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Mississippi (/ˌmɪsɪˈsɪpi/ (listen)) is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. Mississippi is the 32nd most extensive and 34th most populous of the 50 United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Alabama to the east, the Gulf of Mexico and Louisiana to the south, and Arkansas and Louisiana to the west. The state's western boundary is largely defined by the Mississippi River. Jackson, with a population of approximately 175,000 people, is both the state's capital and largest city.
The state is heavily forested outside the Mississippi Delta area, which is the area between the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers. Before the American Civil War, most development in the state was along riverfronts, as the waterways were critical for transportation. Large gangs of slaves were used to work on cotton plantations. After the war, freedmen began to clear the bottomlands to the interior, in the process selling off timber and buying property. By the end of the 19th century, African Americans made up two-thirds of the Delta's property owners, but timber and railroad companies acquired much of the land after the financial crisis, which occurred when blacks were facing increasing racial discrimination and disfranchisement in the state.
Clearing of the land for plantations altered the Delta's ecology, increasing the severity of flooding along the Mississippi by taking out trees and bushes that had absorbed excess waters. Much land is now held by agribusinesses. A largely rural state with agricultural areas dominated by industrial farms, Mississippi is ranked low or last among the states in such measures as health, educational attainment, and median household income. The state's catfish aquaculture farms produce the majority of farm-raised catfish consumed in the United States.
Since the 1930s and the Great Migration of African Americans to the North and West, the majority of Mississippi's population has been white, although the state still has the highest percentage of black residents of any U.S. state. From the early 19th century to the 1930s, its residents were majority black, and before the American Civil War that population was composed largely of African-American slaves. Democratic Party whites retained political power through disfranchisement and Jim Crow laws. In the first half of the 20th century, nearly 400,000 rural blacks left the state for work and opportunities in northern and midwestern cities, with another wave of migration around World War II to West Coast cities. In the early 1960s, Mississippi was the poorest state in the nation, with 86% of its non-whites living below the poverty level.
In 2010, 37% of Mississippians were African Americans, the highest percentage of African Americans in any U.S. state. Since regaining enforcement of their voting rights in the late 1960s, most African Americans have supported Democratic candidates in local, state and national elections. Conservative whites have shifted to the Republican Party. African Americans are a majority in many counties of the Mississippi-Yazoo Delta, an area of historic slave settlement during the plantation era.
* Description and images provided by
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TONGUE-TIES OR LIP-TIES
Tongue-Ties And Speech Problems
Infants With Nursing Problems
A new baby with a too tight tongue and/or lip frenum can have trouble sucking and may have poor weight gain. If they cannot make a good seal on the nipple, they may swallow air causing gas, colic, and reflux or spitting up. You may hear clicking noises when the baby is taking the breast or a bottle. Nursing mothers who experience significant pain while nursing or whose baby has trouble latching on should have their child evaluated for tongue and lip tie. It can also cause thrush, mastitis, nipple blanching, bleeding, or cracking in the mother and inability to hold a pacifier. The mother often reports it’s a “full time job” just to feed them because they are constantly hungry, not getting enough milk, and spitting up what they do get.
Although it is often overlooked or dismissed by other medical professionals, a tongue and lip-tie can very often be an underlying cause of feeding problems that not only affect a child’s weight gain, but lead many mothers to abandon breastfeeding altogether. Very often, after releasing the tongue and/or lip, mothers report immediate relief of pain and a deeper latch. The symptoms of reflux and colic almost disappear and weight gain occurs rapidly. The sooner the tongue-tie is addressed the better the child will learn to use his or her tongue correctly.
Upper lip tie is when the upper lip is tethered to the upper gum. Though most infants have some degree of upper lip tie, when it becomes large and tight enough, it may prevent the upper lip from flaring out or curling up which is essential for breast-feeding in order to create an adequate seal with the breast. Also, some infants with upper lip tie will exhibit an upper lip crease with the skin turning pale in an attempt to flare up during breast-feeding.
If the upper lip tie is tight enough, an infant may have trouble feeding even from a bottle.
Tongue tie (otherwise known as ankyloglossia) is when the tip of the tongue is anchored to the floor of the mouth. Tongue tie may extend all the way to the tip or it may extend partially to the tip resulting in a partial tongue tie. There is also a condition called posterior tongue tie in which the tongue tie is hidden under the tongue lining.
Regardless whether dealing with a newborn or an, the treatment is the same. But when it comes to newborns, tongue tie can lead to feeding problems which can be quite distressing to both child and mother.
With tongue tie, the tip of the tongue is unable to help the infant draw the nipple into the mouth. It also prevents the tongue from being normally positioned between the nipple and lower gumline leading the infant to chew on the nipple. Ouch!
WHAT TO EXPECT DURING THE VISIT
AFTERCARE STRETCH EXERCISES
A small amount of spotting or bleeding is common after the procedure, especially in the first few days. Because a laser is being used, bleeding is minimized. Wash your hands well prior to your stretches (gloves aren’t necessary). apply a small amount of the teething gel to your finger prior to your stretches. The area of the surgery will have a diamond shape. Initially it will be pink to red in color, but will eventually turn white.
Do one stretch on the evening of surgery. Then, skip ahead to the next morning (keep in mind that this is the only time that you should skip the overnight stretch).
Our recommendation is that stretches be done:
6x/day for the first 3 weeks, and then spending the 4th week quickly tapering from 6 to 5 to 4 to 3 to 2 to 1 per day before quitting completely at the end of the 4th week. We find it’s easiest for parents to do 5 of the stretches during their waking hours and one of those stretches in the middle of the night, taking care to not go more than 6 hours between stretches. Diaper changes are a good time to do the exercises. | <urn:uuid:f6c555ea-0ad2-4ee2-b196-bd47883783bb> | CC-MAIN-2021-25 | https://www.jupiterkidsdentistry.com/frenectomies/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-25/segments/1623487608856.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20210613131257-20210613161257-00194.warc.gz | en | 0.936712 | 863 | 2.625 | 3 | {
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Title 17 of the United States Code includes the Copyright Law of the United States. Title 17 defines what type of work is protected under the Copyright Law. Under Title 17, owners whose works are tangible, meaning that they may be expressed in writing, pictures, physical acts, and sound recordings have exclusive rights to their work and they mus. Title 17 also makes it clear that copyright protection does not extend to intangible things such as ideas or concepts.
Associated Press v. Fairey
Recently, there have been several copyright infringement cases that have played out in the media. In fact, the media was actually a party to one of these cases, Associated Press v. Fairey. In 2008, artist Shephard Fairey created what is perhaps the single most memorable image of President Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign. The image of the then presidential hopeful deep in thought, tinted in a patriotic red, white, and blue and complete with the word “hope” written at the bottom, soon became a moving symbol of the Obama candidacy. Fairey’s image was plastered all over Obama’s campaign paraphernalia as well as the media, earning Fairey a decent amount of fame and money in the process.
The original AP picture taken by photographer, Mannie Garcia (left) and the altered version of the picture by Shephard Fairey as used in the 2008 Obama Presidential Campaign (right)
The only problem (and it soon became a big one) was that the picture on which Fairey based his work was originally taken by Associated Press photographer, Mannie Garcia. Fairey never asked permission to use the picture nor did he credit the Associated Press for using it. Soon after Fairey’s picture became widespread, the Associated Press sued Fairey for copyright infringement and demanded compensation for Fairey’s use of the work. While the case was settled out of court, this case created a lot of discourse around the value of work in these copyright battles. It’s unlikely that Garcia’s work could have ever reached the level of fame it did, if not for Fairey’s alteration of it. Yet, it is widely agreed that Fairey should have at least credited either Garcia or the Associated Press for it. This case brought the importance of crediting an original source of a licensed work to the legal forefront.
As illustrated above, it can often be difficult to determine whether or not your work is protected by copyright laws. If you believe that your original work was misused by someone without your permission, you should contact an intellectual property attorney in order to determine whether you may have an actionable copyright infringement claim. | <urn:uuid:3a214d75-6f57-42e2-99db-bbce374af1ca> | CC-MAIN-2022-21 | https://www.ymsllp.com/blog/2014/july/what-type-of-work-is-protected-under-us-copyrigh/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-21/segments/1652662512249.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220516204516-20220516234516-00360.warc.gz | en | 0.970424 | 557 | 2.71875 | 3 | {
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When it comes to educating low-income students and students of color, community colleges do the heavy lifting. They educate students for robust jobs that require sub-baccalaureate credentials in middle level STEM (Sciences Technology Engineering and Math) positions and promise premium wages. They open educational opportunities and reduce class and racial imbalances in educational attainment, career advancement and wealth accumulation.
“STEM positions are very important for upward mobility, and community colleges play this role of really being engines of upward mobility. STEM fields in particular are associated with having livable wages and above living wage level positions,” said Jenna Cullinane, Ph.D., strategic policy lead for higher education initiatives at The Charles A. Dana Center, The University of Texas at Austin.
To ensure that community college and four-year college students who are interested in STEM jobs enter and complete the math courses required to compete in these fields, Jobs for the Future, The Charles A. Dana Center at The University of Texas at Austin and Achieving the Dream released a call to action. The document was coauthored by Cullinane. It’s called “A Call to Action to Improve Math Placement Policies and Processes: Six Policy Recommendations to Increase STEM Student Aspirations and Success While Decreasing Racial and Income Gaps,” and it encourages states and colleges to revise their math placement policies, processes and supports.
“We think it’s really important that all students have access to (STEM jobs), and many students, especially low income and minority students, don’t have the math skills or the background from their K-12 experience to be really competitive and to perform well in some of these STEM programs,” Cullinane said.
Redesigning Math Pathways
The nation cannot allow placement policies, processes and instruments to undermine promising efforts to increase student success in mathematics and increase attainment of STEM credentials, Cullinane wrote in the report. She contends that efforts to redesign math pathways can improve the teaching and learning experiences of students who need college algebra—many of whom are STEM students—and help those students persist toward and maintain STEM aspirations.
The biggest barrier minority students face persisting in STEM programs is math preparation. “If students are not successful in mathematics early in their programs, they often leave the STEM fields,” Cullinane said. Some leave college altogether.
Keeping students interested in STEM has become a priority at many colleges. The more progressive ones have created differentiated developmental and gateway math pathways targeting the math needs of particular academic programs while improving teaching, learning and support in math. Students who need algebra remediation, for example, can enroll in redesigned math classes while those who do not take an alternative pathway that aligns with their program.
Redesigning math pathways, however, is not enough. If placement policies, processes and supports do not keep pace with the change, school place students by using methods that do not align with the content of or that do not effectively predict or support success in differentiated math pathways. When this occurs, the differentiated pathways actually close doors to STEM opportunities.
To ensure those doors remain open, schools must modify their placement processes and consider students’ goals, majors, interests, time and capability within that process. “The placement process should be a much more comprehensive, in-take supportive process,” Cullinane said.
The Report’s Recommendations
Cullinane and her co-author Lara K. Couturier (who leads research and publications for Jobs for the Future’s Postsecondary State Policy work) designed their six recommendations as a roadmap for colleges. To begin with, they encourage schools to begin their placement support process early to ensure freshmen are ready for college-level math.
Successful programs assess high school students early to determine their readiness and provide them with information about how much time and money they’ll need to complete a degree. “It’s good to give the students that information early,” Cullinane said.
High schools students interested in STEM programs that require algebra should begin work to meet that requirement early. Colleges should provide high school counselors who can discuss students’ career interests. High schools should allow students to take college placement exams early and provide intensive math courses the summer before they enroll in college.
Research suggests that existing placement instruments alone are not good predictors of student success in college. Other measures, like high school GPA, work well if not better to determine student placement into developmental education. Some states and colleges are shifting placement practices to include cognitive and non-cognitive measures, high school performance, holistic advising and acceleration and co-requisite placement. Cullinane recommends that all colleges follow suit.
“The Compass test has been discontinued and there have been a variety of studies that have basically undermined the traditional assessments that have been used primarily in community colleges,” Cullinane said. “High school grades are actually a better indicator of success in college level work and could be used in combination with other assessment information.”
No assessment fits the needs of all students and educators. Existing assessments often do not reflect differentiated content and especially not content that would help place a student in a statistics or quantitative reasoning pathway. Cullinane recommends that colleges require test makers to align placement tests with differentiated math pathways and improve their predictive value, even as states move toward using multiple measures of placement.
She encourages test makers, mathematicians and representatives of other disciplines to collaborate. “Tests right now focus on algebraic skills students will need if they are going on to calculus. But we know that two thirds of students, nationally and in Texas, are enrolled in programs that do not require calculus. So a great majority of programs would be better served by a statistics or quantitative reasoning type course. Current assessments don’t cover any of that material,” Cullinane said.
Orientation, advising and assessment services are key supports for accurate and equitable placements and help students make good program choices, determine their developmental and college-level math needs and select courses within their intended programs. Students’ goals and needs should drive this process, Cullinane wrote. As colleges offer differentiated math pathways, she recommends that schools keep academic doors open for all students and eliminate equity implications for students who arrive unprepared. As schools revise their placement processes she wants them to keep an eye on student intentions.
During the placement process, schools must prioritize student academic and career goals, making every effort to keep STEM-aspiring students on STEM pathways. Schools should create cohorts of students grouped by program interest, advise students accordingly, provide supplemental help and support differentiated math pathways placement no matter their readiness.
Finally, Cullinane and Couturier recommend that schools create a bridging mechanism from non-algebra pathways to algebra pathways. Even with the most robust placement processes and policies, some students switch programs, affecting the required math courses. “Sometimes people raise their aspirations. We want to make sure students (can do this), without having to repeat coursework and spend a lot more time and money moving to a program that would be more STEM intensive,” Cullinane said.
Cullinane hopes her Call to Action kicks off an important national conversation followed by state and college changes to assessment and placement policies, processes and supports. “We put out this report as a call to action to say that this is an area that policy makers both at the institution and state level need to really be thinking about. We are seeing more and more momentum and similar calls coming from different entities,” Cullinane said. | <urn:uuid:8785c0be-5e2e-4dd5-b9e7-56ab98535593> | CC-MAIN-2017-22 | https://www.hispanicoutlook.com/featured-articles/2016/2/24/call-to-action-recommends-redesigning-math-pathways-to-stem-by-frank-dimaria | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-22/segments/1495463609061.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20170527210417-20170527230417-00481.warc.gz | en | 0.952779 | 1,565 | 2.9375 | 3 | {
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Parenting – How your child will grow
The rate at which your baby crawls, walks or talks will no doubt be different to others of a similar age. Your baby may walk at 11 months, while your friends baby may still be crawling at 16 months. Both are quite normal; each child is different because each is an individual. This section looks at the way children grow.
How Children Develop
Children arent just born different, they also have different lives and theyll learn different things. A child who plays a lot with toys will be learning to use his or her hands and eyes together. A child who goes out to the park every day will soon learn the names of ducks and trees. A child who is often talked to will learn more words. A child whos given love and praise for learning new things will want to learn more.
Some children have difficulty learning, perhaps because of physical problems with, for example, hearing or sight. You may already know that your childs development is likely to be slower than normal or you may be worried about your childs progress. Your child may be offered regular development reviews (see keeping an eye on your baby’s development) but you dont have to wait for a check-up. If youre concerned, talk to your health visitor or GP. If somethings holding your child back, the sooner you find out, the sooner you can do something to help.
Feet and Shoes
Babies feet At birth and throughout the first year of life, babies feet are very different from yours. They are a different shape, being wider in the forefoot and narrow at the heel with the toes often curling easily. They are designed to function barefoot, so if they are cramped by tight bootees, socks, stretch suits or pram shoes, the toes cant straighten out and grow properly. Try to keep your babys feet as free as possible and make sure bootees and socks leave enough room for their toes, both in length and width. The bones are also undeveloped at this stage and consist solely of cartilage, so they are very soft and pliable. There are twenty six bones in each foot which gradually develop throughout infancy, becoming bony by the age seven or eight.
Do not force your baby to walk; they will do so naturally and in their own time. The age at which a baby takes his or her first steps varies quite a lot between individuals. It can occur between 10 and 18 months, but later than this does not imply anything is wrong.
Dont put your baby into proper shoes in the early stages of walking, as they are unnecessary and in fact may affect the growth. It is wise to allow your baby to walk barefoot in order to strengthen the muscles in the feet. However make sure there is no risk of injury to the feet by ensuring the floor is clear of obstruction and clean.
Once ready to walk outside, the provision of shoes becomes necessary. Remember to take the following points into consideration whenever you buy shoes for your child:
* Always have your childs feet measured by a qualified fitter for each new pair of shoes. Children under four years old should have their feet measured every six to eight weeks. Those over four should have their feet measured every ten to twelve weeks.
* Shoes should be about 1 cm (a bit less than 1/2 in) beyond the longest toe and wide enough for all the toes to lie flat.
* Shoes with a lace, buckle or velcro fastening hold the heel in place and stop the foot slipping forward and damaging the toes. If the heel of a shoe slips off when your child stands on tiptoe, it doesnt fit.
* Buy footwear made of natural materials, i.e. leather, cotton or canvas as these materials breathe. Plastic shoes make feet perspire and may cause fungal infections and abrasions.
* Never rely on the question do they feel comfortable? Because childrens bones are soft, so distortion and cramping can occur without your child feeling it.
* Never buy second-hand shoes or hand shoes down as these take on the shape of the previous owner and will rub and not support vital areas.
Whenever possible you should encourage your baby to kick and exercise free from the constrictions of clothing. This will enable the muscles of the feet and legs to strengthen ready for when walking begins.
Babies and small children’s feet grow at an incredibly rapid rate, so the fit of socks and baby-grows should be monitored continually. If they begin to look even slightly restrictive, change the garment for the next size up. Bedclothes should not be tucked in too tightly as this can also be restrictive to your baby’s feet.
Baby’s nails sometimes curl round and follow the contours of the toe. This is quite normal and is due to the thinness of the nail in the early months. They will soon toughen and develop a more conventional free edge. Never cut down or probe into the sides of the nail, and always trim the nails straight across and not too short.
Common foot problems
Dont be concerned if your baby appears to be walking flat-footed. In the early stages of development this is quite normal and gives them a more stable base until the legs and feet have gained strength.
It is also quite common for toddlers to walk with their feet apart or for young children to appear to be bow-legged, knock-kneed or walk with their toes turned in or out. Most minor foot problems in children correct themselves. But if you are worried about your childs feet or how he or she walks in any way, talk to your doctor or health visitor. If necessary, your child can be referred to a chiropodist, orthopaedic surgeon or paediatric physiotherapist.
Bow legs a small gap between the knees and ankles when the child is standing up is normally seen until the child is two. If the gap is pronounced or it does not correct itself, check with your doctor or health visitor. Very occasionally, this could be a sign of rickets.
Knock knees this is when a child stands with his or her knees together and the ankles are at least 2.5 cm (1 in) apart. Between the ages of two and four, a gap of 6 to 7 cm (2 to 23/4 in) is considered normal. Knock knees usually improve and correct themselves by the age of six.
In-toeing (pigeon-toed) here the childs feet turn in. The condition usually corrects itself by the age of eight or nine and treatment is not usually needed.
Out-toeing (feet point outwards) again this condition usually corrects itself and treatment is not needed in most cases.
Flat feet if when your child stands on tiptoe the arch forms normally, no treatment is needed.
Tiptoe walking if your child walks on tiptoes, talk to your doctor or health visitor.
Oral care should start from even before your babys first teeth emerge, as certain factors can affect their future appearance and health. Tetracycline, an antibiotic, can cause tooth discoloration, so should not be used by nursing mothers or by women in the last half of pregnancy. The age when babies get their first primary (or milk) teeth varies. A few are born with a tooth already through, while others have no teeth at one year. Most infants sprout their first tooth at six to eight months, usually in front and at the bottom, with the last of the molars appearing between 20 to 30 months. There are 20 primary teeth in all, 10 at the top and 10 at the bottom. The first permanent second teeth come through at the back at around the age of six. Good oral care is one of the most important health lessons you can teach your child. Help your child brush their teeth twice each day, limit the number of sweet snacks and visit the dentist regularly.
Due to the discomfort of teething, your baby may experience increased drooling, gnawing and chewing, sleep disturbance and general unhappiness. Teething is often blamed for an onslaught of other problems such as coughing, diarrhoea and fever, but a recent study found these are often unrelated. Teething symptoms should only happen during the few days surrounding the eruption of each tooth, so if symptoms are prolonged, your child may be sick with something else.
It can help to give your baby something hard to chew on such as a teething ring, though avoid stiff plastic or silver ones as they may exacerbate the pain if clamped down on too aggressively. Some soft plastic or liquid-filled rings may be frozen for extra comfort, but avoid the variety with small objects floating inside. Even gnawing on a wet washcloth, a crust of bread or breadstick, or a peeled carrot provides relief. Avoid rusks because almost all contain some sugar. Constant chewing and sucking on sugary things can cause tooth decay, even if your baby has only one or two teeth.
For babies over four months old you can try sugar-free teething gel, available from the chemist, applied on the gum. Speak to your GP or health visitor if your baby is younger than four months.
If your baby hasn’t started teething at the usual time, don’t be alarmed. Like other milestones such as walking and talking, every child has their own pace. It may be as late as 14 months before a tooth will emerge. In rare cases, delayed eruption may be the result of rickets, a vitamin D deficiency. If your child hasn’t begun teething by 18 months, see your GP to rule out this possibility.
Decay in babies teeth can be caused by frequent exposure to liquids containing sugars, including milk, formula, and fruit juices. The sugary liquids collect around the teeth for long periods of time, particularly as your baby sleeps, leading to cavities that first develop in the upper and lower front teeth. Try to prevent your baby falling asleep with a bottle of juice or milk, instead, when your child is ready to sleep give a bottle filled with water. If you breastfeed, avoid letting your baby nurse continuously and after each feed, wipe your baby’s teeth and gums with a clean, damp washcloth.
Caring for your childs teeth
Brush your childs teeth thoroughly, twice each day, using a small pea-sized amount of fluoride toothpaste or a tiny smear for babies. Start brushing as soon as your babys teeth start to come through. Buy a baby toothbrush or one with soft bristles for older children and use it with a tiny smear of fluoride toothpaste. You can also clean your babys teeth by wrapping a piece of damp gauze with a tiny amount of fluoride toothpaste over your finger.
Check with your dentist whether baby toothpaste has enough fluoride for your babys needs. Dont worry if you dont manage to brush much at first. The important thing at the start is to get teeth brushing accepted as part of the everyday routine.
Gradually start to brush your childs teeth more thoroughly, brushing all the surfaces of the teeth twice a day. Not all children like having their teeth brushed, so you may have to work at it a bit. If it becomes difficult, try games, or try brushing your own teeth at the same time and then help your child to mimic you.
How to brush
The best way to brush a babys teeth is to sit him or her on your knee with the head resting against your chest. Stand behind an older child and tilt his or her head upwards. Brush the teeth in small circles covering all the surfaces, angling the brushes toward the gums. Let your child spit the toothpaste out afterwards.
It’s a good idea to supervise your child’s brushing until the age of six, following the guidelines below:
Cutting down on sugar
Its not just the amount of sugar in sweet food and drinks that causes tooth decay but more importantly, how often and for how long there are sugary things in the mouth. This is why sweet drinks in a bottle and lollipops are so bad, as the teeth are bathed in sugar for quite a long time.
From the time you start your baby on foods and drinks other than milk, avoid giving sweet things, this will to encourage a savoury taste. Watch for high sugar content in baby foods, even the savoury varieties can sometimes have large amounts. Baby drinks such as squashes and syrups, especially fizzy drinks, should be avoided.
If you give your child sweet foods and fruit juice try to limit these to mealtimes to avoid tooth decay. Well-diluted fruit juice containing vitamin C can be given with a meal, as this can help iron to be absorbed. It is better to give milk or water between meals.
Try to find treats other than biscuits or sweets and ask relatives and friends to do the same, instead use things like crayons or small toys.
If children are given sweets or chocolate, it is less harmful for their teeth if they eat them all at once and after a meal, than if they eat a little every hour or so.
Avoid giving baby juices or sugar-sweetened drinks at bedtime or in a bottle, and keep drinking times short. Only milk or water should be given as a drink during the night, unless your baby is still feeding in the night.
Try to avoid giving drinks containing artificial sweeteners such as saccharin or aspartame. If you do, dilute with at least 10 parts water to 1 part concentrate.
Ask your pharmacist and doctor for sugar-free medicine for your child.
Looking for sugars on the label
The following are sugars that can cause dental decay sucrose, glucose, dextrose, maltose, fructose, hydrolysed starch.
Invert sugar or syrup, honey, raw sugar, brown sugar, cane sugar, muscavado and concentrated fruit juices all contain sugars.
Fruit juices contain sugars, which can cause decay too. Always dilute these.
Maltodextrin is not a sugar, but may cause decay.
Taking your child to the dentist
You can take your child to be registered with a dentist under the NHS as soon as your child has been born, even before any teeth come through. In addition to monitoring your child’s dental growth and development, dentists can give you information about tooth development, the need for fluoride, how to help your child maintain proper oral hygiene, diet and nutrition, and how to prevent oral injuries. NHS dental treatment for children is free.
Take your child with you when you go to the dentist, so that going to the dentist becomes a normal event. Try to emphasise that a dental visit is a positive experience and explain that visiting the dentist helps maintain good oral health. If you can create a positive attitude your child will be more inclined to see a dentist regularly throughout life.
If you need to find a dentist, you can ask at your local clinic or contact your local health authority.
Fluoride is a natural element found in our diet, mostly in fish and tea, which can help prevent tooth decay. It is also present in many water supplies, but usually at a level too low to be beneficial.
In areas with little or no fluoride in the water, some children may benefit by taking fluoride drops (for babies) or tablets as dietary supplements. They should not be used in areas with fluoride naturally present or artificially added to the water, as an excessive fluoride intake is undesirable. Therefore advice from your dentist is essential before giving them. Fluoride in toothpaste is very effective for babies use a tiny smear and for children only use a small pea-sized amount on the brush.
The sucking reflex is normal in babies, however, a thumb or finger sucking habit in older children can cause problems. The growth of the mouth and jaw, and position of teeth, may be affected if it continues after permanent teeth have come through, between the age of four and seven. Front teeth that point outwards and an open bite may result from habitual thumb or finger sucking. This can cause problems in adulthood that include premature tooth wear, increased dental decay and discomfort on biting. | <urn:uuid:b716445b-a598-4c28-8661-13ed8aa06a61> | CC-MAIN-2018-09 | http://www.thdn.co.uk/parent-information/parenting-guides/how-your-child-grows/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-09/segments/1518891812306.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20180219012716-20180219032716-00737.warc.gz | en | 0.95203 | 3,363 | 3.21875 | 3 | {
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Tip #9 to Get a Top ACT Math Score
Students come into my office and say, "I can't do this question because I don't know what consecutive means." I get to say, "Oh cool, it just means numbers in a row, like 4, 5, 6." Then the question becomes easy. In fact, for some questions, the only hard part is knowing the vocabulary, and once you know the terms, the questions are easy. That's why I love these next four Skills; memorize the terms, practice using them in the drills, and you will absolutely gain points, guaranteed. Also, once you know the terms, watch for them and underline them when they appear. That will eliminate many careless errors.
Here are the first nine math vocabulary terms:
Real number—You can ignore this term, it just means any number: –3, –2.2, 0, , π.
Constant term—This word really throws some kids, but it just means a letter in place of number, kinda like a variable, except that it won't vary.
Integer—Numbers without decimals or fractions: –3, –2, –1, 0, 1, 2, 3,…
Even/odd—Even numbers: 2, 4, 6, 8,… ; odd numbers: 1, 3, 5, 7,… The number 0 is considered even.
Positive/negative—Positive numbers are greater than 0. Negative numbers are less than 0.
Consecutive numbers—Numbers in a row: 7, 8, 9, 10.
Different numbers—Numbers that are… ummm… different.
Prime—A number whose only factors are 1 and itself. The numbers 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17,… are prime. Note: The number 1 is NOT considered prime, and the number 2 is the only even prime number.
Units digit—Just a fancy term for the "ones" digit in a number, like the 2 in 672.
Let's look at this question:
Solution: List the primes less than 20: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19. All are odd except 2. Remember that 1 is not a prime number. So there are 7 odd prime numbers less than 20.
Correct answer: D
- For all real numbers x, what integer values satisfy the equation 2x2 = 50 ?
- 25 only
- 5 only
- –5 only
- –5 and 5 only
- –5, 5, and 25 only
- If the sum of three consecutive odd integers is 33, what is the value of the largest of the three integers?
- If 2 consecutive prime numbers have a sum of 42, what is the larger number?
- Two consecutive odd integers have a sum of –32. Which of the following is NOT a justified conclusion?
- Both numbers are negative.
- The lesser number is –15.
- Both numbers are greater than –20.
- Both numbers are less than –10.
- One of the numbers is a factor of 60.
- Which of the following is a list of all positive integers between 40 and 46 that are not consecutive odd prime numbers?
- 42, 44, and 45
- 42, 43, and 44
- 41, 42, 43, and 44
- 41 and 45
- 42 and 44
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- First Grade Sight Words List | <urn:uuid:90a28176-62a2-4638-8f8d-282940c1fc31> | CC-MAIN-2013-48 | http://www.education.com/reference/article/math-vocab2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-48/segments/1386163844441/warc/CC-MAIN-20131204133044-00084-ip-10-33-133-15.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.900208 | 809 | 3.640625 | 4 | {
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The Coalition both federally and in Queensland have responded with scepticism, arguing smart meters may actually push up prices.
“Today’s proposed $250 saving is a dishonest grab for a headline that is not backed up by any details," said Queensland Energy Minister
In fact, the Productivity Commission report on which Ms Gillard based her claim does suggest that smart meters will save consumers $100 to $250 a year but it also says that done wrongly, smart meter technology and the related idea of time-of-use pricing could end up costing them money.
“The actual extent of the estimated benefits depends crucially on the manner in which demand management is implemented – for example, under some implementation scenarios, some initiatives are forecast to deliver net costs," the commission said in its latest report on electricity networks.
Indeed, a cost-benefit analysis showed that smart meters matched with a system of “time-of-use" or peak tariffs for electricity could deliver anything from $7.60 of benefit for every $1 invested to a net cost of 70¢. It all depends how the scheme is implemented.
The key issues to be decided include how “smart" smart meters need to be and how the costs of power will vary between peak and off-peak times. The power companies are also arguing over who will get to install and monitor the meters. And most crucially, there is an argument over whether it should be compulsory or voluntary to have a smart meter at all.
The fundamental problem smart meters are designed to address is that demand for power spurts on a few hot days each year when households turn up air conditioners and other appliances.
To meet this peak demand, energy companies have to build expensive back-up gas generators and poles and wires that are used for less than 100 hours a year.
All consumers pay the cost of building this almost redundant infrastructure. About 25 per cent of power network spending is used only 1 per cent of the time.
Smart meters are a first step – and only a first step – to reduce this waste by providing some basic information. The “accumulation" meters on most houses today just say how much power you have used in the three months up to the meter reader’s visit and can’t tell when you used the power. But smart meters measure power use in five minute or half-hour intervals.
Once smart meters are in place, the next step is to change the pricing system so that households will pay higher prices at peak times of the day, which in turn should encourage households and businesses to reduce peak power use. To that extent, opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt is right in saying that the Prime Minister’s embrace of smart meters amounts to increasing power prices at “dinner time".
But the Productivity Commission says the new pricing should save individual households money because they can easily switch a lot of consumption to off-peak. Pool filters could be altered to work in the morning and air-conditioners could be switched to intermittent use at peak times.
In NSW, where smart meters have been installed in about 400,000 houses and time-of-use pricing already exists, off-peak power can cost about one-eighth that of peak-time.
Longer term, if this change in behaviour slows the growth in peak demand across the whole system, it will allow power network companies to defer billions of dollars of costly infrastructure spending, delivering an even bigger saving.
Frontier Economics has estimated that savings from peak demand reduction are likely to be between $4.3 billion and $11.8 billion over the next 10 years but the benefit will vary considerably from state to state.
In South Australia and Queensland the saving per household could be $500 a year, in NSW $350 but in Victoria only $120. That is because Victoria relies on brown coal power stations that tend to run whether or not there is demand, so the gap between off-peak and peak generation costs is considerably narrower.
That is the theory but it can go badly wrong and Victoria is the prime example. The former Labor government decided that all households would be fitted with smart meters and the cost would be added to their household bills.
Unfortunately, the cost of what was then fairly new technology blew out to over $2 billion or $800 a household. The government was also concerned that some disadvantaged households that did not understand the system or could not adjust their power use might face huge bills. To avoid an outcry, until next July Victoria refused to allow time-of-use pricing, which was the whole point of the exercise.
“It appears that the Victorian decision to roll out smart meters was premature and/or poorly planned, with inadequate knowledge about smart meter technologies, their costs and associated risks," the commission said.
A swag of reviews has been commissioned to work out how to avoid a repeat of that debacle. Giving consumers more warning and better information about how they can save money by switching to off-peak use is the key. The reviews also call for a security net for low income customers such as age pensioners.
Another question is how to cut the cost of meters. Victoria had very tight specifications for its designs, which raised costs. Some say a more basic “interval" meter will cut the unit’s cost per household to $70. Others say the meters must have displays so people can see how much power they are consuming at any time.
Power companies in Victoria have opened web portals for people to study their consumption patterns and help them prepare for time-of-use pricing. But a trial by NSW power companies Ausgrid and Endeavour Energy found that people tire of the displays and most ignore them after the first two years.
Some say the smart meter should be linked to a switch, so that it can automatically turn off some appliances. And indeed, the Productivity Commission says some consumers may dispense with the meters and just install technology that turns off power at peak times.
Queensland network company Energex offers households $250 to fit new air-conditioners with a device that switches the power to intermittent on a signal from the power supplier. For the energy industry the two crucial questions are whether the roll-out of smart meters should be compulsory and whether it will be run by the network companies or by the electricity retailers such as
A series of reviews has found that one of Victoria’s big mistakes was that it rolled out the meters to all consumers, including those who have little capacity to shift from peak to off-peak power.
The commission found that this sort of compulsory roll-out would in general be much less cost effective than a selective approach, because a lot of households would barely change their behaviour.
A key state and federal adviser, the Australian Energy Markets Commission, which on Friday released a review called “Power of choice" on how to manage demand peaks, has recommended a hybrid approach where smart meters are compulsory for large power customers, which almost always have some flexibility in their time of power use, but where they are optional for smaller consumers.
The latter may choose to stay with an average same-all-day tariff. Alternatively, power retail companies may make it a selling point to offer smart meters to allow consumers to benefit from low off-peak costs. “The onus will be on the retailer... to elicit consumer consent to a smart meter through offering appropriate retail pricing offers and value added services," the AEMC said.
Ms Gillard seems to be backing this sort of voluntary approach. “No one should be afraid that they are going to be forced with a cost that they don’t want and no one should be afraid that they will be forced to do something they don’t want to do," she said on ABC Radio on Monday.
Retailers are champing at the bit to get into this market but it is the network companies in NSW and Queensland, owned by state governments, that have a monopoly on metering. And state governments are all terrified of deregulating power prices, partly because they fear it may leave consumers exposed to price gouging. Without the freedom to distinguish between peak and off-peak prices though, retailers will not be able to convince households to change their habits.
The system will be most effective in cutting peak demand if prices for those with smart meters are allowed to spike during the most critical peaks. The Productivity Commission said the most effective policy would be a limited roll-out to large customers and others with the most capacity to curb peak demand and this would be combined with very high pricing on the hottest days.
But on those hot days it recommended that consumers should be warned by SMS or email to turn off their appliances.
The Australian Financial Review | <urn:uuid:4d48871f-950c-4508-af9f-6591f6af0185> | CC-MAIN-2015-35 | http://www.afr.com/business/energy/electricity/smart-meters-spark-national-electricity-argument-20121203-jik1l | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-35/segments/1440644059993.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20150827025419-00112-ip-10-171-96-226.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966177 | 1,787 | 2.515625 | 3 | {
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Welcome travelers, and we off on another exciting adventure today to:
A little History
On March 2, 1561, Pedro del Castillo founded the city and named it Ciudad de Mendoza del Nuevo Valle de La Rioja after the governor of Chile, Don García Hurtado de Mendoza. Before the 1560s the area was populated by three tribes, the Huarpes, the Puelches, and the Incas. The Huarpes devised a system of irrigation that was later developed by the Spanish. This allowed for an increase in population that might not have otherwise occurred. The system is still evident today in the wide trenches (acequias), which run along all city streets, watering the approximately 100,000 trees that line every street in Mendoza. The Spanish founded the city at the bank of river (present name) Río Mendoza, only later realizing that the “river” was a wide irrigation canal dug by the indigenous Huarpes people.
It is estimated that fewer than 80 Spanish settlers lived in the area before 1600, but later prosperity increased due to the use of indigenous and slave labor, and the Jesuit presence in the region. When nearby rivers were tapped as a source of irrigation in 1788 agricultural production increased. The extra revenues generated from this, and the ensuing additional trade with Buenos Aires, no doubt led to the creation of the state of Cuyo in 1813 withJosé de San Martín as governor. It was from Mendoza that San Martin, other Argentinian patriots and Chilean patriots organized the army with which they won the independence of Chile and Peru.
Mendoza suffered a severe earthquake in 1861 that killed at least 5,000 people. The city was rebuilt, incorporating innovative urban designs that would better tolerate such seismic activity. Mendoza was rebuilt with large squares and wider streets and sidewalks than any other city in Argentina. Avenue Bartolomé Mitre and additional small squares are examples of that design. Tourism, wine production, and more recently the exploitation of hard commodities such as oil and uranium ensure Mendoza’s status as a key regional center.
The city’s suburbs, the most important of which are Godoy Cruz, Guaymallén, Las Heras, Luján de Cuyo, and Maipú, have in recent decades far outpaced the city proper in population. Comprising half the metro area population of 212,000 in 1947, these suburbs grew to nearly 7/8 of the total metro area of 894,000 by 2009, making Mendoza the most dispersed metro area in Argentina.
Source = Wikipedia
Real hot summers and moderately cold winters so be sure to avoid January if you fear 40C weather.
What is there to see?
Amazingly beautiful parks, a zoo, wineries and much much more! Depending on your taste, this location offers you lots of outdoor and indoor entertainment.
We hope you enjoyed travelling with us today and until next time, keep up the adventure! 😀
This blog is proudly brought to you by Sidra Baksh. Go check out our website for professional English, Spanish and Portuguese translation services! | <urn:uuid:d6f8d31d-2ab5-46c2-a73a-19fb1b8bb204> | CC-MAIN-2017-13 | https://sidrabaksh.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/adventure-time-8/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-13/segments/1490218188553.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20170322212948-00624-ip-10-233-31-227.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951254 | 662 | 3.03125 | 3 | {
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In my opinion the Catch is more important then the pass. Think about it, you can catch balls from anywhere, you can only pass the ball when you already have it on your 5-bar. Learning to catch and control the ball can make you a foosball machine.
Our goal in catching is to keep the ball in control under the next rod. Remember the loose ball lesson? We want to use the back of the man to slow the ball only 1 time, think of it as a 'chest trap' in soccer. You wouldn't see a soccer player try to use their chest more then one time on the ball right? You have no control with the chest so you try to get the ball down and use your feet. In foosball you want to use the sides of the man and the toe. So the ball is coming to your rod, does not matter where from but let's say a pass for argument.
- Trap the ball: Against the wall or in the middle of the table it is the same. Trap it and take as much of the force off the ball as you can, but never let it get away from you. Two schools of thought here, absorb and angle.
- The absorb the impact theory: Some people think you should use your hand to "take" the edge off the speed of the ball by actually giving to the balls direction. While most good players do this, I find it quite challenging for newer players.
- The angles of the men theory: Physics would say that there is an angle that you can set your figure so that the ball comes into the foot and all the energy is directed down and the ball stops. You need to adopt this in general because you want the majority of the ball energy to go into the table.
- Unified Theory of Catching: Man that sounds impressive. Due to spin and the ball being lifted off the table a bit, neither the "absorb" or the "angle" theory works perfectly, so we use a combined theory. We want to start with the foot in a good position, then when the ball hits the foot of your man, you absorb some of the energy. Some of this absorption is down automatically by your grip and some is done in your mind.
- Grip on the handle: You need to have control of the handle, but you need to be soft. Your hand needs to be able to manipulate the rod and the men, while at the same time being soft when the ball comes in contact with the foot. CRITICAL: DO NOT BOUNCE ON IMPACT. If your hand is "limp", you might bounce when the ball hits your man, meaning the ball will go backwards. Either learn to avoid this, learn to pin the ball as it rolls away or become a graceful loser.
- Finger tips on rod: This is a trick some people use. They actually pinch the rod with their finger tips. This allows for nice absorption, with no bounce. Give it a try.
- Control the ball: So you trapped the ball, now if it is not stopped either pin it to the wall or get it rolling side to side under the rod. DO NOT USE THE FRONT OR BACK OF YOUR MAN! Use only the sides or the toe where ever possible. You must break the habit of using the front/back of your foot on the ball! Only use them when you shoot or pass. This is a good start for you. Remember to learn the loose ball skills.
Click here to read foosball blog on catching. | <urn:uuid:69daccac-b523-4059-a3b9-d386ee84df5f> | CC-MAIN-2022-05 | https://foosball.com/schooloffoosball/catching | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-05/segments/1642320301475.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20220119155216-20220119185216-00063.warc.gz | en | 0.934492 | 728 | 2.71875 | 3 | {
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The end of summer and going back to school can be challenging in the best of times. Now that we are returning back to school under COVID-19, it can be even harder. The good news is that there are many things that you can do to support your children and youth with going back to school during COVID-19.
Deciding whether to send your child back to school
School boards across the country are now planning for a return to school for fall 2020. Many school boards are offering parents the option between:
- returning students physically back to school (ranging from part-time to full-time)
- keeping your child at home and continuing with virtual schooling
- a combination of physical return and virtual schooling
Are you uncertain about which choice to make? The Centres for Disease Control has a Back to School Decision-Making Tool to help you weigh the risks and benefits of each option. Reasons to attend school include:
- Your child learns best when physically at school.
- Your child benefits from seeing peers and other school activities, such as gym arts and music.
- The school allows parents to work and provides access to meal programs and other services.
Reasons to avoid a physical return to school:
- Your child (or someone living at home such as a parent or sibling) has an underlying condition (or age) that increases the risk for severe illness from COVID-19.
- The level of community spread is high in your area (which increases the risk of COVID-19).
Reasons to consider virtual schooling from home:
- Your child has someone that can supervise them at home.
- Your child has access to reliable technology (such as the internet) for your child’s virtual learning.
- Your child’s virtual learning option gives opportunities for real-time interactions with the teachers (e.g., have live instruction).
- Your child’s maturity and learning style are sufficient for virtual learning.
TIPS FOR PARENTS AND CAREGIVERS
This reference is for educational purposes only. If you have any questions, ask your health-care provider. Other considerations:
Does your child have special needs such as ADHD, autism, mood disorders, anxiety or other issues? Does your child have other issues such as bullying, or other school stressors? It is recommended that schools work with parents and healthcare providers to ensure that adequate supports will be in place in the classroom to help with special needs. Every child and situation is unique.
Back to school tips
Here are some tips that may be helpful as the school year starts, whether or not your child will be returning to school physically or virtually.
- Continue to encourage your child or youth to stay social with their friends and peers. This will help them feel more connected by the time they get back to school. Ideally this involves face-to-face connections outside, as per COVID-19 physical distancing.
- If they can’t meet face-to-face, try a video call or even write a letter to a friend.
- Gradually get back into school year structure and routines. Bring up the topic that summer is coming to an end and that school will be restarting.
- Talk about routines. You might say: “Hey guys, with COVID-19, you’ve had a lot more screen time than usual, but now that school is starting up again, we’re going to get back into our old routine… “
- Set a bedtime (and/or wake up time) and move it closer to what it should be for the school year.
- Set a screen curfew (a “downtime” after which point there are no screens). For example 8-9 p.m. for school-aged kids and 8:30-9:30 p.m. for high-school-aged kids.
- Consider posting a family calendar with the school start date marked down, to help your family see how many days are left until school starts.
- Ask about routines to continue. “What new COVID-19 routines would people like to continue during the school year? For example, regular family walks after dinner; family dance night, etc.
- Write down the new COVID-19 school-year schedule, for example:
7:00 a.m. – Wake up
8:00 a.m. – Leave for school
8:40 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. – School
3:45 p.m. – Arrive home, wash hands
3:45-5:00 p.m. – Homework time
5-6:00 p.m. – Family dinner
6-8:00 p.m. – Free time (non-educational electronics only allowed on Fridays and Saturdays)
8:30 p.m. – Screen time finished, bedtime routine
10:00 p.m. – Lights out
Some children will be able to wear masks easily but others may have a harder time. Consider the following exposure and desensitization strategies
- Are you buying a mask? Try giving your child some of the newer child-friendly designs to choose from or get them to help decorate a pre-made mask.
- Are you making a mask? Let your child choose the material.
- Create an exposure hierarchy to understand your child’s fears. From least scary to most scary it might be: seeing others wear a mask, seeing a mask, touching a mask, putting on a mask for short periods of time and putting on a mask for longer periods of time.
- Teach distraction strategies like distracting with music, videos, video games to help pass the time while wearing a mask.
- Practice calming strategies like deep breathing, going outside, going for a walk, etc.
- Consider motivating kids to get used to wearing a mask by pairing it with something they enjoy, like allowing video game time (within your limits) while wearing their mask.
Does your child or youth still have struggles with mask-wearing, despite your best efforts?
Consider seeing your health-care provider see if there might be other options, including seeing if your child may have a valid medical exemption.
Help your child continue to cope
- Stay connected to your kids. Kids do best when they feel loved by their caregivers, which happens when you spend quality time with them and listen, validate and empathize with their feelings (as opposed to seeing adults as being angry, upset, and emotionally unavailable to them).
- Model healthy coping. Kids do best when they learn healthy ways to cope with adversity, such as following public health recommendations with masks and physical distancing (as opposed to unhealthy strategies such as focusing on negatives and blaming).
- Attach positive meaning to the pandemic. Kids do best when they can have a positive meaning of a situation. You might say: “On one hand, this pandemic has not been easy. On the other hand, we’ve been able to have a lot more fun times together. And learn new things such as how to cut each other’s hair!”
Ease your child’s worries
Does your child seem to have excessive fears and anxiety about COVID-19? COVID-19 restrictions (such as restricting parents from entering the school) may lead your child to feel more isolated.
- Ask about their fears, and try to reassure or problem solve. Ask: “What worries you the most?”
- Validate and accept your child’s feelings about the situation. You might say: ” “I can see why you might be feeling (insert your child’s feelings here) about this.”
- Give your child a sense of control.
- Explore in more detail. Try to listen without interrupting. Say: ” “Tell me more…”
- Try giving your child a sentimental object that reminds them of you, e.g. a photograph, a special piece of jewelry, etc. Or perhaps a small favorite toy car or stuffie.
The first week back to school
- Leave earlier than usual. Whether you are driving, or simply dropping off your kids at the bus stop, this will give you more flex time
- Consider working a shorter day on the first day back, so that you can pick them up earlier on the first day back until they get used to the new routine.
- Establish a goodbye ritual. When its time to say goodbye to your child, give them a final hug, kiss, say goodbye, and talk about when you’ll see them next. Don’t just say “Goodbye!”, but bridge the separation by talking about when you will see them next.
- Have you dropped off your child? Try to take some time just for yourself, whether it’s going for a walk, to the coffee shop, having tea with a friend, or just going home to nap. Breathe a sigh of relief and savor this time.
- Check-in with your children about how the day went. If your child isn’t ready to talk, then ask them later when they are ready. You might ask: “How did your day go?” “How did it go with wearing your mask and keeping away from people and all that?” “What was hard, what was easy?”
- If they are sad, validate the sadness: “I can see you are feeling sad and it’s ok to cry. I’m going to miss you too.” Offer comfort like a hug or offering a tissue. Crying is good because it helps the brain. | <urn:uuid:25340691-6a69-476e-9ddb-a6936cc0dc4f> | CC-MAIN-2023-23 | https://www.ava360.com/back-to-school-during-covid-19-tips-for-parents-and-caregivers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224652149.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20230605153700-20230605183700-00483.warc.gz | en | 0.951331 | 2,046 | 2.796875 | 3 | {
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Post-spring recess, we are back to exploring Daniel T. Willingham’s Why Don’t Students Like School? with renewed appreciation for our own times of reluctance to be in the classroom. Spring fever hits tenure-track faculty just at the time when grading and professional review expectations increase, and our students are also showing signs of restlessness in the midst of their growing lists of assignments.
Not much of a surprise, then, to find that our teaching challenge discussion concerned student behavior or that we wanted our students to establish classroom norms for themselves rather than to shift responsibility to their instructors. Nor was it much of a surprise to find that we were nearing the end of our semester-long discussions by sharing our struggles to keep students on track despite differences between those who master material and concepts quickly and those who seem far behind our intended schedules.
Willingham’s eighth principle states that people “do differ in intelligence, but intelligence can be changed through sustained hard work.” He breaks this principle into two main areas for discussion, one of intellectual capacity and one of intellectual development. He argues that the two are closely entwined.
Intelligence, read through Willingham’s research, connects closely with thinking. Intelligence is a combination of problem-solving skills, use of working memory, and expansion of both working and long-term memory to support mental tasks of increasing complexity. Intelligence, then, is active and can be affected by intentional practices that increase its capacities as well as by neglectful or passive practices that allow working and long-term memory to atrophy. This is good news for those of us raised to believe that brain cells die over our lifetimes without the regeneration typical of other organs: we do not necessarily become less intelligent as we age. (Willingham does not address fatigue, hormonal changes, or stress as factors that might cause aging to affect intelligence temporally or indeed long-term).
In reading this chapter, I was reminded of a NewsRadio episode [http://youtu.be/pfOd4ccy8p0] in which the media editor Matthew, generally hapless and more than a few steps behind, drinks a potion called “Smart Juice.” Convinced that he has been doped into genius, Matthew renames himself SMatthew (Smart Matthew) and marvels his colleagues with his abilities to reason and to absorb new information. Sadly, SMatthew discovers that he has been drinking a placebo, and his smart self is unable to sustain the fiction his less capable self happily embraced.
Willingham’s principle clearly opposes this magical thinking. Sustained hard work is the subtext of each chapter’s argument for enhancing intellectual abilities. Moving from the capacity of intelligence to its development, Willingham then reviews the nature versus nurture debate. Which is more important to intelligence, genetics or environment? Willingham points out that this is in some ways a false dichotomy: what seems to occur in our lives is not only an increase in intelligence but a self-selection towards the environments in which our specific strengths of intelligence (verbal, quantitative, analytic, and creative, as examples) are supported in continuing to intensify and improve. We seek out what reinforces our sense of who we can be.
This sounds encouraging, and yet in this text, Willingham does not address the environments within which most of us live and work, engaged with identities of race, gender, ethnicity and culture, sexuality, religion, and economy. How much can any of us self-select into a supportive intellectual environment that maximizes our capacities when our capacities for health, prosperity, and overall self-determination are so limited? These are questions that are and should be present for us in the classroom and in our preparations and assessments of our teaching.
As we move into the final chapters of our shared text and the final weeks of the term, we are facing these questions with a deeper understanding of what brings each of us to teaching and learning. The experience of sharing teaching challenges across disciplines in the context of a larger discussion of how we and our students learn and can learn now brings us to the question of how we practice our teaching more effectively at the same time that we ask our students to learn more effectively. | <urn:uuid:1ed2c4f1-8a23-4cb6-9cfa-75564a0ae185> | CC-MAIN-2014-35 | http://lehmanfacultyprofessionaldevelopment.commons.gc.cuny.edu/page/2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-35/segments/1408500836108.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20140820021356-00127-ip-10-180-136-8.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959832 | 868 | 2.75 | 3 | {
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} | Education & Jobs |
1. The fact that she's not speaking doesn't mean she's not communicating.
Long before your baby said her first word, she was already chatting you up. Establishing eye contact, imitating your facial expressions, babbling, cooing, gurgling, crying -- these are all forms of dialogue. So don't leave her hanging. Imitate her sounds or respond to her cries to let her know that you hear her and that she matters.
2. To give your baby a really big vocabulary, talk -- constantly.
You may feel silly saying to your child, "What's Daddy doing? He's opening the refrigerator. Oh, look! He took out the milk!" But we promise, the more you talk to your kid, the bigger her vocabulary will be. It also helps when you label things you pass on the street or throw into your cart at the grocery store.
And while it probably won't hurt to use your baby as a sounding board for your latest rant about your boss, it's better to focus on the things that actually interest her. If she's pointing at a cat but can't say the word, help her out by saying, "Kitty. What a soft, pretty kitty." The more you speak and expand on your baby's sounds, the more chance she has of picking up words.
3. Kids are very fast learners.
Get this: between 18 months and 2 years, your baby's vocabulary goes from around 50 words to as many as 250! The experts call it fast mapping. We call it amazing.
4. Kids understand more than they can say.
Ask your 1-year-old to "give Daddy the ball," and he'll be able to do just that, even if he can only say the word "ball." It's at this age that kids are first able to follow simple directions. And around the time babies say their first word, they understand between 3 and 50, says Diane Paul, director of clinical issues in speech-language pathology for ASHA in Rockville, Maryland.
5. Don't let language milestones stress you out too much -- they're more guidelines than rules.
As with everything, kids learn language at different rates, so trust your instincts. Karen Slotnick, director of the Speech-Language Learning Center at the Beth Israel Medical Center, in New York City, says not to worry unless your child shows no desire to communicate (not reaching out to you or making eye contact). If you're concerned, don't hesitate to talk to your doctor or a speech pathologist. Here are a few basics to watch for in the first year: In the first three months your baby will interact by cooing, gurgling, and making different cries for different needs. By six months she'll graduate to babbling and turning her head toward a noise. Then, around 12 months, she'll imitate speech sounds and say her first word (we're pulling for "Mama" or "Dada" for you!). | <urn:uuid:7f82b5d9-4b21-49e4-8f4c-1f603bc99183> | CC-MAIN-2014-41 | http://www.parents.com/parents/templates/story/printableStory.jsp?storyid=/templatedata/ab/story/data/1235414455823.xml&catref=prt1436 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-41/segments/1410657128304.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20140914011208-00058-ip-10-196-40-205.us-west-1.compute.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97312 | 614 | 2.65625 | 3 | {
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} | Health |
Asthma is a struggle that plagues 1 in 13 people. That’s 25 million people in the U.S alone. With sports being a big part of a lot of people’s lives, how can people overcome this diagnosis?
Though asthma has different levels of severity and various triggers, some of the most common ones are allergies and exercise. Therefore, outdoor sports can be a big trigger for asthma attacks, which can be life-threatening.
WebMD describes the symptoms of asthma as dry coughing, tightness in the chest, pale or blue skin, and rapid breathing. These symptoms can end in hospitalization or even death.
However, sports, when done correctly, according to an article on teen’s health, can actually lessen the symptoms of asthma. The article talks about the benefits of exercise and how it strengthens breathing muscles. It also recommends different sports that would be more suited to this condition but they reiterated that sport’s challenges can be worked through by talking to coaches and working extra hard.
Since exercise is such a big part of having a healthy lifestyle, professionals will likely suggest lighter exercise methods for people with asthma rather than eliminating physical activity from their routine. An article from MedicineNet discusses how things like hiking, biking, golf, gymnastics, baseball, short track events, and even football can be wel-suited to athletes with asthma. Even in these sports, letting coaches know and keeping an inhaler nearby is a safer option.
Medicine Net also talks about how sports that require high levels of endurance such as soccer, basketball, and cross-country should be played with caution. Coaches should be properly informed coaches and knowledgeable about the signs of an asthma attack. Informed coaches should allow breaks or lenience during practices and drills.
Athletes with asthma should also be closely monitored in winter sports. The dry air that is present during the winter can trigger asthma, says Mayo Clinic.
In addition to the physical consequences of playing sports with asthma, teens may also face social anxiety. An article on Teen Health mentions that teens with asthma may fear that their peers think differently or less of them. They may fear that fellow athletes perceive extra breaks as unfair or special treatment. To avoid feeling isolated from one’s teammates, Teen Health recommends keeping breaks to a minimum while still staying safe. They also recommend replacement drills or modified drills rather than exemption.
Asthma doesn’t need to prevent people from sports, it simply adds a challenge for people to overcome.
People with asthma have historically overcome this struggle to become very successful athletes. Across all sports and leagues, most people don’t even know the struggle that most of them face.
Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Dennis Rodman had a form of asthma that centered around allergies. Despite this, he won five NBA championships and was the only player from the second round of the 1986 draft to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
David Beckham, a retired soccer player for the LA Galaxy, was only found to have asthma when he was photographed using an inhaler in a 2009 MLS cup game. That was 13 years after he made his debut to the sport. An article on Healthline mentions how in numerous interviews Beckham has said that it wasn’t something he felt he needed to talk about. But he added that if it did help people who were struggling with this, he would hope his success would motivate them.
Paula Radcliffe, a marathon runner for 29 years, also suffered from asthma from a young age. She told Healthline, “I don’t think asthma affected my career- if anything it made me more determined to reach my potential.” One of her biggest accomplishments was setting the world record for the fastest women’s marathon time in 2003 with a time of 2:15:25. Only recently in 2019 was this record beaten. She held the record for 16 years in spite of having asthma.
Swimmer Amy Van Dyke was diagnosed at only the age of 18 months, says an article on Health Grades. Then when she was 6 years old, doctors recommended swimming for her to strengthen her lungs around less dry air sports. 17 years later, Amy would compete in the 1996 summer Olympics and win 4 gold medals. She later went on to win 2 more. Though from a young age she was at a disadvantage with other swimmers, she never let that stop her; it only motivated her to become the best she could be.
Eighth-grade MMS student, Lauren Furnas, was diagnosed with activity-based asthma at age twelve but that hasn’t stopped her from participating in a variety of sports. Of all the sports she’s played, soccer and swimming are her focuses. In an interview, Lauren stated, “If anything, swimming worsened it. It didn’t get worse because of swimming but because it is activity-based. It still flares up during sports.” Even though Lauren says that inhalers don’t help her personally, she has overcome this challenge through hard work and practice.
