Dataset Viewer
text
stringlengths 199
648k
| id
stringlengths 47
47
| dump
stringclasses 1
value | url
stringlengths 14
419
| file_path
stringlengths 139
140
| language
stringclasses 1
value | language_score
float64 0.65
1
| token_count
int64 50
235k
| score
float64 2.52
5.34
| int_score
int64 3
5
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
UNECE-UNFPA Workshop on Censuses Using Registers
NOTE: The UNECE launched a new wiki site on population and housing censuses. The Wiki hosts a table presenting information and material related to the population and housing censuses of the 2010 round in UNECE member countries. This includes: type of census, reference date, census questionnaires used, technical papers, reports, and links to the national census websites. More content and interactive services for registered users will be added in the future to the UNECE Census Wiki, also in connection with the preparatory work for the 2020 round of censuses and the revision of the CES Recommendations.
Agenda and tentative timetable (18 May)
Report of the Workshop
Training workshop on censuses using registers in Geneva 21 May 2012
Why register-based statistics?
Definitions of basic concepts
Individual based statistics and register development
Overview of Approaches to Censuses Using Registers
Возможность использования регистров при переписи населения и жилья 2014 года
Possible Use of Registers for Census in Croatia
Census and Registers in Serbia
Establishing a register-based statistical system
The Dutch Virtual Census based on registers and already existing surveys | <urn:uuid:d87ec096-daa3-4f23-9272-b5b5d7f4c7f4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.unece.org/index.php?id=29178&type=111 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400031.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00047-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.761527 | 315 | 3.046875 | 3 |
People who have diabetes and psychiatric symptoms in addition to mild cognitive impairment are significantly more likely to develop dementia, new research shows.
Mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a state between normal ageing and dementia, affects 19 per cent of people aged 65 and over.
Around 46 per cent of people with MCI go on to develop dementia within three years, compared with 3 per cent of the general population.
The study, led by researchers at UCL and published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, reviewed data from 62 separate studies following a total of 15,950 people diagnosed with MCI.
It found those with diabetes were 65 per cent more likely and those with psychiatric symptoms, such as depression, were twice as likely to develop dementia.
“Lifestyle changes to improve diet and mood might help people with MCI to avoid dementia, and bring many other health benefits,” said lead author Dr Claudia Cooper.
“This doesn’t necessarily mean that addressing diabetes, psychiatric symptoms and diet will reduce an individual’s risk, but our review provides the best evidence to date about what might help.”
It is well established that a Mediterranean diet rich in fruit, vegetables, oily fish, poultry and olive oil can help protect against Type 2 diabetes.
It is recommended by the Alzheimer’s Society charity to help prevent dementia, along with staying socially and physically active.
With a higher proportion of unsaturated to saturated fats and largely unprocessed foods it can help people with diabetes control their blood sugar levels. | <urn:uuid:6ff16265-1340-4274-81f0-8038a230ebb1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/mediterranean-diet-could-help-beat-dementia-finds-ucl-study-10062634.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392069.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00115-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955742 | 314 | 3.234375 | 3 |
Caravaggio and the Painters of the North
From 21 June to 18 September 2016
Gerard ter Borch specialised in genre painting and portraiture despite his training as a landscape painter in Haarlem with Pieter Molijn in 1634. As a portraitist Ter Borch worked in small formats, depicting his clients full-length, bust-length or three-quarters. He first used this format, which he appears to have preferred, in the 1640s when he executed one of his most famous works, the Portrait of Helena van der Schalcke, daughter of a preacher, now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. It deploys certain elements that would become widespread in Ter Borch’s later portraiture such as the simple setting, which in that work consists of a plain background and in other portraits comprises only a few elements of furniture including a table and chair. This austerity relates to the type of sitters depicted, who were members of a middle class that opted for a relatively simple manner of dress and lifestyle. Ter Borch’s painstaking and precise technique is evident in these works in which he carefully modelled the hands and the textiles, both delicately illuminated. The artist’s preference for this format was fully consolidated in 1648 when he painted one of the few scenes of contemporary history to be found in Dutch art: the copper panel of The Swearing of the Ratification of the Treaty of Munster (National Gallery, London). On a small panel, Ter Borch included around 70 figures standing and full-length who form a semi-circle around a table at which the leading dignitaries are seated.
The present pair of portraits is dated to 1652, two years prior to the artist’s move to Deventer and after a period in which he is documented in Delft. Using rectangular shaped panels, Ter Borch painted ovals in dark, neutral tones against which the figures stand out. This was a format that he used in the 1640s and 1650s for an important group of portraits that include husband and wife pairs. When he studied these two panels, Gudlaugsson dated them to around 1640 on stylistic grounds. He also noted various pentimenti in the collars of both figures and in the woman’s coif and considered that this indicated that Ter Borch subsequently retouched the paintings, thus explaining the date of 1652 in the background of the male portrait. He suggested that this subsequent alteration may have been due to the artist’s desire to bring the sitter’s clothes into line with fashion at the time. Ivan Gaskell and Emil Bosshard carefully studied these areas and rejected the idea of subsequent re-painting. They detected a different technique in the areas singled out by Gudlaugsson as well as natural wear of the pictorial materials used. | <urn:uuid:97fb64e7-2fda-48cf-851b-4787c0dee68c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.museothyssen.org/en/thyssen/ficha_obra/122 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00155-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970405 | 595 | 2.90625 | 3 |
March is National Nutrition Month!
Most of us know March for basketball, corned beef and cabbage, and the official start of spring, but did you know that it’s also National Nutrition Month.® This nutrition education and informational campaign is sponsored by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
In recognition of National Nutrition Month®, here are a few highlights of some of the work around nutrition and health going on at Mid-Ohio Foodbank!
Over the past several years, the Foodbank has radically increased efforts to distribute more fresh foods. In 2012, we were able to distribute about 16.1 million pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables – 35% of our total distribution. If you add in meat, dairy, etc., about half of what we distributed last year was fresh! Our many fresh food distribution programs, as well as the hard work of our partner agencies, allowed many of our hungry neighbors were able to access healthier, more nutritious foods than they would have been able to otherwise.
In addition to providing fresh, healthy foods, the Foodbank has been providing cooking and nutrition education classes. Dr. Amy Headings, Director of Nutrition, has piloted two classes in the past year: a Crock Pot cooking class, and Pantry Panic!, a class which helps participants learn how to develop recipes from items that they have at home and foods they might receive at a food pantry. Approximately 50 people have attended the Crock Pot classes, and the inaugural Pantry Panic class had approximately 10 participants. During March, we will be hosting participants from Gladden for another session of Pantry Panic, and are working with our partners in Fairfield County to coordinate another series of Crock Pot cooking classes.
According to surveys taken before and after the class, participants who completed the Crock Pot cooking class increased their fruit and vegetable consumption by over ½ serving each day – a meaningful step toward making half of our plate fruits and vegetables! They also showed a statistically significant increase in their confidence in cooking from basic ingredients, such as fresh meat and vegetables, as opposed to prepackaged meals.
We’ve also been working with The Ohio State University on diabetes initiatives, thanks to the grant from Bristol Myers-Squibb awarded in 2011.
As we grow into our new vision and mission, we’ll be doing a lot more to focus on nutrition and wellness – and National Nutrition Month® is a great time to recognize those efforts! | <urn:uuid:c426e594-6120-4209-bf9d-6c7deea6b095> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.midohiofoodbank.org/nnm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00095-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973466 | 496 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Designer Baby: refers to a baby whose genetic makeup has been artificially selected by genetic engineering combined with In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) to ensure the presence or absence of particular genes or characteristics This is called Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD).
Many of us may wonder what a Designer baby is and better yet what does it do? Well scientifically speaking a designer baby is a fetus which was designed to have particular genes or characteristics. My definition though? It is a new scientific development that is altering natural conception and the human cycle.
Designer babies are done through the process of selecting a child’s genes for medical and cosmetic characteristics. This new scientific development has both its negative and positive impact to humanity. However, it is being used in such a way which I feel is getting out of hand for we cannot change the natural balance of things.
“Genetic screening of human embryos may eventually eradicate inherited diseases ranging from breast cancer to cystic fibrosis.”
Reflection in the mirror-
What is exactly good about In Virto Ferilization?
Well for starters, it has been used for saving lives which is definitely good. There are such examples which demonstrate how science can be beneficial for humanity. IVF can be used to select babies without genetic defect which can help survival of the baby increase as well as the mother. Also, IVF can be used so a baby can be perfectly selected to donate to ensure and sustain the life of another. Since Doctors can scan the embryos for genetic makeup, there is a chance of selecting a healthy baby, which is a very beneficial to families since genetic diseases and certain traits can be discarded of. Therefore, IVF can be seen with a shining light as it can benefit humans medically.
How is In Virto Fertlization bad?
Well, if it is used for cosmetic reasons, then things are getting out of hand. In today’s world, society brings importance to physical appearance which could be the reason that cosmetic processes are being used to make the ideal child. However, I believe playing with nature in such a way is unethical and immoral. Using science to alter a child’s physical appearance for cosmetic reasons rather than medical reasons is losing value to the gift of life. Life is precious and should be thanked for, however with IVF I feel that life is being taken for granted and loses its values as children are modified- In a way I feel this can be seen as an un-human thing to do. How is it that people can now chose what they want in a child? I think this its very pathetic because at the end the child needs a loving family, environment and to know they are unique and valuable. With IVF, it further shows that acceptance in society is dependant on physical character tics, and not on the person themselves.
So what to do?
Honestly, I feel this is a very technologically advanced technique which can positively affect humanity if used in the right way.
-"Genetic Screening of Embryos | IVF | Conception." Essential Baby: Parenting Information For Mothers, Fathers, Parents & Parents to Be | Essentialbaby.com.au. Web. 24 Nov. 2010. <http://www.essentialbaby.com.au/conception/ivf/designing-principles-at-birth-of-a-new-era-20091123-itj3.html>.
-Johnson, By Priya. "Pros and Cons of Designer Babies." Buzzle Web Portal: Intelligent Life on the Web. Web. 24 Nov. 2010. <http://www.buzzle.com/articles/pros-and-cons-of-designer-babies.html>.
-"What Is a Designer Baby?" Bionet - New Discoveries in Life Sciences - Explore the Science and Debate the Issues. Web. 24 Nov. 2010. <http://www.bionetonline.org/english/content/db_cont1.htm>.
Blogs I commented on: | <urn:uuid:6209e7b5-a46c-4544-aca2-4aff9c66b91a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://biologyislyfe.blogspot.co.il/2010/11/bio-engineered-kids.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00151-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933519 | 838 | 2.546875 | 3 |
As Tony Abbott prepares to wipe out the remaining institutions supporting the deployment of renewable energy technologies in Australia, the International Energy Association has urged countries to act quickly in the opposite direction, and seek to reverse the respective share of fossil fuels and renewable energy sources by 2050.
In its biannual Energy Technology Perspective report, the traditionally conservative IEA (of which Australia is a member) says the energy mix for the world’s electricity supply needs to be flipped within a few decades, from 68 per cent fossil fuels now to at least 65 per cent renewables by 2050.
And it argues that action is needed now,or it will get more costly. Already, the delays in action in the last few years has increased the bill to $44 trillion from $36 trillion. While that sounds like a big number, the IEA says it is a small percentage of globa GDP over the next three decades, and would be more than offset by $115 trillion in fuel savings.
Interestingly,the IEA is recommending countries adopt the very policies that the Abbott government is now trying to stop through the closure of the Clean Energy Finance Corp, the defunding of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, and the likely reduction in the renewable energy target.
The IEA specifically says that support for policies such as loan guarantees, financing, and first of kind demonstration projects is needed to alleviate the risk for investors. “Without this support, these projects have the potential to be severely delayed or may not be developed,” it notes. These are exactly the sort of projects that would be supported by the CEFC and ARENA.
It says this is needed to address climate change. On a business as usual scenario, the world is heading towards catastrophic average global temperature increases of 6C. Even with the modest policies foreshadowed by government, it is still heading for around 4C.
“The longer we wait, the more expensive it becomes to transform our energy system,” IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven said.
“A radical change of course at the global level is long overdue. Growing use of coal globally is overshadowing progress in renewable energy deployment, and the emissions intensity of the electricity system has not changed in 20 years despite some progress in some regions.”
In Australia, coal fired generation has actually fallen significantly in recent years, but all forecasts are now that this will reverse in coming years because of the policy making decisions by the Abbott government, including the repeal of the carbon price, the anticipated diluting of the renewable energy target, and the dumping of other clean energy supporting institutions and mechanisms.
It is, perhaps, instructive that the Abbott government policies are being guided by advisors – such as Maurice Newman and Dick Warburton, and the Institute of Public Affairs – who do not accept the science of climate change and see no need to act.
Or, in the case of Treasurer Joe Hockey, they see wind farms as “utterly offensive”, in the case of industry minister ian Macfarlane policy must be structured to extract “every molecule” of gas, and in the case of Queensland conservative premier Campbell Newman, the economy must be centred around the extraction of coal.
The IEA makes it clear that the latter is untenable, and even gas fired generation will need to be phased out – or cleaned up with carbon capture and storage technology – by 2025 as its role as a transitional fuel begins to wind down.
Its interesting to note that in this graph, the two biggest contributions to emissions reductions to meet the 2DS scenario are energy efficiency measures (33 per cent) and renewables (34 per cent). CCS (13 per cent) and nuclear (7 per cent) have relatively minor roles to play, and the IEA notes that the technology hurdles, and the costs, may impede the deployment of one or both.
RenewEconomy Free Daily Newsletter | <urn:uuid:e8cc9d98-4fd5-46d8-93da-64376cf43e5e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/iea-says-fossil-fuels-must-be-replaced-by-renewables-46853 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397795.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00036-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948742 | 798 | 2.6875 | 3 |
- Posted April 11, 2014 by
This iReport is part of an assignment:
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
Flight MH 370
The range of 2 miles for the TPL is probably for a pinger and TPL in a homogenous water body. The sound would attenuate according to the square of the distance from the source. With inhomogeneous water characteristics the wavefront may become linear (not circular) and travel much further without major loss of intensity. Such phenomena are known as thermoclines.
Let me know if you would like some graphics. If you find my comments interesting I suggest that you run them past people involved in deploying underwater instrumentation (current meters). Woods Hole would be the perfect place to start. | <urn:uuid:8ed69b63-e2d6-4295-ba38-098067bd0c0e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1118781?ref=feeds/latest | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408828.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00123-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947291 | 150 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Big Data gets bigger and bigger every day. But while a great deal more data is being generated and captured today than ever before, a lot of it is repetitive, erroneous, or just banal. Yes, it's data, but is it information? If I tweet that I'll be at the Starbucks on 10th Street in 30 minutes, and one of my friends re-tweets me, the re-tweet doubles the data, but does it really double the information? A high-definition TV signal transmits five times the data of a standard TV signal, but does it convey five times the information?
In information theory, "entropy" is the term used to describe how much actual information there is in any given set of data. It's a term borrowed from physics, where entropy is a quantifiable value analogous to the amount of randomness in a system. The Second Law of Thermodynamics famously states that entropy (that is, randomness) always increases. Mix a cup of hot water with a cup of cold water, and the trillions of individual hot and cold H2O molecules will jumble together more and more randomly until the result is lukewarm water. But mix two cups of lukewarm water together and these same trillions of molecules will never randomly jumble together in such a way as to make half the water hot and half of it cold. Entropy explains why there's no such thing as a perpetual-motion machine, and why time never runs backward, only forward.
Information entropy is mathematically similar, but rather than randomness it describes the unpredictability of information. Unpredictable information contains high entropy. The outcome of a coin toss, for instance, is information that has high entropy because it's impossible to predict in advance. On the other hand, when you see the letters F-a-s-t C-o-m-p-a-n-_ that last letter is not so hard to predict, right? This means the information conveyed by the last letter has low entropy. Similarly, the information in my original tweet about going to Starbucks is more entropic than the information in my friend's re-tweet, and a standard television broadcast is more entropic than a high-definition re-run of the same program.
Whether you ever consciously thought about it or not, you yourself almost certainly find information entropy highly useful. Think about the last time you entered a term in a search engine to try to find something either online or somewhere on your hard drive, for example. In order to find just the right information or reference, you probably entered the most unique (i.e., least predictable) description you could think of. You may not have known what the concept was called, but you were using information entropy to make your search more efficient.
Information entropy is how we learn new things and gain new perspectives. In a genuinely fascinating book, The Most Human Human, Brian Christian suggests that "we gain the most insight on a question when we take it to the friend, colleague, or mentor of whose reaction and response we're least certain." Moreover, he says, "to gain the most insight into a person, we should ask the question of whose answer we're least certain." In each of these cases, we would be seeking out high-entropy information in order to learn new things at a faster, more efficient rate. Don't tell us something we already know. Tell us something we don't know.
Entropic information may be an important clue to what it means to be conscious in the first place. Our brains are always trying to predict events and anticipate what's about to happen. So consciousness itself may be the result of our brain's effort simply to reduce the information entropy that confronts us. To predict our environment from one moment to the next. Information entropy is one reason weak ties in a social network are more useful in many contexts than close ties are, and it's also the secret sauce in creativity itself. To generate more new ideas, novel concepts, or innovations, expose yourself to high-entropy information—unusual perspectives, unanticipated stories, out-of-context ideas.
In our book Extreme Trust, Martha Rogers and I argue that one important business strategy for dealing with the growing proliferation of data and information is evidence-based management with managers using data to inform their judgments, rather than using their judgments to select the right data. And a couple of months ago I suggested in this space that putting evidence-based management into practice, whether you are managing a baseball team or bidding for offshore oil leases, is a lot harder than it looks. But extracting the right insights and knowledge from data requires more than simply relying on numbers. To get the most valuable information you also need to seek out anomalies. To find unusual things. To dig carefully for entropy.
The problem is that while high-entropy information may generate the most new knowledge and insight, we all have a natural aversion to unpredictability. As human beings we are biased to prefer the routine and familiar, as opposed to the new and different. We feel safer when we know what's going to happen next and we are simply more comfortable talking to people whose views we share. Seeking out high-entropy information may be a mind-expanding activity, in other words, but it still feels unnatural, and you can improve with practice. To get more comfortable with it, try a few exercises like these:
- Play a game with someone else to find two properly spelled English words that, when searched together on Google or Bing, return the fewest results.
- Pick a point of view you vehemently disagree with, and argue in favor of it instead. Be convincing.
- Read a magazine you would never ordinarily have the least interest in.
- At a restaurant, order a food you normally can't stand, and eat it.
- Put your clothes on in a different order every day (i.e., shirt first one day, socks first the next, right then left instead of left then right, and so forth).
- At a party, find the person you have least in common with and spend at least an hour in conversation with them.
