Sudan, Asia Minor (including Transcaucasia), Arabia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Persia, Afghanistan, Turkestan, China, India, etc. Naval and Overseas Operations comprises operations on the seas (except where carried out in combination with troops on land) and in Colonial and Overseas theatres, America, etc. Political, etc. comprises political and internal events in all countries, including Notes, speeches, diplomatic, financial, economic and domestic matters. Source: Chronology of the War (1914-18, London; copyright expired)
Fighting continues on Bailleul-Wulverghem line, and Germans capture both places.
Very violent artillery action in Luce Valley (Somme).
Finland: Germans report occupation of Helsingfors.
Macedonia: Greek troops cross Struma river and occupy villages in Seres district.
British troops take two villages south-west of Demirhissar.
Naval and Overseas Operations
British Naval forces sink ten German armed trawlers in Kattegat.
Austria: Count Czernin's resignation announced.
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Fletcher Allen, a Vermont university hospital and medical center, serves all of
Vermont and the northern New York region. Located in Burlington, Fletcher Allen is a regional, academic healthcare center and teaching hospital in alliance with the University of Vermont.
Rectal Prolapse in Children
Rectal prolapse in children most commonly happens before the age of 4, and usually before age 1. Boys and girls are equally likely to develop the condition.
A child's risk of developing rectal prolapse may increase because of a structural problem in the digestive system. Other conditions that increase a child's risk for rectal prolapse include:
- Increased abdominal pressure. Rectal prolapse may develop in a child who frequently strains during bowel movements, such as from problems with long-term (chronic) constipation. Pressure from forceful coughing spells, such as those caused by whooping cough (pertussis) or long-term lung disease from cystic fibrosis, may also lead to rectal prolapse.
- Short-term or long-term diarrhea. Giardiasis or Escherichia coli (E. coli) infection may cause short-term diarrhea. Conditions that prevent proper food absorption, such as celiac disease or inflammatory bowel disease, may cause long-term diarrhea.
- Parasitic diseases. Parasites such as whipworms increase the risk of prolapse.
- Cystic fibrosis. This disease of the mucous glands is associated with conditions throughout the body, including digestive problems. About 20% of children with rectal prolapse will have cystic fibrosis.1 A child who has rectal prolapse with no obvious cause may need to be tested for cystic fibrosis.
- Pelvic floor weakness. Weakness of these muscles, which stretch across the floor of the pelvis, may be linked with damage caused by nerve disorders or spinal cord deformities (such as spina bifida) or may develop after pelvic surgery.
- Malnutrition. Across the world, lack of proper nutrition may be the most common cause of rectal prolapse in children. This is especially true in underdeveloped countries. Malnutrition prevents children from developing supportive tissues around the rectum.
- Hirschsprung's disease. The birth defect Hirschsprung's disease affects muscular contractions of the bowel, which can lead to rectal prolapse.
- Not having an opening in the anus (imperforate anus). The surgery to repair an imperforate anus can make rectal prolapse more likely.
|Primary Medical Reviewer||Anne C. Poinier, MD - Internal Medicine|
|Specialist Medical Reviewer||C. Dale Mercer, MD, FRCSC, FACS - General Surgery|
|Last Revised||July 6, 2011|
Last Revised: July 6, 2011
To learn more visit Healthwise.org
© 1995-2013 Healthwise, Incorporated. Healthwise, Healthwise for every health decision, and the Healthwise logo are trademarks of Healthwise, Incorporated.
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Key Ringneck Snake
Scientific name: Diadophis punctatus acricus PAULSON 1966
* Currently accepted name
* scientific names used through time
- Coluber punctatus – LINNAEUS 1766
- Natrix punctatus – MERREM 1820
- Homalosoma punctata – WAGLER 1830
- Calamaria punctata – SCHLEGEL 1837
- Ablabes punctatus – DUMÉRIL, BIBRON & DUMÉRIL 1854
- Diadophis punctatus acricus – PAULSON 1966
- Diadophis punctatus – DUMÉRIL, STEBBINS 1985
Description: Average adult size is 6 inches (15.2 cm). Adults are small and slender-bodied with a slate gray body. Unlike other ringneck snakes, the ring normally present around the neck is indistinct or completely absent. The belly is bright orangish-yellow, fading to orange-red beneath the tail. There is a single row of half-moon spots down the center on the belly. The scales are smooth, and there are 15-17 dorsal scale rows at midbody. The pupil is round. Juvenile color is similar to that of the adult.