Another eighth-grade student, Owen Milroy, was diagnosed with allergy-based asthma at the age of four. He mentioned the absence of modified drills in his sports’ experiences and how he just had to work through the challenge. Owen also participates in several sports, the main ones being swimming, soccer, and track. In his experience, he only uses an inhaler when he’s “straight-up dying.”
Asthma and sports may seem to not mix, but historically, and in our own school, people have found workarounds and have been able to partake in any sport they wanted. | <urn:uuid:5d720d4f-55c7-4cd8-8689-ee5eee94df83> | CC-MAIN-2022-27 | https://wildcatvoice.org/6370/sports/asthma-and-sports-how-can-they-mix/?return&print=true | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-27/segments/1656103036099.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20220625190306-20220625220306-00020.warc.gz | en | 0.979521 | 1,168 | 3.34375 | 3 | {
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"interpretation": "Strong reasoning"
} | Health |
What people do not understand is that there is no proof of
"Man-Made" Global Warming without using irrelevant
computer models. Yes computer models have a place in engineering
but are utterly useless at fortune telling, I mean "climate
prediction". With engineering you can build and test in
the real world to confirm the computer model's accuracy. You
can do no such thing with the planet Earth and it's climate.
You cannot build a planet and it's atmosphere to "test"
your computer climate model.
I am a computer analyst and can program a computer model to
do whatever I want. If you program a computer model so that
X amount of CO2 increase "forces" X amount of temperature
increase then it will happen, this does not make this true in
the real world.
"...all of our models have errors which mean that they
will inevitably fail to track reality within a few days irrespective
of how well they are initialised." - James Annan, William
GIGO: Garbage in = Garbage out
Computers need exact information and the exact procedures to
process that information to get accurate answers, without that
you get useless results, period. There is no way around this.
Computers cannot fill in the blanks for you like nature does
when you do an experiment in the real world. With computers
everything must be programmed into them from the beginning and
everything that is programmed into them must be 100% understood
and 100% accurate. Even the most advanced and expensive computer
climate models include various approximations known as 'parameterizations'.
These "guesses" include:
- Cloud Cover
- Transfer of Solar Radiation in the Atmosphere
Fundamental Computer Science - if a Computer Model includes
merely one approximation for what latter dependent calculations
or data are derived from then the output of the model is useless.
This is Computer Science 101.
(Article continues below)
Computing incomplete, biased or flat out wrong data (guesses
and assumptions) based on poorly understood climate physics
in a "model" will give you useless output. But since
these models have been "tuned" (guesstimated or deliberately
altered to get the results they want) they get results that
"seem" likely or even convincing to the average computer
illiterate, yet they are absolutely meaningless for prediction.
What the modelers do is they keep playing with the numbers until
they think they guess right, a useless exercise. Technically
they are mathematically adjusting various climate related equations
based on theoretical assumptions.
Alarmist scientists presenting their "predictions"
as fancy graphs or nicely colored renderings does nothing for
the accuracy of their predictions. They like to use colors such
as yellow, orange and red to have an emotional effect for worthless
computer generated results.
Question: Would you use a mathematically broken calculator?
Nothing is emotional about computers they are pure logical
machines, 1 + 1 must = 2. Imagine trying to use a mathematically
broken calculator based on poorly understood arithmetic to get
a correct answer but you have no way to confirm that "correct
answer" except to wait 50-100 years. Sound crazy? Welcome
to Global Climate Modeling. Yes the models have to be exact
to give any sort of relevant results. That is like saying a
calculator does not have to be based on accurate arithmetic
to be a useful tool in mathematics - utter propaganda.
Weather vs. Climate
Computer models are used to predict your weather and you know
how accurate they are. But Al Gore and Gavin Schmidt can certainly
tell your what the climate will be 50-100 years from now. Give
me a break! Don't be fooled that the basic principles of how
computers work changes whether you are modeling the climate
or the weather. Nor is one more accurate than the other long
term. Computer code is computer code no matter what name you
give it and how a computer works does not change because you
change the name you call the code. You cannot simply excuse
away missing data, substitute mathematically created observations,
parameterize what you are unable to model and then run the model
over a longer time and think your results have any remote relation
The existence of parameterizations (approximated assumptions)
means that various calculations are not fully resolved to scale
and thus the models are flawed by design, this is basic computer
science. You have results based on estimated calculations and
thus worthless results. No hand waving can change this. Any
computer code that is not 100% perfect will produce meaningless
results with scientific and math calculations. That is the fundamentals
of how a computer works.
The Myth of Testing
Testing a model against past climate is an advanced exercise
in curve fitting, nothing more and proves absolutely nothing.
What this means is you are attempting to have your model's output
match the existing historical output that has been recorded.
For example matching the global mean temperature curve over
100 years. Even if you match this temperature curve with your
model it is meaningless. Your model could be using some irrelevant
calculation that simply matches the curve but does not relate
to the real world. With a computer model there are an infinite
number of ways to match the temperature curve but only one way
that represents the real world. It is impossible for computer
models to prove which combination of climate physics correctly
matches the real world. Do not be fooled this logic is irrefutable
by anyone who understands computer science and computer modeling.
"These codes are what they are - the result of 30 years
and more effort by dozens of different scientists (note, not
professional software engineers), around a dozen different software
platforms and a transition from punch-cards of Fortran 66, to
Fortran 95 on massively parallel systems." - Gavin Schmidt,
Computer Science vs. Natural Science
To make matters worse it is not computer scientists creating
these models but natural scientists coding them using Fortran.
These natural scientists do not even begin to have the basic
understanding of computer science or proper coding practices.
Their code is not 100% available publicly and you do not have
independent auditing or code validation. Sloppy and buggy code
is very likely littered inside these climate model programs
yet there is next to no accountability for any of this. How
do you separate a programming error from a temperature anomaly?
How can you replace observational data with a complex mathematical
equation? You can't.
How many of the models used by the IPCC have had ANY bug fixes
or code changes since the most recent IPCC report? If they have
had ANY - all previous model run results become null and void
based on simple logic thus easily invalidating the ridiculous
conclusions of the IPCC report.
"No complex code can ever be proven 'true' (let alone demonstrated
to be bug free). Thus publications reporting GCM results can
only be suggestive." - Gavin Schmidt, RealClimate.org
All the computer illiterates are convinced that because something
is done on a "super computer" that costs "millions
of dollars" it is infallible. The more complex the model,
the more "mysterious" it seems to the average person.
The public gives computer climate models this mystical aura
because they are largely computer illiterate about how they
actually work and when they hear the term "computer"
they do not want to sound or feel stupid, so they nod their
heads and go along with it.
Why are we not turning to models to predict the future for
everything? Because they can't, not even remotely. Some of them
work "sort of" for the weather in very, very short
term results (1-3 days) until all the data they are processing
that is wrong combined with all the data they are missing and
the millions of variables they are not accounting for start
to kick in and grow exponentially the farther out the model
runs and wham - the model is wrong. No kidding, there are simply
way too many variables that they cannot account for and the
computer power necessary to even start to take these variables
into account does not exist.
The sheer ignorance of the scientists creating these models
is astounding. The fact that they have absolutely no scientific
understanding of computer systems in any remote way is appalling.
They instead rely on the computer illiteracy of the general
public and their perceived standing as "intellectuals"
to get away with this fraud.
You are expected to believe that they can "model"
the climate 50-100 years in the future when they cannot even
give you accurate weather 3 days out? Don't be fools, I do this
for a living, Computer Models cannot predict the future with
anything as complex as the Earth's climate.
Climate models are rubbish (The Register, UK)
"My first heresy says that all the fuss about global
warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy
brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded
citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models.
[...] But I have studied the climate models and I know what
they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics,
and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions
of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of
describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology
of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe
the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and
messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is
much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building
and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure
what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds.
That is why the climate model experts end up believing their
own models." - Freeman Dyson, Professor Emeritus of Physics, | <urn:uuid:0eff7cb5-2de7-484c-adc9-73acd6a0c90e> | CC-MAIN-2014-23 | http://www.infowars.net/articles/november2008/041108FACT.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-23/segments/1406510271862.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20140728011751-00027-ip-10-146-231-18.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920907 | 2,101 | 2.703125 | 3 | {
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} | Science & Tech. |
Through history.. the bridesmaids & groomsmen have had many different responsibilities.
This comes from MentalFloss.com:
1. In a time in which “marriage by capture” was practiced, close friends of the groom would assist him in taking the bride from her family. They’d form a small army to fight off angry relatives so that he could escape with her.
2. Witnesses at the marriage bed were once required to get REALLY involved. A tradition in medieval England and France was called "fingering the stocking”: literally checking the bride's stockings for signs that the marriage had been consummated.
3. There was a lot of shoe-throwing in the old days. In Anglo-Saxon times the groom “symbolically" struck the bride with a shoe to “establish his authority.” Brides would throw shoes at their bridesmaids (instead of a bouquet) to see who would marry next. Whoever caught it would throw her shoe at the men, and the first guy hit would be the one to wed.
4. Ancient Roman law required 10 witnesses to be present at a wedding, which is considered a precursor to the bridal party tradition. Bridesmaids and groomsmen had to dress just like the bride and groom to confuse vengeful spirit presences (or real-life jealous suitors) who might try to harm the newlyweds.
5. Another origin story for the bridesmaid tradition is Biblical: When Jacob married Leah and Rachel, each brought her own “maid”—but they were personal servants rather than your typical bouquet-holding bridesmaids.
6. The tradition of the “best man” is thought to have originated with the Germanic Goths of the 16th century. He was the “best man” for, specifically, the job of stealing the bride from her neighboring community or disapproving family, and he was probably the best swordsman, too.
7. In some early traditions, the groomsmen were called Bride’s Knights, because they helped protect her—and her dowry, and her virginity—or because they assisted in her kidnapping.
8. The chief bridesmaid might be in charge of the dow-purse (much the way today’s maid of honor would hold the bride’s bouquet). She’d also help the bride take off her gloves and then hold them during the ceremony.
9. In some traditions, bridesmaids led the bridegroom to the church and the groomsmen led the bride.
10. In medieval times, some bridesmaids made the bride drink and eat a concoction of plum buns in spiced ale to “restore the energies.”
11. Part of the job was to walk carefully: If a bridesmaid stumbled on the way to the altar, the superstition was that she would never marry.
12. Given the likelihood that the bride's family would attempt to retrieve her from her groom or get revenge—or that another suitor would try to take her, or she might try to escape—the best man stood right next to her at the wedding, at the ready with his weapon. Later, he was moved to the groom's right side (possibly due to jealousy on the part of the groom). After the ceremony he stood guard outside the newlyweds' bedroom or home.
13. In ancient Roman weddings, the matron of honor was a moral role model, known for fidelity and obedience. (She had to have been married no more than once, and to have a living husband.) She joined the right hands of the bride and bridegroom for the first time at the ceremony.
14. In early Victorian times, tradition called for all-white weddings, so bridesmaids—who were supposed to be younger than the bride—wore white dresses with short veils, contrasting with the bride’s more ornate veil and train. By the 20th century, this had fallen out of favor, and the bride alone wore white to better stand out.
15. Victorian bridesmaids were tasked with making party favors out of things like ribbons and flowers and pinning them onto the sleeves and shoulders of guests as they left the ceremony. Bridesmaids of the past also used to walk down the aisle with aromatic bunches of garlic, herbs, and grains to drive evil spirits away (and to help make things smell nice in times when hygiene was a bit different).
16. A maid of honor once attended to the bride-to-be for several days prior to a wedding, making sure the bridal wreath was made and helping her get dressed. Bridesmaids also helped undress her, making sure to remove all pins (if a pin remained, it was bad luck for the wedding), and helped decorate for the wedding feast.
17. The “stag” or bachelor party originated in Sparta in the fifth century, as his buddies—de facto groomsmen—toasted him and feasted on the night before his wedding.
18. Being a bridesmaid was considered a good way to procure a husband. In the 16th century, if you had served as bridesmaid three times without getting married yourself, it was believed that evil spirits had cursed you. To break the spell, you’d have to be a bridesmaid four more times, for a total of seven rounds on the wedding circuit.
19. The bride’s friends would “shower” her with gifts before her wedding in cases when her father didn’t approve of her groom and wouldn’t provide the necessary dowry for her to marry the man of her choice. The gifts they gave would become her dowry.
20. The bride was often accompanied by a child—think today’s flower girls and ring bearers—meant to symbolize a fruitful union. Flower petals tossed in the bride’s pathway were representative of the way to a beautiful future.
21. Open carriages were considered an easy target for evil spirits, so wedding guests would use bells and firecrackers to scare them away. This translates to today’s celebratory car honking after ceremonies. | <urn:uuid:9d65c1a9-21e8-443b-a5d2-af11bbad5a01> | CC-MAIN-2017-13 | http://kiss1067.iheart.com/onair/pauly-17900/21-historical-roles-of-wedding-parties-12570268/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-13/segments/1490218190183.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20170322212950-00281-ip-10-233-31-227.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976915 | 1,318 | 3.28125 | 3 | {
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} | Social Life |
Holi is one of India’s best-known festivals, providing great material for photographers from all over the world. Its marks the beginning of spring and takes place at full moon in the lunar month of Phalgun (February-March). It is known as the festival of colours and also the festival of love, commemorating the divine love of Krishna and Radha.
Holi is also day for breaking down barriers, releasing tensions and ending conflicts – a day of forgiving and forgetting. It is also a festival of unity and brother-/sisterhood. It brings together all social classes, all castes, men and women; everyone looks the same when drenched in coloured powder!
The celebrations start with a Holika bonfire the night before Holi proper. Holi is named after Holika, the sister of the king and demon-deity Hiranyakashipu.
According to legend, Hiranyakashipu had obtained powers that made him indestructible. As a result he became arrogant, considered himself a fully-fledged god, and demanded that everyone worship him.
But his son Prahlada, a fervent devotee of Vishnu, would not bow down to his father.
The furious king decided to kill his son, but his plan failed; Prahalad survived being thrown from a cliff, crushed by elephants, bitten by snakes and attacked by soldiers.
So Hiranyakashipu asked his sister Holika to kill Prahalad. Holika took Prahalad on her knees and sat atop a pyre. She had obtained a power from the gods that made her impervious to fire.
But the gods were displeased that she should use this power for evil purposes and immediately took it from her. She was burnt to ashes. Prahalad, who had remained faithful to his convictions, was protected by Vishnu and survived. Shortly afterwards, Vishnu killed Hiranyakashyap and Prahalad inherited the throne, reigning as a wise king.
To celebrate this legend, great bonfires are built and an effigy representing Holika is placed on top. On the night before Holi the fires are lit and people sing and dance around them.
Some take embers home with them, for this fire is a reminder of the symbolic victory of good over evil.
Holi proper starts the day after Holika. The streets explode with all the colours of the rainbow. People run playfully after each other and throw coloured water or powder at each other until everyone is covered in colour from head to foot.
If you are out in the streets during Holi you will be assailed from all sides. There is no way to escape it and you cannot protest because that is the spirit of Holi – there are no limits. So be prepared! Don’t dress smart, protect your hair and skin, and wear glasses.
Originally, the coloured powders used for Holi were made from natural pigments: turmeric for ochre yellow, kumkum for carmine, blue hibiscus for indigo, etc. – plants that are used in the Ayurvedic pharmacopoeia. Because people can catch chills at this time of changing season, throwing the powders had a preventive or curative purpose.
Unfortunately the powders used nowadays are made with chemicals and there is no control over their origin or properties. They can persist on the skin for several days and sometimes cause irritation.
Holi is a general letting off of steam. Indeed this was one of its original purposes, allowing people to be momentarily free of all prohibitions.
But the party can also degenerate with too much alcohol and drugs such as bhang, a drink made from cannabis. Men under the influence soon become uncontrollable. It is best to attend Holi in the morning, before the men have drunk too much or overindulged in drugs.
In fact many Indian families prefer to stay home and play Holi amongst themselves rather than get too close to the excesses going on in the street.
Holi, festival of colours, is intimately linked to the Hindu god Krishna.
Krishna has blue skin because a demon-woman called Putana poisoned him with her breast milk when he was a baby. In his youth Krishna was desperate to know whether Radha and the other gopis (cowherd girls) would like him despite his blue skin. His mother, tired of seeing her son lament in this way, told him to approach Radha and colour her face with whatever colour he liked. He did, and Radha and Krishna became a couple. Ever since, the playful colouring of Radha’s face has been celebrated at Holi.
In the region of Braj, where Krishna grew up, the festival lasts 16 days in commemoration of Radha’s divine love for Krishna (see below)
Another story tells that Krishna liked to play jokes on the girls of his village by throwing coloured water at them.
Mathura in Uttar Pradesh and towns around it are associated with the Lord Krishna story and are famous for their Holi celebrations. Barsana, an hour’s drive from Mathura, has a unique version of Holi called Laddoo and Lathmaar Holi.
Laddoo Holi celebrates Krishna’s visit to Barsana during Holi. It takes place on the day before Lathmaar Holi.
Laddoos are ball-shaped sweets that are very popular in India. At this festival they are thrown from the top of the Radha temple onto the crowd below, who try to catch them. They are regarded as prasad – holy food – and are treated with great respect.
The literal meaning of Lathmaar Holi is “Holi with stick-beating”. Legend has it that when Lord Krishna was living in the neighbouring village of Nandgaon, he used to visit Barsana where his beloved Radha was born. The dark-faced god enjoyed teasing Radha and her gopi friends (gopis are cowherd girls). The girls took offense and chased him out of town.
To relive the legend, the men of Nandgaon come to Barsana during Holi and are greeted by the women of the village armed with long sticks called lathi. The Nandgaon men chant verses to provoke the women, who set about them with their sticks. The men use shields to protect themselves. The next day the women of Barsana go to Nandgaon and are drenched with coloured water by the men there. | <urn:uuid:cae5c379-7849-4e44-a0be-d27a14f15cd2> | CC-MAIN-2021-39 | https://magikindia.com/holi-india/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-39/segments/1631780057775.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20210925202717-20210925232717-00071.warc.gz | en | 0.976594 | 1,376 | 2.71875 | 3 | {
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Number 1 Coy. 5/60th Royal American (Rifles) were a British serving company within the 5th btn, 60th Regiment of Foot (Royal Americans).
The 60th itself was a regiment raised to police America only, originally being given the number 62 in the line, it changed to the 60th in 1757. The regiment was charged mainly with fighting the French, and actually won the motto ‘Celer Et Audax’ (Swift & Bold) from General James Wolfe after driving the French from Quebec. This motto is still in use today with the modern day Rifles.
Parliament passed legislation in late 1797 to add another battalion, 1,000 men strong to the Regiment. This brought the addition of a fifth battalion to the 60th, which was raised on the Isle of Wight with Lt. Col. Baron de Rottenburg as the commanding officer. The first return for the battalion was sworn in front of Newport Magistrates in March 1798, and depicts the four companies of the battalion based on the Isle of Wight drawing pay. Within 6 months those four companies had moved to Waterford, Ireland.
The battalion was wholly armed with a Prussian Rifle, and consisted of men drafted in from two foreign corps; Lowenstein’s Chasseur’s (Dutch) and Hompesch’s Mounted riflemen (German). It is from the latter that the battalion gained it’s uniform style – a pair of tight fitting pantaloons, and a green jacket with scarlet facings (unlike the other battalions of the 60th, the 5th used a green jacket with red facings instead of a red jacket with blue facings, but retained the royal status of the regiment with its royal blue pantaloons). This battalion became the first in the British Army not only to be wholly equipped & specifically trained in the use of rifles, but also to wear the now famous green jacket.
Early service in Ireland beckoned the newly raised 5th btn, and saw them successfully quash a rebellion at the Battle of Vinegar Hill under the command of Sir John Moore. The four companies of the battalion then headed for the West Indies in 1799, where on arrival the battalion was strengthened to ten companies, with recruits being drafted in from Lowenstein’s Chassuers, York Rangers and also a company of the Walloon Guards amongst others. The battalion then served in the America’s briefly, serving at Martinique, Surinam, Grenada, Trinidad and Halifax (Nova Scotia) before travelling on to Portsmouth, England.
1808 saw the opening of a marvelous and colourful chapter in not only the regiments history, but also of Britain itself. Sir Arthur Wellesley (Later Lord Wellington) landed at Mondego Bay in Portugal, thus beginning the Peninsular Wars. The 5/60th along with the 2/95th were the first men ashore and became the first British forces to encounter the French. The battalion itself was ordered to work at Company level (the typical European way of employing riflemen in the field) and was strung through the various divisions of the British army to provide elite’ sharpshooters to work with the light companies of line regiments. It’s also important to note that on the first order of the battle made during the Peninsular, 5/60th were accompanied by 2/95th Rifles in the Light Division, with 5/60th being the senior battalion.
The battalion went on to win no less than 16 battle honours in the Peninsular and France campaigns, which are still worn with pride today by the officers of the current Rifles.
The Commanding Officer of the 1st Company who we represent, was called John Galiffe. He was the most highly decorated officer of the British Army which served in the Peninsular Wars, with no less than 15 actions to his name. Galiffe went on to command the 5/60th from the beginning of 1813 until the end of hostilities in April 1814.
5/60th itself was itself present in the Peninsular from the very beginning to the last day of the war (1808-1814). Only two other battalions in the British Army achieved this feat.
The battalion was eventually disbanded in 1818 with the remaining men, battle honours & traditions amalgamated into the 2nd. Rifle Battalion, Duke of Yorks’ Rifle Corps. Their motto ‘Swoift & Bold’ also went with them, and carried on in use when they became the KRRC in 1830. In 1948 the KRRC merged with the Rifle Brigade & Ox & Bucks. LI to form the Royal Green Jackets (RGJ). Finally in 2007 the RIFLES were formed from the RGJ , Devonshire & Dorset LI; The Light Infantry & finally the Gloucestershire, Berkshire & Wiltshire LI. The 60th’s battle honours, traditions and history is kept alive by 2nd Battn. The Rifles, with their original motto ‘Swift & Bold’ now used by the whole regiment, the single largest regiment in the British Army. | <urn:uuid:841cb94e-b360-461d-89f6-9931341ff653> | CC-MAIN-2019-35 | http://5th60thrifles.co.uk/?page_id=108 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-35/segments/1566027313996.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20190818185421-20190818211421-00444.warc.gz | en | 0.972436 | 1,079 | 2.6875 | 3 | {
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AIS Special Report, February 28, 2017
Armored trains have a place in the popular imagination, having been featured in films such as Doctor Zhivago (1965), The Train (1964) and the James Bond thriller Goldeneye (1995). More fantastic armored trains are now encountered in popular video games and Japanese anime. Hundreds of these menacing iron giants armed with formidable naval guns once roamed the expanses of Eastern Europe and Asia, but today there are only four left in service; the Russian Defense Ministry’s armored trains Terek, Baikal, Amur and Don (like the cruisers of the sea, these cruisers of the rails are given individual names). The Terek is the Russian Army’s sole factory-made, purpose-designed armored train, the others having been converted from various civilian rail cars.
A Weapon Built for Russian Expanses
Russia has an extensive history of armored train use, largely due to the difficulty of moving large numbers of troops across the vast road-less regions of early 20th century Russia. Large numbers of armored trains were deployed on the mobile battlefields of World War One’s Eastern Front, but the Russian Civil War of 1917-22 saw a virtual explosion in their use, with over 200 in operation at one point.
Many of the White Russian trains passed into the service of northern Chinese warlords before falling into the hands of the Japanese after their 1931 invasion of Manchuria. Both Russia and Germany deployed armored trains on the Eastern Front in World War Two. Russian armored trains patrolled the wild east Siberian frontier during the Sino-Soviet border conflict of the 1960s and appeared again during the 1990 Nagorno-Karabakh War. During the most intensive phases of the Chechen-Russian War armored trains were successful in performing reconnaissance missions, de-mining operations and the escort of military trains carrying troops and equipment.
The defensive weaknesses of armored trains (vulnerability to ambush, derailment, capture etc.) were recognized early and by 1919 it was common for each Russian armored train to carry a desantniy ortryad (raiding team) that could be quickly deployed alongside train-borne tanks or other armored vehicles. With fire called in by forward observers deployed from the train, the armored train can provide powerful fire-support to drive away or destroy enemy forces. In modern times these raiding teams include BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicles and T-62 or T-72 tanks. While mounted on flatcars, the more vulnerable sides of these vehicles are protected by timber and sandbags. The tanks have a secondary role as tractors in the event of a derailment.
Armored trains may also use small railed reconnaissance vehicles known as draisines to scout the track ahead of the main train. The trains typically carry the material and trained men necessary to quickly repair damaged track as immobility places a train in danger of ambush or capture.
Use in Counter-Insurgency
Modern armored trains are vulnerable to air raids or artillery strikes, making them suitable only for counter-insurgency operations where such capabilities are typically unavailable to insurgents. Armored trains were first used for counter-insurgency work by the Austro-Hungarian Army in 1848. Later armored trains were used on counter-insurgency missions by the British against the Boers in South Africa, the Germans against Partisans on the Eastern Front in World War Two and by the French against the Viet Minh in Indo-China. Their use enabled railway troops to secure important transportation links from sabotage and provide fire support to infantry and armor.
Though armored trains have become vulnerable to modern tank tactics and armor-piercing munitions, their rail support allows the trains to carry a weight in weapons and armor that would crush paved roads or have mobility difficulties on certain types of ground. Expendable flatcars (often loaded with sandbags) are typically deployed ahead of the train to absorb the initial impact of explosives or derailment.
Antiaircraft gun of the Armored Train Terek. The Baikal is to the left. This photo was likely taken at the Russian Armored Train base at Khankala, Chechnya. © Photo: otvaga2004.ru
Modernizing Russia’s Armored Train Fleet
The return of the Russian Defense Ministry’s four armored trains to service after a brief retirement is part of an expensive program to modernize and expand Russia’s armed forces by 2020, though sanctions and economic difficulties have hindered implementation. The trains were operated by Russian Railway Troops (Zheleznodorozhniki -ZhDk) in the North Caucasus from 2002 to 2009, at which point Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov decided the trains had outlived their usefulness as the Chechen insurgency wound down. Serdyukov was sacked over corruption allegations in 2012 and his order to dismantle the trains was never carried out. His replacement, Sergey Shoigu, had seen the trains in action and decided to bring them back into service (International Business Times, August 28, 2015).
Armored train Terek © Photo: otvaga2004.ru
The four corps of ZhDk railway troops are under the authority of the Defense Ministry and are responsible for securing and repairing Russia’s railway network during military operations or natural disasters.
There is no sign yet that the Defense Ministry trains will be re-joined by the Russian Interior Ministry’s sole armored train, the largely improvised Kozma Minin, which served in the Caucasus in the periods 1994-2002 and 2011-2012 before being sent for a technological overhaul in 2013. The Kozma Minin operated separately from the Army’s trains, carrying out missions for Interior Ministry forces.
Diagram of the Baikal and Amur armored trains: The Baikal (top) features 1) cover platform 2) anti-aircraft gun 3) locomotive 4) kitchen and dining car 5) sleeper car 6) radio station 7) headquarters 8) jammer; the Amur (bottom) features 1) freight car 2) anti-aircraft gun 3) locomotive 4) kitchen and dining car 5) sleeper car 6) sleeper car 7) radio station 8) jammer 9) headquarters 10) freight car 11) freight car, 12) crane 13) cover platform. © Politrussia.com
The Defense Ministry’s overhauled armored trains now include an electronic warfare wagon capable of jamming enemy communications and radar. New tactical protocols now allow the trains to operate in tandem with helicopter support, a potentially lethal combination for insurgents operating anywhere close to the railway system (Sputnik News.com, August 15, 2016). Russia’s armored trains have also been fitted out with anti-mine technology, including the Kamysh M4K system, which uses white noise to interfere with radio-controlled IEDs at a distance of up to 20 meters. Firepower is now provided, not by naval guns, but by powerful, rapid-firing twin 23 mm ZU-23 anti-aircraft guns (MK.RU, August 12, 2016). These guns are protected by shields and their crews have access to armored shelters on both ends of the gun-car. Heavy use of camouflage nets helps reduce the visibility of the armored trains as targets.
Armored Train Baikal © Photo: otvaga2004.ru
Amur and Baikal undertook intensive drills in Volgograd, Krasnodar, North Ossetia and Crimea in August 2016. One of the high points of the exercise was the construction by railroad troops of a 1300-foot long pontoon bridge over the Volga capable of supporting the armored trains (Russia Today, August 17, 2016; Video of the operation at Vesti.Ru, August 17, 2016).
Russia is also re-introducing military trains equipped with the new MS-26 Rubezh light intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), armed with multiple nuclear warheads (the whole system is known as “Barguzin”). An earlier version of these missile trains was deployed from 1984 to 1994, but the enormous weight of these missiles damaged the rail system and the entire project was shut down in 2005, partly due to strategic weapons treaties (Russian Beyond the Headlines, May 17, 2016). The new, much lighter missile trains will be disguised by the inclusion of normal freight cars and wagons in the train to prevent their easy detection from space (Independent, November 23, 2016). | <urn:uuid:c2992028-d332-4858-9012-db0cc90b10cf> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.aberfoylesecurity.com/?p=3873 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030338213.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007143842-20221007173842-00517.warc.gz | en | 0.952668 | 1,745 | 2.84375 | 3 | {
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One of the biggest issues we face when making food is balancing health with taste, as well as also cost. We want our food to be tasty and healthy, but we don’t want to break the bank making food. An excellent indicator as to how costly our food will be is what we cook it with. This is why so many struggle with gas or electric appliances, considering what the outcomes are.
Most people are aware of the basics. As Saving Electricity points out:
“Natural gas is almost always cheaper than electricity. Of course, if you don’t cook very much, the savings won’t be that great. Electric stoves account for only 2.8% of electric use for households that have them. (The oven part of the stoves comprises only 1.8%.)”
However, this is not perfect or universal. After all, some people could use the stove so infrequently any difference becomes negligible. Someone who barely uses his electric stove probably won’t be using his electric oven, either.
According to most studies, working purely with costs, the energy efficient winner is gas. How Stuff Works summarises the findings of leading institutes:
“[Gas] takes about three times as much energy to produce and deliver electricity to your stove. According to the California Energy Commission, a gas stove will cost you less than half as much to operate (provided that you have an electronic ignition.)”
But that doesn’t quite answer our cooking needs nor provide a full picture.
Where the debate lies
As Kitchen Myths points out, in its list of where gas and electric stoves succeed, it’s clear the answer is not simple. For example, boiling is essential to cooking. Yet, one does it significantly better than the other.
“In comparison tests, gas stoves are almost always slower to boil a large pot of water than an electric stove with the same BTU rating. This is probably because a lot more heat escapes with gas.”
Timing is everything here. So, if one does it slower than another, that will have an effect on taste. Indeed, because you’re spending more gas than you would electricity, you might find the cost is more in this instance.
Common knowledge then isn’t conclusive. What we need to do is carefully calculate our costs at the end of the month, using whatever appliance we currently have. Then, we need to obtain details about particular stoves or appliances. With this data and info, we can compare the differences and see whether there is anything significant.
The overall point is that gas isn’t obviously better, only more likely to be so. We should, however, always think of our own individual situation before making a purchasing decision. | <urn:uuid:d8e4366f-b228-4e35-b488-36c4cfdebb59> | CC-MAIN-2017-13 | http://tasteobservatory.com/gas-vs-electric-the-ongoing-debate/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-13/segments/1490218191984.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20170322212951-00083-ip-10-233-31-227.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963568 | 575 | 2.765625 | 3 | {
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A Short History of Flying in Idaho
Idaho's storied connection with aviation begins early in the twentieth century. It was here, in the Intermountain West, that commercial airmail first took hold, on the Pasco-Boise-Elko route.
"The airmail had been flown by the army to start out with," said historian Arthur Hart. "But they were killing too many pilots, so the army got out of it. Congress put it out for contract in 1925, and that's when Walter Varney put in a bid for a route that he was sure nobody else would want."
Varney Airlines came to Idaho, not to carry passengers, but to carry the mail. "That was their specialty, but they soon became part of the larger conglomerate called United Airlines – one of several small companies that joined. So United quite correctly considers that its history begins on April 6, 1926, when Varney flew the first commercial mail. Commercial passenger service was immediately thereafter."
According to Hart, Idaho has one other claim to fame. "As far as I can tell, the first smoke jumpers jumped into Idaho. They were based in Missoula, but the first jump was into Idaho, and I think that was in a Travelair."
In its infancy, aviation was propelled by industry, often by mining companies needing equipment flown in to remote locations. In fact, just about every major business in Idaho had its own plane and pilot.
Penn Stohr, of Johnson Flying Service, was one of the most famous of backcountry pilots. He seemed right at home in any kind of weather.
In the winter of 1943 Stohr became a national hero when he spotted and rescued five crew members of an army B-23 bomber that had crash landed in the rugged mountains near Loon Lake, outside of McCall. You can still see the wreckage along the shore of the lake.
The headlines of The Idaho Statesman said it all: "Primitive Area Flier Saves Five Airmen Marooned Near Lake." Stohr had been flying the mail plane from McCall to Warren when he noticed the tops of a string of pine trees had been clipped off on the south shore of Loon Lake. "The wings appeared to have been sheared off as the plane was landed," said Stohr.
The men were rescued the next day. The newspapers called Stohr "Idaho's miracle pilot."
And people still talk about Bill Woods, the self styled "Old Man of the Mountains." He spent 30 years hauling in every conceivable kind of machinery, including tractors and mining equipment and even livestock. Pilots say he left parts of wrecked planes scattered all over the backcountry. Sometimes the wreckage would be hauled down the Middle Fork of the Salmon River to be reassembled later.
But the Old Man of the Mountains managed to log 29,000 hours of mountain flying and, impressively, walked away from every accident. | <urn:uuid:d8382eeb-b60b-462c-b29e-cf845e54a642> | CC-MAIN-2014-23 | http://www.idahoptv.org/outdoors/shows/flyingIdaho/historyIdahoAviation.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-23/segments/1406510267876.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20140728011747-00446-ip-10-146-231-18.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987201 | 607 | 2.671875 | 3 | {
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Anyone can be affected by bed bugs, including luxury hotels. While they had disappeared in the 1950s, here they are again, posing real health problems, to the point that the minister in charge of housing needs to take up the subject. How does this insect live and how to eradicate it from the house? It is important to know your enemy in order to get rid of them better. So, here is our file which will help you to come to end of it.
Who is the bed bug?
Recognizing bedbugs is essential in order to act quickly to control their development. The bedbug is an insect of the family of Cimicidae, parasite of humans. But unlike lice, it doesn’t live on us. Here is their description:
- Adult bedbugs are usually brown, with red variations when engorged with blood, their nymphs being light brown, translucent,
- Their shape is oval,
- Visible to the naked eye, they are the length of an apple seed, measuring between 4 and 8 mm,
- As they have no wings, they do not fly. They don’t jump either, moving at an ant’s speed.
These insects have been known since ancient times, but they had almost disappeared from our lives after World War II, when thehygiene had developed significantly, as had the use of insecticides. However, these bugs reappeared in the 2000s to settle again in our lives. The causes are multiple: more limited use of pesticides, increased travel and trips which they take advantage of to spread, fear of ostracization of infected people who do not report their presence.
Reproduction and movement of the bedbug
The bedbug’s mode of reproduction is rare in insects. It is said to be “traumatic” because the male pierces the female’s abdomen thanks to his sharp reproductive system. By injecting his sperm into the female’s paragenital organ, he also risks introducing pathogenic microorganisms that can cause at least one disease, if not the death of the female.
Reproduction gives rise to the laying of whitish eggs, the size of a pinhead, forming clusters fixed in small tight spaces like micro-cracks, and this 3 to 10 days after fertilization. They hatch between 7 to 15 days after laying, depending on temperature conditions. The eggs hatch to give birth to nymphs, which are like adults, but smaller. They will become adults after a month. The life of an adult bedbug lasts 5 to 6 months. In the absence of food, unlike the nymph which does not survive, the adult can resist for more than a year by placing itself in a state of dormancy.
Adult females can lay between 5 and 15 eggs per day, between 300 and 500 eggs in a lifetime. It is therefore important to react without delay to limit an infestation that will otherwise settle in some months only.
The life of the bedbug is very sensitive to temperature:
- Bedbugs only develop above 13 ° C,
- It survives 20 minutes at 48 ° C, 5 days at – 7 ° C and 2 days at – 18 ° C,
- It no longer feeds below 9 ° C and goes into hibernation.
Its ideal development temperature is between 21 and 28 ° C.
Bed bugs are spread during moves, travel, in walls, ceilings and floors, along pipes, conduits and electrical cables, by contact of soiled linen with unsoiled linen in laundry rooms and laundry rooms. Be wary of items acquired from flea markets and thrift stores.
How does the bedbug eat?
The bedbug feeds on blood, which is what makes it a parasite and our nightmare. Both males and females bite us to suck our blood, like a mosquito would. The meal lasts 3 to 15 minutes. The insect then hides for digestion which usually takes several days. A bug bites on average once a week.
As with the mosquito, during the bite, the saliva of the insect acts as an anticoagulant to keep the blood fluid and facilitate aspiration. Result: a reaction of the skin to the insect’s saliva, traces of bites similar to those of mosquitoes, causing itching whose strength varies between individuals. The bites are on the parts of the body discovered during sleep. The bites can form characteristic lines but also spread all over the body.
Bedbugs are especially active at night: the bedroom is therefore their chosen land. Shunning light during the day, they fold up in dark, narrow and inaccessible places: box springs, mattresses, bed frame but also cupboards, plinths, etc.
Spot the bed bug
Besides the bites it leaves on the body of their victims, and since they hide during the day, the easiest way to identify them is to spot the small ones. black stains that they leave on the sheets, the mattress or the box spring: it is their excrement. In case of a heavy infestation, it is possible to see them alive, moving in the bed, and to crush them while you sleep, in which case you will see traces of blood on the sheets. Translucent skins can also be found in different places, like so many traces left behind when they molt.
How to get rid of bed bugs ?
The big cleaning is the first reflex to adopt! Here are the different actions to take:
- Machine wash over 60 ° C and tumble dry for at least 30 minutes for supporting clothes.
- For other clothes, freeze at -20 ° C, 72 hours minimum.
- Cleaning the carpets, curtains and corners of your home with a device generating steam at 120 ° C.
- Suction of baseboards, cracks, bed structures and other less frequently cleaned places with the fine nozzle of the vacuum cleaner. After operation, packing of the vacuum cleaner bag in a plastic bag and deposit in an external trash. Clean the vacuum cleaner duct with soapy water.
- Some surfaces require the use of the brush. It is about unhooking the insects, their eggs and their larvae. It is essential to vacuum or clean the entire area after passing the brush.
- If you want to get rid of a contaminated mattress or furniture, it must be deposited directly in the landfill, without deposit in the street or elsewhere which could lead to reuse and therefore a displacement of the problem.
If bed bugs are still present despite your efforts, it is necessary to resort to chemical methods. But these can only be implemented by professionals. The selected company must be specialized in detection by sniffer dogs and have a Certibiocide certificate issued for less than 5 years.
For any question, there is a telephone number open by the State: the 0806 706 806, accessible at the cost of a local call.
Photo credit: CDC / Harvard University, Dr. Gary Alpert | <urn:uuid:f8b152e6-9a59-403c-ba90-b1526f5c3685> | CC-MAIN-2021-39 | https://www.newslax.com/the-bedbug-how-does-it-live-how-to-eradicate-it-from-the-house/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-39/segments/1631780056297.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20210918032926-20210918062926-00059.warc.gz | en | 0.958729 | 1,425 | 2.765625 | 3 | {
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Abstract and Introduction
Sunscreens have been on the market for many decades as a means of protection against ultraviolet-induced erythema. Over the years, evidence has also shown their efficacy in the prevention of photoaging, dyspigmentation, DNA damage, and photocarcinogenesis. In the USA, most broad-spectrum sunscreens provide protection against ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation and short-wavelength ultraviolet A (UVA) radiation. Evidence suggests that visible light and infrared light may play a role in photoaging and should be considered when choosing a sunscreen. Currently, there is a paucity of US FDA-approved filters that provide protection against long UVA (> 370 nm) and none against visible light. Additionally, various sunscreen additives such as antioxidants and photolyases have also been reported to protect against and possibly reverse signs of photoaging. This literature review evaluates the utility of sunscreen in protecting against photoaging and further explores the requirements for an ideal sunscreen.
Chronic sun exposure has long been known to cause photoaging, a process where the skin undergoes changes in epidermal thickness, increases in pigment heterogeneity and dermal elastosis, degradation of collagen in the dermis, development of ectatic vessels, and increases in mutagenesis of keratinocytes and melanocytes in the skin. Clinically, this is characterized by an increase in rhytides, telangiectasias, dyspigmentation including lentigines and ephelides, volume loss, and cutaneous malignancies. A recent observational study further characterized skin aging as hypertrophic and atrophic variants, with atrophic photoaging presenting with erythema and increased risk of skin cancers and hypertrophic photoaging with increased skin thickness and sallowness.
In today's society, the value placed on a youthful appearance is reflected in the multibillion-dollar industry centered around anti-aging products.[3,4] It has been reported that approximately 80% of skin aging on the face can be attributed to ultraviolet (UV) exposure. Therefore, despite the emphasis of the market on the reversal of skin aging, the best defense against cutaneous age-related changes is through prevention with rigorous photoprotection. It should be noted that proper photoprotection consists of seeking shade when outdoors; wearing a wide-brimmed hat, photoprotective clothing, and sunglasses; and applying sun protection factor (SPF) ≥ 30 broad-spectrum tinted sunscreen on exposed sites.
In the USA, most broad-spectrum sunscreens provide protection against UVB radiation and short wavelength UVA radiation. However, there is a paucity of US FDA-approved filters that provide protection against long UVA (> 370 nm) and none against visible light (VL), making the ideal sunscreen a product that requires further innovation and research. Notable exceptions are pigmentary grade zinc oxide and titanium dioxide, which reflect VL; however, the whitish discoloration they leave on the surface of the skin makes them cosmetically unappealing to consumers. This review evaluates the utility of sunscreen in protecting against photoaging and further explores the requirements of an ideal sunscreen.
Am J Clin Dermatol. 2021;22(6):819-828. © 2021 Adis Springer International Publishing AG | <urn:uuid:5f6b2827-6e0a-4859-96ba-fb11538366d5> | CC-MAIN-2022-49 | https://www.staging.medscape.com/viewarticle/962704_1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-49/segments/1669446711394.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20221209080025-20221209110025-00590.warc.gz | en | 0.920256 | 693 | 3.3125 | 3 | {
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} | Health |
Recurrent Erosion Syndrome
What is recurrent erosion syndrome (RES)?
Recurrent corneal erosion syndrome (RES) is diagnosed when a person wakes up in the morning with a very painful eye, which feels like something has “ripped” on the surface of the eye. An abrasion or corneal ulcer develops when the epithelium (skin) on the surface of the cornea is dislodged.
What causes it?
The most common cause of recurrent corneal erosion is a fingernail injury or other trauma to the cornea. It can also occur spontaneously, or in patients with a weakness of their cornea called Map Dot Fingerprint (Epithelial Basement Membrane) Corneal Dystrophy.
What treatments are available for recurrent corneal erosion syndrome?
There are 3 main treatments:
- Lubricating ointment at night-time and drops during the day. Sometimes oral antibiotics to improve Meibomian gland dysfunction and reduce tear enzymes are recommended. Lubricating ointment will prevent the eyelid from sticking to the epithelium and lifting it off the cornea.
- Bandage contact lens, used under close medical supervision, changed monthly for at least 3 months.
- Laser phototherapeutic keratectomy (PTK). Laser PTK is performed by removing the epithelium (or outer skin of the cornea) and then applying excimer laser treatment to the surface of the cornea. The goal is to produce a smoother and clearer cornea, and to enable the epithelium to bond better to the rest of the cornea to prevent recurrent erosions.
What happens during PTK surgery?
Anaesthetic eye drops are used to numb the surface of your eyes. A clean drape will be applied around your eye, and a gentle eyelid clip will keep your eyelids open during the procedure.You will be asked to look a target light while the epithelium, a thin layer of protective skin that covers the cornea, is removed with a fine spatula. The laser will then treat your cornea. It is important to continue looking at the target light whilst the laser treatment is taking place. The laser treatment will be finished in less than a minute or two, depending on the amount of treatment needed. Your eye will then be examined by Miss Saw at the slit lamp microscope. Sometimes a little more laser treatment will be done that day, until the cornea is smooth and clear. A bandage contact lens will be place in the eye at the end of the procedure.
What happens afterwards?
Your vision will be blurry or hazy for the first few days. You will experience some discomfort as the epithelium heals and covers the treated area. Your eye will be gritty, red, watery and sensitive to light, especially during the first week, but this will gradually improve. Cool compresses, regular pain tablets and eye drops will be used to minimize this discomfort. Sleeping will help the eye to heal. You will either use an eye pad for 2 days, or use a soft bandage contact lens for up to 1 week. Most patients resume normal activities after the first week, sometimes earlier. Vision can fluctuate for up to six months.
What are the risks of PTK?
PTK is a safe and effective procedure, but like any surgical procedure, it does have some risks and side effects. Some patients find that their spectacle or contact lens prescription is slightly different after the procedure. After PTK, it is normal to experience light sensitivity, glare and halos. These visual side effects are mild and temporary and have a tendency to resolve over time. When treating recurrent corneal erosions, PTK may need to be carried out more than once. Serious complications following PTK are extremely rare but include corneal infection, irregular astigmatism (where contact lenses may be needed to improve vision which cannot be improved with spectacles), or permanent scarring which impairs the quality of vision.
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The London Clinic 119 Harley Street London W1G 6AU | <urn:uuid:6de535ee-d8fc-4e1b-b3bf-069a21c9db70> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://valeriesaw.com/treatments/recurrent-erosion-syndrome/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510179.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20230926075508-20230926105508-00426.warc.gz | en | 0.910682 | 899 | 2.75 | 3 | {
"raw_score": 1.41158926486969,
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} | Health |
Content: The argument is clear, focused, and supported. These papers engage with the text thoroughly and competently, and clearly demonstrate how the analysis fits in with the larger point of the essay. Further, they make efforts to engage counterarguments, consider the implication of the argument to other areas of the text, or demonstrate an awareness of the complexity of the topic. Finally, papers that push beyond simply “answering” the assignment and attempt to work with the material in provocative, interesting, and complex ways will fall into the “A” category.
Structure: Structurally, they follow a clear development of ideas, providing evidence where appropriate. The paragraphs are developed and progress logically from what precedes them. An introduction and a conclusion are effective; the introduction provides necessary contextual information in an engaging and original way and the conclusion moves beyond simply restating the introduction by suggesting the implications of the argument.
Style & Mechanics: Aside from being virtually free of grammatical errors, “A” papers read with a certain ease and clarity. They also demonstrate stylistic variety – on the level of the word, sentence and paragraph – by varying length and word choice.
Content: Put simply, these papers are good essays – they accomplish the task at hand and do not have any significant structural, grammatical, or analytical errors that deter from the overall success of the paper. They demonstrate a thorough understanding of the text and have arguments that are adequate (but could be sharpened). They employ close reading and analysis successfully and are able to work textual support into the fabric of the argument. If counterarguments are not addressed directly, their absence does not weaken the argument. Though well-executed, these essays do not push their analysis into the realm of “provocative.”
Structure: The structure of the paper is logical (tying points back to the whole), contains relatively few areas of disorganization, and attempts to use transitions. This paper provides enough detail in the body to satisfy the reader and presents an effective introduction and conclusion.
Style & Mechanics: While they may contain a small number of awkward sentences, “B” papers are, for the most part, well-written and contain few grammatical errors.
Content: Overall, “C” papers demonstrate an understanding of and ability to work with a topic. The essay makes effort to answer the assignment; however, it may fall short when considering all aspects of the issue at hand. The approach is not as “well-rounded.” These papers attempt to make a point or argument, yet run into some problems when following the argument through the entire paper. Arguments are often defined only generally and do not address the complexity if the topic. The supporting evidence, gathered responsibly and used accurately, is, nevertheless, often obvious or easily accessible.
Structure: While the paper does follow a structure, this organization is sometimes lost and unclear. Transitions may be used, but are often mechanical.
Style & Mechanics: Some patterns of grammatical error emerge and take away from the strength of the essay. Sentence structure is relatively simple and the writing style seems slightly awkward and choppy at moments.
Content: These papers may gesture at an overall point but do not articulate this clearly. Some attempt is made to answer the assignment, but clarity and depth of analysis give way to summary. Points are made yet may exist without textual support and a clear tie to the rest of the paper. Understanding of the text is uncertain and possibly incorrect.
Structure: Transitions are non-existent and the movement from paragraph to paragraph and sentence to sentence seems arbitrary at multiple points.
Style & Mechanics: The paper contains a significant amount of grammatical errors. Coupled with the overall lack of organization, this makes the essay difficult to read.
This paper makes no effort to respond to the assignment. It contains no argument or point and does not engage with the text in any coherent, analytical way. Organization is absent and grammatical mistakes are numerous. Writing style is both awkward and inappropriate. This paper may also be plagiarized. | <urn:uuid:95275e43-df32-4a87-9520-01da7e384f0f> | CC-MAIN-2015-40 | https://sites.google.com/site/hustcolloquium/home/grading-rubric | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-40/segments/1443737962531.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20151001221922-00142-ip-10-137-6-227.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934175 | 840 | 3.09375 | 3 | {
"raw_score": 2.823791980743408,
"reasoning_level": 3,
"interpretation": "Strong reasoning"
} | Education & Jobs |
FIG. 2: Schematic of an array of four vacuum nano tubes (cross section, side view). The cathode (− − −) is a planar. The anode (+ + +) is a nano tip on a flat electrode. The thin curved lines indicate the electric field lines. The cathode is a conducting solid with high tensile strength, such as tungsten or steel. The flat part of the anode needs to have a high tensile strength, such as steel. The nano tip is a conducting solid with extremely high tensile strength, such as a carbon nanotube clamped to the steel electrode, or a tungsten Spindt-tip . The design of the electrodes is similar to a tunneling microscope, except that tunneling microscopes have one movable tip, whereas the vacuum tube arrays have many stationary tips. The insulating walls (dots) are solids with a high compressive strength, such as silicon oxides. The electrodes and the walls create a vacuum tube. The electric field is in the vacuum tube between the anode tip and the cathode.
Digital quantum batteries: Energy and information storage in nano vacuum tube arrays
Alfred W. Hubler and Onyeama Osuagwu
Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
1110 W Green Street, Illinois 61801, USA
(Dated: September 22, 2009)
Dielectric material between capacitor electrodes increases the capacitance. However, when the electric field exceeds a threshold, electric breakdown in the dielectric discharges the capacitor suddenly and the stored energy is lost. We show that nano vacuum tubes do not have this problem because (i) electric breakdown can be suppressed with quantization phenomena, and (ii) the capacitance is large at small gap sizes. We find that the energy density and power density in nano vacuum tubes are large compared to lithium batteries and electrochemical capacitors. The electric field in a nano vacuum tube can be sensed with MOSFETs in the insulating walls. Random access arrays of nano vacuum tubes with an energy gate, to charge the tube, and an information gate attached to the MOSFET, to sense the electric field in the tube, can be used to store both energy and information.
PACS numbers: 52.80.Vq 68.37.Vj 85.35.-p
Electronic address: [email protected] | <urn:uuid:32fec538-d637-43d6-9ad9-7d8069e1c001> | CC-MAIN-2017-43 | http://donpatent.blogspot.com/2010/02/digital-quantum-battery-layout.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-43/segments/1508187824894.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20171021190701-20171021210701-00793.warc.gz | en | 0.896341 | 508 | 3.671875 | 4 | {
"raw_score": 2.5921480655670166,
"reasoning_level": 3,
"interpretation": "Strong reasoning"
} | Science & Tech. |
[By Douglas Novick, DVM]
As breeding season approaches, it is important to understand the heat or estrus cycle in order to maximize the chances of success when breeding your mare. Before I go into the details let me share with you that although breeding is often filled with worry, each an every client of mine who has gone through the experience has found it to be one of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of their lives. These foals hold a special place in their heart.
Horses are referred to as seasonally polyestrus. This means they have breeding season in which they have multiple heat cycles and a period where they will not go into heat. For horses the wintertime is the period without heat. Towards the end of winter in February and March they start going into heat on an irregular basis. Usually by the end of April mares will have regular heat cycles which last until about October.
The estrus (heat) cycle during the spring and summer lasts and average of 21 days. That is during each 21 day period one egg is ovulated. For an average of 5 days during that period the mare is receptive to stallions. This referred to as "in" or "showing" heat. Ovulation takes place approximately 24 hours prior to the end of the heat period. The mare is then unreceptive for the next 16 days followed by another heat period if the egg is not fertilized.
The rest of the article will describe the hormonal changes that occur during the estrus cycle. In response to increased light in the spring and summer the brain releases GnRH, gonadotropin releasing hormone. This stimulates gland at the base of the brain, called the pituitary, to release FSH, follicle stimulating hormone. FSH stimulates the ovaries to prepare one or more eggs. The ovary grows a follicle or a sort of capsule around the egg in response to the FSH. As the follicle develops estrogen is secreted. Estrogen act on the behavior of the mare to stimulate Estrus behavior making her receptive to stallions. The estrogen also inhibits further secretions of FSH from the pituitary gland and stimulates the release a second hormone LH, lutenizing hormone. This burst of LH, lutenizing hormone causes the follicle to mature and induces ovulation of the egg.
After ovulation the ovarian follicle is replaced by a reddish-yellow mass called the corpus luteum (yellow body). The corpus luteum secretes the hormone progesterone that causes the mare to stop being receptive to stallions and stops the release of LH, lutenizing hormone from the pituitary gland. After 12 to 14 days the uterus secretes the hormone prostaglandin which causes the corpus luteum to regress. Progesterone is no longer secreted. Within days FSH, follicle stimulating hormone, starts the development of the next follicle and the process begins again.
However, if the egg is fertilized when it enters the uterus 4 to 5 days after ovulation an entirely different process starts, pregnancy. By day 14 through an unknown mechanism the mare recognizes she is pregnant. This stops the prostaglandin secretion from the uterus. The corpus luteum continues to secrete progesterone stopping the estrus cycle. As the pregnancy continue the placenta forms, which starts to produce PMSG, pregnant mare serum gonadotropin. The combination of PMSG and progesterone maintain the pregnancy to term.
|Prostaglandin released by Uterus||Uterus recognizes Pregnancy|
|Corpus Luteum regresses||Embryo Implants into Uterus and Placenta is formed releasing PMSG|
|Progesterone Decreases||Progesterone and PMSG maintain pregnancy|
|Back to FSH release||Foal is Born|
Dr. Douglas Novick is an equine veterinarian practicing in the San Francisco Bay Area. His practice is limited to the treatment of horses with special interests in equine lameness, equine dentistry and reproduction. He is also the first veterinarian in Northern California to implant horses with ID Microchips with optional freeze brands as a method of preventing horse theft.
more at www.novickdvm.com | <urn:uuid:95fd40d3-71e8-464b-8c7a-313b6b173b17> | CC-MAIN-2014-49 | http://www.novickdvm.com/estrus.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-49/segments/1416931004246.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20141125155644-00042-ip-10-235-23-156.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915634 | 890 | 2.9375 | 3 | {
"raw_score": 2.127380847930908,
"reasoning_level": 2,
"interpretation": "Moderate reasoning"
} | Health |
How to be a Good Public Speaker: In order to effectively interact with a big audience, express one’s views and ideas, and establish one’s credibility and authority in one’s profession, one must master the art of public speaking. The idea of speaking in front of a sizable crowd, however, can be rather frightful and terrifying for many people. The good news is that anyone can improve their public speaking skills with effort and practice. We’ll go over some pointers and techniques in this post to help you hone your public speaking abilities and develop into a self-assured communicator.
Know your audience
Knowing your audience before you begin speech preparation is crucial. This includes their expectations, expertise in the subject, and areas of interest. You may make your speech more interesting and relevant to your audience by studying them and adjusting it to suit their needs and interests.
Prepare your speech
For a speech to be effective, preparation is essential. Spend some time researching your subject, planning your speech, and organizing your ideas. A compelling introduction that grabs the audience’s attention should come first, then a succinct and clear body should follow, and the conclusion should leave a lasting impact. To become familiar with your speech’s substance, practice it several times. Also, be prepared to modify it as needed in response to your audience’s reactions.
A crucial aspect of public speaking is confidence. Take a deep breath, stand up straight, and make eye contact with your audience before you begin speaking. Keep in mind that your audience wants to see you succeed and is listening to what you have to say. If you’re feeling anxious, attempt to focus that apprehension on your performance and utilize it to be passionate and compelling.
Use visual aids
Videos, diagrams, and PowerPoint presentations can all serve as effective visual aids to support your points and keep your audience interested. However, it’s crucial to avoid overusing visual aids because doing so can make them distracting. Keep your graphics straightforward, understandable, and pertinent to your point.
Use your body language
Your audience’s perception of your message might be greatly influenced by your body language. To highlight your point and establish an emotional connection with your audience, use the proper movements, facial expressions, and gestures. Don’t overdo it, though; too many gestures and movements might be distracting.
Speak clearly and at a comfortable pace
Clear and succinct speech is crucial to effective communication. Clear communication and an easy-to-follow pace are key when speaking to an audience. Speaking too quickly or slowly can cause your listeners to become bored or miss essential ideas, so try to keep your pace moderate.
Recommended: How to Develop WillPower
Engage your audience
Keeping your audience interested in your speech and paying attention to them is essential. calatori desfaso calatori calatorisectiune Echipa masura desfaso”) calatori calatoriDisp”) Conf AccesUneoriUneoriUneoriUneoriUneori Measure Accel linguri urmari ingrijire sarbatori comunist descarc devin piatra trez gag desfaso buna masuri indeplin diamant Possible spalat producator piept ofera Possible Encourage audience engagement by soliciting comments, inquiries, or viewpoints.
Handle mistakes gracefully
Even the most skilled public speakers err. Keep calm, take a deep breath, and carry on speaking even if you fumble over your words, lose your train of thought or encounter technological issues. Instead of lingering on the error, admit it and move on because doing so might draw greater attention from your audience.