[Image: Flickr user Jane Rahman] | <urn:uuid:384df27c-efbf-4332-8500-9c1754414075> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.fastcompany.com/1843201/entropy-can-be-good-you | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397748.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00023-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938178 | 1,273 | 2.890625 | 3 |
When [Andrei] first got his Raspberry Pi he wanted to make it a standalone computer right away. This means the normal input devices like a mouse and keyboard, but also some type of display. To avoid waiting for shipping he ended up using a cheap vehicle backup camera screen from the local big box store. It worked great, and recently he decided he would try to convert it to run off of 5V power to simplify his setup. While snooping around inside the device he discovered an unused resistive touch overlay and figured out how to get it to work.
What tipped him off is the small four-conductor connector which wasn’t hooked up to anything. He carefully soldered wires onto the flexible circuit traces, then generously covered them in hot glue to help prevent movement from breaking the rigid connection. To get this working you need to measure the resistance between the conductors. Most of the time we figure the RPi GPIO header can be used directly, but for this task an intermediary is necessary. [Andrei] went with a small Arduino clone board. A bit of trial and error was all it took to get the connections right and to iron out the code which translates the values into coordinates.
[Chris] just posted his latest tutorial which shows you how to read position data from a resistive touchscreen. These devices are fairly simple, and since they’re used in a lot of consumer electronics you can pick one up for a few bucks. This looks like it is overstock for an old Palm device.
The interface is simple, there’s just four conductors on the tab at the top of the overlay. But connecting to these is a bit of an issue since you can’t really solder directly to them. [Chris] ended up using scotch-tape to hold wires in place, with a paperclip to keep them presses against the conductors. Those conductors are used in pairs, with a positive and negative lead for the X and Y axis. To take a measurement you use I/O pins to connect voltage and ground, then read the voltage that makes it to the gound side using an ADC. This works because the point that’s being pressed on the screen acts as a variable resistor for the circuit. Data for the two axes must be read in separate operations so that the positive voltages don’t interfere with each other.
The nice thing is that once you’ve got it working with a small screen it is easily scaled up. In fact, the 23″ touchscreen used on this Android hack is just another 4-wire resistive device.
You can see a video demonstration of [Chris’] test rig embedded after the break.
Continue reading “The basics of reading data from resistive touchscreens”
If you’re looking to build a really big Android tablet the trick is not to start from scratch. [Peter] pulled off a 23″ Android Tablet hack using a collection of easily acquired parts, leaving the hard work up to hardware that was designed to do it.
He didn’t really build a tablet, as much as he built a big touch-screen add-on for one. He already had a couple of inexpensive tablets on hand to play around with. One of them has an HDMI out port, which let him easily push the display onto a 23″ monitor. He knew the tablet was a 4-wire resistive touchscreen, but he didn’t know if other touchscreens with the same number of connectors and be directly swapped and still work. To test this, he cracked open a second tablet device and connected its touchscreen to the first one’s hardware. When he was met with success it was time to source a couple of 23″ touchscreen overlays to test with the external monitor. As you can see in the clip after the break, it works like a charm!
[Peter] was inspired to write about his experiences after seeing the 23″ Android tablet video in our recent links post.
Continue reading “How to build a 23″ Android tablet”
[Jane] wrote in to let us know about the touch-based synthesizer she and her classmates just built. They call it the ToneMatrix Touch, as it was inspired by a flash application called ToneMatrix. We’re familiar with that application as it’s been the inspiration for other physical builds as well.
A resistive touch screen in the surface glass of the device provides the ability to interact by tapping the cells you wish to turn on or off. Below the glass is a grid of LEDs which represent sound bits in the looping synthesizer track. Fifteen shift registers drive the LED matrix, with the entire system controlled by an ATmega644 microcontroller. Although the control scheme is very straight forward, the jumper wires used to connect the matrix to the shift registers make for a ratsnest of wireporn that has been hidden away inside the case. Check out the demonstration video after the break to see what this looks like and sounds like when in use.
Continue reading “Touch-based synthesizer is a wiring nightmare”
This collection of touch sensor information should be of interest to anyone who liked the simple touch sensor post from Thursday. That was a resistive touch sensor and is covered in detail along with AC hum sensors that trigger based on induced current from power lines around you, and capacitive touch switches like we’ve seen in past hacks. Each different concept is discussed and clearly illustrated like the slide above. [Giorgos Lazaridis] has also put together individual posts that build and demonstrate the circuits. We’ve embedded his resistive sensor demo video after the break and linked to all three example circuits.
Continue reading “Touch sensors: overview, theory, and construction”
We never thought about it before, but having the controls on the bottom of a clock is a bit of an inconvenience. [Alex Whittemore] mutes the LEDs on his clock each night and after a while, decided he should make the mute button into a touch strip on the case. You’ll remember that the Bulbdial clock uses colored LEDs to create the effect of a sun-dial, casting colored shadows for each hand of the clock. It makes sense that this would put off a pretty good amount of light at night. [Alex’s] original thought was to use a capacitive touch sensor but complexity and cost were in his way. What he ended up with is a resistive touch switch based off of two metal strips. He used metal repair tape but suggests copper foil as he was unable to solder to tape. When your finger touches the two strips it completes the circuit for the base of a transistor, which in turn grounds the mute button on the clock. Cheap, simple, and illustrated in the video after the break.
Continue reading “Making the Bulbdial clock touch sensitive” | <urn:uuid:61ebcfed-9927-43c5-bb53-3a655f01bfe9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://hackaday.com/tag/resistive/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398873.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00101-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959753 | 1,425 | 2.90625 | 3 |
|Born||Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez
June 6, 1599
|Died||Aug. 6, 1660 (at age 61)
|Works||View Complete Works|
Diego Velázquez was a notable Spanish artist who achieved notoriety and fame in the seventeenth century. Born in 1599 in Seville, he lived and painted until his death in 1660 at the age of sixty one. He was the eldest of six siblings, five brothers and one sister, although little to nothing is known about them. Diego’s father, Juan Rodriguez de Silva had high hopes for his eldest son and apprenticed him as a child to Francisco de Herrera the Elder. Not long after this, Juan found another master with more prestigious contacts and at age twelve transferred his son’s apprenticeship to Francisco Pacheco.
Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) began his apprenticeship with Francisco Pacheco in 1611 and from this time onwards, his successful career as an artist was set in motion. Firstly, Francisco Pacheco had influential contacts in the Spanish royal court which was to have more value to Diego, than his teacher’s modest artistic talent. In addition, his place of work was a regular meeting place for leading Seville intellectuals, including artists, poets, and various scholars. Frequent discussion centered on artists such as Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, and Caravaggio, while the theory of art was, as one would expect, a central topic of discussion.
When Velázquez was just eighteen years of age, a significant milestone in his life occurred. After applying to the Painter’s Guild of St. Luke, he was accepted in 1617 and marked the beginning of his independent career as an artist. His membership in the guild allowed him to establish his own workshop, complete with assistants. More importantly, it allowed him to accept commission from the Holy Church, the major commissioner of significant artistic works at the time. The other significant event for Velázquez in his eighteenth year, was that he married the daughter of his teacher, Juana Pacheco.
His personal life was not as successful as his professional life because over the course of the following three years, he had two daughters, but only Francisca survived. The social contacts which were readily available via Juana and her father though, ensured the survival of his professional artistic career.
Between 1617 and 1822, Diego painted his first portraits and religious works. He also indulged in a common genre of the time known as bodegones, which in essence were tavern and kitchen scenes in which drink and various food items were the focal items. Significant works from this period included Three Men at Table, Old Woman Frying Eggs and the The Waterseller in Seville, while the religious works Mother Jeronima de la Fuete and the Adoration of the Magi were considered his more significant works. It is also thought that the main characters in the Adoration of the Magi are portraits of himself and his family, that is to say, Diego is the young king, his father-in-law is the old king while the Virgin Mary is his wife.
1622 – 1629
This was a period in which Velázquez experienced some growth as a painter due to his leaving Seville and visiting Madrid and Toledo. During this period he was able to see many art treasures as well as establish useful artistic contacts. He was influenced by the works of El Greco, Juan Sanchez Cotan, and Pedro de Orrente during this time, and in 1623, received his first court commission when Prime Minister Count-Duke of Olivares invited him to paint the portrait of King Philip IV. The portrait was immensely successful and led to his permanent appointment as court painter. He also enjoyed the privilege of being the only artist and painter allowed to paint the king.
Following this success, in 1628 he received a visit from the renowned artist, Rubens, while he was visiting the court at Madrid. Velázquez and Rubens spent time together while Rubens was working and this led into the next significant period of artistic influence for Velázquez. It was Rubens who invited him to visit Italy, and so began another period of development in his career.
Velázquez made his first visit to Italy in 1629. He went to Genoa and Venice where he saw the work of Titian, who he had admired since the days of his apprenticeship in Seville. His art was significantly influenced by Titian, more so than any other artist he was exposed to at this time. He also visited Florence and Rome, where the works of many masters was available for him to study. He stayed in Rome for almost a year, where he copied the masters, as well as embarking on some works of his own. He painted The Forge of Vulcan and Joseph’s Bloody Coat Brought To Jacob.
The Surrender Of Breda
Back in Madrid, Velázquez continued in the employment of the Spanish Court. By 1634, he was hard at work on the artistic side of the decorations for the Buen Retino palace. The Surrender Of Breda was one of these works and is best described as cyclic work comprising twelve battle scenes, each scene painted by a different painter. The fortress of Breda is significant in Spanish history as it was the location of a victory effected by Spinola, a famous Spanish general, after a siege at Breda which had lasted for twelve months. Velasquez painted the scene of the ceremonious handing over of the keys to the fortress of Breda. This painting has been described as a superlative historical piece of work, the best in Western Europe.
Promotion At The Spanish Court
Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) produced some of his best work between 1636 and 1649 and it was during this time that he was made Assistant to the Wardrobe and then Chamberlain of the King’s private chambers. He was also made an assistant overseeing royal building projects. During this period, he painted The Fable Of Aranchne and Venus At Her Mirror.
Velázquez visited Rome again in 1649 where he painted his famous portrait of Pope Innocent X as well as a variety of other paintings. When he returned to Madrid his patron the King made him Supreme Court Marshal and the appointment enabled him to expand his art workshop. He also took on many assistants and pupils, who unfortunately were not of the same artistic caliber as Velázquez.
His last major work was a multiple portrait of the Spanish Royal Family, called Las Meninas. The Infant Margarita is the main figure, running into Diego’s studio and followed by a procession of attendants, while the images of the king and queen appear as reflections in a background mirror, where a painting by Rubens and one by Jordaens can also be seen. It is unique in its conception and execution. Diego Velázquez died in Madrid, in the palace where he spent so much of his time, in August 1660. | <urn:uuid:408a7d12-c607-4ff5-96c1-9c7db5c66cd2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://totallyhistory.com/diego-velazquez/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00113-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988256 | 1,481 | 3.203125 | 3 |
Waste Management in Horticulture—The Global Perspective
Anthony (Tony) G. Biggs
Waste management could easily be the most significant issue confronting world horticulture by the year 2000. Some countries are already addressing the problems of pollution of waterways, leaching of nutrients, and recycling of packaging materials, but there will be increasing pressures for horticulturists to manage all the waste from production systems.
Society is demanding that the responsibility for disposing of waste must lie with those who create it and that waste products must not be dumped into the environment.
Words which are sometimes interchangeable with "waste" include "refuse","superfluous", "rejected", and "worn out". Waste products can be defined as "materials produced or used in a process, that are discarded during or on the completion of that process."
This paper reviews some of the horticultural waste problems around the world and indicates strategies in use or being developed to address the problems.
ISHS members & pay-per-view
(PDF 356343 bytes)
IPPS membership administration
ISHS membership administration | <urn:uuid:f0d54fc2-8aba-4455-8e17-fceeb0b86813> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.pubhort.org/ipps/44/1.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397842.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00161-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917746 | 228 | 3.03125 | 3 |
This part of John Draper’s presentation is about the various methods of phone phreaking as one of the early manifestations of hacking into systems.
And that’s why they can do what they can do. They were able to dial a number, and just by listening they were able to hear the little multi-frequency tones in the background, so faint that the normal person can’t hear it. They figured out that there had to be a way to do that. So, after doing a little bit of social engineering at the telephone company office they would have the ability to figure out what those frequencies were.
And then they associated those frequencies with keys on the organ. And then, to dial a number they simply played two notes at a time in different combinations to make the number. And this is how the cost of phone calls had gone way, way down.
Back in the day, to make a long-distance they used to advertise: “Make a 3-minute call for $1”, in the US. And that was a big thing the AT&T kind of bragged about. So, calls were typically around 30 cents/minute back in the day. And now, you know, a few cents a minute to make a phone call is what you can do. So, you know, this is amazing how the cost of calls has really gone down.
Now, some of the methods that the old-school phreakers used. One of them is called the mute box. What the mute box does is it takes a 2.7 kilohms resistor in series with the phone line, so that when the phone call comes in, you had a little button; you pushed the button really fast and that would stop the ringing tone but still leave the connection open. But there wouldn’t be enough current to cause the telephone to go off-hook, so therefore the billing equipment wouldn’t trigger.
This allows you to be able to receive phone calls for free to the person that’s calling you. So the person who’s calling you will not get billed for it. Why? Because you’re not picking up the phone. You are basically leaving the phone on-hook. But you’re listening to the audio, because the audio still can go through that 2.7 k resistor to the phone line.
The next thing which is very useful is called loop around numbers. Loop around numbers in the San Jose area always began with 0044 and 0045. If you dial the 0044 side, you get a high-pitch tone. It’s a 1000 Hz tone interrupted every 10 seconds. If somebody else were to call 0045 side, the two of them could get connected together and they could talk. Very useful when you want to kind of mask who your phone number was. In fact, that was how I actually got hold of Denny1. He gave me a loop around number. I called the operator, and she said: “That’s an internal test number, why should you be calling that number?”
He called me back about a month later and explained to me what loop arounds were, and I had to find out more, so I made an arrangement to meet Denny, and that was when I first learned all about how blue boxes worked.
The other thing is demonstrators. Back in the day the telephones were rotary dial. So they had to have a way of demonstrating how the new touch tone system would work. So, what they did was: you dialed a 7-digit number and it would answer with a dial tone, and you then could use your touch tone phone right next to that phone to show how fast you can dial a number; these are called demonstrator lines. Normally, these demonstrator lines are restricted to local calls only.
Yet another thing phone phreaks would use was party lines. There are 2 different kinds of party lines: one of them is if you call a busy number, like a radio station – you can actually talk between the busy beeps, and so you can give enough information out to get them to call you or something. It’s not very good to hear that constant beep all the time.
Other phone phreaks figured out that if you opened up the sleeve at an old step office, you could actually have a 10-party conference line. If you can take 10 numbers that aren’t used and you open up the sleeves in the wires, then you can actually make a conference call; usually that took social engineering because you had to call the telephone company switch office, you had to convince the guy that it’s ok and cool to bend the sleeve open to make it work.Then there are blue boxes. Blue box is a multi-frequency device; it combines different tones; there are 700 Hz, 900 Hz, 1100 Hz, 1500 Hz, and 1700 Hz. They are odd frequencies, because that way they won’t interfere with each other. It’s quite a bit different than touch tones.
Then there are red boxes. Red boxes are the boxes used for making free calls from payphones. All it does is just emulate the sound that operator hears, with money going into the phone. They have the 3-coin payphones: you put in a nickel and it goes ‘ding’; you put in a dime and it goes ‘ding-ding’; you put in a quarter and it goes ‘gong’. And that’s what the operator hears, and that’s where she knows that you are putting money in the phone.
There’s actually a demonstration number in Vancouver, Canada; it’s a recording, you dial 604-11-21 and it goes: “five cents – ding, ten cents – ding-ding, quarter – gong”. And it just repeats it over and over again, it’s like an operator training tape. And these are some of the really cool things that we found kind of exploring the system. It wasn’t the idea of making free calls, it was the idea of hacking into the system, and that’s what made it really exciting.
1 – Denny Teresi – is a blind former phone phreak and radio disk jockey, most famous for being the person who introduced John Draper to the field. | <urn:uuid:022f315f-069f-4a70-b5c8-b8a0cd0ea41f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://privacy-pc.com/articles/history-of-hacking-2-insight-into-phone-phreaking.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393518.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00042-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970846 | 1,334 | 3.578125 | 4 |
|Pope Adrian VI|
AKA Adrian Dedel
Birthplace: Utrecht, Netherlands
Location of death: Rome, Italy
Cause of death: unspecified
Remains: Buried, Santa Maria dell'Anima Church, Rome, Italy
Religion: Roman Catholic
Race or Ethnicity: White
Executive summary: Roman Catholic Pope, 1522-23
Adrian VI, born Adrian Dedel (not Boyens, and probably not Rodenburgh), Roman Catholic Pope from 1522 to 1523, was born at Utrecht in March 1459, and studied under the Brethren of the Common Life either at Zwolle or Deventer. At Louvain he pursued philosophy, theology and canon law, becoming a doctor of theology (1491), dean of St. Peter's and vice-chancellor of the university. In 1507 he was appointed tutor to the seven-year-old Charles V. He was sent to Spain in 1515 on a very important diplomatic errand; Charles secured his succession to the see of Tortosa, and on the 14th of November 1516 commissioned him inquisitor-general of Aragon. During the minority of Charles, Adrian was associated with Cardinal Jiménez in governing Spain. After the death of the latter Adrian was appointed, on the 14th of March 1518, general of the reunited inquisitions of Castile and Aragon, in which capacity he acted until his departure from Tarragona for Rome on the 4th of August 1522; he was, however, too weak and confiding to cope with abuses which Jiménez had been able in some degree to check. When Charles left for the Netherlands in 1520 he made Adrian regent of Spain; as such he had to cope with a very serious revolt. In 1517 Pope Leo X had created him cardinal priest SS. Ioannis et Pauli; on the 9th of January 1522 he was almost unanimously elected pope. Crowned in St. Peter's on the 31st of August at the age of sixty-three, he entered upon the lonely path of the reformer. His program was to attack notorious abuses one by one; but in his attempt to improve the system of granting indulgences he was hampered by his cardinals; and reducing the number of matrimonial dispensations was impossible, for the income had been farmed out for years in advance by Leo X. The Italians saw in him a pedantic foreign professor, blind to the beauty of classical antiquity, penuriously docking the stipends of great artists. As a peacemaker among Christian princes, whom he hoped to unite in a protective war against the Turk, he was a failure; in August 1523 he was forced openly to ally himself with the Empire, England, Venice, etc., against France; meanwhile in 1522 the sultan Suleiman the Magnificent had conquered Rhodes. In dealing with the early stages of the Protestant revolt in Germany Adrian did not fully recognize the gravity of the situation. At the diet which opened in December 1522 at Nuremberg he was represented by Chieregati, whose instructions contain the frank admission that the whole disorder of the church had perchance proceeded from the Curia itself, and that there the reform should begin. However, the former professor and inquisitor-general was stoutly opposed to doctrinal changes, and demanded that Martin Luther be punished for heresy. The statement in one of his works that the pope could err in matters of faith ("haeresim per suam determinationem aut Decretalem asserendo") has attracted attention; but as it is a private opinion, not an ex cathedra pronouncement, it is held not to prejudice the dogma of papal infallibility. On the 14th of September 1523 he died, after a pontificate too short to be effective. Most of Adrian VI's official papers disappeared soon after his death. He published Quaestiones in quartum sententiarum praesertim circa sacramenta (Paris, 1512, 1516, 1518, 1537; Rome, 1522), and Quaestiones quodlibeticae XII (Louvain, 1515).