A. Top of the head (notice the large plate-like scales on the top of the head)
B. Smooth scales
C. Elongated scales below the tail (subcaudal scales) are typically divided
D. Front (face view) of the head
E. Side of the head
Range: It is found only on the Lower Florida Keys including Big Pine Key, Little Torch Key, and Middle Torch Key. It is not found outside of Florida. Due to its very small range it is listed as a Threatened Species in the state of Florida.
Habitat: Rare, but occurs mainly in pinelands, tropical hardwood hammocks, and around limestone outcroppings.
Comments: HARMLESS (Non-Venomous) and seldom bites. Little is known about the Key Ringneck Snake, but it is sometimes seen under limestone rocks and boards, and crossing roads at night.
It feeds on small frogs and tadpoles, earthworms, slugs, anoles, geckos, and snakes.
Reproduction is thought to be similar to the southern ringneck snake.
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Queen Katherine Parr's Prayers or meditacions was influenced by Marguerite de Navarre’s Mirror of the Sinful Soul, a text which her stepdaughter, the future Queen Elizabeth I, had presented to her. Katherine was the sixth wife of Henry VIII, highly educated, and served as an intelligent companion to the aging king. Her book was written around 1546/7 but published after the death of Henry VIII, probably because of its Lutheran and more radical Protestant leanings.
Other religious writing took the form of emblems, such as those by Georgette de Montenay. The emblem is a literary form that reveals its message through a combination of image, motto, and poem. Montenay created the first emblem book used for religious propaganda, in support of the Calvinist faith. Her book was republished many times in several languages. In the frontispiece portrait, de Montenay is depicted as a writer with pen, ink, and paper.
Another writer, Vittoria Colonna, is known mainly for her secular love poetry and her friendship with Michelangelo, but in her later life, she turned to spiritual poetry in which she expresses love for Christ.
He is the author of peace, rest from war,
Quiet is found in him. †
She was influenced in her religious thinking by the English cardinal Reginald Pole, who resided in Italy and became her mentor.
Although most women had never been encouraged to preach openly by established churches, Quakers believed that because men and women could equally receive God’s spirit, both could preach. Margaret Fell, married to Quaker founder George Fox, justified women’s claim to speaking by looking at biblical women who testify to the truth. As examples, she cites Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James who followed Jesus, as well as women in the early Christian church, mentioned in the book of Acts.
Also shown are the tracts of Eleanor Davies, a well-educated woman who, in 1625, had a vision of the Day of Judgment. She associated herself with the Old Testament prophet Daniel and began writing and publishing many prophetic tracts. A number of them were kept and bound together by her daughter, Lucy Huntingdon, in the volume seen above. Many of the tracts show Davies’ own annotations in preparation for the publication of corrected versions. She denounced Charles I, supported Oliver Cromwell, and believed that the end of the world was at hand.
† (Translation by Ellen Moody)
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By Terry Kovel
Permanent-press fabrics have relieved most households of the need to iron clothing. In past centuries, ironing was an almost daily duty of a woman in the home.
Before about the 10th century, cloth was ironed with smooth wooden or glass pieces and a pounding stick. Heat was not used until the 16th century in Europe. By then, pressing irons were metal pans with long handles. A piece of charcoal was put in the pan to heat the bottom and the heated pan was rubbed over the cloth.
This crude iron was gradually improved. Charcoal was replaced by a heated iron rod to avoid the charcoal ashes that sometimes fell on the cloth. Next came special box irons with handles and pointed fronts. They were shaped like the electric and steam irons used today. Soon a solid piece of iron, also in today's familiar shape, was made to put on the stove to heat, then quickly used to heat and smooth cloth.
By the turn of the 20th century, irons were heated by liquid gas, alcohol, gasoline or electricity. Unfortunately, some of the liquid-fueled irons blew up.
The electric iron was patented in 1882, but few homes had electricity back then. So the electric iron was not in general use until about 1915. Since then, irons have been improved with the addition of thermostats that control heat and steam. Some even became cordless and could fold up to go with travelers.
All types of old ironing sticks, mangling boards and irons are collected today. Nineteenth- and unusual 20th-century examples sell for hundreds of dollars. In the 1950s, an early Chinese iron that looks like a small, ornate cooking pot with a handle was copied and used as a portable ashtray. These mid-20th-century copies sell for about $30 today. A genuine antique Chinese iron is worth hundreds of dollars.