How to be a Good Impromptu Speaker
The capacity to talk spontaneously and unprepared is known as impromptu speaking. It is a crucial skill that can be useful in a variety of contexts, including networking events, group debates, and job interviews. Here are some pointers for improving your impromptu speaking abilities:
Stay Calm and Confident
Being calm and self-assured is the first stage in developing effective impromptu speaking skills. Inhale deeply, gather your thoughts, and concentrate on the work at hand. Always keep in mind that the people listening to you want you to succeed.
Understand the Topic
Verify that you are familiar with the topic before you begin to speak. Take a minute to think about the main issues you want to discuss, and organize your thoughts in a logical and cohesive manner.
Use Personal Experience
Employing a personal experience is a powerful strategy for engaging your audience. Give a personal example or anecdote that relates to the subject and supports your argument. Your speech may become more relatable and interesting as a result.
Humor may help you connect with your audience and leave a lasting impression on them. Include a joke or hilarious story that is pertinent to the circumstance and the subject at hand. As a result, your audience may become friendlier and more open to your message.
Since impromptu presentations tend to be shorter than planned addresses, it is crucial to be succinct and get to the point as soon as possible. Stick to the primary points you wish to convey and refrain from rambling or going off on tangents.
Speak Clearly and Slowly
Effective communication requires brief, clear speech, especially when speaking spontaneously. Clear communication and an easy-to-follow pace are key when speaking to an audience. Speaking too quickly or slowly can cause your listeners to become bored or miss essential ideas, so try to keep your pace moderate.
Establish Eye Contact
In every speaking circumstance, but especially in impromptu speaking, eye contact with your audience is crucial. As you speak, maintain eye contact with your listeners to build rapport and involve them in your message.
Practice, Practice, Practice
You will get better at impromptu speaking the more you practice it. Take on responsibilities that demand impromptu speaking, such as moderating a panel or facilitating a group discussion, and look for opportunities to speak in front of groups.
In conclusion, developing effective impromptu speaking skills takes preparation, practice, and self-assurance. Maintain composure, comprehend the subject, use humor and personal experience, be succinct, speak slowly and clearly, create eye contact, and rehearse as much as you can. You may succeed in any speaking circumstance by using this advice and techniques to develop your impromptu speaking skills.
Recommended: How to be a Good Writer
In conclusion, developing effective public speaking skills requires patience and practice, but it is a skill that can be learned with commitment and hard work. Remember to be confident, know your audience, prepare your speech, use visual aids, engage your audience, speak clearly and at a comfortable speed, and handle errors graciously. You may develop your public speaking skills, become a confident speaker, and produce presentations that have an impact by using these tips and techniques. | <urn:uuid:0aad5afe-0d53-4a7e-aa80-5fa4b87bedcf> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.goclassroom.org/how-to-be-a-good-public-speaker/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233510085.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20230925183615-20230925213615-00738.warc.gz | en | 0.926972 | 1,443 | 2.875 | 3 | {
"raw_score": 1.929923415184021,
"reasoning_level": 2,
"interpretation": "Moderate reasoning"
} | Education & Jobs |
Stevia comes from a South American herb that has been used by the indigenous people of Brazil and Paraguay for thousands of years as a sweetener as a folk remedy for diabetes. It is hundreds of times sweeter than table sugar, but in its original form it has a bitter aftertaste that some people find objectionable. Many of the new stevia products that are now available, such as Truvia, Nuva, and PureVia, use only the sweet-tasting part of the leaf combined with erythritol as a bulking agent. Stevia is also available as a liquid and as a blend with fructooligosaccharide (FOS), a sweet fiber that comes from chicory root or Jerusalem artichokes, and other sweeteners.
Stevia was banned for use in foods in the US in the early 1990s and could only be sold as a dietary supplement. As a result of intense lobbying from the soft drink industry, rebaudioside-A, an extract of stevia, was granted GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status in 2008. A GRAS designation allows it to be sold as a food without undergoing the normal tests for safety. Some countries still restrict or ban the sale of stevia.
A study published in Denmark in 2000 demonstrated that stevia has the ability to stimulate insulin secretion by acting on the beta cells in the pancreas. The researchers concluded that it may have potential as an anti-hyperglycemic agent in the treatment of type 2 diabetes. 1
Stevia can cause hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) in some people and it may increase insulin sensitivity and delay the absorption of glucose from the intestines. As a result, it can change the effectiveness of diabetes medications and interfere with the timing of injected insulin, making it essential for those with diabetes to consult a doctor before using it. It is also said to lower blood pressure, so those on medication for hypertension should seek medical advice about using stevia.
Mayo Clinic nutritionist, Katherine Zeratsky, R.D., L.D., had this to say: "...It is probably safe in moderate doses. However, until we have more research, women who are pregnant or breast-feeding should probably avoid using stevia. Similarly, people taking diabetes or blood pressure drugs should use stevia with caution because of the risk that it might cause hypoglycemia or hypotension when combined with these drugs."2
I've noticed one more thing about stevia from my personal experience that I haven't seen mentioned. It has always been known that some people love stevia and some think it tastes bitter. The new reb-A extracts were supposed to solve that problem by using only the sweet compounds and leaving out the bitter ones. When I tried some of the new products, I found that they didn't taste bitter, but they also didn't taste sweet. It dawned on me that some of us can't taste the sweet components and that's why it tasted bitter in the first place. That would explain what happened a while back when the owner of a company that makes stevia-sweetened cookies sent me some samples. (I can't remember the nameand wouldn't tell you if I did, as I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from trying them or hurt the company's business.) I really wanted to like them, but they were horrible, like a mouthful of straw. The comments posted on Amazon by buyers showed that some people loved the cookies, but some reacted the same way I did.
Many sugar substitutes that contain stevia are blended with erythritol, lo han guo, sucralose, or other sweeteners, and those taste fine to me, but not quite sweet enough, as would be expected if I can taste all the sweeteners except the stevia. I still use them, but I either use a bit more or kick up the sweetness by adding a little sucralose. I'm not sure how many people are like me in regard to stevia. It is especially strange because I am usually something of a "super-taster." I can't eat cilantro, for example, because it has a strong, nasty flavor to me that other people can't taste at all. Clearly, there's just no accounting for tastes.
1 Jeppesen, P.B.; Gregersen, S.; Poulsen, C.R.; Hermansen, K.; "Stevioside acts directly on pancreatic beta cells to secrete insulin: actions independent of cyclic adenosine monophosphate and adenosine triphospate-sensitive K+-channel activity," Metabolism 2000 Feb; 49(2):208-14. Abstract at:
Stevia photo by Ethel Aardvark.
(C) 2011, Judy Barnes Baker | <urn:uuid:4f0aea82-8e1e-4e77-979b-0c9d7c291385> | CC-MAIN-2015-22 | http://ehealthforum.com/blogs/judybarnesbaker/stevia-the-good-the-bad-and-the-bitter-b22622.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-22/segments/1432207927458.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20150521113207-00161-ip-10-180-206-219.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953749 | 1,007 | 2.921875 | 3 | {
"raw_score": 2.9044363498687744,
"reasoning_level": 3,
"interpretation": "Strong reasoning"
} | Health |
- by BLE Mobile Apps
BLE Technology also known as “Bluetooth Smart” is an enhanced version of classic Bluetooth technology. Before being adopted by Bluetooth SIG, it was introduced and named by Nokia as “Wibree.” It was specifically developed to give power to “Internet of Things” (IoT). BLE enabled device along with a mobile application is a combination which people can use anywhere from personally using it or as a business offering.
Benefits of BLE for Consumers
BLE is now becoming an integral part of our day to day life. It is being used in many applications which has been beneficial to consumers as given below –
- BLE enabled wearable device when connected with Smart Phone/Watch can help in monitoring heart rate, blood pressure etc.
- Your Smart phone can work as a remote control to your home appliances like Air Conditioner, Washing Machine etc.
- BLE enables location base communication. Thus, you can find your missing items or lock/unlock doors by establishing connection between BLE enabled devices and smart phone, tablet or smart watch.
Benefits of BLE for Mobile App Developers
Despite of so many wireless protocols available these days, BLE is preferred by mobile application developers as it –
- Consumes low energy
- Can communicate with almost all the operating systems like iOS, Android, Windows etc.
- Relies on standardized application development architecture
- Works under high-standard security and data encryption
Various Industry Applications of BLE
The benefits and huge potential of BLE technology has encouraged many companies to come up with BLE enabled devices and applications being used in different industries. Here we will discuss some of the BLE application areas experiencing consistent growth at present.
BLE in Healthcare
BLE has contributed to the healthcare industry at a great extent. There are many examples of BLE powered healthcare devices. To name the few – blood pressure monitors, pulse oximeters. The data from your BLE powered blood pressure monitor or pulse oximeter can be sent to your Smart Phone and also your physician’s Smart phone or tablet.
BLE in Retail
The potential of BLE enabled devices in retail is quite high. Imagine if you have just walked into a retail outlet and your smart phone starts showing you the special offers introduced by the store. It would be a win-win situation for both – the consumer and the retailer. Also there are BLE applications developed for retail industry which can notify the shortage of inventory, monitor the staff activities, etc. These smart retailing options can help retailers in efficiently managing and growing their business.
BLE for Wearable Devices
BLE enabled wearable devices are in trend these days and companies like Samsung, Apple, Jawbone etc., are facing cut throat competition in this field. These devices generally are used in fitness and entertainment areas. For example, your BLE powered wrist band sends notifications about your activities, running speed, sleeping patterns, food logging, etc. to your Smart phone. These small-sized wearable devices fulfill the requirement of being highly energy efficient and are useful in day-to-day tasks.
BLE for Smart Home
BLE technology can help you operate your smart home appliances and other equipments with the help of your Smart phone or tablet. Companies like Philips, Haier, etc., have recently introduced BLE powered products in the market which can help consumers to control and customize their home environment for efficient energy management and increased security.
Whether you need to flourish your retail business or require monitoring your personal health, BLE technology can play an indispensable role in your life. Empowering your business with BLE technology can be a smart investment as that would help you in targeting right customers at the right time. Just let us know your requirement and we can come up with new ideas, suggestions and features which can be incorporated in the mobile application for operating your BLE enable devices. | <urn:uuid:2fc7a6ca-94b4-4eb2-8c7b-d83ca869f675> | CC-MAIN-2020-24 | https://www.blemobileapps.com/blog/ble-technology-mobile-applications/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-24/segments/1590347424174.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20200602100039-20200602130039-00559.warc.gz | en | 0.947145 | 794 | 2.5625 | 3 | {
"raw_score": 1.9813824892044067,
"reasoning_level": 2,
"interpretation": "Moderate reasoning"
} | Hardware |
We’ve observed on several occasions that many of the incidents in novels set during the Age of Sail are heavily influenced by actual events. In most cases, the novel’s protagonist expands on the accomplishments of the actual character. In Ramages’s Diamond, Lord Ramage manages to turn the battery later known as HMS Fort Diamond into a combat multiplier that enables his mini-squadron consisting of his frigate, a prize frigate, and a prize sloop to snap up a French convoy and its escorts.
Alexander Kent, on the other hand, perhaps feeling that the actual event was too improbable, actually downplays Nelson’s use of one Spanish ship of the line as a bridge to board and take a second, larger Spanish ship of the line and has Richard Bolitho use a friendly brig as a bridge to board and take a French frigate.
Every once in a while, though, the novel’s protagonist makes out worse than the actual character.
Fans of C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower all know of how Hornblower became a prisoner of Bonaparte. Hornblower, in the novel Ship of the Line, in HMS Sutherland (74) is on detached patrol in the Mediterranean. He meets up with a French squadron consisting of four ships of the line, including one three-decker. Hornblower, knowing his squadron is just over the horizon, decides to engage the French at the hazard of his own ship in order to cripple the enemy ships sufficiently to guarantee their destruction. His gamble succeeds but Sutherland is pounded into a dismasted, sinking hulk in the process and Hornblower has to strike his colors. The 1951 film, Captain Horatio Hornblower starring Gregory Peck, uses this as the central battle of the film.
We’ve already introduced Captain Henry Trollope. In 1795 he was asked to end eight years of half-pay and take command of one of six Indiamen purchased by the Navy Board from the East India Company for conversion into men o’ war. Trollope was given command of HMS Glatton (56) which was scheduled to be commissioned with 28 long 18-pounders in her main battery and 28 carronades, 32-pounders, on the deck. Trollope received Admiralty approval to replace the long 18-pounders with an equal number of 68-pound carronades making Glatton, like Trollope’s previous command Rainbow, equipped with all carronades.
Glatton joined the fleet of Admiral Adam Duncan off the Dutch coast in early 1796.
Late in the evening of July 16, 1796, about 15 miles off Hellevoetsluis, Glatton spotted a squadron consisting of six ships, four of which were frigates including one 50 gun ship, one a brig, and the last a cutter. He challenged them via signal flag and they did not answer. This, and the way they were maneuvering, convinced Trollope that they were hostile.
A lesser man might have sailed for help. Not Trollope. He ordered Glatton cleared for action and steered for them. For reasons that aren’t clear, the enemy squadron kept their stations and did not move against Glatton. Around 10pm Glatton was alongside the third ship in the squadron, the largest frigate which was flying a commodore’s pennant, and Trollope hailed her. Ascertaining she was French he ordered her captain to strike. He received a broadside instead. At a range of about 30 yards, or “pistol shot”, Glatton returned fire. That ship’s consorts came to her aid and Glatton found herself with a French frigate on either side with yardarms nearly touching.
Glatton was only staffed to provide a full crew at one battery and a half crew on the other. Even so, the carronades enabled Glatton to keep up a full rate of fire from both sides of the ship.
Things continued to deteriorate. The other French ships took up station off Glatton’s bow, stern, and quarter and poured fire into her. The volume of this fire was obviously constrained by the fact that the two French ships alongside Glatton would have been potential targets of friendly fire but it had to be disconcerting, at least, to be set upon by five or six ships.
In this battle, Glatton suffered severe injuries to her masts, rigging, and steering and became nearly unmanageable. Trollope managed to stay alongside his adversaries and continue to fire. The first ship Trollope had challenged broke off the fight. While trying to maneuver Glatton to stay in contact with this ship he had to draw men from the batteries to compensate for damage to the ship’s system for making sail and steering. One of the French ships bore down on her, probably thinking that she was ready to strike, Trollope called the men back to the guns and drove this ship off.
The French broke contact but Glatton was so damaged that she was unable to pursue. Trollope spent the remainder of the night making repairs to his masts, yards, and rigging. By 7 am he was ready to continue the action, in the meantime the entire French squadron was in flight in the direction of the port at Flushing.
Trollope pursued the enemy until 9 am when he realized the he could not catch them and that there were no other British ships in the vicinity. He broke of pursuit and sailed to Yarmouth for repairs arriving on July 21.
All of the French ships were severely damaged, one of them sinking in Flushing harbor.
In this case, Captain Trollope outdid the fictional exploits of Captain Hornblower. | <urn:uuid:73095a30-438c-431e-86a9-b9cce9c585ed> | CC-MAIN-2019-04 | https://ageofsail.wordpress.com/2009/02/23/hms-glatton-takes-on-all-comers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-04/segments/1547583657557.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20190116175238-20190116201238-00209.warc.gz | en | 0.981234 | 1,187 | 2.671875 | 3 | {
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The Himalayan challengeTackling the complexities of the risks in the Himalayas requires a critical, adaptive and interactive governance approach
Albert Einstein said that the mindset responsible for creating a problem cannot find solutions to it. Similarly, we cannot use the same mindset to solve problems we are facing in the Himalayas, where society and environment are experiencing some of the greatest challenges in the world. Not only is climate change posing a threat, but Himalayan societies are also undergoing rapid changes.
The Himalayas are facing unprecedented challenges. The region is a global climate hotspot with a five times higher rate of temperature rise compared to the global average. This can massively alter the entire Himalayan ecosystem, with impacts upon the 400 million people living downstream. Further, the recent wave of earthquakes in Nepal, Afghanistan and Pakistan adds to the risk level. Social tensions are also surfacing across the region. And governance throughout the region is often too weak to tackle the twin challenges of environmental sustainability and social development.
Back in 1968, Erik Eckholm warned that the Himalayas are in crisis because of rampant deforestation and unsustainable farming. He blamed the people and local action but failed to see the larger dynamics. This theory of the Himalayan degradation has since informed much of the conservation and development interventions in the region. Later this view was challenged by others, but not in fundamental ways. Guided by the theory, external interventions still target the local roots of the problems, ignoring their wider political and social roots.
Tackling the challenge
Alternative theories have also emerged and proposed new solutions to the Himalayan crisis. We joined this attempt, albeit in a modest way, through a collaborative process which we termed the ‘Future Himalaya Dialogue’. With support from the British Academy, and in partnership with Himalaya-based institutions, we convened a two-day meeting on 23-24 May 2016 hosted by the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. It was an attempt to foster dialogue among those who are engaged in the Himalayan sustainability and development agenda for over two decades.
We were motivated to hold the dialogue because in our two decades of work in parts of the Himalayas, we have seen Eckholm’s thesis still alive and active: People and institutions still blame either nature or the local people as the causes of fragility, underdevelopment and vulnerability in the region. The solutions still emphasise alien ideas at the expense of dialogues and deliberations that are grounded locally and regionally. We found this situation unfair to the people of the Himalayas and potentially disastrous for nature. We felt that the practice of development in the region, despite good intentions, has not really ushered in new thinking, one that embraces critical reflection, alternative knowledge, and transformative change. In many respects, the opposite is true. In the wake of recent climate awareness, the Himalayan challenge has been subjected to even more linear, technocratic and global frames of knowledge and interventions. Alternative attempts have remained too localised or suppressed by the dominant discourses and underlying political economies.
The first ‘Future Himalayan Dialogue’ in Edinburgh brought a group of 20 people with two decades of experience in interdisciplinary and engaged research, development practice, and policy analysis in the Himalayas. Some have done advanced theoretical work on environment and society in the context of the developing world. Others have international and transboundary policy engagement in the Himalayas—working with donors, civil societies, national governments, and intergovernmental organisations in the region. The people invited also brought programme evaluation and teaching expertise, as well as sectoral expertise related to water, forests, biodiversity, climate change, political economy, institutional studies and policy analysis.
In the process, we did not reinvent the list of problems but rather fostered interdisciplinary dialogue to envision a pathway towards a better Himalayas. We drew upon our locally grounded work in parts of the region to explore possible solution pathways that can reconnect research, practice and policy. Our approach was critical and yet constructive and pragmatic—looking at what is already out there and exploring what we can add. The small group size ensured the quality of discussion and at the same time brought remarkable range of thoughts and perspectives into the debate.
In the ‘Future Himalaya Dialogue’, we delved into various questions haunting the Himalayas. Critical social scientists questioned whether the western model of development really works for the Himalayas. Development practitioners challenged current conceptions of development, asking whose development the existing institutions are promoting. The participants were self-conscious not to impose ideas and solutions from outside, but also careful to recognise the emerging new terrain of moral and political space to influence policies on the Himalayas for the well-being of the disadvantaged local people and the resilience of the region at risk.
Researchers also questioned their own research practice, and envisioned new models of engaged and interactive research that can stimulate learning on all sides of the partnership. It was emphasised that the need is not only for a dialogue between various disciplines, but also for a move towards trans-disciplinary research. Questions were also raised about the politics of scaling—the way that there is a tendency to bring national and global perspectives to bear on local issues while not enough space exists for local perspectives to inform larger scale problem framing and solutions. The diversity of governance regimes found in the region was also noted, and implications drawn on how this complicates any effort to promote transboundary governance.
Ecosystems and social systems are often treated in isolation. Policy is seen as a specific document to be written and complied with, downplaying the political process that is integral to policymaking and implementation. Knowledge of the Himalayas is also fragmented, with a tendency for scholars to be specialists within nation states rather than across the region. The development regime has existed for over four decades, but the Himalayan actors still struggle to make sense of change and chart out appropriate strategies of change. What surfaced as a matter of significant concern was the limited investment in the generation of new knowledge from within the Himalayan region.
A key question identified was how to promote the generation of independent knowledge within the region, in such a way that it is not tied to specific development projects and is also capable of challenging dominant presuppositions guiding the development works in the Himalayas. Given the complexity and uncertainty of the future risks in the Himalayas, participants in the ‘Future Himalaya Dialogue’ highlighted the need to foster a critical, adaptive and interactive governance approach. They also emphasised the need to transcend grand ideological divide and to explore critical and pragmatic approaches that can help deliver the Sustainable Development Goals in the context of the Himalayas. But new mindscape—embracing new ways of thinking and acting—is needed to tackle the Himalayan challenge.
Ojha is a public policy expert; Nightingale is a professor at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala with extensive research experience in Nepal | <urn:uuid:84ad7f24-27da-4988-9ece-c2aefe60747f> | CC-MAIN-2020-29 | https://kathmandupost.com/opinion/2016/06/10/the-himalayan-challenge | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593655921988.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20200711032932-20200711062932-00283.warc.gz | en | 0.940147 | 1,403 | 2.8125 | 3 | {
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The Heath Family (Ericaceae) is a very cosmopolitan family of great beauty and delectability. Ericaceous plants are found everywhere with the near exception of Australia, where it is largely replaced by a related family Epacridaceae. The Pacific coastal region is characterized by an abundance and variety of ericaceous shrubs which often dominate the understory of mature coniferous forests as well as high elevations and peatlands, there are also large concentrations in the Himalayas, New Guinea and southern Africa. The Heath Family consists of a 100 genera and 3,000 species, and includes plants such as; rhododenron, azalea, manzanita, madrone, heather, heath, huckleberry, lingonberry, blueberry, cranberry, wintergreen, and many of the curious saprophytes (plants living off of decaying plant matter). The primary branches of this family (subfamilies) are; Rhododendroideae, Ericoideae, Wittsteinioideae, Monotropoideae, Pyroloideae, Vaccinioideae. The overall classification of the family and its allies has been a matter of dispute with last three subfamilies treated as separate families; Monotropoideae (lack chlorophyll), Pyroloideae (herbaceous habit), and Vaccinioideae (many have inferior ovaries).
Rhododendroideae has 19 genera and in the Pacific Northwest is represented by; Rhododendron (rhododendron and azalea, Greek for rose tree), Andromeda (bog rosemary, from Greek mythology Andromeda was the beautiful daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia who was chained to a rock in the midst of the ocean which bathed her feet until rescued by Perseus, indicative of the habitat mossy hummocks in swamps), Kalmia (swamp laurel, named after a student of Linnaeus who traveled extensively through northeastern America in the mid 1700s), and Ledum (Labrador tea, Greek for a plant Cistus ledum with similar foliage).
Ericoideae has 20 genera, characterized by Erica (heath, Latin for ling or broom) and Calluna (heather or ling, Greek for to look becomingly). A subfamily not well represented in the Pacific Northwest, the only wild heath in California (Erica lusitanica) was introduced from southwest Europe and is quite invasive. A dominated shrub in many open and disturbed areas in the Trinidad area, these hardy European heaths aptly have been credited with a high weed-smothering potential.
Vaccinioideae has 50 genera, many of which are found in the Andes of South America. Some regionally common genera are; Arbutus (Pacific madrone with sinewy, graceful and smooth reddish limbs, Latin for A. unedo, the strawberry tree a common horticultural tree native to southern Europe and Ireland), Arctostaphylos (manzanita, Greek for bearberry, the berries are often a staple of bears with 60 species nearly all from the west coast of North America), Gaultheria (wintergreens, such as salal named after a botanist/physician of Quebec in the 1700s), Cassiope (moss heather a dwarf creeping heather-like shrub, from Greek mythology Cassiopeia mother of Andromeda and wife of Cepheus King of the Ethiopians), and Vaccinium (an ancient Latin name applied to some berried shrub grazed by cattle, hence the Latin vacca meaning cow with many species such as blueberries, huckleberries, lingonberry and cranberries all with delightful eatable berries). Cranberry has been placed in its own genus Oxycoccos (Greek for bitter-berried), but currently the old generic name now reflects the species name (Vaccinium oxycoccos), the pollen of this species has been identified in ancient bogs millions of years old.
Wittsteiniodeae has one genus, Wittsteinia, from Australia, which has been place in the related family, Epacridaceae. Pyroloideae has 4 herbaceous genera; Pyrola (wintergreen, Latin for little pear in reference to the similar leaf shape), Chimaphila (Pipsissewa, Greek for winter-loving due to the evergreen habit), Moneses (Greek for single delight describing the attractive solitary and pendant flower), and Orthilia (Greek for straight spiral from one-sided inflorescence, a circumpolar genus of one to two species only). The leaves of many species of these genera have been used in the healing of wounds.
In Monotropoideae a variable number of species is recognized, some being; Allotropa (candy-stick, Greek for other turn, as the young flowers point up and the older ones turn downward), Hemitomes (gnome plant, Greek for half sterile because of the characteristic sterility of one of the paired anther-cells of each stamen), Hypopitys (pine-sap, Greek for beneath a pine tree in reference to the plants common habitat), Monotropa (Indian-pipe, Greek for one direction as the single terminal flower points downward), and Pterospora (pine-drops, Greek for wing seed due to the unusual seed with a large and translucent net-like wing at one end).
Two largest genera of the Heath Family, Rhododendron (1,200 species) and Erica (500 species), have remarkable concentrations of species in relatively small areas. The genus Rhododendron has 700 species in an area where the great rivers of eastern Asia break through the Himalayan chain and another centered in New Guinea with 300 species. The genus Erica has 450 species within Cape Province in southern Africa. The genus Gaultheria has a puzzling distribution that rings the Pacific Ocean.
Several genera of this family are poisonous and contain the same toxic compounds; mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia, a plant of moist meadows, rock crevices, and bogs in the Sierra Nevada, Cascade Ranges and Klamath Ranges), Labrador tea (Ledum glandulosum, a plant of swampy areas along the north coast, and in the Sierra Nevada, Cascade Ranges and Klamath Ranges), Sierra laurel (Leucothoe davisae a plant of boggy areas in the Sierra Nevada, and Klamath Ranges), mock azalea (Menziesia ferruginea, found in the redwood forests of Del Norte and Humboldt Counties), Japanese pieris (Peiris japanica, a very common ornamental in California), rhododendrons, and western azalea. The toxic compounds are called andromedotoxins which produce cardiovascular disturbances in both animals and people, there have been fatal poisonings from children and livestock eating or chewing the leaves . These andromedotoxins are present in the entire plant including the nectar and honey, although bees normally do not work these flowers. The leaves of Labrador tea (trappers tea) were used by the native Americans and pioneers as a beverage tea, possibly low concentrations of this brew may have produced restorative effects (others report a relaxing effect) similar to those resulting from the caffeine in tea without a toxic effect. The yellow rhododendron (Rhododendron chrysanthum) leaves were widely used in Siberia as a remedy for rheumatism. The oil of wintergreen was another remedy for rheumatism (Gaultheria procumbens, a northeastern wintergreen of North America and close relative to salal). It is very important to bear in mind that difference between a plant being medicinal or poisonous may only be a factor of dosage or the part of plant used. | <urn:uuid:aac5be5e-5574-4ae9-af00-66ce486652fb> | CC-MAIN-2017-22 | http://cnps.site.aplus.net/DT/artf97c.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-22/segments/1495463608984.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20170527171852-20170527191852-00243.warc.gz | en | 0.929942 | 1,655 | 3.09375 | 3 | {
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Making the transition from a basic K-12 education to a deciding a career can be harrowing for many young people. One must understand the requirements for each company, such as which personal training certifications one might need to join a particular gym or which accounting qualifications suits the firm one would like to join upon graduating. However, knowing what one needs to succeed can be especially difficult if a student does not know which career option would be best for him or her. With so many options available, a precarious economy, and the mounting worry of student loans, choosing a career can be one of the most difficult decisions that a young adult can make.
Much of whether or not a student will be successful will depend on prepared he or she is for a chosen career and the steps he or she has taken before searching for a job. Here are some tips to help soon-to-be graduates on the road to developing a fulfilling career.
While an excellent transcript might help in terms of adding a merit at graduation, it might not be a defining reason an employer would choose a certain candidate for a job. Good grades and academic excellence never hurt, but many companies are also looking for applicants that show an interest and an aptitude for the career they have chosen.
“[M]any employers have stopped putting so much stock in academic achievements alone. In fact, a recent survey from the research firm Millennial Branding found that only 2% of employers consider GPA the most important factor when evaluating job applicants,” writes Avik Roy for Forbes.
Academic excellence might be a factor in why someone would choose to hire a candidate, but they are also going to keep several other factors in mind. This might include how passionate and knowledgeable a recent grad is about the industry he or she is entering and whether they know how to work in a team environment.
While most students have been known to cram for a test the night before, this isn’t necessarily the best way to show that a student is prepared to handle a full work load. Much of the college experience is learning how to multitask and apply management skills to classwork. Just as a student would have to hold themselves accountable in a workplace to make sure everything gets done, college can offer a similar experience.
“Students have a lot to balance, and college is a great opportunity to put self-management skills to use,” states Carol J. Carter for the Huffington Post.
Students will want to find a way to successfully manage their studies, their extra-curriculum and their social lives. Not only can this make the collegiate experience much less stressful, but it can also show employers that these skills will translate to the office.
No matter which industry a student chooses to enter, there is a high likelihood that he or she will have to network at some point. While clubs and meetups can prepare young people to some extent, a student might need to use an entirely different skill set in order to land the job he or she wants. Career fairs can also be beneficial, but young adults might need to look outside their campus environments in order to truly learn how to connect with others on a professional level.
“Students often come out of college having heard that they should network, but not understanding what that means or how to do it. As a result, some new grads simply don’t network at all, and others inadvertently use strategies that turn off their contacts,” warns Alison Green from U.S. News.
Soon-to-be grads might want to ask the campus career office if there are any ways to practice connecting with professionals and if there is an opportunity to practice interview skills.
The truth is that many academic programs don’t necessarily teach students the hard skills they will need once they have reached the workplace. A higher education can teach important things such as how to research, communicate, and develop an argument. However, students should also look into the industry they are thinking about entering and consider which other skills might set them apart from other candidates for a job.
“The basis of any solid employment marketing campaign is the actual skill based worker presents to potential employers. At the most fundamental level, soft skills like interpersonal communication, the ability to speak and write correctly and present ideas clearly are the areas most often cited when employers discuss the downside of hiring young people,” comments Jennifer Kushell for the Huffington Post.
By thinking about which skills will be necessary in a future job, students are already one step ahead of the competition. This might mean taking some time to learn outside of the classroom and considering what attributes could help them in a future position.
With a changing market, it is never too early for students to begin considering future employment and how they can prepare for a future career. It might take a little extra work, but those who have taken their careers into consideration before graduation are often the individuals likely to land a job he or she wants. | <urn:uuid:8d8d0426-560c-4dfa-a9c5-b29a474da757> | CC-MAIN-2020-05 | https://campuspress.yale.edu/tribune/paving-the-way-for-ones-career-starts-on-campus/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-05/segments/1579251783000.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20200128184745-20200128214745-00071.warc.gz | en | 0.970848 | 1,007 | 2.671875 | 3 | {
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The capsule is to be released 2,20,000 kilometers (1,36,700 miles) away in space and land in a remote, sparsely populated area of Woomera, Australia, on Sunday.
Japanese space agency officials said on Friday the Hayabusa2 spacecraft is on its intended trajectory as it approaches Earth to deliver a capsule containing samples from a distant asteroid that could provide clues to the origin of the solar system and life on Earth.
The spacecraft left the asteroid Ryugu, about 300 million kilometers (180 million miles) away, a year ago. The capsule is to be released 2,20,000 kilometers (1,36,700 miles) away in space and land in a remote, sparsely populated area of Woomera, Australia, on Sunday.
Hayabusa2 is flying smoothly according to plan, Yuichi Tsuda, project manager at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), said at a briefing ahead of the critical separation of the capsule from the spacecraft on Saturday.
“We trained ourselves and now we are fully prepared. So I’m just praying that equipment that hasn’t been used yet will work well and that there will be good weather in Australia,” he said.
In the early hours of Sunday, the capsule, protected by a heat shield, will briefly turn into a fireball as it reenters the atmosphere 120 kilometers (75 miles) above Earth.
At about 10 kilometers (6 miles) above ground, a parachute will open to slow its fall and beacon signals will be transmitted to indicate its location.
JAXA staff have set up satellite dishes at several locations in the target area to receive the signals, while also preparing marine radar, drones and helicopters to assist in the search and retrieval of the pan-shaped capsule, 40 centimeters (15 inches) in diameter.
Scientists say they believe the samples, especially ones taken from under the asteroid’s surface, contain valuable data unaffected by space radiation and other environmental factors. They are particularly interested in analyzing organic materials in the samples.
JAXA hopes to find clues to how the materials are distributed in the solar system and are related to life on Earth.
For Hayabusa2, it’s not the end of the mission it started in 2014. After dropping the capsule, it will return to space and head to another distant small asteroid called 1998KY26 on a journey slated to take 10 years one way.
So far, its mission has been fully successful. It touched down twice on Ryugu, despite its extremely rocky surface, and successfully collected data and samples during the 1½ years it spent near Ryugu after arriving there in June 2018.
In its first touchdown in February 2019, it collected surface dust samples. In a more challenging mission in July that year, it collected underground samples from the asteroid for the first time in space history after landing in a crater that it created earlier by blasting the asteroid’s surface.
Asteroids, which orbit the sun but are much smaller than planets, are among the oldest objects in the solar system and therefore may help explain how Earth evolved.
Ryugu in Japanese means Dragon Palace, the name of a sea-bottom castle in a Japanese folk tale. | <urn:uuid:b1b851e4-88ae-481c-844c-03a36a0e1391> | CC-MAIN-2021-21 | https://www.tricksnews.in/international/japanese-spacecraft-approaches-earth-to-drop-asteroid-samples/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-21/segments/1620243991943.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20210513173321-20210513203321-00512.warc.gz | en | 0.934552 | 665 | 3.171875 | 3 | {
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A problem with interventions that use role-playing to beat prejudice is that bigots usually aren’t motivated to take the perspective of the groups that they discriminate against. In a new study, Gordon Hodson and colleagues have tested the effectiveness of an unusual alien-themed intervention for reducing homophobia that involves participants taking the perspective of a homosexual person, without really realising that that is what they’re doing.
Hodson’s team tested the homophobic tendencies of 101 heterosexual students and then had 79 of them complete the so-called “Alien-Nation” simulation, whilst the remainder acted as controls and attended a lecture on homophobia. For the Alien-Nation task, the students formed groups of four to five members and imagined landing on an alien planet that’s populated by aliens who look exactly like humans, but who don’t allow any public displays of affection, and live in same-sex housing and reproduce by artificial insemination.
The participants answered questions about how they would cope with life on the planet and maintain their lifestyles. They also shared plans for how to behave romantically in secret and how to identify other humans. Research assistants then asked the participants whether the situation applied to any real-life groups. The participants failed to recognise the parallel with homosexuality, but the research assistants pointed out the comparison and drew attention to ways that people who are homosexual deal with the constraints of an intolerant society.
A re-test of the participants’ attitudes towards homosexuality showed that those in the Alien-Nation group were more able to take the perspective of homosexuals, than were the control participants, and this in turn was associated with more empathy towards people who are homosexual, a greater tendency to think of homosexuals and heterosexuals as all belonging to the same category (being human) and ultimately to more positive attitudes towards people who are homosexual. The Alien condition participants’ attitudes also remained more positive compared with controls at one week follow-up.
“The Alien-Nation simulation is easily administered, requires no extensive training, and reduces prejudice,” the researchers said.
The intervention used in this study is reminiscent of a prize-winning educational DVD called “Homoworld” that was created by the British psychologists Neil Rees and Catherine Butler in 2008. The film depicts a heterosexual couple as they struggle to live in a world dominated by homosexuality.
Hodson, G., Choma, B., & Costello, K. (2009). Experiencing Alien-Nation: Effects of a simulation intervention on attitudes toward homosexuals. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45 (4), 974-978 DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2009.02.010 | <urn:uuid:2e37c039-3b7d-4da0-89d5-eb29d1378bf2> | CC-MAIN-2017-30 | https://digest.bps.org.uk/2009/08/14/intervention-helps-reduce-homophobia/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-30/segments/1500549426951.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20170727022134-20170727042134-00076.warc.gz | en | 0.9308 | 550 | 2.765625 | 3 | {
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} | Politics |
Would you like to download our complete A-Z list of computer acronyms? Just click the image below.
MAC – Media Access Control Address: MAC is a type of communication protocol which provides channel access and addressing to control devices. The technology enables multiple terminals to communicate with a shared medium network that provides multiple access. The hardware which is used for MAC is known as a Media Access Controller.
MBPS – Megabits per Second: MBPS refers to the speed of data being transferred over a network and is measured in megabits. One megabit represents over one million bits which means the data transfer rate is one million bits per second. This is right in between Kbps (kilobits per second) and GBps (gigabits per second).
MIDI – Musical Instrument Digital Interface: MIDI is a standard protocol used to connect computers with musical instruments. The protocol allows you to connect a music instrument to a computer to work with pitch, sequence recording, volume, tempos, musical notation, and other musical techniques.
NFS – Network File System: NFS is a file system protocol that allows an end user to access network files from a client computer. When the protocol is implemented on a network, any device connected to the network can access and share files.
NIC – Network Interface Card: A NIC is a hardware component which is embedded into a computer to provide the device with access to a network. NICs operate on multiple queues for transmission and reception. When data packets are received by the NIC, each packet is assigned to a specific queue to improve performance during data transmission.
OEM – Original Equipment Manufacturer: AN OEM is a company that manufactures a specific part for computers. For example, if your computer is equipped with an Intel processor but the computer make is Acer, Intel is the OEM for the Central Processing Unit (CPU).
OLE – Object Linking and Embedding: OLE is a technology that allows the user to embed documents within an application for the purpose of editing. OLE was created by Microsoft and is used to import different types of data and information from different applications.
OLED – Organic Light-Emitting Diode: OLED is a technology that contains light emitting diodes that give off light via a current of electricity. OLED technology is used in a variety of displays and does not require any backlighting. The technology increases black levels and provides for a display construction that is much thinner than an LCD display.
P2P – Peer-To-Peer: P2P is a specific type of architecture which consists of applications designed to distribute workloads among peers. Each peer is considered an equal contributor to the application on a peer-to-peer network. An example of a P2P architecture was the file sharing system known as Napster, which allows members of the P2P to freely share files without the need for server coordination.
PC – Personal Computer: PC is a term used to describe a computer designed to accommodate individual users. A PC is operated directly and personally owned by the end user without any third party intervention.
PDF – Portable Document Format: PDF is a universal document format used to transmit documents to any device with any type of operating system. The primary purpose of PDF is to ensure documents can be read by the recipient in a fixed layout that ensures the document displays properly.
PNG – Portable Network Graphic: PNG is a graphic format which serves as an alternative to the GIF image format. The file contains raster graphics, is compatible with lossless data compression, and utilises 24-bit RGB colours and 32-bit RGBA colours in addition to grayscale images.
PPI – Pixels per Inch: PPI is a method used to measure the resolution or pixel density of a digital image component such as a television screen or computer monitor. PPI can also be used to measure the pixel density of a specific image file and uses vertical and horizontal density as part of the measurement.
RAID – Redundant Array of Independent Disks: RAID is method of backup storage that is comprised of multiple hard drive devices combined into a single unit for the purpose of data protection. When data is backed up, it is distributed across multiple drives (also known as redundancy) so if one drive fails, the data can be accessed on an alternative disk drive.
RAM – Random Access Memory: RAM is a computer component that stores data and applications that are frequently accessed by the user. This allows data and applications to be accessed quickly and prevents the computer from having to go back to the hard drive to retrieve the requested information.
ROM – Read-Only Memory: ROM refers to a type of data storage which is used by a computer or other device. The term is commonly used as CD-ROM in which the data can be read on the disc but cannot be modified.
RTF – Rich Text Format: RTF is a Microsoft document file format that can be opened using a variety of different word processing applications. The format supports images and text style formatting which remains unchanged when viewed in an application other than Microsoft Word.
To download our complete A-Z list of computer acronyms, click here.
About the Author
Our IT Department is a professional IT services organisation which is based in London city. We provide SMBs in and around the city with professional IT services. Click here to find out more about our products. | <urn:uuid:6ad2e90f-da98-4f9d-9ff8-e94828735706> | CC-MAIN-2020-29 | https://www.ouritdept.co.uk/computer-acronyms-m-to-r/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593657151761.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20200714212401-20200715002401-00436.warc.gz | en | 0.929398 | 1,102 | 3.765625 | 4 | {
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“Outrospection” and Empathetic Thinking as a Vital Rebellion
Instead of looking into ourselves, Krznaric invites us to take a look at the testimonies of others and to think from their perspective.
Philosopher Roman Krznaric affirms that the 20th century was the century of “introspection”. This was a period when the sciences and the arts told us it was necessary to “look into ourselves” to find the answers to the greatest question in life, or simply to try doing so and be happy.
Psychoanalysis, the study of dreams, and even the genetic odyssey, were driven by this need to look into ourselves. However, the alchemical principle states that whatever is up is down, and whatever is inside is outside; which is why Krznaric proposes the term “Outrospection” to characterize the ethics needed in the 21st century.
The notion of outrospection implies that we should discover who we are and what it is that we want to do with our lives by looking outside of ourselves, not just at the world but also the lives of others, and thus define our place according to empathy and not egoism.
Krznaric has a very unique understanding of empathy. We often say that empathetic people “feel others’ pain” as if it were their own. But empathy can lead us to the concept’s trap: to confuse a feeling with an action. The point is not that empathy is not important, but that we have greatly misunderstood it.
According to Krznaric, empathy is a dangerous concept, since empathy has made revolutions possible: every rebel feels the emotions of others profoundly, but they fight to change the living conditions of others. As if we were literally putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes, the empathy that is generated through outrospection will not work if it is not set in motion through action.
Krznaric refers to the life of George Orwell (author of 1984) as an example of a “hero of empathy”: born to a wealthy family (which is why he knew the 11 rules to prepare the perfect cup of tea), he worked in the United Kingdom’s Oriental colonies in India, which enabled him to face a culture that was completely foreign to his own; he made friends, had many adventures and acquired a great deal of material to tell in his stories.
One of the best examples of empathy in Orwell’s work is found in his essay Shooting an elephant. Orwell tells us about his days as an officer in rural Burma, where he comes across an elephant who has escaped his owners and is creating havoc; our empathy is tested when the officer’s dilemma is presented: the locals do not respect him, but nonetheless need him, since the elephant has already killed someone; in turn, our empathy also sides with the elephant, who we see grazing calmly, as if he were a giant wise cow, after his destructive trance.
According to Krznaric, the museums of the future will be places where we will be able to learn through empathy: instead of reading about and lamenting the harsh working conditions in the factories of Northern Mexico, and in Chinese sweatshops, the experience of the museum will consist of learning about making a pair of Nike shoes or an iPhone during a long workday (which in the museum could be reduced to a mere 15 minutes), and afterwards the visitor could receive a symbolic payment of 2 dollars.
Being empathetic is in no way an achievement: “liking” a photograph depicting a disaster on Facebook does not make us an activist. If outrage is not channelled it becomes a social cancer, the guilt of a class paid for with forced charity work. True empathy has the power of transforming the world, because it begins with an individual that dares to rebel against his own prejudices and his own notion of compassion, and when he is able to give that leap and really put himself in someone else’s shoes, that leap has made the world change slightly, but perceptively.
When ancient rituals became religion
The emergence of religions irreversibly changed the history of humanity. It’s therefore essential to ask when and how did ancient peoples’ rituals become organized systems of thought, each with their
Seven ancient maps of the Americas
A map is not the territory. —Alfred Korzybski Maps are never merely maps. They’re human projections, metaphors in which we find both the geographical and the imaginary. The cases of ghost islands
An artist crochets a perfect skeleton and internal organs
Shanell Papp is a skilled textile and crochet artist. She spent four long months crocheting a life-size skeleton in wool. She then filled it in with the organs of the human body in an act as patient
A musical tribute to maps
A sequence of sounds, rhythms, melodies and silences: music is a most primitive art, the most essential, and the most powerful of all languages. Its capacity is not limited to the (hardly trivial)
The enchantment of 17th-century optics
The sense of sight is perhaps one the imagination’s most prolific masters. That is why humankind has been fascinated and bewitched by optics and their possibilities for centuries. Like the heart, the
Would you found your own micro-nation? These eccentric examples show how easy it can be
Founding a country is, in some ways, a simple task. It is enough to manifest its existence and the motives for creating a new political entity. At least that is what has been demonstrated by the
Wondrous crossings: the galaxy caves of New Zealand
Often, the most extraordinary phenomena are “jealous of themselves” ––and they happen where the human eye cannot enjoy them. However, they can be discovered, and when we do find them we experience a
Think you have strange reading habits? Wait until you've seen how Mcluhan reads
We often forget or neglect to think about the infinite circumstances that are condensed in the acts that we consider habitual. Using a fork to eat, for example, or walking down the street and being
The sky is calling us, a love letter to the cosmos (video)
We once dreamt of open sails and Open seas We once dreamt of new frontiers and New lands Are we still a brave people? We must not forget that the very stars we see nowadays are the same stars and
The sister you always wanted (but made into a crystal chandelier)
Lucas Maassen always wanted to have a sister. And after 36 years he finally procured one, except, as strange as it may sound, in the shape of a chandelier. Maassen, a Dutch designer, asked the | <urn:uuid:d4374ec2-cd99-4328-8336-868aa875b415> | CC-MAIN-2022-21 | https://www.faena.com/aleph/outrospection-and-empathetic-thinking-as-a-vital-rebellion | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-21/segments/1652662525507.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20220519042059-20220519072059-00636.warc.gz | en | 0.970224 | 1,414 | 3.046875 | 3 | {
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When the cold weather sets in, there’s nothing better than curling up with a comforting, hot cup of tea. Using the healing power of herbal teas, you can drink your way to good health all winter long. Not only does a cup of herbal tea provide comfort and warmth, it is also a cup of delicious food-as-medicine, and can help prevent head-colds, fevers, sinus congestion, and coughs through the winter months. Herbal teas are safe for children to drink as well, so can be a great preventative medicine for your whole family.
Herbal teas which promote winter wellness:
Yarrow – Yarrow works with your body to gently bring down a fever. It is also a herb with an affinity for your circulatory system and helps promote peripheral circulation in your cold little fingers and toes.
Elder Flowers – With amazing anti-viral and immune stimulation effects, elderflower tea is a great support for head cold symptoms, like sinus, ear & nasal congestion. It also helps ease hay fever symptoms.
Peppermint – With its fresh minty flavour, peppermint is great to clear the head with a stuffy head cold. It is also a great support for sinus headaches and tension headaches, which come with respiratory illnesses like colds & flu.
DID YOU KNOW – YEP tea (yarrow, elder & peppermint) is a traditional blend used in herbalism for immune support during winter.
Siberian Ginseng – Also known as Eleutherococcus, this particular species of ginseng has immune supporting properties and is used to perfect infection and illness, particularly in times of stress.
Thyme – An excellent herb for helping relieve coughs and sore throats, drinking thyme tea has an anti-bacterial effect on the mouth and throat. It also helps to bring up all that lovely mucous and congestion sitting on your chest. Better out than in!
Cinnamon – Cinnamon is a lovely circulatory stimulant, great to support blood movement during winter. With its comforting flavour, a cinnamon-based tea is a great winter warmer.
Eyebright – As its name suggests, eyebright is great at relieving eye irritation and congestion caused by hay fever or head colds. It’s also used to relieve congestion in the ears, nose and sinuses.
Ginger – A superb stimulating herb, that sharp bite of ginger encourages circulation during the cold months. It also helps boost the immune system, and relieve fever caused by colds, flu and infections.
Licorice Root – With its delicious natural sweetness, licorice root tea helps support your precious mucous membranes during a cold. It’s also soothing on sore throats and coughs, as well as being supportive in clearing a runny nose. Just don’t over-do it on the licorice tea if you suffer high blood pressure, as licorice root can potentially raise blood pressure.
Therapeutic grade honey – Add a teaspoon of propolis or manuka honey to your herbal tea, for its antibacterial and immune stimulating effects. Especially soothing on sore throats, quality therapeutic honey is a great medicinal sweetener for any herbal tea.
With so many options to help support your health, drinking a range of herbal teas during the cooler months is a terrific preventative medicine strategy, to keep those winter clicks away! | <urn:uuid:41a808a2-8084-4195-99b3-5efb10639759> | CC-MAIN-2019-30 | https://www.redheadwellness.com/recipe/herbal-teas-for-winter-wellness/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-30/segments/1563195524972.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20190716221441-20190717003441-00159.warc.gz | en | 0.93634 | 706 | 2.5625 | 3 | {
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A recent Yale cognitive science study, published in the journal Cognition, has demonstrated that humans can be aware of a visual image’s statistical information without perceiving its individual elements.
The study, published online last month, plays into an ongoing debate about whether humans execute sparse or rich visual awareness. Those who have done research on change blindness — a visual phenomenon in which people do not notice a major change in an image -— believe that people normally execute sparse awareness. On the other hand, there are other perceptual psychologists who believe that people actually execute rich visual awareness due to iconic memory — vivid short-term memory for visual images — but people just do not report how much they remember. The Yale study suggests that people have sparse awareness but an over-arching understanding of an image’s statistical properties, study authors said.
“There’s this interesting conflict where, on one hand, you feel like you’re really aware of everything in the world; on the other hand, you know that you actually miss a lot of what’s happening. And so, with this study… I wanted to try and figure out if there was a way to possibly reconcile these two views,” said Emily WardGRD ’16, co-author of the study and a Yale Psychology Ph.D candidate specializing in cognitive neuroscience.
The study was conducted by researchers at the Yale Perception & Cognition Laboratory under cognitive science professor Brian Scholl.
Participants were placed at computers that first displayed a fixation primer: a cross in the middle of the screen where participants were directed to look, then a white rectangle and finally a 4 x 6 array of colored alphabet letters. This array had letters with either high or low color diversity. After the array, the participants were shown a black screen followed by a “spatial letter cue,” a white bordered square.
“The design of the study was, on one hand, if you’re aware of all of these rich details, you should be able to report specific parts of a scene, you should also be able to report general properties of a scene, and you should notice changes to any of those individual elements,” Ward said.
In the first experiment, 12 participants were instructed to report the letter they had been directed to. Then, they were asked to report if they thought the color diversity of the array was low or high. The participant could answer either in regards to the specific cued row or the rest of the array. Finally, participants were asked to select one out of four experiences describing how clearly they were able to perceive the colors of the letters ranging from no color perception to detailed perception of individual colors of letters.
The second experiment, which involved 24 participants, was similar to the first experiment, but participants were shown the array twice. For half of the trials, the colors of the non-cued letters of the array were changed the second time the array flashed on the screen. Participants, who reported the letter they were cued to see, were asked if they were aware of the color change and the amount of color diversity in the array.
The third experiment, which involved 36 participants, was nearly identical to the second experiment, except at the onset, the array did not have specific letters, but identical color “digital placeholders” which changed into letters and stayed on the screen until the screen went black.
The methods of this study were modeled after those from the study “We See More Than We Can Report: ‘Cost Free’ Color Phenomenality Outside Focal Attention,” published online in the journal Psychological Science. Both studies found that participants were able to report the color diversity of the non-cued rows in the array, even when they could not detect any individual changes in the letters. However, the 2014 study authors concluded that this gives credence to theory of rich awareness, claiming participants stored the visual information in short-term memory. The study authors claimed that the short-term iconic memory would disappear before participants could report the detailed information.
The current Yale study, however, drew the conclusion that people were not recognizing the individual details, giving more credence to the phenomenon of sparse visual awareness, Ward said.
According to Ward, the next step is to investigate to see if there is a mechanism that allows for visual information to register a perception into consciousness. | <urn:uuid:e9baf375-0e24-4707-ab7c-917bca0813f2> | CC-MAIN-2021-49 | https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2016/04/12/humans-see-less-than-we-think/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-49/segments/1637964360803.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20211201113241-20211201143241-00454.warc.gz | en | 0.959629 | 896 | 3.046875 | 3 | {
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Attending a powwow gives spectators the opportunity to glance into the history of Native Americans, a glimpse of a centuries-old tradition and a chance to gaze upon the beauty of their regalia while listening to the rhythmic beat of their drums and their voices lifted in song.
Everyone is welcome to attend the powwow at the Medicine Lodge city park. Seating that is set up around the area where the dancing is to take place is for the dancers, not the spectators, so bring your own lawn chairs. It is good to ask before taking a picture out of respect for those who may have religious reasons for avoiding photos. No one should ever enter the dance arena unless invited. Do not touch the clothing of any dancer. A good rule of thumb is to wait for the reaction of the Native onlookers. If they clap, then everyone claps. Most of the time the emcee will tell the audience what is going on and what to do.
Food vendors will also be on-site providing the always popular Indian tacos and fry bread. There will be craft vendors selling a wide selection of Native items including shirts, jewelry, wooden crafts, rugs, wall decorations and Native items for children.
About the powwow
Dances and the ceremonies with which they are associated played an integral part in the lifestyle of the Native American. A dance was held to ask for help and direction from the Creator before a battle or a hunt. A dance was also held to celebrate joy or the victory of a successful hunt or war party. Dances, or powwows as they are now called, are still important occasions for the American Indian. They are occasions for keeping alive the traditions and cultural teachings of the those before them and passing them down to the next generations, in also making new friends and enjoying old friendships. There are not many activities where a great-grandparent and great-grandchild may participate in the same activity as they may at a powwow.
The word powwow is derived from the Algonquian term pau-wau, or pauau, which referred to a gathering of medicine men or spiritual leaders. European explorers who observed these gatherings pronounced the word wrong and passed on the wrong pronunciation to the Indians when they began learning English.
The history of powwows is sketchy as there was a period of time when the gatherings were illegal under the United States Government. The modern-day powwow gives Native Americans an occasion to meet, dance, sing, socialize, honor their Native American culture and share their traditions with non-Indians.
Planning a powwow can take months. If a powwow or celebration is publicized, it is open to the public. Sometimes, it may be open to the public but there is a charge. In that case, it becomes more of an exhibition display.
The Gourd Dance, which is performed at many powwows, originated many years ago among the Kiowa people. The Gourd Dance is a man’s society. It is enjoyed by the young men of the tribe; however, the gourd is not a veterans’ society. The men dance in the arena with the women dancing in front of the benches/seat of the men. The women never disrespect their men by dancing in front of them.
The War Dance is a common dance among the various tribes. It was the original dance of the tribes among their social gatherings. However it has had slight changes throughout the Native communities. The fancy war dancing you will see originated among the Oklahoma tribes and is known as ruffle or war dance. They use two bustles in their regalia.
The Straight Dance or Gentleman’s Dance originated among the Ponca people and spread through the Oklahoma tribes and throughout the nation. They are trailing or looking for tracks/enemy in a display of a poise and methodical dancing.
The Traditional Dance originated among the Northern tribes. They use one bustle on the lower back usually consisting of the eagle’s wings. Depending on the tribe, the regalia may differ from man to man.
Chicken Dance is a dance actually mimicking the prairie chicken. Originating among the Lakota people, it honors the prairie chicken with its dance given for it.
The Grass Dance also originate among the northern tribes. There are several stories of the grass dance. In one, a medicine man told a young boy to go to the prairie. There he saw the swaying of the grass and received a vision of himself dancing the same way of the grass. When he returned to the village and he shared this vision with his people, the use of his legs returned to him as he performed the grass dance.
The Ladies Southern Buckskin is one of the most graceful and beautiful dances among the women. The beauty of the regalia and the timing and poise she dances with are truly something to witness.
The Jingle Dress is a dance consisting of metal cones fashioned into the women’s attire. As they dance you will hear the rhythm and sound of their movement.
The Fancy Shawl dance among the women is a colorful one. It is similar to the jingle; however, it is done with more emphasis on the display of of movement done with the shawl. | <urn:uuid:62307f02-4238-4e55-b018-18f182fba6db> | CC-MAIN-2020-16 | https://peacetreaty.org/events/powwow/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585371807538.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20200408010207-20200408040707-00270.warc.gz | en | 0.966667 | 1,079 | 2.75 | 3 | {
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This section is designed to help the field worker gain a thorough knowledge and understanding of the community and its current tree use practices. It will provide information that is needed for determining the options and constraints within the community in the selection of tree species (see Figure 3).
The size, composition and distribution of the population of the community are important factors in determining:
These elements can have a significant influence on species choice. Sample Worksheet 1 provides a framework and suggestions for gathering population information.
To obtain information on the size, density, composition and migration patterns of the community's population.
Population size and density: You can usually find some information on the population of the community. Currently almost all countries have a national census about every 10 years. Since the census is used to provide government agencies with population information, regional, district, or even community level information is usually available.
The common problem with census data is that it might not reflect the current population - if the census is 7 or 8 years old the population in the community could be substantially larger than the census figures. However, remember that for your purpose all that is needed is an approximate figure, not a complete and accurate count.
You can easily update the old census figures: Take the latest census information as the base figure and use the annual growth rate to increase the population year by year. Growth rates are expressed in percentages, for example, 2.5% a year. National growth rates are readily obtainable; local rates may require a search through census records.
Migration: Information on migration patterns is often included in census reports and surveys. Other sources are university or research institute studies, project documents, and government ministries of (according to the country) settlement, housing, health, agriculture, etc. National census data and local lists can be used to analyze what is occurring in the local community, but you will have to supplement the secondary sources with interviews of community members.
Village lists: In some countries village leaders are required to keep a list of all households and their members. These village lists are usually the best source of information that you can have since they are extremely useful not only for estimating the population of the community, but also for providing information on household size, the gender of the household head, and absent community members. The lists can also serve as the basis for choosing households which represent the different user groups.
What if there are no village lists or census information? There is a simple four step method to estimate the population and population density of the community that can (and should) be done quickly in combination with other activities (see Box on page 20).
Migration. While gathering information on the number of residents in a household (either when interviewing the household members themselves, or when collecting household information during transects or mapping), ask if anyone in the household is residing elsewhere, and if so, for how long and for what reason.