University: University of Leiden
Roman Catholic Pope 9-Jan-1522 to 14-Sep-1523
Roman Catholic Cardinal 1517
Do you know something we don't?
Submit a correction or make a comment about this profile
Copyright ©2016 Soylent Communications | <urn:uuid:be1ed117-508d-42c7-8d29-41e475edf1fb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.nndb.com/people/538/000097247/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00045-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969536 | 928 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Most recent answer: 08/14/2015
How long does it take for water to freeze?
- Dara (age 12)
The answer to your question really depends on three things: how much water you have, how cold it is to start out, and how cold the things around it are. Water actually freezes when it gets to 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius), but the time it takes to get there may be different.
Let's start with the first. If you take two glasses, and fill one with a tiny bit of water, and the other about halfway, then put them both in the freezer, the one with less water will freeze first (you can try this at home, but I recommend using plastic cups and not glass ones).
Now let's move on to the second part. Let's say you have two glasses, and you fill one with really cold water that has been in the refrigerator, and the other with really hot water from the sink. If you put both of them in the freezer, the one that started out colder will freeze first.
For the third part, let's imagine that you have two glasses with the same amount of water in them, and the water is at the same temperature. Imagine putting one outside on a really really cold day in Georgia, and having a friend in Alaska put one outside on the same day. Since it would be so much colder in Alaska, the glass of water there would freeze before yours.
So, if you took a tiny bit of really cold water in a glass, and put it outside on a cold day in Alaska, it would freeze a lot faster than a big glass of hot water outside on a cold day in Georgia.
Hope this helps!
(published on 10/22/2007)
Follow-Up #1: freezing and authority
This isn’t a question, but in fact a correction to your answer, Sara. It has been known for centuries that hot water freezes faster than cold water. Both Aristotle and Francis Bean believed this to be true. It has been proven fact in several different experiments by many different scientists. You gave a good answer, and certainly helped out Dara, but I just wanted to make sure she got all her facts straight.
- Mackenzie (age 11)
Midland, MI, USA
Mackenzie- Thanks for your note. You're right to remind us that the common-sense result isn't always right. Sometimes the hot water freezes faster.
I would be a little more cautious than you about authority, however. Aristotle made many mistakes, even on simple questions like how many teeth women have. Francis Bacon (is that who you mean?) also wasn't much of a scientist.
My own attempts to repeat this experiment have flopped so far. I always forget to look at the glasses until they're both frozen. You might try it yourself, using metal cups so they don't break, and being sure to put the same amount of water in each. Also, try it a few times switching the positions of the hot and cold cups, since freezers don't cool evenly.
The most careful discussions of the subject (e.g.) suggest that which water freezes fastest depends on several factors, including whether it is allowed to evaporate, how well heat is conducted into it, how much gas is dissolved in it, etc.
I think Tamara has a good discussion on this site, under the name 'Mpemba effect', named after a high school student who had the courage to believe his observations rather than his teachers.
(published on 10/22/2007)
Follow-Up #2: what freezes first
Hot water does not freeze faster than cold water. That idea is ridiculous. It can be misconstrued as such when you look at it without a mind towards physics and chemistry. When a liquid is cooled, it may pass the freezing point and not appear to freeze. This is due simply to the fact that the molecules need additional energy or a solid to begin the crystallization process. If you put boiling water in the freezer along with cold water, the cold water would reach the freezing point of 0 C much more quickly, but it does not make the transition to ice until a force acts upon it. If you rap the glass you will see the liquid freeze in front of your eyes. The boiling water would not even have reached the previous temperature of the cold water. In conclusion, with both liquids under constant pressure, there is no way for hot or boiling water to "freeze" first.
- Cody (age 17)
Your argument makes a great deal of sense, but subtle complications in the real world can give strange results. Here's an example. Let's say that you set the water in a glass in a freezer with a lot of frost. The hot water may melt the frost, and then make excellent thermal contact with the cold shelf. The cold water may sit on top of the frost in poor thermal contact. Then the initially hot water could cool more quickly and end up freezing first. In some cases it's necessary to actually do experiments to find out how things act.
(published on 02/09/2010)
Follow-Up #3: how long does it take for cocoa to freeze?
Can someone answer my question??
If you put 200ml-500ml of *cold* cocoa in the any normal freezer, how long does it takes to freeze?
- Kavi (age 19)
The actual time depends on may factors: thermal contact and quantity of cocoa, beginning temperatures of the freezer and coca, composition of the cocoa, etc. The best answer is for you to do the experiment and find out for yourself. Try it several times varying one or another parameter. Keep a record and see if you can figure out a trend.
Let us know what you find.
(published on 03/04/2010)
Follow-Up #4: Time for water to freeze?
Can someone provide an answer on how long a specif volume of water will take to freeze at a typical residential freezer temp, i.e. 8 ounces of water starting at 38 degrees farenheight takes "X" minutes to freeze, or "x" minutes per ounce at "x" degrees?
- Peter Thompson (age 29)
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
No. This sort of problem is unanswerable because it depends on too many variables that we don't know the values of. At best one can give scaling laws, for example twice the heat transfer rate will halve the freezing time or twice the volume, at the same transfer rate, will double the time. The freezing time depends on: the air circulation rate, the surface and shape of the container, the amount of contact area, etc. The best way to answer this question is to do some experiments and vary some of the parameters. Eventually you will get some empirical idea of what's going on.
(published on 06/13/2010)
Follow-Up #5: time and rate happeneth to all
Rate and time are being confused. RATE is DISTANCE/TIME. 100C to 0C / x = 100/x && 5C to 0C / x = 5/x. if x is 5 minutes then 100/5=20 > 5/5=1. 20>1 = FASTER RATE.Though related they are not the same thing. Hot water freezes at a faster RATE than Cold Water. The equal sized/surface/area/pressure/temp/volume of the container of water closest to 0C will freeze in a shorter period of time than the hotter container of water. Hot water is often used because it lacks the dissolved air which makes the ice look cloudy. Ice sculptures can be crystal clear like glass if the hot water is super cooled to freeze the water before much air gets caught in the water. Common Chemistry experiments are done by taking temperature readings of a solution while stirring it to maximize the solutions contact with the surface of the beaker which is submerged into a ice/salt bath. The ice/salt bath on the exterior provides an subzero environment to freeze the solution on the inside. A Computer is usually doing the sampling automatically and graphing the results in a 2d graph showing the temp reading on the y axis and the time frame on the x axis. typically the graph is logarithmic. you see the temperature of the solution plummet quickly, but the amount of energy required to break the phase barrier is exponential. So you see water go from 100C to 1C in a short period of time, then it takes a much longer period of time compared to the 100C to 1C to go from 1C to 0C. Thus, the misunderstanding is that hot water freezes 'faster' than cold water. The same can be said about boiling water. the amount of energy introduced to the system to achieve boiling point is exponentially larger than the quantity to heat it up to 99C from 1C.
observe the graphs where f(x) = y,
f(x) = log(x)
f(x) = x^2 or f(x) = x*x [pronounced x squared)
then turn each one 90 degrees to see they're the same thing on a different axis.
Maybe a more real world scenario is in order for clarification. Bob is standing at the beginning of a 100 meter dash. Walter is standing 1 meter away from the end of the 100 meter dash finish line. The whistle blows! Bob is off to a speedy start traveling at 10 meters per second. It takes Bob 12 seconds, accounting for the the time it takes to accelerate from 0 to 10 m/s, to finish the race. Walter, being 1 meter from the end took his sweet time traveling at at only 1 meter per second and crossed the finish line 11 seconds before Bob. Bob traveled at a FASTER RATE, but Walter still finished first. Who was faster? Bob was faster! Who finished in the least amount of time? Walter, because he finished in 1 second.
To properly calculate the time it would take to freeze a substance from point x to point y...
As many posts before said there is not enough information given. Glasses are typically cylindrical in shape. So lets start with the Surface Area of a Cylinder Equation: (2*pi*radius^2)+(2*pi*radius*height). The SUBSTANCE of the container is very important for heat transfer rates as well as the mass of the container.
- WALTER (over 9000 years old)
Anchorage, Alaska, USA
Walter- I should defer to your advanced age, but I see no evidence that anyone was confusing time and rate. These messy practical heat flow problems cannot reliably be reduced to your simple equations.
Here's some reasons why hot water could actually freeze sooner, surprising as that is.
1. There's a burst of initial evaporation. That leaves less water in the hot container, so that less latent heat needs to get dumped to the surroundings. If that's the reason, there would of course be evidence: less final ice.
2. There's less dissolved gas. That means that the freezing point is higher. If the surroundings are just a little below 0°C, the time it takes to freeze is very sensitive to even small changes in the freezing point. For example, if there are enough solutes to lower the freezing point below the surrounding temperature, the time becomes infinite.
So the freezing time has a complicated dependence on the temperature of the surroundings, the way in which heat is conducted in, the relative humidity of the surroundings, the amount of dissolved gas..... As a result, you can occasionally get the weird situation is which the hotter water freezes sooner, at least according to some experimental reports.
(published on 12/08/2010)
Follow-Up #6: how long for water to freeze?
I don't know why you couldn't give a rough answer to the initial question. Would it take minutes or hours for a room temperature cup of tap water to freeze in a typical residential freezer? That was all the little girl was asking. You didn't answer her question, you told her to find out herself. Mythbusters answered the question about beer. Try to help, okay?
My guess would be about an hour.
UIUC Engineering Grad & Mother
- E Wickliff (age 40s)
I've made a guess as to which question your comment was intended to follow-up.
The original Q&A on this goes back to before my time on the site, so I'm not sure why an approximate answer wasn't given. It's not hard to imagine a reason, though. It's rare for the turn-around time on this site to be less than a day. Often it's weeks. Sometimes years. The time to freeze a cup of water in a home freezer is less than a day, so just doing it gets the answer quicker than asking us, and avoids having to rely on authority.
My guess would be maybe three hours to freeze if you really wanted it frozen or maybe half an hour to freeze if you were just trying to cool it and the glass would break if you forgot to take it out in time. But children shouldn't be exposed to that kind of superstition.
(published on 04/07/2011)
Follow-Up #7: philosophy of freezing water
Like E. Wickliff pointed out, its really funny that no one really answered the girl's question.
But moving forward, here's a link to why hot water DOES freeze faster than cold...
Basically put, the hot water won't create an insulating layer of frost on the top and it contains less gas bubbles due to evaporation which in turn causes the hot water to cool more quickly as it evaporates more quickly than cold water. Faster cooling means it will eventually become colder than the initial temperature of the cold water"
And age is mostly irrelevant to knowledge.
- Peter Ryan (age 31)
Vancouver, BC, Canada
I looked at your link about hot water freezing faster. It basically speculated about the same reasons as we had discussed, plus adding another speculation about how the lack of bubbles in the hot water would promote supercooling. That's a little odd, since by definition that effect would make the freezing of the hot water slower.
They then add a speculation that since the cold water would start freezing sooner, it would develop an icy crust that would slow further freezing. However, they really have no argument as to why a similar crust wouldn't form on the hot water when it starts to freeze.
The main thing I hope students would take from this is that each of these speculations can be tested.
If the theory is that some of the hot water evaporated, you can check to see if the amount of ice it makes is noticeably reduced. If the theory is that the dissolved gases in the cold water lowers its freezing point significantly, you could try using cold water that had been degassed, maybe with a vacuum pump or other means. And so forth- each idea should be checkable.
This brings us back to the simple question of about how long it takes to freeze water in a home freezer. Why would anyone ask us that when it's so easy and quick to check directly?
(published on 09/09/2011)
Follow-Up #8: testing freezing times
Yes, we can be able to test it. But what is the correct temp for the freezer? And why would it be better?
- Tina (age 12)
Wesley Chapel, FL, USA
There's no particular "best temperature" for the freezer for this experiment.
So if you were looking for the strange effect of the hot water freezing sooner, you might test with the temperature just a little below 0°C, say -5°C. That's because dissolved gases (more likely to be in cold water) lower the freezing point, and that's very
noticeable if the freezer temperature is close to the freezing point. If you were just trying to see what happens, without any particular favorite result, you could do that at any temperature, with the results maybe depending on temperature.
(published on 10/06/2011)
Follow-Up #9: time to freeze water
1 cup of cool water (in a glass tumbler) took about 3 hours to freeze in my freezer. ;)
- nnugles (age eh?)
(published on 08/01/2012)
Follow-Up #10: How long to freeze water?
I did this for my science fair project and it took 80 minutes for 4 ounces of room temperature water in a thin disposable cup to freeze in my freezer.
- Xander (age 6)
Cave Creek, AZ, US
Xander- Thanks, some of our readers will like this information.
(published on 02/17/2013)
Follow-Up #11: wisdom of babes
I'm so glad the 6 year old answered the question that it takes 3 hours. I'm making pina coladas and want to chill the pineapple juice and canned pineapple, but not freeze them. Getting an answer of 3 hours means that my timer of 1 hour will do it safely. I respect that it is better to give an ESTIMATE of an answer, than to plead ignorance.
- Peter W Lindner (age 63)
I hope he sees your thanks.
(published on 08/30/2013)
Follow-Up #12: experimenting on freezing water
i am goin to be doing my junior cert this year and have a few questions.... For my science i am doing a project which is based on which temperature of water freezes the fastest an which one melts fastest at room temerature.. i will be doing it more then once with varius sized containers to get an accurate result. the junior cert is an important set of exams and leads to how well we will do and which college we will go to. so fr ive alot written down on that topic but am struggling. My teacher has told me to find out a method for how long the water takes to freeze. so basically if i go to the freezer and both are frozen i don't know how long it took to froze. so how often should i check the water and also how do i know if there is a difference from the last time i checked? do i just check the temperature or is there something im missing? please help and thanks :)
- aoife (age ...)
I can't follow what you're comparing here, but at any rate it seems that you want to compare freezing times for several samples.
Unless you can get some sort of automatic data logger you should check pretty often, maybe every 15 minutes or 1/2 hour. I grew up on experiments like that where we had to keep an eye on things almost continuously.
Maybe now you could do something clever, like conduct the experiment in a styrofoam cooler with a viewing port. Cooling maybe could be supplied by some dry ice/alcohol slurry. Each sample could have a thermometer in it. You could take pictures with a digital camera, maybe even with a timer. To avoid fogging, the viewing port could just be a long styrofoam tube with open ends, also serving to vent the CO2 from the evaporating dry ice. A little LED light could be turned on inside when you wanted to view or take a picture.
Whatever you end up doing, a crucial part will be to write it up clearly so people can know why you did it and what you did. What are you trying to find out?
(published on 09/09/2013)
Follow-Up #13: looking at freezing water
its saying i can't check every 15 mins cause it might influece the freezing by opening the freezer
- aoife (age 14)
Sure, opening the freezer every 15 minutes will change the freezing time. It will change the time a little for both the water that started out warm and the water that started out cold. This is just like using a slightly different freezer. What's wrong with that? It's not as if you started out knowing exactly which freezer with exactly which properties was the one you wanted to do the test in.
The first thing to do here is to write up carefully what you're trying to find out and why. Without that there's not much point in worrying about the details of what to do.
And who is the "it" that's telling you what to do?
(published on 09/16/2013)
Follow-Up #14: Teach a man to fish
I could not agree more with the earlier comment that it is incredible that this question was either not provided with a solution or an estimate. With all due respect, Mike W, you have directly contributed to this thread being ridiculously long - my son almost gave up twice wanting to find the answer within the thread because there is so much 'hot air' and speculation here without an answer. In the future Mike W. I might suggest instead of pontificating about how one might go about finding the answer, that it might be better to stay off of these answer boards unless you actually have the answer. Good Day.
- Mark (age 40s)
It's a little ironical to get your suggestion now. Our group recently had a discussion about how we'd like to do more to help people figure out their own answers and test answers that they might hear, rather than just passively write down 'facts' from the Web. You know that old saying about teaching a man to fish.
(published on 11/24/2013)
Follow-Up #15: philosophy of teaching
I am a retired secondary science teacher and applaud "teaching a man to fish". Understanding the context of what we are trying to do is critical to plausibility and efficacy. Where might we now be in our troubled, perilous world if, before we began doing all the things we've done, we had first devoted an inordinate amount of time determining if we ought to be doing it at all? Simply demanding a conclusion represents a detrimental amount of arrogance and disrespect for the elegant systems, of which we are only a part.
- Robert (age 62)
We're happy to pass those thoughts on.
(published on 01/25/2014)
Follow-Up #16: Does warm water freeze faster?
If two glasses of water are placed in a home freezer, one at room temp and the other at say 150*, I believe I was taught that the warmer water would freeze first due to the fact that the warmer water had more stored heat energy than the cooler glass of water. The cooling would proceed at a faster rate in the glass of warm water. Am I correct? If not,please correct my view. Thank you.
- Marty Shows (age 71)
From what we hear, which freezes faster depends on detailed conditions. The reasons are discussed in the earlier part of the thread. The reason that you suggested though, is not one of them. More stored heat by itself would mean that it would take longer to get rid of the heat. It's other factors, such as less dissolved air, that can make the warm water freeze first.
(published on 02/22/2014)
Follow-Up #17: experimental results on freezing hot and cold water
After reading all of the variables (Answers) to this Q posted on the Physics Van, I decided to turn this into an experiment, to introduce my 6 yr old daughter to the Scientific Method. So...
We took 2 samples each of boiling and cold tap water (N= 4). Each sample was 4 oz (120 mL). 1 boiling 4- ounce sample was placed into a bowl. 1 boiling 4 ounce sample was placed into a COVERED plastic bottle. 4oz Cold tap water was placed into an identical plastic bottle, and 4oz cold H20 into an identical glass bowl. The 4 containers were placed outside in Alaska on a 10 degree F (-12.22 Celsius) winter afternoon..