Q: Recently I purchased five matching maple side chairs with "Mottville, N.Y." stamped on the back of the top slat of each chair. Two of the chairs are stamped "F. Sinclair" under "Mottville," while the other three are stamped "Union Chair Works." I've cleaned up the chairs and given them new woven seats. Please tell me the approximate age and value of the chairs, and explain the different marks.
A: The Union Chair Works factory was built in Mottville, near Skaneateles, N.Y., in 1866, although some records say the founding of the company dates back to 1859. The company's owners, Joseph Hubbard and Francis A. Sinclair, advertised their furniture under the brand name "Common Sense" and eventually made chairs, rockers, tables and settees. The company operated at least into the 1880s, and perhaps into the early 1900s. If all you had to do to get the chairs into tiptop shape was clean them and replace the woven seats, the set could sell for more than $500.
Q: I want to leave my collection of Hummel figurines to my 14-year-old great-granddaughter. What should I wrap them in and how should I store them?
A: Hummel figurines are based on the drawings of the nun M.I. "Berta" Hummel. They were first made in 1935 by the W. Goebel Porcelain Co. of Oeslau (now part of Rodental), Germany. The figurines are made of earthenware. Parts that aren't glazed will absorb moisture, so they need to be stored in a dry place. Don't store them in the basement, which often is damp, or in the attic, where they would be subject to extreme temperature changes, which could cause crazing. You can wrap the figurines in plain archival paper, white tissue paper or pieces of white bedsheets and pack them carefully in a box with bunches of tissue paper between them to prevent them from bumping each other when the box is moved. Don't wrap them in newspaper. Newsprint comes off and may stain the figurines. Don't wrap them in colored paper or plastic, either. The best way to store them is in their original boxes, if you still have them.
Q: My mother left me an oval brooch made of blue milk glass. I think it originally belonged to her grandmother, who died in 1924. It's a series of little blue balls and tiny silver balls. The gold-tone border is impressed "Czechoslovakia" in capital letters on the back. What do you think it's worth?
A: The country of Czechoslovakia was formed in 1918, when World War I ended. So your brooch was not made before 1918. The country split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993. Costume jewelry made of Czechoslovakian glass sells for a wide range of prices, depending on design and condition. Your brooch could sell for $20 to $50.
Q: I was pleased to see your recent column about furniture designs by Charles Rohlfs. But being from Buffalo, N.Y., I was disheartened that you said Rohlfs was a New York City furniture maker. He actually lived and worked in Buffalo.
A: Thanks for speaking up for Buffalo. Rohlfs (1853-1936) was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and studied design at the Cooper Union in Manhattan. But he moved his family to Buffalo in 1887, when he took a job with a stove manufacturer there. In 1897 he opened his own workshop in Buffalo and created his unique furniture designs for a decade.
Tip: If you get gum on your Oriental rug or carpet, freeze it with an ice cube in a plastic bag, then scrape it off with a plastic credit card.
Sign up for our weekly email, "Kovels Komments." It includes the latest news, tips and collector's questions and is free if you register on our website. Kovels.com provides lists of publications, clubs, appraisers, auction houses, people who sell parts or repair antiques and more. Kovels.com adds to the information in this column and helps you find useful sources needed by collectors.
Terry Kovel answers as many questions as possible through the column. By sending a letter with a question, you give full permission for use in the column or any other Kovel forum. Names, addresses or email addresses will not be published. We cannot guarantee the return of any photograph, but if a stamped envelope is included, we will try. The volume of mail makes personal answers or appraisals impossible. Write to Kovels, (Name of this newspaper), King Features Syndicate, 300 W. 57th St., New York, NY 10019.
Current prices are recorded from antiques shows, flea markets, sales and auctions throughout the United States. Prices vary in different locations because of local economic conditions.
Madame Alexander doll, Chatterbox, hard plastic and vinyl, pigtails, sleep eyes, head turns, talk button in front, battery-operated, 1961, 24 inches, $55.
Bermuda Triangle board game, made in Ireland, Milton Bradley, 1976, 20 x 12 inches, $60.
Cookie pail, Sunshine Biscuits of New York, red, white and blue cardboard, pictures little cookies in toy shapes, tin cover, handle, 1950s, 11 ounces, $70.
Cambridge Glass cake stand, Virginia pattern, rum well in center, 1940s, 8 x 11 inches, $200.