Again, the objective is to understand the general pattern of population movement into and out of the community, not the actual number of individuals involved in migration. Identification of a pattern of young male out-migration to urban areas leading to a relatively high proportion of female-headed households is extremely useful; an accurate count of males living outside the community, which would require much more time and effort, is not very useful.
Estimating Population Density
STEP 1: Obtain an approximate count of the number of households and area (km2) of the community.
Walk around the community and make a count of households you observe and make an estimate of the community's area. You can combine this activity with mapping and transects (Worksheets 2 and 4). There may be recognized community boundaries (road, river, mountain ridge) that will help you in your estimate.
STEP 2: Estimate the average number of individuals in the household.
While doing the transects and mapping, ask the community member(s) accompanying you who lives in the households that you encounter. In a densely settled larger community rather than for every household, information could be asked of every third or fifth household. The goal is to have enough information to be able to estimate the average number of household members. An average is obtained by dividing the total number of residents by the number of households questioned.
STEP 3: Multiply the number of households by the average number of residents per household.
The result is the estimated population of the community.
Each household has about 4.7 residents:
STEP 4: Divide the estimated population by the estimated area (km2) of the community.
The result is the estimated population density of the community.
1410 community members / 10 km2 = 141 persons/km2
It is important to have an estimate of the proportion of the land in the community under the various types of land use (annual crops, perennial crops, fallow, pasture, etc.). This section provides instructions on how to do a map of the community, which can be done at the same time as Worksheet 1 on demographic data or during preparation for the transect activity in Worksheet 4. Note that the map is to show only estimates of area under the various types of a land use and should be based on observation and participatory mapping, in which the community members help to draw the map.
To map out the current distribution, arrangement and proportion of land under each major type of land use and its location within the area being utilized by the community.
Maps may be available in development project documents, district reports, research institution reports, or through the extension services. Aerial photographs are extremely useful, and are becoming readily available in many countries.
If there is little information from secondary sources available, you can do an estimate of the proportion of the land under each major type of land use through observation and mapping (drawing a rough map of the village area). Ideally, secondary sources should always be verified by field observation.
If possible, mapping should be combined with collecting information on population (Worksheet 1) and during transects of the community (Worksheet 4).
Using these sources, carry out the following steps:
Important: make special note of topographical features (such as hills, valleys, rivers and roads) so you will have some guidelines when transferring their map to yours.
In addition to the map, it is useful to get a description of the land use system from community members and leaders. The worksheet in this section is a short checklist that provides the description of the map which the community has prepared in the preceding section.
To complement the map by describing the general land use pattern and inequities within the community in access to landed resources.
This is general information which describes the majority of the households in the community. Government documents and project reports should provide enough information for you to be able to understand the land use system, distribution of resources, and settlement pattern. However, be careful to avoid using sources with a negative or biased view of certain systems which distorts the information.
In East Africa, land use systems with a large number of livestock were commonly classified as communities based on "livestock with very little or no cropping" until it was recognized that although livestock were culturally more valued than crops, conferring income and status on the owner, in many such communities the bulk of the food was obtained through crop production. This type of community should be classified as "livestock with annual crops (food)."
Part of the information for this description should be available from the community map (see above). Your observations and informal group and community discussions should provide the remaining information.
A thorough knowledge of current tree growing patterns in the community is obviously very important when deciding to plant new trees. You can use two methods to obtain this information:
A transect is a line drawn through the map of the area being explored, along which you walk (or ride or drive) together with one or more community members, while making specific detailed observations. In this case, these observations are particularly concerned with the terrain and micro-ecological zones to understand where certain trees are planted or retained by the community, and how they are arranged. An Example Transect is given in the worksheet below, and another example from a very different site can be found in Appendix 2.
To identify, through direct observation in the landscape, the general pattern and current practice of tree-growing as it is integrated into the land use system.
Athough there may be descriptions of tree growing patterns available in secondary sources, the best information will be obtained by walking through the community during the transects.
The transect itself is a method for obtaining information from the community, through observation assisted by community sources. Making a series of transects is one of the best ways of gathering information on the general tree growing patterns in the community.
To make a transect, a route should be chosen across the community territory which gives the best representation of the land use patterns and different terrains present in the area. The transect is then made by following this predetermined route on foot, animal, cart or motor vehicle (the slower, the better for close observation).
You need to be accompanied on this excercise by one or two knowledgeable community members, if possible including both a man and a woman. During the walk, you will be noting your observations as well as asking questions of your informants relative to to the area being crossed. Clearly explain the purpose of the transect - it would not be surprising for people to be concerned when they see a person walking through their fields making sketches!
After completion of data collection in the field, these field notes will be transcribed onto a sheet of paper in the form of a sketch showing a cross-section of the territory. A descriptive name is given to each different type of micro-environment traversed (fields, forest, village, etc. - see the example in Worksheet 4 below). Under each one, the following features are described:
The purpose of the transect is not to be able to draw a precise map. The goal is to produce a sketch which broadly shows the species, location, and arrangement of trees in the community.
This is also a good opportunity to gather information about the production systems and the households that you pass while walking your route (see Worksheets 7, 9 and 10).
The worksheet below should be used to consolidate information gathered from secondary sources, observation and transects, and used as a basis for further community discussions concerning the location of trees in the community. The worksheet provides a framework for listing the identified trees and niches, and when complete it should contain more tree species, niches, and descriptive information than can be found during the transects.
To gather information from community members on current tree planting or retention locations and practices, and also on tree species and use.
There may be government documents or records of government policy which will aid in the analysis of current tree planting patterns. It is important to determine if the tree growing patterns in the community are the result of local preference, or of government policy, as in the following example from Dewees (1991).
In the past in Kenya, colonial government agricultural policy strongly discouraged trees being retained in crop fields. Farmers were told to cut down all trees in their fields, so that they would take on the appearance (and, it was hoped, the productivity) of "modern" fields. Separate woodlots of black wattle (Acacia mearnsii) were also encouraged, primarily to provide income to pay taxes. Both of these policies had a profound impact on tree planting and retaining practices in this country.
Your observations and discussions within the community will be the most important source of information on where trees are found in the current community land use system. You should use the worksheet below to consolidate what you have already observed during mapping and transects (Worksheets 2 and 3), and to gather additional information through informal discussion.
You should also discuss with members of the community past and current government policies concerning where trees could be planted or retained. Community leaders will probably be the best source of information on the implementation of government policies in the area.
The physical environment of the community establishes the range of physical conditions for the potential tree species. Information can be collected from secondary and community sources on the amount of rainfall, rainfall patterns, temperature, wind and other climatic factors, and on soil conditions. Secondary sources generally supply this type of information on the scale of a relatively large area (province, county, district, etc.) which may not reflect the local physical environment of a community or variations within the community area. Because of this, you will need to confirm this type of information in the field. The worksheet below provides a framework for gathering information on the physical environment.
To collect the information concerning the physical environment of the community. Of special interest is information which relates to tree growing: patterns of rainfall, temperature and soils.
Information concerning meteorology is generally available in every country. The limitation of this source of information is that it is usually expressed in averages for rather large areas, unless there is a weather station close by the community.
Useful information may be available on the scientific classification of the soils in the area in government documents, project reports, etc. although it may be very broad and not include specific information on the site.
Climate and soils can vary over rather small distances (especially in hilly or mountainous areas), so secondary sources should be verified in the field. Who would know more about the physical environment of an area than those who live there? Although community members may not be able to tell you the precise amount of rainfall or pH of the soil, they can usually provide excellent relative information, eg. the annual distribution of rainfall and what does or does not grow well at a site.
Climate: One of the best methods for obtaining information about the reliability and pattern of local rainfall is a rainfall calendar of the year made by members of the community (see Box on page 38).
Who should you ask?
Choosing the particular group can be done informally: several men returning from their fields together; several women going to fetch water or on their way to market. The interview should be done in a place where people will feel comfortable. It should be in a semi-public area - the homestead area (compound) of a household usually works well.
Drawing a Rainfall Calendar
Ask for a calendar of the year to be drawn on the ground. This allows people to feel free to change it, which they might not be willing to do once it is drawn on a piece of paper. Although dividing the year into months such as January, February, etc., is quite common in most areas, it might be best to use the traditional calendar, with the local divisions and names for months, seasons, etc.
Then ask for the months (or the local divisions) to be filled with beans, pebbles, shells or other markers, which represent rain. Rather than the absolute amount of rainfall, a precise measurement which probably will not be known, ask for relative amounts. For example: "During which month does it rain the most? Which is the next most?" And so on. The more pebbles within the month, the more rain; the fewer the pebbles, the less rain.
This is a rainfall calendar of a community in a region classified in maps and government documents as a "monsoon" climate with a rainy season from May to mid-October and dry season from mid-October to April.
In the community, a different pattern was described, as shown in the calendar below, drawn with the community members. There was some disagreement among participants in the discussion over the relative amount of rainfall in November and December, especially since during the current year there had been almost no rain during those months. This is the calendar that was drawn (dots represent pebbles: the more pebbles the more rainfall; the information has been transferred to a Western calendar):
Soils: The past experience of tree growing in the community provides valuable information regarding the suitability of certain trees for local conditions. There will usually be some classification of soils within the community. It may be based on color, textures, or other characteristics.
Your task is not to do a study of the local soil classification system. You will only need to ask community members two very specific questions:
On what soils do trees grow best?
On what soils do trees not grow well?
This local knowledge should be incorporated into the information on the physical environment of the community and confirmed by your observations in the community.
It is important to understand the agricultural production systems of the community in order to understand the gaps which may be filled by trees and tree products, as well as the most appropriate places in which to integrate tree planting and management. This section explores the major crops grown and livestock raised, for food or cash, and management practices of the community. The worksheet below provides a framework for gathering this information.
To identify the major production systems of the community, and in particular the cultivation and management practices of the predominant crops and livestock types.
It should be possible to find government agricultural statistics, project preparation documents, and other sources which give a general description of the crops and management practices, marketing opportunities, and livestock activities. If there are cooperatives or marketing boards, they will have records which can be very useful. Any nearby agricultural colleges or research stations will also be rich sources of information on local production systems.
Observation is important. What do you observe in the community? What crops do you see growing in the fields, being sold in the market, and being transported in trucks? Do you see livestock in combined herds or family herds? Where is livestock grazed?
In talking to farmers, keep in mind that although they may be reluctant to say how much was harvested or sold, most farmers are very willing to talk of the problems that they encounter in crop production and marketing. If certain practices (such as shifting cultivation) are banned, farmers may not be willing to discuss their use of it as a cropping practice. However, they might be willing to discuss why such bans should be lifted.
Remember that you need to identify the general pattern for the community. While there may be significant variation from household to household (which should be noted), it is the general pattern that emerges which is of more importance.
Although some of the same questions will be asked of both the community and the household, the household profile uses selected households to represent identified groups within the community, rather than seeking community-wide patterns.
Information is gathered from a representative sample of households concerning household members, farm resources, labour, livestock, income, location and spatial arrangement of on-farm trees, on- and off-farm tree use, fuelwood use, and wood supplies. The worksheets which follow below provide a framework for the gathering of household information.
Household composition: It is important to establish which unit in a community resides together, shares agricultural/tree responsibility and rights, and provides labour. In some regions a separate house indicates a household that has its own gardens and fields with the household members making the decisions as to which crops, trees, etc., will be planted. However, in other regions families sharing the same house may have separate fields or families residing in their own houses may have combined fields with other families and joint decision-making. In regions with many ethnic groups, castes, etc., you should verify information from secondary sources through discussions with community members.
Which households? You cannot interview all the households in the entire community. You have to choose a few households that will accurately represent the community (see Box on page 50). Since you will only be interviewing a small number of households (the sample), you will want to make sure that these households represent groups that will be important in the later analysis of suitable trees for the community.
How many households should you interview? Some researchers suggest that rather than establishing a sample size before interviewing begins, it may be more effective to look at the similarity of responses as interviewing progresses. For example, if you have interviewed five or six households in the same category and the responses have been similar, you can be fairly certain that the answers are valid.
A Simple Method for Choosing a Sample of Households
A sample should reflect the community. From the secondary sources,
observations, and discussions with community members, you should be
able to identify the major groups within the community: ethnic groups,
castes, landlords and landless, salaried employees, wage labourers,
female-headed households, etc. If there are several different groups,
it is important to include all of them in your sample since each will
potentially have its own criteria for tree planting and maintenance.
For example, farmers with large landholdings have more resources than
smallholders, so it could be expected that these two groups would
favour planting different types of trees.
In some communities, such as recent resettlements, the great majority of the households may be very similar according to farm size and other criteria, with only a few having more or less than the average (see Case Study 1 in Appendix 1). Such a community would be considered a single major group with further distinctions to be made according to ecological zones and access to facilities (Steps 2 and 3).
The community area should be divided according to agro-ecological conditions. Some of the factors to be considered are differences in altitude, rainfall, soils, etc. The more ecological zones, the more potential tree species that can be used by the community.
If applicable, you should also divide the community area according to the access to facilities: roads, markets, agricultural extension, etc. Tree species preference may be influenced by access to transport and markets for selling tree products.
After determining the socio-economic groups, ecological zones and zones of relative access to facilities, you will choose the specific locations where the survey will be conducted. These should be representative of the community as a whole, including each of the different divisions made in Steps 1 to 3.
At each location, a route should be chosen which will pass through the area. Make a rough estimate of how many households are along the route and determine your random interview sequence (every fifth, tenth, etc.). Using this "walking" random sample method entails determining into which socio-economic category the household belongs after the interview. Additional households may have to be interviewed to ensure coverage of all the groups identified in Step 1.
Nevertheless, you should prepare a basic sample design such as the one above, and determine a reasonable number of interviews which you feel you have the time and resources to complete. This number might also be dependent on how much you already know about the community; the more you know from secondary sources, observations, and discussion, the fewer the number of interviews needed.
Remember that the objective of the household survey is to identify the current practices and needs of the different groups in the community. You want the information not only to be accurate, but also to be gathered quickly from the minimum number of households.
Example of a Sample Section
In a recent resettlement community where each household had been given about the same amount of land, it was apparent after a short period of time spent in the community that there were three main types of households: relatively well-off households that had more livestock and income from positions in the local government, households that were totally dependent on their farms, and female-headed households in which the spouse was working in another area of the country.
There were two major ecological zones in the village area: the hills and the valley. Cutting through both the hills and the valley was a road that was passable for about eight months of the year. The school, village government office, and a small clinic were in the valley near the road. There was a small market in the village every five days, and a larger daily market an hour's walk away. The market was about the same distance from two other communities.
It was decided to divide the community by ecological zone and by distance from the village centre and the road. It was divided into four areas: hill site nearest the road and village centre, hill site furthest from the road and centre, valley site nearest the road and center, and valley site furthest from the road and centre.
There were about 200 households in the community. It was decided to interview eight households from each site, for a total of 32 households. There was concern that by just walking along a route through each site and stopping at every fifth house or so, the two smallest groups, the well-off and the female-headed households, would not be represented. It was decided to ask at each of the sites for female-headed households and to choose by observation a few prosperous households. This worked well. Two female-headed households, two well-to-do households, and four farm-dependent households were interviewed at each site.
Be flexible. After five interviews there may be enough similarity in the responses for you to decide to end the interviewing for that group. Or after twenty interviews there may be so little consistency that you may be forced to rethink your group classifications and revise the sampling.
To gather socio-economic information from a small representative sample of households in the community. This information will be used to determine variation within the community and to identify different user groups.
There may be previous household surveys of the community by government agencies (such as the census bureau or the office which compiles government statistics), research institutes, or projects. If there have been surveys in the area, the information can be used to provide general household information or to fill in specific gaps, even if it does not cover all the factors that are needed.
Even if secondary sources are available, you will still need to gather information from a small sample of households. Note that the emphasis is on small sample, since you want to get the information that you need as rapidly as possible, not conduct a full-scale research project.
Careful observation is important. When you visit a household, make note of the general land use pattern, crop stands, vegetation cover, distance to roads, trees on-farm, etc. Your observations can serve both as the basis for questions ("How old is this mango tree?"), as well as a on-the-spot check of the answers ("You said that you had not planted any trees, but what about the mango trees around your house?").
The household survey: The survey format below was designed to be a general guideline and includes a wide range of questions. If a question or a section is not applicable to the community, delete it from the survey. Depending on the situation of your particular community, you might decide to ask the questions in a different way, in a different sequence, expand a section, or make other modifications.
Remember that your objective is to obtain the key information from a representative sample of the various types of households in the community, not to interview every household in the community about every topic.
Targeting Extension to the Right Users
It is not uncommon that the household member who makes the decision to plant a tree is not the household member responsible for caring for it.
The male heads of household in a community became involved in a tree planting project. The men were given seedlings, which they in turn gave to their wives. During the dry season watering the seedlings became a burden as water had to be carried from streams a half hour or more walk from the house, so most of the seedlings were allowed to die.
The project manager belatedly realized that the extension efforts should have included the women as well, since they were the ones in the household who provided the care and maintenance to the seedlings.
In government documents, previous surveys and project documents, there may be some information on household tree use for such things as fuelwood and construction, and possibly fruit. In addition, information from these sources on household production responsibilities and decision-making, especially when disaggregated by gender, can be helpful in determining who will be involved in planting and care of trees. Information from the Extension Service regarding extension courses offered to farmers on tree care, and the gender of those who attended, is also useful.
In the second part of the household interview (below), there will be opportunities to ask who planted, retained, etc., the trees found on the farm, who uses them, and what trees are considered desirable. During discussions with small same-gender groups, information concerning the different perceptions of tree needs and uses can be gathered to try to find general patterns or group-specific needs.
Observation should also help. Although decision-making is difficult to observe, the results of those decisions are readily apparent. Which family members do you observe involved in tree care? Which family members are involved in the sale of tree products? To validate your observations you should ask several households the questions in the worksheet, and a pattern should be relatively easy to identify. You should ask both male- and female-headed households to see if there are different patterns concerning decision-making and care of seedlings.
In order to establish what needs can be fulfilled by tree species in the future, it is necessary to first establish what are the current functions of trees. Gathering information concerning trees in the community can provide you with the information needed for an analysis of the current role of trees. When combined with the priority needs of the community, this analysis should result in the identification of potential tree species for planting. You must identify which trees are providing what services and products. Sample Worksheet 10 below provides a framework for organizing the information on tree use that you have gathered in the previous worksheets as well as seeking new information where there are still gaps. The information will primarily be obtained through observation and interviewing community members.
To organize and gather information on the current function of trees in the community. Of interest is not only what the trees provide, but also which trees provide which products and services. To identify which trees are multipurpose (serve more than one function, providing more than one product or service).
Given the current interest in fuelwood and income provided by tree products, in many countries there will be government documents or project reports that list trees that are used for fuel and income. Information concerning food and fodder products (especially if collected from off-farm sources), medicines, fibre, or services such as soil conservation, windbreaking and shade may be more difficult to find, though occasionally studies do exist from such sources as the anthropology department of a local university or a local research institute.
As with the other aspects of tree growing (niche, spatial location, user group), observation will provide you with a large portion of the information that is needed. Initially, you can gather this information in the course of other activities, especially transects, household surveys, and observations on niche and spatial arrangements.
Although you can observe many of the tree products and services that are available in the community, you will need to ask members of the community to be certain that you have made as complete a list as possible. For example, tree products such as fruit and fiber collected from off-farm sources may not be easily observed. For this information you will need to ask community members, preferably the collectors themselves (the young men who collect tree resins, the women who gather forest fruits, etc.).
The presence of trees does not necessarily mean that they are utilized by the community, or that there is access to the trees by all members of the community. Using the worksheet below, as complete a list as possible should be made of the users of trees and tree products. Observation and the previous worksheets will provide some of the information, but you must also use this worksheet as a checklist in discussions with community leaders and other community members. The worksheet identifies different user groups within broadly defined categories. You should add or delete groups to fit the local situation. Note that the same individual will often be included in several groups, depending on the particular activity and season.
To identify the users of trees and tree products. The purpose of this activity is to develop a list of user groups in the community, including often overlooked users and interest groups (women, seasonal users, etc.).
Government and project documents may include an economic analysis of the community that can help in determining where to seek user groups, such as community forestry activity, commerce, agriculture, etc.
Use the worksheet as a guideline to discuss with community leaders and other community members if the activities and users listed below are present in the community.
While moving around in the community, you should be able to observe a range of activities concerning trees and tree products. Observation is important, since many activities are often not mentioned because they are either illegal (such as poaching) or intermittent (such as occasional sale of fruit).
As mentioned above, the same individual may be in several user groups: depending on the season a farmer may also be a forest labourer and a forest product processor, and everyone will probably be a consumer of some type of tree product.
Determine who has rights to which trees and which tree products in the community. Of special concern are the rights of the vulnerable user groups such as the poor, minorities, and women. The worksheet below provides a framework for gathering the information. You will collect information on the tree rights of the state, groups in the community, and subgroups or individuals, as well as on other factors affecting who has what rights to trees.
To identify who has what rights to which trees and which tree products in the community.
You should consult the government documents which explain the rights of the state to the trees in the community. In many instances, for example, the state will not "own" the trees, but will have rights to determine what can be done to the trees, such as through the issuance of permits for cutting trees (even on a private landholding). Such rights can have a significant impact on tree growing in a community, and especially on the planting of new trees, so they should be carefully researched.
In many countries there are national laws and regulations, as well as recognized local laws, concerning access to trees and tree resources by both individuals and communities. For example, the use of the forest for grazing may be recognized both for local owners of livestock and for herders who reside outside the community but have an established pattern of seasonal use. Landlords may be granted a certain portion of the products from a tree, the right to refuse tree plantings, or other rights. These laws and regulations should be identified through Secondary Sources, then confirmed at community level.
Existing national and local laws and regulations may not be enforced and should also be verified on location in the field, through discussion with government officials, community leaders and community members. For example, there may be a cutting ban on trees in forest lands, but it may be ignored by the community since forestry department officials rarely visit the area. Such a law would, therefore, have very little impact on the community's use of the forest. As another example, it is not uncommon that national laws such as land reform laws which ban or limit the rights of traditional controllers of resources (landlords, privileged castes, the dominant ethnic group, etc.) are not enforced, and traditional laws or arrangements remain intact in the community.
To identify the rights (both modern and traditional, ignored and enforced), it is necessary to interview a broad sample of community members and leaders. If you conduct the household tree-use survey (Worksheet 9: Household Profile II), the worksheet below can be included in the interview of a selected number of the households from each identified group.
If the household survey is not being conducted, you should carry out the following two simple steps:
User groups: There are many potential user groups in a community. The particular groups will vary from region to region, community to community. You can use the worksheet on tree users (above) to identify user groups. After you have identified the user groups in the community, determine each group's rights to trees (see 2: Part A of the worksheet below). Some examples of possible user groups are: kin groups (lineages, extended families), non-kin corporate groups (village associations, women's groups, etc.), community members (all having the same cluster of rights), landowners, landless, project participants, and so on.
Within a single group, there may be variations in rights to trees. For example, in some regions in Africa there are different household and lineage rights based on gender. Under one such system, women do not have the right to plant or cut trees since this action would imply ownership of both the trees and the land on which they grow, while only men are allowed to own land. Examples of possible subgroups are: men, women, tree retainers, tree planters, borrowers, unmarried youths, and so on. Identify the variations, if any, within the user groups in the community, in order to determine the rights of each subgroup or individual (see 2: Part B of the worksheet below).
In this step, the field worker and the community together will make the first selection of tree species based on a careful analysis of the information gathered in Step I (see Figure 4). These trees will then be assessed one by one for appropriateness and benefit to the community in Step III.
Now that you have gathered various kinds of information from the community in which you will be planting trees, the next step is to study that information and attempt to answer several questions which will help in selecting the right tree species. Using your notes and the worksheets that you have completed, go through the different questions and points for analysis listed below to develop a more complete picture of the community and its needs and constraints. This analysis will help you organize your information, and then go on to select the most appropriate tree species following the indications in Chapter 5.
With the information collected using the worksheets in the previous chapters, you should now have an in-depth knowledge of the community and an understanding of household composition, farm resources, labour needs, tree growing patterns, decision-making, etc. Using this information, determine:
What is the impact of the population characteristics of the community on tree planting?
Determine whether the size and density of the population is encouraging or discouraging tree planting. For example, is population density so low that all tree and wood needs are met by off-farm sources? Does the settlement pattern not allow large homegardens?
What current land use practices would encourage or discourage tree planting?
Identify characteristics of the current land use practices that would encourage tree planting:
What are the environmental limitations and options for potential tree species?
It should be possible to establish a set of ranges within which the tree species must grow, such as the following:
In a particular community, a selected tree species must be able to become established with 700 mm of rainfall a year distributed in a unimodal pattern during a five month wet season, surviving with virtually no rain for the remainder of the year. It must be able to survive during 90 days of daytime temperatures exceeding 36¡C and daytime temperature ranges of 15¡C. Soils are acidic, shallow and well drained, so the tree species must do well in acidic soils.
What is the current local knowledge concerning trees on- and off-farm, their uses, conditions needed for growth, tree establishment, etc.?
During the activities for the community profile you identified how trees were being utilized by the community. What is the state of knowledge about tree growing? What is the level of familiarity of the community with trees and tree growing? Can you identify any gaps in the local knowledge that hinder tree establishment and maintenance?
What is the relative value of trees within the community? Are livestock or annual crops considered more or less valuable than trees?
Identify the other components of the local economy that are more valued than trees. Livestock may be grazed in fallow fields, even though seedlings will be destroyed, and trees removed from fields if perceived as competing with annual crops. If trees are given a lower priority than other components in the economy, the task of tree selection will be to find species, niches and spatial arrangements that will complement rather than compete with these components.
Analysis of community needs: Determine the priority needs of the community. The results may be consistent and clear (as in Case Study 1 in Appendix 1), or else there may be different priorities of needs for different groups within the community. At this stage determine the priority needs for the community. You will then continue to refine your analysis during the process of determining the right trees. Keep in mind that the more you know about the community, the greater the number of distinct groups you will be able to identify.
You should now know what trees are utilized, how they are used, and where and in what spatial pattern they are planted or retained; you should also know who, both outside and within the community, utilizes the trees and tree products. Using this information also determine:
Which trees are most common? What are their functions?
Identify the most common trees and their functions - food, fuel, fodder, shelter (poles and construction), income, etc. Can you identify a relationship between the frequency of the trees and their functions, eg., most trees are used for food, but perform other valued functions as well, such as fuel from prunings and cash from intermittent sale.
What appears to be the most valued function of trees?
You have determined the functions of the most commonly occurring trees. Are these the most valued, or are the products of less common trees most valued? When community members mention the uses or value of trees, what appears to be highly valued? Note that different trees may be valued by different user groups within the community, so it is necessary to identify the user group and the trees they utilize.
Do planted trees perform a different function from retained trees?
Identify the primary functions of retained and planted trees. Does there appear to be a direct relationship between the functions of trees retained and planted (for example, availability of fuel from existing retained trees allows planted trees to be selected for other functions)?
Is there a relationship between niche and function?
Determine if there is a relationship between location of the planted or retained trees and the uses of the trees, such as when fruit trees are grown around the house, but trees for fodder are grown in the fields.
Are trees planted for environmental improvement (soil improvement, water control, shade, wind shelter)?
Identify if any of the trees currently being grown or retained are being used for environmental improvements (including niche and spatial arrangement). Also note if this is the primary reason for growing that tree, or if the environmental benefit is a secondary function, or even if this function is unrecognized. This distinction is an important one to identify, since a tree grown for several functions would support the choice of other multipurpose trees (trees that can perform a variety of functions).
Are trees or certain species of trees of religious or cultural significance in the community?
It is not uncommon to find that trees are planted or retained and then protected in areas that are sacred to the community, especially grave sites. Certain species may also be considered to be sacred and will be protected. While sometimes these sacred or haunted groves are off-limits to all villagers except religious leaders, in many regions they may be very important off-farm resources for the community and provide fuel (from collected dead wood), food (especially wild fruit and game), and medicine (medicinal plants). If there are sacred forests or trees in the community, identify the user groups and the tree products.
Within the household and within the community, who knows the most about trees, who the least?
Identify if there is a group, gender, age set or other category that knows the most about trees. Within the household it might be the primary caretaker, while at community level it may be the households which are most dependent on tree products. Determine if there is a relationship between user groups and specific knowledge (for example, women may know more about fruit trees, men about trees grown for poles)? Do the poor or landless know more about off-farm trees that can provide food? Do the livestock caretakers know more about trees used for fodder?
Rights to trees: You should also have a clear understanding of who has what rights to trees in the community. Using this knowledge and information from the community and household profiles, also determine:
Do certain groups or individuals have greater or lesser access to trees and tree products in the community than others? If so, identify the groups. What is the basis of inequities in access (class, caste, gender, length of time in community, or others)?
Are trees planted by others perceived to be a threat (will the trees alienate land, establish rights, etc.)?
In some communities an individual can establish long-term rights to land by planting trees. Governments may claim or reclaim land by planting an area with trees (sometimes with community supplied labour). In the community being examined, are trees perceived as a way to establish rights to land (or extend right of exclusion)? If so, you will have to be careful not to suggest niches or spatial arrangements of tree planting that will create or worsen land tenure problems, especially for the most vulnerable groups in the community.
After completing the analysis of community and household needs and the current pattern of trees in the community, it should be possible to determine the functions which would be required of new tree species selected to fit these needs and be appropriate for the community. The appropriateness of the tree species is also determined by considering the current pattern of tree planting in the community. The closer the new tree species is to the current trees, niches and spatial arrangements, the more likely that it will be adopted by the community members: less change often means easier adoption. Radical changes in the level of care, niche or other aspects will require more extension efforts and training, and may also require changes in tenure, rights, and benefit sharing, all of which are difficult to achieve.
Also consider: are new species needed? What the community may need is not a new tree, but better access to trees with which they are familiar. There are definite advantages to continuing with tree species with which the community is already familiar. If it is apparent, after the analysis of community needs and current tree patterns, that the community wants (and needs) more of what it already has, your task might be to obtain planting material, to develop local nurseries, to improve seed distribution, to introduce improved varieties or to demonstrate new niches or spatial arrangements for existing trees.
In the preceding worksheets and analysis, you determined the desired functions of possible new tree species, as well as conditions that should be met by the selected trees. The potential tree species must:
Developing tree species suggestions: After an analysis of these factors, together with the community you should be able to begin to identify specific tree species to plant (see Figure 4). Some of the tree species may already be part of the land use system, others may be new to the community.
Note that it is unlikely that a single tree will exist that performs all the required functions and is suited to all the various conditions listed above. Rather, it will probably be necessary to identify a variety of trees (see Case Study 1 in Appendix 1).
Large farmers may be interested in trees that offer attractive commercial advantages, or that might enable them to exert tenure over large landholdings. This will probably differ from the preferences of a small farmer, who may be more interested in fodder for his animals and food for the household. Gender differences in tree preferences have also been found in many communities. While men may prefer trees that can provide poles and income, women may be more concerned with food production, such as fruit.
As potential tree species are identified, it is important to determine:
In what niche (type of location) within the landscape will the tree be planted?
Locational factors are quite separate from the appropriateness of a tree species. For example, if you have identified fodder production as a high priority need and identified an appropriate tree species, how do you know where the tree should be planted? You must consider who will be the user groups within the community, and the extent of their access to resources. Different groups will have access to different niches in the landscape.
What will be the spatial arrangements of the planted trees?
Decisions regarding the niche in which to plant the tree are also distinct from decisions regarding the spatial arrangements in which trees are to be planted (dispersed, block, linear, multistory, etc.), and whether they are to be grown as a monocrop or in combination with other trees or crops.
Extension and support needs: The extension activities needed for every suggested tree species must also be determined:
Are the seeds or seedlings available?
If the project is responsible for providing the planting material, can it do so? Are the seeds or seedlings available from other sources? Are they available within the community? If planting material is going to be difficult to obtain, another tree species should be considered.
Do the tree species, niches and spatial arrangements require training?
If so, is training personnel available? If training is not available, or if training that would be required is inappropriate (too long, too expensive, or other problems), another tree species should be considered.
When the species, the niche and spatial arrangements have been determined, the right trees have almost been identified. The next step is to reconsider, together with community members, whether the tree matches the identified needs in the community.
To identify the ideal characteristics which would be desirable for each of the various identified locations in the community.
As part of the decision-making process, the characteristics or specifications that are necessary for a tree in a certain location should be discussed with the community:
What do community members want most from the tree to be planted?
This is especially needed if an attempt is being made to introduce trees into a new location or new trees into an established location. The checklist below can be used in deciding which characteristics are the most important in the selected species.
A careful and thorough evaluation of the selected tree species is the key to making successful choices. The community and the field worker must verify that the trees they have selected fit the conditions described in Step I and satisfy the requirements developed in Step II (see Figure 5). It is necessary to be flexible in approaching this evaluation of the choices, and to be ready to reconsider when a selected tree is found not to meet the necessary conditions.
Tree species that have been tentatively identified should be re-examined according to the ways in which their adoption would affect the community.
Whose rights will be affected? Any major change in the use of a resource will provoke change throughout the system of customary rights and obligations that regulate the use of those resources. You should anticipate the likely impact of the proposed change, especially with regard to niche. This impact will affect not only those who are likely to adopt the innovation, but also those who are not interested or may not be able to adopt it, but nevertheless are unable to escape the effects of adoption by others.
The central question is:
Whose rights are likely to be affected by the introduction of a new tree species or a new tree growing practice?
The goal is to be able to anticipate any negative changes which could potentially occur. As with most development projects, while it may be unrealistic to expect all groups to benefit equally, there is the expectation that there should not be a particular user group which is negatively affected. If it appears that one group would suffer a loss if a new tree, niche, etc., was introduced, alternatives should be considered.
Although there are differences from one community to another, several user groups frequently appear to be especially vulnerable to innovation in tree species and niches:
The worksheet below is a matrix that can be used to pinpoint the possible changes in rights that could occur. The rights of different user groups for different tree products are considered. Use the worksheet as a tool in combination with information from observation and discussions with community members to analyze the potential gain or loss of rights with the proposed trees species, niches, and spatial arrangements.
To assess the impact of the proposed tree species, niches and spatial arrangements on the rights of particular groups in the community. Of special concern is the negative impact that could potentially occur.
Use this worksheet as a checklist to identify the effects of tree planting on existing land or tree use rights currently held by selected user groups. Information on existing rights should be based on the responses to Worksheet 12 (Tenure and rights to trees) and secondary sources. Using this information, work with community members and leaders to determine the impact on those rights of each selected tree species (including its niche, its products, etc.). The "user groups" and "rights affected" listed in the worksheet should be modified to reflect the community.
After the tree species selection process has been completed and the tree species have been identified, re-examine the choice. The worksheet below, Is it the right tree?, provides an extensive checklist that reviews the information and decisions that were made during the process of choosing the tree species. The checklist requires a reassessment of function, location, planting arrangement, tree management and rights to products. You should also go through the decision tree in Figure 6.
It is essential that this final assessment be made together with community members. Return to the community members (leaders, women, men, etc.) who have provided information during the tree selection process, and invite them to re-examine the trees, functions, niches, etc., which are suggested.
Finally, after you and the community have gone through a careful process of evaluation of the tree choice, make a final assessment and ask yourselves the question:
Based on your assessment, are the tree species chosen the right trees for the community?
If the answer to this question is not a wholehearted "Yes!", you should return to Chapter 5 and begin the selection process again, or determine if it is possible to change or modify the constraints that resulted in your negative assessment. The selection of tree species is a process, and should be flexible and responsive to information and suggestions!
You should not hesistate to continue repeating this process until you and the community members agree that a particular tree (or several trees) is a right choice. Only when there is general agreement can you finally say, "This is the right tree."
To determine if all the important factors have been considered in tree species selection.
This is a checklist of factors that should be considered when tree species are being selected. When a possible tree species has been identified, sit down with community members (women, men, leaders, other groups; together or separately) and go through the checklist to be certain that the following important factors have not been overlooked. | <urn:uuid:288ba9bc-4e8e-46f2-8b9d-86965888d119> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/v5320e/V5320E02.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988722459.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183842-00393-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954942 | 11,307 | 3.796875 | 4 | {
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What are the symptoms of COVID-19 in points
For people suffering from seasonal allergies and asthma, springtime can mean increased symptoms such as sneezing, sneezing and coughing. In the past, you would not worry. You would assume that pollen was to blame, but we know that this is not a normal year. Many people are concerned with the risk of COVID-19. This is why now more than ever, being able to understand the difference between COVID-19 symptoms and allergy or asthma symptoms is important to reassure oneself.
What are the symptoms of COVID-19 ?
Since cough and shortness of breath are symptoms of allergy-induced asthma, they can cause some confusion and anxiety. Keep in mind that the hallmark symptom of COVID-19 is fever.
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the primary symptoms of COVID-19 are:
- Difficulty breathing
Some symptoms of COVID-19 appear 2–14 days after onset.
If you have experience, seek emergency medical attention as soon as possible:
Continuous chest pain or pressure
Blue lips or face
How are seasonal asthma and allergies different from COVID-19?
People with asthma should listen to their bodies. If your cough is more severe, just feels different, or your medications are not giving you relief, contact your doctor.
Those experiencing seasonal allergies will notice other symptoms not specific to COVID-19, such as sneezing, nasal congestion, sore throat / ear canal / sinus, and watery or dry eyes. Since, it is your immune system that is trying to protect your body, allergy symptoms are not contagious.
When trying to differentiate between any virus and asthma or allergy, remember that:
There will be no fever due to asthma and allergies.
Viruses are contagious. If you are the only person in your household who is experiencing symptoms, it is likely your seasonal asthma or allergy.
High pollen count in your area will correlate with increased asthma and allergy symptoms.
Be active with your allergy symptoms.With a little preparation, you can stay ahead of your seasonal allergies and asthma. Start by going through your medicine cabinet and discarding any expired medicines. Buy any OTC medicines you need and refill your prescriptions.
Carry your inhaler or any "essential" medication at you at all times.
Monitoring pollen counts in your area.
Living indoors on dry, windy days as pollen is most prevalent in these conditions.
Keep windows closed if possible. Use air conditioners in your car and your home.
Avoid activities such as mowing lawns or pulling weeds.
If you spend time outside, change your clothes and shower as soon as you come in. | <urn:uuid:1ff0aefb-bcd6-42df-b363-a9747a42dcd3> | CC-MAIN-2021-39 | https://drprashantsaxena.in/Blog/what-are-the-symptoms-of-covid-19/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-39/segments/1631780057615.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20210925082018-20210925112018-00704.warc.gz | en | 0.954854 | 560 | 3.171875 | 3 | {
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In the United States, it is estimated that about 3.6 percent of adults have experienced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the past year, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. The estimation for the lifetime prevalence of PTSD is about 6.8 percent of Americans.
Scientists and mental health professionals have been looking into the possible link between PTSD and addiction. This information could help people and their health care providers to better understand how this dual diagnosis occurs.
PTSD is classified as a type of psychiatric disorder. It typically occurs after someone witnesses a traumatic event, such as war or combat, a violent personal or sexual assault, a serious accident, or a natural disaster. PTSD may occur shortly after the trauma or sometimes not until years later, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America.
People of all ages are at risk for developing PTSD if they experience or witness a trauma. Compared to men, women are more susceptible to this condition.
Experts are not completely sure why some people develop PTSD after trauma and others do not. However, the following are believed to play a role, according to the Mayo Clinic:
When someone has this condition, they may be fine, but then a trigger happens to cause them to experience symptoms. They experience the fight-or-flight response that causes their symptoms to occur because the trigger makes them feel like they are in harm’s way even if they are safe, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.
PTSD can be short-term or long-term. The symptoms of this disorder fall into four categories, according to the American Psychiatric Association.
Another possible symptom of PTSD is suicidal thoughts. When someone with PTSD is having suicidal thoughts, they often show the following behaviors, according to the University of Michigan:
It is estimated that up to two-thirds of people with PTSD also have a substance use disorder, according to research presented in Time. People with PTSD might turn to alcohol or drugs to self-medicate in an attempt to calm their distressing symptoms. Unfortunately, alcohol and substance abuse tend to worsen PTSD and its symptoms.
The PTSD Alliance lists the following statistics regarding substance abuse among people with PTSD:
It is estimated that among people who seek treatment for a substance use disorder, about 40.6 percent of them also receive a diagnosis of PTSD, according to research published in the Health Science Journal. Because of this, it is theorized that PTSD makes someone more vulnerable to addiction, but also that addiction may increase a person’s risk of developing PTSD. However, more research is necessary to determine how one disorder affects someone’s development of the other.
There does not appear to be a specific drug that people with PTSD favor; however, alcohol appears to be a common substance of abuse. In fact, it is estimated that one-tenth to one-third of the people who experience a trauma also admit to problematic alcohol use, according to the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.
Another study published in Recent Developments in Alcoholism looked specifically at U.S. military veterans with diagnosed PTSD. This study concluded that about 60 percent to 80 percent of them also had an alcohol use disorder.
Once the initial trauma is over, a person can experience temporary endorphin withdrawal, according to information published by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. This can result in emotional distress and other PTSD symptoms. Alcohol can increase endorphin activity, providing a temporary reprieve from the uncomfortable symptoms. This is believed to be the reason why many PTSD sufferers turn to alcohol.
However, alcohol ultimately makes someone’s PTSD worse. It can worsen the depressive symptoms and other consequences of this disorder. People can develop a tolerance to alcohol quickly, causing them to need larger amounts to achieve the same feeling. This can lead to alcohol addiction.
Other drugs that someone with PTSD might abuse include anti-anxiety medications, heroin, and prescription opiate painkillers.
PTSD symptoms can be made worse by drug withdrawal symptoms, making it harder to overcome a substance use disorder. Coping with PTSD symptoms by abusing alcohol or drugs can delay treatment and make someone’s PTSD symptoms last longer, according to the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress.
Due to treatment challenges, it is imperative that programs simultaneously treat a person’s PTSD and substance use disorder. Such programs may include a combination of the following:
Some of the treatments will focus more on one disorder than the other. For example, a person might undergo medical detox for alcohol or substance abuse. For the PTSD specifically, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs cites the following as possible treatments:
On average, these therapies last for three to four months. Some people will need longer to learn to manage their substance use disorder and their PTSD. The exact treatment regimen varies among people and will depend on what an individual best responds to.
It is essential that those with PTSD talk to someone and receive proper treatment. Those with a dual diagnosis of a substance use disorder and a mental health disorder should choose a facility that can handle simultaneous treatment of both disorders.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). National Institute of Mental Health. Retrieved December 2018 from https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd.shtml
(August 2012) How PTSD and Addiction Can Be Safely Treated Together. Time. Retrieved December 2018 from http://healthland.time.com/2012/08/15/how-ptsd-and-addiction-can-be-safely-treated-together/
Symptoms of PTSD. Anxiety and Depression Association of America. Retrieved December 2018 from https://adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/posttraumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/symptoms
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. National Institute of Mental Health. Retrieved December 2018 from https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/index.shtml
What is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? American Psychiatric Association. Retrieved December 2018 from https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/ptsd/what-is-ptsd
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Mayo Clinic. Retrieved December 2018 from https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/post-traumatic-stress-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20355967
PTSD and Suicide Thoughts. University of Michigan. Retrieved December 2018 from https://www.uofmhealth.org/health-library/ad1034spec
PTSD and Addiction. PTSD Alliance. Retrieved December 2018 from http://www.ptsdalliance.org/ptsd-and-addiction/
(2011) Comorbidity of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders and Substance Use Disorder. Health Science Journal. Retrieved December 2018 from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/bb91/ccb73c76a07fbf96f2ea89b77c776984676a.pdf
Traumatic Stress and Substance Abuse Problems. International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. Retrieved December 2018 from https://www.istss.org/ISTSS_Main/media/Documents/ISTSS_TraumaStressandSubstanceAbuseProb_English_FNL.pdf
The Interrelationship of Substance Abuse and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Epidemiological and Clinical Considerations. Recent Developments in Alcoholism. Retrieved December 2018 from https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4615-7718-8_2
The Role of Uncontrollable Trauma in the Development of PTSD and Alcohol Addiction. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Retrieved December 2018 from https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh23-4/256-262.pdf
PTSD and Problems with Alcohol Use. American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress. Retrieved December 2018 from http://www.aaets.org/article126.htm
Understanding PTSD Treatment. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Retrieved December 2018 from https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand_tx/index.asp | <urn:uuid:4153eeb3-0c5b-4d4f-80ef-c1e47bea1600> | CC-MAIN-2019-35 | https://delphihealthgroup.com/dual-diagnosis-treatment/ptsd/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-35/segments/1566027315321.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20190820092326-20190820114326-00309.warc.gz | en | 0.930901 | 1,743 | 3.484375 | 3 | {
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Armed with raw data and some freeware, you can use Excel to produce some very interesting results, both numeric and graphic. This article describes a test that I ran, one that looks at the way states in different regions of the United States exhibit similar crime patterns.
The data set I used comes from the 1972 edition of the Statistical Abstract of the United States, which reports crime rates (number of crimes per 100,000 population) in each of the 50 states for 1970 and 1971. The crimes are classified according to seven categories: murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, larceny, and auto theft. The report also classifies the states into several regions: New England, Middle Atlantic, East North Central, West North Central, South Atlantic, East South Central, West South Central, Mountain, and Pacific.
Figure 1 shows a portion of the data, just to give you an idea of what it looks like.
Figure 1 Number of crimes per 100,000 population, 1970
I started by putting the crime rates through a custom Excel routine that calculates principal components. Principal components analysis (PCA) looks for components (also termed factors in factor analysis) that underlie the patterns of correlations among variables such as rates for different types of crimes. It can be more straightforward to examine 2 or 3 components instead of 7 to 10 original variables. Further, the original variables might combine in ways that make what's going on in the data much more clear.
Figure 2 Two principal components emerged from the initial analysis.
One of the goals for PCA is to reduce the number of variables that you have to work with. Ideally, you want to simplify things by reducing the number of factors that you lose in information by ignoring some factors.
In PCA there are several different approaches to deciding how many components to retain, including significance tests, scree tests, cross-validation, and size of eigenvalues. (Eigenvalues are a measure of the amount of variability in the original data set that is attributable to each component that PCA extracts.)
In this case, I used Kaiser's recommendation that only components with eigenvalues greater than 1.0 should be retained—and here that criterion means that only Factor 1 and Factor 2 should be kept. Figure 2 shows that only Factor 1 and Factor 2 have eigenvalues greater than 1.0.
The Factor Score Coefficients in Figure 2 are used to convert records' values on the original variables to factor scores. There are actually a couple of steps (which are done on your behalf by Factor.xls):
- Convert each record's values to z scores. Subtract the variable's mean value from each record's actual value and then divide the result by the standard deviation for the variable. Treat the records as a population: Use STDEVP() instead of STDEV(); or in Excel 2010, use STDEV.P() instead of STDEV.S().
- Multiply the z scores by the factor score coefficients and total the results.
Here's how it works out for the state of Maine in 1970.
Maine's original values on the seven crime rate variables are as follows:
1.5 7 12.6 62 562 1055 146
Maine's z scores—the original values less the average for each variable, divided by the variable's standard deviation:
-1.4065 -1.1844 -0.9848 -1.0879 -1.0318 -1.2646 -1.1227
The factor score coefficients for the first factor, from Figure 2 (in Figure 2, they are shown in a column but have been transposed here to occupy a row):
0.137 0.209 0.192 0.192 0.216 0.178 0.175
Now multiply the z scores by the factor score coefficients and total the results:
0.137 * -1.4065 + 0.209 * -1.1844 +...+ 0.175 * -1.1227 = -1.483
So Maine has a value of -1.483 on the first factor. I know this looks like a lot of work, but Factor.xls does it for you. It calculates the factor scores for each record and each factor if you give it individual records to work with. (You can supply a rectangular correlation matrix instead, but in that case you won't get individual factor scores.) I went through the arithmetic here just so you could see how it takes place.
Figure 3 shows the factor scores for each state on the first two factors: the ones I decided to keep because both their eigenvalues were greater than 1.0.
Figure 3 You can treat components (factors) just like variables. They are simply weighted combinations of the original variables.
Now you're in a position to chart these two "new" variables.
Figure 4 shows the chart.
Figure 4 The way the components are derived means that they aren't correlated.
The chart has two dimensions, each corresponding to one of the factors that were extracted. The way states are distributed in the chart is tantalizing. Notice that states in the south and southeast regions of the United States tend to locate toward the top of the vertical axis (North and South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, and Arkansas). States in the western regions tend to locate toward the left, lower end of the horizontal axis (California, Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada). There are two problems, though:
- These are just tendencies. New York, Michigan, Maryland, and Florida, for example, also show up on the left end of the horizontal axis.
- We don't yet know what the dimensions—the factors or components—represent. We should be able to figure that out from how the original variables load on the factors, but a little more manipulation is likely to help.
That manipulation comes in the form of what's called rotation. We want to take the two perpendicular axes in the figure and rotate them, keeping them perpendicular to one another, in a way that makes the loadings more clear.
By the way, you might wonder how the chart in Figure 4 comes to show two-character state abbreviations as labels for each data point. It's an Excel scatter chart; scatter charts can show the plotted values as labels, not ancillary data—at least not automatically.
But if you have your data laid out in a fashion similar to that shown in Figure 3, you can run this simple VBA macro. It establishes data labels, positioned immediately above each data marker. Then it substitutes something such as two-character state codes for the data values that Excel automatically puts in data labels.
Sub LabelDataPoints() ActiveSheet.ChartObjects(1).Activate ActiveChart.SetElement (msoElementDataLabelTop) With ActiveChart.SeriesCollection(1) For i = 2 To 51 .Points(i - 1).DataLabel.Text = Sheet1.Cells(i, 1) Next i End With End Sub
The code makes some assumptions, but you can alter them to fit your own situation. Or you can make the assumptions alter themselves to fit the situation if you feel comfortable with VBA. In particular, the code I show above assumes the following:
- There's one chart on the active worksheet.
- The chart has one data series.
- There are 50 data points on the chart.
- The data labels you want to use are in A2:A51 on the active worksheet. | <urn:uuid:d42506a8-07a9-4615-a2b4-8fe42337d8b6> | CC-MAIN-2016-50 | http://www.quepublishing.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1912076 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-50/segments/1480698542250.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20161202170902-00302-ip-10-31-129-80.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901377 | 1,558 | 3 | 3 | {
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Intercultural Mathematics learning outside the School
- Mathematics and Science Subject dimension: (inter)cultural perspectives on the subjects themselves.
- Mathematics and Science Education dimension: pedagogical issues, in particular in respect to dealing with diversity in classrooms.
„Let’s create our common space, little piece of our common World, full of game and joy. “
This is the message of education program developed under the idea of intercultural mathematics education outside of school and entitled: Architects. The original target group of the program are pupils of 3rd – 9th grade at primary school who, in the role of architects, propose a new functional use of some concrete external area. They are focused on the area which is familiar for them and in which they have better experiences than adults. Thus their attention is aimed at the game and proposal of a new children playground.
The program Architects presents Cross-curricular learning which connects educational content of several teaching subjects especially mathematics, geography and computer science. Duration of the program is at least four standard lessons (four times 45 minutes is equal to 180 minutes), but there is possibility to realize it as a long-term pupil’s project. Promotion and implementation of the program allows connection of several pedagogic approaches e.g. outdoor education, inquiry-based learning, project-based learning, role playing, use of ICT in education, adventure pedagogy principles and inclusive pedagogies principles.
Purpose of the Module 10: Intercultural mathematics learning outside of school, is to introduce the education program Architects to the students of teacher training studies (students of Initial Teachers Education (ITE)) as an alternative program for modern, active, multidisciplinary education. Through the individual activities students are gradually familiarized with a content of education program, methods and forms of learning used within the program as well as with the principles of the intercultural education and others above mentioned pedagogies.
In this module the following topics will be addressed:
- Intercultural perspectives in math and science education.
- Cooperation of pupils and teachers in interdisciplinary education.
- Efficiency of ICT usage in relation with outdoor and adventure education, IBL pedagogies and inclusive pedagogies principles application.
Through this module prospective teacher will:
- get familiar in detail with the education program Architects and find out its benefits and hazards.
- connect intercultural learning to science and maths based on practical solution of problem situation.
- get familiar with principles of interdisciplinary education,
- connect the idea of IBL with realization of education through indoor as well as outdoor education.
- use ICT and online tool convenient for modernization and increasing efficiency of maths and science education.
- acquire skills to build a classroom atmosphere for team cooperation, communication and mutual respect of members of team with roots in different cultural background. | <urn:uuid:0b920761-0cf7-4eac-ba5d-bf55b61e7845> | CC-MAIN-2020-05 | https://inclusme-project.eu/module10/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-05/segments/1579250589861.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20200117152059-20200117180059-00323.warc.gz | en | 0.936316 | 578 | 3.40625 | 3 | {
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For example, the US spends about $100 billion per year in fighting terrorism. It's very difficult to figure out if the anti-terrorism spending was justified, or some of it was over-the-top. All we know is that we have not had a major terrorist attack on US soil since September 11, 2001. Or imagine that those concerned about climate change were able to enact a comprehensive anti-carbon agenda. Say further that the costs of doing so were high, and that the standard of living both in high-income and low-income countries was lower as a result, but the predicted perils of climate change didn't occur. It would be difficult to figure out if the actions were justified, or excessive. All we would observe is that a potential harm did not occur.
Seven years ago in September 2008, the US economy suffered what I think of as a near-meltdown. Some key events of that month included the Lehman Brothers investment bank going broke; the government-sponsored mortgage enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac going broke; the insurance company AIG getting an $85 billion credit line; a huge money market fund, the Reserve Primary Fund, announcing that it had lost money, leading to a run on money market funds; and the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) being introduced in Congress (and being enacted in early October).
The policy response in the months that followed included a number of extreme actions: for example, the Federal Reserve holding its target interest rate at near-zero levels for seven years, while buying several trillion dollars of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed debt; monumentally large budget deficits by the US government; and bailout loans and investments extended to certain banks, insurance companies like AIG, and auto companies like GM and Chrysler.
The claim is that these and other extreme actions were needed to avert what could have turned into another Great Depression. But although the US economy experienced a Great Recession from 2007-2009 and what is sometimes called the "long slump" of sluggish growth that has followed, a Great Depression didn't actually recur. So how can we judge whether the extreme actions were indeed necessary?
Jason Furman, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, takes a shot at this question in a September 9, 2015 speech, "It Could Have Happened Here:The Policy Response That Helped Prevent a Second Great Depression." Furman writes:
With the unemployment rate at 5.1 percent it has become easy to forget just how close our economy came to the brink seven years ago. But during the Great Recession, comparisons to the Great Depression were by no means hyperbolic. I remember sitting in my West Wing office in early 2009 looking each day at a chart comparing the U.S. stock market in the wake of the financial crisis to previous corrections. And each day added a new point to the graph heading directly on the same trajectory as 1929 and considerably worse than every other episode.Furman offers a series of graphs showing the stock market, household net worth, housing prices, bond yields, unemployment rates, and flows of international trade to back up his argument that for a time in late 2008 and into 2009, the US economy appeared to be on a Great Depression track. But during the Great Depression, unemployment reached 25% and the rate of deflation (that is, negative inflation) was more than 9% in 1931 and 1932, and 5% in 1933. By comparison with that catastrophe, the Great Recession has been mild.
Furman offers an argument that the various monetary, fiscal, and other policies enacted since 2009 are responsible for avoiding a Great Depression. I fear that in some places, his argument comes close to this syllogism: 1) Steps were taken; 2) A Depression didn't recur; 3) The steps worked. As noted above, this case is very difficult to prove. My own sense is that some steps were more defensible than others at the time, and that some steps that made good sense in the few months after September 2008 might not have continued to make sense several years later.
But my point here is not to parse the details of economic policy over the last seven years. Instead, it is to say that I agree with Furman (and many others) on a fundamental point: The US and the world economy was in some danger of a true meltdown in September 2008. Here are a few of the figures I used to make this point in lectures, some of which overlap with Furman's figures. The underlying purpose of these kinds of figures is to show the enormous size and abruptness of the events of 2008 and early 2009--and in that way to make a prima facie case that the US economy was in severe danger at that time.
Let's start with a couple of figures related to real estate. The blue line shows a national index of home prices, and how they rose with time. The red line shows the inflation rate. These two lines are set so as to have a base value of 100 in the year 2000, and then to change relative to that base year. The figure shows that housing prices rose pretty much in line with overall rates of inflation in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. But around 2000, the jump in housing prices relative to inflation rates--followed by the subsequent fall--stands out.
With these changes, the value of household owner's equity in real estate rose from about $6 trillion in 1999, to $13,3 trillion in the first quarter of 2006, and then fell back to about $6 trillion by the first quarter of 2009. The value of household owner's equity in real estate stayed around $6 trillion through 2011, before starting to rise again. My preference is to put these numbers in the context of the broader economy: that is, to divide the total value of household owner's equity in real estate by the size of the GDP. That calculation produces this figure, which shows that relative to GDP, the value of household equity rose well above its usual historical levels during the bubble, then fell below its usual historical levels, and now is back in more-or-less the historical range. But look at that precipitous drop!
The fall in housing prices meant problems for the banking sector. It was clear that many housing loans previously viewed as safe weren't going to be repaid. Moreover, economic prospects looked grim. Banks were terrified to lend. Here's a graph of net lending by the financial sector taken from the CBO's January 2011 Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2011 to 2021 (p. 33). Net lending is new loans minus repayments and write-offs of bad loans. The historical pattern is that during recessionary periods in the past, there was sometimes a quarter or two where lending turned negative for US banks or for money market funds. But for the US financial sector as a whole, net lending was positive every single quarter from 1950 up to 2008, when it veers wildly from more than 10% of GDP on the positive side to a decline of 10% of GDP on the negative side. This enormous change shows an almost paralyzing fear of lending in the US financial sector.
Finally, a standard measure of fear in the banking and financial sector is known as the TED spread. You calculate this measure by subtracting two interest rates. One interest rate is called the London Interbank Offer Rate, or LIBOR for short. It's the interest rate at which big international banks borrow overnight from each other. Because these are big banks and the loans are extremely short-term, such loans are usually viewed as very safe and the LIBOR rate is usually low. The other interest rate is the 3-month Treasury bill rate--that is, the rate paid by the US federal government for short-term borrowing. These two interest rates are usually pretty similar. The LIBOR interest rate is a bit higher, because borrowing by a bank, even a well-established bank, has larger than US government borrowing. However, the two rates usually move pretty closely.