My daughter won this guess- the glass bowl of COLD water froze first, at 35 minutes. The plastic bottle of Cold water froze second, at 41 minutes. The glass bowl of hot water froze third, at 44 minutes. The plastic bottle of hot water finished last, and (uncertainly) froze at 87 minutes (I'm not sure if the floating ice formed on the side of the bottle, or not). All times are for the formation of ice crystals in/on the liquid (not entirely frozen).
I came to the Van with a question; you provided the research and here is an answer. Hope this helped. -Carl Anchorage, AK
- Carl F (age 28)
Anchorage, AK, USA
Many thanks for these carefully reported results!
(published on 01/27/2015)
Follow-Up #18: freezing milk and water
How hard can this really be?? Wait it I'd hard with all the variables that go into it, from temperature of water to the humidity. There is just so many variables that go into this. So lets ask give Mike a nice round of applause for trying to help! Plus he is a savage! Would milk and water freeze at the same time if they had all the same variables down to a dot?
- Hugh G. Rexcion (age 37)
In equilibirum, the water freezes at slightly higher temperature, because the sugars and salts, etc. in the milk slighty lower it's freezing temperature. (See .) Since in practice solutions can supercool (see ), i.e. stay liquid a bit below the equilibrium freezing point, I can't guarantee that the milk won't freeze first, because the fat droplets might reduce the tendency to supercool. We'd love to hear the results of the experiment.
(published on 03/23/2015)
Follow-Up #19: pure heat conduction
So say we have this magical freezer it is always -20 degrees Celsius (The temperature is never changing) In this magical box there is no gravity and it is a vacuum. So we add a floating sphere of water. Its has a radius of 1cm so its Area is 12.57 cm2 this is about 4.19cm3 The ball of water is 10C. Now lets say this magical ball of water as well because it spreads its temperature through its self evenly (Can be treated as 1 System evenly distributing its energy). Water having a heat capacity of 75.375 ±0.05 J/mol·K and the density is 1g/cm3. Now is there any kind of calculation you can do to determine roughly how long it will take for that water reach -20C? Also if there are any more assumptions that need to be done to determine this what would they be? (Assume that the pressure is 1 Atm and constant).
- Mike Watson (age 23)
Vicotira, BC, Canada
Let's forget about the part about magic water that keeps its internal temperature uniform. That removes the only real physics of the problem, which is thermal diffusion. You've made our life easier by removing gravity, which causes convection, a much mesier process.
The water will gradually approach -20°C. If by "reach -20°C" you mean get very close, you have to wait several times the thernal diffusion time, the time it takes for heat to diffuse a distance of about the radius of the sphere.
So you need the thermal diffusion constant, which is the thermal conductivity divided by the heat capacity per unit volume. So that's (0.60 W/m-K)/ 4.2*106 J/m3-K =1.4*10-6 m2/sec. WIth your 1 cm radius, the typical diffusion time is about 100 sec. The exact solution for the time-dependent temperature can be obtained by decomposing the spatial dependence into a bunch of patterns each of which relaxes exponentially toward equilibrium. The pattern with the longest spatial wiggles has the slowest relaxation.
(published on 03/16/2015)
Follow-Up #20: physics, banking, and figuring things out
found the article trying to figure out how long it takes water to freeze and decided to read it. I am very impressed with Mike. He is patient in trying to teach and unfortunately there is not always a straight answer to many things in life due to variables. I am a banker and I see this a lot in banking. Sometimes you have to give a general answer to the public and let them learn the variables for themselves. And you get the response "but, you said!" What I said was "generally". I appreciate Mikes patience and his positive manner. Great thread.
- anna (age 42)
We really appreciate these comments!
(published on 06/25/2015)
Follow-Up #21: does cold water freeze faster?
The answer given here about cold water freezing faster than hot water is flat-out wrong and disregards the Mpemba effect. http://www.seriouseats.com/2013/10/science-this-is-why-hot-water-can-freeze-faster-than-cold-water-mpemba-effect.html
- Jay (age 33)
NY, NY, USA
The site you refer to has nice discussions of the limitations of some common explanations of the effect whereby sometimes hot water freezes before cold water. Unfortunately the explanation they give, that the heat changes the molecular bonds between the water molecules so the resemble those of ice, is pure baloney, far more than the ideas they criticize. The relaxation time for those little local modes in the water is somewhere crudely in the neighborhood of 10-12 s, not exactly long enough to help the cooling water remember anything about its past.
The main explanation that they leave out is probably the best. Heating causes dissolved gases to leave the water. Dissolved gasses lower the freezing point. So the heated water has a slightly higher freezing point.
We discuss these issues in another thread.
(published on 08/14/2015)
Follow-up on this answer. | <urn:uuid:38853839-6e5e-4760-89ef-90f2799de786> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=537 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392527.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00124-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952598 | 6,266 | 3.234375 | 3 |
Here’s the latest twist on the Jesus Wife Papyrus. To review; prior to this discovery, the common wisdom was that there was nothing – I repeat, nothing – substantiating the idea that Jesus was married. No ancient text whatsoever. It was all “Da Vinci Code” stuff. Then along comes the Jesus Papyrus: (http://www.hds.harvard.edu/faculty-research/research-projects/the-gospel-of-jesuss-wife), a 2nd to 4th century Coptic text in which Jesus refers to someone – apparently Mary Magdalene – as his “wife”.
Instead of doing the science on this papyrus, weighing the implications and reviewing previously ignored archaeology e.g., the Talpiot tomb, the first line of theological defense was to declare the text irrelevant. The response was: “So what? Some 4th century Christians tried to rationalize marriage by saying that Jesus was married. This teaches us nothing about the historical Jesus or his marital status.” Clearly, this line of defense doesn’t work. After all, based on this logic, most Christian writings would have to be dismissed as late and historically irrelevant. The papyrus may be an invention, or it may be preserving history. But you can’t just ignore it.
So the sleeper agents of Christian Orthodoxy took another approach – it’s a forgery. Nevermind that the papyrus can be easily dated with a C-14 test, afterall a modern forger can write on a blank piece of ancient papyrus. Nevermind that the ink can be tested, afterall we can make up a Hollywood style scenario where an ancient papyrus is burned and the ash is used to pen the modern forgery (in reality, to work as ink, this is impossible since the ash would have to be mixed with modern elements, and the modern elements could be easily detected). Nevermind that there isn’t even a suspect or motive for this forgery; it’s a forgery! Why? Because we don’t like it. The “official” reasons for dismissing the papyrus were:
- The text is similar to the Gospel of Thomas.
- The text is exactly like the Gospel of Thomas.
- The text is disjointed like many damaged ancient manuscripts.
After a while, the naysayers realized that the three reasons given to dismiss the papyrus actually helped to authenticate it. Being “similar” to the Gospel of Thomas, helps to date it. Being “disjointed” makes it like other authentic, damaged manuscripts and, clearly, the text is not “exactly” like any Gospel because it’s the only one that refers to Jesus’ “wife”. So the naysayers had to fall back on some pretty heavy pseudo academic babble to scare all lay people into believing that the text is a forgery after all.
The pseudo academic babble came in the form of an online article by Andrew Bernhard from Oxford no less (http://www.gospels.net/gjw/mighthavebeenforged.pdf). And what does Andrew say? If I understand him correctly, he argues that something called the Grondin Interlinear version of the Gospel of Thomas has a kind of “typographical error” and that this type of typographical error appears in the Jesus Wife Papyrus. Meaning, someone forged the papyrus and used the Grondin Interlinear Gospel of Thomas as his guide. By copying the typographical error, however, the forger gave himself away. Bernhard’s argument is packaged in some pretty heavy analysis of Coptic writing, enough to scare anyone not at Oxford.
There’s only one slight problem with Bernhard’s analysis. I believe that Grondin’s Interlinear version became widely available online only in 2002, Bernhard says 1997. In any event, this papyrus was already seen in 1982 by Peter Munro, a prominent Egyptologist at the Free University in Berlin and a long time Director of the Kestner Museum in Hannover. More than this, he showed it to a colleague, Gerhard Fecht, who identified the papyrus as a 2nd to 4th century CE (AD) fragment. The collector who owns the papyrus turned over to Prof. King at Harvard Divinity School some signed and dated letters by Prof. Munro and an unsigned, undated note that appears to belong to the same 1982 correspondence. The latter states that “Professor Fecht believes that the small fragment…is the sole example of a text in which Jesus uses direct speech with reference to having a wife” (emphasis added). So when you get rid of the babble, what is Bernhard really saying? He is saying that the fragment was most likely forged “after 1997 when Grondin’s Interlinear was first posted online”. How could someone forge something in 1997, when the “forged” item was already referenced in 1982?
All the fancy Coptic gymnastics don’t change the basic fact that you can’t forge something retroactively. The only way around this is to argue that someone also forged the 1982 correspondence. Wow! Talk about “Da Vinci Code”, this is turning into a real whodunit. Who could be the culprit? Since the only possible suspect is the unknown owner of the manuscript, it must be him. Or not. What is his motive? Fame? Hardly, he remains anonymous. Money? Hardly, the best way to make money is to forge something that the Vatican agrees with, not dismisses. And when you blow all the pseudo-academic smoke away, there is a very easy way to ascertain whether the 1982 letter is a fake. All you have to do is go to a writing specialist and compare the unsigned 1982 letter with known writings of Prof. Munro and Fecht. If the letter matches one of them – bingo, it can’t be a forgery.
Has Bernhard or anyone else initiated an analysis of the letters accompanying the papyrus? Of course not. It’s best to just call the papyrus a “forgery”, despite the fact that no one can fake in 1997 a papyrus that was examined in 1982 – unless, of course, that forger is also a time traveler. Since all this forgery libel is just so much science fiction, maybe that’s the next line of defense. The Jesus Wife Papyrus can’t be authentic because a time traveler forged it in 1997 – and planted it in a private collection in 1982. | <urn:uuid:b85f3b58-cd7d-4459-a7a5-97ab7a5b163a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.simchajtv.com/jesus-wife-forgery-charges-are-science-fiction/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399385.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00068-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949653 | 1,405 | 2.90625 | 3 |
The Seashell Science kit is designed for use in your classroom and contains shells representing nearly 30 species of marine animals from Monterey Bay. Curriculum suggestions for grades K-2 are included, focusing on adaptive features of seashore animals. Activities challenge students to sharpen their observation skills, while incorporating language and creative arts. Although curriculum suggestions target grades K-2, the shells and resources could be used for activities with any grade level.
In addition to the shell collection and curriculum, the kit also includes activity sheets, answer keys, two reference books, and a teacher preview pass to visit the Seymour Center.
Reservations: Seashell Science is available by reservation only. Please complete the Seashell Science Reservation Form. Please note the kit must be picked up and dropped off at the Seymour Center. We are unable to mail the kit.
For more information: Call the Seymour Center at (831) 459-3800.
Additional Classroom Kits are available for check-out from the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History. Topics include tide pools, fossils, insects, and geology. Visit www.santacruzmuseum.org for more information. | <urn:uuid:5a823267-8301-4247-88b2-de48a491a62f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://seymourcenter.ucsc.edu/learn/students-teachers/educator-opportunities/education-kits/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395346.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00094-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919697 | 241 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Epstein, who lives in St. Louis, Missouri, had recently been surrounded by protests following the shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by a policeman August 9. On Monday, she decided to do something about it. Yet, disregarding even her advanced age, Epstein was still not another random protestor in the crowd.
Born to a Jewish family in Freiburg, Germany in 1924, Epstein was eight years old when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. The daughter of a dry goods shop owner and a housewife, she fled in 1939 to England with the help of her parents in order to escape Nazi persecution, as part of the Kindertransport, a mission that helped rescue at least 10,000 Jewish children prior to the outbreak of World War II. Many times, these children were the only surviving members of their families.
As for Epstein, her parents were first sent to two different concentration camps in France. By late summer 1942, her parents, along with all other surviving members of her family, were sent to the infamous Auschwitz extermination camp in Germany. In September 1942, Epstein received a postcard from her mother that read, “Traveling to the east .. Sending you a final goodbye.” It was the last time she would hear from her. The only surviving members of Epstein’s family were an aunt and uncle, who had emigrated to the United States in 1938.
For the rest of World War II, Epstein remained in England, where she attended school and worked several jobs, including one in a factory that produced war munitions. Following the war, she returned to Germany, where she worked for the U.S. government as part of the U.S. Civil Censorship Division and as a research analyst at the Nuremberg Medical Trial. Back in Germany, she hoped to locate members of her family, an endeavor which ultimately proved unsuccessful.
In 1948, she came to the U.S., working a variety of government jobs, still in hopes of locating her family. She worked for a stint at the New York Association for New Americans, an organization which helped bring Holocaust survivors to America. Not long after, Epstein became active in social justice campaigns for human and civil rights. In 1970, she began speaking to audiences about her experience in the Holocaust and her work in Nuremburg.
In 1989, she traveled to Cambodia, Nicaragua, and Guatemala as a peace delegate. Since 2003, Epstein visited the Israeli Occupied West Bank numerous times, participating in non-violent demonstrations with Israelis and Palestinians to protest Israel’s occcupation of Palestinian land. She was detained at the Tel Aviv airport in 2004 and strip-searched. In 2006, she was tear-gassed during a peaceful demonstration in Ramallah, where bombs were also detonated, and Epstein lost some of her hearing. She has been active in supporting abortion rights, fair housing, and anti-war efforts.
Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Epstein felt an impulse to take action in her town regarding the incidents of late. “I really didn’t think about being arrested or doing anything like that,” Epstein said to a Newsweek reporter. “I was just going to be somebody in the crowd. I guess maybe I was impulsive: Someone said, ‘Who is willing to be arrested if that happens?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’m willing.’”
Along with fellow protestors, Epstein marched toward the Wainwright Building, where the office of Governor Jay Nixon is located, to express disapproval of his decision to activate the National Guard and to request that he deescalate the situation. They were informed that the Governor was not in the building and instructed to disperse. When they refused to do so, the group was arrested by police, handcuffed, transported to a police substation, and given court dates.
As no stranger to injustice, Epstein said, “I’m deeply, deeply troubled by what’s going on in Ferguson. It’s a matter of racism and injustice, and it’s not only in Ferguson…. Racism is alive and well in the United States. The power structure looks at anyone who’s different as the other, as less worthy, and so you treat the other as someone who is less human and who needs to be controlled and who is not trusted.”
She recalled an anecdote about her experience after coming to America and working at the New York Association for New Americans in New York. An African American woman helped her get started and informed her that they had an hour for lunch each day. Epstein did not understand why they could not go to lunch together. She said that she thought, “Wait a minute. Lincoln freed the slaves. This is 1948. You can’t go to eat where I go? Isn’t someone doing something about this?”
Many years later, Epstein is troubled by police violence and riotous violence in the streets, both of which have been the subject of concern in Ferguson, Missouri. While being escorted to the police van, she said, “I didn’t think I would have to do it when I was 90. We need to stand up today so that people won’t have to do this when they’re 90.”
(Daily Corinthian columnist Stacy Jones teaches English at McNairy Central High School and UT Martin and serves on the board of directors at Corinth Theatre-Arts. She loves being a downtown Corinth resident.) | <urn:uuid:c32ed4d0-e77f-4e48-bf1d-65575e97b1f2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.dailycorinthian.com/view/full_story/25668953/article-Holocaust-survivor-continues-campaigning-for-human-rights-at-90 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397565.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00101-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983373 | 1,136 | 2.828125 | 3 |
The giant spiral assemblage of several billion stars that is home to the Sun and its family of planets, including Earth, is only one of the billions of star systems known to exist in the universe (see EXTRAGALACTIC SYSTEMS). Because it is our star system, however, it is usually called the Galaxy. The Milky Way, another name for it, is the portion visible to the naked eye.
In the 20th century, astronomers determined that the Galaxy is a disk-shaped object, far larger than most of the galaxies in its neighborhood (see LOCAL GROUP OF GALAXIES).
Its visible disk is about 100,000 LIGHT YEARS wide but only about 2,000 light-years thick. A halo of other materials, including star clusters, surrounds the disk.
The total mass of the Galaxy can be measured by studying the motions of individual stars and clouds of hydrogen gas in different parts of the galaxy and by applying CELESTIAL MECHANICS to calculate a total mass that will account for the observed motions. The mass can also be determined from the motions of the Galaxy's small satellite galaxies, especially the nearby dwarf elliptical galaxies, and globular clusters. Recent computations by both methods agree that the Galaxy's mass is possibly 1,000 to 2,000 billion times the mass of the Sun. As the Sun's mass is about average for a star in the Galaxy, the total number of stars must also be of this order. Most of these stars are invisible from the Earth, however, because the solar system lies in the dense plane of the Galaxy, where interstellar dust obscures all but its nearer parts.
The area around the Galaxy is populated by about twenty galaxies that make up a small cluster called the local group. Most of these neighbors, such as the MAGELLANIC CLOUDS, are far smaller and less luminous than the Galaxy. The only other large galaxy is the ANDROMEDA GALAXY, which is more than 2 million light-years away, is somewhat larger and more luminous than our own galaxy and is visible to the naked eye. The Andromeda spiral differs slightly in shape from our galaxy, having a larger smooth, amorphous central bulge and spiral arms that are less patchy.
The Sun lies a little more than 30,000 light-years from the center of the Galaxy. From our vantage point, the Galaxy appears thicker toward its center, in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, and somewhat thinner in other directions. However, because of the obscuration by dust, which limits our view in all directions, it is difficult to realize from observation that we are not near the center of the system.
DETERMINATION OF GALACTIC STRUCTURE
Until the 1920s it was thought that the system of stars outlined by the Milky Way was the entire universe; early attempts to understand the structure of the Galaxy were thought of as studies of the universe itself. In 1784, Sir William HERSCHEL attempted to determine the structure of the Milky Way (he referred to his work as exploring the 'construction of the heavens') by making extensive star counts through telescopes, recording the number of stars in various directions, and plotting the results in a series of maps. Assuming that all stars had approximately the same brightness and that the Galaxy was uniformly dense, Herschel calculated the extent of the system of stars in various directions and concluded that we live in the central region of a flat, round arrangement of stars that extends far along the Milky Way.
A much more accurate view of the Galaxy resulted from Harlow Shapley's studies of globular clusters, begun in 1914. Shapley realized that dust obscured large numbers of stars along the Milky Way and discovered that making star counts was not as good a way of gauging the size of the Galaxy as determining the size of the system of globular clusters that lie above and below the obscuration of the Milky Way plane. Using this method, he determined that the Galaxy is about ten times larger than previously thought, and that the Sun is located at a considerable distance from the center. He found that the clusters make up a thin, spherical halo that surrounds a bright flat disk. The detailed structure of the disk was difficult to discover because of the dust, but several astronomers, especially Jacobus C. Kapteyn in Holland and Bart J. Bok in the United States, pursued the task of plotting the distribution of stars to try to find a pattern, particularly a pattern of spiral arms like those seen in many other galaxies. Only fragments of structure emerged, however, and they were found to resemble scraps of spiral arms only when stellar associations were discovered during the late 1940s.