Cameo pin, diamond accent around woman's neck, carved flowers at left shoulder, dress draped across front, silver filigree and scrollwork, 1920s, 1 5/8 x 1 1/2 inches, $275.
Bellows, turtleback, painted long-tailed bird, black ground, brass nozzle, American, 19th century, 17 3/4 inches, $555.
Show towel, silk and wool on linen, potted flowers, peacocks and trees, 2 verses, 3 rows of fringe, "Catherine Derr," 1854, 60 x 17 3/4 inches, $705.
Hepplewhite card table, mahogany, poplar and chestnut, shaped top over banded inlay panels, tapered legs with string inlay, 1800-1815, 30 x 35 x 18 inches, $1,765.
Newcomb College pottery jar, lid, blue matte glaze, raised flowers, vines and leaves, marked, Anna Francis Simpson, 1919, 7 inches, $4,720.
Chippendale tall case clock, mahogany and pine, broken-arch pediment, floral rosettes, glass door, 8-day movement, signed John Fissler, Frederick Town (Md.), c. 1790, 102 1/2 inches, $4,995.
Keep up with changes in the collectibles world. Send for a free sample issue of our 12-page, full-color newsletter, "Kovels on Antiques and Collectibles," filled with prices, news, information and photos, plus major news about the world of collecting. To subscribe at a bargain $27 for 12 issues, write Kovels, P.O. Box 8534, Big Sandy, TX 75755; call 800-829-9158; or subscribe online at Kovelsonlinestore.com.
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(BPT) - Snow and ice affect more than 70 percent of the U.S. population, according to the Federal Highway Administration. Each winter the average driver in these areas will see more than five inches of snow on the roads. And when the snow is falling there are few things more comforting than the sight of snow plows and salt trucks making highways safe for commuters, shoppers and travelers.
In the Snow Belt, citizens expect roads to always be cleared of snow and ice, no matter how bad the storm, says Bret Hodne, public works director for West Des Moines, Iowa. To help meet those sky-high expectations, Hodne orders salt months before the first snowflake falls. His motto is "don't trust your climate," because if you plan for an average season it's bound to be a record-setting winter of snow and ice.
Snowfighters first began using salt in the 1930s for snow and ice control, but it wasn't until the 1960s that salt became widely adapted as one of the major weapons to keep winter roads safe. In an average Iowa winter, Hodne's department alone uses 4,000 tons of salt and keeps twice that amount in storage.
Salt works by lowering the freezing point of water, and when applied on already-frozen roadways (de-icing) it helps to melt the ice. When salt is applied before a freeze sets in (anti-icing) it helps prevent liquid water from becoming ice. This is why drivers will often see salt trucks out and about before the roads start to freeze.
Both methods give tires more traction with the pavement, keeping roads open and safe while protecting lives and commerce. How quickly salt melts frozen water depends upon a number of variables, including temperature, time and the rate of application. Fortunately, it is usually not necessary to melt all the snow and ice on a road. Merely destroying or preventing the bond between pavement and frozen water is a more efficient, economical and environmentally sensitive approach. In fact, salt is the single most effective and economical method for treating roadways.
According to the Federal Highway Administration, snowy, slushy or icy pavement accounts for more than 116,000 Americans injured and more than 1,300 killed on each year. In fact, 24 percent of all weather-related vehicle crashes occur under such wintry conditions. A study by Marquette University found that effective use of road salt reduced vehicle crashes by 88 percent, injuries by 85 percent and the cost of accidents by 85 percent.
Icy road conditions are not limited to northern states, however. Sudden and unexpected snow storm and freezing rain can affect southern states as well. In January 2011, such a snowstorm hit Atlanta covering roadways in a sheet of ice and shutting down routine business and traffic for five days. In response, Bill Shelton, road maintenance division manager of suburban Cobb County, has implemented a distribution system that gets salt from storage to roads as quickly as possible. Instead of storing salt and sand in just one location, Shelton has spread it out to five spots throughout the county for easier access to its 2,500 miles of roads.
Snow-fighters have several safety tips for winter drivers. The most important is if you can avoid driving, it is best to stay off the roads -- at least until the snow plows and salt trucks have had a chance to do their job. It is also best not to pass road-clearing trucks. Drivers will also want to make sure they have tires with good traction, cleared windows and headlights with properly working windshield wipers and anti-icing fluid in order to see and be seen, and to leave a good amount of space between their vehicle and the one in front. Finally, remember that taking your time and driving safely is more likely to get you to your destination. For more information please visit www.safewinterroads.org.