But in fall 2007, and then again in September 2008, a large gap suddenly emerges between the LIBOR interest rate and the three-month T-bill interest rate. The risks of lending between big banks, even on a very short-term basis, are suddenly looking larger and rising. If you are staring at this graph in September 2008, as it shoots up, it looks frighteningly like it could be heading toward a breakdown of the global financial system, loosely defined as a situation where banks become unwilling to deal with each other without high transactions costs, because all other banks are perceived as too risky.
As I've said several times already, these kinds of graphs don't prove that a Great Depression definitely would have happened in 2009 or 2010 without the government interventions that did occur. When something doesn't happen, you can't prove that it would have happened. But consider the situation of September 2008 as a matter of probabilities. Say that there was "only" a 10% chance of global financial meltdown, or a 20% or 30% chance. For me, that risk is plenty high enough to justify some extreme policy actions. It's why I'm reluctant to criticize too strongly the decisions made by policy-makers from September 2008 through mid-2009. It's impossible to know how close the US economy came to a true Depression, but it was a genuine and legitimate worry at the time. | <urn:uuid:283fd4af-c2aa-4bac-9cd5-dec073b13213> | CC-MAIN-2017-13 | http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.jp/2015/09/remembering-2008-it-could-have-been.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-13/segments/1490218189686.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20170322212949-00487-ip-10-233-31-227.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973527 | 1,912 | 2.578125 | 3 | {
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Any photos not otherwise credited are from the personal collection of Frank Passic, Albion Historian.
Morning Star, October 9, 1994, pg. 18
Did you know that Spring Arbor really wasn't in Spring Arbor, but one mile southwest of the present-day village and Spring Arbor College? This past September 25, I attended the state historical marker dedication of the Falling Waters Park, located at the intersection of Hammond and Cross Roads. It was at this site that a native Potawatomi burying ground was located, and an Indian village just to the west. One of the most prominent members was Chief Whapcazeek, who was wounded during the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe. The village was called "Falling Waters," aptly named because of the different streams in the area that traveled in different directions from the location.
White settlers came in 1831, and Spring Arbor Township was organized in 1832. Dr. Benjamin Packard and William Smith, both Methodists, platted the 128-lot Spring Arbor village in May, 1835. These two men, along with Henry Colclazer, pressed for the establishment of a Methodist school at this site. A charter for the Spring Arbor school was granted on March 23, 1835. It is that date that Albion College used in celebrating its sesquicentennial in 1985. Trustees of the yet non-existant school were elected, with Dr. Packard elected as its first president. It should be noted that this original Spring Arbor village was located at Hammond and Cross Roads, not where Spring Arbor is today.
While plans were made to acquire land, money, and the erection of buildings for classes, numerous individuals became interested in establishing a village about one mile south of the original Spring Arbor village site, near Sears and Cross Roads. Located along the Kalamazoo River, the proposed village comprised about 400 acres. This was in 1837. By the end of the year however, plans for building this second village were abandoned, probably because of the "panic of 1837) which caused economic turmoil across the country and in the banking community.
Before the abandonment of the proposed project however, optimistic Dr. Benjamin Packard had begun to erect the foundations for the Methodist Seminary on his property in the second village. This was located in the northwest corner of Section 32 of Spring Arbor Township where it intersected with Sections 29, 30, and 31, in a heavily wooded area. It is apparent that no classes were ever held for the proposed Methodist Seminary at Spring Arbor, either at the original 1835 "Falling Waters" site, or the 1837 one 1 mile south.
However, the erection of foundations stones by Dr. Benjamin Packard for the college is significant in Albion history. This foundation is the first physical evidence of what was to later become Albion College. A proposal was made in 1838 to move the proposed Seminary to Albion, and that was approved in 1839. The rest, of course, is history.
Subsequently, the original Spring Arbor Village site became the home of the Michigan Central College in December, 1844, operated by Free Will Baptists. They held classes here into 1845, when they moved the school, and village, to the present-day Spring Arbor village location. This was on the White Pigeon Road (now M-60), one mile northeast of the original "Falling Waters" site. In 1853 the college closed and moved to Hillsdale. That is the origin of Hillsdale College. The college stood vacant for 20 years when in 1873 it was purchased by Free Methodists and became Spring Arbor Seminary, today's Spring Arbor College.
At the site of the original Spring Arbor Village, a lovely "Falling Waters Park" has been erected, under the direction of the Spring Arbor Historical Committee. Chaired by Beverly Cunningham (a former Spring Arbor postmaster), the group fetched several large stones from the foundation of the proposed Methodist Seminary a mile south, and moved them to the park site. A state historical marker was dedicated on September 25, 1994, which mentions Albion as part of the text. There are lovely wood chip trails which go past the arrangement of the aforementioned foundation stones, leading up to the Indian burial ground. A large boulder has been engraved with the bust of a native Potawotomi. There is also an interesting display of old maps, artifacts, and information about the site.
The September 25 dedication ceremony featured representations from the Huron Potawatomi tribe, the three colleges, and various officials. Included in the program was Mike VanHouten, head of Public Services at the Albion College Library, who spoke on the early history of Albion College and its connections with this site. There is much more about this topic which we do not have enough space for it in this week's column, so I would suggest obtaining a copy of the new 86-page book, "Falling Waters 1825-1845," published by the Spring Arbor Historical Commission. The books are $10 each, and can be purchased at the Spring Arbor Township office. The book is filled with photographs, maps, and diagrams explaining the origins of the original Spring Arbor site, and its relationship to Albion College.
From our Historical Notebook this week we present a photograph of Beverly Cunningham, standing next to the foundation stones of the proposed school which was moved to Albion in 1839.
Beverly Cunningham by the 1839 foundation stones.
Next: HENRY BROWN
All text copyright, 2015 © all rights reserved Frank Passic | <urn:uuid:e986b5d5-e87f-46f2-8843-aa501888895c> | CC-MAIN-2015-35 | http://www.albionmich.com/history/histor_notebook/941009.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-35/segments/1440644066266.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20150827025426-00130-ip-10-171-96-226.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978591 | 1,138 | 2.671875 | 3 | {
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Fetal and Infant Mortality Review (FIMR) is an action-oriented, community-based process that examines the factors and issues that influence fetal and infant mortality in a community. The mission of FIMR is to identify and create systemic change that results in the reduction of the fetal and infant mortality rate. Ultimately, FIMR aims to inspire community changes that result in more women being healthy when they become pregnant, therefore increasing their chance of having a positive pregnancy outcome.
The objectives of FIMR are:
- To examine the significant social, economic, cultural, safety and health system factors that are associated with fetal and infant mortality through review of individual cases;
- To plan a series of interventions and policies that address improvement to service systems and community resources;
- To participate in the implementation of community-based interventions and policies; and
- To assess the progress of the interventions.
Why does central Oklahoma need a FIMR?
Infant mortality rate (IMR) is defined as the number of infant deaths per 1,000 live births. IMR is a key indicator often used to measure the health and well being of a population. Factors such as problems in pregnancy, poverty, an unhealthy physical environment, and barriers to health care and services have a bigger impact on infants than on any other population. The first year of a child's life is the most vulnerable.
Review of fetal and infant deaths allows the community to respond to the needs identified by the cases reviewed. Reviews provide a voice for local families who have lost their babies. FIMR is a tool that helps the community implement changes designed to address the needs of the society's youngest population.
How does FIMR work?
The four fundamental steps in the FIMR process include data collection, home interview, case review, and community action.
The FIMR process brings together key members of the community in order to:
- Identify the factors associated with those deaths;
- Determine if they represent system problems that require change (such as barriers to care or gaps in service delivery);
- Develop recommendations for changes; and
- Assist in the implementation of change.
It's everyone's responsibility...How you can be involved.
Health care providers, hospital administrators, medical records staff and law enforcement can be involved in FIMR by paving the way for expedient and efficient data collection.
Community members, health care professionals, public and private partnerships and local organizations that provide services for women, infant and families can be involved with FIMR by joining the Case Review Team.
Policy makers, professionals and community leaders that are in a position to mobilize, direct and affect large-scale changes in the community can join the FIMR Advisory Council.
Families who have experienced a pregnancy loss or death of an infant can join FIMR by providing critical feedback and invaluable insight needed to improve the system of care for mothers.
For questions about FIMR, please call (405) 425-4406, or email us at [email protected].
Central Oklahoma FIMR is funded by Title V Maternal and Child Health Block Grant, administered by the Oklahoma State Department of Health, Family Health Services Division, Maternal and Child Health Service. For more information about the Maternal and Child Health Service, click here. | <urn:uuid:184fb504-2252-439e-847f-b4db514ee1d8> | CC-MAIN-2019-04 | https://www.occhd.org/fimr | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-04/segments/1547583662893.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20190119095153-20190119121153-00189.warc.gz | en | 0.933326 | 688 | 2.75 | 3 | {
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Rapunzel had it easy. On the barren Moroccan island of Mogador, falcons seem to imprison small birds by trapping them in crevasses, presumably saving them to eat later.
First inhabited in antiquity, Mogador hosts the ruins of a fortress, a mosque and a prison. Today the island is a nature reserve, where Eleonora’s falcons nest among the ruins and hunt migrating warblers, hoopoes and other birds.
In a census of the island’s falcons in 2014, Abdeljebbar Qninba of Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco, and his colleagues came across small birds trapped in deep cavities, their flight and tail feathers removed. The birds were unable to move their wings or use their dangling legs, the team reported.
Crippling and imprisoning prey might be a means of keeping fresh food nearby, so parents can stay on the nest and still have snacks nearby to feed hungry offspring.
Many animals cache food during times of plenty to prepare for leaner times. Owls pack away dead mice for winter, and Eleonora’s falcons have been seen building up larders of up to 20 dead birds during migration season, when prey is plentiful. But storing snacks that are still alive could be a unique behaviour.
“I haven’t heard of anything like it in [non-human] vertebrates,” says Theodore Stankowich at California State University in Long Beach. “Perhaps this innovation of simply immobilising prey prior to caching has caught on and spread through the population.”
“Given the right circumstances – prey availability and habitat for storing the prey – it is reasonable to see how this behaviour could evolve,” says Michael Steele at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania.
However, both caution that the few observations made of these trapped birds so far isn’t enough to confirm that they are being held prisoner by the falcons.
Rob Simmons of the University of Cape Town in South Africa is sceptical. “I don’t believe a falcon has the cognitive ability to ‘store’ prey like this,” he says. “I think the birds’ prey may simply be escaping and finding refuge.” Raptors often start plucking their prey before they kill them, so the injured birds may simply be escapees.
Journal reference: Alauda, vol 83, p 149
Image credit: Abdeljebbar Qninba
More on these topics: | <urn:uuid:75ac6446-4704-48e4-858b-dc562b946607> | CC-MAIN-2017-30 | https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28745-falcons-imprison-live-birds-to-keep-them-fresh-for-a-later-meal/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-30/segments/1500549423723.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20170721062230-20170721082230-00573.warc.gz | en | 0.943596 | 520 | 3.671875 | 4 | {
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Sisters, Divorcees, Widows
from And Sarah Laughed
The Status of Woman in
the Old Testament, pp.113-131.
by John H.Otwell
published by The Westminster Press, 1977
Not every woman in the household was a wife or a daughter. In the story of Tamar, David's daughter, we have an example of an unmarried sister living with her brother (II Sam. 13:20). This suggests that a woman's relationships with her siblings were significant. We also have learned that parents could secure a divorce for daughters (Judg. 15:lf.; I Sam. 25:44). Apparently a divorced woman retained standing in the family into which she had been born. Finally, our references to The Book of Ruth and the discussion of the queen mother have raised the question of the widow. The evidence that describes each condition will be reviewed in this chapter.
The relationship between siblings often was very close. In the prose framework of the poem of Job, Job's seven sons invite one another and their three sisters to feasts in their homes (Job 1:4, 13, 18f.), and Job's brothers and sisters come to visit him after he has been restored to health and prosperity (ch. 42:11). In The Song of Solomon, the bond between brother and sister is a simile for the love of bride and groom (S. of Sol. 4:10-12; 8: If.).
Sexual relations between siblings were sternly prohibited, in spite of the erotic overtones of the passages in The Song of Solomon. The oldest example is Deut. 27: 22: "Cursed be he who lies with his sister, whether the daughter of his father or the daughter of his mother." This was restated twice as a law (Lev. 18:9; 20:17) and extended to cover the relationship between a man and his maternal aunt (Lev. 20:19).
Two stories in the Old Testament report brothers avenging the rape of their sisters. The first of these, the rape of Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, by Shechem (Gen., ch. 34), probably is tribal history told as legend since Shechem was a prominent and ancient city-state in Palestine. The story now ends with the slaughter of the men of "the city," and the history behind the legend may have been an Israelite attack on the city of Shechem. The assault is carried out by Simeon and Levi, and Gen. 49: 5-7 also may report the incident.(50) The gist of the tale is that an unmarried woman is raped by a youth who then seeks to marry her. The condition set by the victim's family is the circumcision of all the males of the city. When they have complied,
on the third day, when they [the men of the city] were sore, two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers, took their swords and came upon the city unawares, and killed all the males. They slew Hamor and his son Shechem with the sword, and took Dinah out of Shechem's house and went away. (Vs. 25f.)
When Jacob reproached them for their deed, "they said, 'Should he treat our sister as a harlot?' " (v. 31).
It was the full brothers of Dinah, those sharing with her both father and mother, who avenged her; and it also was the full brother, Absalom, who avenged the rape of Tamar by her half brother (II Sam., ch. 13). In a polygamous family, at least in these two stories, the full brother gives the unmarried sister the fullest legal protection possible. This may reflect a legal obligation not reported in the law codes, or it may indicate that the bonds of affection between children of the same mother were particularly strong.
A similar closeness between siblings appears in laws describing a priest's cultic cleanness:
And the LORD said to Moses, "Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and say to them that none of them shall defile himself for the dead among his people, except for his nearest of kin, his mother, his father, his son, his daughter, his brother, or his virgin sister (who is near to him because she has no husband; for her he may defile himself)." (Lev. 21: 1-3; see also Ezek. 44:25)
Contact with a dead body so defiled a priest that he could not mediate between God and people; but the requirement of ritual purity yielded to the more primal demands of family defined as parents, children, brothers, and unmarried sisters. The relationship between brothers and sisters could not have been based on affection because it applied only to unmarried sisters.
We have already had a hint of the status of a divorced woman in the reports of fathers terminating daughters' marriages (Judg. 15:If.; I Sam. 25:44). These passages indicate that divorce was as much a family matter as had been the marriage. The woman continued to share in a corporate identity, thus to have selfhood as a member of a family. The divorce was a reversion from the family within which she might bear children to the family in which she had been a child. Divorce often was a prelude to remarriage, as in both the instances cited here.
The acceptance of divorce by the authors of the Old Testament has received more attention than it deserves, perhaps because of the hostility of the writers of the New Testament to it (see Mark 10:1-12 and Matt. 19:3-9). Not much is said about divorce in the Old Testament. Few instances of it are reported; it is mentioned infrequently in the laws, it was condemned unreservedly once, and it was held in such low esteem that it was used as a simile for Israel's faithlessness to God.
Reports of divorce are rare. In Gen. 21:14 we are told that Abraham sent Hagar away. Although Hagar had become Abraham's concubine, she continued to be Sarah's slave, and this divorce reflected Sarah's right to dismiss one of her own servants. The report of the relationship between Moses and Zipporah in Ex. 18:2-7 is unclear. Moses is said in v. 2 to have "sent her away," a phrase that might be taken to suggest divorce. But the narrative continues: "One told Moses, 'Lo, your father-in-law Jethro is coming to you with your wife and her two sons with her.' " This suggests that Moses had not secured a divorce but rather had entrusted his family to his father-in-law for safekeeping while he undertook a hazardous task.
One report of a divorce in the Old Testament is given us in the form of a prophet acting out the word of the Lord. Hosea married Gomer, daughter of Diblaim, in response to divine command (Hos. l:2f.). She bore three children. Each child's name was an aspect of the word of the Lord being proclaimed by the prophet (ch. 1:4-9). After the birth of the third child, Hosea divorced Gomer for infidelity, equating what he had done with the Lord's repudiation of Israel for its faithlessness to its deity (ch. 2:2-13). Finally, Hosea is commanded to love an unnamed faithless woman just as God loves a faithless people (ch. 3).
The interpretation of Hos., chs. 1 to 3, is difficult. The marriage may have disintegrated when Hosea found that Gomer was participating in the local fertility shrine's rites. This not only would have called the paternity of the children into question, it also would have disrupted the marriage of a husband who advocated a strict Yahwism and a wife who practiced either Baalism or a synthesis of Yahwism and Baalism. Hosea thus may have come to see his marriage with Gomer as paralleling the relationship between God and Israel. God would be as much in the right in making void a covenant with faithless Israel as Hosea was in the right in repudiating a marriage contract with an unfaithful Gomer.
The tragedy, however, seems to have closed on a note of hope. Hosea stood in the strict Yahwist tradition out of which the Deuteronomic school later was to come. The prohibition in Deut. 24:1-4 of remarriage after a wife had married a second husband may explain why Hosea purchased Gomer (if the unnamed woman in Hos. 3:1 be Gomer). Holding her as a slave wife is not explicitly prohibited in Deut. 24:1-4. The purchase of Gomer is explained as an act of love greater than the wrong which earlier had led to the divorce.(51)
This reconstruction of the events behind Hos., chs. 1 to 3, yields several conclusions. Hosea 2:2 gives Gomer's adultery as the cause of the divorce. The use of divorce as a simile for the breakdown of the covenant between God and Israel (to which we will refer later) indicates that a wife's adultery was a widely acknowledged justification for terminating marriage. Hosea's statement,
She is not my wife,
and I am not her husband
is sometimes described as the legal declaration of divorce,52 although there is no evidence to support the conclusion outside this verse. Verse 4, "Upon her children also I will have no pity, because they are children of harlotry," may indicate that the children of a marriage dissolved because of the wife's infidelity could be repudiated by the husband.
There seems to have been sufficient similarity in Ho-sea's mind between the marriage bond and the covenant between God and Israel for the former to be an illustration of the latter. This will be amply confirmed from other passages later. It is easy to conclude from surveys of marriage in the Old Testament that its dissolution could be secured by the husband for almost any reason, however trivial.(53) It is difficult to see how this could be correct, however, if the covenant between husband and wife were held to be similar in any significant way to the covenant between God and Israel.
Finally, the only reason we are given for the reestab-lishment of Hosea's marriage is that he is to buy "a woman who is beloved of a paramour and is an adulteress; even as the LORD loves the people of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins" (Hos. 3:1). Hosea, ch. 3, seems best understood as an extension of the parallel in Hos. 2:2-13 between the marriage and the covenant between God and people, and the motive for restoring the nation's covenant attributed to the Lord is thus to be extended to Hosea's reason for reestablishing the marriage. In both instances, the motive was love. If this seems too modern a reason, our concept of ancient Israelite marriage may be at fault. The second marriage was concubinage for Gomer. She became her husband's slave. Yet this was the means by which love between man and woman circumvented a law intended to discourage remarriage after divorce.
Ezra 10:2-44 reports a mass divorce. The setting is the establishment of a theocracy under Ezra, one feature of which was the repudiation of marriages with non-Israelite women. They are pictured in the Old Testament as a source of the intrusion of alien elements into Israel's worship (as in I Kings 11:1-8). When it was learned that many had married outside their faith, Shecaniah ben Jehiel recommended that all foreign wives be divorced (Ezra 10:1-5). Since it was raining heavily, it was decided to take a census at a more convenient time to identify those who had married alien women. When the task was done, all who had so acted were named. "All these had married foreign women, and they put them away with their children" (v. 44). This was one of the means by which post-exilic Jews sought to preserve their identity and uniqueness in the midst of an alien environment. Thus the event tells us little about the status of the ancient Israelite woman or of her later Jewish descendant.
The grounds for divorce in ancient Israel are unclear. Hosea's action against Gomer was taken because of her sexual faithlessness (Hos. 2:2). This reason is cited elsewhere in the prophetic literature when divorce initiated by the husband becomes a simile for the Lord's action against a faithless Israel (i.e., Jer. 3:6-10, 19f.; Ezek. 16: 1-63) (54) No instance of a wife repudiating a husband is reported. As we have seen, the wife's father could terminate a daughter's marriage. In the case of David and Michal, Saul may have acted when David became an outlaw (I Sam. 25:44)(55)
No legal prescriptions dealing with divorce in the abstract have survived. This is what we should expect. Case law, which makes up the bulk of the laws recorded in the Testament, deals with specific instances. One such judicial decision, however, was stated in a way which seems at first to give the grounds for divorce:
When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a bill of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, and if she goes and becomes another man's wife, and the latter husband dislikes her and writes her a bill of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies, who took her to be his wife, then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled; for that is an abomination before the LORD, and you shall not bring guilt upon the land which the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance. (Deut. 24:1-4)
The statement that the husband has "found some indecency" in the wife, or that he "dislikes" her, has been taken either to justify divorce on virtually any grounds or as being too vague to be helpful to us. The latter position has been taken by both G. Ernest Wright and Gerhard von Rad. Wright observed that the law seems to permit divorce "only for good cause."(56) Gerhard von Rad wrote:
The meaning of "indecent," "objectionable" (cf. 23:14) must have been clear in the time of Deuteronomy; otherwise the matter would certainly have been defined more exactly. By Jesus' time it was being debated in the rabbinical schools whether in such cases a lapse on the part of the woman is in mind or whether she possessed some repellent quality.(57)
It is best to leave the matter in these vague and admittedly unsatisfactory terms. To infer more is to read more into the passage than our knowledge justifies.
Even though no instance of a wife securing a divorce is reported in the Old Testament, the grounds for such an action can be deduced from Ex. 21:7-11. Only vs. l0f. need to be reported here:
If he [the husband] takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money.
This law describes the safeguards protecting an Israelite concubine. Among them is her right to divorce her husband and to gain her freedom without payment if the husband denies support and sexual access to her after taking a second wife. As Mace observed, "If this were true of a mere concubine, one would expect it to hold good a fortiori in the case of a wife, who would have her family to take her part."(58) Thus, contrary to the belief that the Israelite husband alone had the right to secure a divorce, the evidence indicates that both husband and wife had such a right. The grounds on which the husband might divorce a wife included her adultery but otherwise are vaguely defined. By contrast, the grounds for the wife's actions are precisely defined: nonsupport and the denial of sexual access. In effect, the wife could secure a divorce if her husband denied to her the means to be a mother and the wherewithal to support herself and her child.
New Testament opposition to divorce is foreshadowed in the Old Testament. The bulk of the legal prescriptions dealing with it limit it. One law prohibited remarriage after the wife had been wedded to a second husband (Deut. 24:1-4). To this must be added prohibitions of the divorce of a wife falsely accused of the premarital loss of her virginity (Deut. 22:13-19) and of a ravished, unbetrothed virgin (Deut. 22:28f.). The law requiring the freeing of a slave wife at the time of divorce also discouraged divorce by exacting a property loss (the freeing of a slave) on the owner-husband (Deut. 21:14).
All these limitations appear in the Deuteronomic Code. The use of divorce as a simile for the punishment of Israel by God appears also at this time (as in passages reported earlier here in which Jeremiah and Ezekiel liken Israel to an adulterous wife). Equating divorce with the horror of divine judgment in the collapse and defeat of the nation must have done little to commend it!
Malachi, writing in the century following the exile, opposed divorce as explicitly and as strongly as did the author of Mark 10:2-12:
And this again you do. You cover the LORD'S altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor at your hand. You ask, "Why does he not?" Because the LORD was witness to the covenant between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. Has not the one God made and sustained for us the spirit of life? And what does he desire? Godly offspring. So take heed to yourselves, and let none be faithless to the wife of his youth. "For I hate divorce, says the LORD the God of Israel, and covering one's garment with violence, says the LORD of hosts. So take heed to yourselves and do not be faithless." (Mal. 2:13-16)
These words are the maturation of implications present from the earliest sources. God is the source of the life that is given to a man and a woman covenanted together before the Lord. Any act that violates the covenant to which God has become a witness, and thus defiles the gift of life which God then confers, flouts the sovereignty and work of God. Divorce thus has become as grave an offense against the will of the Lord to create life as is oppression which destroys the life that has been created.
Three motifs emerge in a review of the evidence in the Old Testament dealing with divorce. The first is that both marriage and divorce are a family rather than an individual matter. The wife's family continued to be able to represent her rights, and she could return to it if repudiated by her husband. The second is that husband and wife may have been more nearly equal in their access to divorce than has been supposed. The grounds upon which the wife might secure divorce (and freedom, if she were a concubine) were more clearly stated than were the grounds upon which the husband might take action. Finally, the material on divorce provides us with a clear and strong statement of the purpose of marriage. Since marriage was to give God the opportunity to give new life, we can rightly infer a high standing for the woman in whose womb that new life came into being.
The widow is another category in which the status of woman is disclosed. The word for widow in Biblical Hebrew is 'almanah. It is a feminine noun derived from the verb 'lm, "to bind," "to be silent" (in the intensive mode). The English word "widow" designates any woman who has not remarried after the death of her husband. Chayim Cohen, however, defines the 'almanah as often being a "once-married woman who no longer had any means of financial support."(59) Even this definition may prove to be too broad in the light of the information given us in passages in the Old Testament in which a widow is described.
A childless woman who has not remarried after the death of her husband is called a widow in several Old Testament passages. In a few instances we are informed that she was able to return to her father's household. Tamar, the daughter-in-law of Judah, was told to "remain a widow in your father's house" until Judah's third son had become old enough to become her husband (Gen. 38:11); and a priest's bereaved and childless daughter could return home and share the sanctified food which only the priest and his family could eat (Lev. 22:13). This example is all the more important for being in a law code. Even though case law arose out of a single judicial decision solving a specific case, the decision became a law when the situation with which it dealt arose fairly often. Thereupon it became a description of a category of situation rather than an individual case.
In other statements about a widow, however, she often was a woman not only bereft of husband but also lacking the support of any other adult male. This had two consequences: she had to be self-supporting, and she had lost the normal means of recourse to legal process.
One of the legends told about Elijah reported him as commanded by God to stay with a widow in Zarephthah during a drought. When he arrived and asked for something to eat, "she said, 'As the LORD your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a cruse; and now, I am gathering a couple of sticks, that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die' " (I Kings 17:12). In a similar story told about Elisha, the widow is described as being forced to surrender her children to a creditor (II Kings 4:1). In both of these passages, the bereaved woman is described as responsible for the support of minor children and unable to provide it.
II Samuel 14:1-24 describes one of the means by which a courtier might influence a king. The king is David. The courtier is Joab, the commander in chief of David's armies. Absalom, the oldest living son of David, had been banished after he had ordered Amnon, an older half brother, killed because Amnon had raped Tamar, Absalom's sister (II Sam., ch. 13). When Joab saw that David was obsessed with the situation, he sought to nudge the king into action by having a woman present a fictional case to David for judgment. The woman begins, "Alas, I am a widow; my husband is dead" (v. 5). She had two sons, one of whom killed the other in a quarrel. Her relatives now want to execute the remaining son in retribution for the killing of the brother. The woman then appeals to David because the death of the remaining son "would quench my coal which is left, and leave to my husband neither name nor remnant upon the face of the earth" (v. 7). In this instance, it seems proper to define the widow as a woman who has no recourse to judicial processes other than through appeal to the king, because the men who would normally defend her rights, the members of the extended family of which she was a part, are the ones who seek to execute her remaining son. Thus her sons' accusers are those who would normally be her defenders.
In the light of these passages, it may be no accident that none of the bereaved women in The Book of Ruth are designated as widows. Naomi, who had lost husband and sons, returns to her husband's village because she is represented as having some claim on his kinsmen; and Ruth, the daughter-in-law of Naomi's husband, becomes the agent through whom the claim is realized. Similarly, Bathsheba is not described as a widow after David's death, possibly because she had then become the immensely powerful queen mother.
The evidence thus seems to suggest that the derivation of 'almanah from 'lm, "to be silent," should be taken seriously. A widow was a silent one, a person often denied participation in the economic and legal life of the community because she lacked identification with a family. If this definition be correct, her plight was extremely serious. She had so little standing in the community that she was regularly grouped with the resident alien, the person who was present physically but did not belong to the group (as in Deut. 14:29; Ps. 94:6; etc.). In a society in which selfhood was defined corporately, she had lost selfhood.
Confirmation for this interpretation appears in two kinds of passages: those dealing with the legal status of widows, orphans, and aliens, and those in which an Israel cut off from its God is likened to a widow.
Exodus 22:21-24 is typical of the first group of passages:
You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not afflict any widow or orphan. If you do afflict them, and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry; and my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children fatherless.
Since the Old Testament describes the Israelites when in Egypt as slaves (as in Ex. 5:15f.; Deut. 5:15; etc.), we can easily deduce the true standing of the sojourner, widow, and orphan.
The widow sometimes played a prominent and grim role in oracles in which Israel is described as under a judgment caused by its alienation from God:
You have rejected me, says the LORD,
you keep going backward;
so I have stretched out my hand against you and destroyed you;
I am weary of relenting.
I have winnowed them with a winnowing fork
in the gates of the land;
I have bereaved them, I have destroyed my people;
they did not turn from their ways.
I have made their widows more in number
than the sand of the seas;
I have brought against the mothers of young men
a destroyer at noonday;
I have made anguish and terror
fall upon them suddenly.
(Jer. 15:6-8; see also ch. 18:21; Lam. 5:1-3)
Jeremiah turned here to the plight of the widow when seeking a simile to convey the enormity of the disaster that divine judgment would bring.
Even though the widow seems to have had no status in ancient Israel, she does have status in the Old Testament. The ancient Israelite definition of selfhood and its organization of society had no place for the resident alien, widow, or orphan. The Old Testament, a literature emerging out of the life of a community of faith, explicitly and repeatedly places the welfare of these three groups of outcasts under the care of God. We have already noted Ex. 22:21-24 and Deut. 27:19, verses in which this is stated. Deut. 10:17f. is another such passage:
For the LORD your God is God of gods, and LORD of lords, the great, the mighty, and the terrible God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.
Giving the widow identity and status under God is not a platitude in the Old Testament. The passage just quoted continues: "Love the sojourner therefore; for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt" (v. 19). Although the authors of the Old Testament were consistent and clear in their assertions that the Lord gave the widow what society denied her, they also stated repeatedly that the faithful Israelite was commanded by God to protect the widow. This is stated both negatively and positively.
Stated negatively, the Lord's concern for the widow not only yielded the curse on the person "who perverts the justice due to the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow" (Deut. 27:19), it was expressed also in a series of prophetic oracles of woe. This is familiar to us in passages in the major prophets such as Isa. 10: 1f. and Ezek. 22:6f. But it also was a motif in lesser-known, post-exilic prophets:
Then I will draw near to you for judgment; I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the LORD of hosts. (Mal. 3:5)
These passages report a continuous and consistent tradition covering a period of from approximately 740 to 450 B.C. in which prophetic mediators between God and people transmitted as a word from the Lord a condemnation of the people for their exploitation of the sojourner, orphan, and widow. These are not isolated statements, and their theme appears as often in positive injunctions as in condemnations. Thus Jeremiah Was entrusted with a word of restoration should the people cleanse their lives:
For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly execute justice one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers for ever. (Jer. 7:5-7)
Isaiah earlier (Isa. 1:17) and Zechariah later (Zech. 7:9f.) joined with Jeremiah in this "word from the LORD."
This is highly specific. This word of the Lord exhorted the righteous to take upon themselves the responsibility for becoming the legal voice for the "silent ones," to take their part in a court of law just as a close kinsman would have done had there been one. The Deuteronomic legislators became even more explicit in describing a specific kind of injustice: "You shall not pervert the justice due to the sojourner or to the fatherless, or take a widow's garment in pledge" (Deut. 24:17). From this law we gain an unwelcome insight into the grimness of the extremity a widow deprived of family support might face. These same legislators also stated the right of the defenseless to glean a once-harvested crop:
When you reap your harvest in your field, and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow; that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat your olive trees, you shall not go over the boughs again; it shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow. When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not glean it afterward; it shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I command you to do this. (Deut. 24:19-22)
Ruth and Naomi seem to have used this right to call their plight to the attention of distant relatives after they had returned to Naomi's village (Ruth 2:lf., 18).
Finally, the care of the Lord for those lacking the support of a family was expressed in the law governing the use of the tithe:
At the end of every three years you shall bring forth all the tithe of your produce in the same year, and lay it up within your towns; and the Levite, because he has no portion or inheritance with you, and the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, who are within your towns, shall come and eat and be filled; that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands that you do. (Deut. 14:28f.; see ch. 26:12-15)
The magnitude of God's care for widows is revealed nowhere more clearly than here. The Levites were a landless tribe which had become professional servants of the Their livelihood came to them through their share of tithes and sacrifices given to God by the faithful. Yet they were here required to share their access to gifts given God with widows, orphans, and sojourners.
We have already indicated that the three groups often named together the resident alien, the widow, and the orphan were in the same situation in the community. All three lacked participation in an Israelite family that could provide economic and legal security. These three groups represented, in Israelite antiquity, the dispossessed in much the same way that a refugee without resources does today. Desperate though the plight of the widow must have been to have been grouped with the sojourner and orphan, her presence there provides two insights into her status.
The first is to be deduced from the obvious fact that sojourners and orphans would include both females and males. The trilogy of sojourner, widow, and orphan were equal in their misfortunes regardless of their sex. A male sojourner had no advantage over the Israelite widow without family. As we have seen before in this study, an equality of the sexes emerges far more often in a careful study of the status of woman in the Old Testament than we had been led to expect.
But that same equality between the sexes is present in the consistent, centuries-long proclamation of the word of the Lord. The God of Israel is the self-proclaimed kinsman of both the male sojourner and the widow. It was circumstance that mattered, not gender.
It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that the widow represents the gravest extremity in which the ancient Israelite woman might find herself. The derivation of the word for "widow," 'almanah, suggests that a widow was likely to be a woman who found herself deprived of family identity through the death of her mate. She was less than a person because she had been deprived of the context (a family) in which selfhood was known. She occupies this tragic place along with orphans, male and female, for whom no family provided identity, and the resident alien whose family lived in another land.
Yet she had status even in extremity. At the very least, she was equal to all others, male and female, in a like situation. Far more to the point, however, she was of such importance to the God who had created Israel to be a people of the Lord that God became her next of kin in order to provide security for her through the actions of those among the people who heeded God's will. Her lot was desperate, but her standing was as high as that of the Levites, the servants of God.
This chapter has reviewed materials essential for any well-rounded picture of woman in ancient Israelite society. The information provided us confirms essentially the estimate of the status of woman deduced from a review of their place as daughters and wives with a single, but significant, exception: the standing of the widow in the community of the faithful as one whose kinsman was God. The role of the go'el, the kinsman charged with defending the rights of another, was so important and elevated in ancient Israel that the Second Isaiah described the Lord as Israel's go'el, during the bleak years of the exile (Isa. 41:14; 43:14; 44:6; etc.), knowing that his words would give his people a sense of their worth. For centuries, the prophets of the Old Testament proclaimed the Lord to be the go'el of the sojourner, the widow, and the orphan.
50. The presence of historical memories behind the story is widely recognized. Hermann Gunkel, Genesis uber-setzt und erklart(Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1901), p. 337, calls it a historical saga telling of an incident involving the city of Shechem and three Israelite tribes, Dinah, Simeon, and Levi. The first merged with Shechem; the second and third attacked Shechem but were defeated by a coalition of Canaanites. For variations (at times major) on this, see Von Rad, Genesis, pp. 329f., and Speiser, Genesis, pp. 266f.
51. See James Luther Mays, Hosea, A Commentary, The Old Testament Library (The Westminster Press, 1969), pp. 22-24. See pp. 24-60 for a review of various interpretations of Hos., chs. 1 to 3.
52. So Phillips, op. cit., p. 352; de Vaux, op. cit., p. 35.
53. As in W. P. Patterson, "Marriage," in James Hastings et al. (eds.) A Dictionary of the Bible (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1906), Vol. III, p. 274c. Paterson argued that the primitive freedom of the husband was later restricted by prophetic protest and the legislation derived from the protest. Phillips, op. cit., p. 355, argues that Deut. 24:1 gave the husband virtually unrestricted rights of divorce. This legislation, at least in its present form, is usually dated about 650 B.C.
54. It needs also to be added that a husband's sexual faithlessness is described by the prophets as faithlessness to God. See Hos. 4:12-14; Jer. 5:7-9; Ezek. 18:10-13 as examples.
55. Although de Vaux, op. cit., p. 35, reports that women in the Jewish colony at Elephantine could divorce their husbands (fifth to sixth centuries B.C.) and that an instance is reported from Judah in the second century A.D.
56. G. Ernest Wright, "The Book of Deuteronomy: Introduction and Exegesis," in G. A. Buttrick et al. (eds.), The Interpreter's Bible (Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1953), Vol. II, pp. 473f.
57. Gerhard von Rad, Deuteronomy, A Commentary, tr. by Dorothea Barton, The Old Testament Library (The Westminster Press, 1966), p. 150.
58. Mace, op. cit., p. 258. The Code of Hammurabi, sec. 142, explicitly gave a wife the right to divorce her husband "if she has kept herself chaste and has no fault, while her husband is given to going about" (Driver and Miles, op. cit., p. 57).
59. Chayim Cohen, "Widow," in Cecil Roth and Geoffrey Wigoder (eds.), Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem: Kefer Publishing House, 1971), Vol. XVI, p. 487.
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The number is indicative, but incomplete. For full details click on cross icon at bottom right. | <urn:uuid:51b6c31a-1e3d-4246-9615-aa1e848ccc6a> | CC-MAIN-2017-43 | http://www.womenpriests.org/classic2/otwell07.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-43/segments/1508187825575.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20171023035656-20171023055656-00590.warc.gz | en | 0.978144 | 8,560 | 2.890625 | 3 | {
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National Priorities Project
nominated for 2014 Nobel Peace Prize
That's the conclusion of a new analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), in a report released last week: "Tenth Anniversary of the Bush-Era Tax Cuts: A decade later, the Bush tax cuts remain expensive, ineffective, and unfair."
According to EPI's website, their mission "is to achieve shared prosperity by raising the economic status of low- and middle-income Americans."
In the report EPI policy analysts Andrew Fieldhouse and Ethan Pollack detail ten findings:
1) The Bush tax cuts disproportionately benefited the wealthy – The top 0.1% of wage earners (those making over $3 million) received an average tax cut of roughly $520,000, more than 450 times larger than the share received by an average middle-income family.
2) The cuts did little for low-income families – In 2010, tax filers in the bottom 20% of wage earners (those making less than $20,000) received only a 1% share of the tax cuts, and 75% of these low-income families saw no reduction at all.
3) The tax cuts never trickled down – The Bush economic expansion had the worst wage and salary growth and total compensation growth of any postwar economic expansion, and workers fared progressively worse the lower their wages were.
4) The Bush tax cuts were a poorly designed economic stimulus – Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi estimates that making the Bush tax cuts permanent generates only 35 cents in economic activity for every dollar of revenue. Meanwhile, the targeted refundable tax credits included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus package) are estimated to generate much more per dollar of uncollected taxes, ranging from $1.17 for the Making Work Pay Credit to $1.38 for the Child Tax Credit.
5) The Bush tax cuts failed to create strong long-run growth – Between the end of the 2001 recession and the peak of Bush-era expansion at the end of 2007, the U.S. economy experienced the worst economic expansion of the post WWII era.
6) The Bush tax cuts were so expensive that they added greatly to the debt – From 2001 through 2010, the cuts added $2.6 trillion to the public debt, nearly 50% of the total debt accrued during this period.
7) The Bush tax cuts were much more expensive than advertised – The Bush tax cuts were designed using a few budget gimmicks to obscure their true cost.
8) The Bush tax cuts continue to be expensive – The extension of the Bush tax cuts as part of the December 2010 tax deal is projected to decrease revenue by $423 billion over 2012-21, adding more than $5 trillion to the debt over the next decade. This represents about half of the total projected deficits over this period.
9) The Bush tax cuts eliminated the most progressive federal tax: taxes on large estates – The Bush tax cuts repealed the tax on large estates for the first time since 1916, eliminating the only federal tax on concentrated wealth.
10) A decade of Bush tax cuts are increasing interest spending today – The U.S. government has spent more than $400 billion over the last decade in higher interest payments to finance the debt created by the Bush tax cuts.
These are just some of the facts presented in the EPI analysis which call into question the economic benefits put forth by supporters of permanently extending the Bush tax credits. At a time when the federal deficit is in the forefront of everyone's thoughts, this information needs to be considered as the nation debates ways to reduce the deficit and stimulate economic recovery. | <urn:uuid:de96aa4e-b5a1-4c4f-97b6-1cb6cf7a0182> | CC-MAIN-2014-15 | http://nationalpriorities.org/blog/2011/06/06/bush-tax-cuts-10-years-later-still-expensive-and-ineffective/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-15/segments/1398223206672.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20140423032006-00643-ip-10-147-4-33.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955166 | 748 | 2.859375 | 3 | {
"raw_score": 2.97329044342041,
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"interpretation": "Strong reasoning"
} | Politics |
Symptoms of brucellosis may show up anytime from a few days to a few months after you're infected. Signs and symptoms are similar to those of the flu and include:
- Loss of appetite
- Joint, muscle and back pain
Brucellosis symptoms may disappear for weeks or months and then return. In some people, brucellosis becomes chronic, with symptoms persisting for years, even after treatment. Long-term signs and symptoms may include fatigue, recurrent fevers, arthritis, swelling of the heart (endocarditis) and spondylitis — an inflammatory arthritis that affects the spine and adjacent joints.
When to see a doctor
Brucellosis can be hard to identify, especially in the early stages, when it often resembles many other conditions, such as the flu. See your doctor if you develop a rapidly rising fever, muscle aches or unusual weakness and have any risk factors for the disease, or if you have a persistent fever.
Brucellosis affects many wild and domestic animals. Cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, dogs, camels, wild boar and reindeer are especially prone to the disease. A form of brucellosis also affects harbor seals, porpoises and certain whales. The bacteria may be spread from animals to people in three main ways:
- Raw dairy products. Brucella bacteria in the milk of infected animals can spread to humans in unpasteurized milk, ice cream, butter and cheeses. The bacteria can also be transmitted in raw or undercooked meat from infected animals.
- Inhalation. Brucella bacteria spread easily in the air. Farmers, laboratory technicians and slaughterhouse workers can inhale the bacteria.
- Direct contact. Bacteria in the blood, semen or placenta of an infected animal can enter your bloodstream through a cut or other wound. Because normal contact with animals — touching, brushing or playing — doesn't cause infection, people rarely get brucellosis from their pets. Even so, people with weakened immune systems should avoid handling dogs known to have the disease.
Brucellosis normally doesn't spread from person to person, but in a few cases, women have passed the disease to their infants during birth or through their breast milk. Rarely, brucellosis may spread through sexual activity or through contaminated blood or bone marrow transfusions.
Brucellosis is very rare in the United States. Other parts of the world have much higher rates of brucellosis infection, especially:
- Around the Mediterranean Sea
- Eastern Europe
- Latin America
- The Caribbean
- The Middle East
People who live or travel in these areas are more likely to consume unpasteurized goat cheese, sometimes called village cheese. Unpasteurized goat cheese imported from Mexico has been linked to many cases of brucellosis in the United States.
Occupations at higher risk
People who work with animals or come into contact with infected blood are at higher risk of brucellosis. Examples include:
- Dairy farmers
- Slaughterhouse workers
Brucellosis can affect almost any part of your body, including your reproductive system, liver, heart and central nervous system. Chronic brucellosis may cause complications in just one organ or throughout your body. Possible complications include:
- Infection of the heart's inner lining (endocarditis). This is one of the most serious complications of brucellosis. Untreated endocarditis can damage or destroy the heart valves and is the leading cause of brucellosis-related deaths.
- Arthritis. Joint infection is marked by pain, stiffness and swelling in your joints, especially the knees, hips, ankles, wrists and spine. Spondylitis — inflammation of the joints between the bones (vertebrae) of your spine or between your spine and pelvis — can be particularly hard to treat and may cause lasting damage.
- Inflammation and infection of the testicles (epididymo-orchitis). The bacteria that cause brucellosis can infect the epididymis, the coiled tube that connects the vas deferens and the testicle. From there, the infection may spread to the testicle itself, causing swelling and pain, which may be severe.
- Inflammation and infection of the spleen and liver. Brucellosis can also affect the spleen and liver, causing them to enlarge beyond their normal size.
- Central nervous system infections. These include potentially life-threatening illnesses such as meningitis, an inflammation of the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord, and encephalitis, inflammation of the brain itself. | <urn:uuid:75ea9270-2e37-4a94-969b-9d804747884f> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/brucellosis/symptoms-causes/dxc-20214311?p=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282926.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00269-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923487 | 950 | 3.53125 | 4 | {
"raw_score": 1.6718171834945679,
"reasoning_level": 2,
"interpretation": "Moderate reasoning"
} | Health |
What You Should Know About Carbon Monoxide in Memphis
Carbon monoxide (CO) is a colorless, odorless, tasteless and poisonous gas.
It is produced by the incomplete burning of solid, liquid, and gaseous fuels. In
technical terms, it is produced by the incomplete oxidation of carbon in
NOTE: CO is NOT the “gas” people sometimes smell in their houses. That
odor is actually sulfur. Sulfur is added to natural gas (which is also odorless)
to alert you to a natural gas leak. If you ever smell this odor in your home,
evacuate and call MLG&W’s Emergency Line immediately at (901) 528-4465.
Why Is CO Dangerous To My Health?
Acute effects are due to the formation of carboxyhemoglobin (COHb) in the
blood, which inhibits oxygen intake. At even low levels, symptoms similar to the
flu are reported. In one study of randomly tested patients in an Emergency Room
complaining of flu-like symptoms, almost 25% had CO poisoning. At moderate
concentrations, angina, impaired vision, and reduced brain function may result.
At higher concentrations, CO exposure can be fatal. 40,000 people received
medical treatment in the US last year for CO poisoning. CO poisoning is the 1
cause of poison-related deaths and injuries on the world. (JAMA, 10/6/04)
10 Common Symptoms of Carbon Monoxide Poisoning
2) Fatigue, Weakness
3) Muscle Pain, Cramps
4) Nausea, Vomiting
5) Upset Stomach, Diarrhea
6) Confusion, Memory Loss
7) Dizziness, In coordination
8) Chest Pain, Rapid Heartbeat
9) Difficult or Shallow Breathing
10) Changes in Sensitivity of Hearing, Vision, Smell, Taste or Touch
Do I Have Anything in My Home That Produces CO?
You might. Any appliance fueled with natural gas, liquefied petroleum (LP
gas), oil, kerosene, coal, or wood produces CO. Appliances include not only
furnaces, but also boilers, water heaters, gas stoves, gas logs and unvented gas
appliances. Burning charcoal produces CO. Running cars produce CO. If you have
an attached garage and run a car in it, CO is likely entering your living space
(even with the garage door open). Even electric ovens in self-cleaning mode
What Might Cause Unacceptable Levels of CO in My Home?
The level of CO produced and the integrity of the method by which the CO
exits and/or enters the living space determines whether CO levels will become
unacceptable. Theses issues generally break down into these categories:
Excess Production of CO from Appliances:
Any (old or new) dirty, faulty, poorly adjusted, inefficient or improperly
installed gas appliance can emit more CO than the venting mechanisms installed
to remove it from the home were designed to handle. Old and new unvented
appliances and gas logs can also emit unsafe levels of CO directly into the
living space. Even when an appliance appears to be working properly, it may be
emitting excess CO. The only way to test this is with the proper equipment and
training. It cannot be done by sight, touch or smell. You cannot do it yourself.
Failure of Venting Mechanisms:
On the other hand, your appliances may be emitting CO within acceptable levels
(provided they were properly vented). However, due to a failure in the venting
mechanism, the CO level emitted becomes unsafe. For example: the flue may be
improperly sized, blocked, disconnected or leaking – forcing high levels of CO
back into the home (dangerous) rather than outside (acceptable). Something as
simple as a bird’s nest or other debris can block enough of a venting mechanism
to create a dangerous situation. Many companies install new gas appliances
without investigating whether the venting method requires changing too.
Issues Affecting the Pressure in the House:
Imagine your Memphis house as a living thing that breathes, because it does. All the air
inside your house comes from somewhere. Every day, air comes in and out from:
your dryer, kitchen vent hood, bathroom exhaust fans, the opening and closing of
doors and central air conditioning and heating ducts. When your house is
negative, it must draw air from every available place. For example, even with
your garage door open, your house might take all the available air out of your
garage. This is why it is dangerous to start a car indoors – even with the
garage door open.
Air Flow Issues, Stove Exhaust Hoods and Attic Fans Also Impact the CO Levels in | <urn:uuid:c83e22fb-502b-466c-9075-e3199de00f0f> | CC-MAIN-2019-51 | https://www.precisionhvac.com/memphis_contractor/hvac-2/carbon-monoxide-memphis/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-51/segments/1575540547536.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20191212232450-20191213020450-00413.warc.gz | en | 0.88263 | 1,033 | 3.3125 | 3 | {
"raw_score": 2.420841932296753,
"reasoning_level": 2,
"interpretation": "Moderate reasoning"
} | Health |
|Date:||15 January 2012|
Let me explain by starting with a simple example. You are already familiar with operator precedence, and how multiplication binds more tightly than addition when both operators appear in the same expression. In the following expression, a will first be multiplied with b, then the result of that operation will be added to c.
There is, in other words, a hidden intermediate result inside of this equation: the result of the multiplication. So (1) is, in fact, a shorthand for writing this sequence of two separate binary operations:
Note that our ability to transform (1) into the pair of lines (2) does not involve any special properties of the operators themselves. This does not illustrate some special feature of multiplication or addition, like the Distributive Property! Instead, we are working down at the lower and more fundamental level of asking what a complex math expression even means. So while we must use argument and proof to learn that addition is commutative, the operators and their precedence are simply a matter of definition — of what we decide it means when we string symbols together to form an expression in the first place.
(3) n = a.b(c)
Until a programmer really grasps what it means for a language to have “first-class functions” — functions that can themselves be manipulated as values — it might be difficult to see that a.b makes quite good sense simply standing by itself. It means “take the a object, look and see whether it has an attribute named b, and resolve the value of that attribute.” And so a.b works perfectly in front of (c) so long as the result of the attribute lookup happens to return a callable.
So expression (3) can be decomposed like expression (1), and in Python the following two steps are exactly equivalent to statement (3) — except, of course, for defining an extra local variable fn:
(4) fn = a.b n = fn(c)
One last note for newer Python programmers reading this: you might be suspecting that Python itself has some kind of magic involved here, because how else could it remember later whether you had pulled method fn off of the specific object a instead of off some other instance of that class? The answer is that every lookup of an instance method returns a new object, called a bound method, that remembers the object on which the lookup took place.
>>> class C: ... def __init__(self, n): ... self.n = n ... def __repr__(self): ... return 'C%d' % self.n ... def fn(self, m): ... return self.n + m ... >>> a = C(100) >>> b = C(220) >>> a.fn <bound method C.fn of C100> >>> b.fn <bound method C.fn of C220> >>> b.fn(5) 225 | <urn:uuid:a939a6db-a689-43b8-8955-f34c054902e2> | CC-MAIN-2013-48 | http://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2012/js/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-48/segments/1386164015892/warc/CC-MAIN-20131204133335-00038-ip-10-33-133-15.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929971 | 609 | 3.328125 | 3 | {
"raw_score": 2.575080156326294,
"reasoning_level": 3,
"interpretation": "Strong reasoning"
} | Software Dev. |
On January 8, 1967, Allied military forces began one of the largest search and destroy operations of the Vietnam War. Operation Cedar Falls involved a sweep by American and South Vietnamese troops through the sixty square miles of trees, thick undergrowth, and abandoned rubber plantations in the Iron Triangle and Thanh Dien Forest.
General William C. Westmoreland wanted U.S. troops to achieve a number of objectives during Cedar Falls, including the destruction of the headquarters for the Vietcong’s Military Region 4, which oversaw Communist military activities in and around Saigon. Westmoreland also hoped Cedar Falls would deny the Vietcong the use of the Iron Triangle as a base camp and staging area for attacks throughout III Corps. To accomplish that end, Westmoreland ordered his troops to destroy the Vietcong tunnel complex known to exist beneath the area.
Additionally, Westmoreland directed his subordinate commanders to relocate all the peasants living in the Iron Triangle to resettlement camps. MACV intelligence had determined the residents of the Iron Triangle to be solidly Vietcong and thus irredeemable. Their removal would eliminate a source of Vietcong recruits, porters, and supplies.
The offensive against the Iron Triangle began with a heli-borne assault on the fortified Vietcong village of Ben Suc. At the moment U.S. troops landed outside the village, loudspeakers mounted on helicopters announced in Vietnamese, “Attention people of Ben Suc! You are surrounded by Republic of Vietnam and Allied Forces. Do not run away or you will be shot as VC.” Dozens of men disobeyed the order, darting off into the tall grass next to the Saigon River or into the thickets further inland; over the course of the day, U.S. and South Vietnamese soldiers methodically tracked them down and killed them.
At the conclusion of the first day of the operation, American officials claimed forty-one Vietcong dead. Some of the dead were probably young men who fled into the surrounding countryside because they feared being drafted into the South Vietnamese Army or tortured by the South Vietnamese police.
Soon after the air assault on Ben Suc, Operation Cedar Falls lost steam. Like so many search and destroy operations since mid-1965, the Allies failed to find the Vietcong. At the end of the fourth day, the massive Allied force, which had grown to twenty-six manoeuvre battalions, had chalked up only fifty confirmed enemy dead. Forty-one of those dead had been tallied on the first day of the operation. The three subsequent days of the operation produced nine enemy deaths, or three per day. On day five, the 20,000 Allied troops involved in the operation did not find or kill a single Vietcong. A reporter on the scene commented, “…the largest allied offensive of the war, took on today the plodding, unspectacular characteristics that some American military officers predicted for it from the outset.”
The U.S. did accomplish one thing during Cedar Falls; it blew the countryside to smithereens. A week into the operation, MACV reported that thirty U.S. artillery batteries, with six howitzers each, had been shelling the Iron Triangle and Thanh Dien Forest non-stop for the past seven days. While the artillery batteries blasted away, U.S. aircraft flew 478 fighter-bomber sorties and twelve B-52 arc light raids.
The 1st Infantry Division and its hard-driving commander, William E. DePuy, requested and received the majority of the airstrikes and artillery support. In one seven-day period, aircrews conducted 660 tactical air strikes in support of DePuy’s 1st Infantry Division soldiers. DePuy had no qualms about unleashing so much destruction, believing it was justified because it saved U.S. lives. A fellow officer said of the division commander, “General DePuy likes to use a lot of airpower.”
All told, the Air Force conducted 1,113 tactical strike sorties and 102 B-52 sorties during Cedar Falls. Yet, for all the expended munitions, the enemy body count remained low. A high percentage of the bombs, artillery shells, and napalm directed at suspected Vietcong positions fell on uninhabited jungle, empty rice paddies, and South Vietnamese civilian structures.
In the final days of the operation, the body count nudged upward. When Cedar Falls ended at midnight on January 27-28, MACV announced that Allied forces had killed 720 enemy soldiers – or an average of thirty-seven enemy KIA per day for each day of the operation – while losing only 72 American KIA’s. The accuracy of the figure on enemy dead was suspect because it corresponded exactly to the 10 to 1 kill ratio long trumpeted by Westmoreland as the metric of operational success. But even with the apparent favourable kill ratio, the low number of enemy dead hardly justified the tremendous amount of ammunition, man-hours, fuel, and equipment devoted to the operation.
An unknown number of civilians died during Cedar Falls. How many will never be known. U.S. airstrikes and artillery barrages certainly killed some civilians. Others died when U.S. and ARVN soldiers burned down their huts. Allied troops set fire to the homes of peasants to force them out into the open so they could be rounded up and sent to GVN refugee camps. However, an indeterminate number of peasants became trapped inside their underground bomb shelters, where they had initially gone to seek safety from airstrikes and artillery shells. Unable to escape through the flames and smoke enveloping them, peasants died from burns or smoke inhalation. American advisor John Paul Vann observed, “…even two days before the end of the operation people were still coming out of caves who must have been there throughout the operation.” American and South Vietnamese soldiers removed 5,967 peasants from the Iron Triangle, almost all of them old men, women, and small children. Men of military age had apparently run-off with the Vietcong.
The aging and greasy-haired General Jonathan O. Seaman, the overall commander of the operation, declared at its conclusion that Allied units succeeded in depriving the Vietcong of “…a vast logistic complex and base area…We believe that it will take the heat off the immediate area and the capital….” Yet, just a few days later inside the Iron Triangle, the Vietcong sprung an ambush on a platoon of the 1st Infantry Division. Believing the triangle had been cleared of guerrillas, the 1st Division troops had been taken completely by surprise. MACV later reported that the platoon had suffered “heavy” casualties – military speak for having been slaughtered. The ambush indicated that the Vietcong had already returned to the Iron Triangle; or more likely, they had never left.
Operation Cedar Falls did result in the removal of the civilian population from the Iron Triangle; but the U.S. did not attain any of Westmoreland’s other goals. The region remained a Communist base area and jumping-off point, the Vietcong’s headquarters for Military Region 4 functioned as before, and the area’s vast tunnel network continued to do what it had always done – it hid the Vietcong from American spotter planes and foot patrols.
New York Times, “Vietcong Village to be Bulldozed: 3,800 People in Hostile Town to be Resettled,” January 11, 1967; New York Times, “More troops Join Allied Offensive,” January 12, 1967; New York Times, “Allies Press Attack, A Tough, Plodding Operation,” January 13, 1967.
New York Times, “Vietcong Village to be Bulldozed: 3,800 people in Hostile Town to be Resettled,” January 11, 1967.