An important breakthrough occurred in 1951, when Harvard scientists Harold Ewen and Edward Purcell made the first radio detection of the 21-cm emission line of neutral hydrogen gas in the Milky Way. By 1954, Dutch and Australian radio astronomers were ready to assemble a radio map of the Galaxy. Since radio waves pass through the dust unimpeded, this map was far more accurate than those based on visual observations. The result clearly showed a complex and beautiful spiral structure, very much like that of the giant galaxy Messier 101 or the Whirlpool Galaxy, Messier 51.
Our present view of the Galaxy is based on highly detailed radio maps of neutral atomic hydrogen gas and other sources, including hot gas clouds and gas-dust complexes that emit radiation from various molecules and parts of molecules, such as water, carbon monoxide, and hydroxyl. The Galaxy consists of a slightly warped, scalloped disk of heavy-element-rich stars, gas clouds, and dust, surrounded by a tenuous spherical halo of old, heavy-element-poor stars and star clusters. The halo extends to about 85,000 light-years from the center, and is enveloped by the corona, which reaches to at least 200,000 light-years.
In recent years astronomers have begun to examine the core of the Milky Way in other wavelengths (see INFRARED ASTRONOMY; RADIO ASTRONOMY; X-RAY ASTRONOMY). Infrared studies have revealed a small number of fast-moving red supergiant stars within 5 light-years of the center. Strong radio and X-ray emissions from the same area suggest that a BLACK HOLE may exist in that region, and that it may be generating the extremely hot gases spiralling around the galactic center at speeds of up to 700,000 kilometers per hour. Heavy-metal synthesis, which accompanies the formation of new stars, is also thought to occur in that region. Farther out are dramatic radiowave-emitting filaments perpendicular to the galactic plane; these arcs of matter, approximately 150 light-years long, suggest that a huge magnetic field exists around the galactic core. Unrelated to these arcs are three bizarre, threadlike structures, uniformly bright and about one light-year wide and more than 100 light-years long, that cut across the central galactic regions. These threads remain unexplained but may be magnetic in structure.
COMPOSITION OF THE GALAXY
Our galaxy, like most well-studied spiral galaxies, chiefly consists of stars, gas, and dust. A census of the visible part of the Galaxy indicates that most of the mass is in the stars, with only about 2% in the form of gas (mostly hydrogen) and about 0.01% in the form of dust.
The stars of the Galaxy have been divided into two kinds, called Population I and Population II. Population I stars are prevalent in the spiral arms and include stars of all ages, from over ten billion years to only a few hundred thousand years old. They all contain elements heavier than helium, in amounts comparable to those found in the Sun. Population II stars, on the other hand, are found in the bulge around the galactic nucleus and in the spherical halo, which includes both the thin envelope of stars surrounding the disk and the globular clusters. All Population II stars are approximately 12 to 15 billion years old, and all are deficient in their amounts of heavy elements, some by factors of more than a hundred. These are the Galaxy's oldest inhabitants, and they are frequently offered as evidence that the Galaxy itself is 15 billion years old.
The total amount of stars, gas, and dust in the Galaxy does not quite equal the total measured mass. Although there has been considerable recent controversy about the matter, it may be necessary to account for the difference by suggesting that the Galaxy contains matter in some undetected, invisible form, such as molecular hydrogen, black holes (collapsed and invisible stars), or meteoroids. Recent investigations suggest that the 'missing mass' of the Galaxy might be found in the corona. The composition of the corona is unknown, but it is estimated that it contains between 100 and 200 billion solar masses.
DYNAMICS OF THE GALAXY
In the early 20th century, as the mystery of the structure of the Galaxy was being unraveled, the motions of stars were also being determined. Astronomers recorded the slow perceived position changes of stars (proper motion) and their motions toward or away from Earth (radial velocities); the latter are easily measured by the Doppler shift of the stars' spectral lines. In 1904, Kapteyn found that stars did not move at random but in two streams flowing in opposite directions along the Milky Way, one converging in the constellation of Orion and the other converging 180 deg away, in Scutum. The Swedish astronomer Bertil Lindblad showed that this streaming motion is simply the result of the rotation of the Galaxy. Stars traveling in nearly circular orbits around the galactic center with the Sun will have larger motions relative to the Sun either toward or away from the center--depending on whether they are approaching the nearest or farthest points in their elliptical orbits--than in the direction of motion. Therefore, we preferentially see motions towards us or away from us in these directions.
In 1927, Jan H. Oort of the Netherlands showed that the motions of stars in different parts of the Milky Way could be used to derive the properties of the rotation of the Galaxy, including the speed of the Sun through space. When modern values are used in Oort's equations, it is found that the Sun's velocity is approximately 250 km/sec in its orbit around the galactic center. The velocity for stars at larger distances from the center is smaller; in the inner part of the Galaxy the velocities are similar to those of solid bodies. These velocity differences cause differential rotation in the disk, and they may be the primary cause of the spiral shape of the arms (and also, incidentally, of the rotation of the bodies in the solar system, including the Earth).
The dynamics of the spiral arms are still only imperfectly understood. Differential rotation will make spiral arms out of almost any structural feature in a galaxy, but the arms should only last a fraction of the age of the galaxy. It would lead to a rapid winding-up of the arms in the 50 or so rotations that have occurred since the Galaxy was formed. One possible explanation is that the arms are not constant physical entities, but are waves of high star density moving more slowly than the stars. Stars slow down and pile up temporarily in an arm because of its higher gravitational field, then pass out of the arm and proceed until they encounter the next arm.
Determinations have been made of the Galaxy's movement as a whole, relative to the rest of the universe. For example, high-altitude measurements were made of the universe's BACKGROUND RADIATION, the residual glow of the so-called 'big bang' that is assumed to have occurred in the first moments of the universe (see COSMOLOGY). The measurements indicated that the Galaxy is moving, relative to the universe, in the same direction as the constellation Leo lies relative to the Earth, and with a velocity of more than 600 km/sec (373 mi/sec). The galaxy is also moving at about 100 km/sec (62 mi/sec), relative to the center of mass of the local group of galaxies. The local group, in turn, is moving at a comparable velocity relative to the supercluster of galaxies to which it belongs. Some astronomers have proposed that the flow is moving toward a huge, distant region of space that has been called the Great Attractor, but others have since disputed this theoretical structure.
RADIATION FROM THE GALAXY
From a distance, the Galaxy could be detected by a wide variety of means, since it emits radiation at almost all possible wavelengths: it is optically bright, emitting the equivalent of approximately 200 billion Suns in optical (visible) radiation; it is a strong source of radio-line emission, especially from its large mass of neutral hydrogen; it is a source of radio continuum noise, both from the hot gas clouds in its arms and from its dense, hot nucleus; its huge, dark, cool complexes of dust and gas emit infrared emission; it shines in the ultraviolet region of the spectrum because of its large number of very hot, recently formed stars; and it gives off X radiation from many sources. | <urn:uuid:647bbb21-0372-472f-8782-6eec073ae4f6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.schreiben10.com/referate/Physik/3/GALAXY-reon.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395166.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00025-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951105 | 2,717 | 4.46875 | 4 |
More than ever before, there is widespread interest in studying bumble bees and the critical role they play in our ecosystems. Bumble Bees of North America is the first comprehensive guide to North American bumble bees to be published in more than a century. Richly illustrated with color photographs, diagrams, range maps, and graphs of seasonal activity patterns, this guide allows amateur and professional naturalists to identify all 46 bumble bee species found north of Mexico and to understand their ecology and changing geographic distributions.
The book draws on the latest molecular research, shows the enormous color variation within species, and guides readers through the many confusing convergences between species. It draws on a large repository of data from museum collections and presents state-of-the-art results on evolutionary relationships, distributions, and ecological roles. Illustrated keys allow identification of color morphs and social castes.
A landmark publication, Bumble Bees of North America sets the standard for guides and the study of these important insects.
- The best guide yet to the 46 recognized bumble bee species in North America north of Mexico
- Up-to-date taxonomy includes previously unpublished results
- Detailed distribution maps
- Extensive keys identify the many color patterns of species
Paul H. Williams is a research entomologist at the Natural History Museum in London. Robbin W. Thorp is professor emeritus of entomology at the University of California, Davis. Leif L. Richardson is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Dartmouth College. Sheila R. Colla is an NSERC postdoctoral fellow and project leader at Wildlife Preservation Canada.
"A very helpful guide for any one interested in bumble bees."--Amanda Williams, buzzaboutbees.net
"As bee populations plummet and environmental concerns continue to make the news, there is widespread interest in bees. This attractively priced guide helps users identify the 46 species found north of Mexico and offers insight into their ecology and habitats. . . . This guide will be useful in public and academic libraries where there is an interest in bees or the environment."--Rebecca Vnuk, Booklist
"Identif[ies] the 46 species of bumblebee that are found in North America (Mexico is not included), far more than previous guides. The introduction presents clear information on these bees generally, their distribution, colony cycle, and interactions with plants. . . . An attractive, worthwhile purchase."--Margaret Heilbrun, Library Journal
"Because of their importance as a pollinator, their ubiquity (in various species, of course) across the continent, and simply because the lives and behaviors bumble bees are so fascinating, Bumble Bees of North America should be considered as a must-read by all amateur naturalists. Professionals--be they entomologists, ecologists, general biologists, and most especially teachers of life science subjects at all levels--would also do well to add it to their reading lists for both its superb introduction to the genus as well as its value as a reference guide."--John Riutta, Well-read Naturalist
Table of Contents
Worker Bombus fraternus
Click to enlarge
Bee Life Cycle
Click to enlarge
Worker bumblebees foraging
Click to enlarge | <urn:uuid:c0936831-0fda-4efd-87a4-bff2ab373121> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10219.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397562.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00151-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907266 | 671 | 3.265625 | 3 |
Throughout her career, African-American actress Diana Sands successfully challenged racial barriers in the theater world by pursuing and winning parts that were traditionally played by white actresses. At a time when black actors were offered minor or marginal roles Sands battled for more interracial casting. She also appeared in noteworthy plays about the lives of African Americans.
A native New Yorker who graduated from that city’s celebrated High School of the Performing Arts, Sands made her professional debut off-Broadway playing Juliet in An Evening with Will Shakespeare (1953) and a year later she appeared in a revival of Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara. She had a few minor successes before making her Broadway debut in Lorraine Hansberry’s ground breaking play about an African-American family living in Chicago’s South Side, A Raisin in the Sun. The play was roundly praised as a work that “has vigor and veracity and is likely to destroy the complacency of any one who sees it.”1 Members of the cast, which included Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, and Claudia McNeil, were celebrated for their compelling portrayal of Hansberry’s vivid characters. Sands was awarded the Outer Critics Circle Award and a Variety Critics Poll Award for her performance. She revisited the part in the 1961 film version of the play.
Shortly after the success of A Raisin in the Sun, Sands appeared with Alan Alda in a Broadway romantic comedy, The Owl and the Pussycat by Bill Manhoff. The two-person play was written for white actors, and race wasn’t an element of the story—in fact it was never even mentioned. Such interracial casting was rare and thus was thought by many to be a major step toward dismantling the status quo regarding race in the theater community. Sands continued in this vein when, in the late 1960s as a member of the Repertory Theater at Lincoln Center, she became the first African-American woman to play Joan of Arc in a professional production when she appeared in Shaw’s Saint Joan.
In addition to performing with touring and regional productions, Sands appeared in films and on television. She was to play Claudine in the 1974 film of the same name, (a role for which Diahann Caroll would eventually receive an Oscar nomination) but Sands, a long-time chain smoker, was diagnosed with cancer and deemed too ill to take the role. She died in September of that year. | <urn:uuid:6804bcab-3441-4dce-b0a7-1d533acbe03d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://brbl-archive.library.yale.edu/exhibitions/cvvpw/gallery/sands.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403508.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00150-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984704 | 505 | 2.515625 | 3 |
They steamed westward with America, carrying goods and people to the new frontier. They powered through the industrial revolution, moving with the times. And they transported a nation in motion, soldiers and settlers and immigrants, captains of industry and itinerant laborers. These were the steam locomotives that ruled the rails and kept America moving and working for more than a century.
Pictured here in more than 250 modern photographs of restored and preserved models, these locomotives evoke the railroad’s golden age and stand as a powerful reminder of the industry’s might. The book offers a pictorial history of the evolution of steam power from the early nineteenth century to the demise of steam power after World War II; detailed captions identify each pictured locomotive and explain its role in the history of American motive power. Featuring every prominent wheel configuration as well as shrouded “streamlined” locomotives, Steam Power conveys the grand geographic and technological breadth of North American railroading. | <urn:uuid:eaa431ca-22bf-42cb-9a33-8c299d1c5dcb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.railroadbookstore.com/shop/Steam_11948_076033336X_Steam-Power-Gallery.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402479.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00070-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954633 | 201 | 3.234375 | 3 |
Engineers have constructed a solar array smaller than a dime out of 20 solar cells
Some of the tiniest solar cells ever built have been successfully tested as a power source for even tinier microscopic machines. An article in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy (JRSE), published by the American Institute of Physics (AIP), describes an inch-long array of 20 of these cells -- each one about a quarter the size of a lowercase "o" in a standard 12-point font.
The cells were made of an organic polymer and were joined together in an experiment aimed at proving their ability to power tiny devices that can be used to detect chemical leaks and for other applications, says Xiaomei Jiang, who led the research at the University of South Florida.
Traditional solar cells, such as the commercial type installed on rooftops, use a brittle backing made of silicon, the same sort of material upon which computer chips are built. By contrast, organic solar cells rely upon a polymer that has the same electrical properties of silicon wafers but can be dissolved and printed onto flexible material.
"I think these materials have a lot more potential than traditional silicon," says Jiang. "They could be sprayed on any surface that is exposed to sunlight -- a uniform, a car, a house."
Jiang and her colleagues fabricated their array of 20 tiny solar cells as a power source for running a microscopic sensor for detecting dangerous chemicals and toxins. The detector, known as a microeletromechanical system (MEMS) device, is built with carbon nanotubes and has already been tested using ordinary DC power supplied by batteries. When fully powered and hooked into a circuit, the carbon nanotubes can sensitively detect particular chemicals by measuring the electrical changes that occur when chemicals enter the tubes. The type of chemical can be distinguished by the exact change in the electrical signal.
The device needs a 15-volt power source to work, so far and Jiang's solar cell array can provide about half of that -- up to 7.8 volts in their laboratory tests. The next step, she says, is to optimize the device to increase the voltage and then combine the miniature solar array to the carbon nanotube chemical sensors. Jiang estimates they will be able to demonstrate this level of power with their next generation solar array by the end of the year. | <urn:uuid:c221bd93-b044-4311-9aea-71c613eff27f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/38599 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00030-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945198 | 481 | 4.03125 | 4 |
For as long as humans have been telling stories, they have been sharing the experience of war. From Homer to Hemingway and after, their writings have left a record that has enriched our understanding of war's madness and how it affects the soldier. This section contains excerpts from the poems, stories and memoirs of veterans and a few first-hand observers - including Hemingway and Whitman - of the American Civil War, World Wars I and II, and the Vietnam War. No doubt, as American soldiers return from Iraq and Afghanistan, they will be adding to this remarkable literary cannon.
FRONTLINE thanks Dale Ritterbusch, an associate editor of War, Literature & the Arts and a visiting professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy, for his assistance in compiling this selection. The WLA journal has been published by the Air Force Humanities Institute since 1989 and offers on its web site more than 15 years of the literature and art of war.
· The American Civil War
Sam Watkins was born in Tennessee in 1839 and enlisted as a private in the Confederate Army, Company H, in 1861. With two decades of hindsight, Watkins wrote his memoirs of those years, titled Company Aytch: Or, a Side Show of the Big Show and Other Sketches (1881). In this excerpt, Watkins questions the veracity of his recollected experience until the present is drowned out by memories of the past. Watkins died in 1901.
[From Company Aytch]:
And while my imagination is like the weaver's shuttle, playing backward and forward through these two decades of time, I ask myself, Are these things real? did they happen? are they being enacted today? or are they the fancies of the imagination in forgetful reverie? . . . Surely these are just the vagaries of my own imagination. Surely my fancies are running wild tonight. But, hush! I now hear the approach of battle. That low, rumbling sound in the west is the roar of cannon in the distance. That rushing sound is the tread of soldiers. That quick, lurid glare is the flash that precedes the cannon's roar. And, listen! that loud report that makes the earth tremble and jar and sway, is but the bursting of a shell, as it screams through the dark, tempestuous night. That black, ebon cloud, where the lurid lightning flickers and flares, that is rolling through the heavens, is the smoke of battle; beneath is being enacted a carnage of blood and death. Listen! the soldiers are charging now. The flashes and roaring now are blended with the shouts of soldiers and the confusion of battle. . .
After finding critical success with his 1855 volume of poetry, Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman turned to nursing and journalism at the outbreak of the Civil War as a way of helping out the union cause. He published and anti-slavery newspaper and visited wounded soldiers at military hospitals in New York and Washington. In this poem, penned at the end of the war, Whitman describes how his dreams are haunted by memories of those wounded soldiers and of the home front carnage of war.
In midnight sleep of many a face of anguish,
Of the look at first of the mortally wounded, (of that indescribable look,)
Of the dead on their backs with arms extended wide,
I dream, I dream, I dream.
Of scenes of Nature, fields and mountains,
Of skies so beauteous after a storm, and at night the moon so unearthly
Shining sweetly, shining down, where we dig the trenches and gather
I dream, I dream, I dream.
Long have they pass'd, faces and trenches and fields,
Where through the carnage I moved with a callous composure, or away
from the fallen,
Onward I sped at the time -- but now of their forms at night,
I dream, I dream, I dream.
· World War I
Siegfried Sassoon was born in 1886 into a wealthy English family and spent his early years enjoying the comforts of country living and writing romantic verse. These experiences left him ill prepared for the horrors of war -- including the deaths of a close friend and a brother -- but well suited to render the details of war in poetry. By 1917, Sassoon had become disillusioned by the war and began publicly protesting Britain's military leadership. Fortunately, friend and fellow poet Robert Graves convinced Sassoon's command that he was suffering from neurasthenia, or "shell shock," and Sassoon was sent to convalesce at the military hospital at Craiglockart, Scotland. While there, he met and encouraged the work of one of the greatest World War I poets, Wilfred Owen. Although Owen's poems reached wider public acclaim than his mentor's, Sassoon's poetry is important for illustrating the lose of innocence and disillusionment that accompany a soldier's war experience.