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Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE):
In 2011 there were a large number of cases of EEE seen in non-vaccinated horses in Northern Wisconsin. This disease is usually fatal in horses- with a 90% mortality rate! EEE is caused by a virus that infects the brain resulting in encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) and neurologic symptoms. This virus is transmitted via a mosquito bite. Birds, horses and also people can become infected. Migrating birds can readily spread the virus to new areas.
Fortunately, there is a vaccine available for horses. It is usually given in a combination vaccine that includes WEE (Western Equine Encephalitis), tetanus and West Nile Virus. WEE & West NileVirus are also spread by mosquitoes. In Wisconsin, we recommend annual vaccination in the spring- before the start of "mosquito season". If a horse hasn't been vaccinated previously, a series of two vaccines are recommended, given 3-4 weeks apart.
Call us at Fredonia Veterinary Clinic if you have questions on vaccination recommendations for your horses or would like to schedule an appointment/farm call.
For more information on EEE and the cases in Northern Wisconsin, click on EEE in Wisconsin.
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Who Invented Fireworks Article
Fourth of July for Kids
There are many different ways that the Fourth of July can be celebrated. Each year, families everywhere participate in some sort of activity to celebrate the Fourth of July. This year, if you are searching for a way to celebrate the Fourth of July, you should consider simply doing things that surround the enjoyment of your child. Here, you will find many suggestions that you can use to create a Fourth of July for kids. You can implement one of these suggestions this Fourth of July, or all of them!
One of the first ways that you can create a Fourth of July for kids is to encourage children to dress in the American colors. You may even allow children to purchase an outfit that reflects the American spirit. You can allow children to create an American hat, or other accessories that they can wear. You may choose to purchase small flags that they can wave as they walk around throughout the day. You may want to teach them what the different symbols and colors on the American flag represent and encourage them to teach others throughout the day of the Fourth of July.
A Fourth of July for kids can include teaching many patriotic songs like “Yankee Doodle”, and teaching the history of the song and why the lyrics are what they are. It is also a great idea to check out books from the library that tell the story of the Fourth of July. These books should be the appropriate grade level for the child that you are sharing it with. There are numerous books, for example, that teach about the Fourth of July for very small children so that they have a basic understanding of the events of the day and why we celebrate it.
If you want to celebrate a Fourth of July for kids, you should consider creating many arts and crafts that surround the holiday. You may want to create a firework display from paper, and American flag from fabric or poster board, and similar other things. There are many things that you can create using various items around the house that can teach children about the Fourth of July. This type of tactile learning allows many children to comprehend lessons more easily.
If you are going to host a Fourth of July party, you should allow your child to decorate for the event using the lessons that they have learned regarding this holiday. This can prove to be a lot of fun for the child and the people who attend the event will enjoy the creativity of the child. You may also want to allow the child to create small flags or a variety of other items to give to the guests as a thank you for coming to the Fourth of July party.
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The characteristics of plants give us clues as to how some plants are similar to and different from others. Classification of plant species depends upon common and unique features that are used to identify plants by their characteristics. Scientists and plant experts have collected data on numerous plant species from studying the plants in their natural habitats and recording information about their characteristics in scientific literature and databases for future reference.
What Are the Plant's Features?
Plant features include the color, shape, size and orientation of the plant's leaves on the stem and the color of its stem, branches and/or trunk. Is the plant evergreen, or do its leaves change color in the fall? Whether the plant's leaves fall or not identifies the plant as deciduous or evergreen.
Plants are also identified by the shape and color of their fruits and the seeds they contain. Fruit and seed colors include black, brown, green, orange, yellow, red and white.
How Does the Plant Grow and Change?
Plant types are identified by their active growth seasons, which vary at different times of the year and in different parts of the world. Some actively grow during the spring and summer, while others grow during the winter months.
The height of the plant is an identifying characteristic that defines its variety within a species. Some plants grow to a minimum height in dry soils but to a towering height in moist soil conditions.
What Are Its Growth Requirements?
The types of soil and soil conditions that support a plant's growth are identifying characteristics that define where a plant will and will not grow. Soil types include varying degrees and combinations of sand, loam, silt and clay. Soil pH levels and levels of potassium, phosphorus, nitrogen and salt are also characteristics that help to identify a plant.
How Does The Plant Reproduce?
Plants are identified by their reproduction characteristics. Plants naturally reproduce by seed, through the spreading of their roots or through their bulb or corm production. Some plants are propagated through cuttings as well.