New York Times, “Allies Press Attack, A Tough Plodding Operation,” January 13, 1967.
New York Times, “Airstrike Mark is Set in Vietnam,” January 15, 1967; New York Times, “U.S. Builds Up Force in Delta for Drive in Foe’s Stronghold,” January 14, 1967
New York Times, “Airstrike Mark,” January 15, 1967.
John Schlight, The War in South Vietnam, The Years of Offensive, 1965-1968: The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia, (Washington, D.C., GPO, 1999), Appendix 6.
Vietnam Task Force, Office of the Secretary of Defense, The Pentagon Papers, Parts IV.C.6 through IV.C.8, IV.C.6 (b), U.S. Ground Strategy and Force Deployments, 1965-1967, Volume II, (Nimble Books, LLC, 2011), 23.
New York Times, “Some May Have Died in Razed Villages,” January 28, 1967.
New York Times, “U.S. Reports Foe’s Casualties at 1,219 in Sweep,” Tom Buckley, January 24, 1967.
New York Times, “GIs Battered in ‘Iron Triangle’,” February 2, 1967. | <urn:uuid:28e243a6-0a32-4b48-bd09-806be3f59ac6> | CC-MAIN-2020-40 | http://ecointheknow.com/uncategorized/westmorelands-big-unit-war-part-i-cedar-falls/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-40/segments/1600402101163.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20200930013009-20200930043009-00473.warc.gz | en | 0.95512 | 1,928 | 3.15625 | 3 | {
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A Hooded Warbler, rare for this area, at the Lincoln Park Zoo where researchers from their Urban Wildlife Institute are surveying birds in order to replicate a 1898 to 1903 study published in Wild Birds in City Parks. (Michael Tercha, Chicago Tribune)
Like at least one of them has been doing almost every morning since March, Mason Fidino and Kelvin Limbrick are standing in a flat, grassy patch north of Lincoln Park's nature museum, looking intently at sky and trees and listening like, well, hawks.
The binoculars give one clue about their purpose, the field notebooks another.
And then the dialogue seals it. "Downy woodpecker at 20 to 30 meters," says Fidino, as Limbrick makes notes. "Ring-billed gull flyover ... Another golden-crowned (kinglet) at 30 to 40. ... That's the same flicker ... And that's a branch."
They are making a systematic catalog of the birds near Lincoln Park Zoo. But they aren't just any birders, and this isn't just any ornithological survey. Fidino and Limbrick, both in their mid-20s, are Lincoln Park Zoo urban wildlife specialists, and they are spending the spring re-creating a survey of park birds done more than a century ago — and rediscovered last year in a modest book in a Galena antique shop.
Their job is, literally, a walk in the park. To tag along with them one April morning is to witness science in action and to get at least a starter course in the highly specialized and surprisingly popular pursuit of birding.
Identifying birds, for instance, is done as much with the ears as with the eyes; its call might be the one thing that can help you distinguish one brown sparrow from another. The brown thrasher mimics other birds' calls so well that you think, "Oh, there's, like, 15 species in that one tree," Fidino says. "Oh, wait. It's one single brown thrasher."
Birders hear things others don't: That full-throated avian battle call that accompanies the eagle in the opening credits of "The Colbert Report," Fidino says, belongs more likely to a red-tailed hawk; the bald eagle's cry, which we soon hear while walking past its enclosure in the zoo, is rather meek.
Birders rely on an alphabet soup of acronyms: NOFL, pronounced "nah-ful," for northern flicker, for instance, and CAGO for the ubiquitous, annoying-to-many Canada goose. As Limbrick likes to say, "You can't spell Chicago without CAGO."
Also, birders use the term "birded" as shorthand for spotting birds and, indeed, for doing most anything related to birding. "It's like an all-purpose bird 'aloha,'" says Seth Magle, director of the zoo's Urban Wildlife Institute.
When Limbrick found a kite bearing an eagle pattern abandoned in the park, he mounted it above Fidino's desk with one word written on the accompanying slip of paper: "Birded."
When Fidino spots a rarity on the morning's walk, a hooded warbler (HOWA), the "coolest bird" he's seen in the Chicago area, not only is he moved to high-five his partner, they also say to each other, yes, "Birded."
The idea for the walk is to compare avian populations then and now, a notion that's scientifically valid, of course, and will, it is hoped, lead to a paper in a scientific journal. Fidino, too, will give a public talk on it May 2 in the zoo's education building.
But this one has the added charm of a great back story. It got its start more than a year earlier, when another zoo scientist, antiquing in Galena during a trip celebrating an anniversary, came across an intriguing turn-of-the-last-century book.
"Wild Birds in City Parks" turned out to be a detailed record of the birds its authors witnessed in the park, beginning in 1898.
"Being hints on identifying 145 birds," said the subtitle, "prepared primarily for the spring migration in Lincoln Park, Chicago."
It was written by a couple with the same last name, Herbert Eugene Walter and Alice Hall Walter. Married? Siblings? (Married, it would turn out.)
It had authorial flair, bits of bright verbal plumage: "A pair of field or opera-glasses is a valuable aid, although practice is necessary in learning to adjust them rapidly and to fix them instantly upon the bird," the authors wrote.
And it was a record of urban wildlife, a burgeoning field now but something of a rarity then. The book evangelized, in its way, for what the zoo does through the Urban Wildlife Institute, which is study city fauna: "During the migrations of the birds, city dwellers have one of the keenest delights of country life brought to their very doors, because many birds, migrating largely at night, are attracted by the lights of the city, and stop off on their long journey to feed, so that a city park often contains a greater variety of feathered visitors than an equal area of the country."
"I usually check antique shops for natural history books," said Allison Sacerdote-Velat, Lincoln Park Zoo's reintroduction biologist. "You can usually find some pretty cool field guides with good antique plates of animals and wildflowers."
"Wild Birds" was "a small book tucked away in a shelf of other natural history books. I was picking ones that had interesting bindings. This one had a small, plain, green binding." | <urn:uuid:f167adc5-95e2-49a5-9522-c4dd7a25db00> | CC-MAIN-2015-27 | http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-04-25/entertainment/ct-ent-0425-lincoln-park-birds-museum-20130425_1_lincoln-park-zoo-bald-eagle-birds | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-27/segments/1435375096287.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20150627031816-00078-ip-10-179-60-89.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963802 | 1,207 | 2.578125 | 3 | {
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"reasoning_level": 3,
"interpretation": "Strong reasoning"
} | Science & Tech. |
Headaches are currently defined as any form of pain that occurs in the head, face, or neck of the human body. This pain occurs through the structures that encompass the head and neck, and can be felt through any of these areas from the many nerves, blood vessels, muscles, and tissues that encompass your face, even your eyes, ears, and nasal cavities. Headaches can occur occasionally, or chronically depending on the type and cause of their occurrence. The classification system as written and published by the International Headache Society organizes headaches by four major categories: tension-type headaches, migraines, cluster headaches, and those headaches that occur in the cranial nerves.
Tension-type headaches are the only ones most of us will encounter in our lives, occurring in nine of out ten adults at least once. The level of pain associated with a tension type headache varies, but is usually less severe than the other three types of headaches. In most cases tension-type headaches cause mild levels of tightness and pressure anywhere along the face, neck, and areas of the head. A tension-type headache can be caused from stress, dehydration, and even caffeine in some cases.
Migraines range in moderate to severe pain, and can cause nausea, vomiting, and increased sensitivity to sound and light. Researchers have surmised that these well-known headaches occur in four phases. The prodrome, the initial stage of migraines, causes drowsiness and stiff muscles. The second phase, dubbed the aura, only occurs in 30 percent of migraine sufferers at most, and can affect either motor movements or your sensory input. For example, one may experience flashes of light or zigzag lines in vision, pins and needles sensations in your arms and hands, as well as the face and mouth. The third migraine phase is the actual pain, on one or both sides of the head, lasting anywhere between 4 hours and three days. The last phase is called the postdrome, and causes a sore feeling in the areas where pain was, as well as exhaustion and a general weakening of cognitive abilities. Only 6% of men and 18% of women will experience a migraine in their lives.
Cluster headaches are the most rare form of headaches, affecting only .1% of the population, and mostly males in their late 20’s. Known for its piercing pain in the area of the eye, a cluster headache is usually isolated to one side of the face. While they only last up to 90 minutes at a time, cluster headaches are called such because they can occur multiples throughout the day. Patients who suffer from cluster headaches often report experiencing them three times a day on a regular basis. Those who suffer from any type of headache on a frequent basis should not hesitate to inform their local doctor, as this could be a symptom of a greater problem at hand.
Suffering from Headaches?
Call our office at (310) 933-3077 to learn more about your treatment options. | <urn:uuid:c868f8a2-cddd-47a0-9dd2-d60afcc96525> | CC-MAIN-2019-18 | https://southbaytmj.com/pain/headaces-torrance/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-18/segments/1555578602767.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20190423114901-20190423140901-00233.warc.gz | en | 0.953816 | 614 | 3.546875 | 4 | {
"raw_score": 1.445661187171936,
"reasoning_level": 1,
"interpretation": "Basic reasoning"
} | Health |
Pleistocene Shorelines and Coastal Rivers: Sensitive Indicators of Quaternary Faults, Atlantic Coastal Plain, USA
Eight possible active faults beneath Quaternary Coastal Plain sediments are indicated by models showing expected patterns of shoreline regression and river deflections along tectonically inactive and active (where subsurface faults may affect surface processes) parts of the passive margin. Non-tectonic processes produce consistently spaced parallel shorelines and an absence of river deflections or seaward deflections of shorelines by major deltas with spacing dependent upon sediment influx rates. Differential regional uplift will cause divergence of shorelines toward, and deflection of rivers away from the end with greater uplift. Tectonic models show shoreline regression with a shoreline-parallel fault that is either seaward-side-up (SSU) or seaward-side-down (SSD) or with a shoreline-perpendicular fault (SPF). SSU interrupts non-tectonic patterns with convex-seaward deflections and wider spacing of older shorelines across uplifts and river deflections toward uplift-margins. SSD produces a convex-landward deflection and wider spacing of younger shorelines on the down-dropped side of faults and river deflections toward uplift-margins. SPF produces: convex-seaward deflections with wider spacing of older shorelines across uplifts and river deflections toward uplift-margins; convex-landward deflection and wider spacing of younger shorelines on down-dropped sides of faults where river deflections merge toward the lowest area; shorelines are discontinuous and may be difficult to correlate across faults. SPF patterns in the vicinity of the 1886 Charleston, SC earthquake indicate a NW-trending, 50-km long, NE-side-up fault active since Early Pleistocene near the Ashley River and suggest a similar 30-km long fault near the North Edisto River and a NW-trending, 50-km long, SW-side-up fault near the Broad River. Variations of SPF patterns in NC suggest E-W-trending, 150-km long, N-side-up faults extending westward from both Cape Fear and Cape Lookout and possibly a shorter one near Cape Hatteras. Previous workers invoked SSU to explain zones of river anomalies in the Carolinas, but those anomalies do not exhibit SSU patterns. SSD patterns both east and southwest of the Okefenokee Swamp suggest a N-trending, 100-km long, W-side-up fault near the St Marys and Satilla rivers in GA and a NW-trending, 75-km long, NE-side-up fault near the Suwannee River in FL. Possible Quaternary faults at these locations may indicate significantly greater risk from seismic hazards for east-coast communities.
EOS, Transactions, American Geophysical Union
Bartholomew, Mervin J., Frederick J. Rich.
"Pleistocene Shorelines and Coastal Rivers: Sensitive Indicators of Quaternary Faults, Atlantic Coastal Plain, USA."
Geology and Geography Faculty Presentations. | <urn:uuid:ef28b985-fa5d-4d3e-8626-d8fe98fa4d59> | CC-MAIN-2018-05 | https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/geo-facpres/66/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-05/segments/1516084894125.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20180124105939-20180124125939-00697.warc.gz | en | 0.864839 | 673 | 2.75 | 3 | {
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} | Science & Tech. |
Autonomic failure is a condition that develops when the nerves that control the heart and circulation become damaged. It is most often found in adults with neurodegenerative diseases that affect the brainstem or peripheral nerves, like Parkinson disease, Lewy body dementia, and multiple system atrophy. As a result, these patients have problems with blood pressure control, which is why they are followed in autonomic clinics.
One of the most challenging aspects for any doctor encountering a patient with autonomic failure is how to manage their blood pressure. When a patient with Parkinsonism stands up, their blood pressure can plummet to very low levels. But, when they lie down it often enters the hypertensive range. Treating the lows, often worsens the highs, – and vice versa, which means you have to be vigilant about both. More recently, there has been a shift in the attention to high blood pressure in Parkinson’s and multiple system atrophy. We recently took part in writing new international guidelines for the diagnosis and management of supine hypertension. But until now, it wasn’t quite clear what were the consequences of high blood pressure in patients with autonomic failure on the organs.
In the general population, high blood pressure (hypertension) is known as the silent killer and accelerates hardening of the arteries (arteriosclerosis). This can lead to stroke, coronary thrombosis and kidney failure. Blood pumped from the heart flows through increasingly narrowing arteries and arterioles, into the capillaries which have the smallest diameter. The capillaries have very delicate walls, which allows the oxygen and nutrients to diffuse across the membranes and into the tissues, but means they are very fragile. If the arterial pressure builds up, it’s the job of the small muscular arterioles to constrict and hold back the blood flow to prevent the pressure from the capillaries from rising and the vessels from bursting. Overtime, this causes the heart muscle to become thicker (hypertrophic) in order for the heart to pump harder against the resistance. It also destroys the white matter insulating the nerve cells in the brain and damages the kidney.
A new study led by Dr. Alberto Palma has led to some important new insights. Over many years, the team followed kidney function, thickness of the heart muscle, and the intensity of white matter lesion in a total of 57 patients with autonomic failure – the vast majority of which had multiple system atrophy. They divided the patients into those with and without high blood pressure and assessed their organ function over 2-years. Not only was high blood pressure when lying down associated with a higher incidence of organ damage to the heart, kidney and brain, it was also found to have a higher all-cause mortality. It’s something we have long suspected, but now can prove.
For the autonomic specialists, this raises some very important questions. The next steps are to define ways to prevent or manage high blood pressure in patients with autonomic failure. The paper underscores the importance of measuring blood pressure in different positions. In addition to taking readings while the patient is sitting, it’s also important to take measures lying flat and standing up. It’s really this range of blood pressures that can help guide treatment. It’s important to make sure we are detecting and managing supine hypertension as this has clear consequences for the organs.
Read more here:
Learn more about how to measure your blood pressure at home: here
Learn the non-pharmacological remedies that can help lower supine blood pressure in patients with autonomic failure: here. | <urn:uuid:c3819303-ab7b-4ea5-a37a-ec0fe4462514> | CC-MAIN-2021-43 | https://dysautonomiacenter.com/2020/06/19/high-blood-pressure-in-autonomic-failure-may-pose-a-risk-to-health/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-43/segments/1634323587767.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20211025185311-20211025215311-00261.warc.gz | en | 0.948166 | 739 | 3.15625 | 3 | {
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} | Health |
Risk Assessment and Genetic Counseling
Genes are the individual packets of information we inherent from our parents. They help determine traits like hair color, eye color, and susceptibility to disease. All our genes are present in pairs. One gene in each pair is passed down from our mother and the other from our father. Genes provided instructions that tell a cell what to do. Some genes instruct a cell to grow and divide. Other genes are responsible for telling cells how to break down certain substances in the body that are harmful.
Genes and environmental factors together play a role in the occurrence of cancer. There are different causes for cancer in one individual versus another. Sometimes, we see a specific pattern of cancer in the family called a cancer syndrome. A “syndrome” describes a group of features that repeatedly occur together. A cancer syndrome is present when several family members have the same type of cancer, or a cluster of specific forms of cancer. A single susceptibility gene in a family causes these cancers. Other forms of cancer may be caused by a variety of other mechanisms, such as familial exposure to environmental or dietary risk factors, several genes working together to contribute to cancer formation, or even by chance alone.
Your family history is suggestive of an inherited susceptibility to breast and ovarian cancer.
BRCA1 and BRCA2 are genes inherited in an autosomal dominant pattern. Everyone has these genes – one from their mother and one from their father. Certain families have inherited altered or mutated versions of these genes that increase their risk for cancer. When an individual carries an autosomal dominant gene mutation, there is a 50% or 1 in 2 chance that each child could inherit that altered gene. These genes can be inherited from either the mother or the father’s side of the family. It is best, but not always possible to begin genetic testing on a family member who has had cancer so that the test is easier to interpret.
Not everyone with a mutation will develop cancer. Women who carry an altered BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene have an estimated 60% lifetime risk of developing breast cancer. Women in the general population have a 1 in 8 or 12% risk to develop breast cancer in their lifetime. Only about 10% of women with breast cancer will have a BRCA mutation.
Women who carry an altered BRCA1 gene have an estimated 40% lifetime risk of developing ovarian cancer and women who have an altered BRCA2 mutation have an estimated 10-20% lifetime risk of developing ovarian cancer. The general population risk of ovarian cancer is 1 in 70 or 1.4% by age 90.
Testing positive for a BRCA mutation allows us to aggressively screen for breast and ovarian cancer. Screening guidelines change if you carry a mutation. Also, there are effective prevention strategies that can be initiated. Prophylactic surgery with mastectomy and/or oopherectomy is also an option considered by many women.
I have read and understand that BRCA mutation analysis is available and that my family history makes me a candidate for testing.
I would like to proceed with testing
I decline the test at this time | <urn:uuid:fc1a8c5b-3935-477b-bbc3-9e4d4906e792> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.chicagourogynecologist.com/center-services/hereditary-breast-ovarian-cancer/genetic-counseling-brca-testing/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335396.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929225326-20220930015326-00491.warc.gz | en | 0.951419 | 654 | 3.453125 | 3 | {
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} | Health |
It’s almost too simple. Why do porcupines have spines? Why do tortoises have shells? Why do zebras have stripes? Just as animals rely on their protective exteriors to help preserve life, so too do plants have methods to safeguard their life-giving properties. And when we humans violate nature’s order, we too pay a price. Here’s a case in point: the current epidemic of gluten intolerance. What accounts for it? Why are so many people sensitive or allergic to flour? Didn’t our ancestors eat grains?
Today, for many of us, it’s not the wheat itself that causes trouble. Rather, the process of grinding dormant wheat berries into flour has become bad for our health. Why is this happening? All dry grains, seeds, nuts, and legumes contain high amounts of phytic acid, an anti-nutrient that inhibits our absorption of iron, zinc, calcium, and magnesium. Ingesting too much of these plant toxins may cause cavities, osteoporosis, anemia, and other deficiencies. Though toxic to humans, phytic acid serves the plant well by keeping it in a dormant state until it’s ready to germinate. Releasing nature’s goodness: sprout! Nature has provided us with these three (3) healthful ways to neutralize phytic acid and unleash the nutrients our bodies need and crave: Soaking, Sprouting, and Fermenting.
Our ancestors deeply understood this. All ancient cultures “cultured” their food, not only for taste, texture, and natural preservation but also to “pre-digest” it, in order to deliver optimal nourishment. Somewhere on the highway to modern times, this ancient wisdom got blown-out with the exhaust. In order to sprout, grains must first be soaked. Soaking releases phytic acid, initiates fermentation, and triggers germination, whereby the grain, preparing to drop roots into soil, “sprouts a tail.” Fermentation, or letting your bread rise, would be the step after grinding your sprouts into a dough. This phase neutralizes whatever phytic acid is left over from the soaking and sprouting. Fermented foods are so necessary for the basis of a healthy colon and yet so sorely missing in modern man’s diet. Kitchen Alchemy- Turning Little Grasses into Sweet Pitas! Sprouting transforms grain from an indigestible granule into a tiny living “vegetable,” decreasing carbohydrates while increasing proteins, amino acids, essential vitamins (including B vitamins) and other nutrients. Sprouting also breaks down gluten, and that is why most people who are gluten intolerant can eat and enjoy—and digest and tolerate—sprouted grains just fine! For adults and children with or without gluten problems, sprouted breads offer regal benefits. They are bursting with nutrition, cost effective, and are decadently delicious.
Samantha Siegel, founder of Rustic Regal Sprouted Bread Bakery in Jerusalem, is a baker and healthful-eating educator who teaches private and group workshops throughout Israel. She specializes in delicious, cost-effective cuisine – sprouted, gluten-free, raw or cooked — geared to promoting youthfulness, natural beauty, optimal weight and joyful living. You may visit her website at www.rusticregal.com.
WellnessJerusalem members get 15% off on first introductory class on sprouting. | <urn:uuid:f96a9f31-dcdb-4ae5-8869-f9df1fd09e68> | CC-MAIN-2018-51 | http://www.healthrightisrael.com/sprouted-breads-promoting-health-nurturing-life-and-overcoming-gluten-woes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-51/segments/1544376823183.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20181209210843-20181209232843-00331.warc.gz | en | 0.924033 | 728 | 3.1875 | 3 | {
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Vincent J. Intondi. African Americans against the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and the Black Freedom Movement. Stanford Nuclear Age Series. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015. 224 pp. $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8047-9275-2; $85.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8047-8942-4.
Reviewed by Javan D. Frazier (Middle Georgia State College)
Published on H-War (March, 2016)
Commissioned by Margaret Sankey (Air University)
In this work, Vincent J. Intondi argues that the contribution of African Americans to the cause of nuclear nonproliferation in the United States has largely been marginalized and ignored by scholars. He describes how African American activists have worked to slow the development of or to eliminate nuclear weapons in America since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The author provides several explanations for this activism. Some opposed the development of nuclear bombs because of a perceived connection between colonialism and the development of nuclear technology. Activists noted that uranium from Africa was used in the first nuclear bombs, further stripping resources from colonial possessions in order to help colonial powers and their allies. Some feared that bombs would be used to support colonial empires against subjugated people. Some activists opposed nuclear weapons because they saw race as a driving reason for the use of these weapons against the Japanese and feared they would be used against other nonwhites in the world. Yet many African Americans opposed nuclear weapons because of how unsafe they felt these weapons made the world and how much of America’s resources were being utilized toward developing these weapons when such resources could have been used to improve American society.
Intondi thoroughly traces the development of antinuclear activism in the African American community. He acknowledges that the strength of this movement varied over time, due to such events in the United States as McCarthyism, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the hardening of the Cold War during the early Ronald Reagan years. Yet the author asserts that a chain of antinuclear activism is evident in the African American community and is part of a larger activism by African Americans against colonialism, racism, and discrimination. Intondi develops his argument by providing numerous quotations from Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, W. E .B. DuBois, Rayard Rustin, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King, Andrew Young, and others that tie the issues of colonialism, racism, discrimination, and nuclear proliferation together. Yet how strongly these activists and others focused on the antinuclear aspect of this argument varies. Some activists, such as Greg and Brenda Johnson who founded Blacks Against Nukes (BAN) in the 1980s, focused their work on antinuclear activities, while others focused on racism and discrimination in America. The chain that Intondi wishes to uncover appears to be more of a thread that can be found weaving its way through American activism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Intondi organizes his narrative chronologically and maintains this organizational structure throughout most of the book. However, there are some places where he deviates from this structure and the narrative becomes confusing. For example, in chapter 4, which centers on the 1960s antinuclear movement, Intondi focuses on King’s antinuclear statements. Toward the end of this chapter, he switches from describing King’s stance up to his death in 1968 to describing Malcolm X’s antinuclear stance in 1964. The switch in chronology makes the end of this chapter weak and weakens the overall persuasiveness of his arguments.
Intondi relies heavily on activists’ antinuclear statements to prove his arguments about the strength of their antinuclear commitment. He is most effective at proving his points when he interweaves these antinuclear accounts within his own narrative. When he includes lengthy statements standing on their own within a page, the narrative of his argument is interrupted and becomes less effective. The long quotations weaken his narrative and, thus, weaken his argument.
Intondi’s work provides a significant historiographical contribution to the history of antinuclear activism in the United States. He mentions antinuclear marches and rallies that are typically not included in histories of activism. Intondi’s particular focus on African Americans illustrates the struggles they faced to have their message heard and to not be restricted in the types of activism they could engage in. Furthermore, participants’ personal stories describe the struggles African Americans endured to achieve leadership roles and have their voices heard within the very organizations they worked in to try and facilitate change regarding nuclear proliferation in America and even the world. Intondi’s monograph points to the antinuclear activism of African Americans that existed within the larger peace movement, civil rights movement, and other activist movements since 1945.
If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at: https://networks.h-net.org/h-war.
Javan D. Frazier. Review of Intondi, Vincent J., African Americans against the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and the Black Freedom Movement.
H-War, H-Net Reviews.
|This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.| | <urn:uuid:6288e877-28b2-45c1-95d4-fca63c66029b> | CC-MAIN-2022-49 | https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=43088 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-49/segments/1669446710978.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20221204172438-20221204202438-00522.warc.gz | en | 0.942283 | 1,143 | 2.78125 | 3 | {
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"interpretation": "Strong reasoning"
} | Politics |
The Notary public forms the oldest branch of the legal profession. Their origins can be traced back to the Romans.
A notary prepares Notarial Acts, including authentic acts, mainly being documents executed in Jersey for use everywhere else in the world.
There are two basic types of notarial act; those in private form and those in public form, which are authentic acts/instruments.
The private form applies when a notary annexes a notarial certificate by way of authentication of a document and its contents, thus converting it into a notarial act.
The public form is an Authentic Act/Instrument drafted by a notary, which includes verification of identity, legal capacity and understanding of the document and awareness of the contents, confirming authority to enter into the transaction, for example, in the case of a corporate body.
The notary also authenticates the contents, after verifying the same. As officers of the law and holders of the Public Office of the notary public, the duties of notaries public are wide ranging and include the preparation and drawing up of private and public authentic Acts and Instruments under their signatures and official seal, which are accepted and recognised throughout the world.
A notary holds an official seal and Notarial Acts in Jersey have probative force. Notarial Acts under the signature and seal of a notary are recognised as evidence of a responsible official legal officer in all countries of the world. ‘A Notarial Act or Instrument may be received in evidence without further proof as duly authenticated in accordance with the requirements of the law unless the contrary is proved.’
Since the Ecclesiastical Licences Act 1533, created by the Court of Faculties, notaries have practised under the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Jersey Notaries are regulated by the Court of Faculties and the Faculty Office, which is presided over by the highest ecclesiastical Judge, the Master, who is often a Judge of the High Court of England and Wales.
In essence, notaries fall into three categories: Commonwealth notaries or former British Commonwealth notaries,
Firstly, Commonwealth or former British Commonwealth notaries are more akin to those in Jersey, in that they are legally qualified lawyers who are principally involved in the preparation and completion of Notarial Acts and Instruments for use abroad.
Secondly, Civil Law notaries are much more central to the legal processes in their countries. In mainland Europe and most parts of the Americas (notable exceptions being the USA and all Canadian provinces except Québec) most countries have legal systems based on the Code Napoléon, into which the role of the notary is deeply embedded.
Thirdly and lastly, USA type notaries are, for the most part, not legally qualified and are merely state appointed officers, who certify identification.
Carl Parslow | Notary Public | Notarial Services
For advice, assistance or further information on Jersey Notarial services please do not hesitate to call 630530 or email us on [email protected]
Parslows Notaries offer fixed fees, Jersey notarial service.
We can assist you with all your notarial requirements, whether it be certifying a true copy of a document, witnessing the signing of corporate documents, authenticating statutory records or witnessing a power of attorney. We also provide Jersey legal opinions if and when needed.
We offer same day notarial services.
Our clients are pleased with our service and fees; we are confident you will be too. | <urn:uuid:0f6208ff-85cb-407a-a6b8-1eb92f20c5d3> | CC-MAIN-2018-51 | https://parslowsjersey.com/2017/02/23/notary-public/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-51/segments/1544376824601.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20181213080138-20181213101638-00175.warc.gz | en | 0.949104 | 717 | 3.25 | 3 | {
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Obesity: Definition and
Definition of Obesity
The term 'obesity' - derived from the latin word obesus, meaning 'having eaten until fat' - describes an excessive accumulation of body fat (adipose tissue), usually caused by the consumption of more calories than the body requires to fuel its energy requirements. The excess energy is thus stored for future use.
Types of Obesity
As a very rough guide, a body weight which is twenty percent over the optimum weight tends to be associated with mild obesity. In recent times, with the advent of the Body Mass Index (BMI), most Western doctors equate obesity with a BMI of 30 or more. More serious categories of obesity include: morbid obesity (BMI 40+), and super-obesity (BMI 50-60). These conditions should not be confused with problems of edema caused by water retention.
The recent upsurge in the incidence and prevalence of obesity among Western adults and children, particularly morbid obesity, has triggered increased research into the underlying causes of the condition, especially the mechanism whereby the body adjusts food intake to its energy needs, as this can be disturbed by numerous factors, including hormone imbalances, glandular defects and other genetically transmitted conditions. However, while such genetic conditions are believed to be contributory causes, the extent of their influence is complicated by two things. First, the fact that obesity is frquently passed from mother to child via early feeding habits - an environmental or cultural phenomenon, rather than a genetic one. Second, obesity can precipitate metabolic disorders which themselves lead to a worsening of the obese condition. Distentangling cause and effect in these situations is not easy.
Impact of Environment and Culture on Body Weight
Traditionally, the medical view of obesity has been shaped by the unchanging nature of human biology. Human genes do not appear to have changed materially since prehistoric times. Thus most doctors attribute the recent obesity epidemic to environmental and cultural factors. Among these are: increased availability of food; food processing techniques that remove more and more natural ingredients from raw food; higher levels of stress which lead to increased emotional-eating and patterns of disordered eating especially among young adults and children; and a general reduction in physical exercise. Until research discovers a more significant role for genes in raising obesity levels, the medical consensus as the causes of obesity is likely to remain centered on these cultural and emotional factors. Not least because a number of Third World countries are beginning to count an increasing number of obese and morbidly obese people among the more affluent sections of their society.
The treatment of obesity has two principal objectives: the removal of the causative factors, including emotional or psychological causes, and the reduction of the excess adipose tissue. While the latter can be accomplished by a calorie-controlled obesity diet, or - in extreme cases - by bariatric surgical operations, the former can only be achieved through counseling and training, which is both expensive and time-consuming and requires the active involvement of the obese patient. For this reason, the success rate for the treatment of severely overweight people remains low. Ann weight loss forum has a large number of members who suffer from obesity, many of whom are losing weight for the first time in their lives. Well worth checking out if you need extra support to reduce weight.
Guide To Excess Body Fat
© 2000-2008 Ann. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:2439fe78-f3a8-4dca-95c4-80773ec10072> | CC-MAIN-2017-47 | http://www.annecollins.com/obesity/definition.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-47/segments/1510934807146.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20171124070019-20171124090019-00350.warc.gz | en | 0.94207 | 686 | 3.546875 | 4 | {
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By: Grace Helmke
Dreams can be a place of great comfort, but they can also be an incredible source of anxiety. Nightmares are a phenomenon that have wreaked havoc in the night for centuries. They have been the perpetrator of sleepless nights, anxious living, and declined mental health amongst individuals of all ages around the world.
Sleep happens in cycles. Most dreams occur during a cycle known as REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. During this phase, your brain releases glycine which causes the body to become paralyzed. This is likely a natural way to ensure that we don’t act out our dreams in real life. Oftentimes, this causes even more anxiety within a nightmare. It sometimes causes restricted motion within dreams, and can lead to sleep paralysis upon waking up, or exiting the state of REM.
According to the Harvard Medical school, a nightmare was defined as a “Disease when a man in his sleep supposes he has a great weight laying upon him,” in the late 1700s. Although this definition doesn’t necessarily come up today, nightmares are still considered dreams which result in “Feelings of terror, fear, distress, or anxiety”.
Some researchers say that people are working through difficult moments in a day, or traumatic experiences in life. It can get to the point of dysfunction. If the individual has frequent nightmares, they may be suffering from “nightmare disorder”, formerly “dream anxiety disorder”.
Dreams are defined as recent autobiographical episodes that are woven with past memories. Nightmares are simply dreams that produce a negative response. They are often confused with night terrors, which are fearful reactions that occur during transitions between phases of sleep. Usually, they occur when non-REM (non rapid eye movement) sleep transitions to REM (rapid eye movement) sleep.
Nightmares are generally caused by anxiety, stress, mental health disorders, irregular sleep, and medication. But possibly the most common cause is trauma and PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). NIghtmares are so common in those suffering from PTSD that it has become part of the criteria for determining diagnosis. A study by Sleep Medicine Clinics found that 80% of people suffering from PTSD have frequent nightmares. A study that looked at over 200 episodes of nightmares found that they frequently contained physical aggression, emotionally intense situations, and failures or unfortunate endings.
Nightmares caused by trauma often involve elements similar to the trauma itself. In a study by the US Department of Veterans affairs, around half the individuals who have nightmares due to PTSD replay their trauma in their dreams. In PTSD nightmares, the regions of the brain involved in these behaviors work to identify potential threats, and could be overactive or overly sensitive. These nightmares caused by trauma are most likely not too different from flashbacks in the daytime, and the general anxiety that these people experience everyday.
There are several ways that nightmares and PTSD are treated. The first step is to identify the stressor. From there, effective ways to manage it can be found through medication, psychological therapy, exercise, and so much more.
Psychological therapy for nightmares involves image reversal therapy, sometimes called IRT. This involves the recollection and writing down of nightmares. The patient is then asked to rewrite the nightmare and give it a positive ending. The patient is instructed to rehearse the new version before going to bed with the aim of eradicating the unwanted content. This is a pretty effective method of treatment. It has been found to reduce nightmare distress by significant numbers.
Nightmares are a response to trauma, anxiety, and stress experienced in life. They are a manifestation of what has harmed you. It is a record of your traumatic experiences and reminder of days you wish to forget. But there are ways in which people can heal and eradicate these pervasive dreams. There is always hope.
For more information, please visit: | <urn:uuid:a4ab85fd-b515-423e-8a3d-f9fc227997d9> | CC-MAIN-2023-23 | https://hpshplaidline.org/2021/06/08/the-nature-of-nightmares/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224653071.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20230606182640-20230606212640-00593.warc.gz | en | 0.959438 | 795 | 3.296875 | 3 | {
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} | Health |
If you are new to this series you may want to start at the beginning HERE.
A Food Co-op is a way to start saving money on food while still shopping for it locally. It is a food distribution outlet that acts like a cooperative. That means the decisions about the production and distribution of its food is chosen by its members. So In a co-op you get to say what type of food you get if it is organic or non-organic, how it is grown and where it is grown.
Food Co-ops are are wonderful for those who aren’t afraid to try to cook new things. They are also wonderful if you want the freshest produce for the cheapest price. For those who are not so comfortable with those things, they are a bit harder to use unless you are able to get past that.
Benefits of a food co-op
Even though stores buy in season items closer to the actual store, they still have to include transport time and shelf life into their decision when to pick. Food co-ops usually get their produce the day of or day after the produce is picked. so it can be the freshest and most prime time for picking. A lot of people say this makes the produce taste better.
Most co-ops get you the produce at around 50% off the price the store. This is often cheaper then when you shop the sale prices at stores.
This is also a great way to get your family eating a variety of healthy fruits and veggies while still saving money on food. During the summer there are lots of fruits and winter there is usually more veggies in your packs. When you get new things you have never cooked before you learn new ways to cook them and your family tries new items.
Some co-ops even include breads. This is an added bonus if you have a co-op near you that includes bread, as this is a huge cost for a lot of people. It is also usually freshly made and very healthy.
How to find a local food co-op
To find a co-op I would start on the internet look up “food co-op” and your city and see what comes up. Another good place to search is facebook as lots of local co-ops will have facebook groups or pages.
Second, you could do a search Bountiful Baskets to see if your state and city are included in their program. This is one of the cheapest and best co-ops I have seen so if you can get in on this I would definitely do it!
Third, I would ask grocers and food market participants if they know of any in your area. They may know if some if they participate in selling their produce to them.
Lastly, I would ask everyone around you if they know of one. If they don’t you may want to get a group of neighbors together and start your own co-op.
Do you have any tips for finding or Using a Co-op? Have you ever used one? What has your experience been?
Be sure to check out other ways to save money on food! | <urn:uuid:6f9c7a62-facb-4d5a-b36c-ea61155031cd> | CC-MAIN-2015-48 | http://www.livingafrugallife.com/saving-money-on-groceries-without-coupons-shopping-through-coops/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-48/segments/1448398444138.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20151124205404-00188-ip-10-71-132-137.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981023 | 641 | 2.640625 | 3 | {
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A superhero is a type of stock or comic character possessing extraordinary powers and dedicated to protecting the public. One of the early superheroes was Mandrake the Magician, created in 1934.
Mandrake the Magician was followed by many characters, usually based or originated from the USA, as Superman, Batman, SpiderMan, Iron Man, The Fantastic Four and many more. In my opinion, superheroes are flamboyant and entertaining role models. Their propensity to protect the public makes them an essential point of reference for the young minds of children and adults. Here below is an early Superman:
Here at Film Annex, we have started a very interesting trip into the world of Digital Literacy and Storytelling for developing countries, starting from Central Asia, and in particular Afghanistan.This month, we have launched the Examer Film Project to motivate young female Afghan students to write the stories that they would like to make into a real film.
In November, we will be looking into elevating the Examer Film Project to a further level by inspiring Afghan students to conceive and create their ideal superhero, not a replica or adaptation of traditional American superheroes, but a character associated with the culture and needs of young Afghans and Central Asians. I like to define this as the Superhero Factory. We focus on the concept of Building Local Talent. Instead of importing ideas and projects to Afghanistan, we will export them from Afghanistan to the rest of the world. #BuildLocalTalent. The Superhero Factory will operate with the technology and software available at the Film Annex and Women's Annex's Digital Media Lab in Herat, Afghanistan, including future 3D printers.
In parallel to what is happening in Afghanistan, here in New York, we will gather people with extraordinary powers, starting from magicians, just like Mandrake. The video and written documentation of real life extraordinary powers and skills are an important inspiration for young people all over the world who are seeking or conceiving the new generation of superheroes. We are here to inspire young women and men from all over the world, starting from Afghanistan.
Picture courtesy of Angela Shah.
Crime in NYC is down. Consequently, superheroes like Batman and Robin have more time to travel and discover new opportunities to learn and help. This is why Batman and Robin are interested in Central Asia where they understand the need and desire to a local superhero figure, a role model and positive influence for children and young adults pressed by difficult circumstances.
Please read this interesting article by Magician and Scientist Nicolas Heron: Magic and Critical Thinking for Education and Digital Literacy.
Please read my latest thoughts on the Examer Film Project: If you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room and my last encounter with Batman, BATMAN's Sustainable Philanthropy for Afghanistan Education and Women Empowerment. | <urn:uuid:7d6c57d1-fe53-4d1f-a250-57f57505f02d> | CC-MAIN-2021-39 | https://www.bitlanders.com/blogs/superhero-factory-for-afghanistan-central-asia-and-beyond-storytelling-buildlocaltalent-digitalliteracy/77588 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-39/segments/1631780060803.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20210928122846-20210928152846-00452.warc.gz | en | 0.926303 | 571 | 2.84375 | 3 | {
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Orville Aker was 10 years old when Walt Disney character Mickey Mouse premieres in his first cartoon, "Plane Crazy". Walter Elias Disney was an American entrepreneur, animator, voice actor and film producer. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film producer, Disney holds the record for most Academy Awards earned by an individual, having won 22 Oscars from 59 nominations. He was presented with two Golden Globe Special Achievement Awards and an Emmy Award, among other honors. Several of his films are included in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
Orville Aker was 21 years old when Adolf Hitler signs an order to begin the systematic euthanasia of mentally ill and disabled people. Adolf Hitler was a German politician, demagogue, and Pan-German revolutionary, who was the leader of the Nazi Party, Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and Führer ("Leader") of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945. As dictator, Hitler initiated World War II in Europe with the invasion of Poland in September 1939, and was central to the Holocaust.
Orville Aker was 27 years old when World War II: Combat ends in the Pacific Theater: The Japanese Instrument of Surrender is signed by Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu and accepted aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. The Pacific War, sometimes called the Asia-Pacific War, was the theater of World War II that was fought in the Pacific and Asia. It was fought over a vast area that included the Pacific Ocean and islands, the South West Pacific, South-East Asia, and in China.
Orville Aker was 37 years old when Disneyland Hotel opens to the public in Anaheim, California. The Disneyland Hotel is a resort hotel located at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California, owned by the Walt Disney Company and operated through its Parks, Experiences and Consumer Products division. Opened on October 5, 1955, as a motor inn owned and operated by Jack Wrather under an agreement with Walt Disney, the hotel was the first to officially bear the Disney name. Under Wrather's ownership, the hotel underwent several expansions and renovations over the years before being acquired by Disney in 1988. The hotel was downsized to its present capacity in 1999 as part of the Disneyland Resort expansion.
Orville Aker was 46 years old when The Beatles make their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, performing before a "record-busting" audience of 73 million viewers across the USA. The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. With members John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they became widely regarded as the foremost and most influential music band in history. Rooted in skiffle, beat and 1950s rock and roll, the Beatles later experimented with several musical styles, ranging from pop ballads and Indian music to psychedelia and hard rock, often incorporating classical elements and unconventional recording techniques in innovative ways. In 1963, their enormous popularity first emerged as "Beatlemania"; as the group's music grew in sophistication, led by primary songwriters Lennon and McCartney, the band were integral to pop music's evolution into an art form and to the development of the counterculture of the 1960s.
Orville Aker was 60 years old when Jim Jones led more than 900 members of the Peoples Temple to mass murder/suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, hours after some of its members assassinated U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan (pictured). James Warren Jones was an American religious cult leader who initiated and was responsible for a mass suicide and mass murder in Jonestown, Guyana. He considered Jesus Christ as being in compliance with an overarching belief in socialism as the correct social order. Jones was ordained as a Disciples of Christ pastor, and he achieved notoriety as the founder and leader of the Peoples Temple cult.
Orville Aker was 62 years old when Mount St. Helens erupts in Washington, United States, killing 57 people and causing $3 billion in damage. Mount St. Helens or Louwala-Clough is an active stratovolcano located in Skamania County, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is 50 miles (80 km) northeast of Portland, Oregon and 96 miles (154 km) south of Seattle, Washington. Mount St. Helens takes its English name from the British diplomat Lord St Helens, a friend of explorer George Vancouver who made a survey of the area in the late 18th century. The volcano is located in the Cascade Range and is part of the Cascade Volcanic Arc, a segment of the Pacific Ring of Fire that includes over 160 active volcanoes. This volcano is well known for its ash explosions and pyroclastic flows. | <urn:uuid:c01d850f-2683-45bd-9477-5f8b57de458f> | CC-MAIN-2021-25 | https://billiongraves.com/burial-record/Orville-Aker/8565 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-25/segments/1623488512243.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20210622063335-20210622093335-00307.warc.gz | en | 0.968883 | 977 | 2.578125 | 3 | {
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"reasoning_level": 2,
"interpretation": "Moderate reasoning"
} | History |
The term Merchant Navy came into use when King George V bestowed the same title on the British Merchant fleet of ships after they rendered commendable services during the First World War. However, in modern times Merchant Navy denotes the fleet of Merchant Vessels that are registered in a country and used to transport goods and people in times of peace. During times of war, Merchant Navy may be summoned to transport reinforcements to the advanced posts of the Naval Forces. In fact, the Merchant Navy of the United States is called United States Marines.
Merchant Navy rose to prominence during the world wars when it provided substantial support to the Navies of the warring nations. Merchant Navy thus, became a championed career choice.
Life At Sea Yesterday
However, Life at Sea in the yesteryears was a difficult affair. Without the modern communication systems which ships proudly feature today, a job in the Merchant Navy could become a tedious or dangerous affair. There was no way to know for sure whether the seas would remain calm or not. The job of a seafarer was in fact one of the most unpredictable professions. Crew of a Merchant Ship would be out in the waters for months at a stretch without any news of their families or the rest of the world. Thus, Sea-Voyage stories were always adventurous and fascinating with lots of unexpected events and with touches of poignancy.
Life At Sea Today
The technological advances in the field of communication ensured that Life at Sea today is a safer and much more comfortable affair. Advanced radar systems and satellite communication provides early warnings about weather conditions and the GPRS systems provide the exact location of the ship. Sophisticated gadgets providing wireless internet access, wireless-enabled capability for cell-phones, desk telephones etc. now enable the crew to stay in touch with the rest of the world.
Reasons To Select Merchant Navy As A Career
Merchant Navy is one of the most sought-after professional careers. The high degree of professionalism which has replaced the carefree ways of the ancient seamen, better safety and communication systems and better salaries and growth opportunities have pushed jobs in Merchant Navy to be one of the topmost career choices. The structure of leaves is customized to suit the life of crew members. An employee of Merchant Navy works for 9 months and stays home for 1 month. Merchant Navy offers a career of high prestige and repute. It can be said that Career in Merchant Navy is a promising one.
There are training academies which provide Maritime Training Courses that amply help in the selection to the Merchant Navy. The prominent training academies have tie-ups with shipping companies for placements of the trainees.
Among the Merchant Navy Academics in Dehradun, Siroi Maritime Academy of Merchant Navy is a prominent name with a repute of high placements. Online registrations and enquiries regarding the opportunities offered at Siroi Maritime Academy of Merchant Navy can be made at www.merchantnavyssm.com. | <urn:uuid:dbdca1f1-66b1-46be-83da-de38f24683d0> | CC-MAIN-2018-05 | http://www.siroimaritimeacademy.com/blog/17-select-merchant-navy-as-a-career-by-merchantnavyssm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-05/segments/1516084886639.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20180116184540-20180116204540-00084.warc.gz | en | 0.947102 | 605 | 3.0625 | 3 | {
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"reasoning_level": 2,
"interpretation": "Moderate reasoning"
} | Education & Jobs |
"Jan. 2, 2013 -- Medical experts say Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is extremely lucky that her medical team found the blood clot they are now treating with blood thinners.
The rare clot in a vein between her brain and skull was di"...
- Patient Information:
Details with Side Effects
Read the Medication Guide that comes with XENAZINE before you start taking it and each time you refill the prescription. There may be new information. This information does not take the place of talking with your doctor about your medical condition or your treatment. You should share this information with your family members and caregivers.
What is the most important information I should know about XENAZINE?
- XENAZINE can cause serious side effects, including:
- suicidal thoughts
- suicidal actions
- You should not start taking XENAZINE if you are depressed (have untreated depression or depression that is not well controlled by medicine) or have suicidal thoughts.
- Pay close attention to any changes, especially sudden changes, in mood, behaviors, thoughts or feelings. This is especially important when XENAZINE is started and when the dose is changed.
Call the doctor right away if you become depressed or have any of the following symptoms, especially if they are new, worse, or worry you:
- feel sad or have crying spells
- lose interest in seeing your friends or doing things you used to enjoy
- sleep a lot more or a lot less than usual
- feel unimportant
- feel guilty
- feel hopeless or helpless
- more irritable, angry or aggressive than usual
- more or less hungry than usual or notice a big change in your body weight
- have trouble paying attention
- feel tired or sleepy all the time
- have thoughts about hurting yourself or ending your life
What is XENAZINE?
XENAZINE is a medicine that is used to treat the involuntary movements (chorea) of Huntington's disease. XENAZINE does not cure the cause of the involuntary movements, and it does not treat other symptoms of Huntington's disease, such as problems with thinking or emotions.
It is not known whether XENAZINE is safe and effective in children.
Who should not take XENAZINE?
Do not take XENAZINE if you:
- are depressed or have thoughts of suicide. See “What is the most important information I should know about XENAZINE?”
- have liver problems.
- are taking a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) medicine. Ask your doctor or pharmacist if you are not sure.
- are taking reserpine. Do not take medicines that contain reserpine (such as Serpalan® and Renese®-R) with XENAZINE. If your doctor plans to switch you from taking reserpine to XENAZINE, you must wait at least 20 days after your last dose of reserpine before you start taking XENAZINE.
What should I tell my doctor before taking XENAZINE?
Tell your doctor about all your medical conditions, including if you:
- have emotional or mental problems (for example, depression, nervousness, anxiety, anger, agitation, psychosis, previous suicidal thoughts or suicide attempts)
- have liver disease
- have any allergies. See the end of this Medication Guide for a complete list of the ingredients in XENAZINE.
- have breast cancer or a history of breast cancer
- have heart disease that is not stable, have heart failure or recently had a heart attack
- have an irregular heart beat (cardiac arrhythmia)
- are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if XENAZINE can harm your unborn baby.
- are breast-feeding. It is not known if XENAZINE passes into breast milk.
Tell your doctor about all the medicines you take, including prescription medicines and nonprescription medicines, vitamins and herbal products. Using XENAZINE with certain other medicines may cause serious side effects. Do not start any new medicines while taking XENAZINE without talking to your doctor first.
How should I take XENAZINE?
- XENAZINE is a tablet that you take by mouth.
- Take XENAZINE exactly as prescribed by your doctor.
- You may take XENAZINE with or without food.
- Your doctor will increase your dose of XENAZINE each week for several weeks, until you and your doctor find the best dose for you.
- If you stop taking XENAZINE or miss a dose, your involuntary movements may return or worsen in 12 to 18 hours after the last dose.
- Before starting XENAZINE, you should talk to your healthcare provider about what to do if you miss a dose. If you miss a dose and it is time for your next dose, do not double the dose.
- Tell your doctor if you stop taking XENAZINE for more than 5 days. Do not take another dose until you talk to your doctor.
- If your doctor thinks you need to take more than 50 mg of XENAZINE each day, you will need to have a blood test to see if it is safe for you.
What should I avoid while taking XENAZINE?
Sleepiness (sedation) is a common side effect of XENAZINE. While taking XENAZINE, do not drive a car or operate dangerous machinery until you know how XENAZINE affects you. Drinking alcohol and taking other drugs that may also cause sleepiness while you are taking XENAZINE may increase any sleepiness caused by XENAZINE.
What are the possible side effects of XENAZINE?
XENAZINE can cause serious side effects, including:
- Depression, suicidal thoughts, or actions. See “What is the most important information I should know about XENAZINE?”
- Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome (NMS). Call your
doctor right away and go to the nearest emergency room if you develop these
signs and symptoms that do not have another obvious cause:
- high fever
- stiff muscles
- problems thinking
- very fast or uneven heartbeat
- increased sweating
- Parkinsonism. Symptoms of Parkinsonism include: slight shaking, body stiffness, trouble moving or keeping your balance.
- Restlessness. You may get a condition where you feel a strong urge to move. This is called akathisia.
- Trouble swallowing. XENAZINE may increase the chance that you will have trouble swallowing. Increased coughing may be the first sign that you are having trouble swallowing. Trouble swallowing increases your risk of pneumonia.
- Irregular heartbeat. XENAZINE increases your chance of having certain changes in the electrical activity in your heart which can be seen on an electrocardiogram (EKG). These changes can lead to a dangerous abnormal heartbeat. Taking XENAZINE with certain medicines may increase this chance.
- Dizziness due to blood pressure changes when you change position (orthostatic hypotension). Change positions slowly from lying down to sitting up and from sitting up to standing when taking XENAZINE. Tell your doctor right away if you get dizzy or faint while taking XENAZINE. Your doctor may need to watch your blood pressure closely.
- Tardive dyskinesia (TD). TD is a condition where there is repeated facial grimacing that cannot be controlled, sticking out of the tongue, smacking of the lips, puckering and pursing of the lips, and rapid eye blinking. XENAZINE works like other drugs that can cause TD. If you get TD with XENAZINE, it is possible that the TD will not go away.
Common side effects with XENAZINE include:
- sleepiness (sedation)
- trouble sleeping
- tiredness (fatigue)
Tell your doctor if you have any side effects. Do not stop taking XENAZINE without talking to your doctor first.
Call your doctor for medical advice about side effects. You may report side effects to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) at 1-800-FDA-1088.
General information about XENAZINE
XENAZINE contains the active ingredient tetrabenazine. It also contains these inactive ingredients: lactose, maize starch, talc, and magnesium stearate. The 25 mg tablet, which is pale yellow, also contains yellow iron oxide.
Medicines are sometimes prescribed for conditions that are not listed in a Medication Guide. Do not use XENAZINE for a condition for which it was not prescribed. Do not give XENAZINE to other people, even if they have the same symptoms that you have. It may harm them. Keep XENAZINE out of the reach of children.
This Medication Guide summarizes the most important information about XENAZINE. If you would like more information, talk with your doctor. You can ask your doctor or pharmacist for information about XENAZINE that is written for healthcare professionals. You can also call the XENAZINE Information Center at 1-888-882-6013 (option 1) or visit www.xenazineusa.com.
This Medication Guide has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Last reviewed on RxList: 10/29/2012
This monograph has been modified to include the generic and brand name in many instances.
Additional Xenazine Information
Report Problems to the Food and Drug Administration
Get breaking medical news. | <urn:uuid:3994965f-5228-497c-bb46-058b04eddeec> | CC-MAIN-2014-23 | http://www.rxlist.com/xenazine-drug/medication-guide.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-23/segments/1406510267824.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20140728011747-00072-ip-10-146-231-18.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91057 | 2,001 | 2.625 | 3 | {
"raw_score": 1.8756277561187744,
"reasoning_level": 2,
"interpretation": "Moderate reasoning"
} | Health |
St. Peter’s Basilica, located in Vatican City, is perhaps the most famous Christian worship space in the world. It is also an enormous and masterful collection of works from some of the greatest artists in history. Numerous artists contributed to the construction and decoration of this vast cathedral, but Bernini was the primary architect of St. Peter’s Basilica for the last fifty years of his life; he created some of the most important and impressive pieces that adorn the church.8
Although the entire basilica contains numerous, impressive works and structures from the Baroque—as well as the Renaissance—the apse in the rear of the Cathedral is perhaps the best representation of the Baroque.
Upon approaching the apse, one cannot help but be amazed by the sheer size of the space—and the entire building, for that matter. The high, domed ceiling is ornately decorated with painted stucco depictions of Christ, several saints, and numerous other heavenly hosts. Gilt trim borders each image and creates an awe-inspiring grandeur throughout the entire space. The use of grandiose designs and decorations is common throughout Baroque architecture; it facilitates the desired overwhelming effect felt by the viewer.
Numerous sculptures of saints are tucked into alcoves on either side of the main altar, but the primary piece in the room—and the one created by Bernini himself—is the Chair of St. Peter. This massive, bronze monument to the Church’s founder is not simply the altarpiece for the apse, but it is also an extravagant encasement of an important relic: a chair that many believed to have been used by St. Peter. The original chair, in a state of disrepair during Bernini’s time, is enclosed within this bronze throne.
The chair is backed by a gilded depiction of St. Peter receiving the keys to the church from Jesus. Behind and above the chair is a host of gilded cherubs and angels, as well as sculpted clouds and rays of light that are emanating from a central pane of stained glass window. In this pane is a dove holding an olive branch, a common representation of the Holy Spirit in the Christian tradition. With exterior light illuminating the pane, as well as the general glow of the gilded bronze, the entire sculpture radiates a heavenly aura, which is surely meant to enrapture and inspire the viewer.
The Chair is supported by sculptures of the Four Doctors of the Church: St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Chrysostom, and St. Athanasius, all of whom were major reformers.8 These dynamic portrayals, which are detailed and life-like, give an otherwise stationary object—a throne—a sense of movement. Combined with the rays of sunlight that are bursting forth from behind the throne, this dynamism—a defining a feature of the Baroque6—creates the feeling that this enormous structure is somehow moving toward the viewer. This piece was meant to elicit emotion and to be a full experience for the audience; the entire structure carries with it the “dramatic theatricality”6 that Bernini strived for in his architectural works.
The four figures supporting the throne also serve as rhetorical figures, or guides, for the Christian viewer; Christians are meant to support the Church, and perhaps reform it when necessary. This can be seen as a subtle reference to the Counter-Reformation participants of the time.
With the combination of the lighting, the painted stucco ceiling, the architecture of the room, and the way the sculpture seems to have become a part of that architecture, the apse in St. Peter’s Basilica is a fantastic example of a Baroque composto; it blends different art media into an awe-inspiring and coherent piece. The grandiosity created by the composto, and the dynamic nature of the Chair of St. Peter, generates a moving and dramatic experience for the viewer. This in turn conveys the Church’s Counter-Reformation message of personal encounters with God.
Learn more here: http://www.vatican.va/various/basiliche/san_pietro/index_it.htm | <urn:uuid:ca4880fb-570f-411d-99ce-34701b6c7981> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://blogs.cuit.columbia.edu/deb2170/the-apse-of-st-peters-basilica/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573760.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819191655-20220819221655-00616.warc.gz | en | 0.959582 | 876 | 2.90625 | 3 | {
"raw_score": 2.6125030517578125,
"reasoning_level": 3,
"interpretation": "Strong reasoning"
} | Art & Design |
What is a LightCatcher?
Thanks to an ingenious mirror and technology system, the LightCatcher brings more and longer daylight into your buildings. That's the one ecological and economic alternative for skylights or traditional domes: the LightCatcher brings green energy, lots of light and puts a stop to temperature fluctuations.
The basic operation
The basic operation of the LightCatcher is very simple. A mirror is integrated into a polycarbonate skylight that focuses on the optimum light point: often this is the sun, and often another point when the sun is hidden behind clouds or obstacles. The mirror captures the daylight and that light is reflected inwards, filtered and amplified in a light shaft, after which it is neatly distributed throughout the building.
The result: an average of ten hours a day, the artificial light can be turned off now that the LightCatcher brings in intense and pleasant daylight. Thanks to the LightCatcher, a roof opening of 1.6m² provides an abundance of light to a zone of no less than 60 to even 120m² on the floor.
That is completely free. The LightCatcher mirror is controlled by a patented sensor technology linked to a microcontroller, and that technology doesn't consume a cent of energy: an integrated solar panel ensures that the LightCatcher works completely autonomously, without being connected to the electricity grid. And so the LightCatcher with a particularly small roof opening brings in maximum daylight into a building (especially Best Available Technology)
EcoNation developed the LightCatcher in collaboration with the University of Ghent (Worldwide Patent). Today, the LightCatcher is the only skylight that meets all the requirements of 'Best Available Technology'. This means that the LightCatcher exceeds the strictest European standards in terms of light efficiency, light diffusion, thermal insulation and environmentally friendly production (the CO2 footprint of a LightCatcher is no less than 6.6 times smaller than that of traditional skylights: less material for more light).