"Repression of War Experience"
Now light the candles; one; two; there's a moth;
What silly beggars they are to blunder in
And scorch their wings with glory, liquid flame--
No, no, not that, -- it's bad to think of war,
When thoughts you've gagged all day come back to scare
And it's been proved that soldiers don't go mad
Unless they lose control of ugly thoughts
That drive them out to jabber among the trees.
Now light your pipe; look, what a steady hand.
Draw a deep breath; stop thinking; count fifteen,
And you're as right as rain. . . .
Why won't it rain? . . .
I wish there'd be a thunder-storm to-night,
With bucketsful of water to sluice the dark,
And make the roses hang their dripping heads.
Books; what a jolly company they are,
Standing so quiet and patient on their shelves,
Dressed in dim brown, and black, and white, and green,
And every kind of colour. Which will you read?
Come on; O do read something; they're so wise.
I tell you all the wisdom of the world
Is waiting for you on those shelves; and yet
You sit and gnaw your nails, and let your pipe out,
And listen to the silence: on the ceiling
There's one big, dizzy moth that bumps and flutters;
And in the breathless air outside the house
The garden waits for something that delays.
There must be crowds of ghosts among the trees,
Not people killed in battle, -- they're in France, --
But horrible shapes in shrouds -- old men who died
Slow, natural deaths, - old men with ugly souls,
Who wore their bodies out with nasty sins.
You're quiet and peaceful, summering safe at home;
You'd never think there was a bloody war on!...
O yes, you would. . . why, you can hear the guns.
Hark! Thud, thud, thud, -- quite soft. . . they never cease --
Those whispering guns -- O Christ, I want to go out
And screech at them to stop -- I'm going crazy;
I'm going stark, staring mad because of the guns.
No doubt they'll soon get well; the shock and strain
Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk.
Of course they're "longing to go out again," --
These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk.
They'll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed
Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died, --
Their dreams that drip with murder; and they'll be proud
Of glorious war that shatter'd all their pride. . .
Men who went out to battle, grim and glad;
Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad.
Craiglockhart. October, 1917
"Does It Matter?"
Does it matter? -- losing your legs? . .
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When the others come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.
Does it matter? -- losing your sight? . . .
There's such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.
Do they matter? -- those dreams from the pit?...
You can drink and forget and be glad,
And people won't say that you're mad;
For they'll know you've fought for your country
And no one will worry a bit.
Have you forgotten yet? . . .
For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow.
Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same -- and War's a bloody game. . .
Have you forgotten yet?…
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.
Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz --
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench --
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?'
Do you remember that hour of din before the attack--
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads--those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you'll never forget.
Wilfred Owen was born in England in 1893 and enlisted in the British army in 1915. In 1917 he was posted to the front lines in France, where for six months he witnessed intense bombardment before being diagnose with neurasthenia, or "shell shock." Sent to convalesce at the military hospital in Craiglockhart, Scotland, Owen turned his attention to writing poetry about his war experience. Much of his most famous poetry was written in this one-year period and shows a cynical view of the grisly nature of war. While there, he met the more established poet Siegfried Sassoon, who encouraged his talents and introduced him to other prominent British writers. In June of 1918, he was deemed fit for service and returned to the front lines in France, where he died while attempting to lead his men across the Sambre Canal in November 1918, less than two weeks before the armistice.
"Dulce Et Decorum Est"
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!-An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Happy are men who yet before they are killed
Can let their veins run cold.
Whom no compassion fleers
Or makes their feet
Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.
The front line withers,
But they are troops who fade, not flowers,
For poets' tearful fooling:
Men, gaps for filling:
Losses, who might have fought
Longer; but no one bothers.
And some cease feeling
Even themselves or for themselves.
Dullness best solves
The tease and doubt of shelling,
And Chance's strange arithmetic
Comes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling.
They keep no check on armies' decimation.
Happy are these who lose imagination:
They have enough to carry with ammunition.
Their spirit drags no pack.
Their old wounds, save with cold, can not more ache.
Having seen all things red,
Their eyes are rid
Of the hurt of the colour of blood for ever.
And terror's first constriction over,
Their hearts remain small-drawn.
Their senses in some scorching cautery of battle
Now long since ironed,
Can laugh among the dying, unconcerned.
Happy the soldier home, with not a notion
How somewhere, every dawn, some men attack,
And many sighs are drained.
Happy the lad whose mind was never trained:
His days are worth forgetting more than not.
He sings along the march
Which we march taciturn, because of dusk,
The long, forlorn, relentless trend
From larger day to huger night.
We wise, who with a thought besmirch
Blood over all our soul,
How should we see our task
But through his blunt and lashless eyes?
Alive, he is not vital overmuch;
Drying, not mortal overmuch;
Nor sad, nor proud,
Nor curious at all.
He cannot tell
Old men's placidity from his.
But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns,
That they should be as stones.
Wretched are they, and mean
With paucity that never was simplicity.
By choice they made themselves immune
To pity and whatever moans in man
Before the last sea and the hapless stars;
Whatever mourns when many leave these shores;
The eternal reciprocity of tears.
Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls' teeth wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain,-but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hands' palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?
These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.
Always they must see these things and hear them,
Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,
Carnage incomparable, and human squander
Rucked too thick for these men's extrication.
Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented
Back into their brains, because on their sense
Sunlight seems a blood-smear; night comes blood-black;
Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh.
Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,
Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.
Thus their hands are plucking at each other;
Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;
Snatching after us who smote them, brother,
Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.
In 1917, the United States had not yet joined the war in Europe, but 18-year old Earnest Hemingway joined the American Red Cross as an ambulance driver in an attempt to participate in the action. However, just a few weeks after arriving in Italy, he was severely wounded by a mortar explosion. After a long convalescence, he returned home and before long began writing fiction based on his experiences, some of the greatest war prose ever written. The following story, "Soldier's Home," written in 1925, tells of a soldier who returns to his family in the Midwest only to feel shame and isolation because they persists in seeing only the romantic side of war.
Krebs went to the war from a Methodist college in Kansas. There is a picture which shows him among his fraternity brothers, all of them wearing exactly the same height and style collar. He enlisted in the Marines in 1917 and did not return to the United States until the second division returned from the Rhine in the summer of 1919.
There is a picture which shows him on the Rhone with two German girls and another corporal. Krebs and the corporal look too big for their uniforms. The German girls are not beautiful. The Rhine does not show in the picture.
By the time Krebs returned to his home town in Oklahoma the greeting of heroes was over. He came back much too late. The men from the town who had been drafted had all been welcomed elaborately on their return. There had been a great deal of hysteria.
Now the reaction had set in. People seemed to think it was rather ridiculous for Krebs to be getting back so late, years after the war was over.
At first Krebs, who had been at Belleau Wood, Soissons, the Champagne, St. Mihiel and in the Argonne did not want to talk about the war at all. Later he felt the need to talk but no one wanted to hear about it. His town had heard too many atrocity stories to be thrilled by actualities. Krebs found that to be listened to at all he had to lie and after he had done this twice he, too, had a reaction against the war and against talking about it. A distaste for everything that had happened to him in the war set in because of the lies he had told. All of the times that had been able to make him feel cool and clear inside himself when he thought of them; the times so long back when he had done the one thing, the only thing for a man to do, easily and naturally, when he might have done something else, now lost their cool, valuable quality and then were lost themselves.
His lies were quite unimportant lies and consisted in attributing to himself things other men had seen, done or heard of, and stating as facts certain apocryphal incidents familiar to all soldiers. Even his lies were not sensational at the pool room. His acquaintances, who had heard detailed accounts of German women found chained to machine guns in the Argonne and who could not comprehend, or were barred by their patriotism from interest in, any German machine gunners who were not chained, were not thrilled by his stories.
Krebs acquired the nausea in regard to experience that is the result of untruth or exaggeration, and when he occasionally met another man who had really been a soldier and the talked a few minutes in the dressing room at a dance he fell into the easy pose of the old soldier among other soldiers: that he had been badly, sickeningly frightened all the time. In this way he lost everything.
During this time, it was late summer, he was sleeping late in bed, getting up to walk down town to the library to get a book, eating lunch at home, reading on the front porch until he became bored and then walking down through the town to spend the hottest hours of the day in the cool dark of the pool room. He loved to play pool.
In the evening he practiced on his clarinet, strolled down town, read and went to bed. He was still a hero to his two young sisters. His mother would have given him breakfast in bed if he had wanted it. She often came in when he was in bed and asked him to tell her about the war, but her attention always wandered. His father was non-committal.
Before Krebs went away to the war he had never been allowed to drive the family motor car. His father was in the real estate business and always wanted the car to be at his command when he required it to take clients out into the country to show them a piece of farm property. The car always stood outside the First National Bank building where his father had an office on the second floor. Now, after the war, it was still the same car.
Nothing was changed in the town except that the young girls had grown up. But they lived in such a complicated world of already defined alliances and shifting feuds that Krebs did not feel the energy or the courage to break into it. He liked to look at them, though. There were so many good-looking young girls. Most of them had their hair cut short. When he went away only little girls wore their hair like that or girls that were fast. They all wore sweaters and shirt waists with round Dutch collars. It was a pattern. He liked to look at them from the front porch as they walked on the other side of the street. He liked to watch them walking under the shade of the trees. He liked the round Dutch collars above their sweaters. He liked their silk stockings and flat shoes. He liked their bobbed hair and the way they walked.
When he was in town their appeal to him was not very strong. He did not like them when he saw them in the Greek's ice cream parlor. He did not want them themselves really. They were too complicated. There was something else. Vaguely he wanted a girl but he did not want to have to work to get her. He would have liked to have a girl but he did not want to have to spend a long time getting her. He did not want to get into the intrigue and the politics. He did not want to have to do any courting. He did not want to tell any more lies. It wasn't worth it.
He did not want any consequences. He did not want any consequences ever again. He wanted to live along without consequences. Besides he did not really need a girl. The army had taught him that. It was all right to pose as though you had to have a girl. Nearly everybody did that. But it wasn't true. You did not need a girl. That was the funny thing. First a fellow boasted how girls mean nothing to him, that he never thought of them, that they could not touch him. Then a fellow boasted that he could not get along without girls, that he had to have them all the time, that he could not go to sleep without them.
That was all a lie. It was all a lie both ways. You did not need a girl unless you thought about them. He learned that in the army. Then sooner or later you always got one. When you were really ripe for a girl you always got one. You did not have to think about it. Sooner or later it could come. He had learned that in the army.
Now he would have liked a girl if she had come to him and not wanted to talk. But here at home it was all too complicated. He knew he could never get through it all again. It was not worth the trouble. That was the thing about French girls and German girls. There was not all this talking. You couldn't talk much and you did not need to talk. It was simple and you were friends. He thought about France and then he began to think about Germany. On the whole he had liked Germany better. He did not want to leave Germany. He did not want to come home. Still, he had come home. He sat on the front porch.
He liked the girls that were walking along the other side of the street. He liked the look of them much better than the French girls or the German girls. But the world they were in was not the world he was in. He would like to have one of them. But it was not worth it. They were such a nice pattern. He liked the pattern. It wis exciting. But he would not go through all the talking. He did not want one badly enough. He liked to look at them all, though. It was not worth it. Not now when things were getting good again.
He sat there on the porch reading a book on the war. It was a history and he was reading about all the engagements he had been in. It was the most interesting reading he had ever done. He wished there were more maps. He looked forward with a good feeling to reading all the really good histories when they would come out with good detail maps. Now he was really learning about the war. He had been a good soldier. That made a difference.
One morning after he had been home about a month his mother came into his bedroom and sat on the bed. She smoothed her apron.
"I had a talk with your father last night, Harold," she said, "and he is willing for you to take the car out in the evenings."
"Yeah?" said Krebs, who was not fully awake. "Take the car out? Yeah?"
"Yes. Your father has felt for some time that you should be able to take the car out in the evenings whenever you wished but we only talked it over last night."
"I'll bet you made him," Krebs said.
"No. It was your father's suggestion that we talk the matter over."
"Yeah. I'll bet you made him," Krebs sat up in bed.
"Will you come down to breakfast, Harold?" his mother said."
"As soon as I get my clothes on," Krebs said.
His mother went out of the room and he could hear her frying something downstairs while he washed, shaved and dressed to go down into the dining-room for breakfast. While he was eating breakfast, his sister brought in the mail.
"Well, Hare," she said. "You old sleepy-head. What do you ever get up for?"
Krebs looked at her. He liked her. She was his best sister.
"Have you got the paper?" he asked.
She handed him The Kansas City Star and he shucked off its brown wrapper and opened it to the sporting page. He folded The Star open and propped it against the water pitcher with his cereal dish to steady it, so he could read while he ate.
"Harold," his mother stood in the kitchen doorway, "Harold, please don't muss up the paper. Your father can't read his Star if its been mussed."
"I won't muss it," Krebs said.
His sister sat down at the table and watched him while he read.
"We're playing indoor over at school this afternoon," she said. "I'm going to pitch."
"Good," said Krebs. "How's the old wing?"
"I can pitch better than lots of the boys. I tell them all you taught me. The other girls aren't much good."
"Yeah?" said Krebs.
"I tell them all you're my beau. Aren't you my beau, Hare?"
"Couldn't your brother really be your beau just because he's your brother?"
"I don't know."
"Sure you know. Couldn't you be my beau, Hare, if I was old enough and if you wanted to?"
"Sure. You're my girl now."
"Am I really your girl?"
"Do you love me?"
"Do you love me always?"
"Will you come over and watch me play indoor?"
"Aw, Hare, you don't love me. If you loved me, you'd want to come over and watch me play indoor."
Krebs's mother came into the dining-room from the kitchen. She carried a plate with two fried eggs and some crisp bacon on it and a plate of buckwheat cakes.
"You run along, Helen," she said. "I want to talk to Harold."
She put the eggs and bacon down in front of him and brought in a jug of maple syrup for the buckwheat cakes. Then she sat down across the table from Krebs.
"I wish you'd put down the paper a minute, Harold," she said.
Krebs took down the paper and folded it.
"Have you decided what you are going to do yet, Harold?" his mother said, taking off her glasses.
"No," said Krebs.
"Don't you think it's about time?" His mother did not say this in a mean way. She seemed worried.
"I hadn't thought about it," Krebs said.
"God has some work for every one to do," his mother said. "There can be no idle hands in His Kingdom."
"I'm not in His Kingdom," Krebs said.
"We are all of us in His Kingdom."
Krebs felt embarrassed and resentful as always.
"I've worried about you too much, Harold," his mother went on. "I know the temptations you must have been exposed to. I know how weak men are. I know what your own dear grandfather, my own father, told us about the Civil War and I have prayed for you. I pray for you all day long, Harold."
Krebs looked at the bacon fat hardening on his plate.
"Your father is worried, too," his mother went on. "He thinks you have lost your ambition, that you haven't got a definite aim in life. Charley Simmons, who is just your age, has a good job and is going to be married. The boys are all settling down; they're all determined to get somewhere; you can see that boys like Charley Simmons are on their way to being really a credit to the community."
Krebs said nothing.
"Don't look that way, Harold," his mother said. "You know we love you and I want to tell you for your own good how matters stand. Your father does not want to hamper your freedom. He thinks you should be allowed to drive the car. If you want to take some of the nice girls out riding with you, we are only too pleased. We want you to enjoy yourself. But you are going to have to settle down to work, Harold. Your father doesn't care what you start in at. All work is honorable as he says. But you've got to make a start at something. He asked me to speak to you this morning and then you can stop in and see him at his office."
"Is that all?" Krebs said.
"Yes. Don't you love your mother dear boy?"
"No," Krebs said.
His mother looked at him across the table. Her eyes were shiny. She started crying.
"I don't love anybody," Krebs said.
It wasn't any good. He couldn't tell her, he couldn't make her see it. It was silly to have said it. He had only hurt her. He went over and took hold of her arm. She was crying with her head in her hands.
"I didn't mean it," he said. "I was just angry at something. I didn't mean I didn't love you."
His mother went on crying. Krebs put his arm on her shoulder.
"Can't you believe me, mother?"
His mother shook her head.
"Please, please, mother. Please believe me."
"All right," his mother said chokily. She looked up at him. "I believe you, Harold."
Krebs kissed her hair. She put her face up to him.
"I'm your mother," she said. "I held you next to my heart when you were a tiny baby."
Krebs felt sick and vaguely nauseated.
"I know, Mummy," he said. "I'll try and be a good boy for you."
"Would you kneel and pray with me, Harold?" his mother asked.
They knelt down beside the dining-room table and Krebs's mother prayed.
"Now, you pray, Harold," she said.
"I can't," Krebs said.
"Do you want me to pray for you?"
So his mother prayed for him and then they stood up and Krebs kissed his mother and went out of the house. He had tried so to keep his life from being complicated. Still, none of it had touched him. He had felt sorry for his mother and she had made him lie. He would go to Kansas City and get a job and she would feel all right about it. There would be one more scene maybe before he got away. He would not go down to his father's office. He would miss that one. He wanted his life to go smoothly. It had just gotten going that way. Well, that was all over now, anyway. He would go over to the schoolyard and watch Helen play indoor baseball.
· World War II
Audie Murphy is famous for being the "Most Decorated Soldier in WWII," a record that stands to this day. The son of a Texas sharecropper, Murphy lied about his age in order to join the Army at 17. By the time he was released from service two years later, he had killed 240 German soldiers and was awarded every medal for bravery that the nation bestows, including the Congressional Medal of Honor. After returning from the war, Audie's story made the cover of LIFE magazine and was turned into a feature-length film starring Murphy himself. He went on to have a long Hollywood career, consisting mostly of B-level war stories and westerns, and was killed in a plane crash in 1971 at the age of 46. However, what is less well-known about Murphy, is that he suffered from PTSD for most of his adult life. In a 1983 Esquire profile, Thomas B. Morgan writes that Murphy was uncomfortable with the country's hero worship and unable to enjoy life after the war. He suffered from eight years of insomnia, an addiction to sleeping pills, a nagging sense of insecurity and emotional numbness. In this excerpt from his 1949 memoir, To Hell and Back, Murphy describes his experience just after he has left the front lines and as he is beginning to feel the on-set of what we know today as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
[From To Hell and Back]:
In the Cannes hotel, I crawl into a tub of hot water and wallow around like a seal. Knotted muscles snap loose; and my eyes droop.
"Hey, there. You want to drown yourself?" My roommate, the restless lieutenant on the train, pauses in the middle of his shaving. "If you want to drown yourself, do it with champagne."
"I didn't know a body could get so tired."
"I'm out on my feet too. But a few snorts will fix that up."
"I'm going to take this town apart. You want to come along?"
"No, I'm going to hit the sack."