Flowering plants bloom before the formation of their fruits and seeds. Plants are identified by the shapes of their flowers and their color, whether white, yellow, orange, red, purple, brown, green or blue. Plant identification includes the times when the plants are in full bloom and for how long. The fruiting characteristics of plants--the season when the fruits form, their shape, size, color and whether the fruit is edible or poisonous---describe and identify plants.
Observe and make notes about your plant. Take measurements of its leaves, its height and spread, the circumference of its base or trunk, and describe the plant's colors and distinguishing features. Compare your plant specimens to the records found in plant identification resource materials. These include reference books and online databases.
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Who knew GCSE revision involved the use of so many acronyms? This week Pauline Hills, an English teacher and author of our Romeo and Juliet titles, talks about the importance of PAF for GCSE English revision.
PAF stands for purpose, audience and format. That’s why something is written, who it’s written for and how it’s written.
For months your teacher will have been discussing the terms purpose, audience and format with you, encouraging you to write for yourself in different formats such as letters, speeches or newspaper reports and teaching you the conventions of these formats. You will be familiar with the different purposes for writing through the writing triplets: argue, persuade advise; inform, explain, describe; analyse, review, comment; and explore, imagine, entertain and you’ll have had the chance to write for these purposes – you may even have produced coursework for one of these purposes.
You’ll have been taught to think about your audience – the person or people you are writing for – and whether it’s appropriate to adopt a formal or informal tone for your piece. For example, you wouldn’t speak to the headmaster in quite the same way that you’d speak to your best friends, would you? So, it’s easy to see why it’s important to take your audience into consideration when you’re planning your writing.
Having practised all of these things in class, in the English exam you’ll get to apply them not only in the writing tasks, but in the reading tasks as well. An informed response to a reading task will show that you understand the writer’s purpose and how they achieve that purpose, taking the audience into consideration within the conventions of the format they are using.
So, when you’re planning your English revision remember PAF – purpose, audience and format.
Image: Felipe Trucco @ Flickr:cc
| 3.606855 |
Scientists at Cancer Research UK’s London Research Institute (LRI) and the Technical University of Denmark have developed an RNAi-based approach to determine paclitaxel response. Focusing on estrogen-receptor (ER)/progesterone-receptor (PR)/human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2; ERBB2)-negative (triple-negative) disease, they sequentially deleted 829 genes involved in cells’ response to the chemotherapy to see which missing or faulty genes would prevent the drug from working.
Their results identified six genes which, if faulty, impacted on the effectiveness of the drug in cancer cells in vitro. The team then confirmed that the same six genes in patients’ breast cancer cells could be used to predict which individuals would derive the most benefit from paclitaxel.
“Our research shows it is now possible to rapidly pinpoint genes that prevent cancer cells from being destroyed by anticancer drugs and use these same genes to predict which patients will benefit from specific types of treatment,” states Charles Swanton, M.D., head of translational cancer therapeutics at the LRI. “Now the challenge is to apply these methods to other drugs in cancer medicine and to help identify new drugs within clinical trials that might benefit patients who are predicted to be unresponsive to treatment.”
Details appear in The Lancet Oncology in a paper titled “Assessment of an RNA interference screen-derived mitotic and ceramide pathway metagene as a predictor of response to neoadjuvant paclitaxel for primary triple-negative breast cancer: a retrospective analysis of five clinical trials.”
| 3.029021 |
Most environmental goods and services, such as clean air and water, and
healthy fish and wildlife populations, are not traded in markets. Their economic
value -how much people would be willing to
pay for them- is not revealed in market prices. The only option for assigning
monetary values to them is to rely on non-market valuation methods.
Without these value estimates, these resources may be implicitly undervalued
and decisions regarding their use and stewardship may not accurately reflect
their true value to society.
Source: GreenFacts, based on
A fundamental distinction in economics is between market and non-market goods
and services. Goods and Services in a free market economy are sold for prices
that reflect a balance between the costs of production and what people are
willing to pay.
Some environmental goods and services, such as fish and seaweed, are traded in
markets, thus their value can be directly
observed. Conversely, a non-market good or service is something that is not
bought or sold directly. Therefore, a non-market good does not have an
observable monetary value. Examples of this include beach visits, wildlife
viewing, or snorkeling at a coral reef.
Intrinsic value - Value
Español: Servicios no mercantiles de los ecosistemas
Français: Valeur non marchande
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