The LightCatcher is suitable for industrial and public buildings .
Fit for flat roofs, but also for pitched roofs: the curb (that is the load-bearing structure that is placed on the roof and integrates the LightCatcher in your roof) is then adjusted so that the technology can be placed neatly flat.
The LightCatcher fits both in new construction as in existing buildings. With new construction, we can already take an optimal placement into account in the design phase. For existing buildings, we assume the existing division of your infrastructure, including any obstacles or impediments (for example, air hoses, high racks or other obstacles at the height of the ceiling).
The LightCatcher light shaft can sag deeply to, for example, connect perfectly to your suspended ceiling, but can also be perfectly integrated at ceiling height. The shaft length is determined in consultation with you.
Flat or pitched roof, new construction or not: the LightCatcher adapts easily. The only requirement is a free roof opening of 1.30m by 1.30m. This is necessary to get the light shaft through the roof.
The LightCatcher was developed in 2009 by EcoNation R&D, the research body of EcoNation NV. Through intensive collaboration with the research partners listed below, a robust and reliable system was designed with the aim of providing a room with maximum daylight.
Dieudonné Lefèvrestraat 17
Green Light Flanders
Brothers De Smetstraat 1
university of Ghent
bd. A. Reyerslaan 80
Lab Light Technology
Brothers De Smetstraat 1
Bure tongs 200 | <urn:uuid:f8ee3aed-e6af-437f-8b8c-699f3801e397> | CC-MAIN-2023-06 | https://en.econation.be/renovatie | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-06/segments/1674764494976.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20230127101040-20230127131040-00384.warc.gz | en | 0.897034 | 883 | 2.8125 | 3 | {
"raw_score": 2.4098660945892334,
"reasoning_level": 2,
"interpretation": "Moderate reasoning"
} | Industrial |
It consists of 40 questions. A variety of question types is used in order to test a wide range of reading skills.
Task 1 is a letter and you must write at least words. You should spend about 20 minutes out of the hour for Task 1.
Task 2 is an essay and you must write at least words. You should spend about 40 minutes for Task 2. The essay is usually a discussion of a subject of general interest. You may have to present and justify your opinion about something, give the solution to a problem or compare differing ideas or viewpoints.
Your final band for Task 2 will be effectively an average of the four marks awarded in these areas. Task Response This mark grades you on the content of your essay.
It marks whether you have fully addressed all parts of task. The examiner wants you in your essay to have a fully developed answer to the question given with relevent and extended ideas and support.
The support is the facts that you use to back up your ideas. Support is very important in Task 2. You need to bring in facts from your own experience in order to support your ideas.
Coherence and Cohesion These two are interrelated which is why they are done together. Cohesion is how your writing fits together.
Does your writing with its ideas and content flow logically? Coherence is how you are making yourself understood and whether the reader of your writing understands what you are saying.
An example of bad coherence and cohesion would be as follows: The writer should have written: Sentence 1 has made a cohesion and coherence error as well as a vocabulary one. This is an exaggerated example but it shows what I mean. Good cohesion and coherence is not noticeable as it allows the writing to be read easily.
Good cohesion and coherence also includes good and appropriate paragraph usage. Lexical Resource This area looks at the your choice of words. The marker will look at whether the right words are used and whether they are used at the right time in the right place and in the right way.Practice your IELTS Academic writing test skills.
Two practice writing tasks over a 1 hour test. Download the practice test questions and answers sheet. Online training through video classes Practice exams for Reading, Writing & Listening Training for Academic and General Modules Tutor assistance through email & chat You can take classes any where, any time All these just for $99, But now from $ The IELTS Academic Task 1 Writing is not an easy part of the exam.
Describing a graph well in 20 minutes is not something most people can do straight away whether they are English speakers or not. Online training through video classes Practice exams for Reading, Writing & Listening Training for Academic and General Modules Tutor assistance through email & chat You can take classes any where, any time All these just for $99, But now from $ Practice makes perfect when it comes to IELTS Writing.
Luckily, we have a huge selection of IELTS Writing practice questions for you on this site. With many thanks to David Recine for his enormous contributions to this post..
If you’ve been searching for an IELTS practice test online, well done! It’s a great idea to practice . | <urn:uuid:95a650d5-20d5-4f4c-a04b-0fcce78c3e7b> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://ziwacimujeku.regardbouddhiste.com/ielts-practice-test-academic-writing-34073qz.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030338280.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007210452-20221008000452-00453.warc.gz | en | 0.943229 | 662 | 3.09375 | 3 | {
"raw_score": 1.4555549621582031,
"reasoning_level": 1,
"interpretation": "Basic reasoning"
} | Education & Jobs |
How to Convert a BIN File to TXT
Comstock Images/Comstock/Getty Images
Converting a binary file (.BIN) to a text file (.TXT) is easier than the average computer user may think. The process of converting the two files from one to another is as easy as a few clicks of the mouse. Because .BIN files and .
TXT files can read one another, the process of switching the two will not take up much of your time. You've got several options to choose from, ranging from simply changing the file extension yourself to using a free online conversion website.
Open "My Computer" and then the "Control Panel." Open "Folder Options." Click the "View" tab in the "Folder Options." Scroll down until you see the line "Hide extensions for known file types." Deselect this option and click "Apply" followed by "OK." Right-click on the .BIN file you wish to convert and change the file extension from ".bin" to ".txt" and press "Enter" on your keyboard. A warning will probably pop up that asks if you are sure if you want to change the file extension. Press "Yes." Your .BIN file is now a .TXT file.
- Converting a binary file (.BIN) to a text file (.TXT) is easier than the average computer user may think.
- Scroll down until you see the line "Hide extensions for known file types."
Direct your browser to My PlayGround (see Resources) for another alternative. Copy the contents of your .BIN file and paste them in the "Binary to decode" box. (You can view the file itself by right-clicking on it and choosing to open it as a Text document; it is still written in binary while being viewed through the Text document.) Click the "To Text" button under the "Binary to decode" box to convert your .BIN file into a .TXT file.
Go to the Snarkles website (see Resources) for yet another alternative. To convert your file to a .TXT file, click the radio button next to "Convert from binary to text." Then copy the contents of the .BIN file by opening it via Text document and pasting it into the box on the Web page. Click "Convert!" to convert the contents into a .TXT file.
- Direct your browser to My PlayGround (see Resources) for another alternative.
- Then copy the contents of the .BIN file by opening it via Text document and pasting it into the box on the Web page.
D. Wright has been covering the video game industry since 2007. Since then, he has written video game guides, editorials, hosted several video game-focused podcasts, interviewed some of the brightest minds in the industry, consulted with indie developers to fine-tune their games and more. | <urn:uuid:6d512744-585c-4196-814b-f909b4b020a2> | CC-MAIN-2020-45 | https://www.ehow.co.uk/how_6895904_convert-bin-file-txt.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-45/segments/1603107891203.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20201026090458-20201026120458-00328.warc.gz | en | 0.92433 | 603 | 2.75 | 3 | {
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"reasoning_level": 2,
"interpretation": "Moderate reasoning"
} | Software |
- Southern Africa
- South africa
- Science - Black history
Ancient arrows and Africa’s place as the cradle of technology
A team of archaeologists led by Dr. Marlize Lombard from the University of Johannesburg in South Africa have discovered the first direct evidence of the use of arrows by man. The information, published in the journal Antiquity last week, reveals that several ancient arrowheads, dated over 64,000 years, were discovered in a Sibudu cave, about 40 kilometers north of Durban. Traces of glue on the tips of the cut stones show that humans, even at that time, could construct complex tools.
The invention of the bow and arrow was a key moment in the history of mankind. And the recent discovery of the arrowheads on the east coast of South Africa by doctor Marlize Lombard’s team pushes the emergence of the arrow back by at least 20,000 years. The discoveries still bear residues of blood and bones of the prey and are the vestiges of weapons that were used for hunting some 64,000 years ago.
Given the fact that wooden or organic parts of weapons, like wood or bones, rarely survive the test of time, the deduction of the weapon’s initial use as a bow and arrow was very slim. And although they are triangular in shape, it was after the arrowheads had undergone microscopic analysis that the various residues on them helped identify them as arrows.
The scientific examination of the arrowheads revealed traces of blood, bone and "glue". The presence of these elements on the arrow heads shows how they were used. By locating the site of impact on the arrow heads and their visible damage, archaeologists were able to determine that they were in all probability projectile points, rather than spear points which are held in hand.
The glue used was made from resin-based plants, and demonstrates that the head was attached to another structure or probably a wooden shaft. All put together, it formed an arrow that could be projected with a rudimentary bow.
The discovery, after tediously excavating through layers deposited up to 100,000 years ago, pushes back by some 20 000 years the most ancient record of man’s conception of technology. According to the researchers, it is without a doubt around the same time, 60,000 or 70,000 years ago, that our ancestors began to think similarly to humans of today.
And the group of researchers argue that "hunting with a bow and arrow requires intricate multi-staged planning, material collection and tool preparation and implies a range of innovative social and communication skills." Indeed, the use of a glue substance to manufacture and arrow by attaching the arrow head to a shaft requires pre-meditation. Also the use of the prehistoric glue would have required several steps to achieve a complex recipe.
According to Dr. Lombard, "The presence of glue implies that people were able to produce composite tools - tools where different elements produced from different materials are glued together to make a single artefact (...) This is an indicator of a cognitively demanding behaviour" said Dr Lombard.
The discovery does not only consolidate Africa’s place as the cradle of humanity but also indicates that Africa could be the continent where the first technologies were developed. | <urn:uuid:8af10a8e-c507-4da0-9140-bfd8b279afe6> | CC-MAIN-2018-34 | http://www.afrik-news.com/article18170.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-34/segments/1534221217006.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20180820195652-20180820215652-00201.warc.gz | en | 0.963832 | 668 | 3.609375 | 4 | {
"raw_score": 2.9393489360809326,
"reasoning_level": 3,
"interpretation": "Strong reasoning"
} | History |
Israel launched multiple air strikes on Gaza on August 5, in another eruption of open warfare between Israel and Palestinian militants. The latest attacks come just over a year after hundreds were killed in an intense period of conflict in the territory.
Israel announced its missile strikes were targeting military leaders of the al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad militant organisation in Gaza. Israel alleged Islamic Jihad forces were making “threatening movements” near the Israeli border.
Israel’s strikes killed two key leaders of Islamic Jihad in Gaza and severely damaged its military capabilities.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad responded by launching hundreds of rockets into Israel. The Israel Defence Forces reported its Iron Dome missile defence system was operating at a 97% success rate in intercepting rockets launched from Gaza. No Israelis had been killed or seriously injured.
But the past three days of intense conflict have extracted a very heavy civilian toll in Gaza. The Palestinian Health Ministry reports at least 44 dead and over 350 civilians wounded. Reportedly among the dead were 15 Palestinian children, including five boys killed by a missile strike as they visited their grandfather’s grave.
An Egyptian-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Islamic Jihad has now begun. It is too early to say whether the ceasefire will hold, or for how long.
The Palestinian governing authority in Gaza is Hamas, which was elected in 2006. Hamas does not recognise the legitimacy of the Israeli state and aims to liberate Palestine through armed resistance. Yet Hamas has not engaged in the most recent outbreak of warfare.
Blockaded Gaza in humanitarian crisis
The Gaza Strip is a 365-square-kilometre territory that has been under Israeli control since 1967, along with the other Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Over 2 million Palestinians live in the densely populated territory. Nearly 80% depend on aid to survive.
Gaza has been under blockade for 15 years. Israel controls its airspace and territorial waters, along with two of three border crossings (Egypt controls the third). Gaza is often referred to as “the world’s largest open-air prison”.
Humanitarian organisations blame the blockade for the extreme humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Statistics tell a dire story of life in Gaza today:
- around two-thirds of the Palestinian population of Gaza are refugees, with over 500,000 living in eight refugee camps across the Gaza Strip, in some of the highest population densities in the world
- 97% of Gaza’s water is undrinkable, and contaminated water is poisoning people
- people in Gaza receive a daily average of 12 hours of electricity supply and are subject to rolling power cuts
- healthcare services in Gaza are in perpetual crisis, starved of power, vital equipment, staff and essential medicines
- 39% of patients needing specialist care in the West Bank or Israel were denied or delayed permission to leave Gaza by Israel this year
- the unemployment rate is 46.6%, and over 62% for young people
- four in five children in Gaza report living with fear, grief and depression, often manifesting in self-harm
- tens of thousands are displaced within Gaza due to the bombardment and ruin of their homes.
What hope for a solution?
The UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, has called the latest Israeli strikes on the territory illegal and irresponsible.
Her predecessor, S. Michael Lynk, concluded earlier this year that Israel’s occupation of Palestine constitutes apartheid. He accused the international community of failing to hold Israel to account for breaching fundamental international norms over its 55-year occupation, saying:
For more than 40 years, the UN Security Council and General Assembly have stated in hundreds of resolutions that Israel’s annexation of occupied territory is unlawful, its construction of hundreds of Jewish settlements are illegal, and its denial of Palestinian self-determination breaches international law.
The Council and the Assembly have repeatedly criticized Israel for defying their resolutions. They have threatened consequences. But no accountability has ever followed. If the international community had truly acted on its resolutions 40 or 30 years ago, we would not be talking about apartheid today.
Israel’s most powerful ally, the United States, rejects such characterisations. In relation to the most recent warfare, the US ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, tweeted:
British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss echoed this position:
There is no sign that the most recent outbreak of warfare has or will alter the status quo. No peace process is operating to find durable solutions to the conflict.
Recent years show no trend away from perpetual conflict and entrenchment of positions anathema to a two-state solution for Palestine and Israel.
For the people of Gaza, the stalemate becomes increasingly untenable every day.
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- Garena’s Free Fire Max Redeem Codes for 10 December, 2022 | <urn:uuid:f1a00daf-3855-47b2-aa2c-6b3bc1530e6b> | CC-MAIN-2022-49 | https://www.eastmojo.com/news/2022/08/09/amid-devastation-latest-conflict-in-gaza-shows-depths-of-humanitarian-crisis/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-49/segments/1669446710421.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20221210074242-20221210104242-00763.warc.gz | en | 0.944424 | 1,095 | 2.75 | 3 | {
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- Author: Mark Bolda
- Author: Steven Koike
Accompanying the current spate of Macrophomina and Fusarium discoveries by the UCCE Diagnostic Laboratory in Salinas and by other pathologists, growers, farm managers, and PCAs are now faced with the question of what the next step should be.
Fumigation: The advice for growers and farm managers is to avoid bed fumigation at this juncture. Even beds fumigated by professional operators will have little reservoirs of surviving pathogens on the shoulders where the fumigant did not travel. Of great concern are pathogen populations surviving in the soil making up the untreated furrows. Growers who are not flat fumigating with methyl bromide + chloropicrin should consider using a high rate of chloropicrin under impermeable film. This likely will not be as good a treatment as the mix of methyl bromide + chloropicrin used in the past, but it is the next best soil treatment solution.
Reducing stress to the plants: The diseases caused by both Macrophomina and Fusarium develop earlier, more rapidly, and more severely if plants are stressed. Strawberries that are under-chilled or subject to irrigation deficits, fertility shortfalls, and/or pest issues (such as mites) can succumb fairly rapidly, while those perfectly managed can withstand disease for a longer time. Growers wanting to reduce their diseases losses from here on out will need to play a tight defensive game and address plant stress factors in a timely manner.
Not disturbing the existing bed: The in-field spread of both Macrophomina and Fusarium is mainly accomplished by tillage and other procedures that move soil around. Because neither pathogen makes airborne spores (such as those made by powdery mildew and gray mold pathogens) or swimming zoospores found in soil water (produced by Phytophthora), the spread of inoculum is only by physical movement of the soil. Presumably, beds remaining intact and in place, as they would be for second year strawberries or other system of minimal tillage, will keep the pathogen from being spread to non-infested parts of the field.
This situation has been observed locally. In 2013, a strawberry field had significant Macrophomina outbreaks in certain parts of the field. Held over for a second year, the dead areas were replanted and again developed disease in those sections; however, second year plants that were healthy in 2013 were mostly healthy in 2014. While growing second year strawberries is not being recommended, this type of situation demonstrates the key role of soil movement in disease epidemiology.
Sanitation: Sanitation is critical for limiting the spread of Macrophomina and Fusarium. Tractors, tillage equipment, and irrigation pipes moving from infested fields should be cleaned. Remember too that a strawberry field that had significant dieback two years ago and is now planted to lettuce or another crop, likely still has plenty of Fusarium or Macrophomina around. It is a good practice for all of us to pay attention to where we have been and clean up if you are coming out of an infested field.
Having the Right Attitude and Accept the Changing Reality: In this environment of new diseases and reduced to no availability of good fumigants, those able to keep open minds and adopt new practices stand the best chance to weather the storm from these new pathogens. Growers and agricultural professionals of all stripes MUST adapt to this new era. Go to meetings, keep up to date on the latest research, talk with reputable professionals and be ready to make the changes necessary to keep your crop the most productive it can possibly be.
- Author: Steven Koike
- Author: Mark Bolda
Beginning at least as early as 2005 and continuing through 2013, collapsing strawberry plants from various parts of California have been associated with the soilborne fungus Macrophomina phaseolina. The disease, called charcoal rot, appears to be the most important current concern for the industry due to its steady increase over this period of time. Each year finds additional new fields infested, and the disease has now been found in all of the major strawberry producing counties in the state. In 2005-2006, charcoal rot was restricted to southern California in Orange and Ventura counties. Most recently this disease has been confirmed in Santa Barbara, Monterey, Santa Cruz, and Santa Clara counties. The spread of Macrophomina to new fields and counties portends that charcoal rot may be a long term threat to the industry which at present does not have satisfactory plant resistance with which to combat the pathogen.
Symptoms of Macrophomina infection in strawberry consist of wilting of foliage, plant stunting, and drying and death of older leaves, with the central youngest leaves often remaining green and alive. Plants can eventually collapse and die (Figure 1). When plant crowns are cut open, internal vascular and cortex tissues are dark to orange brown (Figure 2). Disease is often most severe if the infected plant is subject to stresses such as weather extremes, water stress (shortage of water), poor soil conditions, or heavy fruit loads. In locations where the disease has occurred for more than one season, the patches can be quite large and appear to have spread from the initial problem area (Figure 3). Such patterns are consistent with the spread of a soilborne pathogen. It is noteworthy that in these cases we have never isolated other important, well known pathogens such as Colletotrichum, Phytophthora, or Verticillium. However, it is important to note that another recently described disease, Fusarium wilt, is also occurring in the same regions; symptoms of Fusarium wilt are identical to those caused by charcoal rot.
Macrophomina produces numerous tiny, black, irregularly shaped microsclerotia (Figure 4). These microsclerotia are survival structures that allow the fungus to persist for extended periods in the soil. The fungus is spread within and between fields mostly by the transport of contaminated soil during soil tillage and preparation operations. Spread of Macrophomina in strawberry fields deals with the same issue of field sanitation that concerns growers of many other commodities. Verticillium wilt (lettuce, strawberry, pepper), clubroot (broccoli, cauliflower), Fusarium wilt (lettuce), Fusarium yellows (celery), and lettuce dieback disease (lettuce) are all problems caused by soilborne pathogens that are spread in infested soil.
Current management strategies involve the following: (1) Crop rotation. Do not plant strawberry in fields having a known history of the problem and avoid back-to-back strawberry plantings in infested locations. (2) Pre-plant fumigation. This remains a useful tool for managing Macrophomina and the other soilborne pests, even though bed-applied fumigants may not provide complete control. (3) Avoid stressing the plants. Stress will hasten the development and increase the severity of symptoms, so use appropriate growing and irrigation practices to reduce stress. Note, however, that even in the absence of stress, infected plants will eventually develop the disease. (4) Sanitation. Growers with Macrophomina infested fields need to be concerned with limiting the spread of the fungus from infested to clean fields.
- Author: Mark Bolda
- Author: Steven Koike
A big field of strawberries in Santa Cruz County has been confirmed as being infected with Macrophomina phaseolina. This is the third confirmation of this disease in the Watsonville- Salinas production district. Long time readers of this space will know that the first confirmed find was two years ago which interestingly is in close proximity to this latest situation.
Symptoms of this disease, known as charcoal rot or crown rot, are marked by plant stunting, initial wilting of older foliage, and the drying and death of outer leaves (Photo 1 below). Similar to a plant infected with Verticillium, the central leaves will remain green and alive for a period of time. However, in contrast to most Verticillium infections which show little to no discoloration of the crown when cut open, a plant infected with Macrophomina will show a distinctive dark brown to orange brown discoloration of the crown (Photo 2 below). Eventually, plants infected with Macrophomina will collapse and die.
What is notable about this particular field is the astonishing distribution and severity of the infection (Photo 3 and 4 below) even though the field was flat fumed with methyl bromide- chloropicrin every other year for more than a decade. It is presently a mystery to researchers how this infection reached this magnitude so quickly.
A grower with a Macrophomina infested field should take action to limit the spread of the fungus. Any sort of tillage of an infected field should be followed by a thorough washing with water to remove soil clods and trash which are all potential carriers of the pathogen. Finally, to attempt to clean up Macrophomina from strawberry fields, pre-plant flat fumigation with methyl bromide/ chloropicrin provides the best control.
What about rotating to a non-host crop? This is actually a difficult question to answer. Macrophomina has a broad host range and is reported as a pathogen of many vegetable, fruit, and field crops. Rubus, the genus of caneberries, has not been reported as a host, but that does not necessarily mean such plants would never be infected. Still, it is too early to know for certain whether Macrophomina from strawberry can infect other hosts. Some researchers have successfully infected strawberry with Macrophomina from other hosts, but not the other way around. Our UCCE team is conducting research to answer these and other questions about Macrophomina in California fields. | <urn:uuid:cc4a5a9b-766b-4748-85fb-b9bde37aa99b> | CC-MAIN-2015-32 | http://ucanr.edu/blogs/strawberries_caneberries/index.cfm?tagname=Macrophomina | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-32/segments/1438042990112.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20150728002310-00178-ip-10-236-191-2.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952996 | 2,040 | 2.984375 | 3 | {
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12.03.2009. Researchers at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid’s School of Computing have developed a system to improve decision-making processes concerning complex situations. The system was tested on a real case: the restoration of Lake Svyatoye in Belarus contaminated in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident.
In their research, professors Antonio Jiménez, Alfonso Mateos and Sixto Rios, of the Decision Analysis and Statistics Group, belonging to the UPM School of Computing’s Department of Artificial Intelligence, proposed to take into account incomplete information and its possible impacts on decision making. The results of their research soon to be published in the Omega journal specializing in management science.
Complex problem solving
Real decision-making problems are usually complex in that several conflicting objectives have to be taken into account simultaneously. In this case, the closer you get to achieving one objective, the worse the prospects of attaining another are. Therefore, there has to be a trade-off between the attainment of objectives.
Multi-Attribute Utility Theory is an approach used widely by academics and practitioners to solve this type of problems. According to this theory, after building a hierarchy of objectives and identifying a set of alternatives and each alternative’s value for or impact on the objectives or criteria under consideration, the decision maker’s preferences have to be quantified.
First, we need to find out the decision maker’s preferences for the possible values or impacts on each criterion under consideration. To do this, a function is defined assigning a utility ranging from 0 (associated with the least preferred impact) to 1 (associated with the most preferred impact) to all the values in the criterion range. Given the impact of an alternative on a criterion, this function tells us what preference the decision maker has for that impact (through its utility value).
Second, we also need to find out the relative importance of the decision-making criteria. In this respect, several methods have been proposed for calculating weights representing this factor.
The elicited decision maker’s preferences are combined with the impacts of the different alternatives on the different attributes in an evaluation function. This function is used to identify the best alternative. Several model evaluation functions, including the additive and the multiplicative models, have been proposed.
Using incomplete information
The School of Computing researchers weighed up the possibility of adding incomplete information on the impacts of some alternatives to the analysis, that is, when the impacts of some alternatives and attributes are not known.
This can be a consequence of several factors. First, some criteria might be intangible or non-monetary because they reflect social or environmental impacts. Second, the alternatives could have random impacts on the criteria because they depend on variables whose values are unknown at the time of decision making. Finally, the available information might be incomplete, not credible or contradictory.
Two approaches for dealing with incomplete information were analysed. The first was to redistribute criteria weights with missing values or impacts logically throughout the objectives hierarchy and across the other criteria. This way, the criteria hierarchy and its assigned weights vary when each alternative is analysed depending on the criteria with missing values.
The second approach to incomplete information analysed was to associate the criterion range (set of possible values) as the impact for a criterion with missing values, assuming that they have a uniform distribution, that is, all the values in the range are considered possible and equally likely.
The best option
Throughout the article, the researchers demonstrate that the best option is the second approach using criteria ranges for unknown impacts, whereas weight redistribution has serious drawbacks.
The analysis is illustrated by a complex real decision-making problem, the restoration of an aquatic ecosystem, Lake Savyatoye (Belarus), unbalanced by radioactive fall-out. The lake was polluted after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and the environmental impact was considered one of the key objectives of the decision-making analysis. | <urn:uuid:1f815827-89eb-491e-8abb-83aa91715526> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.fi.upm.es/?pagina=897 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280718.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00392-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918419 | 804 | 3.0625 | 3 | {
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Wild mountain gorillas can now only be found in one area in the world: amid the mountain range that straddles Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda. Years of poaching and human encroachment, which have been exacerbated further by civil wars and economic crises, had once brought these mighty creatures to the brink of extinction – however, a decade of conservation efforts, plus a strong drive by the Rwandan government to promote tourism, has given them a lifeline and ushered in a new phase of development in the East African state.
As the globe’s largest concentration of mountain gorillas continues to steadily grow in size in Rwanda, so does its positive impact on local communities, thanks to a pioneering revenue-sharing contribution scheme.
Tourism has now become the country’s top export earner and a pillar of Rwanda’s growing economy
Following the devastating aftermath of the Rwandan Genocide in 1994, Rwanda’s government set about resuscitating the economy through its tourism industry. A clear strategy was devised with the help of the UN and private corporations, which focused on high-end tourism, intermingled with conservation. Diversification of Rwanda’s tourism sector thus began, which included promoting activities such as bird watching and conference spaces for the international business community. Hotels and leisure businesses were soon privatised, while a marketing campaign was launched to improve the country’s image abroad, as well as to inspire local acceptance of visitors. The result has been nothing short of remarkable: tourism has now become the country’s top export earner and a pillar of Rwanda’s growing economy.
Increasingly successful conservation has raised the number of tourists visiting Rwanda’s national parks exponentially: according to the World Bank, the numbers rose from a mere 417 in 1999 to 43,000 in 2008, with year-on-year growth continuing ever since, according to the Volcanoes National Park website. Part of this success can be attributed to the Kwita Izina Festival, an annual newborn gorilla-naming ceremony that began in 2005. Although the ritual is a long-standing tradition in Rwanda, formalising the event and shining the international spotlight on it has raised awareness of the sub-species considerably and made the country’s efforts to sustain the endangered population known worldwide.
Over the course of the last decade, 161 gorillas have been born and named, each of which has attracted visitors from around the globe to witness these creatures in their natural habitat. During the most recent anniversary celebration in July 2015, the Rwanda Development Board (RDB) announced that there are now over 600 gorillas living in Rwanda’s mountains, an impressive upsurge from the 254 that were recorded in 1981.
In Rwanda, 10 out of 19 gorilla families are ‘habituated’, meaning that they have grown accustomed to people and allow visitors to revel at them. Time slots for tourists are restricted to one hour, however, with a maximum of 10 groups allowed per day, as regular contact with humans raises the risk of disease for the creatures. Visitors are also asked to keep a distance of seven metres from the animals and must not participate in the excursion if they are feeling unwell. If fit and healthy, however, the privilege to meet silverbacks and blackbacks comes at a hefty rate of $750 per person for non-nationals – but this cost comes with good reasons.
“The cost of the gorilla permit is high and as a result [it] is a vital revenue stream for protecting these endangered animals”, explained Eleanor Dunkels, General Manager for the specialist travel company Expert Africa. “The fees cover the costs of the rangers who patrol the national park to protect against poachers, which is extremely important.”
The conservation programme is a huge source of employment in the region, creating jobs for guides, rangers and vets. In fact, an entire sub-industry has emerged to facilitate tourists travelling from far and wide to see mountain gorillas in person, from accommodation and transportation to the hire of hiking equipment. And, of course, a trip to Rwanda is not limited to this excursion alone: “Along with seeing the gorillas, the private guide might also take our travellers to see markets, towns, genocide memorials – all of which help build a rounded picture of what Rwanda is like as a country”, Dunkels told Business Destinations. According to the World Tourism Council, travel and tourism contributed 174,500 jobs to the economy in 2013, which is equivalent to 8.1 percent of the country’s total employment.
Although gorilla experiences are also offered by Uganda and DRC, Rwanda’s agenda holds several advantages over its neighbours’: aside from the greater number of gorillas living within its borders, the Volcanoes National Park is just two hours from Kigali International Airport by a well-developed road, whereas the Virunga National Park in the DRC is several hours from Kigali and also involves crossing the national border and possible delays. “It is difficult to see gorillas elsewhere, due to access and low population numbers”, according to Dunkels. “Rwanda is one of the few countries that is safe to travel to, and also home to good numbers of habituated gorillas. As a result it is often the first place that people think of when they decide they want to see these primates. It is also well organised in Rwanda – the rangers are well trained and the walking is quite manageable.”
The local community is heavily involved in helping to restore the habitat of the gorillas, which had long suffered as a result of human encroachment and deforestation. Involving locals is actually a vital aspect in the process; as is ensuring that they also benefit from the growing tourism to the area. As such, in 2005 the Rwandan government introduced a scheme whereby five percent of the revenue earned from the national parks is shared with villages that are proximally located. According to the RDB, $1.83m has been disbursed to support community initiatives so far, including the provision of a reliable water supply, tools and seeds for agriculture and equipment for small factories. Individuals have even been given assistance in purchasing farmland, which has raised many above the $2-a-day poverty line.
Over the past decade, the scheme has also funded the construction of 57 schools, 12 health centres and numerous roads and bridges, thereby having a drastic impact on the local population. “It is this infrastructure and stability that has restored faith in the country as a safe and friendly tourist destination”, Dunkels said. Sustainability also plays a large role in the programme: a beekeeping project, for example, has successfully discouraged locals from collecting wild honey, which can have a detrimental impact on the area’s fragile ecosystem. The RDB’s Kwita Izina Awards, which acknowledge individuals and organisations for their assistance in the conservation programme, further enhances the spirit of community and cooperation in the area.
People from across the globe are enticed by the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness first-hand the spectacle of the mountain gorillas – grand creatures that share 98 percent of their DNA with humans and are known to have similar characteristics. As experience holidays become more popular and environmental issues receive growing attention, the number of visitors making the trip to see mountain gorillas in their natural habitat will certainly increase. Rwanda therefore has a unique opportunity to use its wondrous asset to grow tourism revenue even further, and in turn speed up its rate of economic development. By doing so, the Rwandan government will be able to offer greater protection to the very creatures that people are willing to pay a fair amount to see.
By placing local economies at the heart of this initiative and implementing a tremendously beneficial revenue sharing scheme, the Rwandan government is lifting its citizens out of poverty sustainably. The system has thus become co-nurturing, healing the wounds of both animals and people in Rwanda after years of devastation. | <urn:uuid:03dc20ad-4cd1-4c4a-aa97-70b65de7958d> | CC-MAIN-2020-34 | https://www.businessdestinations.com/move/travel-management/ape-appeal-tourists-flock-to-see-rwandas-mountain-gorillas/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-34/segments/1596439737233.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20200807231820-20200808021820-00371.warc.gz | en | 0.960335 | 1,657 | 3.421875 | 3 | {
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By Dr H S Prayag & Meera Bhardwaj
The Wuhan novel-Coronavirus (n-CoV2o19), which made its deadly entry early this year and spread across the world, is attributed to the Chinese fetish for eating all kinds of wildlife. Even as the world stares at the virus spread, the genetic sequence of this new strain points to the Wuhan seafood markets. These unhygienic and dirty fish markets also sell a variety of wildlife ranging from fruit bats to snakes, including live animals.
Apart from this, there are many other speculations making rounds on the social media that the virus is alleged to have leaked from a lab working on various kinds of questionable viruses with the Chinese not forthcoming with facts time and again.
Presently, the World Health Organization has declared a global health emergency as many countries are not in a ‘position’ to respond to the spread of this deadly contagion. Further, as of now, no one can predict or know the extent of spread of this virus or its impact.
Till date, the virus life cycle, evolution, its transmission and other parameters are yet to be scientifically deduced.
NOW WHAT ARE CORONAVIRUSES?
Coronaviruses are a large group of viruses that are common among animals. In rare cases, they are what scientists call Zoonotic, meaning they can be transmitted from animals to humans.
Human coronaviruses can make people sick – ranging from mild to moderate upper respiratory tract sickness which is very similar to common cold. But animal coronaviruses like SARS and MERS are deadly and cause severe illnesses.
How did the coronavirus jump from bats to snakes to humans?
Experts claim this deadly coronavirus shares a common ancestry with a virus found only in fruit bats. Since snakes commonly feed on bats in the wild, they were found to be susceptible to the same kind of coronavirus.
With snakes being commonly sold in seafood markets of Wuhan – this is where the virus originated. Fruit bats and snakes are a delicacy in Chinese cuisine. So the virus may have spread either from eating fruit bat soups or from cutting snakes and eating them or even touching them during butchery operations in these markets.
WHO further confirms that all cases in China and other countries are linked to WUHAN either with a history of travel from here or due to close contact with a traveler from Wuhan.
CHINESE ADDICTION TO WILDLIFE MEAT
After SARS and MERS, once again, the world is witnessing the spread of another zoonotic disease from animal to man and all because the Chinese are addicted to consumption of wildlife meat. So, wildlife veterinarians have called for a total ban on consumption of wildlife meat in view of the recurrence of zoonotic diseases in man.
Although China has temporarily banned trading of wildlife meat as the novel virus has spread from eating of fruit bats or snakes or birds, it is difficult to deduce the source with hardly any scientific studies. As per WHO, the disease has been identified as originating from Wuhan, China. The first case of this deadly disease was identified in December – with 12 cases and linked to a seafood market in Wuhan.
Unfortunately it took the Chinese authorities almost a month to close this seafood market for environmental sanitation and disinfection on January 1. It was only on January 8, the virus was traced to an unhygienic seafood market in Wuhan.
Now how vulnerable are humans and on a smaller scale, how many other zoonotic disease have we seen in the world and India?
Ebola, measles, and monkey pox are just a few of the infectious diseases that caused severe outbreaks in 2018 across the world. “Although China has taken extraordinary measures we don’t know what sort of a damage this virus could do if it were to spread in a country with a weaker health system. We must act now to help countries prepare for that possibility. Therefore, a public health emergency of global concern has been declared over its outbreak,” said Dr Tedros from WHO.
It was earlier known as Anthropozoonotic disease, however, due to indiscriminate usage and confusion, experts decided to call it as Zoonotic disease. According to WHO, zoonotic diseases are transmitted between animals and humans. In man, the new virus has shown a capacity to transmit from human to human.
Most common signs include fever, cough, and shortness of breath and breathing difficulties. In severe cases, infection can cause pneumonia and also fatalities. Presently, there is no specific treatment or vaccine available for this disease.
There are many zoonotic diseases that have been reported in Karnataka and India. Some 22 Zoonotic diseases that have been reported include rabies, JE, kyasanur forest disease (kFD), anthrax, brucellosis, plague, TB, Leptospirosis, Salmonellosis etc. With respect to utilization of wild meat legally – only harvest of wild fish is permitted but illegal consumption of wildlife meat continues unabated.
CALL FOR BAN ON WILDLIFE MEAT
Wildlife experts say there should be a complete ban on consumption of wildlife meat. Under Indian Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 hunting and consumption of wildlife is banned. Zoonotic diseases have occurred in man due to indiscriminate hunting/consumption of wildlife meat and in the last few decades, the spread of such diseases has taken a turn for the worse.
The Wildlife Protection Act (WPA) 1972 prohibits the hunting and utilization of wild animals (except by indigenous communities in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and North-eastern states) and does not make any distinction based on social status. However, the prevailing situation is that hunting, although prohibited, exists across India among indigenous and non-indigenous communities for local meat consumption and trade.
Also organized meat gangs hunt wildlife around many protected areas in the India and sell this meat in towns and cities without consumers being aware of the consequences, say wildlife conservationists.
One should realize, it is not just earth which is in danger but human beings too are vulnerable due to various acts of omission and commission. The fear of extinction will probably bring us together, not ‘love’ or feeling of brotherhood. “We are like a spider web and what happens in one part of globe does affect all across due to travel and tourism and trade. We are vulnerable because of movement of affected individuals. Already, one case of corona virus in Kerala has been reported. If necessary steps are not taken, it may spread to other states and then it will become unmanageable.”
TIMELINE of 2019-nCoV
31 Dec 2019 – China alerts WHO about a spate of pneumonia-like cases in Wuhan
1 Jan 2020 – Seafood Wuhan market, the epi-centre of the outbreak is closed
9 Jan 2020 – WHO says the infection, is caused by a new type of coronavirus
10 Jan 2020 – China shares the genetic code of the new virus
11 Jan 2020 – Scientists start working on a vaccine and the first death confirmed
13 Jan 2020 – Virus spreads abroad for the first time, with a case in Thailand
MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome ( 2o12)
Spread from Saudi Arabia to 27 countries
SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (2oo3)
Spread from China to 30 Countries
[[ First author is Chief Veterinary Officer & Assistant Professor Karnataka Veterinary Animal and Fisheries Sciences University [KVAFSU] Bengaluru and second author is Green Minute Editor . ]] | <urn:uuid:4f120345-71e1-422b-ad36-5e6758f95aad> | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | https://greenminute.in/2020/02/01/wuhan-deadly-virus-spreads-due-to-wild-chinese-eating-habits/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947474661.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20240226162136-20240226192136-00473.warc.gz | en | 0.954286 | 1,595 | 3.03125 | 3 | {
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Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation (UBI)
How does it work?
In the process, a small amount of blood is removed and then the blood is run through ultraviolet lights. What happens is the smaller bacterial and viral cells are targeted and absorb five (5) times as much photonic energy as their healthy counterparts. The healthy cells remain intact while the disease cells are killed and become antigenic. The microbes in your bloodstream are rapidly destroyed. This is called “induced secondary immune reactivation.”
Enhancing the body’s ability to produce antibodies, allows the body’s natural immune system to burst into action against even the most stubborn (antibiotic resistant) bacteria or virus.
Then the body works with a new supercharged immune response, greater oxygenation and a balancing of the system.
What does it do?
- Kills bacteria and viruses in the blood and super charges the immune system
- Improves circulation
- Improves oxygenation of tissues
- Balancing effect (homeostasis)
- Increases bodies tolerance towards radiation or chemotherapy
- Cardiovascular protection through increased metabolism of cholesterol, uric acid, and glucose
- Helps anti-inflammatory effects
- Has powerful anti-infection properties
- Reduces tissue pain
What is the procedure for UBI?
Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation, involves inserting a small needle (similar to giving blood) into a vein in the forearm. A small amount of blood is removed. An anticoagulant is added to prevent blood clot formation. The blood passes through a flat crystal cuvette, is irradiated with a medical ultraviolet device and treated with ultraviolet light in a closed, airtight, sterile circuit and returned to the blood stream. The entire procedure takes about one hour.
Does it really treat all of these ailments?
YES! Numerous studies and our own personal experience have shown the phenomenal effects of this treatment. It has been used to treat over 1 million patients over the last 70 years with significant results and little or no side effects.
What have others said?
Dr. Henry Barrett on 110 cases of UBI:
- No detrimental reactions from UBI
- Improvement is frequently immediate
- Increase in peripheral circulation
- Increase in oxygen of the blood
- Inactivation of toxins in the blood
Published reports on its use in:
Respiratory problems such as asthma, respiratory infection, sinusitus, pneumonia, tuberculosis, and bronchitis.
Bacterial diseases including specticemia, pneumonia, peritonitis, and wound infections.
Viral infections including acute and chronic hepatitis, atypical pneumonias, poliomyelitis, encephalitis, mumps, measles, mononucleosis, and herpes; Hepatitis C, HIV, and rheumatoid arthritis.
Circulatory conditions including thrombophlebitis, peripheral vascular arterial disease, and diabetic ulcer; overwhelming toxemias, non-healing wounds and delayed union of fractures, and a number of others.
Common Health Issues UBI is used for:
- Cardiovascular Disease/Angina
- Chronic Fatigue
- Chronic Yeast Infections
- Multiple Sclerosis
- Non-healing wounds
- Poor Circulation
- Respiratory Infection
- Rheumatoid Arthritis
- Staph infections/MRSA
Article: Give your Blood a Little Sunshine | <urn:uuid:77633ee6-6de3-45b1-b443-7a95e55e6cae> | CC-MAIN-2018-26 | https://advancednaturopathic.com/our-services/therapies/ultraviolet-blood-irradiation-ubi/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-26/segments/1529267864740.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20180622162604-20180622182604-00187.warc.gz | en | 0.893587 | 705 | 2.953125 | 3 | {
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Flow and geochemistry of groundwater beneath a back-barrier lagoon : the subterranean estuary at Chincoteague Bay, Maryland, USA
Bratton, John F.
Bohlke, John K.
Krantz, David E.
Tobias, Craig R.
MetadataShow full item record
To better understand large-scale interactions between fresh and saline groundwater beneath an Atlantic coastal estuary, an offshore drilling and sampling study was performed in a large barrier-bounded lagoon, Chincoteague Bay, Maryland, USA. Groundwater that was significantly fresher than overlying bay water was found in shallow plumes up to 8 m thick extending more than 1700 m offshore. Groundwater saltier than bay surface water was found locally beneath the lagoon and the barrier island, indicating recharge by saline water concentrated by evaporation prior to infiltration. Steep salinity and nutrient gradients occur within a few meters of the sediment surface in most locations studied, with buried peats and estuarine muds acting as confining units. Groundwater ages were generally more than 50 years in both fresh and brackish waters as deep as 23 m below the bay bottom. Water chemistry and isotopic data indicate that freshened plumes beneath the estuary are mixtures of water originally recharged on land and varying amounts of estuarine surface water that circulated through the bay floor, possibly at some distance from the sampling location. Ammonium is the dominant fixed nitrogen species in saline groundwater beneath the estuary at the locations sampled. Isotopic and dissolved-gas data from one location indicate that denitrification within the subsurface flow system removed terrestrial nitrate from fresh groundwater prior to discharge along the western side of the estuary. Similar situations, with one or more shallow semi-confined flow systems where groundwater geochemistry is strongly influenced by circulation of surface estuary water through organic-rich sediments, may be common on the Atlantic margin and elsewhere.
This paper is not subject to U.S. copyright. The definitive version was published in Marine Chemistry 113 (2009): 78-92, doi:10.1016/j.marchem.2009.01.004.
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
Geochemical and physical sources of radon variation in a subterranean estuary — implications for groundwater radon activities in submarine groundwater discharge studies Dulaiova, Henrieta; Gonneea, Meagan E.; Henderson, Paul B.; Charette, Matthew A. (2007-12-13)Submarine groundwater discharge (SGD), in form of springs and diffuse seepage, has long been recognized as a source of chemical constituents to the coastal ocean. Because groundwater is two to four orders of magnitude ...
Submarine groundwater discharge to a small estuary estimated from radon and salinity measurements and a box model Crusius, John; Koopmans, D.; Bratton, John F.; Charette, Matthew A.; Kroeger, Kevin D.; Henderson, Paul B.; Ryckman, L.; Halloran, K.; Colman, John A. (Copernicus Publications, 2005-06-24)Submarine groundwater discharge was quantified by a variety of methods for a 4-day period during the early summer of 2004, in Salt Pond, adjacent to Nauset Marsh, on Cape Cod, USA. Discharge estimates based on radon and ...
Ganju, Neil K. (American Geophysical Union, 2011-06-04)Coastal groundwater discharge is an important source of freshwater and nutrients to coastal and estuarine systems. Directly quantifying the spatially integrated discharge of fresh groundwater over a coastline is difficult ... | <urn:uuid:21a9227f-1bfb-4f99-8409-d33bf8c48f9c> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | https://darchive.mblwhoilibrary.org/handle/1912/2963 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719027.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00401-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.889934 | 764 | 2.703125 | 3 | {
"raw_score": 3.004638910293579,
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"interpretation": "Strong reasoning"
} | Science & Tech. |
Mainly water reducing admixtures are divided into two categories depending upon the amount of dose being use in concrete and in result the decrease in the required weight of water.
- Low range plasticizers or regular plasticizers
- High range or super-plasticizers
Low Range Plasticizers
Low range plasticizers also named as regular plasticizers. These are also called as regular water reducer due to most used in the field. These admixtures are used in a very small amount i.e. almost 0.1% to the total weight of concrete. By using 0.1% dose, slump of concrete increases about 50-85mm and required amount of water also decreases. Required slump will be obtained without increasing water content.
Effects Of Regular Plasticizer
- These admixtures reduce almost 5-10% required amount of water.
- Increase workability of concrete at same water to cement ratio.
- If you want to get best results, than during testing in the laboratories, consider effect of environmental conditions on the properties of that material in the field.
- How concrete will behave in field? This all depends on composition of cement, mix proportions, fines of cement, alkali contents in cement, concrete temperature etc…
Super Plasticizer/High Range Water Reducers
These are the water reducing admixtures, which lessens high amount of required water without any effects on slump value of concrete. Super plasticizers are mostly used where high strength of concrete will be required and this also gives higher slump value without the increment in amount of water content.
These admixtures are mostly used during the construction of commercial areas, like markets, plazas, shopping malls etc…
Amount of doze used in concrete will be higher than low range water reducer. This is because of due to less amount of water, slump value will decrease but super plasticizer tries to resist and add more increment in the value of slump. Slump value shows how workable concrete will be?
If slump value will be less than this mean workability of concrete is less so handling will be bit difficult and also not possible to properly place the concrete. In case when slump value is higher than workability of concrete will be higher, so handling will not be difficult anymore and hence as a result a well compacted, uniform concrete will form.
By using 1 percent of admixtures, increase in value of slump will be greater than 100 and also lessen the 10-20% the required amount of water. | <urn:uuid:96f43276-0c8c-45be-8b3d-e8cc9734ebcb> | CC-MAIN-2018-34 | http://www.engineeringintro.com/concrete/admixtures/types-of-water-reducing-admixtures/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-34/segments/1534221211185.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20180816211126-20180816231126-00221.warc.gz | en | 0.92322 | 506 | 2.640625 | 3 | {
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"interpretation": "Moderate reasoning"
} | Industrial |
Yellow watermelon is a unique fruit that is becoming increasingly popular among fruit lovers. This fruit is a variant of the traditional red watermelon, which has a green exterior and a red interior. Yellow watermelon, on the other hand, has a yellowish-green exterior and a bright yellow interior. Despite its unusual appearance, many people are curious about the taste of this fruit and wonder whether it is good or bad.
The taste of yellow watermelon is often described as sweeter and milder than that of traditional red watermelon. It has a subtle honey-like flavor and a slightly grainy texture. Some people also claim that it has a tangy aftertaste. However, taste is subjective, and what one person finds delicious, another may find unappetizing. So, whether yellow watermelon tastes good or bad is ultimately up to individual taste preferences.
Table of Contents
- Yellow watermelon has a sweeter and milder taste than traditional red watermelon.
- The taste of yellow watermelon is subjective, and whether it tastes good or bad depends on individual taste preferences.
- Yellow watermelon has a subtle honey-like flavor and a slightly grainy texture.
Origins and Varieties
Yellow watermelon is a sweet and juicy fruit that is a variation of the traditional red watermelon. It is believed to have originated in Africa, where it was first cultivated in the wild. Over time, farmers began to intentionally breed yellow watermelons, resulting in a number of different varieties that are now available.
Some of the most popular yellow watermelon varieties include the Yellow Crimson, Desert King, Yellow Flesh Black Diamond, and Yellow Doll. Each of these varieties has its own unique flavor and texture, with some being sweeter and more succulent than others.
The Yellow Crimson watermelon, for example, is known for its crisp texture and slightly tart flavor. It has a bright yellow flesh and a thin rind, making it easy to slice and serve. The Desert King variety, on the other hand, is sweeter and juicier, with a thicker rind that helps to protect the fruit during transport.
Another popular variety of yellow watermelon is the Buttercup Yellow Melon. This type of watermelon has a creamy yellow flesh that is sweet and slightly nutty in flavor. It is also known for its unique appearance, with a round shape and a bumpy, textured rind.
Overall, yellow watermelon is a delicious and refreshing fruit that is enjoyed by many people around the world. Whether you prefer a sweeter or more tart flavor, there is sure to be a yellow watermelon variety that suits your taste buds.
Yellow watermelons are visually striking and are known for their unique color. They have a bright yellow flesh with black seeds, and their rind is typically a pale green color. When selecting a yellow watermelon, it is important to look for certain physical attributes to ensure that it is ripe and ready to eat.
One way to tell if a yellow watermelon is ripe is by its weight. A ripe watermelon will feel heavy for its size. Additionally, the rind should have a uniform shape and be free of any major dents or bruises.
Another indicator of ripeness is the field spot, which is the area where the watermelon rested on the ground while it was growing. A ripe yellow watermelon will have a creamy yellow field spot that is slightly indented.
When cutting into a ripe yellow watermelon, the flesh should be a vibrant yellow color and have a firm texture. If the flesh is too soft or mushy, it may be overripe and have a less desirable texture.
Overall, the physical attributes of a ripe yellow watermelon are similar to those of a traditional red watermelon. By paying attention to the weight, shape, field spot, and flesh texture, one can ensure that they are selecting a ripe and delicious yellow watermelon.
Taste and Texture
Yellow watermelon has a distinct taste and texture that sets it apart from its red counterpart. The taste of yellow watermelon is often described as sweeter and milder than red watermelon, with a honey-like taste that is less tangy and more subtle.
In terms of texture, yellow watermelon is generally softer and juicier than red watermelon, with a flesh that is less fibrous and more delicate. The texture of yellow watermelon is often described as silky and smooth, with a melt-in-your-mouth quality that is highly enjoyable.
Overall, the taste and texture of yellow watermelon are highly appealing to those who enjoy the sweet, mellow flavors of summer fruits. Whether eaten on its own or used in a recipe, yellow watermelon is a delicious and refreshing addition to any meal or snack.
Yellow watermelon is not only delicious but also packed with nutrients that provide several health benefits. This section will explore the nutritional value and health benefits of consuming yellow watermelon.
Yellow watermelon is an excellent source of several essential vitamins and minerals. One cup of diced yellow watermelon contains:
- Calories: 46
- Protein: 1 gram
- Fat: 0.2 grams
- Carbohydrates: 12 grams
- Fiber: 0.6 grams
- Sugar: 9 grams
- Sodium: 2 milligrams
- Potassium: 171 milligrams
- Vitamin A: 23% of the Daily Value (DV)
- Vitamin C: 18% of the DV
Yellow watermelon also contains small amounts of other vitamins and minerals, including calcium, iron, and magnesium.
Yellow watermelon is rich in lycopene, a natural pigment that gives fruits and vegetables their red or pink color. Lycopene is a powerful antioxidant that helps protect the body against damage from harmful molecules called free radicals. It may also reduce the risk of certain cancers, including prostate cancer.
Beta-carotene is another antioxidant found in yellow watermelon. It is converted into vitamin A in the body and is essential for maintaining healthy skin, vision, and immune function.
Consuming yellow watermelon may also help lower blood pressure and reduce the risk of heart disease. It is an excellent source of potassium, a mineral that helps regulate blood pressure and maintain fluid balance in the body.
In conclusion, yellow watermelon is a delicious and nutritious fruit that provides several health benefits. It is an excellent source of vitamins and minerals, including lycopene, beta-carotene, and potassium. Adding yellow watermelon to your diet can help protect against certain cancers, lower blood pressure, and reduce the risk of heart disease.
Yellow watermelon can be used in a variety of culinary applications, from salads to cocktails. Its sweet and juicy flavor makes it a versatile ingredient in many recipes.
One popular use for yellow watermelon is in salads. It pairs well with feta cheese, mint, and other fresh herbs. It can also be combined with other fruits, such as strawberries or blueberries, to create a refreshing summer salad.
Yellow watermelon can also be grilled, which brings out its natural sweetness and adds a smoky flavor. It can be served as a side dish or used as a base for a grilled watermelon salad.
In addition, yellow watermelon can be used in smoothies and cocktails. Its vibrant color and sweet taste make it a great addition to any drink. It can also be used to make a refreshing agua fresca or lemonade.
Lastly, yellow watermelon can be used in pies and other desserts. Its sweet flavor makes it a great alternative to traditional pie fillings, such as apples or cherries. It can also be used to make sorbet or ice cream.
Buying and Storing Tips
When it comes to buying yellow watermelon, there are a few things to keep in mind to ensure that you get the best tasting fruit possible. Whether you’re shopping at a farmers market or a grocery store, here are some tips to follow:
- Look for a melon that feels heavy for its size. This indicates that it’s juicy and ripe.
- Check for a hollow sound when you tap the melon. If it sounds dull, it may be overripe or underripe.
- Examine the skin for any cracks, bruises, or soft spots. These can indicate that the fruit is past its prime.
- Check the stem end of the melon. If it’s flat, it’s likely ripe. If it’s still rounded, it may need a few more days to ripen.
Once you’ve selected a ripe yellow watermelon, it’s important to store it properly to ensure that it stays fresh and flavorful. Here are some tips to follow:
- Store the melon at room temperature until it’s fully ripe. Once it’s ripe, you can store it in the refrigerator to keep it fresh for up to a week.
- If you’ve cut into the melon, wrap the remaining fruit tightly in plastic wrap and store it in the refrigerator. It should stay fresh for up to three days.
- If you have leftover watermelon, you can freeze it for later use. Simply cut the fruit into cubes and place them in an airtight container in the freezer. Frozen watermelon can be used in smoothies, sorbets, and other frozen treats.
Yellow watermelon is typically in season from June to September, so be sure to take advantage of its peak season to enjoy the sweet, juicy flavor. With these tips, you’ll be able to select and store the best yellow watermelon for your needs.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between yellow watermelon and red watermelon?
Yellow watermelon, as the name suggests, has a yellow flesh while red watermelon has a red or pink flesh. Yellow watermelon is also slightly sweeter than red watermelon and has a slightly different texture.
Where can I find yellow watermelon?
Yellow watermelon can be found in most grocery stores during the summer months. They are also available at farmer’s markets and specialty food stores.
How do I choose a ripe yellow watermelon?
To choose a ripe yellow watermelon, look for one that is heavy for its size and has a uniform shape. The skin should be smooth and free of bruises or soft spots. Give it a tap, and if it sounds hollow, it is ripe.
What are the benefits of eating yellow watermelon?
Yellow watermelon is a good source of vitamin C and vitamin A, as well as potassium and dietary fiber. It is also low in calories and fat.
Does yellow watermelon taste different than red watermelon?
Yes, yellow watermelon has a slightly sweeter taste than red watermelon and a slightly different texture. It is also less watery than red watermelon.
What are some recipes that use yellow watermelon?
Yellow watermelon can be used in salads, smoothies, and sorbets. It pairs well with feta cheese, mint, and lime. One recipe to try is a yellow watermelon and feta salad with mint and lime dressing. | <urn:uuid:b1e2b550-f809-479e-8d45-d7c2bd700f0d> | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | https://fafdl.org/what-does-yellow-watermelon-taste-like-yellow-watermelon-taste-good-or-bad/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947474661.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20240226162136-20240226192136-00445.warc.gz | en | 0.923011 | 2,301 | 2.75 | 3 | {
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} | Food & Dining |
After the 2020 census, North Carolina gained a 14th seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. This meant the Republican-led state legislature was able to redraw the House Congressional districts, adding another congressional district, consequently employing partisan gerrymandering. In February 2022, this new map was challenged in the North Carolina Supreme Court. The new map was struck down because it employed partisan gerrymandering in favor of Republicans, with the North Carolina Supreme Court calling for an independent entity to redraw the congressional map.
North Carolina representatives, however, have challenged this ruling on the basis of the Independent State Legislature Theory, bringing this case to the US Supreme Court. According to the Independent State Legislature Theory, “the word “legislature” in the U.S. Constitution [means] that state legislatures — and only state legislatures — can make laws regulating federal elections” (Democracy Docket). This “right-wing constitutional theory…would allow state legislatures to set election rules and congressional maps unchecked — not by governors, state courts, the people or even state constitutions themselves” (Democracy Docket). The US Supreme Court agreed to hear the North Carolina redistricting case, Moore v. Harper, but the case has been on the docket since 2022.
According to James Piltch, if the Supreme Court rules in favor of the Independent State Legislature Theory, there could be major consequences, including the states having no input for the congressional redistricting process. In regards to democratic erosion, subnational authoritarianism would be increased, denying free and fair elections and representation to constituents due to the inability of the state courts to declare racial or partisan gerrymandered maps unconstitutional. The ability of Republican legislatures to control congressional maps creates an electoral system that is unfree and unfair, reducing the quality of democracy in North Carolina, which could be applied to other states in the US, jeopardizing the quality of democracy nationwide. Further implications of the Independent State Legislature Theory also have potential to harm the status of democracy and subnational authoritarianism, such as banning independent redistricting commissions, which have been declared constitutional in the 2015 SCOTUS Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission case. These commissions have been used in an effort to limit the effects of gerrymandering, but denying these commissions abilities could mean restricting minority groups’ right to vote in state and national elections, or gerrymandering minorities out of power completely, with no protection from the judicial system.
By doing so, the political opposition as well as minority groups would be intentionally weakened, resulting in democratic backsliding on the subnational level. Without a competitive opposition, opposition groups would not be able to access institutional channels to challenge the majority. The disenfranchisement of minority groups, such as black voters, and the systemic undermining of the Democratic party could be negative consequences from the rulings in Moore v. Harper. In federalist systems such as the United States, state governments have significantly more autonomy, allowing for an increase in subnational authoritarianism. Although the Independent State Legislature Theory is being argued by North Carolina Republicans, implications of Moore v. Harper could be felt in Democratic states as well, using partisan gerrymandering to their advantage.