"Well, get out of the tub, bub. We've got a couple beds with sheets and everything, you know."
"I'll see you later."
"Okay. But remember, this burg's loaded with soldiers. If you want a dame, you'll have to hustle."
When I awake from the nap, it is mid-afternoon. From my window I can see the gulls wheeling over the Mediterranean and white breakers lapping the beaches. A hum comes up from the crowded city streets; and somewhere an orchestra is playing "Lili Marlene."
Turning to my pack in search of a necktie, I spy my service pistol. Automatically I pick it up, remove the clip, and check the mechanism. It works with buttered smoothness. I weigh the weapon in my hand and admire the cold, blue glint of its steel. It is more beautiful than a flower; more faithful than most friends.
The bells in a nearby cathedral start ringing. I toss the gun back into the pack and seize my necktie. In the streets, crowded with merrymakers, I feel only a vague
irritation. I want company, and I want to be alone. I want to talk, and I want to be silent. I want to sit, and I want to walk. There is VE-Day without, but no peace within.
Like a horror film run backwards, images of the war flicker through my brain. The tank in the snow with smoldering bodies on top. The smell of burning flesh. Of rotting flesh too. Novak rotting in a grave on Anzio. Horse-Face. Knowed an old girl once. The girl, red-eyed and shivering, in the Naples dawn. And Kerrigan. Kerrigan shuffling cards with half a hand. He was far luckier than Antonio. Yes, Antonio, trying to stand on the stumps of his legs with the machine gun ripping his body. And Brandon dead under the cork tree. Deer daddy, I'm in school. "I'll never enter another schoolroom," says Elleridge.
He was right. It is as though a fire had roared through this human house, leaving only the charred hulk of something that once was green.
Within a couple of hours, I have had enough. I return to my room. But I cannot sleep. My mind still whirls. When I was a child, I was told that men were branded by war. Has the brand been put on me? Have the years of blood and ruin stripped me of all decency? Of all belief?
Not of all belief. I believe in the force of a hand grenade, the power of artillery, the accuracy of a Garand. I believe in hitting before you get hit, and that dead men do not look noble.
But I also believe in men like Brandon and Novak and Swope and Kerrigan; and all the men who stood up against the enemy, taking their beatings without whimper and their triumphs without boasting. The men who went and would go again to hell and back to preserve what our country thinks right and decent.
My country. America! That is it. We have been so intent on death that we have forgotten life. And now suddenly life faces us. I swear to myself that I will measure up to it. I maybe branded by war, but I will not be defeated by it.
Gradually it becomes clear. I will go back. I will find the kind of girl of whom I once dreamed. I will learn to look at life through uncynical eyes, to have faith, to know love. I will learn to work in peace as in war. And finally-finally, like countless others, I will learn to live again.
Lucien Stryk is a veteran of World War II, a prize-winning poet, and an editor and translator of Chinese and Japanese Zen poetry. In these two poems, from his collection, And Still the Bird Sings, Stryk writes about the power of memory. Though not necessarily about Post-Traumatic Stress, these poems touch on the issue of flashbacks, and how painful memories can return unbidden and without warning -- a symptom common to those suffering from PTSD.
"Watching War Movies"
Always the same: watching
World War II movies on TV,
landing barges bursting onto
islands, my skin crawls --
heat, dust -- the scorpion
bites again. How I deceived
myself. Certain my role would
not make me killer, my unarmed
body called down fire from
scarred hills. As life took
life, blood coursed into
one stream. I knew one day,
the madness stopped, I'd make
my pilgrimage to temples,
gardens, serene masters of
a Way which pain was bonding.
Atoms fuse, a mushroom cloud,
the movie ends. But I still
stumble under camouflage, near
books of tranquil Buddhas by the
screen. The war goes on and on.
Three deliberate shots
fire this quiet town,
scatter sparrows from
the willow-oak, touch
the scar where over thirty
years ago the mortar
fragment hit: I know
once more how good it is
to live. Thinking of the
boy struck down beside
me by that shell, I see
him sink into slow jungle
green, shock burned forever
in his eyes. Again I
crawl to comfort his last
breath. Even now there's
nothing I can do but,
as the bugle fades, remember.
Robert Mason was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam from 1965-1966. Soon after he returned, he began suffering from the effects of PTSD, which lasted 14 years. He has written several memoirs about Vietnam including Chickenhawk, about his combat experience, and Chickenhawk: Back in the World, about readjusting to post-war life. In addition, his wife, Patience Mason, has written Recovering from the War, a guide to PTSD for veterans, their families and caregivers, and publishes the Post-Traumatic Gazette, a quarterly newsletter. In this excerpt, from the beginning of his post-war memoir, Mason describes his mindset soon after returning from war, but before he learned he was suffering from PTSD.
[From Chickenhawk: Back in the World]:
By the Christmas break I had been an IP for a month and Patience and I were pretty well settled. We'd rented a house in Mineral Wells, an all-American place with a garage and backyard. This was the first house we'd lived in together. We were married in 1963, just before I joined the Army. Patience and our son, Jack, had endured crummy apartments and trailers while I went through basic training, advanced infantry training, and flight school. They seldom saw me while I was a trainee soldier, and then I went to Vietnam. Jack, two years old now, was getting used to me again. I'd been away half his life and had missed the previous Christmas. I wanted to make him a present to show him I was just a regular dad. I was home. I was going to build things, pursue hobbies, do well at work. Forget.
I wasn't thinking about Vietnam, but it was there. Awake, in quiet moments, I felt a familiar dread in the pit of my stomach, even as I angrily informed myself that I was home. Asleep, my dreams were infected by what I'd seen. The explosive jump-ups I'd been having since the last month of my tour were getting more frequent. When Patience and Jack saw me leaping off the bed, Patience would make a joke of it: "Daddy's levitating again." But it scared her. I had asked the flight surgeon about it and he said I should be okay in a couple months.
During the two-week Christmas break I spent most of my time teaching myself how to print photographs at the craft shop or building Jack's present -- a rocking horse I designed, which Patience said had to be big enough for her, too -- at the woodshop. I thought I could obliterate memories of Vietnam by staying so busy I couldn't think about it.
A collection of my photographs began to assemble on our dining room wall. A few were prints of pictures I'd taken in Vietnam, but most were of abandoned farm buildings, rusted farm equipment, and stark Texas still lifes taken when Patience and Jack and I went for drives. One of the Vietnam pictures was of a second lieutenant and three of his men, tired, dirty, but alive, sitting on a paddy dike. I called it "Ghosts." Patience asked why. "Because they are all dead. Everyone we dropped off in that LZ is dead."
The photographs were technically good.
The rocking horse turned out big and sturdy. Jack named it Haysup. Why Haysup? "It's his name!" Jack said.
I was staying busy, but fear, my familiar Vietnam companion, visited me at odd moments, even times when I should've been happy. Normal people didn't have these bouts with fear. I knew that because I had been normal once, long ago. I looked forward to flight school starting again so I could lose myself in my work, shake these feelings.
I drove Patience and Jack out into the country to fetch a Christmas tree. While I chopped it down and Patience and Jack happily collected small branches to trim our house, I searched the dark places in the woods where snipers could hide.
Dale Ritterbusch was in the U.S. Army from 1966-1969, the last year serving a tour of duty in Vietnam. He is currently a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy, and an associate editor of their journal, War, Literature, and the Arts. These poems are from his collection, Lessons Learned.
"When It's Late"
Sometimes, when it's late
and the house is asleep
except for me
pacing from room to room,
I walk to the backyard,
look out across the ground
by a distant streetlamp.
I remember nights
in some Asian bar
drinking a few exotic beers
that sweat quickly
through the khaki's
We'd walk out late
go back to the base
sleep off as much
of the war as we could.
When you were killed
I drank for days,
made love until I
anything but the hot
sun, the red dust
Now, this late
under the circling stars
I see you walking
in the shadows
of these trees
the backyard playthings
of my daughter:
You pick them up --
they are your daughter's
you have a wife sleeping,
the rest of her life
with you: It is
this love I see
lost in the shadows
of this night, my
mind turning back
with the chill
of late spring.
This is the loss, the love
I bury each night in the shadows,
turning a spadeful of war
over and over, and always,
in the vigilant spin of this earth
digging it up before morning.
I have little sense of place
having grown up on the other side
of the world and returned home
to foreigners on foreign soil.
Not once does the family ask questions --
as if I'd gone off for the weekend
to fish or hunt. My place at the table
is the same, same chair, same silverware:
But as I glance up from my meal
I don't recognize the family portrait
hanging on the wall -- their faces unfamiliar,
their eyes from another time or country,
another race. Even my grandfather's words,
the words I'd lived by,
dissipate like a ghostly presence
passing through the walls.
my father stands on the front porch
staring at the lawn I had so often mowed
and played on as a kid:
We share the dark and the silence,
the silence of the world
in response to inarticulate horrors; I flick
a lighted cigarette, watch its red glow
as it traces an arc over the front yard,
land I cannot recognize as home.
John Balaban served two years in Vietnam -- not as a soldier, but as a conscientious objector. He worked for the Committee of Responsibility, which brought wounded children to the U.S. for treatment, many of whom he describes in this poem. After he finished his obligations there, he stayed to record Vietnamese folk poetry and has since made a career of translating these poems into English. In the following poem, Balaban describes the horrors he witnessed happening to children in Vietnam and how they have colored his relationship with his own daughter. And, in a related selection from his memoir, he recalls a conversation he had with the novelist John Steinbeck about PTSD.
"Words for My Daughter"
About eight of us were nailing up forts
in the mulberry grove behind Reds's house
when his mother started screeching and
all of us froze except Reds -- fourteen, huge
as a hippo -- who sprang out of the tree so fast
the branch nearly bobbed me off. So fast,
he hit the ground running, hammer in hand,
and seconds after he got in the house
we heard thumps like someone beating a tire
off a rim his dad's howls the screen door
banging open Saw Reds barreling out
through the tall weeds toward the highway
the father stumbling after his fat son
who never looked back across the thick swale
of teazel and black-eyed susans until it was safe
to yell fuck you at the skinny drunk
stamping around barefoot and holding his ribs.
Another time, the Connelly kid came home to find
his alcoholic mother getting raped by the milkman.
Bobby broke a milk bottle and jabbed the guy
humping on his mom. I think it really happened
because none of us would loosely mention that
wraith of a woman who slippered around her house
and never talked to anyone, not even her kids.
Once a girl ran past my porch
with a dart in her back, her open mouth
pumping like a guppy's, her eyes wild.
Later that summer, or maybe the next,
the kids hung her brother from an oak.
Before they hoisted him, yowling and heavy
on the clothesline, they made him claw the creekbank
and eat worms. I don't know why his neck didn't snap.
Reds had another nickname you couldn't say
or he'd beat you up: "Honeybun."
His dad called him that when Reds was little.
So, these were my playmates. I love them still f
or their justice and valor and desperate loves
twisted in shapes of hammer and shard.
I want you to know about their pain
and about the pain they could loose on others.
If you're reading this, I hope you will think,
Well, my dad had it rough as a kid, so what?
If you're reading this, you can read the news
and you know that children suffer worse.
Worse for me is a cloud of memories
still drifting off the South China Sea,
like the 9-year-old boy, naked and lacerated,
thrashing in his pee on a steel operating table
and yelling, "Dau. Dau," while I, trying to translate
in the mayhem of Tet for surgeons who didn't know
who this boy was or what happened to him, kept asking
"Where? Where's the pain?" until a surgeon said,
"Forget it. His ears are blown."
I remember your first Halloween
when I held you on my chest and rocked you,
so small your toes didn't touch my lap
as I smelled your fragrant peony head
and cried because I was so happy and because
I hear, in no metaphorical way, the awful chorus
Of Soeur Anicet's orphans writhing in their cribs.
Then the doorbell rand and a tiny Green Beret
was saying trick-or-treat and I thought oh oh
but remembered it was Halloween and where I was.
I smiled at the evil midget, his map-light and night
paint, his toy knife for slitting throats, and said,
"How ya doin', soldier?" and, still holding you asleep
in my arms, gave him a Mars Bar. To his father
waiting outside in fatigues I hissed, "You, shit,"
and saw us, child, in a pose I know too well.
I want you to know the worst and be free from it.
I want you to know the worst and still find good.
Day by day, as you play nearby or laugh
With the ladies at Peoples Bank as we go around town
And I find myself beaming like a fool,
O suspect I am here less for your protection
Than you are here for mine, as if you were sent
To call me back into our helpless tribe.
[From Remembering Heaven's Face, 1991]:
A total of 8,744,000 Americans -- men and women, civilians and military -- went to Vietnam, twice the number engaged in World War I, half the number engaged in World War II. No wonder this war won't go away. It lives in varying degrees of intensity in all those heads. The average age for an American soldier in Vietnam was nineteen. As Steinbeck said, they grew up in Vietnam.
Some years ago, I was in Boulder, Colorado, to see Steinbeck at the Tibetan Buddhist center where he had lately taken refuge. We were walking outside as the Red
Zinger Bicycle Classic zoomed by us. We were talking -- of course -- about Vietnam, and specifical1y about Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, which John had just written about for a magazine.
Often enough over the years, I have found myself at a window with tears in my eyes as I suddenly, without expectation, have been greeted by the naked nine-year-old thrashing on the stainless-steel operating table with his eardrums blown; often images from my COR days come floating up on mental backwater: the napalmed mother and her lovely infant daughter with the blackened arm; the pajamaed girl throwing her thigh over he old father to keep him warm as he lay dying beneath her; my carrying little anesthetized Thuy in my arms down the steps of Nhi Dong Hospital; watching a doctor unwind the turban of gauze from Thai, the scalped teenager. But somehow, if I believed at all in the existence of PTS, I thought of it as something that applied to GIs, like shellshock or battle fatigue. As Steinbeck and I spoke, however, a troubling thought overtook me. "John, do you think we've been damaged by Vietnam?"
"C'mon, Balaban, you're too smart not to have realized that."
home + introduction + interviews + jeff lucey + what the experts say + readings
watch online + join the discussion + producer's chat + video: additional stories + support & services
FRONTLINE home + wgbh + pbsi
posted march 1, 2005
FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of wgbh educational foundation.
web site copyright 1995-2014
WGBH educational foundation | <urn:uuid:277f4dd9-98e5-4797-aefb-dbdbb9c0d420> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/heart/readings/lit.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397562.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00164-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981877 | 11,694 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Results In A Heartbeat. Five To Be Exact.
About five million people visit Emergency Rooms with chest pain every year. Only a fraction of them are actually suffering serious cardiac events. For most people, there are no warning signs.
The most effective treatment for heart disease is prevention. The earlier we detect the potential for heart disease, the sooner you can begin to make changes to reduce your risk. For more than 150,000 Americans a year, the very first sign of coronary artery disease is sudden death.
Now there’s a fast, reliable, non-invasive way to rule out the cause of chest pain. In just five heartbeats, a complete coronary angiogram can be acquired and physicians can quickly rule out the three life-threatening (aortic dissection, pulmonary embolism or coronary artery disease) causes of ER chest pain in one non-invasive scan.
What is it for?
A Coronary CTA is a heart-imaging test for non-invasively determining whether either fatty deposits or calcium deposits have built up in the coronary arteries, which supply blood to the heart muscle. We can discover signs of heart disease that would be invisible in EKGs, stress testing, calcium scoring and even cardiac catheterization. Unlike calcium scoring, coronary CTA can identify what is known as "vulnerable plaque," the type of arterial plaque most likely to develop into a life-threatening blockage. If left untreated, these areas of build-up called plaques can cause heart muscle disease which, in turn, can lead to fatigue, shortness of breath, chest pain and/or heart attack.
How does it work?
A Coronary CTA comes from a special type of X-ray examination. Patients undergoing a Coronary CTA scan receive an iodine-containing contrast dye as an IV solution to ensure the best images possible. The same IV in the arm may be used to give a medication to slow or stabilize the patient’s heart rate for better imaging results. During the examination, x-rays pass through the body and are picked up by special detectors in the scanner. At Jupiter Medical Center we utilize the GE Light Speed VCT 64-slice CT scanner.
This multi-detector system delivers a comprehensive view of the heart and coronary arteries within five seconds (or five beats of the heart); essentially quadrupling the number of available thin slices over previous systems. Because of the speed of the system, it dramatically reduces artifacts due to patient motion and opens new diagnostic possibilities for the clinician.
The information collected during the Coronary CTA examination is used to identify the coronary arteries and, if present, plaques in their walls by creating 3D images on a computer screen. Though the exam typically takes approximately ten minutes, the actual scan time is only eight to ten seconds.
One or more of following risk factors can increase your risk for developing heart disease:
Heart disease affects both men and women, and while men are more susceptible at an earlier age, a woman's risk of having a heart attack rises sharply after menopause.
Don’t spend a lifetime worrying about your heart!
Because this is a screening exam it is not covered by insurance. At Jupiter Medical Center, we offer Coronary CT Angiography for $399 - including the radiologist’s interpretation.
To schedule a Coronary CT Angiography Screening, call (561) 263-4414. | <urn:uuid:3d2bf659-fb25-458b-b1c5-8a65e0d49cdc> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.jupitermed.com/ccta | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396887.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00012-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910403 | 716 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Schizophrenia is a complex illness that may partly involve your genes. But other events in your life may also play a role.
Scientists are edging closer to figuring out if there are ways to lower the risk of schizophrenia.
Smile, frown, or use facial expressions that fit the situation.
Talk as loudly or softly as needed.
You'll also learn skills that will help you with your treatment. These may include:
How to manage your medicines.
How to tell if your medicine is causing side effects and what to do.
How to know if you're having a relapse and what to do.
How to find the help you need.
To help you with these skills, your teachers may model them and then ask you to do the same with others in your class (role-playing). For example, you may role-play asking for help or interviewing for a job. | <urn:uuid:fad34c1b-4a88-42ce-9d2b-4a742471f000> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/schizophrenia-social-skills-training-topic-overview | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399117.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00191-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959117 | 183 | 3.546875 | 4 |
Pronunciation: (kav, käv), [key]
—v., calved, calv•ing.
1. to give birth to a calf: The cow is expected to calve tomorrow.
2. (of a glacier, an iceberg, etc.) to break up or splinter so as to produce a detached piece.
1. to give birth to (a calf).
2. (of a glacier, an iceberg, etc.) to break off or detach (a piece): The glacier calved an iceberg.
Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Copyright © 1997, by Random House, Inc., on Infoplease. | <urn:uuid:f930e652-dec0-490e-8aff-51e05544b818> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://dictionary.infoplease.com/calve | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393093.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00004-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.799088 | 137 | 2.765625 | 3 |
What are the characteristics of experience for Dewey? Experience begins with an impulsion of the whole organism, outward and forward. The organism moves to satisfy a need, but the nature of this motion is determined by the environment and the past experiences of the organism. Emotion always accompanies an experience. Without emotion there is no action.