Another possibility from the Supreme Court hearing, in regards to an increase in subnational authoritarianism in the United States, would be the ability of state legislatures to overturn federal election results in the states. According to Gellman, state legislatures have the ability to control the “‘Manner’ of congressional elections and the appointment of presidential electors in each state to ‘the Legislature thereof’”. If using the Independent State Legislature Theory, state legislatures would have increased control over elections and restricting the ability of the courts to hold the legislature accountable. Decreasing the court’s legitimacy and ability to hold other branches of government accountable, horizontal accountability would significantly decline, ensuing an increase in an erosion of democracy. Democratic institutions would be weakened by undermining the ability of the courts to check the actions of the legislature and concentrating more power in the state legislature. Also, by allowing state legislatures to appoint presidential electors, a Republican legislature could use the Independent State Legislature Theory to its fullest extent to disregard the popular vote and instead appoint Republican electors. By completely ignoring the will of the people and exercising full control over the results of the election, the political elites would be signaling their willingness to reduce democratic institutions. Due to the institutional weakening, citizens would be restricted in their capacity to hold the legislature accountable. These actions combined would result in an increase of autocracy on the state level in the United States, overall affecting the national level of democracy as well.
Although the scenario of an increased level of subnational authoritarianism sounds impractical in the historically democracy-defending nation of the United States, multiple Supreme Court Justices have indicated a support for the Independent State Legislature Theory, including Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas, with Brett Kavanaugh also implying support. However, horizontal accountability may be American subnational democracy’s saving grace. In an effort to constrain the effects of the potentially dangerous ruling in Moore v. Harper, both the House of Representatives and the Senate have introduced bills to block the ability of state legislatures to override a presidential election. The Presidential Election Reform Act in the House successfully passed, and a similar bill, the Electoral Count Reform Act, in the Senate has potential to pass with bipartisan support. Horizontal accountability at the national level may be enough to restrict the North Carolina Republicans undemocratic goals, but it is also needed at the state level. Although at the subnational level, legislatures have increased their authority resulting in democratic backsliding, national institutions still have the ability to combat erosion, minimizing the decline of democracy in the US. | <urn:uuid:be093907-eb56-4fe4-b76c-f744d60c7aa3> | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | https://www.democratic-erosion.com/2023/04/21/independent-state-legislature-theory-and-its-effects-on-democracy-in-the-united-states/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947473360.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20240221002544-20240221032544-00763.warc.gz | en | 0.939399 | 1,175 | 3.25 | 3 | {
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} | Politics |
Pliny identifies the most valuable gemstone as being ‘adamas’ which ‘for long was known only to kings, and to very few of them’. In Greek, adamas means unconquerable or invincible. The characteristic of adamas is that it is exceptionally hard. Some scholars consider that Pliny was talking about diamonds here and it is clear that the word ‘diamond’ derives from the Greek adamas. However, he goes on to describe six different types of ‘adamas’, only two of which are probably diamonds – transparent, octahedral crystals that resemble rock crystal. It is worthwhile remembering that the diamonds that Pliny might have seen were uncut, natural stones as the skill of diamond polishing did not occur until around 1496. The other four types of adamas listed by Pliny are silvery in colour and were usually found with gold.
Pearls from Arabia and India are the second most valuable gemstone which Pliny discusses further in his ninth Book. Third in value are the ‘smaragdus’ which are green stones. Pliny lists twelve kinds of green ‘smaragdus’ from different locations such as Bactria (a Greek state occupying areas such as part of Iran and Afghanistan), Scythia (around northern Iran and further north), Egypt, Cyprus, Ethiopia, Media (another part of Iran), Attica and Persia. One or two of the stones Pliny describes are clearly emeralds, but others, which he states are found in copper mines, appear to be malachite, dioptase, jasper, and chalcedony. The word ‘smaragdus’ evolved into the word ‘emerald’.
Pliny notes that ‘[beryls], it is thought, are of the same nature as the smaragdus, or at least closely analogous’, which, as we know, was quite correct as they belong to the same family. He states that they are mined in India and are usually cut to a ‘smooth hexagonal shape’. Beryls came in a range of colours, with the most esteemed one being the colour of the pure green of the sea (aquamarines).
The next valuable gemstone is the opal which is also mined in India. Pliny describes them as displaying ‘the more subtle fires of the “carbunculus”, the flashing purple of the amethyst and the sea-green tint of the “smaragdus”, all combined together in incredible brilliance’ – rather a beautiful description.
It is when we arrive at this section of the Book that Pliny announces that these gemstones talked about above have been chosen as valuable by women, or as one scholar translates it, ‘by decree of our Women-councillors of State’ and another scholar as ‘by the ladies’. There are only three stones that men chose as valuable, often only because another man might value them – sardonyx, onyx and sard. All are forms of chalcedony quartz, are translucent, have a dull or waxy lustre, and usually display some type of banding, though it can be quite indistinct. Those with distinct banding are called agates. We know onyx today as black but onyx is actually a parallel banded chalcedony agate with, usually, bands of black or dark brown and white. When the parallel bands are reddish brown or dark orange and white, the stone is called ‘sardonyx, derived from two words, ‘sard’ and ‘onyx’. ‘Sard’ is said to be named after the ancient Persian city of Sardis, where this reddish brown/dark orange and white layered agate was mined.
Next week, I will look at gemstones grouped by colour. | <urn:uuid:740c783b-21e5-41f3-831c-2a04ffbe1518> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://navettejewellery.org/2022/07/26/pliny-the-elder-and-gemstones-part-ii/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572215.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815235954-20220816025954-00346.warc.gz | en | 0.966453 | 825 | 3.734375 | 4 | {
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Release Date: April 2, 2015
BUFFALO, N.Y. – Shred a document, and you can piece it back together. Burn a book, and you could theoretically do the same. But send information into a black hole, and it’s lost forever.
That’s what some physicists have argued for years: That black holes are the ultimate vaults, entities that suck in information and then evaporate without leaving behind any clues as to what they once contained.
But new research shows that this perspective may not be correct.
“According to our work, information isn’t lost once it enters a black hole,” says Dejan Stojkovic, PhD, associate professor of physics at the University at Buffalo. “It doesn’t just disappear.”
Stojkovic’s new study, “Radiation from a Collapsing Object is Manifestly Unitary,” appeared on March 17 in Physical Review Letters, with UB PhD student Anshul Saini as co-author.
The paper outlines how interactions between particles emitted by a black hole can reveal information about what lies within, such as characteristics of the object that formed the black hole to begin with, and characteristics of the matter and energy drawn inside.
This is an important discovery, Stojkovic says, because even physicists who believed information was not lost in black holes have struggled to show, mathematically, how this happens. His new paper presents explicit calculations demonstrating how information is preserved, he says.
The research marks a significant step toward solving the “information loss paradox,” a problem that has plagued physics for almost 40 years, since Stephen Hawking first proposed that black holes could radiate energy and evaporate over time. This posed a huge problem for the field of physics because it meant that information inside a black hole could be permanently lost when the black hole disappeared — a violation of quantum mechanics, which states that information must be conserved.
Information hidden in particle interactions
In the 1970s, Hawking proposed that black holes were capable of radiating particles, and that the energy lost through this process would cause the black holes to shrink and eventually disappear. Hawking further concluded that the particles emitted by a black hole would provide no clues about what lay inside, meaning that any information held within a black hole would be completely lost once the entity evaporated.
Though Hawking later said he was wrong and that information could escape from black holes, the subject of whether and how it’s possible to recover information from a black hole has remained a topic of debate.
Stojkovic and Saini’s new paper helps to clarify the story.
Instead of looking only at the particles a black hole emits, the study also takes into account the subtle interactions between the particles. By doing so, the research finds that it is possible for an observer standing outside of a black hole to recover information about what lies within.
Interactions between particles can range from gravitational attraction to the exchange of mediators like photons between particles. Such “correlations” have long been known to exist, but many scientists discounted them as unimportant in the past.
“These correlations were often ignored in related calculations since they were thought to be small and not capable of making a significant difference,” Stojkovic says. “Our explicit calculations show that though the correlations start off very small, they grow in time and become large enough to change the outcome.”
The study was partially funded by the National Science Foundation. | <urn:uuid:d691888c-0f6a-4806-b3af-97bf768b5cf9> | CC-MAIN-2016-36 | http://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2015/04/006.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-36/segments/1471982290634.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20160823195810-00062-ip-10-153-172-175.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958469 | 735 | 3.609375 | 4 | {
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The Truth About Cervical Cancer
Spanish Version: La Verdad Sobre El Cáncer De Cuello Uterino
Cervical cancer is a major threat to women’s health worldwide. Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in women. According to the American Cancer Society, around 12,300 people will be diagnosed with cervical cancer and around four thousand will die from it in 2014.
This success in reducing cervical cancer cases and decreasing fatalities boils down to early detection.
When people have regular pap smears and we’re able to catch it early, there are usually ways to cure it. In fact, the disease can often be found through pre-cancerous lesions.
However, there is a lot of misinformation and confusion when it comes to HPV (human papillomavirus) and cervical cancer. HPV still carries a stigma with it, when the reality is almost anyone can become infected with HPV. Sometimes the infection can linger in the body, dormant, for decades before causing any problems.
Who’s at a higher risk for cervical cancer?
This kind of cancer is more common with women over forty, and increases with age. Smoking actually vastly increases the risk of cervical cancer, but after you quit smoking those risk factors return to normal. Most cervical cancer cases involve HPV, which is a STD.
There is a slight genetic component with cervical cancer, women with two close relatives (ie. aunts, parents) with this kind of cancer seem to have an elevated risk but they haven’t isolated the gene like they have with breast cancer.
How does making love affect one’s risk of getting HPV?
HPV is most prevalent amongst people who have multiple partners, though it can happen to anyone. HPV is very difficult to detect. Condoms provide some protection against the virus, but they’re not a guarantee. Not to mention, the virus is not just spread through [email protected]@l !nter-course, but also through oral contact and any genital touching and can be anywhere on genitalia. It is also related to vulvar, penile, and colon cancer.
HPV can be undiagnosed and asymptomatic in the body for years and if you’re not tested for it, you probably won’t realize you have it – this goes for all genders. If you’ve been married for a few years and are diagnosed with HPV, it doesn’t necessarily mean your spouse has been stepping out on you, you may simply only now be diagnosed with a condition you’ve had since the first time you had contact with your spouse or even earlier.
Does HPV mean I’ll definitely get cervical cancer?
Not at all. In most cases, it doesn’t. There are roughly thirty different types of HPV that we are aware of that cause genital infections and most of them disappear over time. Two of these strains cause more than 70% of all instances of cervical cancer and are high-risk strains. | <urn:uuid:019823aa-8cb6-489f-b519-fb785fecdfa4> | CC-MAIN-2020-05 | https://www.positivemed.com/2014/09/02/truth-cervical-cancer/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-05/segments/1579250599718.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20200120165335-20200120194335-00020.warc.gz | en | 0.958379 | 626 | 2.59375 | 3 | {
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Today.Az » Politics » 'Memorial day' marks very important page in modern history of Azerbaijan - ombudsman
26 September 2022 [18:23] - Today.Az
'Memorial day' is a very important page in the modern history of Azerbaijan, Azerbaijani Ombudsman Sabina Aliyeva told Trend.
She noted that the announcement of September 27 as 'Memorial Day' has a special meaning. The victory in second Karabakh war, which united the entire Azerbaijani people into a unified force led to the creation of opportunities for establishment of peace and development of the entire region.
The reason for this victory was Azerbaijani Armed Forces under the leadership of the Victorious Supreme Commander-in-Chief President of Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev, who showed great heroism in battles. Conditions were created for the return of Azerbaijani internally displaced persons to their native lands, for which they yearned for many years, and today the country is experiencing the joy of the 'Great Return'.
"May Allah rest the souls of Azerbaijani martyrs who sacrificed their lives in the name of restoring the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, I wish their families patience. Azerbaijan will always be proud of its martyrs, Azerbaijani people will always honor their memory. I also want to honor the memories of civilians that became martyrs as a result of grave crimes, committed by Armenia, including the memory of children who died. Armenia must answer for these crimes, committed against the civilian population, for the violation of the requirements of the IV Geneva Convention," Aliyeva said.
She stressed that it's a moral duty for the entire Azerbaijan to take care of the families of martyrs, as well as heroic veterans of Azerbaijan. President Ilham Aliyev and First Vice President Mehriban Aliyeva pay special attention to caring for the families of martyrs and veterans, which is an important task for state structures.
"After the end of the second Karabakh war, Azerbaijan also expanded its activities in this direction, created a new sector related to the protection of the rights of families of martyrs and war veterans. Azerbaijan pays special attention to their appeals. Actions are being taken in the regions to provide medical and psychological assistance to family members of martyrs and war veterans, to provide them with support," she added.
Moreover, Azerbaijani ombudsman emphasized that from the moment of gaining independence to the present day, Azerbaijan has been suffering from the policy of aggression and ethnic hatred of Armenia. Armenia has committed many international crimes against Azerbaijan, such as military aggression, genocide, ethnic cleansing, terrorism, environmental crimes, destruction and desecration of historical, religious, cultural monuments, mining of territories, the use of mercenaries, attacks on civilians using prohibited weapons.
"At the same time, during the occupation, a policy of illegal resettlement was carried out in the internationally recognized territories of Azerbaijan, Armenians from Armenia, as well as from Lebanon and Syria were illegally settled in houses belonging to Azerbaijanis. When, in accordance with the trilateral statement dated November 10, 2020, Armenians left Azerbaijani occupied lands, and also recently, when they left Lachin villages of Zabukh and Sus, Azerbaijan witnessed manifestations of hatred policy by Armenia. Among them - damage to flora and fauna, arson and desecration of houses," Aliyeva stated.
"Azerbaijan, even in the period after the cease of fire, suffered losses as a result of mine explosions, laid by Armenian troops. Each of these crimes is a violation of human rights and freedoms. Numerous fundamental rights of the Azerbaijani people have been violated, and the requirements of international law are not being observed. Azerbaijani government continues to work to inform the world community about these facts, to bring Armenia to justice for its crimes," she said.
Aliyeva reminded that Ombudsman's office made several statements in connection with Armenian provocation.
"The fact that the Armenian Armed Forces constantly carry out provocations against Azerbaijan in the post-war period causes serious concern. During the suppression of a large-scale Armenian provocation undertaken on the night of September 12 in the Dashkasan, Kalbajar, Lachin, Zangilan directions, Azerbaijani servicemen became martyrs, there were also wounded. At the same time, two of Azerbaijani civilians were wounded," she said.
Azerbaijan appealed to relevant international organizations diplomatic representatives in connection with the large-scale provocation committed by Armenia. The country also appealed to world community to respond harshly to the actions of Armenia that threaten the establishment of fear and sustainable peace in the region.
According to Aliyeva, the attack of Armenia created a serious threat to lives and well being of people and violated many fundamental rights. Fist of all, these actions are evidence of disrespect for international legal norms, as well as the requirements of trilateral statements signed by Armenian PM.
In addition, Azerbaijan has repeatedly addressed the international community in connection with the issue of Armenia's failure to provide accurate maps of minefields. The mine threat delays the process of returning Azerbaijani citizens to their native lands liberated from occupation, and also leads to the death and disability of people. However, during this time, the Armenian Armed Forces repeatedly made new attempts to mine these territories.
"Azerbaijan believes that ethnic hatred towards Azerbaijan is behind this policy in general. The attacks of the Armenian communities on Azerbaijani diplomatic missions abroad under the guise of 'peaceful actions', the sounding of various slogans and attempts to commit acts of vandalism is the evidence of this. Azerbaijan expressed its opinion to the international community in connection with these attacks, and also called on the countries in which country's diplomatic missions are located to ensure the safety of embassies and diplomats. Such attacks must be prevented in accordance with the obligations assumed by host states under international law," she added.
Aliyeva stressed the importance of international support to Azerbaijan, saying that Armenia's hostilities should be strongly condemned at the time when Azerbaijan starts the process of 'Great return' and implements comprehensive construction work on the territories destroyed during the occupation.
"Thus, after second Karabakh war very important opportunities appeared for establishing peace in the region. It was also beneficial for the Armenian side, its people. However, it's very unfortunate that Armenia not only neglected peaceful initiatives, but also demonstrated its destructive intentions through numerous provocations," she stated.
"Although Azerbaijani people suffered for about 30 years from the consequences of the occupation policy of Armenia, no decisive measures were taken against it at the international level. New reality has emerged in the region, the relevant international structures, having demonstrated a fair approach, should condemn the provocations of Armenia that threaten the lives of people, and contribute to the process of establishment of peace in the South Caucasus region. The structure of ombudsman institution will continue to make the necessary contribution in this direction, which is a priority in its activities," Aliyeva said.
Azerbaijani Ombudsman expressed hope that leadership of Armenia will draw lessons from recent events and make efforts towards peace and coexistence, and the international community will support Azerbaijan in its peace efforts. | <urn:uuid:e0d70372-b10b-4772-8d92-434d4d75c12e> | CC-MAIN-2023-06 | http://www.today.az/print/news/politics/226002.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-06/segments/1674764499857.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20230131091122-20230131121122-00200.warc.gz | en | 0.968358 | 1,475 | 2.53125 | 3 | {
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Central Venous Catheters
What is a central venous catheter?
A central venous catheter, also called a central line, is a long, thin, flexible tube used to give medicines, fluids, nutrients, or blood products over a long period of time, usually several weeks or more. A catheter is often inserted in the arm or chest through the skin into a large vein. The catheter is threaded through this vein until it reaches a large vein near the heart.
A catheter may be inserted into the neck if it will be used only during a hospital stay.
What is a central venous catheter used for?
Central venous catheters are used to:
A central venous catheter can be left in place far longer than an intravenous catheter (IV), which gives medicines into a vein near the skin surface. Also, a central venous catheter allows a person to receive IV medicines at home.
What types of central venous catheters are there?
There are several types of central venous catheters.
PICC line. A peripherally inserted central catheter, or PICC line (say "pick"), is a central venous catheter inserted into a vein in the arm rather than a vein in the neck or chest.
Tunneled catheter. This type of catheter is surgically inserted into a vein in the neck or chest and passed under the skin. Only the end of the catheter is brought through the skin through which medicines can be given. Passing the catheter under the skin helps keep it in place better, lets you move around easier, and makes it less visible.
Implanted port. This type is similar to a tunneled catheter but is left entirely under the skin. Medicines are injected through the skin into the catheter. Some implanted ports contain a small reservoir that can be refilled in the same way. After being filled, the reservoir slowly releases the medicine into the bloodstream. An implanted port is less obvious than a tunneled catheter and requires very little daily care. It has less impact on a person's activities than a PICC line or a tunneled catheter.
Can complications result from the use of a central venous catheter?
Possible complications from the use of a central venous catheter include:
How can you care for a central venous catheter at home?
You can take steps at home to care for your catheter:
When should you call for help?
Call your doctor now or seek immediate medical care if:
Watch closely for changes in your health, and be sure to contact your doctor if:
eMedicineHealth Medical Reference from Healthwise
To learn more visit Healthwise.org
© 1995-2012 Healthwise, Incorporated. Healthwise, Healthwise for every health decision, and the Healthwise logo are trademarks of Healthwise, Incorporated. | <urn:uuid:78624082-0c9b-408a-af84-fd9d208fe603> | CC-MAIN-2014-23 | http://www.emedicinehealth.com/central_venous_catheters-health/article_em.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-23/segments/1405997894275.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20140722025814-00213-ip-10-33-131-23.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923993 | 605 | 3.375 | 3 | {
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By the healthiergang writer Edoardo Laudi, personal trainer and majoring in Exercise and Sports Sciences
Types of Abs: What Are They and How to Develop Them?
In this article we talk about different muscles that make up our abdomen and how to develop them through targeted exercises. After a brief insight into the different types of abs, we will detail a training program to engage and strengthen them all.
A little bit of anatomy
The rectus abdominis muscle it is innervated by the last six intercostal nerves and the hypogastric ileus nerve. By contracting, it lowers the ribs, thereby acting like an expiratory muscle, flexes the chest over the pelvis (or vice versa), and increases abdominal pressure.
The transverse abdominal muscle it is innervated by the intercostal nerves (T8-T12) and by the iliohypogastric and ileoinguinal nerves (L1). By contracting, it brings in the ribs, thus acting as an expiratory muscle, and increases the abdominal pressure. Widely used in the discipline of Yoga.
It is placed deeply in the internal oblique muscle and has transverse course bundles. The internal oblique muscle of the abdomen is innervated by the last intercostal nerves (T8-T12) and by the ileohypogastric and ileoinguinal nerves (L1). Like the external oblique muscle of the abdomen, with its action it lowers the ribs, thus acting as an expiratory muscle, it flexes the chest but rotates it on its side. In addition, it also causes an increase in abdominal pressure.
The external oblique muscle of the abdomen it is innervated by the intercostal nerves (T5-T12) and by the ileohypogastric and ileoinguinal nerves (L1). Like the internal oblique muscle of the abdomen, with its action it lowers the ribs, thus acting as an expiratory muscle, it flexes the chest but rotates it to the opposite side. In addition, it also causes an increase in abdominal pressure.
It is located in the anterior and lateral walls of the abdomen and goes up the lateral chest wall. It looks like a large flattened sheet, quadrilateral in shape.
It originates from the external face of the last eight ribs by means of digitations of which the first five or six cross with those of the anterior serratus muscle and the last three with those of the great dorsal muscle. (1)
Core Strenght e Functional
core strength we mean the training of strength, balance and stability of all the muscles of the trunk. It means training not only the rectus abdominis, but all the muscles that come into play in the complex balance of the back, pelvis and buttocks.
The muscles involved in this specific type of training are varied and include: rectus abdominis, transverse abdominals, internal and external obliques, paravertebral, lumbar, small and large psoas and trapezius. Training the core has numerous advantages for both the advanced athlete and the normal client. A good core protects you from the many problems to which the back is subject in today's sedentary life. Greatly improving posture and stability of the spine.
In athletic training they are a real must, as the core comes into play in practically all movements!
Surely the plank and its variations are great exercises to include in a training routine. Having to keep the body in a straight line for a few seconds, this allows you to train and strengthen all the core muscles.
Lie prone on the floor (or mat), lean on your elbows, which will be shoulder-width under your chest, and on your toes. Contract your core to create a straight line. Hold this position for at least 30 seconds or up to a minute if you are just starting outRecovery time between sets of at least 30 seconds or 45 seconds. Let us remember well to exhale all the air by contracting all the muscles of the core.
Lie on your side, with your upper body weight held on your elbow. Then try to imitate a straight line along the body by contracting all the necessary muscles. Hold this position for at least 30 seconds or up to a minute if you are just starting out. Do this exercise on both sides of the body. Muscles mostly called are internal and external oblique.
Front Plank variation
Once the ability to perform is developed the front and side plank exercises you can try, in addition to increasing the time under tension, adding some variants. For example, while doing the front plank, try to raise one arm or leg (or together an opposite arm and leg, for example, left arm, right leg).
Other operational advice
-If possible, try these exercises in front of a mirror. Thus you will have constant feedback of your correct form of execution.
-Use a suitable clock or timer. If you think everything will be fine by counting the seconds in your head, you will find that as you become more tired you will start counting faster.
-Going forward, be sure to gradually increase the time under tension. Increase by 510 seconds per week each position. (2)
HOW TO DEVELOP THE CORE
-Beginner: try to familiarize yourself with the first two exercises, getting as close as possible to the ideal and most suitable position for the exercise. Tension time at least from 15 seconds to 30 seconds.
-Intermediate: once the exercise has been well controlled, by consolidating the movement we can also use the third exercise by coordinating the limbs well. Tension time at least 15 seconds.
-Advanced: having learned all three exercises well, you can play through a functional circuit with all three exercises and trying to reach the maximum of your possibilities, also reducing recovery times.
(1) AMBROSI G., CASTANO P. (2006) Anatomy of man, Edi Ermes Edizioni.
(2) STECCHI A. (2004), Biomechanics of physical exercises. From athletic training to fitness, Elika. | <urn:uuid:0fbdbc97-f369-4036-a69d-11bd30930454> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.getpersonalgrowth.com/en/types-of-abs-what-are-they-and-how-to-develop-them | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335365.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929194230-20220929224230-00747.warc.gz | en | 0.938599 | 1,294 | 2.75 | 3 | {
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06 Dec 2018
Despite an increasing body of literature on the topic, forest policymakers often overlook gender considerations. However, gender blindness is a problem that makes women’s participation and contributions invisible and allows forest management to be incorrectly treated as “gender neutral.”
03 Dec 2018
COP24, the two-week 24th conference of the parties of the United Nations Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC), started in Katowice, Poland, with a special focus on carbon neutrality and gender equality.
29 Nov 2018
When farms are less productive, that leads to deforestation, as farmers clear more land to grow the same amount of food. If women had the same tools as male farmers, Project Drawdown calculates that they could grow 20-30% more food on the same amount of land. That translates into 2 billion tons of emissions that could be avoided between now and 2050.
24 Oct 2018
The Latin American and Caribbean Open Science Forum 2018 (CiLAC 2018) was held in Panama City, 22‐24 October 2018. The forum brings together the best scientists and decision makers of the region and is a platform to offer recommendations for sustainable solutions and mechanisms that support science policies in Latin America and the Caribbean; in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable...
17 Sep 2018
The Focal Point of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change for Liberia at the EPA says the issue of climate change continues to be one of the major threats to development.
21 Aug 2018
This report seeks to address a major research gap by adopting an intersectionality approach to better understand the different climate risks, vulnerabilities, adaptation and resilience among people of different ages and different genders. In particular, this report aims to shed light on the specific climate change challenges faced by young women and girls in Northern Thailand whose experiences...
02 Aug 2018
Three years into the Sustainable Development Goals — 17 global goals set by the United Nations — many countries’ policy makers are developing domestic legislation that will help them reach environmental targets, from cutting carbon emissions to improving clean water and sanitation. But when it comes to environmental research and action, weighing the options to reach policy decisions relies on...
02 Aug 2018
A community meet on “Protection on Land and Environment”, organized by Khoupum Area Village Authority Council, Khoupum, Women Development Organization, Tamenglong and the Centre for Research and Advocacy, Manipur was held at Gaidimjang Village, Manipur on 31st July, 2018. The meet was held in the context of increased loss of indigenous peoples land and resources, due to pursuance of unsustainable...
16 Jul 2018
In Bangladesh, one of the main social challenges presented by climate change is the furthered entrenchment of preexisting systemic gender inequality ...
23 Feb 2018
A proceedings report from the September 2018 workshop Gender and Innovation: Implications for Sustainable Development is now available. This report from the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) provides a summary of... | <urn:uuid:72e5b147-46fc-40e4-ac48-48bf23a9d326> | CC-MAIN-2019-18 | https://genderinsite.net/news?field_technical_thematic_area_tid=7&page=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-18/segments/1555578633464.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20190424054536-20190424080536-00084.warc.gz | en | 0.933264 | 613 | 2.921875 | 3 | {
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"reasoning_level": 3,
"interpretation": "Strong reasoning"
} | Science & Tech. |
When Bjørnson accepted the Nobel Prize in Literature in Stockholm in December 1903, he was 71 years old, and perhaps the most famous Norwegian ever – both in Norway and abroad.
In its statement of 14 September 1903, the Nobel Committee wrote that it had discussed giving the award to Ibsen and Bjørnson jointly. Both authors, however, could be said to be too prominent to share the award, and the Committee had learned that Ibsen “is a man of ill health, whose flame of life is dwindling”, whereas Bjørnson, despite his respectable age, was still in full vigour.
The Committee statement emphasises that Bjørnson “is a great epic and dramatic bard; yet he might shine even brighter as a lyricist”. He is “in the vanguard of contemporary folk life narrators”. In his writing, Bjørnson has “dedicated himself to the service of pure and enlightened ideas”, and he “unifies ethical and poetic health”. He has created key works that are “ideal in nature”, as required by the will of Alfred Nobel.
The Committee concluded that Bjørnson, according to some newspaper notices, expressed a wish for Ibsen to be awarded the prize in its entirety – if there were plans to award it to the two authors jointly. Bjørnson had responded to allegations that his renewed political attitude towards Sweden was motivated by the idea that he could some day be awarded the Nobel Prize. The Committee did not wish to take such rumours into consideration, for several reasons. If Bjørnson were to decline the prize, the Committee had decided to give it to the French poet Mistral, who, in fact, was awarded the prize in 1904.
On Thursday 10 December 1903, the clouds lay heavy over Stockholm, but the city looked its best, with flags hanging from every public and private building. The award ceremony itself took place in the Great Hall at the Swedish Academy, which was festooned with garlands and laurel wreaths. The hall was full to bursting, and members of both the Swedish government and the Norwegian cabinet in Stockholm were present. The royal delegation arrived at seven thirty: The King and Princess Ingeborg, the Crown Prince with Princess Therese, and finally, Princes Carl and Eugen.
Only three of the Nobel Prize winners travelled to Stockholm to receive the award in person that year: Becquerel, Arrhenius, and Bjørnson. Bjørnson was the last to receive his award from King Oscar II: the draft for the monetary award, the diploma, and Nobel’s great gold medal. All award winners were greeted with applause, but when “Bjørnson took the stage as the last one, the applause grew in strength and duration”. Bjørnson had barely got back to his seat before “Ja, vi elsker” sounded forcefully from the balcony.
In his presentation of Bjørnson at the award ceremony, Academy Secretary Wirsén reiterated the Committee’s statement: “Bjørnson is so generally known and his works are so familiar to educated Swedes that it is unnecessary to give a comprehensive appreciation of his universally and gladly acknowledged merits”.
Afterwards, a banquet was held in honour of the Nobel Prize winners at Grand Hotel, with 230 guests present.
In his acceptance speech, Bjørnson focused on the role of literature as part of human progress and development: It is essential that “we have our faith in life reinforced, not diminished”. In art, we search for meaning in life. The responsibility of authors is greater than that of others, because writers are at the front of the train of development. Without naming names, Bjørnson distances himself from both Ibsen and Tolstoj, whom had both been candidates for the prize. Ibsen was his “ill old friend”, who “had lit many a lighthouse along the Norwegian coast.” The problem with Ibsen, however, was that he was “so sharp in his alerts that it made people wary”. Tolstoj’s mistake was that “he lured people with ideals that were beyond human might”. Bjørnson held up Victor Hugo as an ideal, because even though this author also had flaws, “these flaws are all blown away by his mighty breath of life”. Bjørnson concluded by toasting the Swedish Academy’s “prosperity in everything that keeps literature healthy and strong”. His speech got a resounding, and lengthy, applause. Bjørnson finished with a “Long live!” to the Swedish Academy, which was followed up with a quadruple hurrah.
Later evaluations of this award have expressed scepticism towards Ibsen being snubbed. The issue of Bjørnson’s renewed attitude towards Sweden right before he received the Nobel Prize was never really resolved, and Bjørnson’s motivations have been questioned. | <urn:uuid:a4171c5c-5e11-47bb-a1e7-21e485c33d02> | CC-MAIN-2015-06 | http://www.nb.no/bjornson/Bjornson/English/Nobel-Prize-in-Literature-to-Bjoernson-in-1903 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-06/segments/1422115869404.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20150124161109-00116-ip-10-180-212-252.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987648 | 1,071 | 2.8125 | 3 | {
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| | What is test bias?
Cleary (1968) offers that a test is biased when "the criterion score predicted from the common regression line is consistently too high or too low for members of the subgroup." Thus, bias is a difference in accuracy of predictions
about performance based on scores. Studies of the SAT in predicting the first year college grades showed that it overpredicted
success for African American Students, and so while it was biased it was not harmful bas it did not lead to screening out African Americans as potential students.
Of course, this isn't the only
definition of bias. Many argue that simple differences in the scores
obtained themselves mark some bias when the differences are reliably produced between one group of people and another, even if there is evidence that the differences are "real." Thorndike and others in this camp argue for using "biased" tests, but with different cutoff scores for different groups. Mercer offered this should be based on an analysis of the culture of the home.
Some skip all this, claiming that to assess test
bias is pointless, as the tests measure what they do, and reliably so. Thus, the issue is user
bias. Throwing out tests is like saying, "Sometimes bad drivers cause car accidents. We should get rid of all cars."Sattler
discusses in Chapter 19 some of the issues in IQ testing and bias. He points out that issues against
IQ tests are as follows:
1) IQ tests are culturally biased since they show differences between minority groups
Sattler argues that this has not been clearly shown. Where one minority group shows lower scores, the differences could be real. This could indicate a poorer educational system (differences in educational opportunities, poverty, neighborhoods, home life
), but this doesn't mean the test is biased. Tests, further, should not be abandoned, as they can be used to assess the impact of interventions, and spot deficiencies in teaching different groups. Further, returning to "judgment calls" would introduce even more bias.
When you look at mean score differences between groups on the WISC R, there may be real differences, especially when SES convolutes the data. Some recall studies that African Americans score 15 points lower on IQ tests that Caucasians, but when SES is controlled this drops to 5 points or less. This is to say that being poor or rich may have more of an impact on your IQ and perhaps intelligence (whatever that is) than your ethnicity.
Other efforts look at predictive validity. Most IQ tests predict performance on achievement tests very well. But, if achievement tests are biased too, then we would expect high predictive validity and this wouldn't rule out bias. However, some argue that if our culture does value some skills over others, then the test is still an accurate predictor of a person's ability to succeed in our culture. Thus, IQ and achievement tests could be culturally biased and heavily so, but their reflection of the dominant culture's values is desirable. To design truly "culture free" tests would be to design tests that don't measure anything.
Other efforts look at construct validity, but the factor structure of the WAIS III holds up with African American, Caucasian, and Hispanic children. Thus, it is measuring the same thing in each child. Now, whether that is what you mean when you say intelligence or not is another question
Other efforts focus upon test item bias. A CBS documentary picked "What would you do if a child much smaller than you tried to pick a fight with you?" for a documentary. They offered this was a culturally laden item from the WISC.
Rankings of easy to hard items placed this item number 42 and 47 for black and white kids respectively; that is, black children got it "right" more often that white children. Rankings of percentage of children that correctly answer the question showed 73 and 71% black and white answered this question correctly. Thus, "eyeball evaluations" of item bias may not actually match the data. Only two items showed a significant difference on the WISC R, and one was dropped from the WISC III. For the WAIS III items were given to AA, Hispanic, and White people and any items not answered equally by all three groups were dropped. Thus, there were no items on the test that differentiated between blacks and white prior to its publication.
This eyeballing is provocative though. Take the CBS item. Is this to say that black people teach their children that it is acceptable to hurt weaker people? Be careful about thinking in "culturally sensitive" ways that aren't.
2) National norms are unfair, since Caucasian kids are compared to Caucasian kids and African Americans or Hispanic kids are compared to Caucasian kids.
Sattler argues that the norms reflect societal levels of performance, and African Americans and Hispanics are represented at percentages equal to whole population. How would we alter this? Collect norms for different ethnic groups? What about people of mixed ancestry (which is really everybody). How black is black, how white is white? Does rural, suburban, or city life make a difference?
Another issue is if minority children score lower, do they need more or special education to compensate? Sattler raises the self-fulfilling prophesy problem with teachers who find kids scored lower and they thus expected less from them, and thus they were less challenged to achieve. Lower scoring children get less experienced teachers (as the more experienced teachers work with the "bright" children), less one on one time and attention in class, and may not even be offered some opportunities for education and coursework.
This plays out in the children themselves, ("effort optimism"), but if a minority child scores low, might not these reflect real deficits and the need for real intervention? I had a case where a child floored the test, and the worker and family described her as "slow and a little immature," but definitely not retarded. Does she need help she isn't getting?
Sattler also discusses differences in norms. The correct answer to the wallet question is "return it," and some say this is a cultural value that is consistent with religious, legal, and moral codes of conduct. If a different culture doesn't hold that value, then it isn't an issue of test bias that they differ on their score, but of cultural differences. The thing is, this value is a value espoused by American culture. A test of the skills and basic levels of performance required for our society and used to predict that performance should, to do its job, assess understanding and adherence to prevailing values.
3) Minorities may not be culturally ready to take the test
Minority children may not appreciate the demands, achievement stimuli, time pressures, competitive edge required
and may not see the test in the same way. Sattler says there may be something to this, but we need data for it.
The effort optimism argument is salient. Gardner quotes a study in which African American students were told they would do poorer, and they did, but when not told this, they performed the same as white kids.
Some argue that instructions like "Work as quickly as you can" may mean little to groups who don't view time as the mainstream culture does, or who don't see the value in rushing. While we have tried to remove all the culturally laden objects in the test, the act of verbally explaining some ideas might be a culturally practiced skill common to middle class parents and children. Prompting, "Yes, you do eat them, but they are also fruits," may also not be seen as a sign that you should change your thinking with some groups, but only as an alternative.
4) White people testing African Americans results in depression of scores
Sattler says the data doesn't support this in 25 of 29 published studies.
So are IQ tests biased? It depends. The answer is likely "No" if you limit interpretations to IQ scores and what they are shown to be, but "Yes" if you extend interpretations to "intelligence," whatever that is. | <urn:uuid:7946c20f-171c-45ca-8cad-2b0dd8213526> | CC-MAIN-2015-18 | http://www.psychpage.com/learning/library/intell/biased.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-18/segments/1429246654114.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20150417045734-00210-ip-10-235-10-82.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966226 | 1,648 | 3.78125 | 4 | {
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All about the teacup Havanese
The teacup Havanese is not an actual breed of dog. The teacup Havanese actually comes from breeding down with the runts of each litter, a method that many dog breeders have been using for years to create smaller and smaller versions of various breeds of dogs. Dog breeders essentially breed a female Havanese a couple of different times while she is in heat. The dogs that are conceived first end up becoming Havanese that are of normal size. However, the dogs that are conceived the second time they breed the female are born at the same time as the dogs that were conceived earlier. They can spend up to a week less in the womb than their littermates and end up being much smaller. This method of breeding to create the teacup Havanese is very controversial among breeders because of the tendency for the teacup variety to have more health problems.
The regular Havanese is already in the toy group, so they are already very small dogs, standing between nine and 11 inches tall. Most Havanese weigh between eight and 15 pounds, although the teacup variety will be even smaller than this.
The Havanese has very long and thick fur, which never sheds. Of course that term “non-shedding dog” is used loosely because essentially, every dog sheds. However, the Havanese tends to shed very slowly compared to other breeds of dogs. This is great for those who like to own dogs without having lots of dog fur all over the furniture. However, it does mean that you will have to give your Havanese regular haircuts.
The hair of the Havanese is very silky, and this breed of dog will need to be brushed regularly to avoid letting its hair become matted. The hair is very wavy and tends to attract lint and all kinds of dander, and the best way to get rid of these things is to brush them out. Many people consider the Havanese to be one of the few hypoallergenic dogs, which basically means that people who are allergic to most dogs are less likely to be allergic to the Havanese. However, as with all dogs, it’s always possible for someone who has a dog allergy to still present symptoms around a Havanese. The Havanese breed can be found in a wide variety of colors, and they have small round, black eyes and black noses.
Many people enjoy owning a Havanese because of the breed’s playful temperament. Unlike other toy breeds, the Havanese gets along very well with children and will usually greet company in a friendly manner. The Havanese loves people, and this breed of dog will tend to follow you around the house. If you tend to be someone who is very busy, make sure that you make time for this dog if you adopt one. This breed does not like to be in a room alone, so it has a tendency to stop eating in the middle of a meal to follow its owner out of the room. This can be a problem if you don’t take the time sit down with your dog and let it eat. | <urn:uuid:ee8ea307-7124-4340-b50d-ee0fd0747323> | CC-MAIN-2014-35 | http://www.teacupanimals.com/teacup_havanese/teacup_havanese.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-35/segments/1408500829661.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20140820021349-00265-ip-10-180-136-8.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979727 | 660 | 2.546875 | 3 | {
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The Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations have made Clayoquot Sound their home for thousands of years. The Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations village of Opitsaht (across the water from Tofino on Meares Island) is thought to have been continuously inhabited for at least the past 5,000 years, according to carbon dating of a long-buried stash of discarded clamshells. The word Clayoquot comes from Tla-o- qui-aht, and is said to mean "people who are different from who they used to be."
The earliest recorded European contact with Vancouver Island's First Nations residents occurred just north of Clayoquot Sound, between Estevan Point and the Escalante River. In 1774 Captain Juan Pérez was sent north to reassert the long standing Spanish claim on the west coast of North America. Pérez reached the Queen Charlotte Islands in July, 1774. After some trading with the Haida people from aboard the Santiago, Pérez turned south and made contact with Hesquiaht people near what are now called Perez Rocks, approximately 40 km north of Tofino. Pérez preceded the more celebrated Captain James Cook, who arrived three years later at Nootka Island, in the spring of 1778.
During the 1792 exploration of Vancouver Island by Captains Galiano and Valdez, Clayoquot Sound's southernmost inlet gained the name Tofino Inlet honouring Vincente Tofiño, a Spanish hydrographer who taught Galiano cartography.
By the late 1890s, a scattering of homesteads had appeared on the Esowista Peninsula, across the water from Clayoquot. Gradually, the new townsite of Tofino took shape here, as more settlers arrived, mostly Norwegian, Scots, and English.
In 1959, a long-awaited logging road was punched through the mountains between Port Alberni and the coast and Tofino became an increasingly popular destination. In 1970, the Pacific Rim National Park was created, the road was paved and Tofino became the official western terminus of the Trans Canada Highway.
Tofino is located on the west coast of Vancouver Island and is the offical western terminus of the Trans Canada Highway. Accessed via Highway 19 north and Highway 4 west from Nanaimo, Tofino is 40 km (25 mi) north of Ucluelet, 126 km (78 mi) west of Port Alberni and 207 km (128 mi) northwest of Nanaimo. Flights to Tofino are available from Vancouver International, Victoria International and Seattle-Tacoma International Airports.
The Rainforest Interpretive Centre houses some excellent displays about the temperate rainforest and the creatures that inhabit it. At the Whale Centre Museum there is a fascinating collection of marine artifacts and whale skeletons.
Tsimshian Native artist Roy Henry Vickers invites you to enjoy his northwest coast longhouse style art gallery, located in the heart of Tofino. We exhibit Roy's carvings, original prints and paintings, reproductions, books and jewelry.
The Tofino Botanical Gardens were selected as one of the best gardens in the world by Jane Perrone, the gardening editor for the UK's Guardian newspaper for their whimsical and inspiring nature. These 12 acres of gardens, forest, and shoreline explore the relationship between culture and nature. Tofino Botanical Gardens Foundation, a non-profit registered Canadian charity operates educational programs and provides information about temperate rainforest conservation. A network of paths and boardwalks will take you from Darwin's Café and Visitor Centre around the flower, herb and kitchen gardens, the duck pond, and Children's Garden into the forest, where clearings have been transformed into a series of pocket gardens, art installations and garden buildings. Some of the pocket gardens display plants that once thrived in other coastal temperate rainforests around the world. Garden buildings include the "historic" Bernardo O'Higgins homestead, the storytelling hut made by acclaimed local artist, Jan Janzen and two bird blinds overlooking the Tofino Mudflats Wildlife Management Area. Featuring the work of internationally renowned sculptor Michael Dennis, art installations are all made to survive or weather in the rain, and provide a cultural counterpoint to the surrounding natural beauty.
A one-hour boat ride or 20 minutes by air will take you to Hot Springs Cove. Walk the 1.5 km (1 mi) boardwalk and soak in seven successive (hot to cooler) geothermal hot spring pools. You will also enjoy the stunning views and surrounding waterfalls.
The Tofino/Clayoquot Sound area has a long history of fishing, and now plays host to world class sport fishing opportunities. Chinook and Coho Salmon, Halibut and various bottomfish make up the bounty for both guided and unguided sports anglers from around the world. Unique and somewhat remote freshwater opportunities for Steelhead and trout are a great option. Fishing in Tofino is incredible, with salmon, halibut, cod and crab being the catches of the day.
Kayakers have long been fond of the Tofino area. The numerous inlets and bays offer sheltered paddling, while the more adventurous can tackle the open ocean. Novice paddlers can take in a guided sea kayak tour of Tofino Inlet's calm waters, or even an excursion to Meares Island with a walking tour of its Big Tree Trail. Along the way, seasoned guides will share their knowledge of the ecology and natural history of the region while you discover the beauty and biological diversity of this wondrous place. Experienced kayakers can rent a kayak or you can bring your own boat. Before venturing out on your own, make sure you are prepared for Clayoquot Sound's potentially dangerous waters, including powerful tides.
In mid-spring, grey whales begin their annual migration, passing right by Tofino. There are a number of charter companies that offer guided tours to view these magnificent creatures. Most whale watching trips last between 2-3 hours. You can expect to see grey whales during your trip and possibly humpback whales. You will likely encounter bald eagles, harbour seals, Steller and California sea lions, sea otters and, if you are very lucky, orca whales or porpoises. The season officially begins in March with the Pacific Rim Whale Festival, which is both a fascinating and educational event.
The Long Beach Golf Course, located in the Clayoquot Biosphere Reserve, is one of the most scenically situated golf courses in British Columbia. The course is only a few minutes away from spectacular Long Beach in the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. The 9 hole championship course is also known to be one of the most challenging courses on Vancouver Island.
The Tofino Mudflats are a muddy haven for birds and birders. This estuary is alive with a vast diversity of species, from shorebirds to waterfowl to waders. The importance of the Tofino Mudflats as a migratory shorebird stopover and a winter waterfowl refuge is recognized by Birdlife International, who designated the area one of Canada's Important Bird Areas. Great blue herons and bald eagles are commonly sighted year round on or near the mudflats, but the very best time for birdwatchers to visit the mudflats is late April through early May. Tens of thousands of shorebirds use the extensive mudflats and beaches in the area as a vital feeding and resting ground.
The waves keep rolling in along miles of sandy beaches - 35 km (22 mi) of surfable beach break to be exact, leaving plenty of room for all boarders, from absolute beginners to seasoned longboarders. The water is a cool, yet fairly constant 10°C/50°F, making surfing a year-round activity in Tofino, with some of the best rides being caught during the winter when the surf is definitely up with a strong, fairly consistent swell. The best surfing beaches are: Chesterman Beach, declared by Outside Magazine in 2010 "one of the best beginner breaks in North America." Cox Bay is one of the most consistent surfing beaches in the summer months. Long Beach is located in Pacific Rim National Park Reserve and is without doubt Tofino's (and arguably Canada's) most famous beach.
Winter storm watching in Tofino has been turned into a bit of an art form. Not only do the months from November to March bring a series of perfect storms from the mighty Pacific Ocean, there are also some fabulous vantage points, such as the Kwisitis Visitor Centre in the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, or Chesterman Beach, with the Lennard Island lighthouse in the background.Witness the twenty-foot swell rolling in toward the shore, and after its all over be sure to beachcomb the shore for some post-storm flotsam and jetsam, because you never know what surprises you'll find. Whether you want your storm straight up with the rain glistening on your yellow slicker and the wind playing tricks with your scarf, or prefer to take a front row seat within the warmth of a local eatery or from the comfort of your own room (or a spa), you'll never look at stormy weather the same way again.
Background Photo Credit: Destination British Columbia | <urn:uuid:d2f34af2-d20d-4025-b6e6-797013cba411> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.travel-british-columbia.com/vancouver-gulf-islands/pacific-rim/tofino/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719815.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00104-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942976 | 1,944 | 3.515625 | 4 | {
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Third Grade Writing Prompts #9:
Gizmos and Gadgets
Don't push the red button! This page is a series of 10 free third grade writing prompts about gadgets and gizmos. There are so many ridiculous technological devices in the world and as a generation, many third graders are part of the first to experience them. Instead of playing with these gadgets, allow them to write about the experience to cultivate their imaginations.
You may notice that the numbers on this page do not start at 1 and work their way up. This is because these 10 third grade writing prompts are an excerpt from my book, 500 Writing Prompts for Kids: First Grade through Fifth Grade. If you like these free samples, the full version is available in both digital and paperback form.
Third Grade Writing Prompts #9: Gizmos and Gadgets
291. There are all sorts of wacky devices in the world like iPads, iPods and Kindles. Which is your favorite device and why? Do you have your own copy of that device or do you borrow the one that your parents or friends have?
292. Is there gadget in your life that you couldn’t live without? Perhaps your iPod or your cell phone? What is the gadget and what would it be like if you were not allowed to hold onto it for an entire week?
293. What kinds of gadgets do you think we’ll come up with in the next 20 years? Will we have a robot that makes your bed or a pair of shoes that can exercise for you? Come up with at least five different ideas for future devices. Who knows, maybe you’ll be the next great inventor!
294. What gadget do you think is the least useful? This should be a device that you think serves no purpose and that it’s silly for people to buy it. Pick one and write a dialogue between you and a friend who thinks it’s the best thing since sliced bread.
295. Imagine that you have brought four gadgets from the present about 30 years into the past (using your trusty time machine). What do the people of the past think of these amazing devices?
296. What do you think it would be like to be the inventor of one of these gadgets and gizmos that everybody in the world uses? Do you think that you would be rich? Do you think that everybody on the street would recognize you? How would your life be different?
297. Do you think that technology is a generally good thing or that there are some negative points to it as well? List five positive benefits of technology and list five cons of technology. Which side do you think is the winner, the pros or the cons?
298. There are currently robot dogs, robot vacuum cleaners and now even some robots that can talk. Do you think that eventually there will be a robot in every home that will help your family to get things done? Do you think that’s a good idea or a bad idea?
299. Technology and gadgets offer us a lot of shortcuts to things. They make doing the dishes go quicker and they make looking up directions quicker. Are there some things that you wish there weren’t a technology shortcut for? Talk at length about anything you like to do that you’d rather there not be a technological shortcut for.
300. Your favorite gadget, the one you can’t live without has slipped out of your hands and smashed into a million pieces on the sidewalk. What happens next?
Done with Third Grade Writing Prompts? Go back to Creative Writing Prompts. | <urn:uuid:f189ba6d-e7b7-44d0-bcf6-b0ef46071105> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.build-creative-writing-ideas.com/third-grade-writing-prompts-gizmos-gadgets.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170434.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00587-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960626 | 741 | 2.75 | 3 | {
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A Strip of Nori for Health
Nori is that blackish green, thin strip of edible seaweed you see wrapped around sushi, or just placed on top of your soup as garnish. It is widely used in Asian cuisine, particularly that of the Japanese and Korean. Nori is the Japanese word for do and it refers to dried seaweed sheets made from the edible red algae species.
Nori is generally regarded as safe to eat in moderate amounts and provides an abundance of healthful properties.
Benefits of Nori
Loads of B Vitamins. A study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry states that nori is the best source of vitamin B12. Another study published in the British Journal of Nutrition found that the status of vitamin B12 deficient subjects improved substantially after they were fed a diet supplemented with nori. It determine that nori contains about 54.5 – 58.6 micrograms of vitamin B12 per 100 grams of dry weight, and that is due to five types of biologically active vitamin B12 compounds in nori.
Great source of Iodine. Published in the Journal of Food and Drug Analysis, seaweeds such as nori are good sources of dietary iodine because they accumulate significant amounts of iodine from seawater. Nori contains 29.3e45.8 mg/kg of iodine. A recent study by the Thyroid Research found that iodine intake from edible seaweeds in Japan is amongst the highest in the world.
Unsaturated Fatty Acids. The Journal of Applied Phycology states that nori is a rich source of unsaturated fatty acids with more than 10% of its total fatty acid content comprised of linoleic, linolenic, and arachidonic acids. There’s EPA that accounts for almost 50% of the FAs in nori, effective in preventing atherosclerosis. There’s high levels of inositol and choline, which help utilize fats and nourish brain cells.
A betaine compound in nori, y-butyrobetaine, lowers high levels of plasma cholesterol.
Lots of Trace Elements. The same journal that nori contains a large amount of essential trace elements including zinc, manganese, iron, selenium and copper with their known beneficial antioxidant properties.
Rich in Amino Acids. Nori seaweed is a rich source of free and bound amino acids such as alanine, aspartic acid, glycine, glutamic acid, lysine, arginine, leucine, histidine, and isoleucine. These amino acids are beneficial in several ways, notably in muscle building.
Love some Nori at K-Ton
When you find nori, know how very nutritious and beneficial to health is this blackish-green strip of algae. You are actually getting loads of healthy nutrients straight from the sea. Come have your nori, at K-Ton. | <urn:uuid:a075279d-9477-4274-8388-f0bbf2045051> | CC-MAIN-2019-18 | http://ktonrestaurant.com/amazing-benefits-of-the-nutritious-nori/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-18/segments/1555578528481.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20190420020937-20190420042937-00165.warc.gz | en | 0.936654 | 606 | 2.671875 | 3 | {
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Waite researchers have uncovered how a common parasite affects wheat crops by applying new technology to address an old problem. Using high-resolution 3D imaging, PhD student Kara Levin discovered how cereal cyst nematodes interfere with plant root development to hijack water and nutrient flow.
Cyst nematodes are soil-borne pests that infect plant roots. In southern Australia, cereal cyst nematodes (CCN) once caused devastating yield losses in wheat and barley crops. Over many years, researchers at the University of Adelaide and SARDI guided efforts to bring these parasites under control. Despite this, it remained uncertain exactly how these nematodes interfere with root development and crop yield.
New research, published in the journal Scientific Reports, used cutting edge imaging technology to take a close look within CCN-infected wheat roots.
“By combining new techniques from plant biology, microscopy and computer modelling, we were able to look deep within CCN-infected wheat roots to generate 3D models that show nematodes and their effects on plant tissues.” said lead author Kara Levin from the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, and the Waite Research Institute.
This revealed that CCN infection dramatically affects the development of xylem vessels that transport water and mineral nutrients from the root to the rest of the plant.
ABOVE: Rotating 3-D model of a nematode infection site within a wheat root. The nematode (shown in red) and its feeding site (shown in blue) are positioned next to the water transport system of the roots (shown in green and yellow, green being parts of the root invaded by the feeding site)
Kara Levin used confocal microscopy to generate 3D images of cereal cyst nematode infection in wheat roots.
“Although microscopy has been used to investigate this system for decades, this study is the first to show that xylem cells in infected roots become short and fat ‘bubbles’ rather than long and narrow ‘tubes’. This is likely to impede water transport within the roots.”
“We also saw clear evidence of nematode feeding sites having ‘invaded’ xylem vessels.”
Professor Diane Mather said that this new knowledge is now being applied to investigate how some varieties are able to resist this parasite.
“This research means we now have a clearer picture of how nematode infections affect root development, which is important in determining resistance mechanisms in wheat that could be exploited in breeding programs.”
“The innovative use of imaging techniques can also be applied to other plant species and other research questions.”
Journal article link:
Levin KA, Tucker MR, Bird DM & Mather DE. Infection by cyst nematodes induces rapid remodelling of developing xylem vessels in wheat roots. Sci Rep 10, 9025 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-66080-z | <urn:uuid:593ade0e-05b1-417e-af2b-793df7b7bdcd> | CC-MAIN-2023-40 | https://www.thewaite.org/getting-to-the-root-of-soil-parasite-infections-in-wheat/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-40/segments/1695233511351.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20231004020329-20231004050329-00296.warc.gz | en | 0.920833 | 628 | 3.421875 | 3 | {
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Containers made from plastics are used in most traditional greenhouse operations. While plastic containers are practical, strong, and can be formed to any size, shape, or color, the extensive use of these petroleum-based containers creates significant waste disposal problems for the greenhouse industry and consumers. One example: a 2008 report found that a typical greenhouse operation in California discards over 3560 pounds of plastic trays, flats, and containers annually.
The amount of waste plastic generated by greenhouses has become an important issue as the industry focuses more on creating sustainable practices. Increasing the use of "biocontainers"—containers that are not produced from petroleum and that degrade rapidly when planted in the field or in a composting operation—is one way to reduce the amount of waste plastic generated by greenhouse operations.
In a new study that may provide greenhouse professionals with effective "green" alternatives, researchers report on a series of experiments in which they evaluated the physical properties of a range of commercially available biocontainers and compared them with traditional petroleum-based plastic containers. Scientists Michael R. Evans, Matt Taylor, and Jeff Kuehny compared seven commercially available biocontainers with plastic containers for physical attributes such as strength, water usage, and algal/fungal growth. The results of the study were published in HortTechnology.
According to Evans, corresponding author of the report, the results indicated that rice hull containers had the highest "vertical dry strength" of all containers tested. "Containers composed of 80% cedar fiber and 20% peat, composted dairy manure, and peat had lower vertical dry strengths than the aforementioned containers, but had higher vertical dry strengths than those composed of bioplastic, coconut fiber, and rice straw", Evans said.
"Plastic, OP47 (bioplastic), and rice hull containers had the lowest rates of water loss per unit of container surface area, while peat, Fertil, and rice straw containers had the highest rates of water loss per unit of container surface area", the researchers noted. They recommended that in locations where water use or availability is a major consideration, biocontainers such as OP47 or rice hulls may be preferred to other biocontainers that have a higher water usage requirement.
The researchers also tested "plantable" biocontainer decomposition under field conditions in greenhouses in Louisiana and Pennsylvania. Plants were grown for 5 weeks in Louisiana and 7 weeks in Pennsylvania; results showed that coconut fiber containers had the lowest level of decomposition at 4% and 1.5% in Pennsylvania and Louisiana, respectively.
The authors remarked that results related to container wet strength and water requirements were the most significant findings in their research. "Because the differences in physical properties of biocontainers compared with plastic containers were specific for each type of biocontainer, greenhouse managers will need to decide which of the physical properties are most important and select biocontainers with physical properties that best match their needs." | <urn:uuid:6ae30483-0bdf-412d-9af0-98ac84dc8f07> | CC-MAIN-2016-50 | http://www.k-online.com/cgi-bin/md_k/lib/pub/tt.cgi/New_information_provides_sustainable_options_for_greenhouse_operations.html?oid=28686&lang=2&ticket=g_u_e_s_t | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-50/segments/1480698541864.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20161202170901-00372-ip-10-31-129-80.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950101 | 609 | 3.734375 | 4 | {
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Subsets and Splits