A work of art does not simply evoke an emotion. The material in it becomes the content and matter of emotion when it is a part of the environment that satisfies a need in relation to the past experiences of an organism. Art objects may be inadequate or excessive in relation to the emotional needs of the spectator. Art is not nature; it is nature organized, simplified, and transformed in such a way that it places the individual and the community in a context of greater order and unity.
Therefore, for Dewey, a work of art represents nature as experienced by the artist. It organizes the public world by taking the scattered and weakened material of experience, then clarifying and concentrating it. However, a work of art does not lead to another experience of the world; it is an experience. Only secondarily, as it becomes a part of the past experiences of a person, does it transform everyday existence. Painters, for example, perceive the world just as everyone else does. However, certain lines and colors become more important to them, and they subordinate other aspects of what they are perceiving to relations among them. What they view as important is influenced by their past experiences, by their theories of art, by their attitudes toward the world, and by the scene itself. | <urn:uuid:f59ac120-b6c0-4a78-b2a0-fb7ff3e1e6d8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.enotes.com/topics/art-experience | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397562.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00107-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971943 | 323 | 3.71875 | 4 |
Skip the main content if you do not want to read it as the next section.
Eating more fruit and vegetables has been proven to help lower blood pressure.
Fruit and vegetables are full of vitamins, minerals and fibre to keep your body in good condition. They also contain potassium, which helps to balance out the negative effects of salt. This has a direct effect on your blood pressure, helping to lower it.
Eat at least 5 portions a day
To help lower blood pressure, adults should eat at least 5 different portions of fruit and vegetables per day. A portion is 80 grams, or roughly the size of your fist.
The following amounts represent a portion:
- A dessert bowl of salad
- Three heaped tablespoons of vegetables
- Three heaped tablespoons of pulses (chickpeas, lentils, beans and so on)
- One medium-sized fruit (apple, orange, pear or banana)
- Two smaller fruits (plums, apricots, satsumas)
- One slice of a large fruit (melon, pineapple or mango)
- Two to three tablespoons of berries or grapes
- A glass (150ml) of fruit or vegetable juice
- One tablespoon of dried fruit
Not everything counts
Potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, cassava and plantain are all vegetables, but they do not count towards your five a day total. However, you should still include them as part of your healthy eating.
Pulses, fruit juice and vegetable juice all count towards your five a day total. However they only count as one portion no matter how much you eat or drink.
10 ways to get the most from your fruit and vegetables
- Don’t buy fruit and vegetable dishes that come with sauces. They often contain a lot of fat, salt and sugar.
- Dried, frozen and tinned products can be just as good as fresh, but watch out for added salt, sugar or fats.
- Vary the types of fruit and vegetables you eat. Each has different health benefits and it will keep your meals interesting. By eating a wide range of fruit and vegetables, you will ensure that your body is getting all the nutrients it needs.
- Don’t add sugar to fruit or salt to vegetables when you cook or serve them.
- Try to eat fresh fruit and vegetables as soon as possible. They will lose their nutrients over time, so if you want to store your ingredients for a while, it is best to freeze them or buy frozen packets
- Avoid leaving vegetables open to the air, light or heat if they have been cut. Always cover and chill them, but don't soak them because the vitamins and minerals can dissolve away.
- Vegetables keep more of their vitamins and minerals if you lightly steam or bake them, instead of boiling or frying them.
- If you boil vegetables, use as little water as possible to help keep the vitamins and minerals in them.
- Experiment with other ways of cooking vegetables, such as roasting or grilling them, for new tastes and flavours.
- Stir-fries are great for getting lots of vegetables into one meal. So are freshly-made soups. | <urn:uuid:c4c0c049-bb7a-4ef9-a3b4-8ab7e5580bcb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bloodpressureuk.org/BloodPressureandyou/Yourlifestyle/Eatingwell/Fruitandveg | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00057-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947218 | 659 | 3.078125 | 3 |
The perfectly healthy Rufous hummingbird lay motionless in her open palm, in a trance of sorts.
Gwen Baluss, a wildlife technician with the U.S. Forest Service, had just finished banding, measuring and examining the little bird with the care a parent would take with a newborn.
It was May and snow drifts still lingered in the shadows. Despite the still-drab outdoors, the hummingbirds were alive with fervent activity in the chilly air, busily searching out nectar to refuel after a long migration north.
Back in Baluss’ hand, in the warmth of the spring sun, the hummingbird suddenly took flight, zooming into the cover of the surrounding spruce trees. It chattered its annoyance back at the group of observers.
Everyone smiled. Another bird had been counted.
Then, Baluss reached into her jacket and produced a white mesh bag. She extracted its contents — another hummer, another female — and began the process of weighing, sizing and assessing all over again.
Baluss has been recording data on Rufous hummingbirds all summer and now, with the males already gone, she’s wrapping up her research as the last of the birds — the females and juveniles — begin their migration south.
The study had multiple objectives.
“The goal is multifold,” Baluss said. “We want to learn more about the birds, what they do when they’re here and when they’re migrating.”
Specifically, she said they were interested in what native plants they preferred, how far they’d range and how often an individual bird returned to the feeder, to name just a few.
In all, Baluss and her team of volunteers banded more than 130 birds since the study officially began on April 23 at the Jensen-Olson Arboretum. They started a bit later at the Juneau Community Garden. Both places, she said, were chosen because of the prolific blooms that show up during summer months. The hummingbirds, she figured, would know about those places already.
Even with feet of snow still on the ground, Baluss and her team began capturing hummingbirds within the first few weeks.
She said the males arrived first, followed by the females. They were captured simply; a soft net was suspended over a feeder and when the bird arrived for a snack, the net was silently dropped. Baluss would reach in, clasp the bird in her hand and tuck it inside a mesh bag, before stowing it away under her jacket and against her skin to keep the bird from getting too cold and too stressed.
“One interesting thing I found through this study is that these little birds are a lot more resilient than we are in cold weather,” she said. “On those early spring days our hands would be cold and we’d be very uncomfortable, but when we’d get a bird they’d be fine. They didn’t really show signs of stress related of the cold, which is good.”
Baluss said part of that is tied to the Rufous’ unique ability to enter a state of torpor, which means they can lower their body temperature overnight.
“This helps them cope with cold weather and save energy,” she said.
Once captured, Baluss would pluck the bird out of the bag and take measurements. She measured the length of the beak, the length of the wings from “shoulder” to tip. She’d count the number of iridescent feathers on the throat patch, which is like a bird fingerprint — the number, shape, size and coloration are completely unique. She’d snap a photo. Pinch on the tiniest of tiny bands on the leg and jot down the near microscopic number on the metal bracelet. Baluss blew on the feathers of the belly, revealing the paper thin skin beneath. The feathers would spread like parting waves to reveal veins and arteries, muscle and fat deposits. On the females, she’d use this technique to view the vent of the bird — the exit site of the egg. By doing this she could tell if the female had recently mated, laid an egg or was ready to lay. On one female, the perfect outline of a dainty oblong egg could be seen directly under the surface of the skin.
Then, Baluss would lay the bird on a tiny scale, the kind one might find in a laboratory. The hummer wouldn’t budge; it seemed entranced by the process. She’d quickly jot down the number — the females always weighed more than the males — and sweep the bird once more into her hand. In a sunny spot she’d lay her palm flat, opened up to the sky and, after a moment or two, the hummingbird would zip away, often annoyed, but completely unharmed.
“The thing that was really interesting to me is that we kept getting new birds. We wouldn’t get recaptures the same day or even two weeks later,” she said. “We had zero recaptures at the Jensen-Olson Arboretum. All the birds we got there were new birds. That just blew my mind.”
Baluss said she fully expected some males — who were especially territorial — would end up as recaptures. And with the females, who would come and nest, she expected the same. Even the juveniles, she said, must not stray far from the proximity of the nest.
But even at the Community Garden, her recapture numbers were slim. In all, the team had four recaptures.
“On May 7, we initially banded a group, and then we recaptured some of those on May 19,” Baluss said. “I was just happy to see that they were healthy and that the bands were looking good.”
Another recapture happened on July 2.
“That female was probably a local nester, because she did have young around with her,” Baluss said. “She was skinny. Probably busy caring for young.”
Baluss speculates the low recapture rate was because the birds wised up and would avoid the feeder when the net was in place.
“Yet it also shows there’s a whole lot of other birds,” she said. “I often assumed it was the same birds that would keep coming back to my home feeder all day, but clearly there’s more to it than that.”
Generally speaking, Baluss believes her research this summer supports the theory there are more hummingbirds in Juneau during the late spring and summer months than people originally thought. This is a good thing, she said.
“We also know they’re moving around in a wide area, too,” she said.
Baluss hopes, if they repeat a similar effort in the same spot from year-to-year, that a trend will emerge. That trend could be migration timing — how many arrive and at what time. Or, it could be sex-linked — more males than females in an area, for example.
As far as total population numbers go, Baluss said it’s almost impossible to tell how many make their “home” in Juneau.
She said their sampling effort wasn’t huge when compared to other efforts but it’s enough to track when they’re around and already — through observations of local birders and our banding effort — she said the team is going to refine and expand the known spring arrivals and as well as the times the females are here.
“So we’re going to have much better dates on arrival, departure and when the first fledglings are coming out than we have had in the past,” Baluss said. “The other thing we’re interested in is what they’re feeding on. And that’s not related to the banding, but just collecting those observations on what native plants they enjoy.”
That information will be handy to organizations, she said, such as the USFS, on putting out information on pollinators.
“Not only for private gardens, but also restoration projects will be better informed on the proper flower selections for hummingbirds. We want more information for Alaska on that topic.”
For now, Baluss is pouring over her results and logging them into the national database. Next year, she hopes to see some of this summer’s birds again.
“It would be great to get some recaptures so we could see where these birds are going,” she said.
One thing is for sure, all the birds are headed for warmer climes, certainly bursting with the kind of broad blooms only found on Mexico’s mainland and Baja Peninsula.
• Contact Outdoors Editor Abby Lowell at [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:a818064a-ad38-4071-a7fc-cc87e8adefa5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://juneauempire.com/outdoors/2013-08-09/summer-hummers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392099.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00168-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974282 | 1,897 | 2.875 | 3 |
Visit our sister site, BirdSong Nature Shop, for great prices on thousands of backyard birding items:
Sooty mold is a fungus, which causes the blackening of the leaves of certain trees. The mold forms on the leaves as a result of honeydew secretions from insects such as whiteflies, aphids and mealybugs. Insect control is the most effective way to prevent the incidence of this disease. To control the insects and prevent the secretion of their honeydew discharge, spray the tree with Bug Buster Insecticide. When spraying the tree ensure that both the top and undersides of the leaves are adequately sprayed. A second treatment spray may be required about 10 to 14 days later depending on the severity of the insect infestation.
To control and eliminate the mold growth that has already developed, spray the tree with Liquid Copper Fungicide. Generally one application of Liquid Copper is adequate for sooty mold control, but a second application about 14 days later may be required in major outbreaks. | <urn:uuid:abaeb8e6-47f7-48d7-bcf7-eae2b0a75717> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.treehelp.com/sooty-mold/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398209.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00001-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934605 | 205 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Keyboard vs Mouse
Keyboard and mouse are integral parts of a computer system and one cannot even think of interacting with the computer or monitor with the use of these two devices. In a sense, these two devices are the user interface that allows working on a computer system, and without them it is not possible to do anything on a computer. While the main purpose of a mouse is to guide the cursor on the computer monitor, a keyboard is a typewriter like device with some additional functions that allow human interaction with computer. In fact, a keyboard is the only source of providing the input to the computer and it performs the functions we ask it only with the help of this device.
While mouse is considered to be a pointing device, keyboard is the input device for a computer. Despite touch screen having been developed that allows one to use virtual keyboard onscreen, physical keyboard remains first choice of most of the individuals. There are keys with symbols printed on them in a keyboard and with the lightest of touches; the numeral or alphabet gets written on the screen of the monitor using a keyboard. There are some instructions for which one has to press a key and holding it pressed, another key has to be pressed. There are many shortcuts also used with the help of a keyboard that help save time and effort. Many computer commands are the results of these shortcuts. The major function of a keyboard is when one is using a word processor or a text editor.
A mouse is a pointing device and consists of a right and left clicks with a wheel in between that allows on to scroll up and down on a web page. The major function of a mouse is to control the cursor on the monitor of the screen. Today there are wireless mouse available that work through infrared rays.
Keyboard vs Mouse
• Mouse and keyboard are user interface that allow human interaction with a computer
• While a mouse is used as a pointing device controlling the cursor, a keyboard is a input device used to provide input commands and to type in word processors and text editors. | <urn:uuid:23125a02-8d1f-45f7-9246-e86d40557f5e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-keyboard-and-vs-mouse/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397864.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00032-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944032 | 411 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Wakatobi National Park
Ministry of Emvironment
The Secretariat of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Heritage Centre do not represent or endorse the accuracy or reliability of any advice, opinion, statement or other information or documentation provided by the States Parties to the World Heritage Convention to the Secretariat of UNESCO or to the World Heritage Centre.
The publication of any such advice, opinion, statement or other information documentation on the World Heritage Centre’s website and/or on working documents also does not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of UNESCO or of the World Heritage Centre concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its boundaries.
Property names are listed in the language in which they have been submitted by the State Party
Wakatobi National Park has very high marine resource potential, in terms of both species and uniqueness, with enchanting submarine landscapes. In terms of configuration, the marine waters of the park generally start flat and then slope seawards, with sheer precipices in some parts. The water depth varies, the deepest parts reaching 1,044 metres with sand and coral at the bottom. This Park has 25 chains of coral reefs, and the total circumference of the coral islands is 600 km. The National Park includes an area of 1,390,000 hectares. | <urn:uuid:2f51b1b8-7a10-4659-8939-cfd3ebbd069c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://whc.unesco.org/pg_friendly_print.cfm?cid=326&id=2006 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394414.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00077-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.874479 | 281 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Why did animal X stop transmitting?
Jerry - Cayman Turtle Farm Green Sea Turtle Releases
A project of Cayman Turtle Farm.
Static Map | Zoom Map | Animated Map (137KB)
Subscribe to Project Updates
Jerry - a 2-year-old 2nd-generation Green Sea turtle bred, laid, and hatched in captivity at Cayman Turtle Farm, now exploring the Caribbean Sea. Jerry migrated from Grand Cayman to Cuba.
"Jerry" is a 2-year-old Green Sea Turtle that is of the 2nd generation bred and raised in captivity at Cayman Turtle Farm. "Jerry's" gender is unknown as it is too young to distinguish from external observation.
"Jerry" is the first juvenile captive-bred Green Sea Turtle to be released with a satellite tag, known as a Position Tracking Transponder (PTT). To conserve battery life, "Jerry's" PTT is programmed to transmit during a 6-hour window every 54 hours. In addition to ARGOS satellite position data, "Jerry's" PTT is able to obtain GPS position fixes and transmit those in coded form via the ARGOS uplink during its transmission window. Positions displayed as coloured circles on the map above include ARGOS Location Class A through 3, as well as GPS locations.
"Jerry" was also fitted with a passive inductive transponder (PIT) tag prior to release, a type of radio frequency identification (RFID) device with a unique individual code for each animal so fitted. The PIT tag is embedded under the skin of "Jerry's" "shoulder" of the right front fin, where it should remain for the rest of "Jerry's" life so it can be read and identified if and when "Jerry" is spotted by an observer equipped with a PIT tag scanner.
"Jerry" joins over 31,000 captive-bred Green Sea Turtles released from the Cayman Turtle Farm since 1968. Tagging studies (living tags) have shown that females reared from eggs on the farm and released in the 1980s are now returning to beaches on the Cayman Islands to nest and complete their life cycles.
Cayman Turtle Farm in West Bay, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands is the first commercial sea turtle farm in the world to have achieved the 2nd generation of Green Sea turtles bred, laid, hatched and raised in captivity. Given that it typically takes two decades or more for Green Sea Turtles to reach sexual maturity and the ability to reproduce, this is a major achievement in assisting the conservation of this species. Visitors are welcomed to Cayman Turtle Farm: Island Wildlife Encounter which has been developed into a "mini theme park" attraction featuring island wildlife such as birds, fish, sharks, and crocodile in addition to sea turtles of all ages. Its "Turtle Lagoon" is one place in the world where visitors are guaranteed to be able to swim and snorkel amongst ten or more juvenile sea turtles as well as hundreds of reef fish.
Cayman Turtle Farm also participates in leading research on the biology and care of sea turtles. In 1984 Cayman Turtle Farm participated in an international project to help conserve Kemp's Ridley sea turtles, and the farm achieved the first successful captive breeding of that species for later release in that species' native territory to help boost the wild population. Cayman Turtle Farm's stock of Green Sea turtles of a wide range of known ages from hatchlings to over 40 years old, and the CTF experts' experience in the husbandry of these exotic animals, have created unique opportunities for learning more about these magnificent creatures. Some 100 scientific papers have been published or presented based on research in which Cayman Turtle Farm was involved, and there are currently a number of research projects in progress.
The release of satellite-tagged 2nd-generation juvenile captive-bred turtles will help expand knowledge of the adaptation and behaviour of captive-bred turtles released into the wild. "Jerry" was sponsored by a family from Louisiana, USA, who participated in "Jerry's" release on February 19, 2012. Cayman Turtle Farm is now seeking sponsors for imminent future releases of PTT-equipped captive-bred Green Sea turtles to continue to expand this knowledge.
More information about Cayman Turtle Farm and its programmes is available at www.turtle.ky
- The presentation of data here does not constitute publication. All data remain copyright of the project partners. Maps or data on this website may not be used or referenced without the explicit written consent of the data owners.
- For more information please visit the project website.
- This map connects positions generated by the ARGOS system designated as location class (lc) '4', '3', '2', '1', '0', 'A'. Locations that have been "filtered" are displayed as small red dots.
- This maps also shows locations of class 'B', 'Z' as small black dots which are not connected by a route line.
- Bathymetry layers are derived from the GEBCO One Minute Grid.
- Sea surface temperature and chlorophyll are derived from NASA's Ocean Color data.
- Ocean currents and sea surface heights are derived from AVISO's Ssalto/Duacs Gridded Absolute Dynamic Topography & absolute geostrophic velocities data. | <urn:uuid:892e0b21-c1c1-4b0e-be9a-8b5dea2011bc> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.seaturtle.org/tracking/index.shtml?tag_id=112227&full=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00148-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932445 | 1,087 | 2.546875 | 3 |
End of preview. Expand
in Data Studio
No dataset card yet
- Downloads last month
- 8